Advanced MATHS: analog-computing patch recipes

This module turns Make Noise MATHS from a function generator into an analog computer at the heart of a small eurorack generative rig — the kind of self-playing ambient/techno voice you leave running on stage while your hands work elsewhere. In a live set, every extra module costs HP and attention; the whole task here is squeezing comparator logic, memory, rectification, and complex modulation out of the one module you already own, so a single MATHS can sequence, animate, and vary a voice for a two-minute unattended take.

The arc starts supported: replicate single recipes from the manual with a steady clock and a scope or tuner as reference. Begin with gate extraction (“MATHS extracts a gate from a CV by comparing it to a threshold and firing an instant EOR pulse”), then hold state with the set-reset flip-flop recipe, and bend slopes with Variable-OUT-to-RISE/FALL self-feedback. Next, combine pairs: cross-trigger two channels into a quadrature LFO, divide a clock with RISE time, pull sub-harmonics from an oscillator. Add rectification (multing a signal through an inverted channel into OR OUT), soft-sync (patching a sawtooth to the lag input of an audio-rate cycling channel), audio-rate oscillator tricks (injecting into the EOC jack), and voltage mirroring (inverting and offsetting via SUM). Each recipe is a JIT pointer you return to mid-patch rather than memorize wholesale — though the comparator, self-feedback, and clock-divider moves recur so often they should become drilled reflexes. The capstone removes the scaffolding: you choose and layer at least four of these operations into one evolving patch and commit it to a recording.

The required atoms are exactly the operations the capstone menu draws from — comparator gates, flip-flop memory, feedback shaping, full-wave rectification, quadrature motion, clock division, sub-harmonics, soft-sync, audio-rate cycling, and voltage mirroring; you cannot assemble four credible layers without fluency across all of them. Supporting atoms deepen the palette: the two-signal comparator variant, arcade trill, bouncing-ball physics, the OR bus and peak detector, CV multiplication, and gate inversion offer alternate layers and richer variations once the core recipes sit under your fingers.