My Rings post got a lot of traction in the modular community, so I thought I would write a similar article on another generally nebulous Mutable Instruments module, Clouds – or, specifically, Monsoon, a variant of Clouds running the Parasites firmware, though I’ll try to discuss both equally. Typhoon is a larger, more complex variant that I have no experience with, but all of this article will apply regardless.

How It Works

At it’s most basic, Clouds (and variants) are granulators. They take an audio signal, optionally save it to a buffer (freeze button), then take differently sized (size) and shaped (texture) grains from that audio signal. How often (density) and when (position) they are taken can be controlled, as well as pitch (tune), wet/dry mix, random panning per grain (stereo), delay feedback, and reverb. The last 4 are bundled into one knob, blend, on OG clouds, but broken out on Monsoon and Typhoon.

Size and Density are largely intertwined. Density in the centre position will produce no grains. Slowly turning it counterclockwise or moving the slider down will introduce grains at regular intervals, starting at occasionally, going through constant into overlap, where you may get phase interference or just amplification, depending on the input signal. Turning clockwise or sliding up will have a similar effect, but grains will be randomly triggered instead of evenly spaced. Size determines how large each grain is, from miniscule particles to the entire buffer size (by default, 1 second). Larger size with smaller density (nearer to centre) will result in similar sounds as smaller size with larger density. Size can be used as a speed control, white density controls how many grains there are.

Texture, or shape of each grain, is essentially a wavetable of shapes, from (on default firmware) square to trapezoidal, sine, triangle, to asymmetric sine, and on monsoon, square to half trapezoidal, ramp, triangular, saw, triangular (again), then asymmetric sine. The asymmetric shapes give grains a ‘tail’, which when used with many overlapping grains, can sound almost like reverb/diffusion, blurring them together nicely.

Position is useful for 2 reasons: when using a frozen buffer, it allows you to select where in the buffer you pull grains from, and it sets delay time for the feedback control. Yes, Clouds/Monsoon/etc can be used as just a basic-ass delay (that can self oscillate) if you want. You can also add reverb with the reverb control, but on Monsoon or parasites you’ll find you can apply reverb even on a totally dry signal. This kinda goes against Emilie’s wishes in that it facilitates use as an end-of-chain reverb, but it’s a nice reverb and I do use it regularly in that regard. Modular has no wrong answers.

Overall, you can see Clouds and its variants as a really really complicated series of VCAs and rectified LFOs. Using this analogy, texture controls LFO shape, size is LFO rate, density is number of VCAs. Clouds kinda adds a few features beyond that, of course, but hopefully that helps you understand how it works under the hood.

How I Use It

Now that we’ve touched on how it works, at least in the main granular mode (stock clouds has 3 other modes, parasites/monsoon adds another 2, basically none of which I use but I’ll touch on those at the end), I’ll now go into a few specific patch examples using monsoon as a granulator.

• Footsteps/pebbles falling/similar sounds: first, set up Plaits (I should do an article on Plaits too) in particle noise mode with 75% frequency, 25% harmonics, 60% timbre, and between 40 and 60% morph. Run that into Monsoon fully wet, set position to 0, density to about 40%, size to about 75%, and texture to 80%. You’ll get an even train of vaguely footstep-like sounds. You can use an external trigger to trigger the grains slightly randomly but not as random as monsoon does, and use that same external trigger to drive an envelope generator to modulate density and size. Then, layer that with different versions involving different settings on plaits and different pitches on Monsoon, and you can create everything from walking in snow, on sticks, on glass, pebbles falling, earthquake shudders, balloon squeaks, door creaks, rocking chair noises, fire crackling, you name it.

• Wavetable Oscillator: first, set up any modulating sound. A saw through a plucked lowpass, an FM synth with an envelope controlling amount, whatever, anything that has a clear transient sound. Trigger that sound, then hit freeze on Monsoon when it’s done. set mix to fully wet and slowly turn density right to the point where grains touch perfectly but dont overlap (use a size of 50% and a texture that’s smooth, like a triangular shape, like at about 65%). Then, modulate Position to go through the ‘wavetable’, and use pitch to change pitch. You can also use a smaller size to get more precise grains, and set density such that it overlaps a bit for a different sound. It’s not perfect, no, but it sounds neat!

• Detuned Anything/Pitch Shifter: This one’s pretty simple. Set mix to 50%, set density/size/texture to whatever makes a continuous sound reflecting the input, set position to 0, and play with the pitch control. Anything from detuning to double stops are now in your grasp with any sound. Who needs polyphony?

• Delay: Since I mentioned it above, to use Monsoon as a basic delay, set pitch to noon, density to 25%, size to 50%, texture to 60% (the ‘continuous noise’ setup, where it basically mirrors the input), set mix to 50%, turn up position as delay time, and use feedback as delay feedback/repeats. Pitch allows you to re-pitch each repeat, making arpeggios. Texture can make the delay sound more ‘crunchy’.

• Exciter Modulator: this one turns anything into an exciter for resonators. It’s like shoving sounds into a short-decaying VCA, but with more options! Take any sound, plug it in, then set size kinda small, position to 0, texture to whatever (it determines shape of your exciter), and pitch to whatever (affects final sound). Trigger it with an external trigger, or use density for a train of exciters. The output will just be weird clicks, basically, but that’s prime resonator material!

• Tape Stop: Setting up Monsoon/Clouds to create a continuous, equal noise as the input, then oppositely modulating pitch and density (pitch from noon to full minimum, density from 25% to 50% or so), we can create pseudo tape-stop effects. Getting the modulation speed right is important so you don’t get extraneous grains ruining your stop.

• Beat Repeating Sequences: The correct values of density (below 50%) and size will yield repeating sounds in the buffer. Sequencing pitch will give you a melody. Combine the two and you basically have a reverse Ryk-185! Make sure position is at 0 and texture is set to triangle.

• Dubstep/Servo motor noises: Using more or less any source material (i like a simple lowpassed saw wave but noise can also be effective), freeze it, then modulate size with pitch turned down, density at minimum. Different source material yields different results, as do different position and pitch values.

• Ambient drones: Using any additive voice (I like telharmonic), set up a dark, low-pitched, detuned (preferably) sound, feed that into Monsoon, then set density at about 60-70% and crank up reverb. Great for dark drones.

• Beat remixing: Feed a drum pattern or other rhythmic work into Monsoon, then sequence literally everything. Position will jumble up the composition, size will give you fun beat repeat effects, texture will smear things occasionally, pitch will cause all kinds of mayhem, freezing occasionally allows for beat repeats and buffer error sounds, etc.

• Bitcrushing: With Monsoon, the texture wavetable has sharper squares. You can use this to create pseudo-bitcrushed effects, along with a small size and density set around 25%. position et al set to 0, pitch to noon.

• Undulating Ambient Sounds: Using any drone as an input, you can set mix to about 75%, density to 15%, and turn up the reverb to get a nice, undulating ambient drone. Texture set to triangle, size set to 50%, position set to 0, pitch at noon.

Alternate Modes

While I mostly use Monsoon as a granulator, it can do other neat stuff besides. After Later Audio did a great breakdown of all the types of Clouds variants and firmwares here, but for this article I’ll just be going into Monsoon, which runs Parasites firmware. Among several changes to the default firmware, some of which I mentioned above, it has 5 alternate modes of operation, completely transforming the module into a pitch and time stretcher, looping delay, spectral processor, reverb, and resonator. You can read about these on the Parasites page and on Mutable Instruments’ page on the OG alt modes. I really only use Oliverb and Spectral Madness, however.

Oliverb/Emilieverb is often looked at as the true stereo version of Erbeverb from MakeNoise, but it’s a completely different animal (I have both). Instead, it expands on Clouds’ allpass network, pitch shifter, and delay by giving you a rather fully fledged reverb/multi-tap delay. Position is predelay, density is reverb feedback (also what the pitch control plays best with), size is the size of the room, texture is a combination lowpass/highpass filter. You also have wet/dry mix, stereo is now diffusion, ranging from multi-tap delay network to allpass diffuser, feedback is modulation speed, reverb is modulation amount. I like to set predelay to 0, feedback to noon/centre, size to 75%, filter to 40% (in the lowpass range), set pitch to 75% or 1 octave above, mix at about 15%, diffusion between noon and max, and about 20% speed and 50% modulation. This gives you an excellent chorused shimmerverb, amazing for pads and atmospheres. Playing with pitch, filter, and modulation amount yields nice results with most things.

Spectral Madness I actually use regularly as an additive synthesizer. Basically, you press the freeze button on two different sounds, or spectra, then crossfade between then with position. set density to either noon/centre or a maximal value, set size to noon/centre, and set texture at about 1/4. Between 1/4 and noon/centre, you get additive-like higher harmonics get added based on the frozen spectra, so you can modulate texture and position to get neat additive sounds, and repitch as needed. Going beyond halfway adds more shrill harmonics, which are fun but not as useful, at least to me. Size acts as a weird glitchy pitch control and density is basically a stereo width control.

Conclusion

Clouds and its variants are often seen as meme modules, especially in the ambient space (rings into clouds, etc), but in the right hands it can be an extremely powerful sound design tool. The most important thing is to play with it, feed it a variety of material, modulate it in weird ways, and learn what it has to offer. It’s very much a core part of my rig and I don’t see it being removed any time soon.