Ghost In The ICs

Before sitting down to wrap up another mastering project and start on yet another (when it rains, it pours) I decided to patch up something on the modular for a while, making a specific effort to use the Polivoks.

After messing around with that sound of the Polivoks self-oscillating with the BP out FM'ing itself that I mentioned in the review, I started a patch using it as a regular BP filter and came up with what I called "Ghost In the ICs".

This quite possibly could be my favorite sound I've come up with yet. I think it could have been even more expressive with the joysticks involved, but it's hard at this stage to play them without the alligator clips popping off or having a flaky connection. Here's what the patch consisted of:

The lower register of the sound (the slightly formant like one) is one square wave oscillator from the Dalek Modulator with a little bit of x-modulation. That is being fed into the Harvestman Polivoks which has it's resonance about 3/4 of the way up, getting a slight modulation of it's frequency by the Auxiliary out of the Dual Cuyclotron (both cyclotrons set to "discrete"; square waves), and the Bandpass output going into one half of the Plan B Dual Timbral Gate with the level up @ 10 o'clock. The gate level is opened by the accent out on the first 8th note of a triplet on the Plan B Model 28 Tap Clock.

The upper register of the sound (higher pitched sine wave-ish one) is the sine wave out of the other half of the Dalek Modulator, also with a little bit of x-modulation. That is going directly into the other half of the Plan B Dual Timbral Gate, with the level also @ 10 o'clock and the gate in "Filter" mode. The gate level is closed slightly (not being opened wider) by a Plan B Model 10 Poly Env, with the envelope going negative (~ 11 o'clock on the knob). The Poly Env is being triggered by the triplet gate output on the Model 28 Tap Clock, with the middle 8th note set to Rest.

The mix/sum output of the Dual Timbral Gate is going into the Frequensteiner with it's Resonance set to ~ 10 o'clock and set to LP mode. It's modulated slowly by the Triangle out of one half of the Vulcan Modulator as well as getting an Accent on the first eighth note (so accents on the quater note beat) from the Model 28.

Finally, the Frequensteiner is going into the main VCA (Doepfer A-131) which is being held open via the "clock divider always on trick" and also slightly modulated by the Triangle out of the other half of the Vulcan Modulator.

I added a little UAD RE-201 and UAD Plate 140 in Logic after recording it.



Enjoy.