I know what my next album project is going to be, what it’s going to be called, and in fact recorded three tracks for it this morning.
Okay, technically two of them were previously set up. And the theme is straightforward enough at first glance: every song is a single voice, but complex in terms of timbre and modulation, with at least a little live tweaking.
My definition of “single voice” is whatever I would call a “voice” in my album notes. It doesn’t rule out polysynths I can play chords on, nor blending multiple oscillators in something like Silhouette, nor modulating one oscillator with another, nor patching Strega and Minibrute together. “Part” is another way to say the same thing, I suppose, if you think of it in terms of a score. There won’t be separate parts in any given song, just one unified part.
(And yes, I’m using “song” in the sense that I said I would when this blog was new. I don’t accept that a song necessarily requires a singer, or even necessarily a melody. “Songs Without Words” was a good enough title for Felix Mendelssohn, and Grieg’s “Lyric Pieces” for piano had no lyrics. For that matter, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and A Song of Ice and Fire don’t even have music. Deal with it!)
I finished reading L.K. Steven’s Silvercloak. It was one of those books that showed up on discount at bookshop.org and got me curious. A romantasy and detective/spy story, in a setting where magic is fueled by pleasure but its intensity is fueled by pain. (But it’s not quite as BDSM-themed as that sounds.) And where the good guys are driven by prejudice and revenge as well as actual justice, while the bad guys are driven by obsession and delusion as well as greed, and the protagonist was caught in between. It was quite entertaining, but I’m not sure whether I want to go for the rest of the series.
I’ve just started reading Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson, aka the Blogess. It’s hilarious so far! Basically, a strategy of nonsense and fun to cope with depression (and partly anxiety)… and the author is really good at nonsense and fun. I don’t think it’s going to be a self-help book, so much as a laugh and relate book.
Here’s my current thinking on gear stuff:
I know that I want to pick up Splines. As with my decision on Budapeszt, I don’t think it makes sense to make myself wait for 2027 just to say I did.
However, the plan is to get Budapeszt in first, unless its release turns out to be delayed a lot. From there I can decide what is going to be set aside to make room. My first crack at this will be Nibbler and Katowice, to see if Rings feels redundant or is a good partner for Budapeszt. Meanwhile perhaps I’ll mess with Spectraphon a bit more to judge whether I should hang onto it. Also, again, Akemie’s Castle (but it’s probably safe).
Oh yeah… Noise Engineering just dropped 16 new firmwares for the Legio platform. Before that there were 7! This has completely changed the game for me and I’ve gone from having it in a drawer to thinking about picking up a second one. Here are my favorites:
- Ovis Legio (“army of sheep”) — a “granular Shepard tone processor,” unique among a growing collection of modular granular options. This takes the top prize for me.
- AT Legio — based on Ataraxic Translatron, an LFSR oscillator, with extra features. One of those is ringmodding an external signal, which sounds super nasty in the best way.
- Gator Legio — a stereo supersaw oscillator, with phase modulation inputs. It sounds huge and with PM it will go straight to the Dark Side.
- Megafold Legio — great-sounding stereo combination wavefolder and chorus, with some dynamics stuff that makes it a bit more flexible.
- Cymbal Legio — I’m not into drum modules generally, but this one is just fun to abuse and I can see myself creating noisy drones with it, or using it to modulate other stuff.
- Marimba Legio and Snare Legio — both of these sound quite nice to me, for different reasons. Offhand I’m not sure if I will have a use for them in my music.
- Bitcrush Legio — crushing and downsampling like you’d expect, but with dithering, some handy dynamics stuff and lowpass filter options that track the downsampling and sound great.
Also they have new t-shirts through Threadless, so I can finally get one in my size.
