Friday, April 29, 2011

Last minute show reminder

Our pal Devin King will be giving a reading tomorrow (Saturday) night at a space in Pilson. The Speers will be playing feedback sounds behind him, and Caroline Picard will be projecting live video edits behind us. Should be FUN!

Details

Labels: ,

Sunday, April 24, 2011

143-1 drone

I'm playing a modular duo set with Andy Ortmann tonight, and will be including this 143-1 patch in my bag of sounds:


I read about it on the forum last year or so, and bring it out whenever I'm looking for a steady, subtle 4-note drone, with control over pitch and mix of tones. If you've got a 143-1 (and you should! One of the true Doepfer gems) and are looking for a brighter option, take the End of Attack outs (square waves) and mix them externally-- this is available simultaneous to the more subdued Mix Out drone, by the way.

The forums are littered with interesting 143-1 patches... I'll put together a compilation post of them soon!

Labels:

Monday, April 18, 2011

Project for school


Should be finished next week. Photos/details then!

Labels: ,

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

$0!


Jess just brought this back from California. Anyone else think it looks exactly like the Moog Guitar?

Labels:

Saturday, April 09, 2011

Kinetic Gates w/o a Model 32

Right before Plan B's public flame out, he/they briefly released a module that I was, and somewhat remain to be, interested in: the Model 32 Vector Plotter. It was introduced NAMM 2009, and it looked great. I don't know anyone who actually owned one. They show up on the second-hand market from time to time, but I've stayed away-- using Choices and a little patch cleverness to essentially cover the same ground.

For example, one thing the Model 32 did that made it unique was to provide "Kinetic Gates"-- trigger signals that were outputted whenever the joystick was in motion. We can get the same effect by using a joystick in combination with Doepfer's A-156 Dual Quantizer. Think about it: the 156 spits out a trig with each new voltage. A joystick sweeps through voltage ranges on both X and Y axises...

In the video below I've mixed the X and Y outputs from Choices, and sent their combined voltage to the bottom half of the 156:



Of course, you could send X to the top half and Y to the bottom for independent X and Y Kinetic Gates. You could mix the X and Y outs through a Max/Min and send the Max to the top half and the Min to the bottom. You could mult the combined X and Y trigger to a logical inverter and send the inverted and non-inverted trigs to envelopes which are opening hard panned VCAs for stereo operation. The list goes on. The point being Model 32-styled Kinetic Gates are achievable without having to take the risk of purchasing a second-hand late-period Plan B module.

Labels: ,

Thursday, April 07, 2011

Synth meet-up last weekend

I've been reading about the Trash Audio/Xart synth meet-ups with interest since they started (or thereabouts), and was very excited to finally make it to one (their ninth) this past weekend.

Naturally, I brought a dictaphone with me on Saturday and plugged it into every rig I could get my hands on. The audio in the video below is a collage of some of those recordings. The video itself is from Sunday night's Alessandro Cortini/Richard Devine concert, with visuals by Johnny Woods on video synth.

It should go without saying, but it was a great time. I got to meet some folks for the first time (James Cigler! Mike Wiggler!!) and got to say hello to some old friends, too (Stephen!). My only complaint about the Chicago meet-ups is that they don't happen more often-- they do things once-a-quarter here. The NY/NJ scene had a very informal monthly get-together, which was always a treat. Hopefully, I can get something like that started before long.

In the meantime, enjoy:



New Make Noise granular sample player:


Muff Wiggler himself:

Labels: , ,