Another in my series of live studio jams. The idea being to capture the raw groove of a song in realtime. All these songs will be further edited, overdubbed and generally mangled to form either an EP or an album, but I thought it would be interesting to post the initial song sketch as it happened.
This is also the first video to feature the Dave Smith Tempest drum machine, not in a huge capacity, but the real analogue drums really add something.
Getting away from the Mac/PC to make music is a joy. In the last year or so I’ve been making gear purchases with the goal of writing electronic music ‘live’, with the computer doing nothing except acting as a glorified tape recorder. The whole rig is based around a Sequentix P3 sequencer which provides a gloriously stable midi clock as well as midi sequences. The nice thing about the P3 is it can do generative sequencing in quite a controlled manner, which suits my repetitive yet evolving music style.
My various synths and effect boxes are hooked up to a Soundtracs Topaz 24 track mixer, which allows me to do dub-style ‘playing the mixer’, riding faders and jamming with effects sends, feedback loops etc. The cast list is pretty much this:
- Sequentix P3
- Suzuki SX-500 (poly analog)
- Kurzweil PC3
- Moog Little Phatty
- Dave Smith Evolver
- Eurorack Modular
- Korg ER-1
- Kurzweil Mangler
- Eventide TimeFactor
- Eventide Space
- hand built dual 1176 compressor clone
- Golden Age Pre-73 Mic pre-amp
The video is really my first attempt at using all this together and performing a song live. It uses pretty much everything on the list above except the Kurzweil PC3 and the Evolver. The modular is doing the melody, the ER1 is on drums (going through the Pre-73 and the 1176 to give it some balls), the SX500 is doing chords and the Moog I play live. The Eventide Space is doing all the reverb work. I used Presonus’s Studio One 2 to record everything to separate audio tracks and then did some basic mix tweaking. No additional effects were used. I’m new to Studio One and I’m impressed so far, I haven’t had to look at the manual once, which means they got it right. It also feels solid and hasn’t crashed once.
This experiment was proof of concept really, I have a Dave Smith Tempest on the way which will make drum performances a lot more fun and dynamic. I also need to use Parts on the Sequentix more in order to make more structured changes in the song progression. A better camera angle might not go amiss either.
I’ve been listening to a lot of old rave tunes lately, and for a long time I’ve been thinking it might be fun to write one. To make it more interesting, I used only one bit of software, FXpansion’s Geist. No host, no other plugins, no hardware.
Geist is the perfect sampler for this. It’s not unlike using an MPC in terms of features and workflow and a fair few rave tunes were written with them back in the day, along with trackers and Atari STs, neither of which I have access to or any desire to meddle with ever again.
So without further ado, and with tongue firmly in cheek, here is the result:
Because I’m feeling the old skool love, here is the Geist preset for this tune. It will even load in the demo version. Now, I’m off to find my white gloves and whistle…
My new EP is out. Available only through bandcamp. Four tracks of post apocalyptic breaks, rave, dub, dubstep and analogue modular synthesis. Pay what you like. Click on the artwork to download or purchase.
I don’t usually do album reviews here, but I’m going to make an exception. Enter Calico, by new net label Clear Notice Recordings is a great compilation of unsigned electronica artists. That maybe nothing new in itself, but the label’s inception has been interesting and I’ve watched it unfold online for the last few months.
Clear Notice came about almost entirely through Twitter. Kieron James, the man behind Clear Notice, organized the whole release online. Not only are the artists discovered through Twitter, but the album mastering and artwork were done by Twitter contacts and, just for added value, Keiron organized a video for each song on the album (through Twitter again!). Check this stunning example for Tricil’s track “The Emancipation” by Burning Head.
The music itself is all important of course and it is a great album. There are some exceptional tunes here. David McSherry’s “U?+”, alka’s “sOMn ambulance”, tricil’s “The Emancipation”, rktic’s “nordic walking” and Tapage’s “Wounds” were all highlights for me and could easily be mistaken for songs by artists such as Chemical Brothers, Plaid, Orbital or Aphex Twin.
So if you want to support music and artists at grass roots, grab a copy of Enter Calico. It’s £7.99 from Bandcamp and should be available on iTunes within a few days. I recommend.
This is jammed live entirely in Ableton Live’s Session view using an APC40 and an MPK49 for midi control. It was a bit of an experiment in the art of ‘dub techno’. I’m not a big label fan but I was particularly inspired by Deepchord Presents Echospace – The Coldest Season, a wonderful chill-out album. Read more…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year, you can’t have escaped the rise of Spotify. Free, LEGAL music for all. Gotta love that right? Read more..
I’ve been so busy with work for the past few months, I’ve barely had any time to play, so it’s with great pleasure that I have an empty week. This took me a couple of days to write. Read more..
