Automatonism - free modular

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
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HowieRis
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Automatonism - free modular

Post by HowieRis »

Has anyone else used this?

Johan Eriksson, a PHD student at Birmingham Conservatoire has developed an open source modular synth with 67 modules that runs in Pure Data.

https://www.automatonism.com/the-software/

I had no real knowledge of modular synths specifically before I launched it late last night but within an hour of poking about and figuring out how clocks and CV worked I had a fairly deliberate sounding drums & synth loop going while I jammed with filter cutoffs, ADSR parameters and delay feedback on the fly. I'm surprised at how good this thing sounds.

Very intuitive and addictive.

arkos
Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by arkos »

Sounds like lot's of fun to be had for free, nice one.

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jacksonick
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by jacksonick »

Thanks for this, first time I've used Pd. Trying to get this working with ableton http://cdm.link/2016/11/free-jazz-now-a ... pure-data/ no success yet.

Pelecaras
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by Pelecaras »

i open the pd main page from the automatonism file and then click on oscs, ect fro the menu but they only show as code eg..basic-osc 1
what am i doing w
rong?
FUCK-WIT

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HowieRis
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by HowieRis »

Pelecaras wrote:i open the pd main page from the automatonism file and then click on oscs, ect fro the menu but they only show as code eg..basic-osc 1
what am i doing w
rong?
Silly question maybe, but have you downloaded Pure Data Vanilla?

Pelecaras
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by Pelecaras »

HowieRis wrote:
Silly question maybe, but have you downloaded Pure Data Vanilla?
It's not a silly question as I asked myself the same but I downloaded the installer from the link on your OP but when I open up main PD I get an error message about font.

then when I choose a module from the list it just says error and the module doesn't appear in the page. (this happens on my older laptop and my new desktop)


????

really frustrating because it looks like fun to play with.
FUCK-WIT

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HowieRis
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by HowieRis »

Hmm weird. Maybe trash both downloads, re download Pure Data for whatever OS you have, then the Automatonism .pd files and try again.

I'm still enjoying this. There're examples on Youtube of patches progressing through entire complex tracks without the creators touching them, whereas I've been using it to come up with interesting patterns and sounds (using modulation for shorter term textural movement rather than track progression) then bouncing into Logic for mixing.

I intend to learn more about how those longer pieces are built though.

Pelecaras
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by Pelecaras »

HowieRis wrote:Hmm weird. Maybe trash both downloads, re download Pure Data for whatever OS you have, then the Automatonism .pd files and try again.

I'm still enjoying this. There're examples on Youtube of patches progressing through entire complex tracks without the creators touching them, whereas I've been using it to come up with interesting patterns and sounds (using modulation for shorter term textural movement rather than track progression) then bouncing into Logic for mixing.

I intend to learn more about how those longer pieces are built though.

took your advice and it worked a charm

ta buddy

looking forward to having a proper play later
FUCK-WIT

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kostas
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by kostas »

i had tried to work with
http://www.monologx.com/xodular in the past
this is for pd too
but never really got to know it inside out. somehow it was weird sounding but maybe it was poor patching skills..
this one seems ok too maybe I ll waste some time on this too))
a good find for sure , thanks HowieRis
''We all have the equal amount of now. Got it? ... now go and make some good techno.''

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kostas
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by kostas »

http://write.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/introduction2/
and here is a link to floss manual for pd for an extended guide or troubleshooting stuff..
''We all have the equal amount of now. Got it? ... now go and make some good techno.''

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jacksonick
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by jacksonick »

HowieRis wrote:Hmm weird. Maybe trash both downloads, re download Pure Data for whatever OS you have, then the Automatonism .pd files and try again.

I'm still enjoying this. There're examples on Youtube of patches progressing through entire complex tracks without the creators touching them, whereas I've been using it to come up with interesting patterns and sounds (using modulation for shorter term textural movement rather than track progression) then bouncing into Logic for mixing.

I intend to learn more about how those longer pieces are built though.
Probably a silly question but how are you bouncing down?

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HowieRis
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by HowieRis »

kostas wrote:i had tried to work with
http://www.monologx.com/xodular in the past
this is for pd too
but never really got to know it inside out. somehow it was weird sounding but maybe it was poor patching skills..
this one seems ok too maybe I ll waste some time on this too))
a good find for sure , thanks HowieRis
Go for it, heaps of nerdy fun. When I'm using it my girlfriend looks at my screen as if it's covered with cockroaches... then again its probably just a reaction to my shit music. :lol:
kostas wrote:http://write.flossmanuals.net/pure-data/introduction2/
and here is a link to floss manual for pd for an extended guide or troubleshooting stuff..
Cheers!
jacksonick wrote: Probably a silly question but how are you bouncing down?
Not a silly question, I had to look it up but the easiest way I found is to record real time with writesf~ (mono) or writesf~ 2 (stereo) objects. You just have to give them start/stop commands and file names to write to. Each object will create a WAV file in the same folder as the .pd you're working on.

tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr9je-vpTSM.

You can take audio straight from the DAC stereo outs or from individual sources (with attenuation).

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jacksonick
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by jacksonick »

Not a silly question, I had to look it up but the easiest way I found is to record real time with writesf~ (mono) or writesf~ 2 (stereo) objects. You just have to give them start/stop commands and file names to write to. Each object will create a WAV file in the same folder as the .pd you're working on.

tutorial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr9je-vpTSM.

You can take audio straight from the DAC stereo outs or from individual sources (with attenuation).
Very helpful, thank you.

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[wesellboxes]
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by [wesellboxes] »

This looks very interesting, cheers.

Southpaw
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by Southpaw »

Looks really interesting. I will be trying this out once I get some time off. I noticed some of the devices on the home page and specifically, for my interest, there are sequencers and clock dividers. I have been trying to think of ways to get step sequencers in Live/M4L to 'talk' to each other but to no avail.

The concept of clock dividers/multipliers in electronic music can yeild some seriously complex rhythms when they're interconnected but as far as I knew, there wasn't really anything accessible for me to get into it in software. What I wanted to try was Five12 Numerology but it's Mac only so looking forward to seeing what this does :)

This comes at a time when I just learned about HISE too. A free environment for creating your own VST plugins. Essentially, it says it's designed for sample based instruments but I learned it also comes with oscillators. Don't know much more about it at this point but thought it should be worth mentioning here.

http://hise.audio/

buffered
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by buffered »

Southpaw wrote:
The concept of clock dividers/multipliers in electronic music can yeild some seriously complex rhythms when they're interconnected but as far as I knew, there wasn't really anything accessible for me to get into it in software.


http://hise.audio/
Clock division in software has been available for years.

Max/msp, Reaktor, Bonneville CPS, C-Sound, Chuck, synthedit, audiomulch to name a few.

Southpaw
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by Southpaw »

buffered wrote:
Southpaw wrote:
The concept of clock dividers/multipliers in electronic music can yeild some seriously complex rhythms when they're interconnected but as far as I knew, there wasn't really anything accessible for me to get into it in software.


http://hise.audio/
Clock division in software has been available for years.

Max/msp, Reaktor, Bonneville CPS, C-Sound, Chuck, synthedit, audiomulch to name a few.
Thanks, might be worth my look then. Easier if I explain too, I had a loss of interest in music quite some time ago. It was at a point when VST was very early and I was using Cubase VST with a hardware set up. Basically, it's not been that long since I got some interest back so my knowledge of such things is pretty limited ( but growing )

You may be able to shed some light actually which would be cool. Do you know if any of those you listed allow for interrconnectivity? ie: Getting one sequencer to send a clock to another sequencer etc etc? In essence, what I'd like to get into is complex polyrhythmic stuff, say one sequencer generating a 7 step pattern, another generating a 5 step pattern and have one or both of those sequencers sending out clocks to more sequencers ( say a 3 step pattern ) and that 3 step pattern gets moved along 1 step every time it gets a trigger. That's about as easy as I can describe in a nutshell but outlines the type of flexibility I would like to get into.

buffered
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by buffered »

Max/msp is great for this sort of thing. Very easy to do and so many ways to do it.

for example;
use a metro to send bangs out to a counter. connect a counter to a matrixctrl set to 16 columns which cycles based on counter number. (0-15 for example) connect the matrixctrl output to a route object funnelling out 16 discrete bangs.
Connect each 16 of the route outputs to counters which then send bangs to 16 other matrixctrls set at different columns lengths.
This is a basic way of having a bunch of sequencers all triggering eachother based on the trigger step output routing.

You can also use audio rate to sequence events.
Send a saw (phasor~) to a rate and set the amount of cycles the rate will have per master phasor cycle. Then connect a rate~ to the output of the previous rate~ etc. You can employ waveshaping and fm at this point to alter the wave peaks and shape....creating a sequence in the waveform.
Use a spike~ or zerox~ to send a bang whenever the signal crosses zero. This is ultra precise audio rate sequencing.
Stack a bunch of these structures all sending gates/bangs to various midiout~ or sample playback nodes and you get crazy results pretty quickly.
You can employ conditional logic also which will assess an input and route to it's output accordingly. This can be used to trigger sequencer resets or create random polyrhythmic patches.


Reaktor is pretty simple for this stuff also. It comes bundled with step and modulation sequencers that you can have divided from master clock. Take outputs from any step and have it reset the next sequencer etc. It is fairly easy to do.

If you want to put in the work, it's pretty simple stuff and all there to do anything you can imagine. If you don't want to research it, you may spend just as much time getting the thing you want from already made software and hardware.

buffered
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by buffered »

I used to use software pretty heavily early on but just naturally gravitated to all hardware setup for some reason. In terms of sequencing i'd say that Max/msp gave the best results quickly. Just because it was so open and easy to patch a thought together.
Going hardware i did miss the easy of polyrhythm setup. I now look to modular for this and it works fine.
In terms of complex rhythms, it helps not to go too crazy. It can start to sound messy quickly. Often all you need is one element that is running in different step length and it is enough. Delays can also get you there. Modulation free of sync is also something to look at.

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HowieRis
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Re: Automatonism - free modular

Post by HowieRis »

Southpaw wrote: You may be able to shed some light actually which would be cool. Do you know if any of those you listed allow for interrconnectivity? ie: Getting one sequencer to send a clock to another sequencer etc etc? In essence, what I'd like to get into is complex polyrhythmic stuff, say one sequencer generating a 7 step pattern, another generating a 5 step pattern and have one or both of those sequencers sending out clocks to more sequencers ( say a 3 step pattern ) and that 3 step pattern gets moved along 1 step every time it gets a trigger. That's about as easy as I can describe in a nutshell but outlines the type of flexibility I would like to get into.
This might interest you.

youtu.be/Yf8D8x-H_us



In other news, playing about with PureData has led me to download Max7 and I've just started to work through the documentation... catch you all in a few months I guess :lol:


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