Close

New Instrument: VCV Rack

A project log for My Journey Into Synthesis and Electronic Music

My personal journey learning synthesis and how to make electronic music coming from alternative rock background

avrAVR 01/08/2019 at 19:378 Comments

Finally got into the Eurorack modular synthesizer hobby via free and open source VCV Rack program. Its a C++ sound engine and standalone program written to model eurorack modular synthesizer modules. You can create custom patches from the built in modules or use 3rd party modules. I'm just getting into it but here is a patch I created that I plan to run on an Elo 22" i5 touch screen PC alongside my hardware synth setup.

This patch features the following:

- Modal Synthesizer based on the mutable instruments modules

- Custom bass synth I made out of built in modules + ladder filter

- ARP Odyssey clone module

- Everything mixed stereo

- 3 instrument 16 step sequencer for controlling all of the,

This patch should at some more range to my synth setup, it will free up my Korg Monologue for playing sick leads and add some more textures on top.  Stay tuned for more, its gonna be run treating a whole PC as just a MIDI device synced and controlled by my Korg Monologue over MIDI. 

Discussions

Frank Buss wrote 01/09/2019 at 14:13 point

VCV Rack is cool. And it is easy to program your own instruments for it, see for example my formula plugin, available for free in the plugin manager:
https://github.com/FrankBuss/Formula/blob/master/README.md

  Are you sure? yes | no

AVR wrote 01/11/2019 at 23:13 point

I actually have your module install, I recognized your name right off. Its a pretty cool concept I'll have to try it out in my next patch. On another note have you ever synced a PC running VCVRack with MIDI ? Thats my next challenge.

  Are you sure? yes | no

Frank Buss wrote 01/12/2019 at 03:00 point

I guess this could be difficult. Usually the PC is the MIDI master.

  Are you sure? yes | no

AVR wrote 01/12/2019 at 04:33 point

I'm trying to make a patch in Puredata to just route midi clock in then out but also send it to VCV Rack via a virtual MIDI pipe.

  Are you sure? yes | no

davedarko wrote 01/08/2019 at 20:54 point

program is awesome, but it makes my i7 macbooks fan go crazy really fast

  Are you sure? yes | no

AVR wrote 01/08/2019 at 23:20 point

truly amazing, I'm wondering if this will run fast enough on the quad i5 tablet I want to deploy it on. I want to get it to play in time with hardware synths so we'll see how that goes with the latency. Have you used any patches in a performance or do you just tinker? 

  Are you sure? yes | no

Richard Hogben wrote 01/08/2019 at 20:36 point

Nice! Come join us in mod synth discussion :) https://hackaday.io/messages/room/271844

  Are you sure? yes | no

AVR wrote 01/08/2019 at 23:20 point

oh boy that sounds like fun!

  Are you sure? yes | no