This recording stemmed from an experiment with the Doepfer a137-2 Wave Multiplier II. This module will take a Saw, Sine or Triangle wave and produce 4 phase-shifted Saw waves from it, whose relative phases can all be modulated. I have never tried using it on CVs before though, and it would appear that it is pretty cool in this regard. I have built a breakout module for the a137-2 which gives me all the individual phase-shifted Saw waves on separate outputs, along with the outputs from the built-in comparator, giving me 4 individual Pulse outputs as well. I wanted to see if I could use the various outputs to modulate the various parameters on the Cyclebox to produce a thick, swirling drone. The Modcan Dual Delay, Makenoise Echophon, and Pittsburgh Modular Filter were all used to further process the sounds.

Patch Details:

1. A very slow LFO from the WMD PDO mk.2 was sent into the a137-2, and the front panel controls were set to produce various phase-shifted Saws. Three outputs were taken from Maths - set to very slow cycling envelopes - to modulate three channels of the a137-2, changing the phase of the shifted waves. One Saw output (from the breakout module) was used to modulate the pitch of the Cyclebox' OSC1, and a second was used to modulate the pitch of OSC2 (we were in mode 0010, where the two oscs can be tuned independently). A third Saw output was used to modulate the Cyclebox' GAIN control (the internal waveshaping intensity)
2. OSC1 was set to Wavetable mode, using a vocal formant wave, and an Intellijel Quadra LFO was patched in to modulate PH2, changing the wavetable when brought in manually during the recording. A second Quadra LFO was used to modulate the iFM intensity, also being brought in and out manually during the jam.
3. The LEAD output (OSC1) was sent to the Pittsburgh Modular Filter, whose cutoff was modulated by the a137-2's main output. It was set to Highpass mode, with fairly high resonance, that was modulated by an Intellijel Dixie LFO.
4. The output of the Filter was fed into an oakley VCA, which was slowly modulated by a cycling 4MS PEG envelope/ LFO. The output was recorded directly, and also fed into a Makenoise Echophon delay. The PITCH of the Echophon's delay was swept up and down by a Vulcan Modulator LFO.
5. The Cyclebox' LAG output (OSC2, on a Triangle/ Sine shape) was sent into the Modcan Dual Delay (in STEREO mode). The following modulation was applied to the Delay: Filter Cutoff, Resonance, Delay time, Feedback....all modulated by various slow, overlapping LFOs.
6. The two outputs of the Delay - one set to a shorter delay than the other - were sent to the 2 inputs of the WMD Multimode VCA, and a second PEG LFO was used to sweep from one channel to the other. The two outputs were recorded individually and panned left and right, so that as one delay fades out the other fades in, on opposing sides of the stereo spectrum.
7. During the recording various controls were tweaked, building the overall timbre from extremely low, crackly static-type tones all the way up to aliasing, FM Radio effects.