Journey Into Sound: Week Note #8
Patch notes for My first YouTube video: a eurorack improvisation called “Tell Me When”.
I did a bit of re-organisation of my modular case so I could fit in a fairly simple analog voice along with Rings and Plaits. This meant removing all of the drum modules apart from a 2hp kick and BIA and (natch) the purchase of a couple of new modules – an endorphines Godspeed VCO and an ALM pip-slope envelope. I still plan on switching out Maths for more conventional LFOs and attenuverters at some point. The Godspeed is a great little oscillator module with both East and West coast tones (reminiscent of the 0Coast), a sub-octave output and a mixable noise source. You get a lot more sonic variation than you might expect in 8hp.
However the best recent purchase is an Instruo 0chd – a Divkid designed 4hp versatile source of modulation – really great for getting a whole load of movement and life into your patches which takes a bit of the pressure off when performing and allows you to be a bit more still, listen and tweak rather than feeling the need to keep moving too many controls. I really recommend this module – it should be in everyone’s case.
So on to the patch and the video…
Mutable Instruments Marbles is at the heart of this patch and this is the first time I’ve properly explored it since getting it secondhand a while back. I’ve done this kind of patch using the Turing Machine setting on Disting Mk4 but Marbles is next level. In this patch I’m using the three quantised CV outputs — X1 and it’s associated trigger T1 is strumming Rings, creating a sort of picked damped guitar line with lots of ringing harmonics (modulated by 0chd). X2 is feeding a sample and hold which is triggered every bar to create a simple bassline on the BIA. The third output X3 is feeding Plaits to play the melody with the gate coming from a Euclidean pattern generated by Stoichea. This is given a little bit of rhythmic variation by Phoreo which occasionally triggers a short triplet, modulated by an LFO from Pam’s which in turn is modulated by 0chd.
The rhythm part (Rings) goes through Magneto which gives it a bit of a triplet feel and a nice lo-fi sound with crinkle and flutter set quite high. These effects really shine through on the brighter harmonics when they occur. I really love the crinkle effect on Magneto.
Everything is mixed on a McMillen K-Mix and I’m using the mutes on that to bring parts in. The K-Mix acts as an 8 channel sound card so everything was recorded separately into Ableton. Post production was pretty simple — balance the tracks, add some NI Raum reverb (my new favourite ‘verb) onto Plaits and a teensy bit of eq and Ozone compression on the master bus as usual.
For the performance I’ve found and fixed a melody and rhythmic pattern on Marbles that I was happy and then I’m using the Bias knob to walk it through some chord progressions and also the Spread knob to change the arpeggio voicing and the melody. Doing it this way is a little imprecise — I got some happy accidents but also didn’t quite manage to properly nail the chord changes exactly as I wanted to each time. I did a few takes and this was probably the best one. I guess Lightbath has the patience to rehearse for longer and he’s more practised and skilled too but I’m pretty pleased with the result.
For me it has the feel of a Pat Metheny ballad — I really like the melody and can imagine it being played on a nylon guitar and I think the next step for this composition is to re-create a version in Ableton, develop the ideas further and transcribe the melody line for a friend of mine to play on the guitar. This will be the first time I’ve taken an improvised generative piece and tried to transform it into a song.
And finally… the video. This is my first youtube film: I’ve been saying I should do this for a while now but it is a massive faff isn’t it? Not helped at all by how messy my studio always is. I’m not going to go into the setup or workflow on the video side because it was so terrible. I assume that those that do this sort of thing regularly film what they’re doing the whole time and then have a massive reviewing and editing job to do. I kept things a little more simple for this first foray by cheating! Yes reader, I mimed along to the audio I’d already created. It’s not quite the Attenborough polar bear cub level of TV fakery but I’ll try and do better next time.
