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Re: Putney
Alex,
This sounds remarkably close to the effect I used to get with the
Serge Modular Smooth and
Stepped Generator (if I read you correctly). Something like a random
sample and hold that sounds
like an ever evolving pattern. The small fluctuations in the analog
circuitry would hold the
pattern steady for a while and then inexplicably alter them a little. Ah,
the beauty of analog
gear... I like your description of it as a barber pole type illusion.
BTW, is this the same Alex Stahl who attended Evergreen in the late
70's?
SVG
One loopish technique that I learned on the Putney and still think
about when thinking about ways to extending digital audio loop
techniques, is the stairstep LFO 'sequencer' effect. You take two
subsonic sawtooth waves and set the shape of one so it is an
ascending ramp and the other descending. You combine both of these
waves and modulate the pitch of an oscillator and/or a filter with
both of them. Then you tweak the amplitudes (the knob layout makes
this all really easy to do) so that the rising wave going in one
direction exactly cancels the slope of the other ramp.
You end up with a cyclic sequence of voltage steps, and there are
infinite fine-tuning possibilities. It is practically impossible to
set one analog LFO to say, exactly five times as fast and five times
lower amplitude than the other. If you could you would get a simple
five-note arpeggio. Instead, you get into various "barber pole"
illusions as the steps sort of slide around and create larger
patterns. I am giving up on describing this verbally at this point,
but it is a very simple yet deep technique from the school of
combining slightly different-length cycles. A lot of this kind of
VCS3 synth-looping can be heard on Dark Side of the Moon.
-Alex S.
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