Patch of the Day - Analog Heart, Digital Mind

Using Silent Way's CV Input & Osculator to control your DAW.

Ok, so you've managed to recover CVs from you modular. Now what?

Rather than just process and/ or replay those recorded CVs, how about using Logic's Transformer to convert and redirect the MIDI CCs generated by the pairing of SW's CV to OSC component and Osculator?

In today's patch I've siphoned Osculator's output and used a handful of Transformers to generate pitch & pan information for an electric piano virtual instrument and bypass & downsample parameter data for Logic's Bit Crusher plug-in.

PotD - Analog Heart, Digital Mind by navs

In the first section you can hear me manually adjusting a positive offset voltage from a Doepfer A-138 mixer, followed by a sequence from an A-Sol. SQ-8 plus manual offset and, finally, the stepped output of a Make Noise/ Wiard Wogglebug. In the latter example, I used automation to gradually increase in the bitcrusher's mix level to about 50%.

This is a lot of fun and yields unusual and sometimes unpredictable results. For example in the sequence excerpt, the CC to note conversion isn't always 'clean'. However, I'm sure it's nothing a little additional MIDI processing couldn't solve.

The biggest problem I encountered was the lack of 'note off' data and hanging notes when converting CCs to pitch. There are other ways of generating clean note information, for example using a Novation Bassstation Rack's built-in CV-MIDI converter or the Moon Modular 552, but If anyone has a Logic-based solution, I'd love to hear it!

Here are some screen-grabs of the Environment I used.

For those of you daunted by Logic's Environment, and in particular its Transformer modules, check out this great tutorial by Toby Pitman at audiotuts+.

Thanks to Scaff for providing the inspiration for this patch with his Moon Modular 552 demos!