Single Cell Software

I'm split between being impressed with your output and concern over why, lol. #9, 10 and 12 of More Folding are so cool (again my bias is exposed)

Edit: removed my non-thread related comments. Sorry, wasn't being considerate.

Reviving a thread.

At the time when paulovski originally posted this thread I was not very knowledgeable about modular synthesis - I'm still not but have learned quite a bit, relatively, the past few weeks.

So I was watching a video on wavefolding earlier tonight and remembered this thread. I dig it up and looked at it again. Looking at the circuit I noticed several things that didn't add up so I'll address the first few that caught my eye.

In theory, because of the shape of a square wave, if it were truly folded on itself at would eventually cancel itself out, or at least in my mind it should. Then when looking at the mixer with the marked attenuator I realized that on one side of the crossfader was a sine and on the other a square (due to the saturation).

Plus I couldn't understand how this circuit would actually fold anything, it was simply mixing waveforms.

The main thing though was the timbre and the fact that the folding didn't really look (or sound) like the examples I was seeing on YouTube.

So I experimented. I realized that sending a waveform thru the mixer and modulating it with negative polarity, or vice versa, inverts the waveform. At first this is not obvious because a scope with trigger on does not accurately seem to reflect an inverted sine, triangle or square wave, probably because of their symmetry. It does however become obvious with a saw wave.

If you look at Inversion you can see the top 2 scopes look identical, you cannot visually see that the second is actually inverted. However the true test is what happens when they are mixed- as you can see in the third scope, when the two waveforms are combined they cancel each other out. You can adjust the marked mixer knob and see what happens when the negative polarity is removed.

Inverse 2 clearly shows that the two saw waves are indeed inverse.

Wavemix shows what happens when you mix an inverted sine with a square - it sort of looks like a folded wave but in my mind isn't. The peak of the inverted sine is just pushing the middle of the square down. Or so it would seem.

Then it dawned on me that the Distortion effect has a "Foldback" mode and I wondered if it might have some sort wavefolding type of results. Turns out it sure does - it is literally a textbook wavefolder, or seems that way to me.

If you play the song while watching the Folded scope you can clearly hear and see wavefolding. For measures 16 - 24 I jacked up the output of the Folder 2 wave and Distortion input (it's automated in the sequencer) to get maximum wavefolding, more as an illustration than anything else.

In the final example I wavefolder a Pulse wave; it's a little extreme for the sake of demonstration purposes, not really intended to be musical.

Anyways as a relative novice to modular synthesis I appreciate any and all feedback. Especially if I'm making a fool of myself and making too many assumptions.

Part 2/2

There are two scope setups to watch as you play the "song". The first allows you to visually see how the ebb and flow of the LFO is affecting all the elements you can hear. If you watch it as it loops a few times everything you hear and see starts to gel.

The second scope setup is really the key here - the top scope shows you exactly what the LFO is really doing, the bottom shows you how wonderfully mangled it becomes after waveshaping.

Incidentally there are no note changes at all. What sound like notes are filter cutoff points naturally chosen by the folded LFO and liberal use of resonance to punch out different harmonics from the fundamental.

Anyways, here is the file.

Hope some of you are enjoying this, as always it would be nice to get some feedback in this sadly diminished forum.

Timelapse footage of Batman working while the bats fly around. Enjoy!

Back again for more punishment. Think I'm starting to get it (still a long way to go...). I know very little about electricity but I'm finally coming to terms with bipolar/unipolar, gates, triggers etc.

I did some experimenting tonight to try and wrap my brain around the folding before I get back into looking at your examples. For fun I included a file, nothing new to you, but you'll get where I'm at and others might benefit... if anyone cares to.

I'll write a more detailed explanation for others soon to explain the purpose of the first 2 mods.

So it's pretty basic - SubOsc into mixer, Mod Wheel in the other 2 inputs to give it extra juice. This is fed into the Saturator. I automated the two mixer knobs which give the SubOsc a positive bias then (on the Flip side) started adding the saturation. Some interesting things happen when the current passes a certain point, again I'll edit this later to explain better, but eventually everything is fully up and an audible buzz can be heard. The mixer output is then scaled back and despite the volumes all being very high the signal appears to sort of flatline. So now if I'm correct the wave is fully folded onto itself and cancellation occurs. There are several ways to replicate that as can be seen when the mixer output level is then raised again and on the Flipside the saturation level is reduced and the Waveform flatlines again.

Hopefully I'm on the right path here.