There’s a group on Facebook that I’m involved with that has monthly/bi-monthly/whenever challenges. This was the first time I’ve actually contributed to it. This month’s challenge reads:
Okay, dear Electronetae, I offer up the March/April challenge!! Our resident historian and story teller, Mark, recently told me about synth and sound pioneer Don Lewis, who was ‘so influenced by Wendy’s ‘Sonic Seasonings’ that he feverishly worked on a thunder patch for the ARP 2600 because he thought she’d created the thunder sounds on that dual vinyl LP using her big Moog Modular.\. After he’d been successful, he read the liner notes – where Wendy admitted that the thunder sounds were field recordings of actual thunder, not synthesized.’ RIGHT! so here is your challenge: Thunder / rain / frogs/ water rushing / all sounds of storm, but no samples!!
I uploaded my audio to my SoundCloud. Naturally the other members wanted a breakdown.
SO here’s the break down.
First all the patches together. I’d recommend using ModularGrid for getting modular images easily. The rest was layered and drawn over with Gimp. I realize Modular Grid has a built in patching function, but I wanted to layer out my items differently into their own channels.
Channel 1: rain drops. The random signal out from Harvestman LFO gets multiplied and goes to the two Dixie II oscillators. Sub out is combined in the MG Low Pass filter which is set pretty low before going to the VCA. The filter is slightly modulated by the Batumi. The gate is being triggered by the Korg SQ1 set to random with half of the buttons turned on to give a random gate. This gives the sound of rain hitting the roof of a house at various pitches.
Channel 2: SID Thunder. This is the easiest patch. SID Guts is set to noise, LP filter is set low, connecting to VCA. VCA is triggered by slow sine wave LFO from the Batumi
Channel 3: Rain. Noise signal from Harvestman is multiplied and sent to the Chopping Kinky, channels A & B. The B is being modulated slightly by the Batumi and the “chop” is being modulated by a fast saw on the Batumi. Chopped out (both signals switching rapidly) sent to the korgasmatron filter which is modulated by other slow sine wave signals from the Batumi. The mixed out from the filter is sent to the VCA.
Finally all signals are mixed at the Quad VCA and sent to delay. Channel A output from the delay is split, sending one signal to the left channel and the other signal to the input on Channel B of the delay which is sent to the right channel.
Final channels are panned and sent out to my recording device.