V.Tune

V.Tune exposes the excitation and voicing settings held by Vessel. Use it to set the strength of triggered hits, work directly with rubbing speed and pressure, and shape decay, resonant imperfections, and stereo width.

It has no audio engine or patch jacks of its own. Vessel remains the source of sound and the home of pitch, material, mallet, ΔHz, output level, performance pads, and CV inputs.

1. Add Vessel and connect its L and R outputs to your audio chain.
2. Click the gear on Vessel to spawn V.Tune. You can also add it from the browser and place it immediately to Vessel’s right.
3. Keep the two modules touching in the same row. V.Tune adopts Vessel’s current settings on connection.
4. Send triggers to Vessel HIT (T), leave VEL unpatched, and turn VELOCITY to compare hit strengths.
5. Hold Vessel RUB (G) high, leave INTENSE unpatched, and release the manual RUB pad. Adjust SPEED and PRESSURE to explore friction.
6. Strike the bowl and compare SUSTAIN, FLAWS, and WIDTH. Keep Vessel ΔHz at zero while first exploring WIDTH.

Click a numbered marker for its description. Defaults below are initial Vessel values; connecting to an already configured Vessel adopts its current values.

1

SPEED

0–2 rev/s · default 0.2

Rubbing speed around the bowl. Used with PRESSURE when RUB (G) is high, INTENSE is unpatched, and the manual RUB pad is released.

2

VELOCITY

0–100% · default 50%

Strength of gate-triggered hits when VEL is unpatched. A manual HIT uses its pad position; a connected VEL replaces this setting.

3

PRESSURE

0–15 N · default 2.5

Contact pressure for the separate-control rubbing path. Speed and pressure work together: changing pressure can alter the friction response as well as the level.

4

SUSTAIN

0.25×–4× · default 1×

Scales the bowl’s decay times. Lower values shorten ringing and higher values lengthen it. This shapes resonance decay rather than holding an envelope at a fixed level.

5

FLAWS

0–2 · default 1

Scales imperfection between paired resonant modes. Zero removes this mode-pair splitting; higher values increase it. This is a different control from Vessel’s left/right ΔHz.

6

WIDTH

0–100% · default 70%

Changes the separation of the stereo observation positions. Compare at ΔHz = 0 to isolate the spatial effect. It does not change the bowl frequency difference.

7

Vessel link indicator

Top-left edge

Shows the adjacent Vessel connection. Place V.Tune immediately to Vessel’s right. Vessel’s matching indicator turns green when it accepts the control messages.

8

Body map and pitch-color lights

Lower display

Body shading follows the connected Vessel’s center pitch. The seven pitch-color lights track the bowl-color mapping independently. These are visual indicators, not controls or audio outputs.

For a predictable comparison, change one control at a time and repeat the same gesture. If you hold the RUB pad to audition SPEED, you are hearing the pad’s coordinated intensity gesture instead of the separate-control path.

The lower illustration is a pitch-driven display. Body shading reads Vessel’s center-frequency value, including pitch CV; it does not analyze the output audio or measure activity in a listener’s body. Its Sound+Body associations are a visual mapping. The pitch readout can remain meaningful while the bowl is silent.

Right-click V.Tune and open Body map. Choose Body shading on or Off, then Soft intensity, Normal intensity, or Strong intensity. The menu also reports the linked Vessel target center and the active region labels. These intensity choices affect display opacity, not sound.

The shading blends around band boundaries. The seven chakra LEDs follow Vessel’s bowl-color mapping independently; turning body shading off does not turn off those LEDs. Disconnecting or bypassing V.Tune removes its linked-frequency display data.

When V.Tune first attaches to a Vessel, it copies that Vessel’s current six settings before sending control messages. Moving it to a different Vessel therefore adopts the new neighbor’s settings rather than imposing the old ones.

While connected, Vessel keeps a copy of the received values. Detaching or bypassing V.Tune leaves the latest values in Vessel. Reattach the companion to edit them again. Keep direct adjacency: a gap, another module, or placement on the left breaks the connection.

Save the Rack patch with both modules to retain the full setup. V.Tune saves its body-map mode and shading intensity along with its knob settings. Its live frequency display comes from the attached Vessel and is refreshed when the patch runs.

VCV Rack 2 · 8 HP · right-side Vessel companion · six panel knobs · no inputs or outputs · body shading and independent pitch-color indicators.

Vessel User Manual →

Checked against the local V.Tune controls, attachment handshake, body-map implementation, Vessel control priority, and plugin manifest on October 28, 2026. Appearance and available behavior can differ between releases.