ARCUS Patch Competition

[starship]

Announcing a combinator patch competition for the ARCUS User Knobs CV Utility!

shop page:
https://www.propellerheads.com/shop/rac ... ser-knobs/
manual:
http://alien-seed.com/arcus/ARCUS_manual.pdf

The contest ends July 4th.
Patches that make the cut will be included in an update released soon after.

What's the ARCUS?
A 1U CV utility for controlling other stuff with labeled knobs. It's got curving, precise limits, rewiring, lots of configurable outputs, mod inputs, and a number of other options. The knobs are kinda flashy, moving through a rainbow (partially because it looks neat, partially to help make it obvious what knobs are set to at a glance).

It's great for making complex combinator patches and controlling other devices via their mod inputs and remote. It aims to be flexible and powerful.

And it's on sale. Right now the sale goes to the end of the month, but I'll extend that to have it on sale with the new patches after this competition ends.


Prizes:
I'll adjust the prizes once this thing gets going, so this is just what I'm starting with:
at least top 10 get an ARCUS license (or PSDN or future RE or coupon or something if you own it already)
at least 1st place gets a KRON license (or etc.)


Rules:
Submit as many as you'd like!
Judging based on quality and quantity, usage of the ARCUS(es), usefulness and general sound/utility of the patch(es) itself, etc.
Stock devices preferred; free and other Alien Seed Tech devices are OK.
Any kind of instrument/effect/utility patch is welcome.
No real limits on size.

It's an unofficial competition. I'm judging it! :)
Just post them in here (emailing me is fine too) and feel free to add some explanation.
And please label patches that use non-stock devices or are really big (or say this in your post, etc. to make it easier for me to put them together in the end).


More Details:
These patches will go in the next update. I really want to see what the RT community can come up with using this device, and obviously the point here is for users (and trial-ers) to have a bunch of badass combi patches to use and learn from.

Stock devices strongly encouraged! Free REs are OK but keep in mind the goal here is for an easy set of patches to browse, so the more you can do with just built-in stock devices, the better.

Using the KRON is OK. But unless you all change my mind, let's not do other paid REs (and VSTs), though I might be OK with it if you've got great stock/free patches already. :) And version 1 of the PSDN is fine, but if it's version 2 (for beta testers), I'll have to hold those patches back till it's released. Working on it now fwiw. :)

If it turns out a bunch of entries are on trials and they're looking like winners, maybe I'll pick some early. And I'll gladly give other stuff to anyone that already owns it or ends up buying it because they started the trial ages ago when they thought I was going to start this competition. ;)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you can do!

And a big shout out to the beta testers who helped with this thing! :)

Cheers!

[diminished]

Hey starship! Good luck with the competition. I won't participate (because in all my life I haven't made anything more complex with CV than patching an external LFO to filter resonance), but I would like to voice a concern if you don't mind.
Imagine investing a lot of time into making patches, with a few useful ones but only reaching, idk, 18th place. Then you grab what's useful and leave them empty handed? My suggestion is to hand anyone a price who's patches make the cut and will be bundled with the RE. Anything else would be unfair IMHO.

[starship]

Hey starship! Good luck with the competition. I won't participate (because in all my life I haven't made anything more complex with CV than patching an external LFO to filter resonance), but I would like to voice a concern if you don't mind.
Imagine investing a lot of time into making patches, with a few useful ones but only reaching, idk, 18th place. Then you grab what's useful and leave them empty handed? My suggestion is to hand anyone a price who's patches make the cut and will be bundled with the RE. Anything else would be unfair IMHO.

Thanks. :)

Yeah, that's sort of where I'm going with this. That's why I said I might give out more prizes, just depending on how things go. Starting with 10 slots. Hedging my bets b/c I don't know what to expect here. E.g. if I get hundreds of single entries and they're all awesome ;) I can't give out that many licenses. But the more entries there are, and the more I want to include, the more prizes there will be, for sure!! :)

Re: your CV chops, *shrug*. :) That's the basic idea anyway, and this device is sorta geared towards making combi patches. I'm also really just interested in seeing what RT wizards come up with in terms of their general patching of stock devices. This device is good at facilitating the control of a bunch of stuff, even without wiring up other fancy CV. Think: having a bunch of combi knobs, most having to use direct CV mod inputs or remote (after using up the 4 combi mod inputs), but with lots of control over the boundaries, curving, sending multiple related signals to different/parallel devices, doing nonlinear dry/wet style stuff with any parameters, adjusting the curves and boundaries to do even fades and such with anything... like a knob to do filter freq and res at the same time with lots of control over where that res is for different freqs, or turning a distortion amount knob on an effects device that also raises the volume into more of a dry/wet distortion knob that doesn't.

No pressure. But might as well give that spiel. :) Personally, as soon as I started using it, I was like, "Oh, jeez, I'll never not use these in a song again." :) They make patching for me a lot easier and potentially more powerful. That's my pitch!! But I did make it. :) I'm biased!

[Loque]

Cool stuff. It's the other kind of competition... I am curious what i can do and what others will do.

[Re8et]

A Sequencer example - Arcus 2 Europa Bassline

ARCUS SEQ EUROPA 01.zip

(5.99 KiB) Downloaded 360 times

[starship]

Yeah, thinking it over re: prizes, and I'll give out more for sure. :) I want to see how things go for a week or so and make adjustments. Coupons, etc. Lemme see how this goes and if anyone has great suggestions.

Nice patch, Re8et!

Ditto, Loque! :)

[Re8et]

And a Breathing delay fx
I will try to compress them in one folder, but this was also to give an idea to others not used to Kron stuff

ARCUS DELAY PAN FILTERS.zip

(3.24 KiB) Downloaded 344 times

[starship]

And a Breathing delay fx
I will try to compress them in one folder, but this was also to give an idea to others not used to Kron stuff :D
ARCUS DELAY PAN FILTERS.zip

Cool! Yeah, no worries re: one folder.

[Boombastix]

Sending in the two I did in the other thread so it is all in one place.

ARCUS Chimes - RS.zip

(30.63 KiB) Downloaded 342 times

ARCUS Arp Reverberation - RS.zip

(34.78 KiB) Downloaded 349 times

[starship]

Sending in the two I did in the other thread so it is all in one place.

ARCUS Chimes - RS.zip
ARCUS Arp Reverberation - RS.zip

thanks! :)

[starship]

Here's one I just cooked up. It's a template patch, designed for swapping in different monotone bass patches. Not necessarily done with it but here it is:

Dual Monotones.zip

(5.1 KiB) Downloaded 346 times

Basically it separates 2 versions of the same patch with a couple simple LFOs (a Pulsar) and lots of ARCUSes (4 :)). It modifies the pitch bend and mod wheel, adds some pitch and oscillator drift, and gives a combined filter freq/res control.

No other effects added, just aiming to jazz up monotone patches via CV.

[starship]

Another one. This is designed for plucks (Europas at the moment, but other instruments could be easily used).

Polyrhythym Pluck Arps.zip

(9.04 KiB) Downloaded 351 times

It generates dual random polyrhythm arps with some random LFOs on various things (uses pitch bend and mod wheel for spicing up the stereo field). Also gives filter freq/res access (a knob for each) for adjustment of instrument patches after they're loaded. Gotta say boy do I wish the Europa and Grain had more direct mod inputs! :) please! :)

FWIW, putting a KRON in here instead of the 2 Pulsars would allow repeatable "random" numbers real easily (with its different random seeds that are tempo-safe). For me, if I used this in a song, that'd be pretty necessary. It's why I added it to the KRON! :)

Also I don't care if you all revise/update your patches, if you post works in progress.

And seriously, anyone that makes it into the final patch set will be rewarded somehow. I know this crowdsourcing shtick is kinda asking for free labor.. :) but it's not like i'm making a living at this yet. :) boy do i do a lot of free labor on my end. :) *sigh* haha

another shout out to the beta testers who do the same! :)

[zoidkirb]

Here's 3 little Subtractor combis I had fun making. I know I'm not utilizing ARCUS to anywhere near it's full potential but even still it was fundamental to building these patches. "Noisy One" was my fave, my mission was to fully utilize Subtractors own lfo's and envelopes then twist them in ARCUS and feed them back via the combinator. This patch relies of using the pitch and mod wheels and aftertouch to get some pretty bubbly sounding noisy growls from Subtractor.

[starship]

Here's 3 little Subtractor combis I had fun making. I know I'm not utilizing ARCUS to anywhere near it's full potential but even still it was fundamental to building these patches. "Noisy One" was my fave, my mission was to fully utilize Subtractors own lfo's and envelopes then twist them in ARCUS and feed them back via the combinator. This patch relies of using the pitch and mod wheels and aftertouch to get some pretty bubbly sounding noisy growls from Subtractor.

cool! The lead patch's audio out isn't wired into the combinator though. :)

So I noticed this, checking b/c of my next comment.. Probably my fault (re: layout :)), but I think you're thinking that those output toggles work for both of those outputs, in pairs. The left side of the outputs (with a different background color for each knob) is just what the front says it is, and the right side uses those toggles and amount knobs.

Also if it were up to me, I'd double up the subtractors and use the ARCUS output toggles to spread the signal. Do 2 of 'em with a stereo spread and give the 2nd some kind of altered set of signals. That's mostly what I use those output toggles for. :) It really spreads out the sound, having similar CV, sometimes opposite or negated or just at a different volume, etc. And IMO it can be nice to have both sides using the same CV instead of e.g. different LFOs b/c it sorta unifies them while it's spread out.

But anyway, these sound cool! :)

[starship]

I mean it's not a universal solution. I might go overboard with it. :) But that's sorta more or less why those toggles are on there, aside from it just being a good idea for a CV device like this. :) Props to remo101 for roundabout getting me to put negate toggles on here. And etc. :)

[zoidkirb]

Thanks starship, I did realise eventually about those toggles. My trial ran out so no more changes for now. Lots of good ideas though in this thread from you and others, it's gonna be a good resource moving forward.

[Loque]

Ok, here is my pack.

* It contains a few ARCUS generating LFOs (yes, ARCUS can generate LFO )
* A bass patch (damn! i am proud of this analog bass patch, modify the controls and everything sounds awsome!)
* A sequence patch, where ARCUS is used to transform notes and drives a filter with it (slightly different in L/R)
* A dynamic patch, which uses a envelope follower and scales, transforms and smooths the generate curve
* A few shapes, which can be driven by an LFO to transform e.g. a simple sine into something more complex

Guess i wont have much time for more, so i upload it now. Enjoy!

ARCUS - Loque.zip

(30.17 KiB) Downloaded 161 times

[starship]

Ok, here is my pack.

When I load these there are no ARCUSes. :)

[Loque]

Ok, here is my pack.

When I load these there are no ARCUSes.

Thanks for the hint. Uploaded the wrong file. Fixed now.

[starship]

When I load these there are no ARCUSes. :)

Thanks for the hint. Uploaded the wrong file. Fixed now.

lol.. Sweet!

[Loque]

Here's 3 little Subtractor combis I had fun making. I know I'm not utilizing ARCUS to anywhere near it's full potential but even still it was fundamental to building these patches. "Noisy One" was my fave, my mission was to fully utilize Subtractors own lfo's and envelopes then twist them in ARCUS and feed them back via the combinator. This patch relies of using the pitch and mod wheels and aftertouch to get some pretty bubbly sounding noisy growls from Subtractor.

I cant hear anything on "SUBT - Lead", what shall i do? There is no audio connected.

[zoidkirb]

Here's 3 little Subtractor combis I had fun making. I know I'm not utilizing ARCUS to anywhere near it's full potential but even still it was fundamental to building these patches. "Noisy One" was my fave, my mission was to fully utilize Subtractors own lfo's and envelopes then twist them in ARCUS and feed them back via the combinator. This patch relies of using the pitch and mod wheels and aftertouch to get some pretty bubbly sounding noisy growls from Subtractor.

I cant hear anything on "SUBT - Lead", what shall i do? There is no audio connected.

somehow the audio routing wasn't actually part of the combinator but it must have been routed a different way. I'm kinda new to sharing combinators and relatively new to reason. Definitely I'll get back to cleaning up and improving these.

[Loque]

Ok, looks like i have a bit more time to experiment. Here is something quite easy.

Nearly every synth has Note->FilterFreq control, making the filter following the keyboard. Additionally they have Portamento Glide Time to glide from one note to the other. Often they do not have this implemented in the filter or do not provide any control for it.

I used ARCUS to get MIDI Notes and glide from one to the other. While the normal "Smoothing" is linear, i used two ARCUS to add more smoothing, making it more rounded and less linear. With the resulting Glide Curve i control a filter of a Monotone and directly inverted the routing to the Resonance a bit with increasing notes. Additionally i used a bit non-linear mapping.Finally i used Note*Lag*Lag, Mapping, Scaling and finally also Invertion of signals - which makes 4 functions handled in ARCUS.

What i just miss, is a bit more control of the input, curving, a freaking Gate+Note input on ARCUS, ...for each Knob (cannot believe i said that...). But can easily be handled with multiple devices.

Additionally i am currently trying to generate an Envelope - not sure, if this is possible...i will see. In the meantime, have fun with this:

[Loque]

I failed on creating a usable envelope. So here is a simple LFO transformation, creating a sine with peaks. Can be quite easily adjusted to create a more "U" like curve or similar transformations.

LFO - Peakaboo - Loque.zip

(2.46 KiB) Downloaded 144 times

peakaboo.jpg (119.96 KiB) Viewed 7360 times

[zoidkirb]

i made something in europa this time, but it's influenced by my time with the noise engineering bundle . a plucky paddy sort of thing, where the modulation occurs on the pitch and the mod wheel. i ran enough cables for now but still had two rotator knobs left over in the end!