Pure Data based distortion (for bass guitar, but not only) for the Organelle.
Another standard effect that I created for myself.
Not long ago I gifted myself a very nice Ibanez hollow body bass guitar (for a year of hard work in which there was almost no time for other things) and was looking for a nice distortion. The market is huge and unmanageable, so I built myself a distortion based on Pure Data.
I’m still a beginner, so please be gentle with my performance in the video. The first 50 seconds are really dull, so just jump directly to the second chapter.
The patch consists of six configuration pages. The pages can be changed with the encoder. Press the encoder for at least one second to return to the main menu.
Page 1: Gain and Drive
Gain => Input Gain
Drive => Distortion amount
Highpass => Distorted lows don’t sound good, so this can be filtered out
Wet => Wet ;-)
Page 2: Character
This is something similar to a bit crusher. I call it “struggle”.
Amount => The amount of “struggle”
Character => From coarse to fine
Type => coefficients for the character (don’t know what else to call it)
Mixin => Amount of character at the distortion
Page 3: Tube
Not really a simulation of a tube, just a gentle ring modulation on the distorted signal.
Heat => Stability adjustment
Influence => The level of influence on the input signal
Color: Global effect. Due to a change of the filter in the filter gate here the resonance can be set. Works best on very short gate attack & release. But can be fun as well on longer attack & release times due to charming filter sweeps.
Page 4: Filters
It’s not just a filter, it’s actually a noise gate which is opened and closed not by an amplifier but by a filter. However, you can set the maximum opening to which the output signal should be limited.
LP cutoff => low pass cutoff frequency
GT Threshold => Signal level from which the gate should open
GT Attack => The speed at which the gate should be opened
GT Release => The speed at which the gate should be closed as soon as the signal level is lower than GT Threshold
Page 5: Pedal
Simply use a food switch to control a parameter.
Target => None, Wet, Drive, LP Cutoff, Character
Pedal min => Connect your food switch and set it to the smallest value (displayed in the bottom line)
Pedal max => Connect your food switch and set it to the highest value (displayed in the bottom line)
Current => Displays the current value and its conversion
The values are automatically saved in the pedal.cfg file
Page 6: Preset
Select a slot to save or load a preset and press AUX. The last saved preset will be loaded automatically on startup.
In order to briefly test the patch, it is not necessary to install it on the Organelle. The patch main-oui.pd opens the GUI from the video for testing if you have PD installed on your desktop.
The Organelle UI from the video (I use it for development and testing) is available here: https://patchstorage.com/organelle-ui-for-desktop/
0.1: Initial
0.2: Added foot switch support for “Heat influence”
0.3: Noticed some crinkle on fast attack and release of the filter gate. Changed filter type.
