Your sequencing gets upgraded — including cameos by Pac-Man and the LOGO turtle. You get even more secret weapons for drum synthesis. You get the hot new RANDOM8 collab from Befaco and Mylar Melodies, cloning their new hardware. There’s just so much goodness in VCV Rack that covering the free stuff has me dizzy. Here’s your June update, with some sound examples.
SignalFunctionSet
I’ve already raved about the superb free and open-source (GPLv3) modules from SignalFunctionSet — namely that they brought the legendary granular environment, Barry Truax’s GSX system (1985-86), to VCV Rack.
They’re back with four new modules this month, including Gravity, the “chaos engine,” shown above. It comes with six modes: a double pendulum, a spring-bound rocket that flies around simulated planetary gravity, a Pac-Man-inspired maze (“Hungry Man”), a generative pattern maker inspired by turtle graphics in LOGO (as a lot of us encountered on the Apple II), a billiards simulation, and a spirograph pattern maker. You can use this for sequencing or modulation sources or whatever you like, with bipolar X/Y position, radius, and angle as CV in addition to six gates and six morphing CV outputs — so as the puck on the screen bounces around, it triggers different outputs. There’s also some welcome mouse interaction, so you can try messing around with the screen.
And that’s not all: SignalFunctionSet has more:
- Muse, a port of the Triadax Muse sequencer created by Edward Fredkin and Marvin Minsky at MIT in 1969.
- Band, a beautiful eight-band harmonic bandpass bank.
- Vac, a vactrol-like attack/release envelope with latching loop.
Band is spectacular; here it is using only the Befaco Noise Plethora as a source — plus more Gravity:
You could easily get lost for weeks with just the modules from this maker. There’s the formant synthesis voice Intone, the. powerful and expandable Fugue sequencer, Phase drum sample looper, gamelan-modeling Tine, and time-signature-aware clock Meter, plus more — see the full set. These really demand some focused work, even. Genius.
Befaco x Mylar Melodies RANDOM8
I urgently wanted to talk about the RANDOM8 collaboration between Befaco and Mylar Melodies when they came by Superbooth, but it got lost in the typical Superbooth crunch. It’s a good thing I waited, though, as now you can try it out in VCV Rack, which makes clearer how ingenious this little module can be.
So, you’ve got your random modules. And you’ve got your 8HP modulation sources. But RANDOM8 goes further by giving you per-channel looping and attenuating, which lets you put all that randomness to musical use — like tapping to lock in a random pattern you especially like, so it isn’t lost in the chaos.
The hardware landed this week:
But for all the video watching and explanation — scintillating as my prose may be — it’s really something you’ll grok if you just try it. Enter VCV Rack, as the full functionality is exactly replicated for your hands-on perusal. It’s like Superbooth without the S-Bahn trip; just grab the requisite coffee or beer.
Every VCV Rack user will want this immediately, especially as it’s free. Fair warning, though — you may also find yourself wanting the hardware.
They’ve been generous: it’s licensed under a GPLv3, which is not true of all the Befaco clones:
https://library.vcvrack.com/Befaco/Random8
This month in drums, synths, and processing
Earlier this month, I reviewed the inexpensive, insanely deep Unfiltered Audio Battalion modules for Rack:
Just as I was hitting publish, we got a bunch of other terrific modules, meaning there’s no rest for the drum synth-obsessed.
From TNN1T1S, there’s a nice set of 909-inspired drums. The appeal here is that the modules work well as a set, thanks to a global state controller that handles accents and the like, plus a handy mixer.
I think I’m most excited by Submit’s Impact, though. It’s yet another kick drum synthesizer, but it’s GPLv3-licensed, and creator Juan José has created a unique sounding module with both “pure” and “harsh” modes, and tons of tweakable timbral features, including wavefolding, different noise modes, morphing, and harmonic and “snap” dials. The result is exceptionally good at bringing out transients while giving you some weight behind it. I definitely have other modules that do this (looking at you, Vult Trommor), but I appreciate that Impact has its own sound and character.
Impact comes alongside a bunch of really nice modules by Juan, including an all-in-one voice module called Drift, with wavefolder, slope, and contour built in. Here’s Drift and Impact together in a not-terribly-inspired music demo, but one that should give you an idea of what these modules can do. Juan released these alongside a bunch of useful channel mixing and compression modules, a Gain module for external gear, a looper with auto-BPM detection — see the full list.
And the rest
Rack has been on fire lately, so apologies to anyone I miss — but some highlights for me:
- JW-Modules added a 16-step, sequenced FM synth, fractional delay, and random-generating 4-op FM sounds, now with random seed inputs for those and many other modules.
- Tsugumasa Yutani and Ambivalent Instruments have a beautiful new noise generator.
- Entian Audio, apart from making my favorite software envelope and pitch follower, also offers a great MIDI player, both in free and commercial versions. Now you can both drag-and-drop MIDI files into that module and export to standard MIDI, including in the free version.
- factionoptions gives you a way to run DMX from VCV Rack for interactive lighting fixture support.
And you should really check out the full Questionable Dinner line, which recently added new modules for distortion, pitch quantization, noise/texture, additive oscillation, delay/reverb, and more. That’s next on my list for “try making a patch with modules from just one maker.”
Well, that, as my college piano player used to tell me, “should be enough to keep you off the streets.”
Enjoy:
To play us out — to end the show — here’s a really weird jam with Fugue and Muse, just don’t ask.