Day 012 / Modular Patch #002 – Volta!

Volta is a pretty great invention in the world of modular synths.  While it turns the visceral experience of patching something from raw analog voltages into a slower more logistical experience, it makes the composing of music with the modular a much easier task.   Plus there’s nothing better than being able to bring that modular perfectly in sync with Ableton Live and testing out different drum loops over the sound.
 
This patch at it’s core is rather simple.   Two oscillators, one going through the Frequensteiner filter and the other going to the A-137 wave multiplier.  Both then are patched through the Planb M13 for volume modulation and on to the mixer for output.
 
The rest of it is Volta driven.  I’ll start with Volta outputs 4 and 5, they’re sending out gate signals from two Volta trigger sequencers to two different ADSR’s which are modulating the volume level of each oscillator in time.   Volta outputs 3 & 4 are sending out sample and hold signals synced to Live at different divisions and they are traveling through the A-129-3 Attenuator/Offset onto the Dual Quantizer and each separately into the pitch modulation of each oscillator, creating the random musical scale.   Finally, Volta output 1 is outputting a square LFO clock synced to Live and sending that to the A-161 clock divider. “/2” output of the clock divider is being sent to the CV in of the Frequensteiner and “/8” is being sent to the sustain CV in of the ADSR 1 to add a little rhythmic variety.
 
While recording, I added a small amount of delay from the Kaoss pad and tweaked the A-129-3 knobs to play with the pitches as well as the Frequensteiner.  I also switched wave types of the oscillators throughout, messed a bit with End of Decay re-triggering on the ADSR2 and I played around with the time periods of the Sample and Holds within Volta.  Finally, I added a random drum loop over it in Ableton. I hope you enjoy!