[sdiy] Modular - sound or song

[Scott Nordlund]

In my experience, DSP certainly has its value: no analog anything will approach the sorts of things that are possible with frequency domain processing.  And similarly I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to digitally emulate the many varieties of analog feedback.  My personal goal is to (attempt to) make the best of what various methods and technologies have to offer, without fetishizing any particular way of working.  Noise, "composed" tonal music, electroacoustic improvisation, algorithmic microtonality, etc. are all equally worth exploring, as far as I'm concerned.

Both analog "chaos" and "traditional musicality" have been touched upon by others, but I think digital processing has its own advantages for algorithmic and aleatoric music.  Certain things that I've tried (sequencing intervals rather than notes, randomly sequencing harmonic ratios rather than standard scales, etc.) seem much more viable in a computer-based environment, at least because it's much quicker to design and redesign to find a suitable algorithm.  Of course the distinction here is more hardware vs. software than analog vs. digital.

In the end, I don't think there are really clear lines to be drawn between one sort of use and another (between "play a key and hear a note" and "woah, far out!").  There's no real set "theory" or framework to deal with this sort of thing, so unless a description is very thorough, it sort of falls short.

> Date: Wed, 8 Apr 2009 11:48:12 -0500
> From: Scott at scottwick.com
> To: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
> Subject: [sdiy] Modular - sound or song
> 
> So, in the VCO discussion someone mentioned when they want to do something complex, they ditch the modular for a software synth.  That just blew my mind.  
> BUT.. then I started thinking, I guess we are going for different things.  I can do bizarre things w/ my modular that a programmer writing a soft synth would probably never even think of!  But, obviously a soft synth has more standards, like more various VCO's and filters, etc.
> 
> So what that takes me to..   do you use your modular as a sound generation device, like a normal synth, that you play w/ a keyboard or sequencer, or do you use your modular as a semi-random song creation machine?
> 
> I started my modular w/ the idea of it being a normal playable synth, but after the first time I patched it up, that philosophy changed.  Now, I almost always start a patch w/ a clock going to a divider, going to a percussion module and to some semi-random CV generating module, etc, and build my patch into a song.  
> so, im just curious how others use their modulars.
> 
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