TL;DR - skip to the bottom for the download links - but have fun figuring out how to use these without explanation - a lot of the info in the included text file and google sheet weren't made for this post, they've been living documents for me to keep this bird's nest straight in my own head.
If you liked my prior contribution: Euclid patches for binary prime numbers up to 65521 - then I think you'll REALLY like this one. THAT BEING SAID...
As a forewarning - I fully realize the highly niche nature of these patches and want to take a moment to elaborate how they were made and what their intended function is - but of course, feel free to use them in literally any way you please (or maybe these are so niche that literally the only person that can get any use out of them is me... only one way to find out though). I use them with simple on/off CV gates, but they probably could do all manner of crazy things with LFOs.
Required REs:
- Robotic Bean: Select CV Switch, Euclid Rhythm Generator
- Blamsoft: Polymodular CV Splitter (this is free if you don't have it, and I don't hate myself enough to create versions of these patches using the default Spider.)
- Chronologists: Truth Logic Gates, Now Counting Gate
- Fractality: One can consider the kick and bass patterns these are intended to create as "fractal" not in a necessarily empirical mathematic sense (I'm not really qualified to know for sure if what I've done here applies), but in the sense that, much like zooming in on the Mandelbrot set, starting at a low BPM using these patterns will give the impression of a somewhat spastic kick pattern being occasionally accentuated by another far more sparse one; but then, as you increase the BPM or "zoom in" the sparser pattern replaces the busier one, which itself in turn has its pulses squeezed by the increasing BPM to the point of becoming more akin to hertz - cycles per second, than BPM - beats per minute. It is fractally inpired, so-to-speak, if not empirically fractal.
- A concept/phenomonenon that I suppose can be understood in many ways, and there's probably a more "proper" music theory/sound design understanding of it, but it essentially is inspired by a genre of music known as "Extratone" - this is a style of electronic music that grew out of Speedcore (really fast hardcore techno, 200BPM and higher) - Extratone can be thought of as the experimental offshoot going beyond Speedcore and composing tracks hundreds or even thousands of BPM higher, to the point where individual beats are no longer individually discernible and a rhythm becomes tonal. There are other offshoots of this, such as Flashcore, etc., where these tonal blastbeats are broken up via an overarching slower (but still fast) meter to arrange them in a way that is rhythmically more familiar.
PQRS-INPUTS.cmb - The input patterns (Euclids). There are 4 for the "kick" and 4 for the "bass", a 32/16 pattern routed to a Now counting gate to manage pattern resets, and a mux/selector pattern that accepts an external clock to trigger density percentage alternations on two of the bass patterns (you can split the kick CV output of this entire system prior to actually connecting it to the kick and route it back here to have the kick "toggle" the bass patterns!). The kick patterns favor 1/4 or 1/8 to give the impression of a slower BPM than is actually being used, while the bass is best kept at 1/128 (although its adjustible to 1/16-1/64) to take advantage of the different frequency intervals you can hear between beats.
LOGOS-MUX.cmb - The logic functions. The patterns are modulated by numerous logic gates, including what are essentially implication, non-implication, converse implication, and converse-non-implication (not usually seen/used in digital signal processing AFAIK), 2-to-1 and 4-to-1 multiplexers, and last but not least, actual proofs for the 3 dilemmas in logical rules of inference: constructive, bidirectional, and destructive.
Both patches are set up according to the idea that the bass is always playing the same pattern as the kick, just way too fast for you to hear the beats, so you get a nice growls, groans, buzzes, and minigun-esque droning. I highly recommend using the same sound for the the bass as the kick - i.e. the bass will be simply an extremely fast blizzard of kick drums. IMO, you'll limit the potential sonic "palette" by using a traditional bass instrument with the bass pattern. - Ultimately though, how you select the sounds is your business - I personally use Rob Papen's Punch BD generator, and manipulate the curve and filter/attack functions on the copy the bass uses for the desired effect. These patches also assume that there is a sidechain for the kick to gate/duck the bass.
No matter how complex or chaotic the resulting patterns sound, there's a mathematical connection between them that is fun to explore due to the common source material of the 4 original patterns, and varying stages of the different gate CVs can be routed all over your track.
***The reasons for this escape me, despite my research. The highest BPMs I've ever produced with have been in the 450-475 range, and probably due to my construction and use of patches like these Combis, going above this tempo results in noticeable CPU strain. But, even at 500 BPM @ 4/4, a sustained 1/128th pulse should only equate to about ~267Hz. Hardly something I'd imagine 44.1 kHz would fail to recreate accurately - the only thing I can think of is that the sheer number of discrete events combined with CV delay/delay compensation isn't lining up well with the samplings themselves. At 88200 it lines up noticeably (that is, audibly) better though. If anyone can explain what I'm missing here that'd be awesome.
Okay, so that's the informal rundown.
Here is a link to a zip file, which contains:
- PQRS-INPUTS.cmb
- LOGOS-MUX.cmb
- Two JPG files that depict the CV connections from #1 to #2 (one for the kick in/out and one for the bass in/out)
- A readme/manual .txt file going into more technical detail on how each patch works and what the various settings mean, FAR too long to include here, but I still strongly encourage everyone to give an honest read.
A spreadsheet functioning as a visual representation of the different operations LOGOS-MUX can carry out (save a copy and use the instructions at the top)
A screen recording demo of me using Rob Papen's Punch BD as kick and bass with CV patterns coming from these two Combis, and playing with most of the settings on both patches, as well as a 1-450BPM sweep to illustrate that fractal/extratonal phenomenon.
Other possibly useful but mostly just interesting links:
article covering extratone, flashcore, speedcore, etc.
binary logical operators' truth tables
implication
converse implication
abjunction
converse abjunction
rules of inference
constructive dilemma
bi-directional dilemma and other argument forms
destructive dilemma
Any feedback/suggestions/comments/questions, hit me.