General Disagreement (VCV Rack)

This piece uses double reverbs - both as send reverbs - and double delays. Each of the eight voices has its own delay with mostly different delay settings, and a second global delay is added as send delay. The send/return volume of this second delay is modulated in all eight voices with phase-shifted LFOs. The result is a very complex delay pattern movement. Furthermore, all oscillators, envelopes, and filters are modulated in many parameters to add even more variation to this movement.

I decided against any synth pad voice, as it turned out that the delays and reverbs fill so much of the sound space that they create their own broad continuous underground sound alone. Consequently, all voices use mostly envelopes with short attack and decay to emphasize the delay effects.

The tonal material is a simple repeated 16-step sequence and an accompanying chord progression moving between a-minor, e-minor and d-minor. The chords are never played as such but only arpeggiated, or they serve as a pool for random note selection. (It's the same sequence and chord progression as in this piece    • VCV Rack - Venom Patch 2 (Benjolin Os...  , but used so differently that the identity is almost not recognizable.)

Seven of the oscillator envelope gates are routed through a Sickozell Toggler that is clocked to the sequence length, so the oscillators (and their delay effects) can be started (manually via push buttons) precisely at the beginning of the 16-step sequence. The last oscillator is simply faded in.

The following oscillators for the eight voices are used (in order of their appearence):

Instruo Neoni in "traditional" FM mode, leading with the 16-step sequence.
Surge XT Sine VCO, playing a bass voice that is taken from the key notes of the sequence (the notes where the chord progression changes a chord).
Surge XT Sine VCO, arpeggiating the chords of the chord progression. The sustain level of its envelope is modulated so that sometimes the voice sticks out with short legato phrases.
Surge XT Twist VCO in Wave Table mode, playing a sub-bass, based on the root note of the chords.
Instruo Neoni in "through zero" FM mode, playing the sequence, but only random fragments of it that are selected in a burst-like random pattern, thus adding ocassional highlights on top of the first voice.
Surge XT Twist VCO in Harmonic Oscillator mode, playing waves of high-pitched chimes. The note selection comes from a Slips sequencer that provides notes of the minor pentatonic scale that corresponds to the current chord of the chord progression.
Surge XT Twist VCO in Analog Hi-Hat mode, playing short waves of hi-hat percussion, driven by the probability-modulated slips gate of the same Slips sequencer.
Surge XT String VCO, playing a kind of pizzicato gallop with random notes selected from the current chord of the chord progression.