Monolith of Mazes | VCV Rack Generative Ambient Modular w/Monome Teletype + Grid

This is the third demo track I've recorded to show off my WIP grid sequencer, 'Meadowpillars'. It's another set of Plaits voices and resampled material, but now with a darker edge to it, and some more features of the grid scene to show off.

An AD Envelope EOC trigger clocks the sequencer after passing through a clock divider and some Branches for variation. Koan warps Plaits into different noisy flavors. Deep bass voices thrum underneath, bandpassed noise fills out some atmosphere. Lilac loops a short little melodic fragment that gets audio-rate slew limited to add some odd effects to the sound.

My MIDI controller is really just some knobs for volume of various mixer channels, as well as toggling the Lilac looper on/off. The grid is where the fun generative stuff is happening.

Like in previous demos I sometimes regenerate pitch sequences, or reverse sequence playback, but now we're doing more with beat sequences. Using the column of 2-wide buttons toward the left (bottom, due to the video rotation), I randomly generate a new sequence of beats for a particular sequence. You can watch the changes occur in the lights of the sequence display, or 'meadow'. Speaking of the meadow, I also do a bunch of manual beat manipulation using the meadow, which is another set of singular buttons. Hitting a meadow button cycles through beat types for that particular beat of that sequence. Here I'm just kind of hitting them at random to add variation, but you can always be far more intentional with this process. And of course, I'm using the grid to hocket the sequences around all over the place.

The name of the demo is a sort of feeling. Being in the middle of a gargantuan network of mazes. Honestly not much more to it, I just feel the strange and winding passages of this track are fitting for that kind of image.

I'll probably record one more demo before I finalize the grid scene and make an overview video for it, just like I did with 'Bosanquet'.

If you enjoyed the song and want to hear more of my music, feel free to check out my Bandcamp page: https://benbuchanan.bandcamp.com

Видео Monolith of Mazes | VCV Rack Generative Ambient Modular w/Monome Teletype + Grid канала Ben Buchanan