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Did you know that the free modular synthesizer VCV Rack 2 can be controlled with an Xbox Gamepad / Controller? In this short demo, I control a simple custom patch with a generic controller. The inputs from the controller go into VCV Rack 2 via VCV's MIDI-CC-to-CV module. To program this module, select an output slot from 1-16, and trigger the wanted control on the gamepad. Repeat for all controls you want mapped. I've documented my mapping in the "notes" module next to it. Specifically, I select the pitch for the left and right channel with the up/down movements of the left and right joysticks. The pitch, a CV value, is then sent (via an attenuverter to reduce the range to 2 max. octaves) to a quantizer to make musical notes. Without quantizer, we would have a Theremin, and playing this instrument would have been much more difficult. The note-on / note-off is mapped to the Left-Button / Right-Button on the back of the controller. Since keeping those buttons pressed while moving the joysticks is tedious, I've sent those LB/RB buttons through T-flipflops, so that clicking the button once turns the note(s) on, clicking again turns the notes off. The X and B buttons are mapped to an A/B Switch router module (via T-flipflops) to either send the output of the voltage controlled oscillators (VCO) to a "Plateau" reverb, or directly to the mixer... so effectively turning the reverb for the Left/Right channel on or off. Finally, the Left Trigger / Right Trigger buttons (actually potentiometers) on the back of the controller are used to modulate the sound via a low frequency oscillator (LFO)... specifically the pulse width of the audio square wave. I'm controlling the depth of this modulation via attenuverters as well. I'm NOT using the MIDI Keyboard at all. Everything is being controlled with the gamepad. I'm using the paid version of VCV Rack 2 here, but everything works with the free version as well. You can download both versions from https://vcvrack.com/Rack

Generating film music with the "Cinematic Strings" preset of Tracktion Waveform PRO 12.5's "Subtractive" VST3 plugin. Improv session.