A Brief History of the Bouncing Ball patch

A cult-favorite patch from the original Maths manual, the "Bouncing Ball" has been a source of inspiration and exploration for years!
This video- hosted by Pete from the Make Noise Instagram channel- takes a look at the history of the Bouncing Ball patch through interviews with Tony Rolando and walkthroughs of its various incarnations.
Timestamps for the video's sections are below- enjoy!
0:00 Introduction to the Bouncing Ball patch
0:56 Interview with Tony Rolando about his inspirations for the initial Maths patch ideas
2:01 A walkthrough of the original (2009) Bouncing Ball patch
8:08 Interview with Tony Rolando about his inspirations for the Bouncing Ball patch
10:56 A walkthrough of the updated (2013) Bouncing Ball patch
13:33 Suggestions for ways to expand the 2013 Bouncing Ball patch
15:11 A walkthrough of the Bouncing Ball patch on an 0-Coast
18:12 Interview with Tony Rolando about recent musical examples featuring a Bouncing Ball effect
19:02 Interview with Tony Rolando about the legacy of the Bouncing Ball patch
23:02 Conclusions
Related links:
The "Serge Gold Book":
www.serge.synth.net/documents/...
Eric Archer's "Bouncing Ball" video:
• Analog Computer Bounci...
Aphex Twin, "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball":
• Bucephalus Bouncing Ball
Second Woman, "100407jd7":
• 01 Second Woman - 1004...
For more information about Maths, head to our website: makenoisemusic.com/modules/maths
...and check out the following playlist of Maths-based patch videos: • MATHS
Follow Make Noise on Instagram:
/ makenoisemusic
Thanks for watching, and happy patching!
www.makenoisemusic.com

[@richarquis]

Hey! So, I got 0-Coast about 8-9 months ago, and then I did the inevitable "Yeah, let's start a rack" thing. I started out with all Mutable modules, including Stages. I struggled to figure out what was going on, and my 0-Coast just kinda sat aside unused while I tried to figure out the main body. Frustrated, one day I just shut off the rack and turned the 0-Coast back on, and was playing with Slope/Contour, and wham, suddenly things started moving. That's when I realized that the Slope/Contour section was kinda like a mini-Maths, and started thinking that maybe if I got Maths for my rack, it could help me start to overcome the hurdles that were still defeating me. Well, I did, and guess what? It did. In just a few weeks, the concepts of inversion, rectification, offsetting, slew limiting, and so on and so on, that had just been a bunch of impenetrable jargon to me previously, suddenly started becoming ideas that made sense. Starting to learn Maths has actually opened up the rest of my rack at last. Understanding how waveshaping works, how fm works, how a sine wave can be turned into a trigger, or how a trigger can be turned into a gate, then morphed into a triangle wave or whatever... Suddenly the entire concept of cv as a palette to control the rack, is no longer a fucking arcane mystery. People find their Eureka moments from so many different places. I found mine with Maths. Best thing I have done for my rack yet.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

So glad you are having fun and education with MATHS!! Happy patching!

[@kaustin6969]

A little more research into basics of modular synthesis may have shortened your path. Basic modular synthesis is very simple. Not always easy, but simple. These five or six basics, signal control, logic, source, processor, and their compound variants contain the basics of modular synthesis. As they say, a little eduction is a dangerous thing.

[@tonyrolando1964]

Bouncing ball soundtrack is niiiiiiiiice... niiiice... niice... nice... ni... n...

[@Arby82]

I love how there were musical examples of the bouncing ball patch playing under the narration for most of the vid. 👍

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Good ear! Hopefully it really tied the video together :)

[@nelslindberg765]

I really liked it too. It’s honestly a good little track. Could stand on its own as some “discreet music “.

[@BoardgameBaker]

A brunch of grown men (mainly), spending a lot of time and resources to make electronic equipment sound like a bouncing ball, might seem like madness to the uninitiated. But to me it is a wonderful sign of humanity’s peaceful, exploratory and gentle side.

[@poisonousbirds]

a 'brunch' should be the collective term for millenials

[@tonyrolando1964]

I appreciate this sentiment. Thanx.

[@MarkoDeLaVoota]

lots of resources 😁

[@NigDub]

It is also a cool way to do microtiming and is a very functional parameter in music

[@pubdigitalix]

Is so so beautiful meanwhile third worldwide population live in poverty, starvation and a lot of deceases. Marvelous. A wonderful sign of humanity’s stupidity. Maybe they can put their brains in something more productive. Just maybe i think. I don't know. I'm just to ignorant.

[@robertsyrett1992]

Bucephalus Bouncing Ball was totally on my mind the whole time. Thanks for confirming the genesis for the musical application of the BB patch, Tony, it was great to learn more about the forgotten world of analog computing.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

It's hard to "un-hear" BBB. - and who would want to? ⚡️⚡️

[@ehdyn]

Supposedly Drane/Drane 2 by Autechre are a “response” to BBB with some cleverness inserted into the feedback path.

[@selfpatched1503]

@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC So nobody ever asked Richard D James how he programmed that one? I took it for granted when I was exploring the ball algorithim in Ornament and Crime that there was something comparable but maybe it was just a lot of intense sequencing.

[@SpikesStudio3]

I reckon this patch and the Krell patch are truly an insight into why we modular.

[@jdanielcramer]

My thoughts exactly, and oddly related in that they both rely on modulating the modulator 👍

[@noidsch2129]

What a great video about the bouncing ball patch! Really like this mixture of history and patch suggestions. Nice work!

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it :)

[@Frozen_Smoke1972]

Great video. Lovely to see the 0-Coast getting some love. The backing music was excellent too.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thanks!

[@MatthewShapiroModular]

Love the deep dive, really enjoyed this!

[@TiminatorFL]

Immediately went and tried this out. Fun patch! A little reverb added was groovy and I found that channel 1 on cycling results in endless bouncing balls! QPAS settings were really interesting to modulate. Great video! Thanks!

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Great, glad to hear you are having fun! Thanks for watching ⚡️

[@WilliamVoid]

I always explain modular music with the metaphor of a traditional paint artist. BUT rather than painting the canvas stroke by stroke, I am setting up all the paints on the top edge of the canvas. And when I hit play, the paint runs down and my scene will be formed. Sometimes it is successful, sometimes not.. but always with an artist's intent. The system is the canvas, the voltage are the paints, and I am the artist. Great demonstrations and explanations!

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Great metaphor, thanks for sharing! ⚡️

[@jeromefaria]

Fantastic video and fascinating insight! Thank you so much for sharing, Make Noise.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thanks for watching!

[@pagodaa100]

Fun video! Entertaining, Educational, Clear... Thanks Guys!

[@iganomono77]

Missing from the history are Vince Clarke’s bouncing ball at the very end of a song called Rescue Me by Erasure. This one is older than Richard D, James’ one. There’s also a reverse bouncing ball in the same album, where the “bounces” go from more frequent to less…starting at 3:28 of song Rock Me Gently.

[@mrcwalker33]

This was pure Gold!

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thanks!

[@jasevaughan7829]

Really enjoyed this, thanks

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Glad to hear it, thanks for watching!

[@BenWard29]

We proudly welcome- Tony Rolando…

[@brettnaucke]

Yesssss Second Woman reference

[@kennedydesign3142]

Totally agree. I never heard Second Woman before today, and I have been listening to them all morning. The best electronic music ever ! Thank you Tony !

[@dirthawk]

thanks Tony for reminding me to listen to Second Woman, awesome stuff! ...and maths!

[@GeorgeLocke]

The new patch 13:30 doesn't seem to decrease the amplitude of the bounce, so it's not entirely an apples to apples to comparison to say that it involves fewer cables than the original. (my pitchfork is in the shop.)

[@terrabreeze]

So fantastic

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thank you and thanks for watching!!

[@unsoundmethodology]

Very very cool. Look Mum No Computer did a video on the analog bouncing ball circuits a while back, and seeing the MATHS versions and hearing about the antecedents is great. (Sam ended up building a module around Electric Druid's PIC version - their OneShot chip - largely, I think, for simplicity of implementation; that chip has some interesting filips that make it sort of a cross between an LFO and an envelope.)

[@budfoon]

Cool demos - thanks! Can't wait to try it with the QPAS. My Ensoniq VFX had a "wave" called multi-wave - which strung together all the waveforms (except for drums) into a single, long wave. By itself, the multi-wave sounded very cinematic when sustained. I would sustain the multi-wave via a 5 note tone cluster and at first everything would be cacaphony. Then, on each cycle of the waveform, the individual wave segments would spread out temporally. The longer i held it the chord, the longer the time between segments, and the more it opened up and unfolded like flowering tea. Aleatoric bliss!

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

That sounds like a great time!

[@lichisancheleganta9046]

Great and entertaining video 👌🏼 enjoyd it a lot - and urges me to also mention Abundance from Monolake's 1999 album Interstate as a very nice track full of bouncing balls.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thanks for the recommendation!!

[@DK-qe6uo]

I love seeing the original shared system being used

[@mrcwalker33]

So, I came back from my first holidays since 2019 (where I initially watched this wonderful gem of a modular video) and am going to start my new (dream) job today. It is early in the morning and I am sitting here with a cup of coffee, recreating the bouncing ball patch on my system and it worked on my first attempt. That means today will be great, right? (Or Pete just explains really well... or both) :D

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Congrats on the job! Hope it is indeed a great day ⚡️🎶⚡️

[@jamiefayefenton]

The patch summary at the end of the video had an error. It tells you to set channel 4 rise control to full clockwise. Earlier in the video, the advice is to set channel 4 rise to full counter-clockwise like you do for channel 1. The earlier instructions are correct.

[@DrMuse-on2dx]

Eddie Jobson did this style bouncing ball on a Synclavier with mulitable sound sources. The album was called Theme Of Secrets and released in 1984. Very amazing nd surrealistic.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thanks for the recommendation!

[@DrMuse-on2dx]

@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC Your welcome. I love your modules I almost have all of them. They are great for sound design. Keep up the amazing ideas.

[@sjh3217]

WRT bouncing ball sounds in recent music - it's been a mainstay of BT's stutter edits for years now. Retriggering samples that speed up or slow down in mathematically precise exponential rhythms. Highly, HIGHLY recommend his albums This Binary Universe and These Hopeful Machines for examples (and just for being amazing music in general). I just love that sound so much, and while I've never used a Shared System I'm sure you can do the same thing on Morphagene in spades

[@TRaddcliff]

great vid. you can modulate the end point of a looping sample with an LFO saw to get the same effect tho ;) AND have that end in time with your track

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Good idea!

[@jdanielcramer]

🙀sweet!

[@jammystraub488]

Well that was super cool. It was nice to have the history lesson from Tony.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thanks for watching!

[@Bananskuden]

Essentially it's an envelope controlling the frequency of an LFO.

[@bradleyknudsen5228]

I'm sure there are many of us who would love to be able to download the background music for this!

[@ehdyn]

Definitely inspiring towards the end where Tony is waxing about nature and aleatoric systems. Wish Make Noise would do a focused system with double the footprint of the 0-coast/ctrl to a certain pricepoint.. let’s say $2000 just devoted to advanced exploration of these ourobouros function generators, stochastic bursts, iterated patterns, etc with macro/offset controls and interpolation. To go really deep you need many logic units, function generators, formula mixers and it’s just not practical to emulate those “FUN” based kurzweill/nord noodles in a typical euro case.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Tony can really hypnotize you when he starts digging into his brain ⚡️

[@ehdyn]

Yeah I’ve been fortunate to interact with him a few years ago at Moogfest and similar and he was getting really amped up and apologizing and I was like no keep going.. I’m right there with you! Hard not to get excited by this stuff and carried away.. Came up with a good name for this concept system. Make Noise : Idiophone

[@ModLifeCrisis]

Super fun - I’m off to play with Maths!

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Happy patching!

[@gautrstafr]

That Kurzweil VAST one key song idea looks interesting, anybody has any video link where it is demonstrated?

[@el_dani]

Wow, great video content, with the patching, history and cultural insight into MakeNoise. Now I want a 0-control, so the spent video production money is already giving back..

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Thanks for watching, and happy patching!

[@Bills_Place]

Have to wonder if the Superball guitar pedal by Alexander Pedals was inspired by Make Noise or if similar influences were at play.

[@soundswhile9529]

also autechre -drane and drane2! drane2 is an especially beautiful bouncing ball rendition. also i believe rdj made his as a response to the original drane track

[@timriherd4057]

Thank you to Pete & MAKENOISE for putting this video together! I'd been struggling to wrap my head around usage of Maths, beyond the obvious. Listening to Tony talk about the core concepts behind the module, coupled with the patching of this awesome sound, really opened my eyes to Maths unique potential. And here's another wonderful example of the bouncing ball from Plaid's CLOCK kzbin.info/www/bejne/qZa1qoiKmdaViNE

[@InVacuo]

I remember watching Look Mum No Computer create a bouncing ball circuit and thinking "I reckon I can do that with Maths." I did it and am only now realising it's a whole thing. 😅

[@thanqol]

That Second Woman track was what got me into the Bouncing Ball sound. But I'm pretty sure they're using some Max for Live magic to create theirs.

[@aibonewt]

Yeah, Joshua uses Max in Ableton. If you're hungry for more bouncing balls his album as Telefon Tel Aviv called 'Dreams are Not Enough' is for you.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Yes, SW mainly uses Max. The concepts are similar across tools :)

[@marcel_h_]

who made the background music??? ;) so goood

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Pete made it 🎶⚡️🎶

[@r3dsh1ft3d]

Friction robs the ball of the inertia; without friction the ball would keep bouncing.

[@z1kp2]

Great patch and really cool interview portion. Silly question as I don't really use Instagram. Does the contribution to #bouncyballpatch need to be a video? All I have is s a sound loud link...

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Please do post the link!

[@z1kp2]

@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC alright, now to figure out how (real noob on Instagram)

[@z1kp2]

@@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC can't for the life of me figure out Instagram. m.soundcloud.com/mhm83/bounce Is the link. Bounce from maths starts at :30

[@axonandon]

I yearn to be free from traditional gravity.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Indeed. A life goal!

[@coralmillenium]

Which books were referenced by Tony at the beginning?

[@wellurban]

One was Allen Strange’s ”Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques and Controls”, which has become a bit of a legend in the modular community due to both its inspiring comprehensiveness and its rarity. Make Noise have a subseries of videos called “Strange Patching” which explores some patches from that book.

[@thanqol]

Here's Roly Porter absolutely killing it with a brutal Wrecking/Bouncing Ball: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sHLOk4edoNqfosk

[@seansnyder7744]

I honestly couldn't stop thinking about Bucephalus Bouncing Ball the entire time watching this video. Funny they ended up mentioning it. Check out Aphex Twin if you haven't had the chance. Richard D James is one brilliant individual.

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

It's a stone cold classic!

[@WillemZenhorst]

Cool content as per usual, but; please record the voiceover in stereo next time, it's kinda awkward hearing it only in my left ear!

[@christdolphin69]

everyone is doing that ezbot post-zoom thing now

[@jackcimino8822]

Don't the Korg MS 2000 and MicroKorg have a similar patch?

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

I think there was a bouncing ball preset on the MS2000 at least, now you mention it! - W

[@jorglehmann3892]

But the original bouncing ball patch also has a decaying amplitude, as a real bouncing ball. Or did I miss something?

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

That was removed for the sake of streamlining the 2013 incarnation of the patch, but if you'd like to restore it: patch the Channel 1 Unity CV output to the CV input of a VCA, and patch the Channel 4 Unity output to the Signal input of that same VCA. Patch the output of the VCA to your modulation destination of choice. To be true to the 2009 Bouncing Ball, this modulation destination should be the CV input of a Low Pass Gate, with your audio signal patched to the Signal input of the LPG. However, the result of the patch can be sent to control anything, not just amplitude (i.e. delay time, filter cutoff, reverb size, etc.). Totally up to you! Happy patching!

[@octopappa5694]

Very nice! But hard left on some of the narration was a little annoying.

[@nikitakvitka]

same, hah I started to check routing on my computer

[@xTheOxx]

There must be some natural tendency to create bouncing sounds, because I didn't know about this "cult patch", but I still ended up trying to come up with one when playing around with a Rampage in VCV Rack. It was an "inverted gravity" bouncing ball though. I don't know if I can link from here, but here goes: instagram.com/p/CKRc0EoB9t4/

[@chrissherman01]

The first song on Confeld has many bouncing sounds, but mostly w/o the realistic physics of this patch. kzbin.info/www/bejne/ooPCpHyco69qiLc

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Ha, true, there is rarely anything realistic on an autechre track 🙃 That's one of my favorites! - W

[@TheNimasan]

morphagene is responsible for my extrem moduar addiction....that thing put in on me HARD!! the sad thing is, i still don't have it in my system. i even wrote Tony a letter ( via hand ) from munich just because of desperation. maybe some miracle happens anywhen in near future and i get one! tremendous video!

[@benoftroy]

looooooove loooooove looooove loooove looove loove love lov lo l lllll…

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

I see what you did there ⚡️

[@Starskream3030]

😮 I didn't know Matt Stone was into this shit...

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

😆

[@vurttv6415]

First?

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

Yes indeed!

[@vurttv6415]

love the history behind it all! Thanks for this, hopefully more like this to come?

[@MAKEN0ISEMUSIC]

@@vurttv6415 Thank you! We'll be sure to make more Deep Dives in the future!

[@vurttv6415]

great ill look forward to seeing them and probably spending more money! :lol:

[@ethermod307]

Hey guys I was watching these amazing performances here and to my complete surprise, there it is: the Bouncing Ball on a huge kick and then the amazing natural reverb of the church as a part of the Jessica Ekomane x Zoë Mc Pherson live set. Such an inspiring performance. I recommend to watch the whole concert, AMAZING things are happening. kzbin.info/www/bejne/on7clGOajJtof9k