Alma de Luz

Flickering Lightbulb Glitch Delay

Ladies, gentlemen and all others of non-defined and/or personalized delineations, I present to you the Alma de Luz. And if we go by the usual formula, now would be the time when I dive into an explanation on some sort of personal pun and/or story of how this thing was concocted ala a modern food blog – and I’ll probably still do that but now that we’re all conscious of trends and formulas, we can approach the next following paragraph or two with caution and/or possibly just skip ahead to the recipe.

So yeah, this is the Alma de Luz, which, among other things, is VF’s first official collaboration with an outside entity – or at least as it pertains to circuit design and the like. Our collaborator, one UK-based label called Audiobulb, who I’m absolutely thrilled to be working with since they’ve been an influence and inspiration on my work for a good 14 years or so. In fact, I may have even sent them a demo many years ago, right around the time when I left California for Costa Rica and shifted my general existence from composition and sound design to art and circuit design. Possibly a little too much personal information there, but it’s contextual, I promise. Long short, trying to shop an album when you’re completely uprooting your entire existence typically isn’t the best plan of action. So it goes. It’s still pretty good if anyone wants to take a listen. But, seeing as this is about a new circuit and not past regrets, a few months ago I found myself checking in on what Audiobulb’s been up to for the duration and was pleased to discover that on top of being a record label, they also serve as a depot for audio tools – both with regard to software – and hardware… and, to sweeten the deal, are open and receptive to collaboration. So after some hesitation over what the statute of limitations could be for cold-called demo submissions, I finally threw caution to the wind and dropped a line – and, to my surprise, they replied – and were down to collab!

This is where the fun begins. In the spirit of collaboration, we decided to put or brains together and figure out something that reflects our mutual aesthetics. On my end, I was looking to expand on the modulated delay vibe first introduced in the Menu de Secreciones as part of some sort of overarching scheme to see how far I can push analog delay circuitry before I finally break down and realize that I could’ve saved myself a whole lot of time and soldering by going digital. In the case of the Alma de Luz, that equates to double the overall delay time as compared to the Menu, so approximately 2 or so seconds before everything goes to fuzz. With regard to Audiobulb’s aesthetics, their request was to have the device be able to simulate a flickering lightbulb – so kind of an irregular, sputtering unstable glitchy modulation. Thankfully, I had just the thing for them by way of a modified bit-shifting sequencer section originally featured in at least a couple of VF builds including a couple generations of Pautrons (tabletop randomly synths from sometime around 2014 for those not keen on the mythology) and the near-legendary point-to-point wired 48-bit Serge format bit shifter that I cobbled together shortly after my daughter was born, when most soldering was done behind closed doors between naps. Again, personal info heavy, but sure, contextual. The main takeaway is that we had the technology and we most definitely could rebuild it, which of course we did.

So this is what’s up – btw, if you’re just skimming the text looking for the metaphorical recipe, this is a good place to pick back up. The Alma de Luz is a lo-res (because you can’t spell VauxFlores without lo-res) analog-ish delay with a maximum useable delay time of about two seconds. If you really want to, you can push things a little farther giving you a palate of strange clicks and sputters, but for the sake of our current argument, let’s just go for the two seconds thing. In its native state, the delay is unmodulated and crunchy – however, a wonderful world of glitched-out modulation is only a simple flip of a switch away. This engages the 8-bit bit-shifter section that is controlled by two inputs – clock and data. Clock provides the pulse, data provides the detail. And with each clock pulse the data is shifted from one bin to another, meaning that the final reading that we get to work with is the summed output of each of the 8 bins, providing a somewhat chaotic gradients of shifting voltages. For those who still follow, good for you. For anyone beginning to slip, I’ve included a fancy status LED to give you a reading on what’s going on – which is more or less a flickering light bulb that can be controlled to some degree via arbitrary knob movement. Topping things off, I also included a switchable “rungler” circuit inspired by sections of the late Rob Hordijk’s Benjolin device in the modulation path which provides additional wackiness by way of feeding the flicker back into itself, for lack of a better description. All said, it’s pretty cool.

Rounding out everything is the whole control voltage side of things. Like the Menu de Secreciones, you can sync the modulation to just about anything – but, unlike the Menu that only has an input, the Alma also has a CV out – meaning that if you’re so inclined, you can export said flicker to other modules for extra fancy unstable external modulation.

So to recap (this is another good pickup point for the tl/dr crowd) here’s what we’ve got:

• Lo-res-2 second delay.
• Overclockable for fancy chirps and whatnot.
• Switchable modulation section that mimics flickering lightbulb.
• Switchable rungler for extra instability.
• Modulation depth control to track from subtle to extreme with a couple surprises along the way.
• External modulation input.
• Control voltage output of flicker circuit that operates independent of the input - meaning you can use this as a clocked delay and a chaotic cv generator at the same time.

Heat at 350 for 18-22 minutes, season to taste and serve hot. Serves 4, stores on the fridge for three days, though with a recipe this good, there’s seldom any leftovers. Sorry, I kid – but it is a pretty cool module with a bunch of creative a musical potential co-released with a righteous label and I’m absolutely thrilled to share it with y’all. But also, don't actually put this in an oven. That's... not how synths work.

Oh right – the name. No strange pun or anything here this time – just a riff on the whole ghost in the machine idea exploring the conceptual unknowns of electrical phenomena and whatnot as well as a nod to the whole flickering light aesthetic that the circuit revolves around, hence the whole “soul of light” thing. There may also have been a little bit of a Stranger Things influence as well, but I’ll only mention that in passing in the event that said cultural phenomena fades into obscurity, effectively saving me a good couple of hours of editing the next time I plan a website overhaul. Learned me that lesson real good with the Game of Thrones.

https://vauxflores.com/electronics/alma-de-luz/