Jamuary 2023 - Wk. 1
This January I decided to participate in "Jamuary", a challenge of sorts to make music every day. For this Jamuary I am focusing on my modular synthesizer as I've picked up a few new modules lately and have neglected them. I'll be posting brief weekly patch notes about where the sounds come from and how each module was leveraged to create the sound.
Day 1 (The Feet Go Underneath)
This exercise (and the month) are focused on learning the teletype (a scriptable, dynamic, musical event triggering platform by monome). It responds to trigger signals from Pamela's New Workout (clock and modulation generator) and converts those trigger signals into events based on some basic script logic. This in turns creates rhythmic triggers to the Tyso Daiko (12-bit digital drum voice) which is what's creating all the drum sounds. Layered on top later is Plaits (oscillator, synth voice) which is capable of creating a wide variety of sounds based on the model selected. A sine wave is being used to modulate which model is in use, which is why you can hear gongs and meows as the sine wave changes the synthesizer modes.
Day 2 (Sometimes Horror)
The Tyso Daiko allows you to increase release time off of the digital drum, this can lead to artifacts that result in MASSIVE LONG LASTING sounding drums. Which is what is at the heart of this track. I wanted to layer on some melodic elements with Plaits. However by accident, I changed the model on Plaits to a bunch of creepy static pops. Which are later modified to sound vaguely like rain drops, making this track a little unsettling.
Day 3 (Floating)
It was a late night so I thought I'd make things easy for myself and use my Morphagene (tape and microsound music module) to just grab some audio from the internet, throw it on to a reel, and get some i n s t a n t a m b i e n t. I miscalculated how much I had forgotten about this module. So instead of audio meant for mangingling in Morphagene, I ended up with a vocal stem from Calgary by Bon Iver. The track begins with a Tyso Daiko drum sound, though much more contained then the previous, this is achieved by some filtering and a much quicker release time. I add a Plaits chord drone that's being slowly filtered through QPAS (stereo filter). Finally the Morphagene comes in with the vocal sample. I was able to leverage teletype to send specific control voltages to Morphagene which allowed me to pick two distinct slices of the Calgary sample and move back and forth. Some modulation to gene (or sample) size allows for the glitchiness.
Day 4 (The One I Like Best)
The bassline for this track comes from Plaits. The notes are being sequenced with a monome grid + ansible (in Kria mode). A slow LFO into the Quattro Figaro, allows for the bass notes to slowly swell and recede. I accidently turned on my norns (sound computer) during this track and it began to play its default script, awake, which sounded pretty good for a mistake. After some tweaking with notes, filters, and tempo it began to generate some beautiful bell synth sounds that work very well with the grittier bass sounds. Towards the end of the track I experiment with some high resonance filtering to the bassline which adds a lot of texture and is slightly painful. Probably a lot like applying stucco.
Day 5 (The Post Rock Noise Jam)
I didn't have time to swap out the reel on the Morphagene so this one begins with another Calgary sample. Once again, teletype is sending specific CV values allowing the correct samples to play back. A repeated ascending melody is coming from Kria/Ansible into Plaits that's creating a sort of low siren tone. Tyso Daiko drums add a low dissonant element. After a bit, I began to tweak a lot of parameters on the Tyso Daiko at once to destroy the drum sound into something else, not resembling drums at all. Lots of glitches, train whistles, and more static than I would prefer, ensue. This probably goes on a bit longer than it needs to, but it does sort of feel like beautiful destruction, which is nice.
