#modular synthesiser

[neuro-chaos]

NASA ARP

A stochastic experiment with two ARP 2600s.

The ARP synthesiser was invented by  Alan Robert Pearlman,  a NASA engineer, in 1969.

The ARP 2500 was used in the 5 notes sequence of the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, played by Phil Dodds, of ARP.

https://on.soundcloud.com/DyHXt

[kekwcomics]

I HAZ A NEW ALBUM OUT.

TRANSIENT SOLIDS by BRAM Van BARTEK

"Lo-Fi science-fiction music from a parallel-1980s: eccentric, slowly evolving minimal electronic poly-rhythms that stumble and trip over their own analogue shoelaces. Raw, unpolished synth sequences that unzip and unspool themselves like broken DNA helices. File under: Failed Futures." Available as a digital download or a super-limited physical CD here:

[moult]

thinks: i haven't understood anything he's said for the last five minutes. waveshaper? cross-modulation? what? ... what kind of music-makers' meet-up is this? prompted by watching the modular synth documentary i dream of wires. viv is ver intuitive and all about knowing one instrument, however basic, inside out, so when they meet the type of guy who begins with tech and has a studio lined with eurorack modules it's... interesting. (fwiw i have the vices of both and the virtues of neither, check out my soundcloud for proof.)

[trevlad-sounds]

The latest 50 from Invisible Club.

[verb-lass]

number two reason i could not own a large modular synthesiser is cost. number one reason is i would absolutely bone the shit out of that beautiful machine

[scifigeneration]

Blade Runner soundtrack at 30: how Vangelis used electronic music to explore what it means to be human

by Alison Cole, Composer and Lecturer in Screen Composition, Sydney Conservatorium of Music at the University of Sydney

In June 1994 the late composer Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou – better known as Vangelis – released his soundtrack for the 1982 film Blade Runner. It would go on to become emblematic of his skills, with only a handful of soundtracks reaching a similar level of cult status.

Prior to this, sci-fi film scores tended to be characterised by orchestral sound palettes. For instance, John Williams’ 1991 Star Wars soundtrack leaned on the London Symphony Orchestra to communicate the vastness of a galaxy far, far away.

Vangelis, on the other hand, used an electronic approach to bring a subtlety and complexity that shifted the focus inwards. His ability to communicate deep emotion, alongside expansive philosophical concepts, was perhaps his greatest achievement with Blade Runner.

Missing pieces

Director Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner was adapted from Phillip K. Dick’s 1968 sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – which itself was a thoughtful examination of empathy and what it means to be human. The emotional gravitas of the original story, along with Vangelis’ accompanying timbral exploration, created an aural experience that was new to sci-fi films at the time.

Vangelis began work on the score in 1981. He received edited footage scene-by-scene on VHS tapes and created live takes in his studio with his synthesiser collection.

However, the first official soundtrack was delayed some 12 years after the film’s release, due to what was reportedly an ongoing disagreement with producers.

When it finally was released, purists viewed it as more of an album than a soundtrack. They criticised it for not having much of the music used in the original film, and for including pieces that never appeared in the film, such as Main Titles and Blush Response.

While the 2007 version (a 25th anniversary edition) included some unreleased material, parts of the original soundtrack remain unreleased even today.

A symmetry between newness and nostalgia

By emphasising longer drawn out notes, rather than thick instrumental combinations, Vangelis thoughtfully taps into the atmosphere of Scott’s visual world to create something truly unique.

Early sci-fi movies such as Forbidden Planet (1956) and The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951) often used electronic instruments developed in the early to mid-1900s, such as the theremin and the modular synthesiser. While these instruments helped augment concepts such as aliens, spaceships and robots, they did this somewhat simplistically.

A more sophisticated perspective pervades through Blade Runner, which combines film-noir instrumentation with classical, electronic, jazz and Middle Eastern music genres.

Specifically, Vangelis leverages the different sound qualities of synthesisers – such as bright and airy, thin and cold, or dark and thick – to at once capture emotion and highlight the complex ideas in the film’s narrative. In the final act, expansive synths dominate as the film reaches an intellectual and emotional climax.

While the synthesisers lend an artificial timbre to the score, the musicality simultaneously communicates life and feeling. In this way the foreign and familiar became enmeshed.

The film’s retro costuming and brutalist architecture also set up an expectation for the soundtrack. At times, the score will meaningfully go against this expectation by delving into a more nostalgic sound. The track Love Theme is a perfect example.

Innovative takes

Vangelis’ innovative use of dialogue in the soundtrack also helped to translate the complexities of the human condition. The tracks Main Titles, Blush Response, Wait for Me and Tears in Rain all feature dialogue in a way that makes them feel like a part of the film’s DNA.

The soundtrack’s arrangement was also uncommon for its time, as it mirrored the action narrative sequence. Tracks 1 through 4 are mixed as a single ongoing track. Tracks 5 through 7 are separated by silence, while tracks 8 through to 12 are also combined into a single piece. While this technique is common in electronic composition now, it was unique at the time.

The films dark, fraught and sad dystopian themes are further highlighted through collaborations with Welsh singer Mary Hopkins in Rachel’s Song, and Greek singer Demis Roussos in Tales of the Future.

Today, the Blade Runner soundtrack remains the most beloved of Vangelis’ works by his ardent fans – and it continues to commands its place in the 20th-century electronic music canon.

[burlveneer-music]

Domenico Lancellotti - sramba

Tom Zé, Faust and João Gilberto collide in Domenico Lancellotti’s “machine samba” It’s midwinter in Lisbon and Domenico Lancellotti has invited Ricardo Dias Gomes to stay for a while. They waste no time in doing what they always do, heading down to their underground studio, appropriately nicknamed The Cave, to make music. The fact that Ricardo had just been sent a bunch of Russian-designed synths and was eager to try them out, instantly signalled a direction for the album. “Ricardo had his instruments, modular machines” remembers Domenico, “and I had my guitar, some percussion instruments. On the first day we started making sounds and recording them, and songs started to appear, sambas started to appear.” In just a couple of months the duo recorded the majority of what would become SRAMBA, an album that reaches back to the roots of samba, but does so whilst completely revamping its blueprint, indoctrinating guitar and percussion-led rhythms with analogue synthesisers, Ricardo’s beloved machines. Domenico and Ricardo instantly saw how the synthesisers were not at odds with the sambas they were playing, instead they had a similar sound to its typical percussion instruments (ganza, repinique, surdo, tarol). What’s more, they saw a connection with roots samba, the samba that existed before bossa nova and samba jazz came along. This was rhythmic samba, with grooves that could go on ad infinitum. “It’s samba de clave, geometrically structured” says Domenico. “It’s ostinato samba”, adds Ricardo. Both Domenico Lancellotti and Ricardo Dias Gomes are revered names within Brazilian music over the past 20 years. As a member of the +2’s, with Moreno Veloso and Kassin, Domenico released a trio of albums on Luaka Bop in the early 00s that pioneered a new Rio samba sound with elements of funk and psychedelia. With Veloso and Kassin he would later form Orquestra Imperial, a big band intent on reviving ballroom (gafieira) samba, and that has worked with guest vocalists such as Seu Jorge, Elza Soares and Ed Motta. SRAMBA is his fourth solo album. Multi-instrumentalist Ricardo Dias Gomes first came to notice as a member of Caetano Veloso’s band Cê which helped reinvigorate Caetano’s career with a sound influenced by British new wave. As well as collaborations with Lucas Santtana, Negro Leo and Thiago Nassif, and work with his own group Do Amor, he has released a series of acclaimed solo albums that reveal a restless music-maker. Domenico- guitarras, voz, mpc-1000, bateria eletrônica, caxixi Ricardo- baixo, bateria eletrônica, rodhes Aquiles Morais-trompete Everson Morais- trombone Arranjo de metais- Aquiles Morais

[daemonhxckergrrl]

panel 1: a floor-to-ceiling modular synthesiser with pink, blue and white cables spaghetti'd everywhere

panel 2: a girl rearranging those cables and neatening them up

panel 3: she's opening a new pack of Evorel 50

title: patch change

[amber-pecan]

modular synthesiser would be such a cute name for a baby girl

[kvltoris]

had a dream i started playing a modular synthesiser at a party and then someone told me to wear a purple skirt, and the purple colour symbolised violence. possibly the most transgender dream ive ever had

[neuro-chaos]

Drone Phase

Ayamikhan · Drone Phase

https://on.soundcloud.com/pzm6m

An experiment with Oberheim SEM.

[michaelgogins]

More Notes on the Computer Music Playpen

I have finished maintenance on the VST3 plugin opcodes for Csound, Csound for Android, and some other things, and am re-focusing in composition.

One thing that happened as I was cleaning up the VST3 opcodes is that I discovered a very important thing. There are computer music programs that function as VST3 plugins and that significantly exceed the quality or power what Csound has so far done on it own, just for examples that I am using or plan to use:

The Valhalla reverbs by Sean Costello -- I think these actually derive from a reverb design that Sean did in the 1990s when he and I both were attending the Woof meetings at Columbia University. Sean's reverb design was ported first to Csound orchestra code, and then to C as a built-in opcode. It's the best and most widely used reverb in Csound, but it's not as good as the Valhalla reverbs, partly because the Valhalla reverbs can do a good job of preserving stereo.

Cardinal -- This is a fairly complete port of the VCV Rack "virtual Eurorack" patchable modular synthesiser not only to a VST3 plugin, but also to a WebAssembly module. This is exactly like sticking a very good Eurorack synthesizer right into Csound.

plugdata -- This is most of Pure Data, but with a slightly different and somewhat smoother user interface, as a VST3 plugin.

I also discovered that some popular digital audio workstations (DAWs), the workhorses of the popular music production industry, can embed algorithmic composition code written in a scripting language. For example, Reaper can host scripts written in Lua or Python, both of which are entirely capable of sophisticated algorithmic composition, and both of which have Csound APIs. And of course any of these DAWs can host Csound in the form of a Cabbage plugin.

All of this raises for me the question: What's the playpen? What's the most productive environment for me to compose in? Is it a DAW that now embeds my algorithms and my Csound instruments, or is it just code?

Right now the answer is not simply code, but specifically HTML5 code. And here is my experience and my reasons for not jumping to a DAW.

I don't want my pieces to break. I want my pieces to run in 20 years (assuming I am still around) just as they run today. Both HTML5 and Csound are "versionless" in the sense that they intend, and mostly succeed, in preserving complete backwards compatibility. There are Csound pieces from before 1990 that run just fine today -- that's over 33 years. But DAWs, so far, don't have such a good record in this department. I think many people find they have to keep porting older pieces to keep then running in newer software.

I'm always using a lot of resources, a lot of software, a lot of libraries. The HTML5 environment just makes this a great deal easier. Any piece of software that either is written in JavaScript or WebAssembly, or provides a JavaScript interface, can be used in a piece with a little but of JavaScript glue code. That includes Csound itself, my algorithmic composition software CsoundAC, the live coding system Strudel, and now Cardinal.

The Web browser itself contains a fantastic panoply of software, notably WebGL and WebAudio, so it's very easy to do visual music in the HTML5 environment.

[laurentgudel]

State Music — Residency at Columbia University / Computer Music Center

I spent five weeks in NYC between March and April 2023. It was a fantastic opportunity to work at the Computer Music Center in New York. The CMC is the first electronic music studio in the USA and Seth Cluett was kind enough to let me continue my research in the best conditions.

During this stay I was able to compose two new pieces for my forthcoming debut album State Music. The first was recorded in Studio 324 on two very early versions of Buchla and Serge analogue modular systems and two Bode frequency shifters. The process was similar to what I had done at EMS Stockholm, Radio Belgrade, KSYME Athens and Willem Twee Studio in Den Bosch. I tried to adapt to the machines installed in the studio, tested a lot of patches and recorded many hours of textures, accidents and other sonic events using a variety of techniques. The editing, collaging, layering and mixing was done later in my studio. I just followed one rule. Don't use the same recording twice. No loops, nothing like that.

The second composition was recorded in Jace Clayton's office. Why? Because the RCA Mark II, considered one of the first music synthesizers ever, still sits in that room. The synth has been out of order since 1976, when someone broke into the Prentis Hall building and vandalised the machine. But I decided to make use of it anyway. I opened one of the office windows to let sounds from the city into the room and recorded the tiny vibrations caused by street noise with a geophone magnetised to the synthesizer. In this way the synthesiser essentially acted as a loudspeaker. A cheap recorder was placed near the window. Two wide cardioid microphones were placed in the middle of the room for a high quality recording. Most of the time I sit in front of the synthesizer and do nothing but listen, and every now and then I flip a switch, turn a potentiometer or unplug a patch cable to activate the acoustic space of the office and make the metal frame of the machine vibrate.

It was an amazing moment. I've been working on the State Music project since 2018. I realised that being in that room with that silent machine felt like achieving something. My understanding of electronic music history is much deeper. The links between early synthesizers and the military industry are now much clearer to me. State music? Corporate music? I don't know and it doesn't matter.

Here's an anecdote from The Enabling Instrument: Milton Babbitt and the RCA Synthesizer" a paper by Martin Brody.

When the Mark-I appeared in 1955, it was listed in the RCA Acoustics Laboratory inventory with a proud comparison: The synthesiser was 'second only to the Typhoon rocket simulator as the largest single assembly to come out of the David Sarnoff Research Center'. [Although the Mark-I was built to recreate a peaceful expression of human subjectivity rather than to obliterate a hostile and remote man-machine, its input/output components were as indifferent to the workings of the psyche as an anti-aircraft predictor.As Harry Olson recalled, to test their new machine, Olson and Belar followed Seashore's playbook of analysing past performances. The goal was not to expose the musical mind, but to simulate the sounds of acoustic instruments and human performers with the utmost precision.

I would like to thank Seth Cluett, Anna Meadors, Jace Clayton and Nick Patterson for their help.

[sunburnacoustic]

Muse's music gift for university

 19 Oct 2011, reported in Belfast Telegraph

The rock band Muse have donated thousands of pounds to buy equipment for the next generation of musicians.

The trio, singer and guitarist Matt Bellamy, bass player Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard, have given £15,000 to buy state-of-the-art equipment for undergraduates at Plymouth University in their home county of Devon.

The modular analogue synthesiser, two liquid channel pre-amps and a set of specialist orchestral and instrumental microphones will be used by the university's School of Humanities and Performing Arts.

Professor David Coslett, dean of the Faculty of Arts, said: "This is a wonderfully generous gesture from Muse and will provide exciting opportunities for our students to experience the kind of industry-standard equipment very few universities have access to."

The equipment will enable students to gain hands-on experience and develop the types of recording skills used in the production of television, film, live performances and video games.

Muse, who met at school in Teignmouth, Devon, were made honorary doctors of arts by the university in 2008. They have also agreed that a portion of the donation should fund student prizes over the course of the next three years.

A spokesman for the band said: "We're delighted to provide this equipment and hope it will inspire students to go on and create great music for years to come."

[ansicred]

Tim + Engineering

This is Tim's biggest "thing", and he's been interested in it ever since he was about 4 years old and had "helped" his father fix up the family car one summer holiday. His main related collection is car manuals/schematics because he likes seeing the process of how they're built while his other collections are bits of computers (including synths) and tools. He has filled a good amount of his bookshelves with the manuals, with only certain schematics being framed and put up on his wall, and has boxes of computer parts literally everywhere. His interest in computer engineering came about while he was at school and had been offered the chance to do Computers/ICT as an A Level subject (a rarity) - which he had planned to go to university with, but his joining of and success with Odd Foxes sort of put it on the back burner. He became obsessed with synthesisers specifically after he'd bought his first one, taken it apart, and put it back together again. The obsession only grew with the synth's popularity in music and he's, essentially, an expert on them. He doesn't just play them, he fixes them when they're broken, he customises them, and builds his own (in 2023 he has 3 modular synths he's designed and built himself that he named Huey, Dewey, & Louis (Hu3y, D3w3ii, & Lo-1s). His idea of a break from work is to work on his little computer projects and mess around with computers in general, of which he has roughly 4 going at once at any one time - with one over-arching one being a synth-pc combo he lovingly nicknames his Wonderchips Project that he's spent a good deal of his free time on trying to make it work (and often using his bandmates as guinea pigs for user-friendliness testing). Aside from computers and synths, he's sometimes spent time on 'smaller' projects that involve customising music players (like a boombox he'd customised for Frank as a birthday present), fiddling with car radios, and building up a car (... despite the fact that he can't drive). He always has a small toolkit on him for emergencies and makes a point of making sure that there is a bigger one wherever he's going (one at the studio, one as part of the tour gear, one at home, etc), you know, just in case something happens that requires him to fix something.

[burlveneer-music]

Loula Yorke - Volta

“It’s all about the idea of cyclical time”, says Loula Yorke, calling us on a journey of sonic adventure through her latest album, 'Volta'. In 41 minutes we are spun across a galaxy, revolving and rotating, swelling and contracting, waxing and waning. The loop is the symbol of infinity, a connection between human pattern-making and cosmic cycles unknown; just as a tilt in Earth’s axis gives us the seasons, the smallest shift in a sequence can expand one sound into a musical universe. While 'Volta' stands on the solid foundations of Yorke’s previous work – the errant experimental frequencies of ysmysmysm, the scratchy techno punk of 'LDOLS', the tangled gravitational mass of 'Florescence' – this latest album marks a complete departure for her in both process and palette. Here Yorke steps into a zone of self-imposed order, setting aside the chaos of live improvisation, which previously found her building and trearing apart synth patches afresh for every track. Within the luminous sonic tessellations of 'Volta', synth lines are programmed rather than randomly generated, refined through days spent in front her modular sequencer, listening and adjusting … until a wormhole opens and we tumble in. Once composed, Yorke’s sequences were played and recorded live on her modular synthesiser, with no post-facto assembly or reconfiguration in the edit suite. The resulting seven pieces capture a discrete achievement in the Cottage Studio – but the circuit is only really complete when it meets the listener’s mind. 'Volta' is music for mental travel and infinite introspection: meditations on the endless-everything of the looping sequence. Suns and spheres in unstoppable motion. Hypocycloid eternal curves. Let the circles eat each other.