Though not my first dance with multi-purpose digital modules—I've logged countless hours and patches with various incarnations of Expert Sleepers Distings, ALM's Pamela, U-He's CVilization, and probably a few others I'm forgetting here—this is my first ever foray into one of my favorite-named modules, Ornament & Crime (aka o_C). The open-source project by collaborators Patrick Dowling, mxmxmx, and Tim Churches, which has been around for quite some time, it's a module that has a learning curve to it, though not a very steep one (menu and all), and it's a great way to have a large arsenal of useful features in your rack without needing a module for each one. It also allows for trying out things you might not have otherwise done, since there are so many options on tap, though was we all know, while it's great to tout a module for the ability to do 10s, or 100s, or 1000s of things, for the most part, you can only use one or two functions at a time, with like, 998 or so algorithms waiting on standby. In the case of o_C, it has four identical channels, so you have the ability to have it do up to four things at once.
This particular version of o_C came by way of Western Massachusetts, via Tall Dog Electronics, an outfit who specializes in digital, open source modules. Along with o_C, they have some of the more popular Mutable Instruments, all in micro form, along with some other bits and bobs. The 8HP μo_C I received for testing was a Revision D, and had a nice build quality, with a gold/black faceplate. As μo_C is a digital module, it has various firmware editions available to tailor your use to it, and the number of applications that it contains has changed throughout its evolution and differs via each firmware. The Tall Dog came with thirteen distinct functions available, from a quantizing shift register (the original purpose of the module so many iterations ago), to pitch and chord quantizers, to LFOs, to various envelope generators.
After going through the paces and spending some time thinking about this module, I realized I've never reviewed a module that was open source and where the heart of it was designed by another entity, with more than a few manufacturers offering up the same module; it's an interesting aspect to ponder. Interesting in a meta sense as well, as some of the algorithms are based on various "easter eggs" and hard-to-reach Mutable Instruments algorithms found (or not) on some of their modules.
The Tall Dog μo_C is laid out simply enough with the text-based OLED screen at the top, two encoders and two small buttons for selections below it, and four identical channels of Trig/CV/Output for each. While it's not complicated to use, having the manual nearby is helpful when firing it up for the first time to help figure out navigation and how to edit the details, which is really where o_C shines. You can go deeper into the minutiae here than you can with most modules of this sort, as it's highly customizable. This lets you be efficient with what apps are on the firmware and lets you tweak the parameters for your individual needs. Most modules like this live in a fixed system, so being able to craft and build o_C, so to speak, to how you need it is a real plus.
While the original o_C firmware offers twelve apps, some of these, like Quadraturia (up to four LFOs) I've got pretty well covered in my rig via the Xaoc Batumi and Five12's QV-L, so I decided to pick the three algos I most needed, in this case μo_C's raison d’être, CopierMaschine (a four-stage analogue shift register), Quantermain (quad pitch quantiser), and Dialectic Ping Pong, a bouncing ball EG simulator.
I've always been a bit enamored with shift registers, and even though the right side of my brain is always telling me that it's just a quantized sample and hold, the left side of my brain knows that's not entirely true. With a sequence running as the CV input and with a gate patched in as well, and patching just a couple of outputs from CopierMaschine into a couple of VCOs for melodic purposes, you can easily and instantly get related patterns that are both musical and interesting. Moving, shifting, changing…it's reminiscent of a Turing Machine, but you're also able to freeze your pattern by patching in a high gate into input 2, so if you find something you like, you're able to loop it and tweak around either through o_C or whatever it's patched into. Transposing, changing the scale quantization, switching octaves, as well as the buffer index, which changes the pattern of the notes, but retains the notes; are all great generative ways to mix things up. There are more ways to dig in, and you can customize the CV in as well to modulate any of the parameters. On top of that, there are all sorts of internal CV sources, so no patching is even needed. This type of detailing and flexibility can be pretty immense, and a lot of times it felt like it was never ending, mostly in a good way. Any time I thought I wish I could…I'd find that I could. Whether it was for melody or modulation, CopierMaschine is vast and can be really complex, and it made me think that though I love set and forget modulation, I also tend to be lazy and rely on random modulation for variation, instead of intentional tweaks and changes. Watching the voltage changes and movement on the screen pitched in some eye candy as well.
It's strange how a lot of the algorithms on o_C are related, and I thought of this when I found myself using Quantermain, a quad quantiser, a lot. Again, you can patch in a CV and quantize it to the nth degree and tweak to taste, but as is the case with CopierMaschine there are numerous internal CV configurations to use, which means it's another way to generate random modulation. With four distinct channels of customizable quantization, it isn't hard to see how valuable this can be, and as before, you're able to CV control pretty much all of the parameters you'd want to for some hands off modulation changes. There are so many ways to generate melodies and I really liked using all four outputs for stacked melodic pads, when, with some added reverb and delay, brought everything from bugs in a cave to what sounded like listening to an upset stomach from the inside. Again, Quantermain is dense and extremely customizable and there's no end to the tweaking that can be had, but I found it really valuable to find that sweet spot, patch in some CV to change things around, and move on. You can even do some self patching for this.
o_C is a great module to have in your rack, which explains why years after its release it's still being used by so many. The Tall Dog version of o_C was flawless to use and I'm really glad they sent it along.
Price: $269

Tall-dog.com