How to turn a clock divider into a subharmonic oscillator | Doepfer A-160-2

This is a simple but rich-sounding patch that I came up with while I was working on another video about modular synth utilities. It sounded pretty cool, so I thought I’d record a quick breakdown in the meantime. Here I’m feeding the Doepfer A-160-2 an audio-rate signal from an oscillator (in this case the Plum Audio RO’VED), mixing four of the outputs in Mutable Instruments Blinds, and using four LFOs from Joranalogue Filter 8 (all 90 degrees out of phase with each other) to slowly modulate the levels. The result is a constantly-moving stepped waveform, as you’ll see on the scope. I’m driving the patch with a simple five-step sequence from Mutable Instruments Stages, and feeding the result through a filter, spring reverb and Monsoon (aka Clouds). You can take this idea a step further with audio-rate amplitude modulation (AM) rather than LFOs (which is easy to do with Filter 8!), or explore other combinations of subharmonics, perhaps switching or crossfading between them to vary the ‘chord’ that results. Enjoy... Chapters 00:00 Preview and intro 01:13 What is a clock divider? 02:28 Setup and signal chain 04:19 Individual subharmonics 05:58 Building the full patch and jamming 11:33 Even deeper drone: 4-octave stack More stuff from me: https://tomchurchill.bandcamp.com/   / tomchurchill     / tomchurchill