Complex Sequencing from Simple Patching

It’s typical for synthesizer architecture to be described in terms of so-called “voices” and “polyphony”… you have the monophonic synthesizer with one voice, like the Minimoog… or the polyphonic synthesizer with multiple voices, like the Roland Jupiter series. Any break from this architecture gets argued over seemingly endlessly. Take a look at the so-called “paraphonic” synth, like the Korg Poly-800, where there are multiple oscillators but they all a share a gate structure. Or the modular synth, which is typically polyphonic, but in a polytimbral fashion rather than the monotrimbral chords you hear from a keyboard polysynth. If you need a boost to your melatonin levels you can go to a synthesizer convention and listen to somebody give an hours-long presentation on how to define these various terms, and just what does and does not count as “polyphony.”

The dogma of the voice structure is encoded right into the MIDI standard, still the most recognized way to control synthesizers and other electronic instruments. A MIDI Note ALWAYS has a start point and end point that are tied to a particular pitch value or note number. You never have one without the other. To be sure, this is roughly the way it works in the so-called real world on acoustic keyboard instruments. When you press a key on a piano, you are starting that particular note, and when you release it, you are ending that particular note.

But synthesizers are not acoustic instruments. The gate structure that tells when a note starts and ends does not have any intrinsic relationship to that note’s pitch… yet if anyone ever showed you how to use a modular synth they probably started by showing you how to patch a monosynth. The VCO goes to the VCA, which is opened by a gate that comes at the same time as new note values. MIDI messages are so rigid in their form that for decades people have been using programs like Max and Pure Data to break them into component parts and put them back together in more interesting ways, because it can almost never be done using a MIDI controller and a synth alone. But a modular synthesizer has no such limitation. CV and Gate signals are independent by nature and design.

In this video we'll take a couple simple sequences from René and vastly increase their complexity by just swapping the destinations of their gate outputs.

[mdlrmmnts]

One of my favorite things you do for your videos is your poetic explanation. The ideas you choose to talk about, like parting from the norm of synthesis, is truly what taught me modular, and this is why the shared system will ALWAYS be fresh to me. Thanks Walker!

[mrcwalker]

This was a super inspiring video for me that kept me patching for hours! Thx

[HorseRadish]

Thank you, my favourite VCO/VCF sound/feeling from any modern synth, just need to save up for one😁

[jojoDUB]

I love, that these tutorials are always great music as well! I would listen to them as songs, if there was a version without the voiceover. Such good work!

[LarsBjerregaard]

Now THAT is beautiful, warms my minimalist heart ❤️

[quarkrahm]

Despite of all the variation techniques demonstrated here the patch – like so man other modular patches – sounds quite static due to lack of harmonic development. I was always wondering whether Rene 2 could be the perfect sequencer to break out of this by programming different scales or modes as states and using the Z axis to move between them. I'd love to see a video on something like this.

[kosmikmusa]

Very musical. Thanks for sharing this.

[Elfaki]

"Why stop there? Why stop anywhere?"

[vinylwrap]

Thanks for the video! Appreciate the melodic type tutorials.

[SoundsMick]

This so-called video is very informative thanks!

[mpingo]

😲 😍 Is this minimalist "Bass shift technique" 1:24 possible with the old Rene?

[phillipfarmer]

Can you explain a little further about using S+H to transpose?

[MisterNiles]

What stop anywhere? Because even though I know I should have gone before I left, I have to pee. That's why stop somewhere!