Congrats to user @Dewb aka Michael Dewberry for winning the LZX patch challenge with his entry “Sparks over The Charles.” Michael received 8/35 votes which put him far ahead of all other entries.
Michael described his patch: “Two voices into Cortex. First (explosions) is Diver > Passage > Doorway > Topogram > Mapper, second (spark trails) pulls from Topogram into Memory Palace with self-patched external feedback and Color Chords. All modulated by Sloths, Wogglebug, and O-Ctrl.”
Big ups to Jeffrey Evergreen @jevergreen who received the second most votes, and Evan Twyford who got the third most @etwyford
I had an immense amount of fun putting this together and watching everyone’s entries as they came in. Great job to everyone who participated! I hope you felt sufficiently challenged to use your system in new and different ways to achieve the patch goal. We’ll be looking to do another challenge in the future so stay tuned for more.
Special thanks to @Z0NK0UT for sponsoring this challenge with a few prizes.
Whoa, I’m honored! Thanks everyone and thank you @genlok for running the contest! There were so many impressive entries. I took a fairly literal approach, but I really liked the more abstract entries, and my favorites were the ones that managed to be both literal and abstract, like @etwyford’s, @GijsvO’s, and @SleazeeVulture’s (plus @genlok’s!)
I wrote my patch description in a hurry and I realize I left out some key stuff – War of the Ants processed through Navigator provided critical modulation to both the Doorway threshold and Memory Palace center. More modulations from Prismatic Ray, Sensory Translator, and Bridge. Also, I started developing the patch with Wogglebug and Sloths for randomness, but by the time I finished, I’d replaced all the random modulation with outputs from the 0-CTRL. I’ll do a detailed patch writeup a bit later.
Explosions are triggered by the 0-CTRL gate output AND’d with the frame clock (so an explosion doesn’t start midway through the frame.)
I’m using Sensory Translator’s envelope followers to lengthen and shape the AR pulse coming out of 0-CTRL.
The explosion ramp comes from Navigator; WOTA noise into H creates two noisy out of phase LFOs that are reset by the 0-CTRL gate, one of which drives the Doorway threshold. The Doorway output is further clamped by TVP using the Sensory Translator output, so only the first cycle of Navigator is visible. If I had more/better envelopes there probably would have been a more straightforward way to do this.
Memory Palace is in Warp mode, and B out is patched back into G in for extra feedback; the Saturation control affects how much the sparks “crackle” out of existence.
Topogram into Mapper creates all the color variation within an explosion. Diver is set to the circle bank, mirrored, to create circles, and Doorway is in Outline mode to make them more donut-y.
0-CTRL first row affects Diver H phase and Mapper hue, to vary the position and color of the explosions. Second row maybe affects gate length? Not sure if the AR output is affected, ultimately. Third row creates the timing variation on each explosion step.
During the video, I brought the 0-CTRL clock speed up and down a couple of times, and manually triggered extra steps at the finish. I also tweaked Doorway gain and MP center.
Yeah, it’s a MDLR case, but I ordered it without power supplies and put in Malekkos. Pictures here: MALEKKO POWER Help/Advice
The design is great and I’m happy with it, but the build quality was disappointing and I had to repair/replace some damaged and incorrectly sized parts before I could fully assemble it, long story for another time. It’s a lot of HP in a portable package. The removable center ring does what I wanted it to, allows it to close while patched while not encumbering patching or stage visibility when it’s set up. Excited to see more manufacturers riff on the concept.
Ok, for control I was using Pressure Points, Brains, and Maths to program and semi-automate a sequence of states (wishing I had an 0-Ctrl for this) with slew between settings. Really, there were just three states, with it coming to rest/reset on the fourth. Randomness of X-Anchor on the Navigator came from Wogglebug (I had to manually hold the sampled value, because I just didn’t get far enough to automate that, so annoying). The color selection was also manual, quick between launches, on Layer 1 of Color Chords. The flag comes in manually by twisting the control knob for the Y channel of Mapper, and by triggering the keyer on Visual Cortex (I used Passage to apply an offset so that it would to wipe in the corner square to the right spot over the stripes (Layer 3 of CC). Layer 2 of the CC was just a faint sunset gradient at the lowest opacity setting, barely noticeable.
Patch notes:
Looking things over after the fact, I can see that things could have been simplified it some, using multiples of both VC ramps instead of using static ramps from Diver (earlier animation ideas used the V-Phase slider), and the fader on Bridge instead of Pendulum. I used the SSF Quantum Rainbow for noise instead of War of the Ants because WoTA was flaking out due to heat (that’s a thing, right?); my studio is an oven this week. I never made a patch on Modular Grid before, so sorry if it’s hard to read!
Instagram Link: the 2nd image is a pic of the case, the 3rd is a video attempting to show the automation, with one hand holding the camera.
Congratulations @Dewb. Well deserved! There were some good patches, but I felt like yours was the only one that captured some kind of magic as the explosion falls and fades away. That feedback is beautiful! Well done!
Also, yes thanks to @Genlok for putting together such a great contest. AND, you got me to sign up for the forum now, so I have some research to do. lol!
Regarding patch notes for my own patch. Unfortunately I didn’t document the exact patch, but I wrote:
“I started with the pixel diamond waveform from Diver for the fireworks shape. I used Memory Palace to animate the motion of the fireworks, and Escher Sketch to modulate the WIDTH and HUE to create a sort of explosion effect. Background buildings were done in Fortress to match the same pixel style of the fireworks, and Pendulum LFO into Fortress to create a flashing in the sky. Final compositing and color mixing done in Visual Cortex and Color Chords.”
I just got my WoTA a few weeks ago (Analogue Haven still has some in stock!) and I had the same problem at first — you just need to recalibrate it for your case temperature, instructions here: War of the Ants not working? - #6 by creatorlars
I’ve got a Quantum Rainbow 2 in my audio case, looks like I need to give it a try with video, I liked the different character of your noise.
@Dewb — It’s also nice for mixing color noise, patching different filter colors to RGB. In additive mixing it always has a horizontal grain, but I’m wondering now if it might get a little more sizzle by subtracting different filter bands…
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