ext. control of multiple parameters and range limiting

[castol]

hello all,

can this be done by any marvel of the mod2? i have a patch which i would like to at the very least have the mod wheel control depth of 3 lfo's on osc pitch.

i think i maybe could pull this off in digital performer, but i would rather just deal with it at the source if possible.

the only way i can think of doing this is by mixing the signals together and then i accomplish being able to control all 3 mod depth controls via one knob....but i have a combined mix of all three signals...argh.

this brought about the idea for a simple mixer module, in 2, 4, and 8 channel variants. it would have DIRECT outs from each input, one master knob to control the overall level of each channel (enabling control over multiple parameters) AND here is the kicker, a range slider for each channel.

a mixer that worked in a similar manner on frequency would be nice as well.

i want range sliders damn it!

i have played around with this graphic modular synth called onadime composer and it is just chock full of range limiting on every parameter. why this is better imo is that you can have a single lfo and an 8 channel range limited mixer (i believe some of the mixers can even invert and make the signals , bi or unipoloar, positive or negative).

i have often wondered how to implement range limiting in the mod2, i hadn't known what to call it until i started thinking about it just now.

oh yeah, max/msp/pluggo has range limiting objects.....i own pluggo and think its great....looked at max/msp, but is a bit much for me at this time to plunk down the cash and time to learn. it is a very fertile breeding ground for a wild imagination i hear

[castol]

whoops, got a little carried away and forget to finish why i think range limiting can be very powerfull.

castol said:

"(i believe some of the mixers can even invert and make the signals , bi or unipoloar, positive or negative)."

castol finishes his sentence:

it opens up the possibility of being able to control a number of different parameters each in a different manner. in particular the useable range with which the source modulation affects that particular channels output.

different, suble or extreme modulation is one area where i think modular synthesis is the strongest, and one area which i would like to greatly expand upon.

a single modulation signal can be piped into one of these mixers and out comes many different other variations on the original. this could be very usefull, space and cost (money or dsp) efficient.

[castol]

range limiting in the modular:

i figured this out the other day while playing with equal power panning. it does work - range limiting, but at this time it is futzy to use a modulator to modulate within whatever range one has set up. this is because the modulation input does not cover the FULL modulation range between two sources going into the crossfade module - which is used to modulate between two values.

in fact i think all modulation inputs are intentionally shorted on their range. this didn't occur to me until just now. but i think it is true.

anyway. so understanding the limitation i still think it is usefull to know, maybe use.

so... limiting modulation or adjustable frequencies/values between two specific ends. one uses a crossfade module fed with either 2 contstant value (bi or uni polar) or constant frequency modules - depending if your working with unit values (amplitude, filter frequency, filter resonance, pulse width) or frequency values (oscillator pitch, lfo ext. input).

not super relevant but, one can interchange between these two modules sort of, i.e. constant value module controling oscillator frequency. this can be pretty usefull as each value is interpreted as a musical semitone (i believe). the frequency modules; i have no idea how are scaled - but in my experience they are pretty useless with anything other than setting frequency.

back to range limiting.

its quite simple. a constant module is fed into each crossfade module input. for refrence sake input one is the low end of your range. input 2 is the high end. your range is between whatever values you input into the constant modules. attach the ouput of the crossfade module to something which can take unipolar unit modulation and tweak the manual crossfade control. wahlah.

ultimately i wanted to use range limiting to do something other than arbitrarily set values. this can still be done, but the top end of the range is shortened by some amount. how much i am not sure.

i'll email creamware and see if they can help me out by telling me how much range is cut off. so that maybe i can compensate for it and get the range i am looking for.

btw...this idea of using a crossfade module to limit the range between two arbitrary values was borrowed from a nord modular tutorial on hard sync, by Rob Hordijk.

[David]

On 2002-03-16 18:00, castol wrote:
range limiting in the modular:
btw...this idea of using a crossfade module to limit the range between two arbitrary values was borrowed from a nord modular tutorial on hard sync, by Rob Hordijk.

Can you post a link to the tutorial?
many thanks

[castol]

sure.

http://www.clavia.se/nordmodular/Modularzone/index.html

&

http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~clark/nordmod ... k_toc.html


i'm still working through the first link. found the second one by chance. you gotta love the name "wave terrain synthesis". it just conjures up some great imagery, as well as just sounding plain cool.

the two or three authors that wrote the tutorials on the clavia site also do some on this other one.

in my experience i haven't been able to recreate many of the patches....at one point i thought i could, but it just took to much time and many seemed imposible, or things didn't work like they do with the nord modular. not to mention that nord modular and cw modular are different software modular systems. a lot of things are similar however.

apparently rob hordijk (one of the tutorial authors) is a creamware user. i have thought about emailing him about the cw modular and his thoughts on it, and maybe porting some of the patches for the tutorials he's done (the logic one in particular would be nice), but haven't gotten around to it.

the concepts used are pretty standard in the field of synthesis. with enough knowledge of the cw modular, and these concepts - i think one could pull off a lot of this stuff. i mean, some of it is fairly easy to pull off, but some just didn't work for me at all. or i just didn't have enough understanding of what was being accomplished and happening to really get very far, or even wrap my head around what was being done or how to go about doing it.

anyway...all the same these resources, and really any modular synthesis resources prove to be VERY good brewing pots of inspiration and interest. if not a bit intimidating at times

best.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: castol on 2002-03-17 20:55 ]</font>