The Bridge is a track from the first UtD album, The Demon- Haunted World. This patch is intended to replicate the backing sequences from the original, over which some wailing psychedelic guitar should be played.
There are three sound channels coming into Mixer2 (Knob 1, 2 & 3).
Bass Sequence 1 |
This sound is made up of NoteSeqA1, AD-Env1, LFOSlvC1, MasterOsc1, OscSlvC2, C2 & C3, OscSlvD1, Mixer1 and FilterE1. In essence, what you have is a multi-oscillator monosynth (I was thinking of the Korg Mono-Poly), with its oscillators on different octaves and waveforms, all running through an envelope-swept low-pass filter. Note that the amplitude of this sound is not controlled by an envelope - just the mixer volume. The FMA inputs on the slave oscillators change the frequency according to the level of an input signal. The input in this case comes from Constant1 (unipolar 0-64), slewed by PortamentoA1, to avoid zipper noise. The FMA depth knobs are set to different values so that when the input value rises above 0, the oscillators detune wildly against each other. See later. Knob 1 controls level, while Knobs 7 and 10 control filter freq and res. |
A white noise SFX |
Noise1, FilterE2, LFOSlvC2 and LFOSlvC3 combine to produce a twittery noise sound which cycles up and down in frequency. Filter E2 is set to a Bandpass response with high resonance, meaning that you don't get many frequencies outside the range of interest – this stops the sound from swamping everything in its path. Again, amplitude is controlled purely through the mixer level knob. This is assigned to Knob 2 on the front panel. |
Bass Sequence 2 |
This channel is made up of NoteSeqA2, AD-Env2, MasterOsc2, OscSlvB1, OscSlvB2, Mixer3, FilterF1, LFOSlvC4 and Phaser1. One interesting feature of the sequencer is that it is driven at twice the speed of sequencer 1, due to the ClkDiv1 module. The sound used is a gritty, VCS3-style sound. For that reason, I used an 18dB/oct filter response. The phaser has a very slow cycle rate of 22 seconds. Level is controlled by knob 3, while filter freq and res are controlled by Knobs 9 and 12 respectively. |
The last, and arguably the most interesting, part of this patch concerns Constant1, PortamentoA1 and LFOC1. Instead of using the more common Clock Generator module to drive the sequencers, I used an LFO, so that its rate could be changed via a control signal. Its base freq is 9.18Hz, which roughly equates to 137 BPM. I set up my stereo delay to that value and assigned audio outputs as: Output1 - Dry, Output2 - Wet delay send. At the start of the piece, I put Knob 16 up to its highest setting, which relates to a value of 64 on Constant1. I then faded in the channel 1 sound by turning up Knob 1 slowly. Then I twirled Knob 16 right down to 0. The effect is stunning ! You can hear the oscillators all falling in pitch towards some common end note, but while that's happening, the sequencer rate is falling from ultra-fast, back down to its usual rate of 137 BPM. Right at the end, just before its got itself sorted out, the oscillators are really fat and beating against one another, then everything crystalises into a well-pitched, steady sequence. After that, it's just a case of mucking about with the other controls to keep some variation happening. At the end of the piece, you can take the sequence into orbit by turning Knob 16 fully clockwise.