Drone Ambient Modules?

wirelesswine · Post by **wirelesswine** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 9:15 am

severence wrote:here are three more quick drone/ambient improvisations using the benjolin...

[video][/video]

[video][/video]

[video][/video]

Nice work! I have my Benjolin coming Monday and I can't wait after hearing your patches!

Auxiliaryoctopus · Post by **Auxiliaryoctopus** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 9:54 am

I can't tell if I like the benjolin, or if I just really like Severence.

severence · Post by **severence** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:01 am

Haha thanks very much for the kind words!! im looking forward to setting up and recording a proper mix using this combination, the benjolin kind of behaving like a nice evolving vco sat underneath the effects that spills out into the mix every now and again via the filter if that makes sense!

interested to hear more examples of the wmd synchrodyne + expansion if there are some about, i have their switch matrix and am very happy with the different possibilities that gives

stickmann · Post by **stickmann** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:12 am

Benjolin sounds amazing in good hands, apparently. severence, I'm glad you have a link to your soundcloud. Great music and textures in all of your tracks. Listening to all of them made for great study music.

Hirsbro · Post by **Hirsbro** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:13 am

why the hell is he Benjolin not on modulargrid yet

cant add it to my shopping list

edit
ohh but it is.. I swear it was not there when I looked yesterday or the day before that

stickmann · Post by **stickmann** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:14 am

It is, search for 'Benjolin'. Otherwise, it is under "Epoch Modular" manufacturer drop down.

severence · Post by **severence** » Sat Oct 25, 2014 10:16 am

This version is on there but i dont think epoch modular are set up as a manufacturer yet, try just searching for benjolin

Edit:beat me to it and looks like epoch modular are set up too! Looking forward to more from them!

Hirsbro · Post by **Hirsbro** » Fri Oct 31, 2014 6:28 pm

Made this drone on shapey tonight, thought I share it

http://soundcloud.com/viewed-from-above ... fter-drone

clusterchord · Post by **clusterchord** » Fri Oct 31, 2014 7:00 pm

here's my E350 drone.. 266R, E355 and Dixie for modulations, audio fed into AM8109 and Echophon:

https://soundcloud.com/clusterchord/ter ... in-c-sharp

severence wrote:here are three more quick drone/ambient improvisations using the benjolin...

all of them are absolutely mesmerising and wonderfully sad

i'm confused how did you get all the chordal/polyphonic feel from just the benjolin? theres obviously a minor chord happening there plus the semi atonal melody... if you don't mind sharing some insight..

i suspect the outboard eventid-ish reverb with shimmer and endless decay has something to do with it too..?

Hirsbro wrote:Made this drone on shapey tonight, thought I share it

http://soundcloud.com/viewed-from-above ... fter-drone

sounds great.. the s/h layer evokes as if someone is talking/whispering ..

wellurban · Post by **wellurban** » Fri Oct 31, 2014 11:13 pm

When I think of drones, I tend to think of three things: harmonic evolution, a sense of space, and ultra-slow modulation.

Wavetable oscs are an obvious source of harmonic movement, though wavefolders, filtering, FM, ring modulation and even just slow beating between several analogue oscillators will do it. Eliane Radigue is the ultimate mistress of analogue drone, IMO, and she made ultraminimal yet mesmerising drones with what (by the standards of a large Euro system) could be considered limited resources.

Spaciousness most obviously comes from reverb and delay, though clever use of panning and quasi-stereo tricks can broaden the space further. It's pretty seductive; just throw everything into a wash of reverb and you've got instant drone heaven. But modules that allow you to modify the shape of the space let you treat space itself as part of the composition.

You'll want envelopes and LFOs that can go super-slow (cycles measured in minutes), unless you want to do it all by hand (which is what Radigue mostly did). The A143-4 is a beast in that regard, and also is no slouch as an audio source for drones. Sequencers can be useful, though even with heavy slew the transitions might not be subtle enough for your taste. That's where the Verbos Voltage Multistage shines: in slide mode it doesn't just slew between stages, it interpolates with its internal clock, so it can create extremely long, smooth transitions.

I've happily played for hours with just a Braids, Erbe Verb and simple modulation sources. Braids is much richer than it seems at fist glance, with wavetable interpolation as smooth or as glitchy as you want. Chord mode is incredibly useful, and it does much more than wavetables: vowel synthesis, physical models, FM and comb filter modes can be fascinating drone sources.

Here's a simple drone track I recorded a while ago with just Braids, Erbe Verb and Maths (plus maybe some external delay). It's a bit noisy, but in the right context that just adds extra texture.

http://soundcloud.com/and-per-se-and/ultramontane

severence · Post by **severence** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 7:07 am

clusterchord wrote:all of them are absolutely mesmerising and wonderfully sad

i'm confused how did you get all the chordal/polyphonic feel from just the benjolin? theres obviously a minor chord happening there plus the semi atonal melody... if you don't mind sharing some insight..

i suspect the outboard eventid-ish reverb with shimmer and endless decay has something to do with it too..?

thanks! in those patches the benjolin mod a is modulated by a quantimator and the low pass out went out to my desk where it was liberally smeared with eventide space and partially fed out to a moog ring modulator with an el capistan running on top in places

tsunamisucks · Post by **tsunamisucks** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 8:15 pm

what about DPO as a drone source? never mentioned here, considering buying one... anyone had the experience?

MrNovember · Post by **MrNovember** » Sun Nov 02, 2014 9:48 pm

tsunamisucks wrote:what about DPO as a drone source? never mentioned here, considering buying one... anyone had the experience?

I'm also planning on picking one up. I assume it's a pretty decent drone source but you never know

337is · Post by **337is** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 1:40 pm

Really helpful post full of details and a great sound wellurban, thank you.

RE: DPO as drones source ... absolutely imho, especially with subtle modulations to the Shape, Angle, and Fold inputs. However, in my hands, the DPO tends to get fairly snarly and aggressive in character ... I always seem to be trying to tame and soothe it which can be equally exasperating and enthralling.

MrNovember · Post by **MrNovember** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 2:35 pm

337is wrote:RE: DPO as drones source ... absolutely imho, especially with subtle modulations to the Shape, Angle, and Fold inputs. However, in my hands, the DPO tends to get fairly snarly and aggressive in character ... I always seem to be trying to tame and soothe it which can be equally exasperating and enthralling.

Sounds like exactly what I want

johnwynberg · Post by **johnwynberg** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:20 pm

tsunamisucks wrote:what about DPO as a drone source? never mentioned here, considering buying one... anyone had the experience?

I remember watching this video whilst waiting for my DPO to arrive, like a year ago.

[video][/video]

MrNovember · Post by **MrNovember** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:29 pm

Yeah that's definitely not helping my gas for a DPO or an oscilloscope

ersatzplanet · Post by **ersatzplanet** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 3:55 pm

Those benjolin tracks from severance are VERY cool. Right where I would like to be. I had never heard of this module but will soon look for it.

Something similar that I was considering was a Erthenvar Patch Cord with a VCAMatrix or VC mixer on multiples its outputs. Basically a additive synthesis approach. With lots of verb and filtering on the separate outputs, you could really go places with that sort of setup.

ersatzplanet · Post by **ersatzplanet** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 4:17 pm

Auxiliaryoctopus wrote:I can't tell if I like the benjolin, or if I just really like Severence.

After looking at other benjolin videos out there - it is what Severence is doing with them I like. I don't think I would have the patience or the outboard gear to make it sound as cool as it sounded in his videos.

Dave77 · Post by **Dave77** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 4:22 pm

Qu-Bit Nebulae

MrNovember · Post by **MrNovember** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 4:41 pm

Dave77 wrote:Qu-Bit Nebulae

More of my gas!

ersatzplanet · Post by **ersatzplanet** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 5:15 pm

Dave77 wrote:Qu-Bit Nebulae

I actually was almost going to recommend this too. Some of the CSound patches out there are very chordal in nature. I'm sure a Sound patch that was tailor made for the Drone Zone could be done easily (by someone who could patch Sound that is).

Other than that of course ANY wave player can be used to create textural backgrounds generated by other means. I have a Nebulae, a ADDAC wave player and a couple of custom iPhone modules in my rig whose main jobs often are playing complex drone fields generated by my Nord or other means. You can devote your whole rig to making one very complex sound, record it, burn it to media, and play it back on one of these modules and then used your whole rig to modify them in real time. Sometimes I try to record as raw a sound as possible so that the wav file can be played with/modified live more easily.

JohnLRice · Post by **JohnLRice** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 5:23 pm

The E355 dual morphing LFO is a great and inexpensive drone source:

[video][/video]

quietguy · Post by **quietguy** » Mon Nov 03, 2014 10:27 pm

Was also thinking about a drone module and found this thread very helpful. Thanks to all the posters with suggestions and sound samples.

Had considered the Snazzy DroneBank as a starting point but am now revisiting that idea. Based on the comments here it sounds like it might still work with enough filtering and modulation. I'm already turning into something of a filter freak so maybe it's still a good module to start with. So many modules to learn about when just starting out. I'd never even heard of the Benjolin before this thread.

karmadelic · Post by **karmadelic** » Tue Nov 04, 2014 3:42 am

I'd never even heard of the Benjolin before this thread.

same here .... I've been listening to the demos , and now I just ordered one , even though I went over my budget for this year months ago ..... I should stop reading these posts !!!

MUFF WIGGLER

MUFF WIGGLER

Drone Ambient Modules?