New Live Music!

It's been a while since I posted. I've had many ideas for reviving this Blog but for now I'll just start with where it all matters: The music and people.




At the end of February 2020 my friend and local Philadelphia EMusic veteran SteveO and I got together and set up some gear and just improvised for the evening. On a whim I recorded it and when I went back to the files and mixed things it reminded me a lot of the 1990s live Music For Isolation Tanks coffeehouse gigs I did (now available as the Caffeine album) . Sure some of the gear has changed and while our styles have evolved setting up a limited amount of gear and making the most of it is pretty much what I always did.

These jams include some old favorites of mine in gear (hell-O Juno106!) but also some of my DAEDSound.com  circuit bent gizmos that weren't  around in the 90s.

SteveO is the founder and leader of many Philadelphia Electronic bands including the brilliant Punch Drunk  and Klockenhouzer as well as the bass player in the Goth/Doom Metal Band The Worst Ones.

You can see some of Punch Drunk's theatrical and aural mayhem online and still buy their compilation CD  on amazon.  or listen on Spotify.  Here's a great example of what made them so unique and exciting:

We did two jams for a Looong time and I edited them down (believe it or not!) The link is a free download of two songs totaling over 25 minutes. Enjoy!

Back with Beats...

Been a while since I posted. Here are some things that I have been recording the past few months. Find all and more at DavidTalento.bandcamp.com



MegoDETH Vs Music For Isolations Tanks Upcoming Full Length: 
  


Music For Isolation Tanks new track:

 
More New Acid: 

Mixed Signals...

For those interested in what all this philosophizing on inspiration,  composing, and general sound mayhem adds up to I present my new full length album of heavy synthesis by Sweeping the Noise Floor, titled Mixed Signals..  I have been recording and mixing the material for this record off and on for a bit over three years. During that time I've acquired new tools and instruments, learned a few new techniques, and mixed and matched those integrating them into my vision of what Sweeping the Noise Floor should be.

To Stream the album in it's entirely you can click below or go directly to http://davidtalento.bandcamp.com/album/mixed-signals








Mixed Signals,  is a 12 song, hour plus culmination of my more free form all synth based material. Here is the description from the main release page:

This is the second full length Sweeping the Noise Floor studio album following up on 2007's "Baseline. Over Three years in the making "mixed Signals" showcases a growth of the overall Sweeping the Noise Floor sound and intention while maintaining it's creeping energy and dedication to emotional sound exploration. 

There is a lot of variety in these songs. Some evolve slowly while others tic and ping back and forth in the audio realm. Some ever have (gasp) melody while others take the listener to uncharted territory and aural locations. While the length runs over and hour you'll find different songs take their own path and time frame to get where they are going. 

A few of these tracks have been previous released over the years most notably "That Which Was Then Becoming" which appeared on the international compilation "Signs" dedicated to notated scores and Buchla Modular synthesis as well as on the synthesis and art blog:   SynthandI.blogspot.com 

Modular synthesis in general still take center stage including instruments by Buchla, Serge, Modcan, and various DIY manufacturers such as MegoOhm and DAEDSound.com. There are also older mono synths and some new additional tools such as custom Reaktor ensembles and very creative recording and mixing techniques. The end result is a step forward in sound exploration which, I believe, creates a cohesive whole. 

The "album" was specifically mixed and sequenced to be listened to in it's entirely, perhaps as background, perhaps as the main event. However you choose to apply it I thank you for your support and hope you enjoy it as much as I have putting it all together. 

DT Phila Pa, May 2013

To make things a little more interesting I'll be pointing out some highlights from tracks as I remember making them along with some insight into the process in upcoming posts. In the meantime feel free to listen, download, and enjoy. Comments are welcome and if anyone would like to do a published review or suggest someplace I should submit the album for review please let me know and I'll send off a free download code.

Headphones ON!

Guitar/ Not Guitar... and No One Played Synthesizer...

I have always been obsessed with sound and making unusual noises using whatever tools I could find. Long before I owned a synthesizer my first introduction to "synthesis" was via stomp  box effects, especially delays. Those little colored stomp boxes on the floor in front of guitarists onstage that would make their instrument sounds like jet airplanes taking off (flangers),  doubled parts (choruses and pitch shifters), or perhaps my favorite, multi-part harmonies and spaced out swirling notes (delays).


All of this culminated years later when I did a series of shows and an album appropriated titled "Guitar/Not Guitar) where the idea was to pick up what looked like a conventional six string guitar on stage and have the sound the audience heard be anything but a traditional six strong guitar.  I used effects, a guitar synth, loopers, and even a midi guitar for parts of the set. A simple example of "guitar/not guitar" can be found here where I play Roland GR300 guitar synth into a delay and build the loop in real time. This was done in one take with no overdubs


But before I get to ahead of myself my exposure to doing this started years before I even knew what a guitar or delay was. As a good American teenager I listened to what is now considered "classic rock" radio stations and friend's record collections, etc and it was there I first heard the guitar pyrotechnics of Brian May from the band Queen.  Bloated AOR radio rock bands in a synth blog? you might ask? Well, yes there is a direct connection, please stay with me!

Casual fans might not be aware but Queen's first six albums (the initial ones with all their big rock hits) all had extensive studio wizardry with effects DIY amps, effects, innovative overdubbing, etc. In other words sound sculpting at it's most creative and finest. They were so proud of the work they put in they didn't want anyone to confuse the huge string and orchestral arrangements (done entirely on guitar) that they brazenly put the words "No One Played Synthesizer" on the credits of each of these records. Like their music or not, Brian May was always a true sound pioneer modifying his amps and literally building his main guitar from scratch to get it's wiring to do exactly what he wanted. He also used a series of delays to achieve his trademark sound and developed a way to reproduce his studio work live in real time on a single guitar. In this video he demonstrates one technique he uses combining two short delays one after another to make multiple notes play at once:

 

Seems simple enough (all the masters make difficult things seem simple) but with a little experimentation and practice you can try this at home with similar results. Now again, perhaps Radio Ga-Ga isn't everyone's cup of English tea (personally I liked their earlier "non synth" albums) but from a pure sound excursion level you can't argue with the technique and passionate drive to create new sounds. May's use of muted rhythm playing, echo, volume swells and more seeped into my teenage synthesist's brain and when combined with the other tools and artists I stumbled across better known for their guitar sound work (Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, etc) I was off and running in my journey to explore and create.

As a coda to this post I'll add that there is a classic lost video of an Extremely young Adrian Belew giving a class on "How to Play Electronic Guitar". In the 80s instructional VHS tapes were all the rage and most taught budding fanboys how to shred like their latest metal hero or plays the blues. Someone thought it was a good idea to get a true wizard of bizarre noises to do an instructional video showing how he made his guitar sound like Seagulls, Rhinos, Spaceships, and more.

I suppose outside of the more subtle influences if there ever was a genesis of Guitar/Not Guitar Belew's VHS tape would be it. I've always loved the title was ELECTRONIC guitar not Electric guitar. Truth in advertising folks.

Strum and pick on!

Happy Vintage Holidays...

Proving that analog is much more than synths and psychedelic is much more than stoned guitars or TB303s I present a 15 year old recording that pushed the limits even for an underground band. Overdrive Date Master   was an indie rock/experimental psychedelic (that's what rock guys called Noise back then) band. we had a loud and sordid career throughout the 1990s playing the usual circuit of rock clubs in town and a few extra shows as here and there. We started with synths and guitars into a pile of effects along with some older drum machines and tape echos and usually ran everything into a wall of a half dozen or so tube amps we lined up onstage so we wouldn't have to use the pa. As we discovered more odd instruments (Casio saxophone, 8RPM record players, Library of Congress for the Blind pitch shifting tape recorders) we piled more delays and effects on the mix and kept pushing the reverb and vibrato on those Fender amps. 

Eventually we decided to just drop the guitars and any semblance of songs all together and did a show of just   playing and processing esoteric records, found tapes, and toys. We called this our "holiday party" and set up Christmas lights, put a Santa hat on the clapping monkey, and had Tomy robots running into the audience delivering Christmas cards and holiday treats. Perhaps it was because of the spectacle or maybe people just didn't mind the noise as much as we thought they might but the show caught on and eventually as other obligations and bands took hold Overdrive Date Master slept most of the year only to come alive for the one show a year which grew from small clubs to larger venues and eventually out of town festivals. 

Instruments would sometimes creep in but only if they didn't do anything musical. That wasn't too hard when the mandolin met stereo rack mount processors and more amps started showing up.

Vinyl played a big part in the proceedings and everything from "Songs of the Humpback Whale" to "How to Think by Steven Allen" and Chipmunks tunes played on 16 RPM (try it; the voices are "normal" and music is, well. appropriately possessed) had their turn. "Now Playing" placards adorned either side of the stage to announce to the audience what was being deconstructed before their very ears. Instruction records such as how to be an actor or even my favorite a "Do It Yourself Psychoanalytical Kit" fought with distorted and manipulated Holiday tunes while I hit the "Habanera" preset and we set our sites for the heart of the Sun. 

The mess always ended with various bleeps, bloops, echos, and holiday cheer balancing out ringing ears. It might not be what one expects from "Electronic" or ?Experimental" or even "music" but it always got us through another year.

Now for the first time in 15 years you can relieve the mayhem of the show that started it all. Free Download with inserts and additions for all.

"You can clap if you want to."

Ridiculous...

I recently found an old cassette tape my friend Kent Williams had sent me back in the 1990s. You know when "tape trading" was all the rage and long before CDrs let alone digital recording. Well, to be fair I think DAT was the high end studio bees Knees.

Anyway those were the days when I'd pick up two cheesy analog pieces and do a "jam" twiddling knobs like a monkey not really knowing what I was doing and then declare I had written a "track". I guess in some ways not much has changed.

Anyway this is a silly two bit piece with the lowest of the low drum machines (a Boss DR55) and Roland SH101 monosynth I remember buying from a Pawn shop in south Philly during my lunch break from work. I set the drum machine to "Velveta" and threw a few note sequence into the SH101 and, well, recorded a track. And then promptly forgot about it forever. Until I found it on the ass end of a cassette tape this year.



What do we learn from all this? Perhaps a little about enthusiasm and youth and how friends make it all worthwhile. Or maybe just twiddling analog stuff is good clean stupid fun.

Either way, bleep on...

Let Me Introduce You to the Devil ( or Noise on a Budget Part One)

This blog is about sound and synthesis. Along the way I've often talked about the tools available or certain instruments I use. Because of my niche using modular synthesis many of the tools I mention,  however interesting and cool, are difficult to obtain. Once you start building a system things can get quite expensive very quickly as well. Premium prices for highly desirable instruments are nothing new of course. Collectors have paid thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars for certain model guitars, amps, and yes, modular synthesizers for years.

The punk in me often feels the need to turn off the vintage machines and wall'o'modulars to sit down and do something immediate, simple, and satisfying. This could be a hand made noise box like my DAED Feedback Synth or something by Bugbrand  to a circuit bent gizmo or even stock toy that just does weird sounds.

But you hardly need to win the lottery or roll your own DIY noise boxes to make interesting affordable music. Those with  smart phones know you can download any number of apps that change your voice, make noises by waving your phone in the air, or even have complex touch screen synthesizers for 99 cents (or free). Yet you don't even have to go that far to find noise at your finger tips. If you're readying this blog on a computer happiness is only a mouse click away.

Both Macs and PCs will run Virtual Studio Technology or VST. You can download free host players and VST apps (they're called "plugins")  and load them on almost any computer from an old clunker to your office or school laptop. Future posts will explain the ins and outs of some of my favorite free downloads but for this first mention I'd like get right to the music and, in particular have you meet The Devil Inside.



VSTs come in all shapes and sizes but I am partial to the simple ones with easy to tweak interfaces. Easily accessible knobs or sliders- just like on a hardware synth- make playing with sound on a computer screen easy and fun. There are literally thousands of programs available from every type of company but one of my favorites is a small Spanish company called  ELOGOXA.

Their bio reads: "We offer our stuff for free, as we haven't any other interests more than learning and enjoy doing the plugins".  And Elogoxa doesn't just offer standard fare. Their plugins range from self generating ambient machines to dual tape loop simulators, odds synths, interesting twists on outboard recording gear, and, the inspiration for this post, an odd distortion laden feedback machine

Just like my handheld noise boxes you can sit down and tweak to your heart's content and just like modular synths you can get as complicated as you want or keep things dead simple. The Devil Inside starts it's synthesis with a multiple waveform distortion section featuring an inviting  graphical interface. It then adds  filter and waveshaper parameters, EQ, level, and envelope controls, and much more. But what makes this a stellar VST is it is much more than the sum of it's parts and the more you mess with it the more inspirational it becomes. With some practice you can make it wail, ping, crunch, or sweep evolving drones in real time.

Here is a track I did a few years ago to give an example of some of the tones and possibilities of this plugin:


Many hardware synthesists often lament the use of computers for music making. We like the tactile control and visual feedback from seeing a box with controls we can reach out and twist or press. And we don't  want to be tied to a computer which we use too much for email, work, or entertainment already. Music is the release from the day to day, not another reason to boot up the same machine we use all the time.

But some VSTs, like the Devil Inside, can bridge the gap between computer and hardware and capture the spirit of creative sound creation. Just as modular synthesis can offer endless possibilities for sound exploration, so too can these virtual tools.

As with any set of tools there are good ones and bad ones and the more experienced you are in using them the better your chances of getting a result you're satisfied with. That said The Devil Inside plugin lends itself to exploration right away and I believe even a beginner can get something unique and interesting right away. But don't take my word for it. You  can visit  ELOGOXA and download a copy of  at this link:
http://www.uv.es/~ruizcan/p_vst.htm for free. Go ahead, give the Devil his due.

Growl on.

Mellotron Demo Destroyed...

It's been a few weeks since I last posted and there are some exciting things coming up but rather than wait longer and longer I figured I'd at least post something in the meantime. This is a silly track I composed a few years ago.

The "musical" component of it comes from samples of a Zero Oscillator which is a particular analog oscillator capable of some extraordinary sounds. The Voice samples are taken from a 1960s video which demonstrate the famous Mellotron as a kind of home entertainment system. of course I destroyed both sources and messed with everything until it came out, well, like this:




The track was assembled bit-by-bit in Sony ACID incrementally moving and clipping loops here and there until everything made as much sense as, well, what you hear. It's a bit of a challenging track but if you can stick with it hopefully you'll get the sense of humor and pay off as well :)

Scratch on!

New Member to the Family and A lesson in Live Modular Mixing...

After a few year wait (well, over a decade if you count rumors, I received my Fenix II modular from Holland this week.  I'm sure she'll be making a lot of appearances on the blog in the future and I'll give a more complete description soon but for now here is a little ditty I patched up this morning after coffee.



This patch uses only one VCO and has five main elements going into Mixer1 and Mixer2 and is a good example of how I "play" a live patch by mixing the elements up and down in the master stereo out in real time and tweaking.

 1. Square Wave into Mixer 1 Input 1 having it's pitch modulated by the internal sequencer

 2. Square Wave going into Mixer 1 Input 2. The wave is being fed into the wave multiplier which is being controlled by the same clock (LFO4) as the sequencer

 3. Sawtooth wave into Mixer 1 Input 3. This waveform is being fed into VCF2 which is being modulated by a sine wave from LFO2. You can hear it self oscillating more as the track builds.

4. Digital noise going into Mixer 2, Input 1. The CV of the digital noise is being modulated by the sequencer out as well.

 5. Analog Noise being fed into Mixer 2, Input 2.


The basic structure starts with me mixing in the analog noise and then digital noise. I bring the Wave Multiplied Square up in the mix and shortly mix down the noise and move the Square wave sequence to the forefront. Then I add in the Filtered  sawtooth and tweak the filter, digital noise CV and levels until we work our way back down and abruptly end on the noise beat. All of that mess is then fed into the internal phaser with the + and - outputs going into the dual left and right outputs.

There is no additional reverb, compression, or any panning or volume change in the mix. This is 100% live as recorded directly from the Fenix to WAV.

Enjoy!

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.

Exile - Ambient Music from 1994

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.

What Do you DO with All this Stuff Anyway???

The title of this post is a very valid and frequent question I get when someone sees my studio filled with synths and wires and steps over piles of power supplies, drum machines, stomp boxes and more. The answer is a big more complex but could be simplified into the short answer, "I make music with it". You can blame my Jr High School music teacher, Charles Terry, for introducing me to the very first synthesizer I saw in real life (an Arp Odysessy) and defining music as "Any Meaningfully Organized Pattern of Sound". Seriously, he was THAT cool and it just goes to show some things from your school days do stick with you.


I recently had the opportunity to attend the annual Musicology conference which was held in Philadelphia (my hometown) this year. One of the speakers played a clip of an interview she did with one of the pioneers of Detroit techno where he stated rather than worry or think about genres or types of music (House, Acid, Techno, etc) he just "made music" and put it out adding, "I leave the labeling to others". My musical background both in appreciation and in training is diverse. I suppose that combined with seeing artists from all media who have always made their own path influenced me to never really do the same thing twice and to not pay much attention to where it would "fit". A short list of such artists would include Charles Ives, Chuck Close, Brian Eno, Controlled Bleeding, Hal Hartley, Joe Jackson, Louis Armstrong, and Reed Ghazala.


I founded HelpWantedProductions.com in the early 90s as a vehicle to put out cassettes and do shows of my then new interest in electronic music. I released tapes, CDs, and eventually downloads and played hundreds of shows of everything from Ambient, Industrial, Power Electronics, Dark Synth, Techno, Handheld and 8bit, Indie Rock, and about a dozen other genres all of which really don't convey what the music is. Some is played with guitar and bass, other has DIY soldered noise boxes, analog or digital synths, drum machines, and theremins. All of it, as diverse as it is, comes from the same place. I have music on other labels and compilation CDs as well as various online sites and have collaborated with other artists, festivals, and frequently play as a band member in a few friend's projects doing everything from keyboards and bass to vocals and Omnichord. All the piles'o'gear come in handy but when it comes down to it I grab a few pieces and just go with them either solo or with others and make music.


As you may have noticed this post is liberally sprinkled with links to streaming and downloadable files. This year I decided to come into the 21st century and create a page with much of the HelpWantedProductions.com back catalog. Not everything is up but more will be added. For now there are XOXBOX live sets, Modular synth sets (including This One of my large ModcanA system which has been written about on this blog), Guitar Synth and ACID music
albums, and more.

The official page which will be updated occasionally is at: http://davidtalento.bandcamp.com/.

All tracks are free to stream and most are a name-your-own-price system. It's not the full picture and as you can tell by this blog hardly the end of all this. But to answer those that wonder "what do you DO with all that gear?" it will do for now.


Listen On!

More with Less...

There are many ways to make music. Sometimes you can use a $15,000+ modular synthesizer. Sometimes you can use an abandoned yamaha dx21 and a delay pedal.

Both methods have their place.

When you combine an evening of good company, drink, and Kent Williams and I playing whatever we picked up off the floor of his son's room in Iowa City you sometimes get a pretty cool acoustic and ambient collage EP.

Like this: http://chaircrusher.bandcamp.com/album/memoriam
Truthfully, I had as much fun making weird noises using three presets on the 4op synth as I have at times with my wall'o'modular synths. The spark was there and the need to explore was brought out and into focus. It also felt good to pick up a few odds and ends and make music without a second thought.

I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as we did making it.

Plink on!

UPDATE - 9/5/11:
A few folks have taken the creative common license and made some great work out of our original tracks. The EP now officially includes a fourth track by Michael Crooker with live drums and other instruments mixed in, out, and all around the original recording.

Check it out here:

http://chaircrusher.bandcamp.com/track/part-2-mike-crooker-krautrock-mix

New Song...

This blog presents the song I put together based on the patching from last weeks post. Here it is:

Play Nice by DAEDSound


As previously mentioned this involves cross patching between the Buchla 200e and a few standard and custom modules in my primary banana jack modular. For gearheads into the recording part of things my newest discovery and tool is a Zoom R16 multitrack digital recorder which has literally revolutionized how I record and edit tracks. The R16 allows you to record up to 8 tracks at a time - each with their own WAV file. Everything is recorded onto a SD card which you then can pop out and load into your computer. Since I do almost all my recording on hardware or tape and do all my mixing and editing on a computer this merges the gap allowing me to record *individual* tracks which I then can load one at a time into my DAW and edit, pan, fade, process, etc easily. Prior to this I was mostly recording everything to a live stereo track and doing all the part mixing live in the original take with various audio modules like the 207e or Cyndustries MixSix. Once the track was down I was more or less stuck with how the levels came in and out on the track and couldn't process each channel on it's own. With the R16 I run individual outs from each module into the 1/4" inputs and then dump the WAV files and import them one at a time. I still get to record and play the whole track live but I then have the flexibility to mix levels and process each oscillator or instrument further.

I guess I should point out the zoom R16 is a portable (it runs on batteries as well as AC) fancy pants digital multitrack. You can record, edit, mix, process, etc all on the unit itself. For my purposes I really am using it for nothing more than a glorified tape multitrack and the nice thing is it allows me to do this without interfering. I'm sure at some point in this blog's future i'll do a rant on technology and creativity and how they sometimes interfere with each others (the 200e is not immune to this either!) but for now I'm quite happy I can just "plug and play" and use this piece how I want to without forcing me to use work arounds.

For this song I recorded about five minutes of live playing on the two modulars and then overdubbed some live processed bass and drum playing. I wasn't happy with the drumming so I didn't end up using it and when all was said and done I ended up cutting and pasting different parts of the bass playing throughout the song. You can hear one of the live backwards leads at the very beginning of the track. For eagle ears and TOTAL gearheads all the bass playing is my trusty 90s Ibanez SR1000e into a Boss ME50B. The backwards stuff was done 100% live using the "Slo Gear" mimic on the ME50. Nice trick that.

The basic live playing makes up the majority of the track. At the end of the original take I did a noise jam on the modulars which I then also went off on when I added the bass overdub. When it came down to the mix since I had everything separated on the PC I was able to trim the end of the basic jam track and mix in parts of the noise jam earlier towards the end as well as insert some of the end of the track throughout and mix/fade the various parts together. So, in effect, this track was done live with one instrument overdub and then reassembled using the original take as the core and adding different elements of it throughout. This process allows me to capture the original inspiration of the track and it's take but then expand upon it and present it as moire than a simple linear composition. The image inserted here shows the mix with volume envelopes and cut and pasted parts fading in and out under the solid stereo foundation.

I'm enjoying this new twist on my old methods and will have more examples in the near future. It's only taken about a decade and a half but it seems I'm finally finding a recording system for modular synths that gives me the best of my desire for hands on hardware recording with simple automated longitudinal editing. Many more bleeps to follow. Enjoy.

Less talk, more music...

I've been working on a number of recordings the past couple of weeks.












This is not one of them:
Scratch 80 by DAEDSound

I wandered into the studio and turned on the 200e and mismatched a preset which called up the "wrong" set of oscillators and modulation routings. I've gotten in the habit of keeping a small WAV recorder handy so about twenty minutes later this track was recorded based on the happy accident.

Mostly the 259e,261e, and ZOe with some old stompbox analog delay. Mixed in Acid with my fav VST spring reverb plugin and we're done for the night.

The image above is a photo I took of the Loud Objects performance at Bentfest NYC a few years ago. I think it fits the track more or less.

Enjoy.