WTF is a Krell Patch?!

[@vgermuse]

As mentioned earlier today: awesome deep-dive and unfolding Jeremy! Bravo! Todd Barton here, just one misinterpretation that has followed this patch from the beginning: I didn't intentionally set out to create Ancient Krell music from Forbidden Planet, rather I stumbled onto, discovered this patching technique and decided to name it Krell as an homage to the self-generative techniques of Bebe & Louis Barron used for their electronic music score. Was not at all trying to create their sounds. Thanks for giving me the bandwidth to clarify. Keep up the excellent work!

[@RedMeansRecording]

Ah!!! Thank you for the clarification!!

[@andrewhuang]

haha thanks for the shoutout! i was the kid who was equally into musique concrete and hip-hop so actually yeah makes perfect sense that i ended up being the 'make beat from car' guy

[@RedMeansRecording]

Honestly that's amazing haha. "yeah so I'm really into the new tribe but also have you heard that Stockhausen omg"

[@WillemZenhorst]

Seriously, such an honor to not only get my patches featured on the RMR Ambient channel but now a full chapter in the history of Krell! 🙌 Great stuff man, thanks!

[@RedMeansRecording]

Thank you!!!

[@mcolville]

Making a Krell patch using Maths is a great way to learn your way around the Maths panel.

[@RedMeansRecording]

Hugely agree!

[@noblestrings]

I always love seeing colville make his appearances in the comment sections of my other nerdy hobbies

[@inconnu4876]

​@@noblestrings Ditto! I'd really like to hang out with Matt and talk music and dnd

[@BrandonAaskov]

I guess I know what I’m working on for my first sesh with Jeremy.

[@Reverbial2]

​@@inconnu4876 Check out his twitch streams if you haven't already! Good spot for exactly that.

[@hotsoupmouth]

That intro 🤣 This was a really cool topic to learn about. I'm going to go make my own in VCV right now!

[@amelophile]

'That intro' For sure I was thinking Krell then transported to a comedy club 🤣 you would make a great comedian Jeremy wink wink

[@machinate]

OMG JAMES CIGLER! A modwiggler OG from back in the day, and the original, uncrowned king of the euro demo video! So many of those "second gen" euro modules sold due to that drug dealer, hah. Awesome. Fantastic video!!!

[@robriki2]

Thank you for the brief history of music concrete! And thank you for mentioning Bebe and Louis Barron as the composer of the original Krell music! We often hear of Krell music but not that often from where and and who it came from.

[@muulwarf]

7:05 "Uwu" I think you may have reached peak performance here

[@randommcranderson5155]

thanks for using VCV for this - makes it a lot more relateable than a case full of modular gear

[@randommcranderson5155]

@@timmeyart it's called vcv rack. V1 is free. V2 costs for a car version. Worth messing with!

[@vgermuse]

💥🚀🛸✨ great deep dive and unfolding Jeremy ☺️

[@shoofle]

i love that this gave me a sample of a buncha different peoples takes on a thing from a creative community, like, you're pretty much the only modular person i follow so it's neat that i get a window into your whole world

[@craigsurette3438]

One of my favorite Krell/generative music techniques, is to have several un clocked smoothed random LFOs controlling waveshape/pwm/ hard sync and filter. The interplay of the waveform's timbre being modulated, with the filter being modulated, by 2 random LFOs creates a stochastic/Emergent effect between the 2 that is vastly greater than the sum of their parts. I will then also feed a very very very slow arpeggiator/seq into this, to drive it and give it a pitch center when making a drone, and feed the whole thing into 2 different delay lines, and have the panning between the 2 delaylines automated with yet another random LFO. Big washes of reverb can be added to taste as well to soften the edges if required The patches this sort of technique create can drone on for hours and never be the same twice, but still allow with some tweaking for some features to be pitch centered or rhythmically in sync depending on what you need to do

[@morik3188]

Glad to see more attention on the krell... would love to see more content of classic patches. Great work!

[@eggsnbiscuits3818]

I was feeling pretty unwell but it was just so nice to see you having fun and doing a great video of the kind you enjoy that it genuinely made me feel well enough to get up and make myself some decent food, so thank you and I'm glad to see that your hopefully doing well!

[@fosferus]

nice work! i posed a krell patch about a year ago that used a bunch of modulation feedback by mixing modulators modulating other modulators. it makes it less of a 'linear' experience and more spastic and unpredictable. the fx were also applied at random times to the various voices, so there's odd delay and reverb sends that come in and out. i don't know how some of the sounds it spit out were happening, but it was really fun. i think it was the first time i put the sputnik spectral processor to real work, all those envelope followers kept it moving.

[@EiseniaFoetida]

Great stuff as always! And shout out to the Make Noise Tape and Microsound Machine because that little skiff has brought me so much inspiration in the short time I’ve had it despite already having a much bigger modular system. It’s such a blast to work with.

[@PajamaLlamaLand]

Nice, I've had a krell patch up on my modular for the last week or so before this vid came out! I love taking the random sources that are modulating the attack and decay of your main cycling envelope/LFO, averaging or summing them together, and using a utility mixer to invert/offset them, then using that voltage for the v/oct input on your oscillator- this creates a relationship between how fast your main krell voice is cycling and the pitch of the voice, so that faster cycling will result in higher pitches and vice versa, which can sound very musical.

[@Nalinalinali]

I love the expansion of the characters and shit lovely please keep going

[@Heisenberg2097]

Advanced tip for newbies to the modular madness!!! I registered my addiction as mental illness following what's written in Chapter F of ICD-10. Now my health insurance pays me three new modules each month. Be sure your insurance covers really everything that might happen. I also have a severe bureaucracy allergy... wup... they pay me three secretaries with built in massage function. That is how to make the devil dance!

[@jdanielcramer]

🙀hey, thanks for the shoutout! I’m still doin’ huge ‘lines of Krellage’ thru a rolled up $50 and last year on my tiny channel I did the ‘Krellberg Variations’ the largest patch on KZbin! Just Say NO to Krell kids!

[@RedMeansRecording]

Hell yeah get that krell

[@antfactor]

Fun video, as always - LOL. I am convinced that (in no small way!) seeing and hearing the soundtrack to Forbidden Planet as a very young child, which eventually pushed me toward electronic music. To this day, parts of the soundtrack raise hairs on my neck. Such gorgeously alien, and yet organic textures. They haunted my dreams since I was a kid. The Bebe's were genius musicians!

[@alwysgreen1781]

Favourite video you've ever done! More modular history please xo

[@ob1quixote]

I really loved watching you build in VCV. Just magic when you plugged that quantizer in. It's also neat that you got a shirt with the image of a former presenter on this channel. 🐱

[@jeffreylohr4460]

Thanks for making this video. I was sitting around looking at my modular wanting some inspiration and I realized I haven’t done The Krell patch on it. Now I got my Sunday project

[@krellaxiom]

We were so inspired by the music of the Ancient Krell that we formed a music collective to explore it further. Good onya mate for this excellent post, hopefully more people will be as inspired as we were!

[@jpmudkip1870]

Was not expecting the shuba shuba duck to make a cameo, lol. Great video, it was very Krelly indeed!

[@profoakthe2nd2]

Like a lot of music creation, modular synthesis is one of those things that is simultaneously really interesting to me but also incredibly daunting. Your vid helped peel back a bit of that fearsome "I have no idea what's going on and am afraid to ask" and was actually really cool. Probably not gonna pick up a modular rig any time soon, but fun to learn, so thanks!

[@chrisricetopher21]

Dude. Love the opening to this one lol…Love this channel man. You’re like one of those accordion-like, paddle-shaped things that is used to stoke a dying flame in a fireplace or wood stove or whathaveyou… but instead, the flame is the creative inspiration, curiosity and motivation of your viewers…I’m not alone in that opinion. Keep it up dude! Fight the good fight!!!

[@g1rlchild]

Oh cool! I love Krell patches. Perfect video to watch today, and I love to see you branching out into some of the West Coast stuff. BTW, a Krell patch is one of the examples right in the manual of the 0-Coast for anyone who has one. First patch I connected up when I got mine. (For anyone who doesn't have one, they're really clever little boxes that you can do a ton with.)

[@dlabrador]

This was great. Loved the wook Jeremy bit, strong practical and educational content.

[@Zoysiamo]

This is an incredible video, thank you for sharing. Ever since I first heard of Krell patches I was intimidated by the idea. Seeing this, I understand the basic concept and I feel equipped to go create one with a Maths, S&H, oscillator, and VCA!

[@dedcosmonaut]

Wait, is that my patch on 10:18? Wow. So, I am famous now. Thanks Jeremy.

[@WillemZenhorst]

Can you image how I felt after the bit about ZOIA patches 🧐

[@RedMeansRecording]

❤️👍❤️

[@douglaswaterson7107]

Super cool video thanks. I hope towards the end of the year you will release some Christmas Krells.

[@Ve55el]

Dude...this channel...thank you so much.

[@AndyVonal]

Thanks, Jeremy! Loved that!

[@grizant]

James' Krell was my favorite Krell of all the Krells (Krell)

[@Snaggletoothsound]

AND a happy Krelling to you too, good sir!

[@msld_sound]

This is a gift. Thank you for this!

[@philipcarpenter1347]

For a single voice with space (silence) between re-triggers , instead of setting Rampage to loop, leave it in one-shot and take the channel 1 EOC into the Channel 2 trigger, then randomize the rise (Or Fall) times of both. Take Channel 2 EOC and feed it back into Channel 1's trigger. Use either channel to operate the sound source's VCA. Thus it will loop forever but with space between the sounds to let reverb trails hang or whatnot and you can mult either EOC to send it elsewhere.

[@Ziraya0]

this video is now the 3rd result (for me) when searching youtube for "ancient music of the krells", krellgratulations!

[@Ziraya0]

if you told me Hainbach did this sound track I'd have no choice but to believe you

[@net-work-error]

Very cool to have James Cigler on! James' videos are foundational synth youtube stuff that everyone should check out. I reference the Rene videos constatly.

[@ftm5713]

I often approached Krell patches by building it around an LFO as the clock source for some sort of sequencer and then feeding bits of the patch back into the LFO speed so it speeds up and slows down to almost nothing

[@jamesdeely948]

Fantastic video, loved every second of it!

[@SinfulCreature]

I made something really similar to James Ciglar's krell a month ago or so in VCV Rack, I think I'm gonna record 10 minutes of it going wacky and upload it to my channel tomorrow for funsies. Thanks for the wonderful information nugget!

[@jamescigler]

Link me if you do!

[@SinfulCreature]

Hey@@jamescigler! Cool to see you here! It's my most recent upload on my channel if you want to give it a peek!

[@matthodek]

I really like your comment about not focusing on some perceived musicality of it, but to just explore. Nahre Sol's recent video on contemporary classical music made the same point. It has been a while since I krelled. Perhaps it is time to dust off the spacesuit and have a go...

[@DUNGEONMUSICTHEATRE]

awesome content as usual! Love it!

[@CatFish107]

Thanks man, I went and hit the krell fer a couple hours. Just straight up double fisting that dual Rampage, and fm, and phase locked loops, and a little bit o'tangents to take the abrasive sizzle down a touch. A couple Euclidean rhythm gens, xor logic, eoc gates, rise, fall, and a bernoulli gate all working an array of spank modules. Then I took the inverse triggers from the rhythm gens to trigger a kick and snare.

[@nickcope]

Few more Krell tips: attenuation and offset modules between whatever you have going into the first function generator's rise & fall will allow you 'tune' that generator's output. Taking that end of fall to power a clock like Pam's (attenuate the signal to under 5v to get Pam's to register it) will give you lots of cool timings. Using on function generator to modulate the volume of another is a nice way to not have you Krell voices always hitting max signal all the time. But overall it's really about the offsets you can put between everything. And that Ciglar Krell is brilliant.

[@RedMeansRecording]

Yeah offsets and attenuation are huge

[@crysstoll1191]

@@RedMeansRecording Attenuators and VCAs, more the merrier. I started building them into almost every module i made towards my last years of building and will again some day soon. Example a dual LFO with 4 VCAs all in same module. 1 VCA on CV in to each LFO and one on each output. Attenuators too. Made for bigger modules but less patching.

[@_DRMR_]

There are some nice pure data examples of Krell out there as well. One of which I managed to compile for both OWL and Daisy which gives you instant Krell inside your modular .. without wasting half of your setup for a couple tones ;)

[@littlesynthbox]

Are you... are you feeling ok? Hmm? Seriously though, really interesting stuff, thanks for sharing the wonders of Krell!

[@johnmcneil2431]

Loved this! I learned so much!

[@EZBOT_]

THE KRELL ARE PLEASED - Krellen McKreller

[@compucorder64]

Great video! I like to do a kind of Krell Patch where the end of cycle triggering a random thing instead sets off a bouncing ball patch with randomised parameters; rather than doing pitch modulation of an oscillator. If you get a few instances going in VCV, it can get a kind of cricket insectoid clicking it's legs thing going. Make Noise History of the Bouncing Ball patch is a nice video related to this, and Maths. In the 'Bouncing Ball Percussion with System Cartesian' Tony Rolando uses that patch as a starting point, but takes it somewhere rhythmic.

[@Lewp77]

hell yeah ! Krell for days. thanks for explaining it so clearly.

[@TommyLoaded]

More bits!!!!! You're a really funny dude :)

[@elektr0bath]

I see my krell patch in the description, thank You!

[@RedMeansRecording]

Great work!

[@jaygregory8219]

Great video and that outro jam!!!

[@debbie09090]

Inkrellible video! Who doesn’t love a krell patch.

[@LowGainElectronics]

Always a pleasure. Krell that algorithm

[@GenocidePanda]

yesss I been waiting on this

[@GenocidePanda]

its so funny how all patches lead back to the krell lmao. its so much more of a genre than a patch in itself. thanks Todd barton

[@arthurxmedic]

i think i made a sort of krell using Serum as a complex noise burst generator, and having that converted by a peak controller to talk to a second Serum

[@Lorichs]

Super great video and Best intro ever 😃

[@SpikesStudio3]

Krell is the exact reason we modular. Imo. Its the perfect starting point to a days noodling. Its just one of those patches that you try on anything.- ive krelled my ms20...

[@OscillatorSink]

The Minifreak is well setup to Krell too. I like to Krell all over my Freak after a hard day at work. It's just a little treat for me, you know? (but yes, seriously though, the flexible ways you can trigger envelopes and LFOS allows for these techniques quite comfortably). Krell.

[@RedMeansRecording]

Do a video on it

[@MahlenMorris]

To add a bit of color to the story about how the Barrons made these sounds, this quote from the Wikipedia page; "The sounds and patterns that came out of the circuits were unique and unpredictable because they were actually overloading the circuits until they burned out to create the sounds. The Barrons could never recreate the same sounds again, though they later tried very hard to recreate their signature sound from Forbidden Planet. Because of the unforeseen life span of the circuitry, the Barrons made a habit of recording everything." Also, the guy I know who has studied them the most thinks that Bebe did most of the real work, and Louis just took the credit. Or maybe that was the only story that made any sense to the press at the time.

[@ringsystemmusic]

Dang so I’ve been doing Krells for longer than a major KZbinr? Nice. I’ve always struggled to make them musical though- although this is inspiring me to try it on some new gear as I haven’t tried a Krell on my SP2.

[@MM-ib6qh]

I've spent so many hours tweaking the krell patch on the MakeNoise 0-coast, and I'll spend many more.

[@NicStage]

the opening bit is the kind of thing i want to encounter while hiking.

[@Srcsqwrn]

Jeremy, I'd follow you anywhere for drugs... AND Krell! This was really neat to learn about! Very atmospheric music!

[@_OopsieDaisies]

i know nothing about modular stuffs but this was a super interesting watch thanks :)

[@Nate_ROB_]

Amazing video I love modular synthesis

[@radical_ans]

Krell dealer lives in a wonderland of ferns

[@seedmole]

Explanations? And free drugs?! Okay I'm more familiar with this stuff through the Musique Concrete side of things, didn't know the term Krell before. A bunch of stuff I've made since getting modular gear has this stuff sprinkled throughout. I think my biggest tip is to try to improvize along with it, it can serve as the backbone of a composition, and you can configure it to give as much or little room for accompaniment as you want.

[@dratsnek]

Very inspiring, thanks!

[@znxster]

Never heard of this before, but I do love when a strange project becomes ... everyone's strange project :D

[@viddaddy]

My first Krell patches were on a Nord G2 and they were a wonderful exploration. I have been loving the minimalist Krell example that ScottMFR suggested using only a Quadrax. I imagine you can do something similar with just a Marhs

[@jason3898]

5:38 I had the video playing PIP over VCV while doing some sequencing on the BeatStep. When I finally looked up, I wondered, for way too long, how VCV is glitching so hard with a mini module selection window over my current rack. My first thought was that the BeatStep was accidentally linked to UI control messages. Somehow, I got my free drugs before sitting through the whole Krell talk.

[@offbeep]

Loving the format of this and your other recent ones. I’m sure it’s a little awkward self-promoting your Patreon… so let’s do it for Jeremy so he can create and share with us in community outside of consumer consumption constraints

[@RedMeansRecording]

❤️

[@NightlightCompass]

thanks for making this stuff

[@Jamslerr]

For anyone and everyone. You can build interesting Krell patches inside Puredata. :) Puredata can basically run on a potato, so there’s no need for a good OS

[@Heisenberg2097]

Please please please. MORE KRELL FOR EVERYBODY.

[@ringtone_rhythm]

I'm here for unhinged Jeremy that does weird bits in the forest. Stellar.

[@southofff]

Best intro ever

[@bigtry3210]

Great vid dude. Generative is so fun!

[@JakHart]

Krell patch? I like the way it sounds. I feel like this is what I end up creating in Massive X. I love them so much.

[@cooloutcoexist]

Nice rendition of Basket Krells. :-P Interesting stuff, learned new things about this :)

[@index7787]

Hey Algorithm, I'm doing an engagement.

[@RedMeansRecording]

Bless

[@robappleby583]

The Krell Patch is something that doesn't really exist but was a thing on Muffwiggler about ten years ago. Basically any generative patch that creates wobbly early scifi space tones that you might think amount to music. I can't believe people are still doing it :lol:

[@kopaka647]

Big ups to Todd Barton

[@thb-music]

BTW, The Long Earth is a great read.

[@WillemZenhorst]

I'm on the fourth book now, and seriously considering making a full length 'soundtrack' album to the books. More Kells, more ambient, more soundscapey things inspired by Rectangles and The Gap... It's an honor being mentioned on this channel a couple times and I also hope it brings more people to those books! 🤓

[@michaelkonomos]

LOVE the intro. Hilarious.

[@PocketUnv]

I'm convinced the cat at the end had eaten the drugs that were promised at the start. Oh, and cool Krelling too!

[@retrothing]

There’s a point of interest in the end credits. They’re credited with “musical tonalities” rather than “music”. The powerful musician’s union was wary of any electronic construction of music without live musicians, so they compromised with the film’s producers on the “musical tonalities” end credit. That technophobic could never happen again, right? 😂 I’ve been fascinated by Musique Concrete techniques since learning they were used a lot in early doctor who when they’d construct special sounds with tape loops and splicing at the Radiophonic Workshop. Much like the sounds for Forbidden Planet, they were working pre-synthesizer with broken signal generators and other unexpected sound sources.

[@vaaalsongs4867]

Haha this intro sequence was amazing

[@temporoboto]

long live the Krell patchwell done!💙

[@VictorSteiner]

Will James Ciglar upload a full version of his patch on his channel? My 4 year old doesn‘t like a lot of synth music but came into the kitchen dancing when the drumsequencer started.

[@jamescigler]

I only recorded that short clip, and the patch and beat have been torn down… but I think I can nail a good loop of the end and post it. One father of a 4yr old to another.😂

[@mikey303]

this video is my gateway krell

[@seanhannan8509]

I’ve long considered getting a 0-coast to use solely as a krell machine. But now maybe what I want Isa Zoia krell machine…

[@WillemZenhorst]

Get one, seriously, you won't regret it. It's addictive

[@crysstoll1191]

Absolutely love the intro. lmao.

[@AboveTheTrees00]

brilliant intro