The Void

Thanks! I was afraid to record this tune because it is a popular tuba fanfare at almost every HBCU (Historically Black College/University) in the United States. We even played it in our high school marching band. My main fear was copyrights and such. However, I love this little tune and felt the modular could play it in a way no one had heard before. Take a listen to these rival bands playing the same tune:

Here's a version from my parent's alma mater


Here's a version from this band' arch rival:


You'd think we'd be limited because our sequencers can only play bits and pieces of melodies, but not in the least.

Well, first, it comes from listening to tons of jazz and fusion over the past four decades. More to your point, It comes down to a sample-and-hold or the rbss. I use both in this patch as the lower "saxophone" voice is the sample-and-hold. The upper "soprano" voice is the rbss.

The bass, lower voice, what you call the sax solo. Uses the sample-and-hold (S&H). The S&H is triggered via the CVSwitch that has the tempo controlled by the MMDivider. The fast pulse, and a pulse moving at half the speed of teh fast pulse. The CVSwitch is triggered by the pulse width of an LFO. This way the solo has a some rhythmic variation instead of constant eight notes you would normally get from a S&H. Sometimes I manually switch based on what I'm hear or how I think to solo should build over time.

I also do a lot of waveshaping via end envelopes and other gates controlling the filter that's how you end up with "ghosted" notes.

This all works exactly the same with the RBSS. Often the RBSS makes for much more interesting solos since it's using the Turing Machine software. I just didn't do the multiple beat as I ran out of lfos and I wanted a more steady eight note pattern in the upper voice anyway.