Joy of Synths #19 Voltage Research Lab (VRL)
Overview of the VRL after 5 years in this non-musician’s guide to creating sounds for podcasts, videos, and sampling for music using analog synthesizers.
VOLTAGE RESEARCH LAB
Five long years later
The Pittsburgh Modular Voltage Research Lab was announced in 2019 and delivered later that year. For as long as I’ve owned it, well, I’m barely in control of it. Alas, I’ve come to understand that is the point of its existence.
BUCHLA JR.
The VRL is a homage to Inventor Don Buchla and “West Coast Synthesis”. “East Coast” sound generation is basically every Behringer clone synth: An oscillator generates tone which is filtered for subtracting and/or adding overtones(harmonics) which is then amplified with an attack decay contour or envelope generator which controls the dial of the voltage controlled amplifier (VCA). Whew! That’s sound synthesis!
West Coast was unknown to me when the VRL Kickstarter began. Buchla was introduced to Eurorack with the Buchla Tip Top Audio (BTTA) line of Eurorack modules a few years after the release of the VRL.
I bought the BTTA modules for the ability to modulate semi modular synths I already own. These Buchla modules helped me somewhat better understand things on the VRL like the Function Generator and Lopass Gate. Granted, I returned the Dual Oscillator and Quad Lopass Gate because the VRL has a better implementation for these modules given the decades between the original Buchla circuit designs and the 2019 VRL approach.
WAVE FOLDING, NOT WAVE SHAPING
The key thing of West Coast Synthesis is wave folding to get crazy new sounds. The VRL Primary Osc just means “the first Oscillator”. As in “Start Here.” The Second Oscillator is able to modulate the wave folding.
This makes for beautiful sounds as you are literally folding a generated sound wave like a sine wave into something else as though the wave shape was Sonic Origami.
In contrast, the BTTA Dual Oscillator and some synths by Behringer will shift wave shapes but this is not wave folding. To alter wave shapes you can use a mixer to blend wave shapes but again that is not wave folding.
FUNCTION GENERATOR
Sound is not really processed by the Function Generator. That takes voltage and shapes a rise and fall to use to modulate other modules. This is best dealt with hands on because it is not equivalent one-to-one as an envelope generator and contour.
BTTA makes the Quad Function Generator which has 4 function generators. I appreciate it insomuch it helps me understand the VRL’s Dual Function Generators.
Again, while u can patch in audio because sound has voltage, a Function Generator does require a gate or trigger signal to start the function generator. So this is where you patch your analog Gate or Trigger outputs from a CV controller or sequencer.
DYNAMICS CONTROLLER / LOPASS GATE
A Lopass Gate (LPG) does not work like a filter that will self oscillate. Pretty much all of the Pittsburg Modular filters will NOT self oscillate, which is great but sets you up for a rude awakening when you deal with any other filter that feeds back into itself and produces some high pitched noise.
I did buy the BTT Quad Lopass Gate. It was fun but the Dual LPG on the VRL is sufficient for my needs, so back the Quad went. On the VRL it is called the Dynamics Controller with the option of making it a LPG.
Dynamics Controller can be multiple things like a VCA and a Filter. It does have a pluck feature, which in my situation was not audible because I did not patch in a trigger or gate signal.
In both cases, a Lopass Gate’s filter does not cut all sound. So I prefer to send the LPG output to a proper filter. If using a semi-modular synth’s filter, you may have to duplicate (aka Multiply) the Function Generator output to open up the VCA and allow the sound to pass through. A mixer alone won’t do it.
ANALOG DELAY DELAY DELAY
The reason I bought the VRL was that it was the newest PM instrument at the time and it had an analog delay. Strangely, Behringer doesn’t add delays to its instruments outside of the ARP 2600 clones. The Solina String Ensemble has a modulation reverb but you don’t get that tape effect, which is like an audio cassette tape scrubbing effect when you hit play and fast forward on a cassette deck. Granted, it’s said the delay originates with trying to emulate Reel to Reel tape players used in Electronic Music in the 1960s/70s, but good luck finding one of those under $1,000 at this point in time.
Delays and reverbs are an easy add to your final sound to make it less abrasive, or to play feedback by itself. Behringer Buyer Beware: their sound demos make make use of external delay guitar pedals or effects boxes. I find this fundamentally frustrating as this is not the source sound produced by the standalone instrument. So if you hear a slight reverb, it could be a sustain on an ADSR envelope, possibly, or not.
LIFEFORM TOUCH CONTROLLER
This touch plate sequencer has proven far less practical. I think mine may need servicing because it doesn’t respond to controls as per the manual. Because of that, I don’t use it much at all.
The alternative is to connect a MIDI controller to the MIDI B adapter. All the modules that respond to MIDI allow you to select that as the input. Alternately, you could run in CV and Gate signals, but you may have more fun with MIDI.
5 YEARS ON, SYSTEM UTILITIES AND RECORDING CABLES
I’ve been frustrated by the VRL over most of these 5 years. It was the wrong synth to buy as my first real synthesizer because West Coast synthesis is harder to suss out than East Coast dial turning. That said, I listened to March 2020 VRL recordings that I made knowing so little about the instrument. I recorded through the headphone output so I captured the VRL plus unnecessary line noise with a mini to mini cable, I think.
I emailed Pittsburgh Modular for an answer and they provided a recording guide. Key thing is to use the Line Left and Line Right outputs with a TS interconnect cable that is 1/8” mini Jack to 1/4” Instrument Cable. Only plug in a headphone to the phone jack. Don’t use that output for recording audio. Turn up the output volume on the VRL, and turn down the gain on the recorder. This way you get a full hot signal out of the VRL with lower recorder self-noise.
Alas below my poorly recorded high pitch noise are nice tones for random bursts of sound. Sonic exploration was the promise of the VRL and this was realized despite my absolute ignorance of how to operate the instrument.
READ THE FORGOTTEN MANUAL
The VRL is a definite RTFM (link here). I read the manual. It didn’t make sense at the time because it was all too new for me. Alas, Pittsburgh Modular put effort into the manual, so it’s worth working through the patches and accepting it may not sound as described in the manual, but it may sound better, at least unlike anything you may have heard.
I’ll have to re-read the manual this month of May and record as I go along. It’s very easy to lose a sound with the slight turn of the dial. I mean, with East Coast you can develop a feel for what happens with modulation. Not so with the VRL. Which is why recording everything is a must!
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
The VRL never really went into production. Pittsburgh Modular built and delivered their Kickstarter fulfillment and maybe a few stores received stock in early 2020 and that was it.
In the time since, Pittsburgh Modular has released their experimental Safari Series of Eurorack Modules. I’ve picked up 2 of the Harmonic Interpolation Flamingo (still don’t understand how to work it) and 1 of the Okapi Stereo Mixers that has dials for manual panning. Look, don’t let a lack of understanding stop you from playing with gear that seems like it can do cool things to sound.
They also reissued the SV-1 as the SV-1b, which had a black faceplate like the VRL. I was able to score one of those as a discounted module, and then sent it to Pittsburgh Modular for a blackbox upgrade so it would be self-powered.
They’ve since released the Taiga synth, a Taiga Keyboard, and will hopefully release more info on the Voltage Research Lab 2. But if you do find a VRL for $1300 or less, it’s worth owning even accounting for the frustrations that come with learning curves.
END NOTE
I recorded the first time someone tried to teach me synths. I rediscovered that date was April 17, 2017. Despite editing the video, there were some key points I didn’t take into account. Like, what the heck were they talking about? CV? Gate signals? Controllers? Moving forward, Joy of Synths newsletter will be focused on synthesizer building blocks for generating sounds for an audio library.
The next issue of Joy of Synths will focus on East Coast sound synthesis. Granted, East Coast and West Coast synthesis are 1970s ideas that have evolved into one another. Some instruments like the Majella Audio IMPLEXUS combine those two ideas by including a filter rather than a Lopass Gate.
I’ll be diagramming with littleBits Korg Synth Kits and littleBits Electronic Music Inventor Kits and other littleBits bits. These modular circuits allow you to recombine them quickly to create more sounds. I’ve amassed an embarrassingly large collection of littleBits since 2019. My main suggestion is to work keypresses rather than the sequencer. The keypresses will be more useful for a sound library.
COWOLVES AND RECORDED SOUND 5/1/2024
CoWolves has been recording video that we’ll soon be sharing as a Substack series and audio podcast. Their Discogs store has closed with zero inventory listed. On the upside, they did come into a series of vinyl 7 inch records including DK, The Damned, Pansy Division, and quite likely 1990s Ska/Rocksteady re-issues.
Music was not better in the 1990s, but it was a time of affordable vinyl production for bands and independent labels, right before Napster took away the power and break even profit of the vinyl 7”. This artist abuse continues with digital streaming services and their determination of royalties to artists and publishers.
At present, it’s not enough to record a single. It almost doesn’t exist without a music video. Ideally, a lot of music videos, one for each track, and not the album cover art only video.
There’s the conundrum. What comes first, the recorded music or the music video concept?
Hence, CoWolves won’t be releasing singles or albums or music videos, initially. The sound recordings will be released as a Substack hosted audio only podcast. This is easier to produce and allows for sharing raw recordings that may be refined into something else that can be properly registered for copyright and digital streaming.
While there’s zero profit, there’s zero loss. Podcasts in theory are not stored within the platforms where they are listed. So if someone wants to pull the podcast from circulation, it’s one stop, not going to multiple platforms. It’ll just be a dead link.
Thankfully Substack hosts the file without fees at this point.
So that’s the Spring and Summer 2024 Experiment- releasing sound compositions as a podcast rather than a single, mixtape, or album. While this means more recording, that’s actually the fun part of playing with synthesizers and sequencers and arpeggiators- they almost play themselves.
All Content Copyright 2024 Anthony Torres, All Rights Reserved.