Mantra also calls for crotales and a shortwave radio which one performer tunes to any frequency where Morse code can be heard. Such frequencies being rare today, we use a CD recording instead.
The patch does ring modulation on two pianos, whose signals come in on channels one and two of the computer. There are two corresponding outputs. There are MIDI inputs from two slider boxes which allow the pianists to control "their" respective modulators.
Strictly speaking the patch implements single sideband modulation instead of ring modulation. Each partial of the piano sound is shifted up and/or down in frequency by a chosen modulation frequency.
The controls are "ring1-pitch," "ring1-plus", and "ring1-minus," plus the corresponding controls for "ring2". "Ring1" refers to the first modulator which acts on input 1 and "ring2," correspondingly for input 2. The "ring1-pitch" control specifies the modulation frequency in units of MIDI pitch (i.e., "69" gives 440 Hz), with microtones allowed as in "69.5" and so on. The "ring1-plus" and "ring1-minus" controls specify the amplitudes (the gains, really) of the positive and negative sidebands. They are both in decibels, with "100" corresponding to unity gain. In the analog counterpart, the positive and negative sidebands are omnipresent. But in this patch, one can separate them out. For the most accurate reproduction of Mantra, both the positive and negative sidebands (or "-plus" and "-minus") should be set to the same value.
In the qlist, these parameters can be given as single numbers as in the first event:
ring1-pitch 43; ring1-minus 100;or as pairs of numbers like:
ring1-pitch 74 2000;If a single number is given, the "pitch" updates instantly and the two gains change smoothly over a period of 30 milliseconds (about 1/33 second). If you give a second number this is a time in milliseconds to override this; for instance, the example above makes a 2000-millisecond glissando to pitch 74 (from whatever the pitch was before) and similarly for the amplitudes which can be faded in or out either more quickly or more slowly than the default.