**This patch has a lot of flashing lights. ZOIA has a lot of flashing lights, but this patch has more than usual. If you experience seizures, you may want to avoid it.**
So, this is a patch I’ve worked on in bits and pieces, mostly while offering advice to questions about a Rainbow Machine patch on the ZOIA FB page. I’ll have to be honest with you: I don’t love the Rainbow Machine. It’s always been one of those pedals that I just… the chorus sounds great, yes. Everything else? Not necessarily my cup of tea. But I had this mostly finished for a while now and decided to get it off my “workbench.”
For a patch that shares some sonic territory that I did (and much prefer): https://patchstorage.com/harmonic-pixies-a-granular-polyphonic-pitchshifter-sort-of/
The concept is basically the same as the Rainbow Machine: there are two pitchshifters, that can be delayed, and fed back into one another, to produce weird ascending arpeggios and other pitchshifting wackiness (“Magic”). I’ve added a few wrinkles — using granular modules to provide both the pitchshifting and the delay — but the core concept remains.
The signal path is stereo for the dry path and mono split to dual mono for the wet path.
Controls:
Stompswitches:
Left — “Magic” — turns on the feedback and cross-feeding path of the granular modules, with the amount of feedback set by the “Magic” control. When the magic control is on, the flashing lights on the front page will increase in speed.
Middle — a sort of tone control; it switches between two different settings for the granular modules’ grain size and texture; one is smoother, the other more glitchy and stuttery
Right — freeze; this will momentarily freeze the granular modules until released
Front page:
Bunch of flashing lights.
The controls reflect the layout of the Rainbow Machine so:
Across the top are Primary (set the level of the primary pitchshifter), Pitch (sets the pitch of the primary pitchshifter; around 0, the secondary pitchshifter is slightly detuned, toward 1, it becomes an octave up, toward -1, an octave down), and Secondary (sets the level of the secondary pitchshifter).
Along the bottom row are Magic (sets the feedback and cross-feedback level of the pitchshifters), Tone (a low-pass filter for removing high frequencies), and Lag (sets the delay time). I did include an extra control: Lag Offset. When Lag Offset is 0, the two pitchshifter’s delays are equal. As it is moved toward -1 the delay of the Primary pitchshifter will decrease relative to the Secondary (which will use the time set by the Lag control), and when it is moved toward 1, the Secondary will increase relative to the Primary (which will use the time set by the Lag control).
