Demo. Track. Yes.

Earlier this month I sat down to do a post on the joys of the Buchla 261e oscillator. I've previously posted about how uniquely sophisticated and organic this digital/analog hybrid Oscillator is and I find myself coming back to it over and over again for all sorts of tones, timbres, and classic waveforms.  Like many Buchla modules the 261e contains much more than meets the eye. it's CV controllable modulation oscillator offers evolving waveforms and the main sine wave, while digitally generated, is extraordinarily round and wooly.  I've also raved about it's built in filtering and timbre controls which make this a number of modules in one. 

So with more exploration in mind I sat down to do a demo of both oscillator sections with a little tweaking. I  built up a series of complimentary sequences on the 250E and assigned various gates and CVs to the waveform input, and both pitch control inputs.

One thing lead to another and I "rolled tape" to capture my simple demo run through.  Then I liked what I was hearing so I separated the two oscillators and did a few more takes. Then I started to carve out three distinct lines from the 261e including both sine wave outputs as well as the modulated multi-waveform modulation oscillator output. Along the way I started tweaking the filter and timbre controls in time with the sequence to create something a bit more sophisticated that I originally intended and took the raw WAV files and started messing with volume and panning and fades to sculpt something musically out of the raw material.

Next thing I knew I added another synth (MS20VST) played live over top. A bit  more editing,  some added reverb, and by the time I was done I decided it really wasn't a demo anymore. So, now we get a new completed track.  I told you before how the 200e has a way of convincing me to do more than I thought I would.  This is certainly still a solid demo of what the 261e can do. I suppose it's good to know that might sometimes be more than even I intended.

This track is available for free streaming and download at Name-your-own-price including free as part of my new singles collection at the bottom of my bandcamp page here:  http://davidtalento.bandcamp.com/. Feel free to sample the other ware while you are visiting and, of course, bleep on.

http://davidtalento.bandcamp.com/album/exile We're all synth lovers. Back in 1994 I released my first full length album without knowing how much of a valentine to analog filters, LFOs, and sweeps and pads it would be. Almost 20 years later it still does what I didn't even know I intended it to do. This was released as a cassette album with two sides: "Open" and "Closed". Yes I was young, artsy, and more than a bit precocious but it was all in fun. Some of the tracks got more attention than others and the most ambient was picked up for a compilation by Arts Industria and got me some label interest. Here is "untitled #3" This was the early 90s when float/chill/ambient was all the rage after all but as with all my work each track is different and even in the synth genre I couldn't sit still. To prove the point here is "Kill Yr 808" which has a keyboard solo somewhere between Sun Ra and Peter Gabriel: Some tracks are taking a solo synth and going to town on one idea. The recordings heavily feature a Roland Juno 106, SCI Pro One, and Ensoniq ESQ1 but there is no techno (that came later and quite by accident for me). The album is available for streaming free in it's entirety. Full download price (including two extra long bonus tracks) is only $7 with individual downloads only 75 cents. If you like, please buy and feel free to puruse the rest of the catalog to see where I've been since this one.  As John Cale once sang, I write reams of this stuff. For analog purists I still have about a dozen cassette tapes for sale with their original photo copied and cut out JCards if you want to be all super retro  Thanks for listening and enjoy.

Buchla Ambient Track and "Accidents"

Following up on the track I posted in the previous entry, here is a bit more information on how it came about and some insight on what I perceive to be the creative process and how it can be enhanced by modular synths and organic technology in general.

The track started out as a short beat drive sequence at about 120BPM. Not very fast but certainly more rhythmical and up tempo. I also took advantage of the modular nature of my instruments by cross patching different systems. I ran the 259e oscillator into the Modcan Digital delay and a custom Analog Solutions Comb Filter built into ModcanA format.  I then went to the 261e and patched it into a low rumble drone that used internal feedback between it's Primary and Modulation oscillators. Dedicated readers of this blog might remember how amazed I was at the low "BoooooM" the 261e sine wave can spit out and I have been fascinated by it's capabilities ever since.

I had both oscillators being run by the 250e sequencer which was sending CV out to the pitch in of each osc and then also sending gates and triggers to the 281e envelopes and 292e gates. To make things a bit more interesting I started to program the pulse and CV in on the 250e and set it to different combinations of strobe and various advance/enable/sustain modes on the start/stop section.  As with a lot of my tinkering I wasn't entirely sure where I was going but I was trying different things to see if I found a sound or rhythm that appealed to my mindset at the time.

This is where I feel modular synthesis in general, and the Buchla 200e system in particular, helps to inspire me. Patching and programming modules is a far cry from picking up a guitar or sitting at a piano and hitting a key. Yet, at their core, they are all instruments used for making music. With a guitar you can bend the string or slide your finger up the neck to reach another note or tone. One a piano you can hit the key fortissimo or barely press it so the hammer slooowly meets the felt and the note is more or less coaxed out.

A modular synthesizer, by it's definition, offers openings and access to sound building blocks that don't exist in hardwired or closed systems. It's the fumbling with the interaction of these parts that make the equivalent of a sustained note or muted string to me. I feel my way around the patches starting with something more or less straight forward (in this case I wanted to process the 259e and have a sequence play the 261e sine wave) and then mutate and bend the patch until it starts to peak my interest. I call this the synth "talking back" to me and I often refer to it as a very organic process. With something as complex as the 250e sequencer and the modulation possibilities of the 200e's oscillators it's entirely possible to have the instrument come up with aural combinations and results you didn't expect. If you are going into the composition process looking to allow this to happen "happy accidents" can occur which bring about completely new directions for your music.

This is exactly what happened with the track in question. I usually make a patch I'm comfortable with and map out the modulations and mixing I am going to do in real-time and then sit down and record the track live pretty much sticking to my plan. I set up everything to what I believe it's  "start point" should be and pause the recorder anticipating I'll press go and we're off capturing what I laid out in my rehearsals and preparations. This usually involves stopping or rewinding the sequencer (or other tempo generator) and, in this case that is exactly what I did. What happened next, however, was the perfect "happy accident".

Instead of silence when I stopped the 250e I heard this fascinating organic drone emit from the Buchla. A strange pinging tone (a combination of the 259e modulated A/B waves and the comb filter and delay apparently)  started  *talking* completely alien to my involvement.  It was as though I had created an aural Golem and had set it loose and it wasn't until I stopped the sequencer and it's notes from pushing everything forward that I realized the patch was already moving.

I sat for a few moments stunned by the sound it was creating. Slowly I started to mix in the 261e and realized by turning up the level on the 292e I could allow enough of the strong sine wave through so it would feedback. It sounded like one of Robert Fripp's 1970s feedback guitar solos and with some practice I was able to "play" the 261e in this sustain/feedback mode like an instrument in and of itself. The final piece came through when I started to manually shift the steps on the 250e. By not clocking them I had full control over when the notes of the pre-programmed sequence changes. I could go forward, backward, or even skip steps as I saw fit with both the other tones flowing from the manual tweaks I gave them.

The result is the track "Down the Hill Backwards", a  titular nod to Brian Eno. I sat down to make a straight forward up tempo melody oriented electronica track. The modular, however, had other ideas and it wasn't until I stopped and listened to what it was telling me that I realized I had created something entirely different. The ability to interact with and instrument like this is what makes a machine "organic" and the creative process inspiring to me. I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I do.

Here is the track one more time:




Talk on.

New Buchla 200e Ambient track...

I've been busy in the studio again. Will upload a more complete post including patch details soon but for now enjoy this new track courtesy  of the 200e and some odds and ends.

You Got Chocolate in my Peanut Butter... and Inspirado..

Being an old Industrial/Noise guru I have always appreciated the clangorous metallic sounds that Frequency Modulation synthesis can offer. Being an experimental sound freak I have always liked the idea of mixing external sounds into the "wrong" input on modular synths and getting unexpected results. Feeding audio into CV inputs is one trick that never disappoints.

The Buchla 200e oscillators offer many options to get low bit rate aliasing and  glitch sounds. The 259e on it's own does weird wavetable freaknoise if you sweep it or even sometimes just try to track it via a quick CV or trigger. The 281e envelopes have a loop mode that can be organically triggered then modulate other audio parameters in an unusual rhythm (especially when fed by a Source of Uncertainty).

Yet sometimes I just can't resist messing with things further.

Here are a few experiments feeding the audio of a Vintage analog beat box (Roland TR606) into the FM inputs on the 200e. This causes glitching and twisted pitch triggering and gives an example of how you can make experimental music all the more... well, Experimental. 

First up is a stereo mix of the drum machine on one side and the 261e on the other. The clip starts with the solid tone of the 261e and then the Drum machine starts in. You can hear both together to give you an idea how audio modulates the Frequency of the oscillator. This is a far cry from trying to track the filter to pitch but of course that is the whole point. Throughout the clip I also manually tweak the Timbre controls a bit.

Second, we travel a little further down the rabbit hole. This is a clip of just the 259E audio with no dry signal. I'm messing with the waveform mix as well the Timbre. This is a good example of audio Frequency Modulation and what is can do for you (outside of scare cats and neighbors). 

Finally all this noise messing did what it usually does - it inspired me to try and do something more deliberate and "musical" (insofar as synth noise is musical).  This clip actually doesn't include any FM from the above examples but having heard those sounds for an hour or so I was curious about feeding the audio into more traditional inputs and seeing if I could get something in the same spirit.

This clip has the Drum machine being fed into the Preamp and then I'm taking two outputs from that. One is feeding a single channel of the Lowpass filter only section of a 292e and the other is going into my DIY Flight of Harmony Plague Bearer with the Source of uncertainty modulating the VCA input on the Plague bearer. Is it the "same" as the FM experiments? Well no. But can you see where one thing leads to another? If you can then welcome to the road of Inspirado...

Travel On...

Bzzzz (Guest speaker)

I've been working on a post explaining some of the unique philosophy of Buchla Modules and, in particular, the 250e sequencer.  It's clearly going take a little more time and in the process I posted on a forum for some advice and hints. The great 7th Dan has been very helpful and in fact has a series of instructional videos on  200e modules among other things so while I'm still working I thought i'd give him some press here.

His Blog is here: http://www.niklaswinde.com/index.html

For those not entirely interested in detailed how to videos there are also things like this video as well as some pretty handsome cat pics. Something for all synth geeks!

Mystery Synth Reveal... or The Importance of User Interface

Synthesizers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes including "virtual ones"  There are some amazing software programs  like Reaktor or Rebirth and dozens (hundreds?) of IPhone and Android apps that mimic everything from classic drum machines to modular synthesizers. Passionate debates flow freely about whether such instruments are groundbreaking or simply stealing the hype of classic hardware and if you ask a dozen people if they sound "the same" you'll get a dozen different answers.

For my purposes most of the debates seem to be asking the wrong questions. While I have plenty of judgements and preferences ultimately I don't care if a synth is hardware, software, analog, or digital. What matters most to me is if it is inspiring, interesting, and if I am able to use it (or abuse it) to reach my aural goals.  There will be more about apps and VST plugins on this blog in the future but as an introductory post allow me to introduce one computer and hardware combination that , to me, got it right. The Korg Legacy MS20 controller and Software and yes, this is the instrument featured in the most recent "Mystery Synth" post.

For the past few decades Korg has been leading the way in making modern synthesizers that are interesting and practical. While Roland and others were making ROM based "grooveboxes" Korg came out with the ER1 - a true percussion synthesizer with multiple LFO waveforms for modulating in internal synth engine. Then they came out with the MS2000 a digital "Virtual Analog" synth with knobs galore, a built in sequencer,  tweakable useful effects, and of course midi. They even included features many mainstream manufacturers seem to have forgotten such as a wave scanning oscillator and a form of modular patch memory for modulations.

A few years ago Korg introduced the Legacy Collection. Virtual software copies of some of their most famous synthesizers including the Wavestation, PolySix, and MS20. The MS20 is truly a flagship classic analog synth. it is unique in sound and layout, has an amazing dual filter section which has been cloned and copied of decades since it's demise, and also offers a semi-modular patching system. Kord then went one step further with their virtual software releases by creating a new hardware clone of the MS20 synth itself right down to the original color scheme, knobs, and patchbay.  Some slight changes were made such as the use of 3.5mm jacks intead of the original 1/4" ones and , of course, there is no CV control or actual internal sound engine. However, the legacy MS20 controller hooks up to any computer via USB and then allows you to twist and tweak in controller knobs, patch the jacks, and process external audio or run it as a guitar synth just like the original.  This moves the legacy system from just another software clone to an actual clone of the Interface complete with all it's immediate features. quirks, and real time inter-connections.

Here is a short video demo I made showcasing how it works:



On of the reasons modular systems are so popular among hardcore synthesists and sound designers is they offer a tactile and visual interface that is both immediate and inspiring. Both Bob Moog and Don Buchla realized years ago it wasn't enough to have a box of circuits if you wanted to create ART.  It may be a throwback or clone of the past but by creating a mock hardware interface to go with their software sound engine the MS20 legacy instrument brings the old into the 21st century.

No one nailed the answer but there quite a few great guesses. Free downloads have been awarded. If you'd like to see more synthish contests in the future drop me an email via this blog.

And, of course,  Real-time tweak on!