Muff's Modules & More

[wsy]

Have you ever come up with a synth patch that wasn't just "bad", not just "horrible", but
actually "deplorable" - where hearing it made you think that this would be the kind of
sound that would destroy all life forms on a planet? (like the Deplorable Word in
Narnia, but as a synth patch)

This is that synth patch.

Here's how to make it. Take three sawtooths; tune an octave apart (say, 16, 8, and 2
foot). Note doesn't matter much; chorus them slightly (maybe 2 or 3 cents out of
perfect tune). Drive their 1V/Oct input from a noise->S/H, with the S/H clocked at
about 1.5 Hz.

Add a fourth oscillator making triangle waves around 8" or so. Run that into a
Wave Folder cranked up to 11. Add that to the mixer, equal parts all around.

Put a ribbon controller or one channel of a joystick on the 1V/Oct of the fourth
oscillator so you can sweep the frequency (I suppose you could use a pitch
bend wheel via midi controller). If you have a quantizer, quantize the
joystick CV and put it through a slew rate limiter (glissando module) first;
set the glissando for around 1/10th second.

Take the output of the mixer and run it into a good phaser (i.e. an Oakley Deep
Equinoxe, set for eight poles, and the knobs roughly halfway up). Put the
S/H triggering oscillator frequency onto the mod wheel or 2nd joystick channel.

Play it. Softly. You will NOT like it. It's absolutely disgusting. At anything above
about conversational level, it becomes unbearable. You don't need waterboarding
when you have this patch and a good amp.

The trick seems to be using a Wave Folder and a Phaser in series; one
or the other sounds good, but a folder followed by a phaser just.... hurts. And the
above patch makes it much much worse.

- Bill