Patch 7: 0-CTRL in Full Control

This patch is a great example of how modular can look really confusing by the time a patch is done — hell, it is confusing at this point — despite it being comprised of many fairly simple elements. Kinda like life, I suppose. Anyway, you’re looking at a four voice patch run by the 0-CTRL (not the only modulation source, but does nearly all the actual sequencing). It’s very playable, because the 0-CTRL is very playable. (I fell in love with the 0-CTRL making this patch, BTW.)

Let’s go voice by voice, one at a time. Our first voice is the pink/magenta cables (with one or two exceptions because I run out of cables of certain colors). Its pitch and gates are sequenced fully by the 0-CTRL using the dynamic gate and dynamic envelope outs. Specifically, the pitch output of the 0-CTRL goes into the Ornament and Crime in the main case, where the right side is running the dual quantizer algorithm. The quantized pitches feed the Klavis Twin Waves, which is set to play a single simple sawtooth wave — no waveshaping or detuning or anything going on. That feeds the Doepfer SEM filter , which then goes to the Tallin VCA (controlled by the dynamic envelope output of 0-CTRL), which is cranked high enough to distort (it’s on its Linear distortion setting). Our yummy filtered and distorted saw goes into the Mimeophon and to the mixer.

Our second voice, in neon green, is a drum voice. Here we use the clock to feed the Benjolin so we can get some semi random gates that are synced to our clock. Two of those trigger the two ADSR envelopes of the Ornament and Crime left side, set to a quick decay and minimal sustain/moderate release. Basically, a cymbal(ish). Those “cymbals” go into a ping pong delay on the Disting mk4 (Program C3) and the stereo signal goes into the Noise Engineering Tymp Legio for mixing/ducking.

The second part of the drum voice is the Tymp Legio’s own drum. It’s set to the Cat setting, Tang in the top setting, pitch modulated by the 0-CTRL touch output CV, wack modulated by the slowest Sloth’s bottom output. It’s just triggered by the clock, and it ducks the “cymbals” when it hits.

Our third voice, in purple, comes courtesy of the Panharmonium. It’s fed the SEM filter’s bandpass output to chew on, and set to resynthesize the input relatively slowly. I play a lot of the settings so it’s a little pointless to say where they are as a default — wherever I left them last time I played the patch, I suppose. The output is 100% wet (so just the Panharmonium’s resynthesis of the input, none of the original signal). That goes into the Terci Ruina, through all three distortion stages, and into the WMDevices C4RBN filter. C4RBN frequency is modulated by the middle output of the “fast” Sloth; its saturation level is modulated by the bottom left mix output of the Sloths. I come out of the C4RBN’s lowpass 2 Pole output, straight into the mixer.

Our final voice, in blue (a couple shades of it), is triggered by every other step of the 0-CTRL, via its individual step gate outs and ninja-star splitter combining the gates (often warned against, but Make Noise specifically says their gear can handle it), feeding the Pittsburgh Mod Tools function generator to give us an envelope that controls both the filter’s cutoff (the Wasp filter in this case) and the VCA (the other side of the Tallin, also cranked hot and set to its Symmetric distortion setting). That envelope is in turn modulated by the top output of the fastest Sloth, so it gets longer/shorter in an unpredictable fashion to keep things lively. And feeding that filter/VCA is side B of our trusty Twin Waves, running the bitcrushed saw program, with bitrate modulated by yet another Sloth output (medium speed sloth, middle output). The pitch of this oscillator is provided by the top out put of the medium speed sloth feeding the other side of that Ornament and Crime Dual Quantizer, to give us actual musical pitches. And the end result goes into the DIsting EX running in dual mode, playing B4, Clockable Delay, which then goes to the mixer.

This gives us a complex web of interacting timbres that are closely enough related it’s not always clear which element is providing what, and they change in character in unpredictable but typically musical (IMO) ways. What’s really interesting, and fun, about this patch is how much the 0-CTRL lets you play it. Twist all the knobs, touch the plates, even repatching it in real time all offer a ton of options that, with a little effort and practice, are very musical. The video provides a few examples, since it’s much easier to

Here’s a quick sample; you’ll have to listen to the album to get the rest.