Here’s a quick look at the modular setup I’ve built in Max/MSP to begin the speculative sonic bestiary. I’ve limited it to one audio oscillator with one filter and 5 LFOs. I haven’t implemented any routing functionality yet, so I’m just manually re-patching the modules as I’m experimenting. At the moment I quite like this setup. If I come up with something I like, using one routing combination, I can’t save it, so once I record it and change the routing it’s gone for good. This feels a bit like catching a brief glimpse of some entity, before it disappears again, perhaps for ever, into the digital ether. So the recordings are quick snapshots of these fleeting soundforms.
Here’s a breakdown of the setup so far.
LFO
Waveforms: sine, triangle, rectangle, saw up, saw down, random continuous, and random discontinuous)
There is a range object so I can set the LFO to oscillate between any values between 0 and 1.
CV Amt. - This sets the amount of ‘virtual control voltage’ that will modulate the frequency of the LFO
CV Amt. Mod. - Another LFO signal can modulate the amount of frequency modulation.
Oscillator
The frequency, pulse width and amplitude can be modulated by the LFOs
There are four waveforms that can be added together: sine, triangle, rectangle and sawtooth
The frequency, pulse width and amplitude can be modulated by the LFOs
Filter
A straightforward filter using the svg~ object, with lowpass, highpass, band and notch filters. There’s a range slider here too and the cutoff and Q can be modulated.