Burble

Burble is the combination of two little improvs that were done a few days apart. After I had recorded the less rhythmic, droney, layer I wondered if that rhythmic thing I had recorded a couple days earlier was in the same key and tempo enough to fit on top.

It wasn't, but I glued them together anyway.

For this one, my system was augmented with a borrowed 259e waveform generator, which I used heavily. I go back and forth on whether to add a lead sound to this one. What do you think?

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RoundMirrorRolling

Yet another 200e improv. I play with note density a lot in this one, leaving holes.

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TickTock

Finally, something with something that almost resembles a beat. This one consists of three passes: a drum pass, a pass of a bass sound through a glorpy sample hold filter, and a shimmery bubble-filter pass.

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17YearGuest

A tribute to the diversity of the insect world. This is mostly the Buchla, but there is also one sound that comes from a simple synth that I made in Max/MSP.

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Use Of Uncertainty

I flipped a coin to decide whether to put these here, or on the B-Sides page. These are three parts out of a long improv. I've tried not to get too atomic with the editing (read: I'm too lazy to do a proper job of editing these down. In particular, the middle part should be much shorter). The Uncertianty involved here is split between the 266e Source of Uncertainty module and various random processes in Gyre. I try to strike a ballance between having a pulse and free time.

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Drrrone

Done on my current three waveform generator system.

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Lope

This one is done on my older, two waveform generator configuration.

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PentaTrip

Another one that is on on the too long side, but has a couple of nice moods, I think. Done on my older, two waveform generator configuration.

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YAD

Yet Another Drone. Switching between three presets, for fun and profit. Well, fun anyway. Done on my older, two waveform generator configuration.

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VoxGong

The titular gong (which isn't really all that gong-like, I suppose) is mostly the 291e Triple morphing Filter with the modulation oscillators of my 261e Waveform Generators feeding it. The rhythmic clicks and bumps are the principal oscillators of the 261e's.

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TableThing

This is a reworking of something called TableThing, that I wrote for the first commercial release of Max, too long ago to remember a specific year. TableThing is a scanning sequencer. and I put an updated version of it, renamed ScanSeq, into the Gyre program I'm working on (see Gyre page for a short description of Gyre.) By scanning sequencer, I mean that it scans a Window of notes, some number of times. It then bumps the window by some Step Size. When TableThing starts out you can hear this best. It starts with a seven note window that gets repeated four times, then it bumps forward by a step size of one, and continues this pattern. After a minute or so, a second ScanSeq instance comes in. It's scanning over the same notes, but with a window size of four and a repeat of seven. This one is also fairly long, not that it really needs to be, I'm just too lazy to edit it down.

"An interesting blend of technology and sadness. The feeling of Sobbing Droids." - Johan Boberg

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GestureLong

This is a long (25 minute) improv on the 200e with a piece of software I'm writing in Max, called Gyre. This one is quite long, and fairly tedious in places, but I wanted to put it up intact to show some of the real-time changes possible with the 200e driven with Gyre. It's unedited, with no external processing used, other than a light dusting of compression. Given how long this one is, perhaps the best way to listen to it is to download it and skip around in it, as opposed to listening straight through.

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Blackbird

There was a recent thread on Matrixsynth which started out being about a NAMM video of Yasi Perera showing some of the new Buchla 200e modules, but it quickly devolved into what is starting to be a common series of rants about the 200e demos. There were a few postings talking about how the 200e demos were un-musical. I asked what musical/unmusical meant in this context, and discovered it's much like porn, people know it when they see/hear it. I've since done some research, and discovered there was once a "pop combo", called "The Beatles", who were widely regarded as being "musical". This lead me to do a search on the "internet" to find a MIDI file of one of "The Bealtles" "hits": a little number called "Blackbird." The original MIDI file, which by the way, doesn't seem exceptionally accurate, can be found on many web sites. I didn't touch the MIDI file, I just played it back, one track at a time, twisting a few knobs while I recorded the results.

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VictoryGarden

This is my entry into the 2006 BugMusic contest. VictoryGarden consists of four "passes" of Buchla 200e: two drone passes, a noisy/growly pass, and a plucky pass in 5/4. Each pass was recorded in quad, but is presented here in stereo. ShapePlayer, a custom Max/MSP patch was used as the note generator. There was editing involved to bring it in under the three minute barrier. Apparently, I can't even tie my shoes in three minutes. The name VictoryGarden was chosen to reflect this year's theme of War and Peas (sorry).

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