Vermona meloDICER – the musical aesthetics of uncertainty

Who has ever heard the word “stochastic” before? Nobody? We thought so. Well, Vermona fills this gap in knowledge with its meloDICER. The 34HP wide Eurorack module is not only a sequencer, but a stochastic pattern generator / advanced control voltage quantizer.

Stochastic means (we quote the lexicon, please listen carefully):

Stochastic refers to a randomly determined process. The word first appeared in English to describe a mathematical object called a stochastic process, but now in mathematics the terms stochastic process and random process are considered interchangeable. The word, with its current definition meaning random, came from German, but it originally came from Greek στόχος (stókhos), meaning ‘aim, guess’.” (wikipedia.org)

To put it simply: it’s all about randomness. Significantly important in mathematics, statistics, lottery games and … Vermona. The introduction of the module itself, however, is not a big surprise. It matches perfectly with the random RHYTHM Vermona had published before. Random melodies and random rhythms – the circle is complete.

Vermona describes the module as follows: “MeloDICER is our vision of a sequencer with the perfect balance between stochastic and deterministic creation of rhythm and melody.” (vermona.com)

Specifically, the module offers a selection of parameters that are set or limited by the user, but are then reproduced by the meloDICER in a random manner. Partly or entirely, more or less, everything is open.

Open, but not haphazard:

“MeloDICER continuously generates rhythms and melodies in realtime-mode or repeats them as patterns in dice-mode. Or do you want something in between? No problem. Set the module to play a looped rhythm while the melody randomly changes or vice versa. Shift start and endpoints of the pattern to get even more variation and complexity.”
(vermona.com)

MeloDICER offers 16 memories for saving your creations. But instead of memorizing plain patterns, it saves all random values and control settings that lead to a certain rhythm-melody-combination. Thus you can always alter stored patterns and turn them into something completely new.

The combination of randomness, probability and user interaction make meloDICER defintely a very special creative tool. Let yourself be inspired!


Further Info: vermona.com

Filed under 2020, General, Stories

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