Plains of Arrakis

Another flute piece accompanied by a VCV patch built around my Subharmonicon emulator. This one uses the VCV Fundamental VCO version. The patch works well as a standalone ambient piece.

Note – this patch uses a bugged version 5 of my emulator. It does not impact this patch, but if you want to create your own patches with the emulator, then be sure to get version 5.1
https://patchstorage.com/subharmonicon-emulator-v5-for-rack-2/

Even though the emulator has only two 4 step sequencers, I get 16 different chords in a constantly evolving pattern by applying the sum of the CV from sequences 1 and 2 to VCO 2. The emulator’s rhythm generator uses primes of 3, 5, 11, and 13. Even with a moderate tempo of 240 BPM, I compute it will take nearly 2.4 hours to cycle the sequencers and rhythm generators back to the starting point.

This is the first time I have combined the emulator with other voices. I steal the unused saw waveform from the emulator’s polyphonic oscillator and perform a recursive filter sweep on the summed channels of Subs 1B and 2B to get an eerie yet peaceful glissando. I use a free running LFO to control the filter cutoff. I also use docB HexSeq and Sha#bang! Stochastic Sequencer Grid to drive a set of VCV Drums. The only way I could get the Grid to reliably start with the correct sequence and stay in sync with the other voices was to use the Grid as the master clock, which then clocks both the emulator and the HexSeq.

There are four sources of variability within the percussion to make it dynamic and organic sounding:
– Bernoulli gate randomly directs triggers to either a closed hi-hat, or ride cymbal
– Sample and Hold randomly controls the accent CV for each hit except the kick
– The Grid sequencer randomly decides whether some of the beats trigger the toms
– The Grid sequencer also randomly decides whether certain tom beats are a single hit, or multiple sub-divisions (2, 3 or 4, depending on beat).

I really love the sound of the VCV Drums.

Here is the plugin list for the base emulator:
Bogaudio
Count Modula
dBiz
DHE Modules
docB dbRackFormulaOne
Grande
JW-Modules
QuantalAudio
Submarine
Stoermelder PackOne
NYSTHI
ML Modules
VCV Core
VCV Fundamental
Vult Modules Free

These are additional plugins that are used external to the emulator:
Audible Instruments
Bark
DanT Modules
docB dbRackModules
MindMeld
Sha#Bang! Modules
Squinky Labs
Valley
VCV Drums (Premium)
VCV Host (Premium)

The Host FX module uses the free Valhalla SuperMassive VST plugin, with the Barnard 33 preset (found under SFX -> Nebulae -> Barnard 33)

My performance rig routs the VCV standalone output as input to a Reaper track, and my flutes are a separate track with Acon Digital Solo Reverb. The Master track then applies some EQ and compression.

Performance Notes:

The patch mostly runs itself, with a set of four rectangular glowing buttons from NYSTHI toward the upper right providing some manual control:

Top Left – Start/Stop the patch. Also resets to scene 1, and toggles the lights on or off.
Bottom Left – Manually toggle the lights on or off. I usually only use this button once upon patch load to get the lights to the correct starting state (on while patch is not running)
Top Right – Cycle between the three scenes.
Bottom Right – Unused

Scene 1:
Kick + HiHat/Ride
Glissando – the incoming saw wave pitches are low enough to cause the filter to output a cluster of harmonic partials, rather than just one at a time, giving an eerie sound

Scene 2:
Adds Rim shots
Bumps Glissando up one octave, but cutoff range remains the same, so able to pick off single harmonic partials

Scene 3:
Adds Toms
Adds Emulator (sounds somewhat like a choir)