I tinkered about with VCV a bit during Covid/lockdown, but haven’t touched it so much recently.
However, what I have been doing is listening to a lot of space ambient music while programming - they’re quiet, slow and have some excellent sounds. Search YouTube for “The Intangible”, “Dream Circuit”, “FutureScapes” or just generally “Space Ambient” and you’ll find heaps. They will normally have some nice spacey artwork, possibly animated slightly … some of them are suspiciously 1:01 long, and they are quite repetitive - making me wonder if they’re being automatically generated somehow for revenue farming. Not that I mind, it’s better than looking for a recipe and having to read 10 pages about why the recipe is so good … but anyway, that’s another story.
I’ve long been thinking about a particular track I wanted to create - based around a space station, a low drone, the woosh of space ships flying by, beacons beeping quietly … and on this rainy winter Sunday, with the fire lit, let’s give it a try.
Getting started - drone
I “nooodled” around a bit, and then watched this video from the amazing Omri Cohen, a German guy who got deep into VCV and left a wonderful trail of how-to videos behind him.
That gave me a stack of ideas, so here we go.
Infrastructure:
- VCV Audio 8
- MindMeld MixMaster
The base of a lot of the tracks is a low drone, shifting slightly.
Let’s start with a nice deep monophonic note.
Space Ambient examples
VCV Tutorials
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvWLkmBnhe4 Omri’s drone tutorial.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRa1XnZwxAc Digeridoo drone