New album is up on Bandcamp! As usual it’s pay-what-you-want.
A lot of Eurorack, a lot of software (including a little VCV Rack), a good amount of Minibrute 2S, a little bit of Microfreak, a little bit of Model:Cycles and a smidgen of kalimba.
And that makes 8 albums released in 2021. Whew!
With the remaining time in this year I will be doing a few experiments and perhaps kicking off a new musical practice. And writing here about what that practice is… another day 🙂
Last night was a record-breaker for tornados. Possibly the longest single tornado touchdown in US history (a 240 mile streak, if it’s confirmed) and only the third EF-4 tornado on record. It flattened Mayfield, Kentucky and smashed up a relatively new Amazon warehouse not far from here. It threw debris 30,000 feet into the air, in the way of any commercial flights that were otherwise busy trying not to be near any giant tornadoes. An old photograph from Dawson Springs, Kentucky flew 125 miles to New Albany, Indiana (and is still intact; it’ll be returned to the family that it belongs to).
Here in our home in a St. Louis suburb, we had a “tornado confirmed on the ground” warning that got extended. Less than an hour another warning (“rotation confirmed” right over our town) sent us back into the basement. But thankfully, not a single branch down; even the flimsy shed roof is in no worse shape that it had been.
Completely coincidentally, as my spouse started watching the 1970 Scrooge with Albert Finney, I was recording a replacement for a song I’d titled “Apparition.” I promise it is not about Ghosts of Christmas (Era).
Overall, I feel like the album also coincidentally — though vaguely, at most — fits Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, which I’m halfway through reading now. Again, not really an intended connection — but I am using it as inspiration to rename one of the silly temporary names I had chosen for a track.
Anyway, the new “Apparition” is a radical remix of the original, with a few bits of the old material anchored by a lot of new. The overall shape and tone of it is very different, an appropriately ghostly beginning.
This is the most I’ve reworked my music so close to release — I thought I was going to spend the weekend mastering the album and publish on Monday night, but I made the decision to change it last night between tornadoes.
Here are some of my favorite albums that were released this year. This isn’t a complete list — MusicBee shows I have 54 of them. 54! Um, 7 of them were by me, but still, that was a lot of supporting artists on Bandcamp.
These are in no particular order alphabetical by album title. I’m not going to try to pick “the best” because they are all different, and maybe some other 2021 albums I’ve listened to are “better” in some ways. But these are the ones that stand out in my mind and I enjoy listening to them.
Some of the tracks on this compilation are just okay — the sort of abstract, too-random noodly things that “West Coast” synthesists often indulge in — but many of them are brilliant and beautiful. I feel like it generally gets more engaging as it progresses, but honestly, I really love Suzanne Ciani’s “Empty Skies” and that’s just the third track. Overall, I can confidently list this as one of my favorite West Coast albums. Even if I kind of don’t like the term “West Coast” anymore.
The first Nathan Moody album I encountered — still one of my favorites! — was Etudes I: Blue Box, an exploration of a small, focused Eurorack synth he had put together featuring Mannequins modules and a touchplate keyboard. He has since released many more synth works on various interesting systems, a fantastic album entirely made with self-built electroacoustic instruments, and has been moving in a sort of hybrid direction with acoustic and electronic instruments. I was honestly not into A Shadow No Light Could Make, but whatever he is doing on this one, works. It’s emotional and complex and just overall excellent. I’ve had this less than a week and have listened to it at least three times. I do hope he’s not done with pure synth works like Blue Box or Chrysalis — but I suspect not.
Back in the 80s I got into jazz, and more specifically, jazz fusion with synths: Spyro Gyra, the Yellowjackets, etc. This is like that but for 2021, with an unbelievable bass player, a fantastic drummer, and a keyboard player who is absolutely no slouch and makes some interesting sound design choices. When I’m in the right mood, this album is a total joy. Even when I’m not, it’s hard not to be impressed at how good they are at what they do and how tight their groove is.
I’m guessing this is “dungeon synth”? Retro style, lo-fi, low-budget rock/synth stuff good for exploring dungeons without leaving your basement. It’s definitely reminiscent of somewhere between D&D 2nd edition and NES adventure games — in one of the tracks you can practically hear the slimes/oozes bopping along with cartoony squeaks. Anyway, it’s charming and weird and yet it kind of rocks. I’ve been into the general genre of retro, synthy soundtracks for horror/”mysteries of the unexplained” style stuff, and this one seems the most authentic of them all, in its way.
That other Thanos couldn’t be more wrong, but this one is right. The mood overall is darker and heavier than the album and track titles might suggest, but there’s a kind of positivity in it. More contemplative than brooding, as such. An acknowledgement that this is where we are, and we accept it.
This album is a series of performances wringing beauty and truth from a not particularly beautiful Yamaha organ picked up in a yard sale. It’s… no particular genre, it’s its own wonderful and unique thing, and it moves through a variety of emotions but mostly I would call it both playful and sensitive.
A set of synth drone pieces, with rhythmic elements wending through some of them, most of them constantly under emotional and almost physical tension. It really makes one wonder how an obviously completely sound can seem so creepy and ominous just because it is, as the title says, a sustained tone. Something relating to liminal spaces maybe? At any rate, this simultaneously feels like the study of a phenomenon and a strong musical statement at the same time, plus it just sounds cool.
Rain plus some chill electronic music. Maybe technically ambient, but kind of lives in a place between “chill lo-fi beats to study to” without the beats, the kind of ghostly, sun-faded, warbly tape music that a lot of people (yes me too) like, loneliness and peacefulness. And yes, rain. Probably in Tokyo, but at 3 AM and not particularly close to any cool clubs or whatever. It’s not particularly weird, maybe not even that original, but not boring either — and effective. I have put this album on many times.
Good to know it’s not my ears:
Here’s Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand
A big part of it comes down to sound being a second-class citizen compared to visuals — the same story in film as it so often is with video games.
I won’t rehash my complaints about how poorly considered sound has been in game projects I’ve worked on… much. When an often-heard dialogue line done by someone in the studio can’t be re-recorded so it doesn’t have an annoying rhythmic cadence, when the dialogue is a combination of professional voice actors recorded in a studio and programmers mumbling into a budget headset mic, when you can’t spare two minutes to tone down a particularly loud sound so it doesn’t overwhelm everything else, when you ask for music and don’t inform the composer it’s going to be limited to 8kHz mono WAV so they can make appropriate sound design choices… and none of that is considered a quality problem? It’s pretty obvious how much regard the studio leadership has for sound… and how much better an experience competing games will be.
Anyway. When watching streaming shows we usually have captions on. Sometimes there is dialog in the captions that isn’t unintelligible but 100% inaudible, to the point where it makes me wonder if the line was cut from the audio. I’ve also found captions can reveal character names that we are not explicitly told, and spellings that would otherwise be difficult to guess at, which can be nice for someone who’s more of a reader than a movie watcher. But I feel like this shouldn’t be necessary if the story were being told well, and than includes both dialogue writing and good clear sound.
Speaking of sound, I think I’ll record one more track for the next album and then go into artwork/mastering.
Every album is at least a little different from the previous, but some definitely have their own flavor. Sometimes there’s an intentional creative direction — but this time I think it just happened that way.
Overall, this one has been a little less droney. There’s a bit more interplay between parts — call-and-response, off-grid sequences that trigger something else, generative parts based on the audio from another source. The Model:Cycles comes out to play a little, though you won’t find any four-on-the-floor techno or indeed many “drum” parts. Software has a bigger role than I’ve given it in a while, with Grid and VCV patches, plus a little bit of OPS7, Vital, and Quadra. Part of this is because the Launchpad X makes it a joy to play expressive parts on software synths, and VCV’s ability to send MIDI spices up the sequencing and tuning, so I’m using software synths for more than a few supplemental drones. I’m doing more with xenharmonic tunings, making them battle 12TET-tuned parts, and slipping between quantized and unquantized (and “semi-quantized”) tunings. And we’re hearing more Noise Engineering here, with Melotus and Lacrima frequently adding something, a bit of Loquelic Iteritas, and finding my way with the Ruina plugin without necessarily pushing it to extremes.
Given my thoughts about my musical near future, the albums of 2022 stand a fair chance of shifting yet again. More on that as it develops!
I think the current stand situation is going to be okay, for now, once I put the anti-slip mat between the Minibrute’s guitar stand and the metal base of the laptop stand. I may still go for the KVGear stand eventually though.
I tried VCV Rack 2 standalone. Of all modular software, it is probably the closest it comes to Eurorack. But it inevitably just doesn’t feel the same, and I would generally rather patch the hardware.
However, using it as a plugin inside of a DAW changes the story. After reading a few users’ experiences (positive and negative) I went ahead and got the full version at its intro price.
I feel that its role is different not just from the hardware, but from Bitwig Grid.
Bitwig, without Grid, is still mighty. You can route audio and control signals around not quite willy-nilly but more flexibly than in other DAWs I have used. A very handy part of that is that the audio and control signals can cross over: if I want to modulate one of the drawbars in an Organ device with the output of a Eurorack oscillator coming in on hardware input 5, I can do that. If I want a tempo-synced LFO in Bitwig to modulate something in my Eurorack gear, I can do that too.
Grid sort of coalesces that into a view where you mostly connect inputs, modules and controls, and outputs a little more directly. There are still a few invisible hands turning virtual knobs, where in Eurorack you’d have a patch cable. And there are a few places where you need somewhat silly workarounds to get signals between Grid and elsewhere in Bitwig.
Some of Grid’s big limitations:
And VCV:
There are definitely some gems in VCV’s free library, and that’s before some of the major players like Instruo and Alright have updated their modules to work with version 2. If I want 8 parallel instances of Rings, now I can do that. Supercell, with its very different vibe from Beads, is back on the menu. Two Befaco spring reverbs for stereo — why not? The kind of garish-looking Plateau delay/reverb sounds impressive, I’ve found some tasty waveshaper/distortion options, and there are some microtonal quantizers I’ll definitely be making use of.
So VCV isn’t a “replace my hardware” option nor as much of a “shore up the weak spots in Bitwig Grid” as I might have thought, but it’s going to pull its weight.
I had a nice road trip, a good visit with my parents and Thanksgiving and birthday and all of that. I didn’t want to go back to the routine. So… let’s say it’s not a routine, it’s a continuing journey?
Things I like (in no particular order):
Things I don’t:
A common topic among synth folks is “mise en place” in one’s home studio — having gear set up on stands/shelves/etc., ergonomically placed and ready to play. It can be a challenge in a small space with many different needs and gear that comes in radically different sizes and shapes.
My parents’ birthday gift to me was a laptop DJ stand I’d asked for, and I’ve been trying some different layouts. The current one has some compromises:
If not, the most likely thing is a KVGear Adapt L2 stand, which should fit the Minibrute on one tier and 1-2 other pieces of gear on the other. That is a less ideal playing angle for something like the Launchpad, but other stuff should be fine there. I’ll only go this route if the current setup bugs me, though.
Trying to solve for this set of gear just makes me think: where I would I set up a Strega if I got one? How about the other gear I have that rarely/never gets to have any fun anymore (the Wavedrum, theremin, bass, lap steel, acoustic instruments etc.)? This sort of thing almost makes me want to go back to 100% software.
Okay, not really… but that makes a good segue. VCV Rack 2 was just released, and the paid version can run as a VST plugin. I am considering it, as another extension of the modular. Replacement of hardware modules is really not a goal, but then, if I let go of 60HP of stuff I can put a Strega where the Pod60 is.
I am pretty happy with the current state of the next album. I’ll record a couple more things and see what fits where, but I really could just master it and release it now and be satisfied. If I prioritized it, I think I really could finish 9 albums rather than 8 for the year… but let’s not be hasty.
I’m starting to consider my goals and plans for next year. I think I’m going to put some non-synth musical efforts into that list. More on that in the coming days.
Not all good synth gear is physical. Some of it’s software, and some is even free.
Vital “spectral warping wavetable synth” pretty obviously takes inspiration from Serum. In a side-by-side comparison, I’d say Serum’s UI is a bit more polished (but that’s exactly what the Vital devs are working on right now), its filters more interesting, its effects suite a little nicer. Vital’s oscillators can do a bit more and that’s really where it shines. It can also do audio rate modulation up to a point. Overall it’s my kind of synth, fun to design sounds with and can respond expressively to velocity and pressure from the Launchpad. And it’s free — at least a “basic” version with a limited set of presets and wavetables. I really don’t care about presets, and it has enough wavetables to do a lot of interesting stuff with, and you can create your own. So there’s that. 🙂
Not free but cheap thanks to Black “Friday” (the longest “day” of the year), are Audiority Plexitape and Tube Modulator. The former is a tape loop delay plugin, with a bit of a different vibe than the also excellent Cherry Audio Stardust 201 and the do-everything-incredibly-well Valhalla Delay. Tube Modulator combines a selection of tremolo/vibrato/vibe effects with a stereo panner, Leslie rotary speaker emulation, or tape wow and flutter. for all kinds of retro, liquid warble. Effects like this are an important part of sound design, which is why I kind of think forum arguments about synth presets are silly and pointless. I personally create all my synth sounds from scratch, but if I didn’t, I’d still be routing them through chains of effects (much like a guitarist does with their one “preset” sound!) and making them my own. No judgement here — using presets is just a different approach.
42 minutes recorded for the next album, but I kind of think I’m going to reject one of the tracks. I wound out on a limb with it and I think I went too far. There are a couple of gorgeous tracks though, and yes, I do say so myself. On what I think is going to be the album’s closing piece, I have some call-and-response going on between two main parts:
So overall it’s very dynamic and expressive, and flows smoothly between octaves. The aforementioned Plexitape and Tube Modulator give the 12TET part’s lower register some width and wateriness, while the 7TET part is relatively dry at lower frequencies but has some Supermassive reverb on the higher end. Overall it just works really well.
If I sounded a little bit lukewarm on Arcane before, well… I’ve just finished watching the full season and I have to say it gets better with every episode. The drama and emotion, the animation… it just really comes together. I’m super impressed and looking forward to that next season they’ve announced.
(I could do without the Imagine Dragons song though. Really not my thing. Using it as the theme song is one thing, but also using it in an episode? Bleh.)
I don’t know anything about League of Legends except (A) it’s a game and (B) there are approximately six thousand different characters with different powers and stuff and (C) it has fantasy and maybe SF elements? I’ve never played it, nor Fortnite, nor DOTA, nor really do I know in what ways those games are similar or different except that Fortnite kind of ate their lunch in terms of popularity. I don’t even know if that’s still true.
But I started watching Arcane last night, a Netflix animated series based on League of Legends, because I’ve read that it’s very good and you don’t have to know anything about the game. It drops in 3-episode blocks, so I watched the first three.
Impressions so far:
Just found out another great thing about turning 50: my health insurance premiums go up by $300 a month (though my employer covers half of that). Can’t you just taste the sheer freedom and liberty of not having universal healthcare coverage? ‘Murica!
This is a non-ACA grandfathered plan and they’re looking at changing plans again (like we do every. single. year. and they get worse every time) for 2022.
It just hit me: my birthday is on Black Friday this year. (And by Black Friday, I don’t mean “every freaking day in November” like a lot of stores do, but the exact day after Thanksgiving.)
…
great.
I’ve got almost 25 minutes of music recorded for the next album, so I expect my count for 2021 will indeed be 8 albums.
The thing is, it doesn’t feel like a lot. It just feels like the year was long, especially the stressful summer. It’s a little too early for “year in review” posts but that’s the mood I’m in. It seems like the last quarter of the year points so much at the holidays; if several neighborhood houses can have their Christmas lights going already then I can talk about 2021 as if it’s almost over, can’t I?
…
An insurgency of idiots. Coronavirus continuing to be a political and identity issue, which is probably why it is still dominating everything instead of being well on its way to being crushed like smallpox. Biden being as disappointing as expected. Supply chains disrupted. We lost our sweet dog Gretta, a couple of months after she had to have her leg amputated, which they thought for sure was cancer and then the biopsy said it wasn’t. Work got 10x more stressful after my supervisor left and I became the person who’s supposed to know everything (even though I’m not a manager per se). Two music community websites with awful names changed those names and life went on.
I read a book about drone music, then put together a 30-minute continuous set for an online radio show, decided I really liked doing that, and ran with it for a few more albums. The last album has a few crossfades but mostly separate tracks, and I think this one is going to be all separate tracks again — and I even used the Model:Cycles, probably the first time I’ve recorded an actual hardware drum machine since 1989. But it’s probably not what it sounds like…
I told myself I wasn’t going to change much of my gear, then I did. Deliberately, then somewhat experimentally, then with a sense of closure as I resolved to change how I think about gear. I still want a Make Noise Strega (announced at the start of the year) and I might get one next year — I’m not setting specific “don’t buy stuff” rules but more “it ain’t broke.”
In less than two weeks I’ll be 50 years old. That doesn’t quite make sense to me. Half a century? Some part of me is still 15, awkward and nervous and having no idea what I’m doing. My back muscles and knees feel like they’re about 85. So I guess if you average them it works out.
Recently read: A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace. Two wonderful, beautiful books, and I hope there are more coming from this author. The setting and conflicts are very human, very “here are the wonderful and terrible things about us in the same culture, and often within the same person.” And I would like to see Mahit and Reed resolve their probably unresolvable cultural differences and live happily ever after. But they probably won’t get what they deserve, because generally people don’t.
A mini rant:
Software plugins that have X-day free trials and those trials don’t reset.
A few months ago I tried AAS Multiphonics CV-1, a software modular synth. It was kind of neat, a little bit flawed/limited, and I decided I didn’t need it because I had Bitwig Grid as well as hardware modular. Then they announced an update, with some new stuff. I kind of want to try it again, but I can’t, because my 15 day trial ended many weeks ago.
Same goes for one of the Cherry Audio analog synths. I was reading something about the hardware synth and thought “I tried an emulation of that before, didn’t buy it, but now that I’ve read this I want to give it another try.” And I can’t, because my trial from way back whenever expired.
By all means, in your demo versions, have some soft noise bursts or occasional dropouts to silence or even talk once in a while like the Sonic Charge demos did. Disable saving and shut down the plugin after 30 minutes (or 10, or whatever). But this is just killing off your own second chance to sell your product.
