[sdiy] Modular - sound or song

[Jason Proctor]

>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?

when i started reading in depth about the capabilities of CGS modules 
such as the gated comparator, i literally went crazy thinking about 
the possibilities. having a noise-fed S&H followed by a comparator 
with a configurable (and indeed VC) threshold allows one to 
synchronise any decision within the synth to a clock.

i designed this huge smoke-belching contraption whose job was to 
compose melodies based on the probability of notes falling into 
places inside a scale. most of the time the note would be on the 
major triad, and if it fell there it would stay there longer, the 
remainder of the time would be fill-in notes in other places.

after plenty of building and messing around though i discovered that 
while the synchronised-random reverse-sequencer approach was great 
for generating quirky, glitchy rhythms and adding incidental stuff 
like glide and LFO modulation etc to an existing line, i couldn't get 
the machine to generate engaging melodies. or maybe 1000 hours of 
listening to pseudo-random twaddle wasn't enough!

anyone else fooling with this kind of stuff got some good results?