A phrase that opens over eight bars

A two-note bassline sounds looped because every bar is the same. This guide makes the filter open across eight bars and close again, a little differently each time round, so the same two notes read as a phrase.

It is drawn in the standalone. Saved as a patch, it plays the same in the plugin.

1. Start from a steady sound

Load Demo from the patch browser and press play. The demo line loops.

2. Set the phrase length

On the Arc tab, set the phrase length to 8 bars. At 4 the phrase comes round twice as often and reads as a longer loop rather than a phrase; at 16 the change is slow enough that a listener may not notice it within a section.

3. Draw the Tone lane

Pick the Tone lane and press Swell. The lane now starts below the centre line, crosses it to peak in the middle of the phrase, and comes back down, so the filter starts darker than its setting, opens past it halfway through, and closes again by the end.

Set its Depth to 1.00. At 0.50 the filter moves half as far; at zero the lane is dashed and moves nothing.

4. Let it through

Set Amount to 0.50. The readout under the sliders now shows Tone's setting and where the phrase has it at the playhead, in Hz. At 0.25 the change is felt rather than heard; at 1.00 the filter sweeps the whole way the lane allows.

5. Let it wander

Set Drift to 0.30. The faint trace on the canvas, the next pass, now parts from the bright one, this pass. At 0.15 the two are nearly your drawing every time; at 0.60 the wander takes over and the shape you drew is hard to hear. At full Drift the drawing is not played at all, and the canvas says so.

6. Check it on the Spectrum tab

Open Spectrum and watch the thin line move away from the corner handle and back. That line is where the phrase has the filter now.

7. Save it

Save the patch under a new name. Render and watch the waveform: the heavier lines mark each phrase starting over.