I’m trying to build some new patches for a harsh noise album I’ve had planned for some time now, but I feel like I’ve sort of hit a wall creatively. I’m looking for new textures and tones that sound, well…bad. Lots of screeches and hissing and static. Does anyone have anything that they’ve found make some particularly cool noise?
Actually, now that I’m here, here’s a strange question: I’ve noticed that in a lot of modules knobs are fed through a multiply node? Why bother? Doesn’t that end up creating more of a curve instead of a simple 0-1 knob?
Feeding a knob through a multiply node (squaring it) or using an expression node to raise it to the 3rd or 4th power is a low-CPU load way to get a curve similar to an exponential curve rather than a linear one. It’s often nice to have a bit more fine control at the low end of a knob’s range. The downside it that it affects the behavior when modulating the knob where a linear response is often preferable. It’s one reason I prefer having a modulation input when possible rather than modulating the knob directly. It’s particularly useful for volume knobs because our hearing response to sound intensity is roughly exponential. There’s a link to a good article in this post: Programming Volume Controls