"Oceans & Fields" - 90 Minutes of Ambient Synths for Drifting the World as a Vagabond

Описание: You drift along the fields of the world. Fields of grass... fields of water... does it matter anymore? The ocean and the prairie have so much in common now... the stillness, the wind, the endless expansiveness. What is it that you see in the distance? From so far as this, it loses all perspective. The world turns and you drift. What is it that you seek? Do you even remember anymore? And anything that you find now... will it be what you need?

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Generative ambient music created on Eurorack modular synthesizer. Put in the background as music for studying, relaxing, or for tabletop game soundtracks crossing sunlit open grasslands or open, still oceans.

Patch Notes:

This is a "typical" Mutable Instruments generative ambient patch that I enjoy more than average.

Marbles drives two sound sources: Mutable Elements & 2hp Pluck

Elements feeds into Mutable Blades, where it is treated with separate drive & stereo multimode filtering on the left and right channels. Then Xaoc Tallin for a bit of additional warmth & crunch.

The 2hp Pluck goes into Mutable Ripples for low-pass filtering.

How does it play itself for so long without repeating, but also without wild thematic changes? I call it "linked randomness" - a mega-multed single source of random CV from Marbles that's used to to modulate over a dozen parameters in the patch.

Elements provides a huge dose of its own reverb. Everything we hear also gets additional Reverb and Delay from the Eventide Space pedal & Zed-10FX mixer on ping-pong delay.

My thoughts:

Something about this piece makes me like it more than expected. There's just something about the sound, the changes, and the pacing.

I'm happy with how I networked the Marbles randomness through everything in the composition - and I feel like something small but important “clicked” for me on this patch w/ regard to using Marbles. Making much, much heavier use of the "global" random out, the Deja Vu setting, and mode selectors to create generative structures

The Deja Vu setting also repeats the random output, not just the gates & pitches! So, use this “semi-repetitive semi-randomness” to drive sonic interest via connective links and structural repetition of TIMBRES and any other modulate-able qualities that will then be linked with the gates & pitches.

I counted this central source of patch “randomness” from Marbles linked to THIRTEEN (!) different input patch points when I finally disconnected it at the end.

I pretty much just CV almost every timbre-related control input, so Elements in particular looks like an octopus (in the bottom left of the rack). What an incredible module it is - it’s just so legendary for me. The absolute cornerstone of this entire synth rack, really.

I like the interplay of quick vs slow damping on both Elements & Pluck modules. Sometimes they get more quick and plucky / percussive / dry, other times almost they are pad swells or string-like. Both of the soundsource modules are doing this in different patterns, which leads to endless non-repeating cycles and phases in and out.

I'm pleased with how I set up the complex & powerful Blades filter - the two stereo channels of Elements are each getting a massive multi-mode filter treatment, with completely different patterns & directions for the left and right sides, developing all sorts of interesting complex evolutions

Ripples filter on Pluck is more restrained, just cutting off some high end, giving a little liquid resonance, and also bringing it in and out of the mix organically.

I love Batumi as an endless source of simple LFOs in a small package. It’s providing a handful of multed sine and saw waves that travel throughout the patch, and it’s also self-patched to create shifts and wobbles in its own pacing. This self-patching is heavily attenuated to prevent large, startling tempo shifts - but is enough to add another layer of generative time-based cycles that can phase in & out among the rest of the mix.

In my final opinion, nothing about this patch seems particularly special on paper - it’s a fairly standard Mutable Instruments-style generative patch with a bunch of reverb and delay. And, I regret the specific global delay settings I put over the whole mix - if I could undo this, I would - but something in the emotion captured me, and I felt the urge to leave it playing and record it for a quite a while.

It was actually hard to click the “stop” button on the recording session, since it just kept putting out such an endless variety of gorgeous tones and patterns.

I left the recording session feeling like I had never heard the same bar repeat twice, but that almost every measure was beautiful, and decided it would be worth sharing.

--- GEAR USED ----

Eurorack Synthesizer Modules:
Mutable Instruments Elements / Marbles / Ripples
2HP Pluck
Xaoc Devices Batumi / Tallin
Intellijel Mixup

Other Gear:
Eventide Space Reverb
Allen & Heath Zed-10FX Mixer

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