Bring your rack and some headphones and patch along. Null Infinity and Sam Burt will provide creative stimulation with two approaches to generative feedback patching in modular synthesis. This is a free workshop/social event for anyone interested in electronic music.
Also, feel free to bring modules for swapping!
On occasion, the Red Room hosts a community meetup to discuss modular synthesizers. This time we will experiment with two different types of feedback: audio routed through a matrix mixer and shift register driven chaotic CV. Null Infinity will show you how to use your matrix mixer as an instrument, adding effects to the feedback loops to destabilize and tame your rowdy signals. Sam Burt will show how to patch a Benjolin from scratch, explaining the Rungler and how combinations of continuous and stepped CV, along with undifferentiated CV and audio rate sources can create musical structures.
Null Phi Infinity and Sam Burt will lead the patching. At the end, they will combine their racks into a two-headed feedback monster and give a brief performance.
There will be patch diagrams at the meetup. If you’d like a sneak peak, you can log into the Greater Baltimore Modular Forum Discord. Check out the recommended modules to bring for each patch at the bottom.
Null Phi Infinity is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Baltimore. A graduate of the MICA sound art program and a musician since childhood they have always had an interest in sound and started teaching themselves how to circuit-bend and create electronic music in high school.
After graduating they entered into the world of modular, building DIY whenever possible and using modular’s flexibility to explore a wide range of sonic textures. They are interested in processes that include feedback, phasing, distortion and chaos to create evolving textures and haunting drone soundscapes.
In 2020 they started the Rat’s Nest Podcast which focuses on patching something from scratch every episode and explaining the process and decision making that goes into patching on a modular system.
Samuel Burt is a composer, instrument builder, and improviser based in Baltimore. He helps curate the Red Room and the High Zero Festival. He studied computer music at the Peabody Institute and synthesis and tape music at the University of Georgia.
Burt worked for many years with Pure Data and started work with physical synthesizers during the Pandemic. His work focuses on complex generative and cybernetic systems, using determinate systems to create unstable yet controlled musical textures.
Feel free to just come want. If you want to patch along, we’ll have power strips. You just need to bring a rack with these recommended modules. If you don’t have all of them, no worries! We’ll see what you can build based on these principles.
Modules needed for Null Infinity Matrix Mixer Feedback
Agitator Module (Saw LFO? Drum sampler? Anything that makes a signal!)
Delay (+ optional filter)
Filter
Reverb
Glitch (wave folder, granulator, bit crusher, ASR)
Matrix Mixer
Modules needed to patch a Benjolin — Optimal Loadout
2 Triangle LFOs (with 2 FM inputs or 2 mixers)
2 Comparators* (Maths can act as a Comparator)
2 Offset/Scalars**
XOR Logic*** (or bipolar VCA)
Shift Register*** (binary or analog)
DAC or three-channel mixer
Pingable Filter (or filter with a mixer to add feedback)
Modules needed to patch a Benjolin — Minimum Loadout
Triangle LFO (with 2 FM inputs or 2 mixers)
LFO with Triangle and Square outputs
Comparator* (Maths can act as a Comparator)
XOR Logic (or bipolar VCA, even a Ring Modulator will do a sloppy job)
Shift Register (binary or analog, a Turing machine is close)
DAC or three-channel mixer
Pingable Filter (or filter with a mixer to add feedback
Module Options for patching a Benjolin
*In order to scale the amount of change in the Rungler (shift register + XOR), you need to put one of the Triangle LFOs into an Offset and then through a Comparator. You can run the patch without the Change control, and just send the LFO’s square wave into the XOR. The Ornament and Crime module with Phazerville firmware has a Compare app.
**One offset/scalar is used to make the Shift Registers unipolar CV into a bipolar signal. You can produce Benjolin behavior without it, but having the CV centered is the expected behavior.
***Phazerville also provides a ShiftGate app that has a 16 bit register with a built in XOR.
