I started out trying to use the NI Bento Box and found it opaque. I couldn't get gates, routing was not transparent, and I just wasn't happy working with it.
Marc suggested setting up a VCVRack patch for people who didn't want to install the Native Instruments software. I picked out the modules that I could find that were as close as possible to the ones in the Bento Box; some were not quite as functional (the Bogaudio S&H needed an external noise source, as opposed to the built-in one in the Bento Box S&H, and the Bento Box sequencer was flexible in different ways from most of the VCV ones). After some trial and error, and a lot of staring at alternate sequencers, I had a basic set of modules.
Just to prove to myself that I should have been able to easily get what I wanted in the first place, I started patching together a basic VCO/VCA/ADSR patch, controlled by the Fundamental MIDI module. (Short pause to find and install a virtual MIDI keyboard.)
That worked fine. Well, it would be a shame not to try working the rest of these modules into the patch...and a bit later, I had a nice feedback network running; the sequencers were modifying parameters on the VCO, LFO, and filter, and different phases of the LFO were being fed back into the sequencer inputs.
The result was a very West-Coast-sounding, not-quite-repeating patch. I let it run a while, and then realized I could use the GATE from the MIDI module to reset all the sequencers. I patched that in while it was running, and then used keyboard interrupts to break up the flow and produce the coda.
