It just sort of dawned on me tonight that I’m less than a month from finishing my goal of 1 post a day for an entire year. My mind is blown because I don’t think I ever conceived that I could actually do this. I also noticed that somewhere along the line I messed up my post numbering. Ugh.
Here’s an excerpt of tonight’s drones.
Dove back into VCV rack a bit today and it seemed to click a bit more. Made some interesting drones and thought some thoughts. It might be fun to build (or at least plan) a small sampling/looping, modulation, and effects rack. I dunno, famous last words and all that. I’m likely too capricious for such an endeavor and should stick with my software for things like this.
I can really feel the winter in the air.
Spent some more time with the iPad, etc today and pretty much confirmed the issue the the Twister was that it was trying to draw too much power. A high-current usb battery is en route to confirm, and it should also allow me to integrate norns. After so long of guitar straight into amp it's been really fun using these things for loops and processing. Also a great reminder that Spacecraft is wonderful. These sounds are mostly noodling while setting up channels and midi controls, testing and tweaking, listening and staring off into space.
It was a lazy weekend and I enjoyed it, even if I sh/coulda gotten more things done. Oh well.
Pictures and drones of something and nothing.
Took my mobile mess out to the table this afternoon for testing. Still working on the Axoloti patch (and it appears that my damaged oled screen might finally be giving out, making it very hard to troubleshoot the patch) but things worked well running the jazzmaster into the mini > norns (mlr) > axo synth and reverb > portable speakers. Tons of variables so it definitely needs more use, but once I started playing it was a lot of fun.
The video is a synth drone with guitar loops playing from mlr, and live guitar over the top with bonus bird sounds. It was a beautiful day so the windows were open and the chickadees were really enjoying themselves at the feeders. Wasn’t planning on recording so it was done with the iphone mic. Sounds pretty decent, considering.
I tried to record this morning and both norns and the h4n were full. I’ve been really bad about keeping them clean and backing up/organizing the files. Here’s something that was on there. I don’t know how I made it and I’m not positive I haven’t posted it before. (I’m pretty sure I haven’t, but I need to get better at staying up to date)
I’ve been working on the new patch for my Axoloti scheme. Initially I was having issues with parameters jumping when I switched from one function to another. Still some things to work through, and a whole lot of connections to make/remake, but I think my new coding strategy is working. We’ll see how hard it crunches the cpu once everything is in there. Once I get the UI/control system working then I’ll start patching the synth, figuring out parameters, etc.
There isn’t much to show, and nothing running enough on the hardware to not be confusing, so I decided to make this totally impromptu demo of the drone patch which uses the encoders in the same way as it should work when the new patch is finished. 100% unplanned sounds and 100% thrown together video setup. It clips a bit at the end, but my phone was dying so take 2 wasn’t an option.
In case it’s hard to see/understand:
Top screen is page name and a scope of the audio output. Bottom screen has 4 parameter names and value display. (Bottom screen is harder to see because it got a little damaged during assembly and every other line on the display is dead. I wanted to fix it, but it reads just fine in person) Each encoder controls a parameter on the active page. Pushing the encoder switches between the 4 pages: OSC1, OSC2, OSC3, EFFECT, e.g. push encoder 1 go to page 1, and so on. Each osc page has a -11 to +11 pitch range around a common octave, lfo speed and depth, and volume. Effect page has filter cutoff and resonance, Reverb diffusion and mix. The buttons from left to right are: Common octave down, octave up, on/off. The leds display the rate of depth of the lfo for each oscillator. I specifically left the filter cutoff steppy in order to add another option for pseudo-melody. At higher resonance settings there are some great nodes to be found that ring out (hence the clipping) and really add to everything that’s going on.
I made this patch as a test to work out the hardware control scheme and then never changed it because I like it so much. There’s more in there than it would seem. Hope you enjoy.
TL: Emi coloring her heart out on the amazing drawing sent to us by our dear friend Kara.
TR: Installed B-B-B-B-Beat and it was full of glitchy bugs, until I found out that it was all intentional. haha
BL: We ordered lunch from our favorite The Red Fern and took it to Cobb’s Hill Park. These two set up nearby and proceeded to make some very interesting drones as a small group of people watched. We took a walk around the reservoir and they were gone by the time we got back, but it was SO COOL to randomly run into experimental music in the wild.
BR: There’s never a bad time for some Don’t Break The Ice.
I have owned and loved the EHX Freeze pedal since it was released. At the time I was primarily a bass player without a synth, trying to figure out how to make the drones I wanted to make — and the Freeze was it. I experimented a few times trying to add an internal feedback loop to let me add layers of frozen notes (this was before the Superego, and I should add that I didn’t end up liking that at all) and I ended up killing the pedals both times. Luckily EHX has a great repair program! In the end I put my freezes in an effects loop and it adds the most wonderful subtle modulation to the captures. This has only the barest amount of reverb on it. Best in headphones.
Had a bit of time to move some sliders on the SH-01a today. The number and simplicity of the controls belie its true depths. Everything parameter is so interactive with everything else that I kept finding myself in unexpected places. Nothing amazing here, but I had fun making this — saw waves, noise, sustained notes, arps, and lfos. I particularly enjoy how the noise source makes everything flutter/rumble.
Long drones are also nice on Wednesdays, I guess.
Really long drones are nice on Tuesdays.
Today was very productive and went by really fast. The ladies slept in and I spent some time trying to learn more about setting up routing for the iConnectmidi4+. This quickly gave way to just making music — layers and layers of loops running into the Avalanche run reverse delay with very high feedback. I love the way everything smears and gets crunchy. Was going to shorten the recording, but each section sounds so different (to me, haha) that I just left it long.
We hung around together for a bit once they got up and then they got around and went to see her parents and go swimming. I got the lumber and managed to get the shelves built. It was a pretty simple project, but I tend to overthink things so am pretty happy I just knocked it out. I also ordered some new lights for the garage because those 2 little bulbs are just not cutting it!
Take 2 with nanoloop. Recorded the whole thing with some outboard reverb and delay, but then couldn’t get iMovie to sync them together. Oh well.
Something reminded me of Stars of the Lid this morning, so I listened to the classic Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid while doing dishes, laundry, etc. Inspired by that and the upcoming drone day, tonight I pulled out my axoloti drone synth, ran it through Timeparty, and spaced out for awhile. The axo patch is a simple 3 oscillator setup, each with it’s own tuning and amp lfo, global filter and reverb. I patched it up as a test when I finished the hardware (what’s not simple is the 2 subpatches in the top left which handle all the encoder switching and screen controls) and liked it so much that I never changed it. I’m out of the habit of patching Axo, but I should get back into it. It’s usually a lot of fun and some great sounds come out of it.
Nice end to a long day of working in the garden. (though we didn’t get as much done as we had hoped to and it’s supposed to rain all week…)
Drawn-out nighttime drones. Granular and FM are wonderful together.
Lots of time trapped inside, watching the sun write on the walls…
Played a bit more music today, before work and again tonight. Was glad I pushed to do it and tonight’s drones left me with a peaceful feeling. Goodnight.
I often find that drones after the fact have lost some/most of their magic, which is sad but says something about the act of creation I guess. While this was going I laid on the floor and went to another place for awhile.
Have been too wrapped up in project ideas lately and haven’t done much music. Have to admit I’m a bit disheartened that the Jag needs a setup and I can’t play guitar when I want. Really need to get that scheduled. Small tonight sounds, recorded from the room with H4N for creaks and breathing.
