Mike Brown RIP

Mike Brown of Livewire Electronics passed away yesterday. I never met him, but the person I used to build modules for got his start building modules for Mike, and from the stories I was told, he was the nicest, most generous guy on the planet. Plus he designed the AFG and reissued the Synthasystem filter-- both gold medal moves. His passing is a true loss to the community.

In this "classic" 2008 NAMM clip, not only do we get Mike giving a great demo in a quiet space (show me another NAMM clip where no one yells or wears a mic), but there's a prototype AFG, Chaos Computer* and Audio Compositor** in his system!

Rest in peace.

*, ** unreleased, oft-discussed Livewire modules

Maths as waveshaper

_

Here's something I've been working on this semester:


It's a series of live mixes, using a modular synthesizer, sheets of metal and reverb units as the sound sources. The "presentation version," which I'll be debuting in a couple of hours, features two 7-foot sheets of aluminum, wired as reverberant amplifiers, as the rear channels of a 4-channel playback system:

Doepfer A-143-1 for sale!

We're selling our Doepfer A-143-1 Complex Envelope Generator-- one of the true gems of the Doepfer catalog, in my opinion-- on eBay. If you're in the market, Buy It Now!

EDIT: SOLD (12/5)

Here are a couple of videos with the very 143-1 mentioned above from what Vimeo is telling me was three years ago (that can't be right, can it?):

The other EMS

360 Systems 20/20 "tremolo"

I am very fortunate to have a window of access to all manner of rare gear at the moment, including a full E-Mu modular system (!) and my favorite ring modulator of the pack, the 360 Systems 20/20 Frequency Shifter. Playing with the two earlier today, I managed to coax a downright beautiful tremolo out of the 20/20, which, sure, tremolo from a ring mod is nothing new-- set the modulating oscillator to sub audio and there you go-- but here's a bit of a twist:

The 20/20 has three outs: Low, Ring Modulation and High (the sum and difference have their own outputs (!)). Patching all three into channels of the mixer (with Low and High panned hard left and right) and playing their levels along with the dry signal, I was able to get these sorts of sounds:

360 Systems Frequency Shifter tremolo by Peter Speer

(the E-Mu photo = the drone patch you're listening to.)

Radical Dads: live, processed

We toured around with our friends Radical Dads last month, and, as I'm prone to do with that band, I recorded every show.

When we got back, while I was digitizing the tapes, the Phonogene kept begging to be used-- I figured, "why not try to make something new out of something great?" So, with that said, here is a completely unrecognizable, occasionally-granular remix of a dictaphone recording of the Dads playing their hit "Hurricane" at the Project Lodge in Madison, WI-- the opening tune of one of the best sets I've seen them do:

Radical Dads "Hurricane" live, processed by Peter_Speer

Drone rehearsal

Here's a recording of the patch I will be using at tonight's Lady Rollins performance:

Psycho Dream Factory drone by The Shamblers

A bit sloppy performance-wise, but you get the idea. The patch looks like this:


Hope to see you there!! Things kick off around 8:30/9 at Roxaboxen Exhibitions.

I finally got my hands on a laser

I've been waiting years to make something with a laser! Like most people, my first impulse was to pop a giant bag of popcorn, but since time was short, I cut out my first prototype of a 6U case I've been working on instead, with box joints, spaces removed in the back for a uZeus power supply and I/O for a reverb tank (the driver will be mounted in the rails as a 4HP module).

Being a prototype, I cut it out of scrap cardboard. For the final version--which is still a few revisions away--I'll use something nice. Bamboo maybe. Here's one of the corners from today's version:


I'll be working on this all week and will hopefully have something a little more substantial to show by Friday.

Patches from the Phonogene manual

We picked up the new sampler module from Make Noise (Phonogene) on Thursday. In an attempt to get better acquainted with it, I've been running through the patch examples listed in the manual. Here are a few of them:



More soon!

"Temp. Bells"

This is a modular synthesizer composition I have been working on, entitled "Temp. Bells." I am hoping to release it as a 12" single, paired with another (non-modular) piece, later this year. In the meantime, feel free to stream and/or purchase it (in a no-minimum, name-your-price fashion) below:

143-1 drone

I'm playing a modular duo set with Andy Ortmann tonight, and will be including this 143-1 patch in my bag of sounds:


I read about it on the forum last year or so, and bring it out whenever I'm looking for a steady, subtle 4-note drone, with control over pitch and mix of tones. If you've got a 143-1 (and you should! One of the true Doepfer gems) and are looking for a brighter option, take the End of Attack outs (square waves) and mix them externally-- this is available simultaneous to the more subdued Mix Out drone, by the way.

The forums are littered with interesting 143-1 patches... I'll put together a compilation post of them soon!

Project for school

Should be finished next week. Photos/details then!

Kinetic Gates w/o a Model 32

Right before Plan B's public flame out, he/they briefly released a module that I was, and somewhat remain to be, interested in: the Model 32 Vector Plotter. It was introduced NAMM 2009, and it looked great. I don't know anyone who actually owned one. They show up on the second-hand market from time to time, but I've stayed away-- using Choices and a little patch cleverness to essentially cover the same ground.

For example, one thing the Model 32 did that made it unique was to provide "Kinetic Gates"-- trigger signals that were outputted whenever the joystick was in motion. We can get the same effect by using a joystick in combination with Doepfer's A-156 Dual Quantizer. Think about it: the 156 spits out a trig with each new voltage. A joystick sweeps through voltage ranges on both X and Y axises...

In the video below I've mixed the X and Y outputs from Choices, and sent their combined voltage to the bottom half of the 156:



Of course, you could send X to the top half and Y to the bottom for independent X and Y Kinetic Gates. You could mix the X and Y outs through a Max/Min and send the Max to the top half and the Min to the bottom. You could mult the combined X and Y trigger to a logical inverter and send the inverted and non-inverted trigs to envelopes which are opening hard panned VCAs for stereo operation. The list goes on. The point being Model 32-styled Kinetic Gates are achievable without having to take the risk of purchasing a second-hand late-period Plan B module.

Synth meet-up last weekend

I've been reading about the Trash Audio/Xart synth meet-ups with interest since they started (or thereabouts), and was very excited to finally make it to one (their ninth) this past weekend.

Naturally, I brought a dictaphone with me on Saturday and plugged it into every rig I could get my hands on. The audio in the video below is a collage of some of those recordings. The video itself is from Sunday night's Alessandro Cortini/Richard Devine concert, with visuals by Johnny Woods on video synth.

It should go without saying, but it was a great time. I got to meet some folks for the first time (James Cigler! Mike Wiggler!!) and got to say hello to some old friends, too (Stephen!). My only complaint about the Chicago meet-ups is that they don't happen more often-- they do things once-a-quarter here. The NY/NJ scene had a very informal monthly get-together, which was always a treat. Hopefully, I can get something like that started before long.

In the meantime, enjoy:



New Make Noise granular sample player:


Muff Wiggler himself:

e350-- new faceplate

Somehow, without realizing it, we've become a digital oscillator household. Or so you'd think by looking at the current state of our modular. The imminent release of a certain VCO by a certain company I build for will slide the scales back to the analog side of things, but in the meantime, we have a Hertz Donut, a Cloud Generator and a Morphing Terrarium all in a row, which I call "perfect sine alley." We own a uLFO, too (production model #001), which holds its own just fine in terms of sound quality and sine purity (is that even a thing anymore? Am I dating myself in dredging up that reference?).

The e350 Morphing Terrarium was built from Synthesis Technology's "kit" version, which is essentially the fully built PCBs, minus the pots, jacks and faceplate-- all surface mount work is done for you, at a $100+ savings. Not bad!

I was interested in bringing the jumper pins on the back (which enable/disable wavetable interpolation and reassign the outputs into phase shifted copies) to the faceplate, a popular mod for the module, so I contacted Pro Modular about etching an extended panel for me (with an additional 2HP to accommodate the switches), and asked David from Bubblesound for Illustrator help.

After a short wait, the revised faceplate arrived with yesterday's mail. I threw some Davies knobs on there and KA-BLAM! It looks like this:



BEAUTIFUL! Thank you again to Stephen and to David for their help, and to Paul for designing such an interesting module.

First patch in our new home

All-synthesizer show tonight!!

Jess (Moog, sampler) and I (modular, tape loops) are playing solo synthesizer sets TONIGHT at Sycamore in Brooklyn. Our friend Megafortress (DX7, harmonizers) is closing. It's going to be a fun one! Hope you can make it. 9pm, $5.

I'll be using this patch:

Desolate Astroland

Another summer, another video starring Coney Island:

The music in it is a patch I've had up on the modular since the weekend and have been reluctant to tear down. I'll miss you, creepy sci-fi background music patch...

Edit: can any of our intrepid readers tell me how to remove the letterbox-style black spaces from the video above? Is it a resolution setting or something (I'm using iMovie and don't actually know what I'm doing)? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Update: video repaired! If you're having this sort of thing happen to your iMovie files (unintentional letterboxing), be sure to select the correct format when creating a new iMovie file (the default is set for an 3:2 aspect ratio-- changing this to 16:9 ("DV widescreen") removed the black spaces).

I have a Blofeld for the week!

I've been thinking about swapping our Opus 3 out for something a bit more modern (by which I mean it will break down less often). Having mentioned that to my pal David, he let me borrow his significantly-more-modern Blofeld (from Waldorf, of PPG fame).

Like anyone who has never used a digital keyboard before, I've stuck mainly to the pad sounds. I'll post some audio later this week, provided I can record something worth listening to. Seriously-- this is how it's gone so far: hold down a C chord, wait 2 minutes, tweak the filter, hit C again, repeat.