Fun is important.
There's also the "sandbox" experience of learning how things relate. You need to make a few mistakes and have a few ah-ha moments free of a "composition" framework to generate ideas for later compositions.
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Ambient/Post-Rock/Textural bass playing thread
- Thread starter ttasselm
- Start date
Fun is important.
There's also the "sandbox" experience of learning how things relate. You need to make a few mistakes and have a few ah-ha moments free of a "composition" framework to generate ideas for later compositions.
I have always had immense respect for Don Buchla because of his insistence that synthesis took a wrong turn when they started strapping piano-type keyboards onto the sound-generating engines.
On Bill Laswell's first solo album Baselines Fred Frith is credited with playing "Steinberger String Conole" I'm fairly certain (now) that it just referred to an off-the-shelf Steinberger L-2 bass or GL-2 guitar laid flat on a table and submitted to the plethora of acousti-mechanical modifications that Frith typically would attach to his instruments...pretty sure Ned Steinberger was in no position to whip up custom one-off carbon fiber autoharps or whatever else the phrase conjures up.
My roommate/bandmate/best friend in the late 70s & early 80s got his hands on an ARP Avatar guitar synthesizer as part of the ARP factory auction when they went out of business. The synth engine was basically an ARP Odyssey, a tried & proven design...it was the hex pickup and pitch-to-voltage converters that sucked major ass and essentially killed the company. Literally, everyone I know who was involved with ARP at that time admits that the Avatar was the reason the company went belly-up.
Roomie had it hooked up to a swanky mid-60s Fender Jaguar that had just enough modifications to make any circa 2020 guitarist swoon, but any circa 1980 guitarist to wonder *** was wrong with Mr. Idiot. He could sorta kinda get monophonic lines to sound not-quite-awkward from the Avatar. smh
Ha! I feel like I'm always a week late to any topic in this thread!
I actually do love listening to good electronic or ambient music. I'm just picky about it.
But I do find myself really enjoying noodling on synths or my ambient bass rig, and I know I probably enjoy the sounds I'm making more than anyone else who might hear them. I can sit there for 10 minutes holding one note and just ever so slightly turning with the filter cutoff knob or adding a bit of LFO modulation, just to see how many ways I make that one note sing, through a nice delay pedal and so on. For a while I can just float there.
My girlfriend is also an electronic musician, and when I tell her how cool I think this sounds, she's like, "Whatever", which is pretty much how I imagine my audience will react to my set...
Makes it hard for me to gauge if what I'm playing is actually any good or not.
You and me both. I love fiddling around but I’m not sure it is particularly interesting or listenable to anyone else.
But at least I’m having fun. Just ordered the 1979 version of Clouds in buchla format. I’m sure my family is going to love hearing it.
- Mar 8, 2011
- 12,232
- 51,187
- Disclosures
- Authorized greenboy designs builder/Owner of BNA Audio
their demos tend to be a bit cheesy and dated. Looks like they’re sequencing with some sort of tracker software though
I still have zero idea how to use that internal sequencer. Took a quick look at it and it pretty much makes no sense at all to me yet
Headed out of town in a few minutes and just need to read the manual several hundred times!
That's one that we all struggle with. I think we had a big conversation about that about 50 pages back.
It's such a good topic...
Who doesn't like to make noise? Everyone does. I let my kids loose and they make noise twisting knobs and they love it...but listening is another thing entirely.
I'm searching for that spot in between me making noise and having a blast and also creating something that someone else might enjoy or want to dig in on. I think that's why I'm picky about being deliberate and also keeping things short, tight, and interesting - which is the total opposite to the jam band music that I tend to listen to more than any other. Above all, I agree, this is about fun...for me especially. I draw 0 income from music and don't intend to...I'm thankful for a free meal/drinks at a club when I play and friends come to hang and throw the bar some business.
Who doesn't like to make noise? Everyone does. I let my kids loose and they make noise twisting knobs and they love it...but listening is another thing entirely.
I'm searching for that spot in between me making noise and having a blast and also creating something that someone else might enjoy or want to dig in on. I think that's why I'm picky about being deliberate and also keeping things short, tight, and interesting - which is the total opposite to the jam band music that I tend to listen to more than any other. Above all, I agree, this is about fun...for me especially. I draw 0 income from music and don't intend to...I'm thankful for a free meal/drinks at a club when I play and friends come to hang and throw the bar some business.
their demos tend to be a bit cheesy and dated. Looks like they’re sequencing with some sort of tracker software though
I still have zero idea how to use that internal sequencer. Took a quick look at it and it pretty much makes no sense at all to me yet
Headed out of town in a few minutes and just need to read the manual several hundred times!
i was just impressed by the amount of voices and modulations in that sequence.
- Mar 8, 2011
- 12,232
- 51,187
- Disclosures
- Authorized greenboy designs builder/Owner of BNA Audio
Punk OG basement studio 101.
DIY (kinda...more of an alternate use of the vtdi)
Started using my VT bass DI as a 3 way splitter. (When using as a 3 way splitter the pedal fx and eq are off, but all 3 signals pass through the pedal.)
It works VERY well. I've used this set up the past few weeks with various inputs.)
-XLR out = clean signal
- main out = aux fx on mixer or SP as multi fx insert fx box.
- parallel out = add any pedal fx you want.
EQ all 3 channels as desired.
Blend on mixer. Only down side is not having a phase inverter.
Just sharing some workarounds that may be useful to some of you.
Cheers.
DIY (kinda...more of an alternate use of the vtdi)
Started using my VT bass DI as a 3 way splitter. (When using as a 3 way splitter the pedal fx and eq are off, but all 3 signals pass through the pedal.)
It works VERY well. I've used this set up the past few weeks with various inputs.)
-XLR out = clean signal
- main out = aux fx on mixer or SP as multi fx insert fx box.
- parallel out = add any pedal fx you want.
EQ all 3 channels as desired.
Blend on mixer. Only down side is not having a phase inverter.
Just sharing some workarounds that may be useful to some of you.
Cheers.
for those who are interested (i saw about 1/3 of it so far);
Gavinski’s Tutorials: sEGments by Elliott Garage | discchord
Gavinski’s Tutorials: sEGments by Elliott Garage | discchord
came up on my fb feed today.
somehow i thought you all might find it entertaining.
somehow i thought you all might find it entertaining.
How do you like it compared to Samplr...?
(First impression....potential....)
Another minus for koala......you cant have a sample as a "one shot" and "loop". It's one or the other.
Still not that bad of a problem but it hinders my usual SP workflow when resampling patterns
On the plus side you can transfer beats from the pattern sequencer to a single pad in "sample" mode.
You cant do that on the SP.
Also you can drag and drop samples from one pad to another to "blend them" into one.
Very cool for stacking snares, bass drums etc.....
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Seems like the kind of thing that would be pulled out in a speakeasy if you were watching a film based on "2112"
but from ca. 1600, from what i can tell.
with samplr, you can drag your finger across the wave form and get different effects (different speeds, forward/reverse, specific sections only). you can also automate those gestures. and you can have something like six samples going ar once. in my pov, samplr is much crazier.
*so far*, this seems more normal for chopping up one sample and doing things to it. that’s very cool and useful. i have a preset i’m making with birds singing that i’m going to repitch, etc. need to delve into headphone use to get the best of it, i think.
Keep me posted.
Will give some of my thoughts on koala
.....added a few in previous post.
@steubig do you have the desktop ASM Hydrasynth or the east coast version w keys? I've gotten my budget to be able to afford the desktop but need to raise a few hundred more for the keyboard version. The keyboard version is almost double (maybe not that bad, but significantly more) the price, features wise they are pretty similar...is it worth it to go for the keys? I'm NOT a piano player
i hate to admit that i have both.
the architecture is the same.
the keyboard has the ribbon; which the desktop does not have. probably the biggest difference. and one that i don’t use very often.
obviously, the keyboard has pitch and mod wheels. i do *not* use those the way most people do. i disable the normal functions and use them for modulation sources. imo, this really helps the sound design aspect of things. for example, i have a patch that’s pretty gnarly that uses the pitch wheel to change the panning. i was using it on a piece of music and decided that i needed the ability to change the attack so it wasn’t so harsh, so i used the mod wheel as the mod source for the envelope attack.
now, if you have something like a keystep or other controller, you could use that on the desktop. you could also use the macro knobs to do it. (the macro knobs are very cool.)
this thing had a ton of ways to modulate/mangle sounds.
the pads on the desktop have poly aftertouch, so you do *not* lose that functionality. however, the range is smaller than the four octaves of the keys version (maybe 1.5-2.0 octaves?), but you can define how the pads are set up for scales, etc.
for me the thing about the hs is the way it responds to the way you play it. i know some folks are using it for sequencing, but that’s not something i do.
why i love having both: this track is made up of about three tracks that have both hydrasynths going. each patch is made of both synths using the same basic programming with slightly different lfo speeds, envelope lengths, panning, mod values, etc.
headphones are useful.
