Nord Modular

Patches

The Hall of Mirrors / Spiegelsaal

This is a patch called "The Hall of Mirrors", it sort of does the "mirrors" sound of The Hall of Mirrors on Trans Europa Express by Kraftwerk (1977).

I was present at their concert in Utrecht in 1981, and was especially looking forward to hearing and seeing The Hall of Mirrors, being extremely curious how on Earth they made a sound like this. I was a bit disappointed they simply used a "pinggggg!" sound instead of this wonderful wobbly mirrors sound, but now I understand. It was a sound probably made on a modular synthesizer, and a carefully timed delay/echo, and thus not useable live in those days. I don't think they had a Nord Modular in those days yet, but now, with this patch they could do an original live Hall of Mirrors...

  • download Hall of Mirrors.pch

    Europe Endless / Europa Endlos

    Another patch for a track of the album Trans Europa Express by Kraftwerk (1977) is Europa Endlos. Originally this patch was made by Marko Ettlich, but I was not happy with the main sequencer theme. This patch contains a closer sound-alike. The original Kraftwerk song again features the (probably) Synthanorma sequencer and a precisely timed delay to make the actually simple sequencer melody sound wonderfully complex. It cost me some time to figure this out! The first patch contains the "dry" melody, the second a version that sounds a bit more like the original, by triggering the envelope twice for each note, as a replacement for the echo.
  • download EuropaEndlos.pch
  • download EuropaEndlos2.pch

    Irritating patches

    In playing with the vocal filter and formant oscillator expecting to find a heavenly choir, a squeaking door surfaced. This inspired another irritating patch, Mosquito. Well, it was summer, then. Let me know if you created a fine crying baby?
  • download SqueakingDoor.pch
  • download Mosquito.pch

    Patch comparator: find double patches in collections

    In December 2001 as a christmas present a collection of 9400 Nord Modular FM patches was presented by Wout Blommers, resulting from a conversion of more than 20.000 patches. Many patches could be the same, but who listens to 9400 patches to compare them. No one does. Not even when it's christmas. I like christmas. (Want snow and Santa on your desktop, with snow piling up on your windows? Click here for Windows, Macintosh and Linux snow.)

    Well anyway, it's not up to humans to compare 9400 patches, so why not have a computer do this mindless job. I wrote a scanner to compare patches as follows. First patches are collected that have the same Nord modules configuration and the same cables configuration. Then an exact match is done on the parameter settings for each group of patches with the same module and cable configuration. This results in a list of patches that really are thought to be exactly the same. But, a difference in just one of the parameters makes the fish slip through the net as we say in Holland, so a broader compare is necessary. A second comparison is done, where parameters may differ from module to module by a maximum given value.

    I have not checked *all* patches below aurally, if you find patches that really sound different after all I'd like to hear (from you). DO NOT delete patches that are in this list, really listen FIRST!

  • Patches that are exactly the same (26 lines)
  • Patches that have parameter values that differ up to a value of 1 (143 lines)
  • Patches that have parameter values that differ up to a value of 2 (260 lines)
  • Patches that have parameter values that differ up to a value of 5 (348 lines)

    The same for the FTP archive:

  • Patches that are exactly the same (196 lines)
  • Patches that have parameter values that differ up to a value of 5 (218 lines)

    .midnam file generator for use with MOTU Digital Performer

  • Click here for the .midnam file generator

    [Home] [Electronic Music projects] [Nord Modular] [Nord Modular/MOTU .midname file generator] Rick Jansen (rick.jansen at xs4all.nl)