Planet Rungler (VCV Rack, Generative Ambient)

[@MinorRandomNoise]

A few notes about the overall patch architecture: - The patch has no (conventional) clock. The "clock" is the first Benjolin Oscillator in the patch: --- Oscillator 1 is really a strict clock (no frequency modulation by the Rungler), but is less important and only used for two delay effects in the patch and as external clock input for one other Benjolin --- More important is Oscillator 2 that intentionally acts as a "bad clock": Its frequency is modulated slightly by the Rungler so that the clock ticks don't alyways have the same time distance. This clock is very slow, ticks between about 30 and 60 seconds, and controls when a new selection of voices is made. - The patch has 16 voices whose audio signals are created with various oscillators from Surge XT, Instruo and Befaco. Some of them generate tonal phrases, some are in the more noisy domain, or they are a mix of both. - Each of the 16 voices has its own Benjolin Oscillator with mostly multiple Volts Expanders and a Gates Expander. The Benjolin oscillator frequencies are mostly in the LFO domain (to avoid too much craziness and preserve the intended ambient atmosphere). How are the expanders used? That's exactly the point where the opportunities are truly overwhelming! Some expanders are used to generate monophonic or polyphonic pitch information, and some are used to provide modulation for all kinds of purposes, like wave table movement, feedback modulation, filter cut-off frequencies, noise modulation, envelope shapes, and so on. The gate expander triggers monophonic or polyphonic envelopes, or some of the audio oscillator directly, or it triggers the chaos or double clock flag of another Benjolin Oscillator, and more. - With each tick of the slow "Rungler clock" a new random selection of voices out of 15 voices is made. The chance of a voice to be selected is modulated very slowly over time. It ranges between 8% and 50%, with a modulation shape that prefers to stay longer in the low-chance region and goes quicker through the high-chance region. That might be very much a matter of taste. I liked it more for the ambient mood to have few but varying voices playing at the same time, and only sometimes have an increase in the number of voices. The overall impression of this setting is that the whole recording goes through a few slow waves of quiet music with only one or very few voices, sometimes even a few seconds of total silence, and more vivid and nervous interaction of many voices. - Voice 16 is special in that it's only playing if none of the other 15 voices is selected. It's purpose is mainly to change the harmony by playing one wave with the old harmony and then a second wave with the new harmony. In between, when it's silent for a second the harmony is changed. - Speaking of harmonies: Pitch information comes out unquantized from the Benjolins - the Benjolin Oscillator intentionally doesn't even have a Volts per Octave input or output -, so to create harmonic phrases it must be quantized. Quantization happens based on simple chords of four notes. There are 16 chords provided (minor, seventh and nineth chords), and the patch iterates repeatedly through all of them in a random order that is chosen when the patch is reset. (The recording is exactly one full iteration through all 16 chords.) There's no music-theoretical chord progression involved. Like mentioned before, the chord only changes if voice 16 and no other voice is playing, and only in the moment when it's silent for a second, so it's possible to have large random harmonic jumps without getting dissonant clashes.

[@CosineKitty]

I'm leaving this playing while writing code. It is awesome music to help me focus!

[@MinorRandomNoise]

Thank you! Cool that the patch is useful for this!