Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread

[monsterthompson]

I took a few minutes to play the Qu Bit Aurora reverb at Perfect Circuit. That is not a reverb that I immediately liked. I don’t know if I needed a tutorial on it but the sounds weren’t working for me. Very harsh and artificial in a way I wasn’t excited about.

I've been running the clocked reverb on my Versio module and I’m probably going back to the “standard” reverb firmware, or I’ll flash something like the granular. I do have the Zoia reverb on the rack still, and there are plenty of conventional sounds in there.

 

[JES]

That said, I'm rethinking this. I realized how slippery the slope was from "no more stuff" to "add a really cheap semi-modular" to "add a $350 case and $200 utility and a $600 delay and then I'll have 80HP for another $1-2K of stuff."

It's really something how "an extra module" becomes "an extra case" very quickly.

 

[monsterthompson]

I'm back on a kick on listening to Messer Chups. I might've posted about them before. They aren't ambient, but they have some elements that might interest the usual suspects here. Think kinda surfy Munsters mashed with a Soul Coughing. Instrumental drum, guitar, bass. Song structures seem fairly conventional. Reverb drips. Lots of fun samples and sound design.


16:59 starts the Trashmen Upgrade

 

[monsterthompson]

@dukeorock The 4MS Ensemble with a joystick controller and a delay/reverb patch is droning ambient fun on a bun. I’m still a long way from having it sorted out but I’m building up some familiarity and getting lost in the wash.

 

[dukeorock]

@dukeorock The 4MS Ensemble with a joystick controller and a delay/reverb patch is droning ambient fun on a bun. I’m still a long way from having it sorted out but I’m building up some familiarity and getting lost in the wash.

Nice! I’ve always been curious about that module. Would love more hands on control as opposed to just putting modulation on everything. Though that’s pretty fun too. Typically with eurorack stuff, I just use a single voice, modulate the dog snot out of everything and record long sections to be chopped up and put in the Octatrack or M8. I used to attempt full pieces and may do it again one day, but I’m enjoying this ‘method’ for now.

 

[steubig]

Nice! I’ve always been curious about that module. Would love more hands on control as opposed to just putting modulation on everything. Though that’s pretty fun too. Typically with eurorack stuff, I just use a single voice, modulate the dog snot out of everything and record long sections to be chopped up and put in the Octatrack or M8. I used to attempt full pieces and may do it again one day, but I’m enjoying this ‘method’ for now.

your method makes sense to me. for me, modular is great for using colors/textures that can be used as parts in larger settings.

 

[saltymonkey]

Hi all. I'm going to be listing a few pedals I was inspired to pick up by my daily following of this thread so thought I'd give you guys a heads up before listing them in case any of you are interested.

1) Hungry Robot Wardenclyffe DLX Lofi Ambient Modulator
2) Tomkat Cloudy, Black Anniversary Edition
3) Champion Leccy Skitter, V1 Pink

All are in mint, only used at home condition. Used a few times. The Cloudy is actually new. It was a gift and I never got around to playing with it. I'm realizing that my limited time to play is best served by a more streamlined, less is more approach. I also have two brand new Roland SPD::ONE drum pads. One Percussion and one Electro.

 

[hieronymous]

Posted another meeting-derived Grone track. I'm actually not sure how much I like it - I think that I don't want to adjust the "pitch" knob - which the manual describes as: "Sample Rate controls pitch and speed of the oscillation" - so this track is maybe what not to do?



But I'm having fun growing this Soundcloud account - one bot at a time! I hit 100 plays today, and even this track already has 2 likes and 3 reposts! Why would anyone repost this?!! Do they really like it? Or is it purely an algorithm randomly picking up tracks, fishing for potential customers? I've looked for info on the repost accounts with hot-girl-avatars but only found speculative forum posts. OK, I didn't look that hard.

 

[monsterthompson]

Worked with the 4MS Ensemble oscillator yesterday. Opened up the manual and figured out where the major and minor chord settings were for the Scale quantization, then proceeded to find out how much voltage was needed to modulate between them. Then I sequenced a 4 chord progression and was able to get everything in key. I’m sure diatonic chord progressions aren’t the most interesting thing this module can do, but it seems like a good place to start.

What gets interesting is modulating the oscillator “spread” (there’s 16 of them to be stacked/spread as part of the voice) and the “balance” between the root and overtones (kinda like inversions). Add a dab of delay and reverb and you can get some smoothly evolving chord changes that feel like lava lamp blobs floating around.

 

[steubig]

hot girl avatars.

check your local ticket service for tour information.

 

[dukeorock]

Ok, possibly funny and interesting adjacent.
My girlfriend, Wytske scheduled a massage for me this morning in Holland. I’ve never had a massage where the music had the intended effect on me. That stupid new age, leave out the thirds so we don’t commit to major or minor, floaty buncha nonsense! It’s supposed to relax you, but it makes me a nervous wreck :/
The massage was ok though

 

[monsterthompson]

Posted another meeting-derived Grone track. I'm actually not sure how much I like it - I think that I don't want to adjust the "pitch" knob - which the manual describes as: "Sample Rate controls pitch and speed of the oscillation" - so this track is maybe what not to do?



But I'm having fun growing this Soundcloud account - one bot at a time! I hit 100 plays today, and even this track already has 2 likes and 3 reposts! Why would anyone repost this?!! Do they really like it? Or is it purely an algorithm randomly picking up tracks, fishing for potential customers? I've looked for info on the repost accounts with hot-girl-avatars but only found speculative forum posts. OK, I didn't look that hard.

Appreciate you exploring and sharing the Grone. I've been curious about it. I'll update my avatar accordingly.

 

[Spectrum]

Ok, possibly funny and interesting adjacent.
My girlfriend, Wytske scheduled a massage for me this morning in Holland. I’ve never had a massage where the music had the intended effect on me. That stupid new age, leave out the thirds so we don’t commit to major or minor, floaty buncha nonsense! It’s supposed to relax you, but it makes me a nervous wreck :/
The massage was ok though

Was it anything like this masterpiece? (There's actually a cool story behind this music)

 

[hieronymous]

Ok, possibly funny and interesting adjacent.
My girlfriend, Wytske scheduled a massage for me this morning in Holland. I’ve never had a massage where the music had the intended effect on me. That stupid new age, leave out the thirds so we don’t commit to major or minor, floaty buncha nonsense! It’s supposed to relax you, but it makes me a nervous wreck :/
The massage was ok though

It would be cool if you could bring your own music - I'm sure plenty of people here would be willing to contribute to your Ambient/Power-Rock/Textural bass playing massage soundtrack!

Appreciate you exploring and sharing the Grone. I've been curious about it. I'll update my avatar accordingly.

I just realized - I think I'm spoiled by the Subharmonicon - those are the kinds of rhythms I'm used to, so the continuous straight 4/4 of the Grone is a little disappointing. But there are ways around that - I feel like I have gotten there on occasion. Actually, maybe I need to play with the waveforms of the filter more (it has ramp up, ramp down, square, triangle, sine, sweep, random levels, and random slopes) - play those against the 4/4 of the VCO... Thanks for getting me to that!

I do think I managed to adjust the Clouds sample rate for more of a reverb vs. the delay I've been getting. Not sure that those settings get saved when I unplug it - does it default to something? I'm not sure... Yet.

Edited to add: And I have some meetings tomorrow where I don't have to pay much attention! Perfect!

 

[dukeorock]

Was it anything like this masterpiece? (There's actually a cool story behind this music)

The music I got was just pads, no pulse or percussion at a very slow tempo. Typical massage music. Hard to describe why it bothered me so much, but it was awful

It would be cool if you could bring your own music - I'm sure plenty of people here would be willing to contribute to your Ambient/Power-Rock/Textural bass playing massage soundtrack!

Now we’re talking! I have brought my own music before. Steve Reich. Solid massage music right there. A typical hour massage for me starts out just trying to relax and loosen up. Then by the last 20 minutes or so I find myself drifting into sleep and being totally relaxed.
Seems to me a great hour long massage soundtrack would start out with at least a small amount of tension/pulse, then slowly fade into something more minimal/serene(?!). I dunno, just something that lines up to the experience a bit better.

 

[Colum]

Some more improvisation with the CT5 in mode 1.
The bass tone at the start is a Bit Commander clone into an OC-5, with clean down and up, and with a fifth up via the Line6 M5. Sounds modemy when repeating (coining that term now).

This is just procrastination at this stage and I’m yet to write anything meaningful with the CT5. When I’m jamming on it I get great results that I can’t replicate again when recording. The ephemeral nature of these pedals is half the fun I suppose.

I’ve started into VCV rack also if anyone has any good tutorials or advise in general.

https://youtube.com/shorts/lqK81DZ_oBk

 

[Colum]

Apologies that wouldn’t embed

 

[Bob_Ross]

It would be cool if you could bring your own music - I'm sure plenty of people here would be willing to contribute to your Ambient/Power-Rock/Textural bass playing massage soundtrack!

My wife is a licensed massage therapist, and I've often felt the same: That the typical New Age-y soundtracks marketed to folks in the bodywork industry are definitely lame compared to what creative ambient musicians could come up with. I gave her a disc of original drone-y stuff maybe a decade ago to use for her clients, but tbh I put almost zero thought into those tracks. Could definitely be a fun direction to pursue seriously.

 

[hieronymous]

Now we’re talking! I have brought my own music before. Steve Reich. Solid massage music right there. A typical hour massage for me starts out just trying to relax and loosen up. Then by the last 20 minutes or so I find myself drifting into sleep and being totally relaxed.
Seems to me a great hour long massage soundtrack would start out with at least a small amount of tension/pulse, then slowly fade into something more minimal/serene(?!). I dunno, just something that lines up to the experience a bit better.

My wife is a licensed massage therapist, and I've often felt the same: That the typical New Age-y soundtracks marketed to folks in the bodywork industry are definitely lame compared to what creative ambient musicians could come up with. I gave her a disc of original drone-y stuff maybe a decade ago to use for her clients, but tbh I put almost zero thought into those tracks. Could definitely be a fun direction to pursue seriously.

How about something new - "Modular Massage" - there's a modular set-up in front of you and you make the music as you get the massage, with the person giving the massage reacting to the music! Probably more stressful than it's worth

Seriously though, it would be cool if the person receiving the massage could play a role in the direction of the music - it might involve measuring some kind of bioelectrical feedback and adjusting the music accordingly. I'm sure some kind of AI will be able to do it someday - heck, AI will be able to do everything someday! (yuck)

 

[Spectrum]

How about something new - "Modular Massage" - there's a modular set-up in front of you and you make the music as you get the massage, with the person giving the massage reacting to the music! Probably more stressful than it's worth

Seriously though, it would be cool if the person receiving the massage could play a role in the direction of the music - it might involve measuring some kind of bioelectrical feedback and adjusting the music accordingly. I'm sure some kind of AI will be able to do it someday - heck, AI will be able to do everything someday! (yuck)

Just when I thought this thread couldn't get any weirder.