Patchcord Musing
1999-10-21 by Tkacs, Ken
Patchcords are cables, and therefore have a finite amount of resistance, as well as other electrical properties. That said, in my experience with modulars, as long as you are using good quality shielded patchcords, the length (up to a point) shouldn't make any difference worthy of noting in your patch charts. It makes sense to try to use the shortest cords available to go from point-to-point, while still leaving enough slack so that you can pull them out of the way of something else for tweaking. And it goes without saying that the cords should never be pulled taught. Man, I used to see people doing that in my college E-Music lab... the TA used to shriek when he saw that. "Jazz majors!" he would yell. He yelled that when the tuning scales would be fiddled with, too... those old Electrocomps we had were hard to temper. But I digress. Speaking of patch charts, though, I've always found that they are only useful to a point. The patchcord length makes much less of an impact as some potentiometers being at "62-degrees" rather than "63-degrees," and the cumulative effect can get pretty wild in big patches. Diagrams are only good for getting you to the "Oh, that's right, that's what I was doing" point, and after that you just have to know your instrument well enough to tweak all of the knobs to get what you want. The joy of modulars, IMHO, is that you start off trying to get somewhere and 90% of the time are sidetracked by some new aspect of the sound you hadn't heard before and split off down another road. Working with a modular is like going for a hike with the intention of getting lost, just to see what's "over there." And with a modular synth, unlike a hike after dinner, you don't really care if you get back or not. Nothing beats knowing your instrument, and once you do, you may become too lazy to write things down, because you know you can patch it up again from the heart any time you want. Except for sharing a layout with another, or when every now and then you come upon something so cool or so odd that you just have to write it all down. Maybe a digital camera is the better method! :-) With a digital camera with a Hollywood-style chalkboard clapper that you can hold in front: "Weird copper-sounding brass patch, take one!" -Clap!-- My partner in creative crime is a brilliant but undisciplined fellow (his radio program is on right now, in fact). He used to get up in front of the modulars we had access to and put patchcords all over the place. The most unusual, wild, rhythmic but non-repeating sounds would come out. Instant Morton Subotnick album in a single patch. I would then step in and slowly remove patchcords one at a time that actually weren't doing anything until I got down to the true heart of the patch. Then I would step back and look at it and say, "Huh! *I* certainly would never have come up with this by working logically." These experiences broke me of the discipline of patch charts. Sorry for the rant. Your questions activated neurons I hadn't used in a while, and I had to indulge myself in the mnemonic trip.
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-----Original Message----- Do I also need to note which specific length of patchcord I use to make each connection? Will using different length cords in future patches cause small changes to occur in the voltages between modules and thus change the sound significantly? Likewise, will using different cords made by different manufacturers have a big effect on the patch's sound? Lastly, is there a maximum length that patchcords can be before excess noise or signal degradation starts to detrimentally effect the sound?