Category: studio journal

This patch follows up the one from two days ago, [“Step Wise,”](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/30/buddha-machine-variations-no-17-step-wise/) No. 17 in this series. There, as here, alterations in square waves were used to instantiate some melodic activity amid what otherwise would be a more static operation. The difference is that in “Step Wise,” a single square wave went back and forth, slowly alternating at an even pace between relative high and low. Here the square wave is a little more complicated, a little more rough, a little more varied. And what it produces happens in murkier territory.

There are four channels of audio going into the mixer at the end of the chain, all at pretty much the same volume level. The source audio at the start of the chain is one loop from one Buddha Machine, first generation, going through granular synthesis. The granular synthesis then goes into a filter bank that splits the audio into bands spread across the spectrum.

The first and second channels are simply mid- and low-range bands from the filter bank. The third channel is where the echoing effect comes from: a series of staged delays activating on a low-level band of the filter bank. The fourth channel is more for background haze: a high-level band from the filter bank goes through a granular delay and then through some heavy reverb.

I’m not going to list all the modules used, since they’ve been used in recent pieces in this series to the same purposes. The main thing to keep an eye on is the left side of the tiny screen on the bottom level, the black module three in from the right (it’s an Ornament and Crime running an alternate firmware called Hemispheres, specifically the Scope utility). That’s a scope image of the voltage that’s motivating the changes in overall pitch. That little blue object hovering in space is taking the output signal of the combined Batumi/Dixie/S.P.O. modules and sending it both into the octave control of the granular synthesizer, and into the Ornament/Hemispheres oscilloscope. If you watch it, you’ll see horizontal lines go up and down, and occasionally splinter. The wave causing that visual activity is a somewhat complex one that combines two square waves in the SPO: a slow-moving one from the Batumi, and a slightly faster-moving one from the Dixie. The pitch of the latter in turn is itself being occasionally altered in pitch by a sine wave, also from the Batumi. That’s all parsed in the S.P.O., and yields the relative volumes shifts in the initial granular synthesis of the source loop.

For further patch-documentation purposes, here’s a straight-on shot of the synthesizer:

Video originally posted at youtube.com/disquiet. There’s also a (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MIM4mCYe17nERi9xeEWAD2w) of the Buddha Machine Variations.

Like pretty much all of these Buddha Machine Variations thus far, this one began with a concept, an approach. And like most of them, it ended up someplace else — less else than others, but else nonetheless. The initial technical concept was unusually precise, in that I plugged in a good half of these cables before even turning on the synthesizer, or plugging in the source audio. The audio is from the third-generation Buddha Machine, also known as Chan Fang, which dates from 2010. The loop heard here, like the others on the device, was originally performed with the qin, an ancient Chinese zither. (I once saw an epic Chinese film involving a master qin player and every time the qin was mentioned, the subtitles would say “zither,” like the audience hadn’t yet committed this fact to memory. Over time, of which there was quite a bit, this being an epic, the constant appearance of this translation got the audience laughing, which was rarely the tone the movie was going for.)

My initial goal here was to employ a technique from the previous three variations, but to try a different take on it. This involves a module that takes two inputs and sends out one output, either the lowest (the AND route) or the highest (the OR route) of the two inputs at any given time. In the previous variations, I applied this to inbound audio. This time, I sent CV (control voltage, if you’re new to synthesizers) through it, hybrid waves that were themselves the product of two combined waves. Those two outputs, the AND and OR, were then applied to the relative volume of two of the five channels in the mixer.

Here’s the mixer breakdown, starting from the leftmost channel. Channel one is … well, this is a bit odd. It’s an error. It was to be a bit of granular synthesis applied to input from the source audio. But at some point I accidentally unplugged something, and when I went to plug it back in, I simply had one input from the module going to the main input. Somehow this module continued to produce sound from earlier, so that is heard throughout, quietly. Its volume is being varied based on the AND of that comparison mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Channel two is a narrow band of the audio spectrum of the Buddha Machine loop, its volume being varied based on the OR of that comparison mentioned above. Channel three is the series of three echoes heard throughout, all delays of one band of the source audio. Channel four is a mid-level narrow band of the loop’s audio spectrum, with no volume alteration. Channel five is the lowest-level heard of the audio spectrum sent through a heavy amount of reverb, so much so that it provides a near continuous hum.

And that about covers it. I’m not going to list all the modules used, since they’ve been used in recent pieces in this series to the same purposes. I will add one module-specific note: All three of the repetitions in mixer channel three come from the same single channel of the ER-301. Previously I was doing one delay in one channel and one delay in another, but it was unnecessary. Also, this is the second time I’ve done the video from an angle, which is OK, but I realize that I failed, as a result, last time to fully document the organization of the array of cables, so here’s a still shot from straight on:

Video originally posted at youtube.com/disquiet. There’s also a (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MIM4mCYe17nERi9xeEWAD2w) of the Buddha Machine Variations.

It occurred to me that all the Buddha Machine Variations so far have neglected one particular thing: What a single loop on a single Buddha Machine might sound like all on its own.

To address that situation, this video originated with a completed patch. I then noted the approximate relative volumes of the five channels of audio in the mixer. I then set all five channels to silent, null, void. Then I started the video with no sound at all, turned up the Buddha Machine (not yet plugged into the synthesizer), plugged it in, and proceeded, a step at a time, to introduce the four subsequent channels of audio.

To break it down: The first channel is the sound of the Buddha Machine (second generation) loop, unadulterated. The second and third channels are individual spectral bands extracted from that initial loop, and then each delayed a bit, so there’s a sense of repetition, even veering toward reflection. The fourth channel takes two other spectral bands from the source loop and puts them through a comparative process, so that only the higher pitch of them at any given moment is heard. And the fifth channel is the highest bracket of those spectral bands (the soprano among sopranos) put through granular synthesis (the input gain is set purposefully high).

To break down the tool set: The Buddha Machine is introduced to the synthesizer via the Erica Synths Pico Input. The mixer is the the ADDAC802 VCA Quintet Mixer. The initial division of the inbound audio occurs in the Malekko Heavy Industry Performance Buffered Mult. The spectral bands are extracted via the out-of-print Make Noise FXDf. The delay occurs in the Orthogonal Devices ER-301 (standard Delay unit). The comparison in the fourth channel involves the Whimsical Raps Cold Mac (specifically the “AND” route). The granular synthesis occurs in the Antumbra Smog, a remix of the out-of-print Mutable Instruments Clouds. The output is a Befaco Output (V3).

Video originally posted at youtube.com/disquiet. There’s also a (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MIM4mCYe17nERi9xeEWAD2w) of the Buddha Machine Variations.

This after-dinner patch doesn’t fully count as office ambience, because it had to wait until late in the day, but it had been on my mind all day. Yesterday (for [“Murky Trough”](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/28/buddha-machine-variations-no-15-murky-trough/)), I’d used the Cold Mac module, from Whimsical Raps, to compare a pair of inbound sounds and from them extract the lowest of either signal at any one time. Hence the “murky.” That was the AND route. There is also an OR route on the Cold Mac. After consulting an aftermarket manual, I came to understand that the OR route would also send its initial inbound signal to the AND route if there’s nothing else going into the first jack of the AND route. So, I sent two different narrow strands of the Buddha Machine’s spectrum (split by the Make Noise FXDf, after first going through the granular synthesis of the Antumbra Smog, a remix of the Mutable Instruments Clouds), one to AND and one to OR, and compared each to a third strand. The pair of end results go to two of the five inputs of the mixer. The second of them, the OR, is having its relative volume shifted by a slow-moving square wave from the Dixie II.

The third mixer input is the VCA-out of the Cold Mac: more muted, less volatile. The fourth input is one single band of the FDXf-filtered spectrum. And the fifth input is the right channel of the granular synthesizer, sent first to the ER-301, to be delayed a bit. Lends an orchestral call-and-response feel.

At the risk of burying the lede, the main evident sonic component here is how the music shifts up and down, over and over, between two registers. That’s accomplished by a slow square wave sent from the Batumi to the pitch control of the granular synthesizer via the S.P.O. If the S.P.O. weren’t used to squash the highs and lows of the square wave, the shift would be inelegant. Here it is more controlled.

Oh, and one more thing: the “size” of the granular-synthesis grain is shifting back and forth due to an inbound wave from the Batumi.

I’m not sure what’s up with the clicking. It’s not been this pronounced previously, and seems to have something to do with the LFOs from the Batumi and the Dixie II. I’ll look into that. The sound does lend it a kind of classical-on-old-vinyl-LP vibe.

Video originally posted at youtube.com/disquiet. There’s also a (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MIM4mCYe17nERi9xeEWAD2w) of the Buddha Machine Variations.