How I Use Warps

Mutable Instruments has a lovely history of making outwardly simple modules that do plenty of things under the hood. I’ve already written about Clouds and Rings, and now it’s Warps’ turn. Welcome to my definitive guide to Mmorph but in mono hardware form!

In its default firmware, Warps is technically just 7 different effects, with the 7th one taking up 3 spots. It’s also a dual VCA with clipping, and a very powerful PM+TZFM VCO with 5 waveforms taking the first input slot when enabled. The aux output is always either the internal VCO output or the mix of both inputs post VCA, depending on if the VCO is enabled. Let’s explore each algorithm, noting that the interpolation between them is a simple crossfade, meaning you can combine two adjacent algorithms and enjoy the spectral and phase clashes that ensue.

Crossfade. As it says, this will crossfade between the two inputs. It works at audio rate as well, so you can technically perform:

• ring modulation (mult the first input to an inverter and use that as the second input, then use a second VCO to modulate timbre)

• soft sync (same as above but with a square wave modulating timbre)

• wavefolding (set one input to the same wave but 2 octaves higher and synced – not really wavefolding but has a similar effect as a wave multiplier)

• AM synthesis (can do this with just a VCA but only use 1 input and use the timbre input to modulate amplitude at audio rate)

• panning (albeit not good panning, just use 1 input and both outputs as a stereo pair and modulate timbre)

Wavefolder. This one works best with 1 input but does neat asymmetrical things with 2 based on AM Radio frequency clashes. It just sums the two inputs and folds them using a Chebyshev-like fold algorithm. Cannot be used as a synth voice entirely, but can be used to form the osc+waveshaper or waveshaper+VCA parts of a synth voice.

Diode ringmod, does exactly what you expect but timbre adds some softclipping.

Digital ringmod, similar to diode but more full sounding, timbre is soft clipping.

XOR ringmod, very different from analog XOR as you find in the MS20. This one is entirely bitwise and digital, meaning each bit is XOR’d as they happen. Timbre controls which bits are XOR’d, from none (effectively mixing the two inputs) to all (adding tons of harmonics). You want gnarly digital noises, use this.

Comparator. This one’s super fun, it’s effectively an infinitely variable audio rate window comparator. from 0 to 50% timbre, it fades from replacing the top of input 1 with input 2 AM’d by input 1, to simply replacing the negative portion of input 1 with input 2. from 50-75% it adds harmonics by narrowing the peaks of what you get at 50% and amplifying them. from 75% to 100% it swaps the negative and positive portions. Play with this mode using two sine waves, one several octaves higher than the other, preferably with a scope. If you don’t use one of the inputs, you’ll get silence inserted into the signal, which is great for rectification and general fuckery.

Vocoder. Timbre sweeps what portion of the frequency spectrum is implied from the modulator to the carrier; or, another way, it shifts the carrier’s frequency across the modulators frequency. This is most easily heard when using a saw wave for input 1 and a sine for input 2. Sweep timbre, and you’ll hear each harmonic of the saw wave as you sweep, like a narrow bandpass filter. As you turn up to 8, the decay times will increase. At nearly 9 you can get significantly longer decay times, which means if you were to, say, send a plucked chord to input 1 and a sine wave to input 2, you could extend how long the plucked chord is while achieving a smoother, almost bandpassed sound. Bonus points if you modulate timbre with the chord pluck EG to sweep it down like a filter… which gets me to my favourite part of the vocoder.

Custom Filter. At fully clockwise, the vocoder freezes the second input’s spectral imprint, meaning you can put any sound in there, freeze it, then use it as a filter by sweeping timbre! CUSTOM FILTER, BABY!! Pitch of the signal to be locked matters as much as the spectral content itself, so experiment! If you modulate it, know that more modulation = more higher frequencies, which emulates resonance, though you can use an external feedback loop to create resonance as well.

Dual VCA. While sadly not a true dual VCA, you can use just one input and the aux output as a VCA in a pinch, with nice saturation. They do work at audio rate, however, so you can perform saturating AM synthesis with either or both inputs in any algorithm, which gets very fun.

VCO. Press the button to access the VCO on input 1. CV 1/level controls frequency (and does TZFM), input 1 controls phase (so you can do TZFM and PM at once!). Aux is the VCO output. Press the button to go through the waves: green is sine, yellow is triangle, red is saw. When in any of the vocoder modes, it’ll change the waveshapes to saw, pulse, and white noise. You can combine two shapes by setting algo between the comparator and vocoder.

Lowpass VCF. The noise wave turns the pitch control into a lowpass cutoff control which tracks 1v/o. If you put a signal into the audio input when in noise mode, it’ll lowpass whatever signal you put in, which means Warps is also a slightly resonant lowpass filter!

Waveshaping VCO. In some modes, you only need to use the VCO. That means that along with all the things the VCO does natively, you can also apply the chosen effect to the VCO, resulting in a very capable and gnarly waveshaping VCO. Bonus points for subtracting the outputs externally to only get the sound of the effect at the VCO pitch!

So yeah, that’s what it does and some patch ideas. Now go forth and turn normal sounds into chaos! And be sure to install Parasites, which adds a slew of other things that this post is already too long to mention.