could anybody comment on which order to patch and lpg and filter please?
obvious answers i expect would be patch both ways and see which you prefer - and there is no 'correct' order that's the beauty of modular
but i wonder if anybody could define the benefits of patching order with these two. is there a more 'standard/classic' order? why is that considered the standard?
if so what would somebody lose / gain sonically by patching in the other order?
there is no benefit or standard in patching a lpg and a filter together in any particular order - more often than not just an lpg and no filter as a low pass gate is a vca and a filter in series with the closing of the vca and the cutoff frequency of the low pass filter linked (often using a vactrol or something to emulate a vactrol) so that as the vca closes, the frequency of the cut off reduces - the vactrol (or substitute) acts as a decay envelope
the lpg is more 'west coast' - think buchla - where theere was less use of deedicated filters as 'west coast' synthesis was more additive (wavefolders etc) - ie add harmonic content
patching vcas and filters is more 'east coast' ie subtractive - think moog - in the minimoog architecture the filter is before the vca - which imparts the characteristics of the filter on the oscillator 'drone' before the amplitude is effected by the envelope (in this case an adsr) which means that the filter will be driven, especially noticable with a resonant filter... if the vca is before the filter then depending on the envelope applied to open the vca, the vca will not be as driven - the same would happen if you use an lpg instead of a vca
as you said the only answer is which ever sounds better to synthesist in the context of the piece of music they are making
"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia
Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!
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