Modular Noise

[Bubble-Congeries]

Can anybody point me some video or audio of artists using Qu-Bit Nebulae in the harsh noise context? I am curious to see the potential of this module for noise. All audio and videos that i found just showed Nebulae making beautiful drone sounds or techno rhythmics stuff (what i don't like). Really appreciate for some help. Thanks.

Ultimately, I think a lot of what you get out of granular synthesis in terms of harshness depends on what samples you put in, or else how you process the output. For me, the Nebulae seems most suited to "sample concrete" style applications. Not necessarily super-harsh shit, just audio cuts and digital glitching/scrubbing effects, and of course the more standard droning beds or strident buzzing tones.

I tend to use it mainly for scrubbing across and cycling through sets of samples, with the best results coming from dynamic samples that give me a lot of material to pick out dynamically/tonally varied sections from. Never used any proper distortion modules, but I find the actual excess of headroom in eurorack to be pretty frustrating where my attempts at achieving a quality of line-level, broken, cruddy, saturated harshness is concerned...

Anyway, I have some examples of it being used for kinda-concrete generative nonsense, but not anything especially harsh:



A lot of what's happening involves just cycling through samples on the nebulae, randomly recording chunks of the output into other sampling modules and randomly modulating the parameters all over the patch.

I made a note on that second video, a good reminder to RTFM:

...the main sound source simply cycles through its library of user samples in order, and the only real way to disrupt, or at least partially mask, the rote order of what samples are heard is to feed it chaotic triggers in order to hopefully make it stop and start reading samples at reliably indiscernible intervals, and with reliably chaotic looping patterns and pattern lengths for the samples themselves.

Turns out, you can set the Nebulae to select the next sample in random order, instead of playing in one order, which I only realized later.

FYI, I can't even get that second video to play on two separate browsers because Bitchute is a janky, broken pile of dogshit... Your results may differ!

[confuzzled]

Oskar has a new podcast up with Parasite Nurse whos current work is cutup modular I believe. Really interesting stuff.

[mpw319]

Any good fuzz eurorack module recommendations?

[Bubble-Congeries]

Any good fuzz eurorack module recommendations?

I've never used any purpose-built fuzz or distortion modules, though the Schlappi 100 Grit was mentioned on the last podcast episode.

One interesting thing with modular is that you can patch all kinds of signals around to get interesting results.

One thing I've used for a fuzz is an Atari Punk Console module with an audio input fed into one of the CV control inputs, which produces a pretty unruly, fuzzy distortion effect:
https://on.soundcloud.com/PU19C

[Remi]

Any good fuzz eurorack module recommendations?

Ritual Electronics Miasma with the Crime 2 expander.

You get different flavours of distortion going very fuzzy and wavefolding, and it works great in conjonction with their Altar filter (which is the only reason I still have a eurorack rig. I love it so much.)

[mpw319]

Appreciate the feed back, y'all! I have a 100 grit and a Ritual Electronics Guillotine and they're great. Might try patching the 100 grit around my case and see if that can pull of the sound I'm trying for. Also going to look into that miasma and crime 2 expander.

[Bubble-Congeries]

I've also had mixed results just using level shifter modules with send and return jacks to conveniently integrate line level pedals into the signal chain, though I confess I have mostly used ye olde death metal for this, and haven't experimented with other options a lot, namely fuzzes.

What kind off fuzz effect are you trying to get?

[mpw319]

Honestly, trying to get something close to a super fuzz. I feel like it's the low end that I'm trying to hunt down.

[Bubble-Congeries]

Honestly, trying to get something close to a super fuzz. I feel like it's the low end that I'm trying to hunt down.

I see. I've never tried it or heard demos, but Synthrotek supposedly make a SuperFuzz "clone" in Euro format. How true it is to the classic SuperFuzz, I can't say: https://store.synthrotek.com/Octave-Fuz ... p_668.html
I'm sure there must be others out there, that's just the one I know about.

Unfortunately, I don't have my SuperFuzz clone pedal on hand, but that could be interesting to try out inside the rack. As an experiment, I decided to try hooking up a Boss FZ-2 by running it through an Intellijel Stomp pedal interface. Not sure why I hadn't tried this sooner with he FZ-2. Sounds disgusting (especially the clean boost, haha). Granted, it's not really a great approximation of an actual SuperFuzz, but kind of based on the same principle.

[Remi]

Honestly, trying to get something close to a super fuzz. I feel like it's the low end that I'm trying to hunt down.

Maybe an EQ module could help then ?

[Jeep]

Thanks everybody for the tips, specially Bubble-Congeries for the info and for the videos. I agree with you, Nebulae really shines for music concrete sounds and glitch. It is not a power machine for harsh noise right away. It depends what sample you put in. I tried some junk noise samples, but did not like the results (still sounds music concrete), maybe i should try to put more distorted samples or process the audio with a distortion module. I will keep experimenting until find some sounds that match with my likes.
A 100Grit is a nice distortion/filter (i have one), but i also did not get satisfied with the results of it processing Nebulae (maybe is just me). Anyway both modules are intense and needed to be explore, sometimes the best results are not immediate, takes time and request many tries to be useful and good (at least in my opinion).

[Cementimental]

Coming soon :)

[James Thompson]

Coming soon :)

incredibly sick. love this.

[Bubble-Congeries]

Coming soon :)

Neat! I always wondered if/hoped there's be a rackable version. Still haven't ordered any original version kits, but this may push me over the edge.

[Cementimental]

Thanks all :) we are currently building 10-ish prototypes which will be for sale soon, then we will order the final PCBs (functionally the same but just tidied up a bit) and there will be kits as well as more fully built ones.

Will share more videos soon too. It's a very odd module, we are getting some unexpected things out of it, plus it has some bonus features such as using it as a distortion/fuzz :)

More info about it here: https://isntses.weebly.com/blog/chernob ... ack-module