Monday, 17 March 2014
Mr Moulin in theatre performance
Thursday, 23 January 2014
The Descending album goes digital
The Descending album is available again worldwide. Now from
virtually all digital streaming and download services. And very soon as
physical CD.
Get it here: Spotify, ITunes, CD Baby and probably at your favourite supplier. It's not yet available at amazon at the time of writing, but it will be there and everywhere else too. CD Baby and Amazon will have physical CD's for your uncompressed listening pleasure.
Much more old stuff will be made available in the future. And a new album is in the working - though apparently I am almost as annoyingly slow as Kraftwerk.
Thursday, 21 March 2013
The Zebra Sidecar finalized
Modular synthesizers are great fun, but they also consume time. For me, the entire purpose with a modular synth is to do things that would be impossible on any of the other synths. If a normal synth can do it, the fun but cumbersome modular is a waste of time. The small Zebra modular have plenty of resources, but it was lacking a few things. It's lacking a trigger delay, and sometimes I'd like to delay the start of one envelope generator. It has X-or gate based ring modulation (built in the MFB OSC2), but I also have that in the MS-20, MFB Synth II and ARP Odyssey as well. Ring modulation that handles other waveforms than square would be nice. I thought 4 VCO's would remove the need for suboscillators. But suboscillators are in phase. It sounds different compared to using several VCO's. And if you have some suboscillators you can do very crude additive waveforms - like the weird Korg Poly-800 sawtoth that actually is squarewave's in different octave's with different amplitudes. None of the existing envelopes had voltage control of attack or decay, which I sometimes want. And waveshaping would be marvellously fun. My OB-12 has great folding, and it is one of the more fun functions on the Arturia Minibrute. I definitely wanted waveshaping.
It was time for a sidecar.
A Doepfer Mini case was selected to keep the project small. For waveshaping the new company Abstract Data's "Reactive Shaper ADE-10" was the way to go. Three flavours of separately controllable waveshaping in series. Doepfer's audio divider, and dual ring modulator works well and were very affordable. But then there was the envelope and trigger delay issues and only six HP to play with. (HP, Horizontal Pitch is the eurorack module width units, 1 HP = 5.08 mm or 1/5 inch). Actually I had bought the Doepfer dual trigger delay initially, but though occasionally important I don't use trigger delay that often. In most of the patches that module wouldn't be patched in. What a waste of space. And I really wanted voltage controlled attack. I then discovered the genious Make Noise "Function". An analogue computer based module that does virtually anything. For example VC controlled: AD and ASD envelopes, LFO, Trigger delay, slew generator, sample and hold etc etc. Everything with log, linear or exponential shape. Pure genious for the space limited modular. An intellijel multiple filled the remaining 2 HP. Now I'm finished. The Zebra modular with sidecar can do anything I want to do with a modular synth. Yes there are endless amounts of other great modules that would be so fun to have. This is the golden age of the analogue modular synthesizer, there have never existed so many good innovative modules as now. But I have what I need to make the sounds I can imagine, and the limited size makes it fairly fast to work with. Now... WHERE is the new music I have promised for so long? So incredibly delayed - but something interesting is cooking deep inside the laboratory.
A Doepfer Mini case was selected to keep the project small. For waveshaping the new company Abstract Data's "Reactive Shaper ADE-10" was the way to go. Three flavours of separately controllable waveshaping in series. Doepfer's audio divider, and dual ring modulator works well and were very affordable. But then there was the envelope and trigger delay issues and only six HP to play with. (HP, Horizontal Pitch is the eurorack module width units, 1 HP = 5.08 mm or 1/5 inch). Actually I had bought the Doepfer dual trigger delay initially, but though occasionally important I don't use trigger delay that often. In most of the patches that module wouldn't be patched in. What a waste of space. And I really wanted voltage controlled attack. I then discovered the genious Make Noise "Function". An analogue computer based module that does virtually anything. For example VC controlled: AD and ASD envelopes, LFO, Trigger delay, slew generator, sample and hold etc etc. Everything with log, linear or exponential shape. Pure genious for the space limited modular. An intellijel multiple filled the remaining 2 HP. Now I'm finished. The Zebra modular with sidecar can do anything I want to do with a modular synth. Yes there are endless amounts of other great modules that would be so fun to have. This is the golden age of the analogue modular synthesizer, there have never existed so many good innovative modules as now. But I have what I need to make the sounds I can imagine, and the limited size makes it fairly fast to work with. Now... WHERE is the new music I have promised for so long? So incredibly delayed - but something interesting is cooking deep inside the laboratory.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Akai Miniak
However, the Micron has some drawbacks. The volume knob must be the worst placed in universe. I have to duct tape it, or else surprises will happen. And the sliders and bend wheel are awkwardly placed. After ten years or so Akai have repackaged the Micron to the "Miniak", and done most things right. Great feeling rubbery backlit bend and mod wheels, and very smooth action X, Y and Z knobs makes playing easier. Overall it feels and looks more "quality", and is slightly bigger and heavier. It's amazing Alesis old synth engine still excels today without any alterations. But the D/A converters are much improved so the Miniak actually sounds noticably better. And best of all. It costs almost like a VST plugin at the german webshops. €299, which is like 2600 sek at the moment. This must be a new world record in "bang for the buck". You even get a Gooseneck microphone for the vocoder.
Apart from some powerful bassdrums, the factory programs are not that impressive. But it's surprisingly easy to wade through the myriad of parameters with the keyboard shortcuts to parameter groups. If you know subtractive synthesis you don't need a computer to fairly quickly program this from the front panel. Still no aftertouch though. That's a shame. Another drawback is the visibility of the very blue on blue display. Yellow light would have looked nicer and been more readable. I strongly recommend Akai Miniak to anyone that wants an unusually powerful hardware synth with much more bite than contemporary Korg's and Rolands.
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Monday, 8 August 2011
WIWA the Revolution
When I found this on youtube I didn't believe my ears. Or eyes. It's a cover of Style Of Life's song "Revolution" from 1983. First recorded on the Fostex 4 track portastudio in synthplayer Christer Jonsson's family's garage. I wondered how on earth someone found it?! It was on about 50 demo casettes (remember the compact cassette anyone?) and performed live between 1983 and 1985 at gigs at the Pacific Club and Folkets Hus in Östersund. How on earth could anyone remember this?
Well, it is a quite nice song. But after some googling I found out: The WI in WIWA is none other than Michael Winton, the drummer from Style of Life. Pioneering the very first DDrums btw. The Wiwa website is here: www.wiwa.se
Well, it is a quite nice song. But after some googling I found out: The WI in WIWA is none other than Michael Winton, the drummer from Style of Life. Pioneering the very first DDrums btw. The Wiwa website is here: www.wiwa.se
Tuesday, 15 February 2011
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