This is my most complex patch so far, and I’ve been working on it for a week. I incorporated a few new things this time, such as recording the chordal pads in Tim Exile’s Endlesss app. I played them by hand in the app on my iPhone and recorded them into the Morphagene, which was clocked so that I could fade the chords in and out and they would still be in sync.
I also used the interface that I built to remotely control the Minimoog clone which allowed me to treat it as just another module in my Eurorack. The patch I created for it was used to play the random melody parts generated by the Melodicer.
I also created the tabla percussion in the Vpme.de QD drum module with QEX expander. The QD was being semi-randomly triggered by Calsynth’s uGrids, which is a clone of Mutable Instruments Grids with several enhancements.
I finished uploading “Curving Through Spacetime” around 2am and started to get ready to shut everything down for the night in my studio. When I went to switch off the Eurorack I realized that I had left the Melodicer running even though the volume was down on the system.
I turned it up and out came the most beautiful melody. Next I brought up the chord pads and suddenly everything took on a new character. I immediately began recording and an entirely new version of the patch came flowing out in one take. I instinctively reacted to the moment and somehow knew exactly what to do.
I had spent the past week creating the modular patch and then rehearsing all of the changes, recording a take and being unhappy with a sound, then changing it and rerecording it, repeating the process over and over for days.
Then at 2am just as I was ready to shut down and go to bed the magic happened. In ten minutes an entirely new approach simply flowed out into the studio and washed over me. Sometimes Music and the Universe will do that and catch you off guard… and when it does, it’s sublime.
I live for those moments.