Chill-out house I guess. Recorded live, as usual. Going to bring this one to the local modular meetup.
Used the modular with Deluge on partial sequencing and chord duty.
Last week I bought a uPlaits (by Tall Dog) and am trying out a few things now. It essentially takes the place of the E352, but I think the sounds are a little more musical and melodic. Some things I'm trying:
Instruments used: Only the Eurorack! Main sound sources are BIA (kick/snare), Plonk (hat), Plaits (lead), Cursus Iteritas (arp), and Dixie II+ (bass).
Emotional tone, I wanted something exciting and groovy and danceable. That's usually not hard to do for me.
A Techno Jam on my Eurorack, because when people think of Eurorack, they think of techno. (Or Ambient, or sheer noise, but this isn't one of those). I also used a pedal (Elektron Analog Drive) for the first time.
I am going to the modular meetup today so I decided to work on this instead of my other more produced songs. It's still nice to be able to jam out on the hardware since you can get cool sounds so quickly.
Featured synth voices and effects:
A kind of Eurythmics-inspired track that doesn't have quite the same catchy synth lead. I think I need to keep working on this a bit more, you might hear a re-recording next week.
Done live in Eurorack.
Industrial improv track based roughly off of the improv live performance I did this afternoon at the local Modular Synth meetup. (Hint: The live performance, which I didn't record, was better).
Done in Eurorack modular, featuring mostly Basimilus Iteritas Alter, Cursus Iteritas, DubJr Mk2, and Cat.
Dec 31, 15:25 - 16:05. After an idea that sounded too EDM/progressive for my tastes (but honestly did have some musical merit), I decided that I'd bust out the modular instead and goof off.
This is different from what I've done before on the modular. The pitches and rhythms are generative (mostly). One thing that I'd consider doing differently is having the drums on a control - being able to better control individual parts is pretty important and this patch didn't really allow that.
It's partly generative, but not fully - I did do a lot of knob turning to change pitches, parts, rhythms, and so forth.
Sunday, Nov 12.
12:25 - 12:35. I'm probably going to be out all afternoon, so I'm going to try to crank out a drone track from nothing (no patches or anything) in a few live takes in about 20-25 minutes.
12:45 - 13:00. Resume and attempt to start recording.
13:00 - 13:15: Minor amounts of software post-processing: mostly adding EQ and some compression and a bit of light plate reverb.
So total time about 40 minutes. Not my shortest song ever… but it's an improv.
I wanted to make a generative patch on the modular so I could set it up and let it play while kids answer the door.
What I realized pretty quickly is that I don't have enough modulation options in my modular to quite get the effect I wanted. I still hope that the result is sufficiently spooky or haunting without annoying the hell out of us at home.
Sun, Oct 29.
I'd like to make a generative Halloween patch so I can play it when kids end up ringing the doorbell.
Ambient modular improv.
Sunday, October 22, 11:00-11:50ish
Today might be busy, so I figured I'd record a "quick" improv track just in case I don't make it back to the music later this afternoon.
This is done with my modular and Arpeggionome, an iPad app. The modules doing the heavy lifting here are the E352 Cloud Terrarium and the Dixie II+ through Polaris FIlter and Noise Tools doing the S&H filter effects.
No post-processing except for some compression/limiting through Neutron.
I forgot to turn on the initial time, but I think it's been about 50 minutes or so. I tried about three takes (and some repatching) before I was happy with the result. There are still some changes that I would make if I kept at it - some of the high notes are too sudden and better gating would have helped maintain a background drone.
18:00 - 18:25. Modular jam of the worst kind: improv.
I think I need an ADSR envelope module - would sure help me shape my sounds. I was going to consider getting a second oscillator, but maybe an ADSR would help me do cooler sounds that have, well… less attack.
If I had a bit more preparation I probably would have tried a little more to smooth some of the rough edges of the performance out, or even try to incorporate other synthesizers as a part of it, but I started late after a tiring day.
I forgot to time this one, but it's a fun live jam anyway so kind of low effort. Maybe 30-40 minutes?
This is a two-synth jam: Oberheim XPander and Kilpatrick Phenol.
I set up the XPander to play a loop of chords in the background. The Phenol was played live using self-triggering mechanisms (no keyboard). There's actually a fair amount going on for not that many synths.
No software effects except for limiting/EQ on the master track.
Warning: some high frequencies.
I didn't even make liner notes this time but I think I spent about an hour and ten minutes doing this.
I did it live in many takes using the Kilpatrick Phenol modular synthesizer and Kilpatrick Carbon sequencer.
No software, no processing, it's direct line in.
It's kind of long.
Warning: High Frequencies
Sun, March 26, 14:15 - 15:30. I bought Zelda: Breath of the Wild recently so I've been a bit focused on that.
For the next few weeks you might be getting some strange modular music.
Live, couple of takes, lots of plug-pulling, no software efects.
Bass 1: Future Retro 777
Drums: TR-8
Lead/arp/weird stuff: Kilpatrick Phenol
Total time: 1h 15m
