To begin phasing out my Behringer Neutron (the first piece of electronic gear I ever bought, back in 2018), I’ve just acquired two new oscillators: Intellijel’s Dixie II+ and Shakmat’s Banshee Reach. Both feature a “soft sync” option, whereas Neutron has only hard sync. Oscillator sync is generally touted for its distinctive timbral effects. I’ve never seen any discussion of its use at lower (sub-audio) frequencies. But looking at its effect on the waveform, I reckoned soft sync might generate some interesting arpeggios. Here are the results of my experiments!

NOTE: the folded shape of these arpeggios led me to also experiment with using a wavefolder (Intellijel’s Bifold). This worked – and has the advantage of preserving the period/frequency of the arpeggio, and thus the time signature. But as you increase the fold, the arpeggio begins to sound too chaotic. I guess there is a sweet spot (or range) between a bog-standard arpeggio and a formless sequence of notes.

Other modules used:
Make Noise's Maths
Intellijel's Scales
Mutable Instruments' Plaits
Expert Sleepers' Disting EX
ALM's Pamela's New Workout
Low Gain's Short Bus
Alright Instruments' Chronoblob

#eurorack #modular #arpeggio #electronicmusic