Kaleidoscope ain't your daddy's groovebox

Hello, Oscillator Sync here. Kaleidoscope is a four voice multi-timeral digital synthesizer. That's an example of a description that is at once completely technically accurate, but ultimately explains so little about an instrument that is practically useless. While kaleidoscope can be used as four independent digital voices, those voices live [music] in an environment where the parameters, modulation, and sound of one voice can affect each of the others. Systems involving cross modulation and feedback [music] can lead to shifting rhythms, strange interactions, and sonic mayhem. These themes should come as little surprise when you hear that the creator of Kaleidoscope is Vadim Minkin, who also works at Soma Labs and was the mind behind ornament 8 and the simplex FM firmware for the Metaconformer. Vim sent a collidoscope over to me to make videos about. And while I haven't otherwise been paid, I do get to keep the instrument, so I'll be marking this video as sponsored. We also exchanged a good deal of fruitful correspondence [music] about the ideas and design behind the instrument and I asked some questions and made some suggestions which led to new features in the firmware. So, for what it is worth, I probably have a little more skin in the game emotionally speaking than with most other videos. Which is to say, Kaleidoscope is still very much under active development. So, there may be new features and improvements that I can't account for. If you're watching this video in the distant future, it should come as no shock to anyone that knows my channel, but this video is quite long, so I've added chapter markers so that you can jump around to the areas that you're interested in if needed. And I've scattered a good number of no talking demos throughout the video. Let's get to know Scope. Before [music] we jump into actually using Collidoscope, we should talk about uh how the interface operates because it's a little bit unusual, takes a little bit of time to get used to quite honestly. Um, and the reason for this is that Kyoscope has four independent voices and each of those voices has 128 parameters or up to 128 parameters. It's actually slightly less in this firmware cuz there's space for expansion, although they're mostly full at this point. So, obviously, we don't have 128 knobs or buttons here. So, the way that you actually navigate around the kaleidoscope's parameters is that you have eight different banks of parameters which you access by touching each of these buttons. And they're organized kind of logically. So, the first one is to do with uh the voice. Um the next one is to do with the velocity envelope, uh the mod envelope. Uh down here we have the sequencer. Uh yeah, so they're all sort of lumped together in logical ways. And then within each of those banks, you access four different pages by touching the opposite buttons here. So on the voicing one, you've got your uh sort of your oscillator settings, and then you've got your filter settings, and then you've got your tuning settings, and then you've got your sort of FM settings on that last page there. to apply one of those parameters to a particular voice once you're on the page that you're after. So say we want [music] to change the wave shape on voice one. You have the four knobs which relate to each of the four parameters that are shown here. So we want to change the wave shape for voice one. We can do it like that. [music] You can also hold down the knob to move faster or change the [music] wave folding. Uh like that. And then if we want to do something with this next voice, we just hold down that voice [music] instead. So mixing in the square wave there, mixing in the trigger wave there. But we'll get to all of that in a [music] second. So, it is a bit of a compromise in the way that you actually move around the synth. Um, you can get quite fluent with it, but uh yeah, you are paging across stuff, but it's not scanning through pages like menu diving. Everything is is flat essentially. Um, so you don't have to dive into menus to get to any of the parameters. But yeah, you are going to be tapping around stuff uh to get to the different uh parameters as you go. While we're talking about the interface, we should probably talk about the ins and outs around the back just briefly. It's powered over USB type-C and this is also uh a USB connection for doing like firmware updates and the like. We have MIDI in andout on uh Mini TRS. And then we have our outputs on the back here. Now um you've got two outputs but it's actually four because you've got uh essentially stereo TRS coming out here. Although the instrument is not in stereo. Um what you can do is to any of the four outputs that you essentially have here. You can assign any or all or none of the voices to those outputs. The way I've got it currently set up is that I've got each of the different voices going to a channel on my mixer. So, I can [music] pan the different voices individually if I like, and I'll be playing with that as we go on. But, um, yeah, you can just send it out as one big mono thing or send two to one and two to the other, whatever you you like. It's quite flexible in that way. You could also send the same voice to multiple outputs if you wanted to do parallel processing where you have a clean version and a dirty version. [music] >> [music] [music] >> The voice structure on collidoscope in terms of the synthesis is actually really interesting because it encompasses a lot of different modes of synthesis and you can choose to skew towards one or the other to get different types of synthesis happening on each voice or combine them in interesting ways to get more interesting types of synthesis. And you've got kind of classic sort of semi east coast stuff in there. You've got sort of wilder sort of west coast stuff in there. And then you've got sort of more modern physical modeling and sort of very destructive distortion and stuff like that in there as well as well as FM which is a core part of Clyde Scope. So, I'm just going to set the first uh voice here to drone [music] mode just so I don't have to hold it down the entire time. And this first page here is all to do with [music] wave shapes. So, the first control is going to take our basic wave shape, which is a triangle wave to begin with, and skew it towards being a sawtooth. Now, most of the controls on kaleidoscope are bipolar. [music] And in this case, if we go negative, it's going to do the same thing, but in the opposite phase essentially. So, it's going to be the opposite way round with our waveform. [music] Now, obviously on an individual sound source, if you flip the phase entirely, you don't really hear the difference. We're not [music] sensitive to phase in and of itself, but when you start to combine that with other uh voices or or start to modulate it along with some of the [music] other parameters, that ability to be able to flip the phase, essentially kind of like a pulse width modulation type thing [music] happening in there uh becomes really really interesting when you have that interaction either with other voices or other parameters. The next uh parameter here is called malt. And this allows you to do two different types of [music] waveform multiplication essentially. So if we go positive on this one, [music] we're going to essentially create a sync effect. [music] Uh obviously when I'm turning the knobs, it's steppy, but if we use a modulation source, it's going to be smooth. Yeah, if we go [music] negative, we get instead a wave folder all the way down to infinity, which gives us this digital noise, which is useful for like making snares and the like. And as we combine [music] those two different things, you know, running a sawtooth into a wave folder is going to [music] sound different to a triangle. Similarly with the sync. So you can immediately see just with these two [music] controls that we're going to get quite a lot of tonal changes if [music] we have them interacting with each other and modulating them in parallel. Now we can get to like [music] quite extreme sounds uh in here and we start to kind of lose the fundamental sound within the actual voice and that's where the mix control comes in. So the mix control allows us to take whatever you're doing here and mix in either a good solid square just to bring everything back to the fundamental. Or if you want to get even more fundamental with it to the south, we have [music] that triangle being mixed back in which really gives you that sort [music] of fundamental thing happening. You can also kind of think of this almost like a inverted filter. You if we have something extreme happening on these and then we modulate this >> [music] >> up and down. It It kind of sounds like we're opening up some sort of filter to get the different [music] sounds in there. [music] The final control on this page is the drive control. [music] And this overdrives things. Just need to keep an eye on the [music] on the volume because it does boost the volume. and it gets really really very aggressive. And then making these changes inside [music] that drive [music] really does have massive changes. Now the drive control is bipolar. You won't hear a whole lot of difference except maybe in the overall gain at [music] the moment. Really, not even on the gain. Uh, but the difference between the positive and negative here is whether or not it incorporates uh what's going on [music] with some of the stuff on the next page, in particular, the comb filter. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Wow. [music] What? >> [music] [music] >> So the next page in the sort of voicing here is our subtractive page which is where our filter lives and a delay which you can use [music] as a comb filter but also as a delay. So it's not all subtractive really. Anyway, uh so the first two controls are sort of our classic filter controls. We have a [music] filter cutff and we have a resonance steppy when you're using the knobs, but it doesn't have to be when you are using uh modulation sources within kaleidoscope. Though it is worth noting that by default, this is going to lock to particular pitches. So, if you want to be able to tune the filter to be resonating at something that is related to the pitch of the voice or maybe the key of the song, you can do that really, really easily and lock it in. [music] The resonance kind of does the Mogi thing where it's going to drop out the bottom end [music] as you turn up the resonance. And it does get to sort of squealely self-ressonance quite quickly, which means you can also ping it if you manipulate the voice section uh appropriately. [music] Yeah. And it gets like properly screamy and self-ressonant. >> [music] >> Nice. [music] >> [music] >> Uh so to properly demonstrate the uh the next section, what I'm going to do is just come in here and I'm just going to get our uh velocity um envelope to [music] uh cycle. There we go. Uh slight spoiler alert, you can make the envelope cycle. So coming back to here, the next parameters here are our delay and um with the delay set as it is default here. If we turn up the feedback [music] um sorry if we turn up the feedback, it will just act like a delay. [music] And the delay is independent of the uh uh the volume envelope. Uh so it isn't cut off by the volume which is how you can do like car plus strong stuff. The feedback control is positive and negative feedback which [music] does have kind of a tonal difference when you're using it as a pure delay but not that much. As we adjust the delay time, [music] [music] yeah, we get different delay times [music] and you can hear that you do get [music] sort of pitch shifts as you do it. It's also worth noting that uh a lot of things on [music] the Collidoscope are naturally tempo synced uh based on the BPM of the track and the BPM of the track can be different for each track as well, which is kind of crazy. [music] Yeah, we we have a delay here. As we bring that delay up higher [music] and we stop being sort of an individual delay, [music] we start getting that sort of physical modeling car strong thing happening [music] with those sort of nice resonances. Increase the feedback to make it resonate for longer. [music] >> [music] >> And again, uh, this at this point is going to be quantizing to actual notes. It's cool. [music] Um, and when you modulate it, you can also have it quantized to notes or not. >> [music] >> Uh, as I mentioned, if we come down south, we have negative feedback instead, which [music] once you're in the comb filter world, does have like a significant uh change to [music] the tone of things [music] and, you know, just manipulating what we have on this page [music] Again, like with the first page, you get a lot of different sounds with the different combinations of what you have on this page. And then, of course, we come back here. We [music] could adjust what is actually being fed into the filters [music] to again get different sounds. And coming back to this drive control, if we go, we can just watch the volume a little bit. Just bring it down [music] touch. Uh if we go um just stop the train. [snorts] Come back. Thank you. Uh if we go negative here, [music] we are uh distorting what's going into the comb filter. But if we go positive here, we're also going to be distorting the comb filter itself, which is also going to create feedbacks as well. >> [music] >> And just sending that slightly positive gets us into quite interesting drone territories. [music] >> [music] [music] >> more energy in in the first place. Gets us a brighter sound, but doesn't go out of control. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Yeah. So, you can see how over those two pages you have really quite a large range of different things you could do. You could be east coast, you could be west coast, you can do physical modeling. Yeah. And we've only looked at two of the however many pages it is. Many pages. So I've moved back to a slightly more conventional sound again. And uh on the third page of this group is our frequency controls which is mostly to do with the pitch of it. We have uh a fine [music] tune control which we can modulate to do of course. Uh we have a transposition [music] control which is your sort of course control. We also have a glide control. [music] If we want things to glide. So that's your portimento. [music] And then we also have probably the most important one here, which is the scale control. And we don't have to [music] join in way to to look at this. So the scale control allows us to set different scales for the uh voice. And this will uh affect any incoming modulation to the pitch essentially. So uh you can have uh the scale turned off in which case it's just uh unquantized. You can have the um scale set to fixed which means it's only going to be controlled by this control here. Um but then we have sort of a bunch of other scales as well. So we have major minor, we have pentatonic, hexoponic, uh hexatonic, sorry. um uh blues scale. We have uh one just inated uh quantization and then there's lots of space for further um scales to be added. I'm hoping for more just intonations, maybe some other microonal ones as well. Uh but that's whole page is going to become more interesting when we start sequencing the voices, I think. Hey, hey, hey. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Hey, hey, hey. >> [music] >> And on the final page, we have our master control. And the master control gives us the volume of the voices. It gives us the send control, which allows us to choose which of the outputs the voices are going for. As you can see, at the moment, voice one is going to output one, or rather output one is assigned to receive voice one. It works that way around, but essentially the same thing. Now, the volume control is interesting, believe it or not, which uh you might not assume would be the case with a volume control. And the reason it's um interesting Whoops. Um is that the [music] volume control goes negative as well. Now, that doesn't mean that it's going to invert it. Interestingly, [music] what it does instead, and you can kind of see it happening as I go in here, and you hear a click, cuz there's a DC thing happening here, I think is really interesting. So, below um zero, we move into a way of generating the volume, which is to bias a DC offset instead. So you can see the waveform goes just like rock hard rock hard uh just negative DC. And as we bring this down further, you can see that the waveform is essentially being cut out of the bottom end of that DC. [music] And then when we go past the center point, if you like of this, it kind of goes the other way until we get rock hard DC out the other end as well. This is really interesting [music] um just as a mode of synthesis cuz if you apply the volume envelope to this, you get these sort of glitchy sort of [music] blasts. But this also becomes really really interesting when you start mixing together multiple different um voices [music] uh using this way of defining the volume because you have all this fighting DC uh and when you have very low notes that creates all sorts of interesting pulses and like just go back to to [music] normal volume just for a second though. Now the inner two control here really is the first place where we're seeing the true character of kaleidoscope which is that it's at its most interesting when you have uh interactions between the different voices. So this allows you to um choose how the voices apply [music] FM to one another. So um what we have here on this control is a selector for which voices are going to affect the FM of the voice that we're selecting. Voice one. So you can have if we set it like this voice one affect voice one sort [music] of uh essentially feedback FM. And now if we turn up the FM volume here, [music] we'll start to get that classic sort of FM feedback thing. [music] And you can hear that that's going to be affected, [music] of course, by the volume of the voice. So if I come in here for example um in here sorry and change the shape of the envelope [music] you get that sort of FM feedback thing happening [music] um just within that one voice but we can also have that voice uh be affected or affect other voices as well. So if I want I can say well I want this voice to be FM by the second voice here. [music] Now, if we turn up the FM uh amount here and I play the second voice, [music] you can hear the effect that that's having [music] on our main voice. In fact, if I just turn down that output, so you can't actually hear the voice. You've got that classic [music] FM twang there. Lovely. But then we can say well multiple voices can affect this [music] one voice. So perhaps I say that also uh [music] voice three is going to affect it. And perhaps we will come in here and tune voice [music] three differently. [music] And now we have independent voices which have their independent controls [music] affecting this voice. Again, if I turn down the output for those [music] voices. [music] And at the moment, we're being fairly sort of um conservative with the amount of FM we're doing, but we can go [music] more extreme. and also have it affect itself. [music] And we get into some very interesting places. And bear in mind that these voices are currently fairly static and it's in their sort of default mode. [music] But then you could do things like say, well, okay, the second voice is also going to be FM by this voice. [music] [music] and you set up these sort of feedback loops between all of these different voices where you can get to some very [music] interesting places tonally. And we'll certainly be playing with that as we go along. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. Heat. [music] Heat. Kaleidoscope has a really wide range of modulation sources. We have a volume envelope which is controlling the amplitude [music] of the voices of course, but that can also be applied to other parameters. So if you want to do like the filter and the volume at the same time, that's something that you certainly can do. Uh you have a modulation envelope. This has on top of the envelope quantization modes. Those quantization modes allow you to quantize the modulation uh by step amounts. And then there are some sort of auxiliary quantization modes which kind of bypass or modify the uh the actual envelope. So for example, we have a uh volume envelope follower. So when that's enabled, it's ignoring the actual uh modulation envelope and instead listening to the output. Uh you have the uh sequencer, which we'll get to in just a second, but you can have the sequencer pop up here if you want to send it to multiple different uh destinations, cuz the sequencer only has one destination. Um we have uh sample and hold, which does actually work with modulation envelope, but holds it each time there is a trigger from the velocity envelope. Uh and yeah, and then a mode which will follow the uh uh volume envelope if you just want to send that somewhere else [music] as well. So, lots of different modes in there. Uh, both the volume and the modulation envelope can cycle or not. That's up to you. And that's uh possible to set on a per voice basis. Of course, on top of those sort of envelope sources, we also have the after touch, the velocity, both can which u modulate different parameters. We have keyboard tracking, we have mod wheel and velocity. Um, so all of those are if you have a uh controller plugged in. And then we have a sequencer as well. And it's a really quick sequencer to work with. We'll show it a bit more later, but you can set the length of it. We can set values per step or you can very very quickly [music] randomize things just by tapping uh that knob. We have rotation. In terms of uh modulation destinations, not every single parameter is represented, but most of them are. Certainly all of the sound generation ones are in there. But what is I think really important to the sort of generative nature of kaleidoscope is most of the modulation sources are also modulation destinations. So for example, you can modulate the length of the sequencer with one of the envelopes or you can modulate the envelope depth with the sequencer or you can uh modulate [snorts] the speed of the the volume envelope with after touch that doesn't quite make sense with velocity that would make more sense. Um yeah, so there's a lot of sort of cross modulation of the modulation. Uh in terms of actually assigning stuff depending on which uh bank we're in, generally it's the last two pages for the the envelopes. Um we can come to one of the assignment pages. Um choose the [music] voice that we're going to assign. And then on this knob, we get to choose what we're going to modulate. So I'm going to do the filter here. Uh in most cases, you also then get this alias. And what this allows [music] you to do is modulate or rather um set the parameter uh that you've selected here. So I don't have to go back over here to the page with the filter on in order to um change [music] the filter cutff. I can just do it from here, which is useful. So, I can turn the [music] filter down and then I have a depth control here which allows me to uh set the modulation amount. Now, what's really interesting about kaleidoscope uh which is I think really quite novel is that you don't have to modulate the voice you're on. You can modulate other voices as well. So, um, as an example, just a basic example here, I'll go to the, uh, second modulation slot. You get two modulation destinations for the envelopes. [music] And what I can do is say for this slot on voice one, I actually want to modulate track two and not track [music] one. And I think what I'll do is maybe choose uh, the filter again. >> [music] >> and uh set the depth negative so that when I play the first voice, [music] it ducks the second voice. You can hear it ducking it down and [music] then swooping back up sort of towards par. That's a really basic example, but it's sort of hinting at the sort of feedback and cross modulation nature that we have in kaleidoscope that we'll explore a bit more as we build a patch. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Hey, hey, hey. [music] >> [music] >> So, for the rest of this video, we're going to explore the kaleidoscope by seeing what music might be hiding in there. Today, uh, I want to make it really clear that the way I'm going to be using the kaleidoscope, which is sort of standalone, it's sequencing itself, is only one way that you can interact with the instrument. It has a really complete MIDI uh, implementation. You have CC controls over every single parameter. You can control each uh voice with a different channel. You can even control the modulation envelopes and the volume envelopes separately on different MIDI channels. So, it's a fully uh fourpart multi-tal synth if you want to use it that way. Uh because of the CC control, it pairs really well with uh sequences as well. But yeah, I'm going to use it sort of standalone because that's how I've been enjoying using it primarily. So, I've uh reset everything. [music] Uh we're back to an initialized patch. And I think I'm [snorts] going to start by coming over to the volume envelope uh bank of parameters. So this is where we control the volume envelope. That was probably obvious. Um we have a uh shape control here which essentially controls the attack and decay at the same time. So at the moment it's a instant attack uh and a sort of slowish decay. At the top end here we should have a longer attack and an instant decay. Yep. And then in the middle it's sort of somewhere around even [music] the speed of this um envelope is uh defined by this period control the second parameter here. Uh so we can make it much longer. So you want to go big long attack [music] for patty type things, we can do that or indeed we can go down and make it much shorter. And then there's a separate um release control as well, [music] which kind of does what you would expect. Uh sustain also acts like it does on a sort of standard ADSR. Um, I think I want to have like a plucky thing to begin with. So, yeah, probably [music] something like that. Now, the period control is interesting because it's actually tempo synced. So, um, how much this affects the, uh, the rate of the envelope is actually tied to the BPM. you can have a separate BPM per track actually which is pretty interesting. Um that fact becomes much more important when we make our way over to the second page here which is where you have what's called the uh sequencer for the envelope and this is where I came earlier to make the envelope um cycle. So to make it cycle, um, what we do is we can turn on this EOC control, end of cycle, and that's going to start to make the envelope cycle. Now, you might notice there's a line [music] zinging up this parameter here. So this is the envelope sequencer or pattern. [music] Now, uh, this allows us to put gaps in our envelope. So essentially it's not going to fire all the time. [music] It's still progressing at the uh the period um that we set over on the first page. So if we wanted to make the sequencer in this case go faster, we can reduce the period here. [music] So this is where the period being tempo synced is really important because you've got divisions uh essentially available here. So if you have multiple tracks on the same BPM but you want things happening at different divisions, period is how we can kind of uh deal with that. Uh the second uh or rather the final uh pattern here uh parameter allows us to change the length of the pattern. So if we want it like a seven [music] We can do that. What's really neat is both of these parameters are actually uh modulatable. So we can use a modulation source to move these around over time to essentially um create longer patterns. The modulation sources are also um [music] able to be tempo synced. So uh the same idea with the period is there with the uh parameter the modulation sources rather. So we can create tempo [music] synced slower periodic uh modulations affecting the shape of the pattern so that you get repeatable longer patterns. Very cool. I'm just going to set um this to um drone [music] so I don't have to hold it down constantly. And maybe let's do a little bit of um actually let's make it change melody rather than just doing one note at a time. [music] So the way that we can uh sequence this if we're going to work internally is just to modulate the um the pitch of the uh voice. So if we come into the [music] uh sorry the third page here we have all of our uh pitch controls as I mentioned. I'm gonna set the scale of this to let's go pentatonic so that's nice and safe. [music] Cool. Uh so uh there's a couple of different ways that we can modulate and sequence the uh the pitch here, but one that I really really like is actually using the modulation envelope. Now I'll just draw your attention down at the bottom here. You've got a bunch of things pulsing away. Um, and that's because uh each of the modulation sources are shown down here. So over here you've got all the after touch and other stuff. Uh, but here we've got the the velocity or sorry the volume envelope and then the modulation envelopes and they're firing on a couple of different tracks at the moment. [music] So similar sort of controls here. We have a shape and uh period here. And we also have the end of cycle. So these don't have to be LFOs. can be separate modulation envelopes, but I want them to be um want them to be LFOs. In this case, [music] we don't have a sort of sustain and release on this page. Instead, what we have are these quantization uh controls and these allow us to quantize the modulation when it goes to a particular destination. So we can do that just based on uh sort of integer values and that's going to uh apply the modulation in stepped values to whatever parameter it's going to. Uh so that's pretty useful. Uh but we also have a couple of other ones. If we go up to the top here, we have a volume follower or envelope follower over the uh master output. This is really interesting. Bit experimental for this patch I think but we might come back around to it. Uh we also have a sample and hold which is going to sample the modulation state each time the uh velocity sorry the volume envelope fires. [music] Uh we have one which is linked to the modulation sequencer which we'll get to as well. Uh and we also have one where it will copy what the volume envelope is doing if you just want to send that to more places. Um I'm going to use assembble and hold. So um if we come into the [music] um third page here, we can set where this modulation is going to. And I'm going to send it to the [music] frequency of the uh the the oscillator. Now, if we apply some depth here, [music] now the uh modulator is going to be affecting the pitch, but it's quantized because the pitch is quantized. [music] And it's not going to be sloowing constantly. It's only going to change each time there is a uh uh an envelope. And we can change how this melody manifests by changing the shape and period of the uh modulator. So if we [music] can make it much slower or we can make it much faster as well, which could be fun. [music] Now there's a phase relationship between the two uh envelopes [music] and we're not getting such an obvious up and down movement. [music] So that's pretty fun. Uh let's do something to the actual uh tone of it now however. So let's just get a slightly more rich tone to begin with. >> [music] [music] >> bit square in there as well. [music] And then we can come in here and we can drop the filter down a bit. [music] And perhaps we can have the uh filter opened up with the uh volume envelope. So very similar here, we can assign in the volume envelope now. So that was the modulation. Here's the volume one. And we can assign our volume envelope to also move the filter around. So the depth [music] Cool. [music] Uh the depth of these modulations is also itself a modulation source. So uh you can do some quite interesting things uh there as well. Um perhaps we should now I might come back to that idea cuz I might want to use the modulation invert for something else. >> [music] >> Uh, let's also maybe try like the car of strong comb filtery type stuff on here. So, drop the delay here and give it some feedback. [music] >> [music] [music] >> I prefer the negative. [music] Yeah, that's fine. Give a bit of resonance here, maybe. [music] Or maybe just a little bit of um drive maybe just to give it more. Yeah, there we go. [music] >> [music] [music] >> And then let's maybe move that um [music] let's move that delay time around as well. So let's come into the sequencer [music] here. And you can use the sequencer to do like normal sequencing stuff. But you can also uh if you set the random to the maximum [music] here, you can just use it as like a random generator. Um so if I come [music] uh into this second page here and I can set the actually that's fun. [music] [music] Okay. set the parameter to the delay and make it re-trigger every time there is a [music] a volume envelope. [music] Okay, maybe need to just drop the uh feedback a little bit. [music] Cool. Yeah. So that's that's one voice going around, but this gets a lot more interesting when multiple voices are interacting with each other. So let's let's see how that works. [groaning] Heat up here. So when I said that this page is where I can get the envelope slope to cycle. That's true, but it's not quite what is happening here because I didn't talk about this parameter here. So, this link parameter basically defines which uh envelope is going to be re-triggered when the end of the cycle happens. So, at the moment, track one is uh doing track one, track two is doing track two, track three is track three and so on. [snorts] But we can, for example, set it so that track one is going to re-trigger both track one and track two. So if we set this going now, [music] and I'll just pan those voices a little bit. Now you [music] can hear that there are two voices going and they're being triggered uh when the first one ends. And because [music] we can change the pattern on them separately [music] and those patterns [music] are different lengths, we can get some pretty interesting grooves happening. So, let's shape the voice a little bit. Um, [music] I think if I want it pluckucky as well, so we just drop the >> [music] >> Okay. Uh let's choose the melody uh for the second one based on the sequencer this time. So we can see that our first sequence is just changing randomly and it's only got one step. So it's basically just a random uh uh source. But we can come here and uh by holding down the cursor here, we can lengthen out >> [music] >> the length of that uh that sequence there. And we can go through if we want and choose individual values like such or we can just actually set a random amount. I'll go with 19. Uh just hit uh the button there and it will generate me a s a sequence each time I do [music] that. So sort of really quick to generate new sequences. And uh as before, we'll set the uh destination to the frequency. We go and have it trigger every time the volume triggers [music] So you can hear now we've got a sequence which is repeating but because the uh envelopes are like in eight and this is in 15 you get quite a long sort of sequence which is cool. [music] tonally. Let's [music] maybe do something with the multiplier. [music] Now perhaps we affect the multip multiplier based on the uh based on the volume. So let's come through here. We can set voice 2's destination to be the multiplier. Send it negative cuz we want to use the folder and not the um sync. That's a bit much. [music] >> [music] >> I think we probably also want to filter that one in the same way as well. [music] And we'll also set the um other oops the other parameter. You got two parameters per modulation uh to the filter as well. Yeah. >> [music] >> Uh, wrong way. Oh, hang on. I'm doing the wrong voice, aren't I? [music] Uh, that's meant to be this one. [music] >> [music] >> I think probably make it a slightly longer envelope. [music] Maybe increase the release. Make the period a bit longer. [music] >> [music] [music] >> And we could use the modulation envelope for that voice to affect ffect the filter as well. So it kind of slowly LFOs in and out. So I come over here to the filter, make it negative probably. [music] Not so much. [music] Of course, we got the delay here as well. [music] Give that a bit more feedback. >> [music] [music] >> So now we have two voices coming together. We can start playing with that FM between them as well. So, uh, let's set voice one to be FM by voice 2 and voice two to be FM by voice one. And then just send a bit of FM in either direction just to make things a little bit [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> So, I've applied a bit of the drive there uh with the uh delay as well. So, we're getting a bit of kind of tonal feedback as well, which is pretty interesting. [music] What's next? So, I think it might be interesting to have a bit of a drone sat in there as well. So, um yeah, let's just let's go. So that [music] voice there could be a drone down the middle. So let's set that into drone mode first of all. It's kind of wild. I might add a reverb. Shall I? Got the specular reverb on a send on my mixer. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Okay. So, let's set this voice to drone. So, we can come through uh here, set it to drone mode. Uh come to its envelope and just turn it sustain up as well. So, it get sustain a bit louder. >> [music] >> Uh, I think probably not that down. Yeah, down octave I reckon. Uh, this one. [music] Give it a bit more vibe. Maybe a bit of drive. >> [music] >> Down. [music] Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Okay, we'll get that modulating with some stuff in a second. Uh, but I was just thinking it might be cool to have that particular voice also get FMD with the other two. So, let's send the FM destination or rather receiver uh for that track for both of those. And then, [music] oh, that's interesting. [music] Let's just So, I've just turned down the other two voices there. [music] So, this is just the drone now, but it's getting fmed by the others. That's really rather cool. >> [music] >> Okay, let's just balance that with the [music] >> [music] [music] >> Okay, that's pretty interesting [music] and filthy. >> [music] >> So, is that going to be better if it's an octave up now that it's that disgusting? I wonder. Let's keep it down low. [music] And I reckon probably just take a bit of that top end off with the filter. [music] >> [music] >> That's pretty interesting. [music] Okay. So, what we could do here is actually have um one of the other voices velocities affect this one's filter. So, let's drop that filter down. Yeah, let's drop that filter down lower. So, it's a proper rumble. And if we come over to the filter here, uh, sorry, the the envelope here. Um, uh, we have do we have something on that one yet? We have something on both of those, don't we? But not on this one. So um one of the really interesting aspects of kaleidoscope is that one track's envelope doesn't have to apply to that track. So um we can say uh envelope the envelope uh for the volume on voice one can actually be sent instead to track three and we can use that to move its filter which we've already got. So if I turn up the depth here. [music] So now track 3's filter is being triggered by track one's uh volume envelope. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Okay. This filter go [music] down more. [music] >> [music] [music] >> If we give this one a bit of delay as well. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Yeah. Uh, and I'm not really using the modulator for this one, the drone yet. Um, but I was thinking I could actually use the modulator here to affect the pattern on track one in the same way that we just had track one affect the filter of this one. So, uh, we can say the destination for the modulation of three can be track one. [music] The parameter can be the [music] pattern and so the depth [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> So now we can hear that that pattern is moving around a bit. But uh we can make it more obvious by just slowing down. >> [music] [music] >> Hey, hey, hey. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Down. [music] Down. [music] >> [music] >> I do want to make this um also move around a bit sort of tambberly. I reckon the drone [music] and the mold seems like the mix. Yeah, the mix seems like a good thing to Actually, [music] no. Let's do the mold. So, coming back through to the envelope here. Track 3's second destination can be itself and it can be the uh molt mount. [music] Oh wait, I made it faster, not slower. >> [music] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Okay, track four. Let's just get a percussion thing happening. >> [music] >> Uh just uh just come down to just those two for a second. [music] So uh let's make track one also trigger uh track four want four one and two there. [music] We want to set the pattern here just to be a lot slower. >> [music] >> Probably a little bit faster than that. [music] Yeah. Want this to be nice and plucky. [music] [music] Okay. Uh let's bring that >> [music] >> pitch down. Uh, bring it right down. [music] And then let's make the volume also push the pitch up. So get that kick drum vibe. [music] So uh destination itself parameter can be the [music] frequency. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Yep. Uh, [music] let's distort a bit. Hell yeah. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Yes. Uh [music] so uh give it a bit of delay and sort of off kilt perhaps. Whoa. [music] >> [music] >> There we are. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] >> Okay, second voice I think needs to tune down. [music] Uh yeah. [music] So let's transpose it down an octave. [music] It's got pretty dark suddenly. [music] >> [music] >> Get a bit more square in. [music] [music] Hell yeah. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] >> Uh, so we could um get some more randomness in something. I quite liked affecting the um the mix of the drone. So maybe let's uh come [music] the drone. Uh so let's uh set it the uh source to be the envelope there. Let's set the [music] said it's not going to do it every time because it's only doing one envelope. So, we can have it affected instead by [music] the um mod envelope. It will change [music] every time it goes around. [music] >> [music] >> Uh, what else? I mean, we can have the drone affected by the kick as well. [music] Does that sound good? So, receive on one and four. >> [music] >> Yeah. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Heat. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Let's get this kick a bit more aggressive. [music] >> [music] >> I probably want the drive to the way around, don't we? [music] Yeah, cuz it was affecting the delay as well. [music] >> [music] [music] >> Let's take the uh [music] let's take the mod envelope from four, send it to the pattern of two. [music] Heat. [music] Heat. Yes. [music] I've spoken before on the channel about how I am drawn to opinionated instruments. Instruments which are designed in a way that require or actually maybe invite you as a musician to approach the [music] music making process in a way that is less generalist and more specific. On the one [music] hand, kaleidoscope is actually very open to different types of musical results, but the system it presents to get those results gives you an opportunity to think about how the dialogue between the four independent voices gives you access to sounds and compositions you wouldn't arrive at with other instruments. This strength in my eyes will of course be a weakness for others. Collidoscope won't be for everyone, but I suspect if that's you, you would have made your mind up very early in this video. For my part, I actually hope that the development of Kaleidoscope takes some of these more esoteric ideas further. One thing I was able to discuss with Vadim is that at the moment kaleidoscope can't become a truly free running feedback system as only tracks with a gate held can pass an end of cycle signal [music] and tracks with a gate held can't receive them. And I think there are some really fascinating ideas that can be found in allowing a system to run free. I also hope to see more ways for the voices to interact with each other in the audio domain. The FM interaction is great, but there are other methods for cross [music] modulation as well as combining voices through saturation, wave shapers, filters, and such that I think would be great things to explore. Hopefully, in a future firmware update, we might see that. But thank you so much for watching. As always, a like and subscribe would be very much appreciated. Until next time, take care. Bye-bye. Heat.