Improvisation XXIV – am working as designed

Here’s a new one:

This is something about messing around with rhythm. You will have to wait for more than 12 minutes before you can hear the first melody.

Track length: 27:34.

We have four „drum“ voices:

a) Digital noise from an A-117 is processed by an A-105 SSM lowpass filter.

b) White noise from an A-118 is processed by an A-189 Bit Modifier and then by an A-106-6 XPander Filter (4 pole bandpass used).

c) An „808“ sound (6 oscillators) from an A-117 are processed by an A-188-1 BBD and then by an A-101-1 Vactrol filter (bandpass used).

d) Colored noise from an A-118 is processed by two A-106-1 Xtreme filters (serial connection), first one as a lowpass filter, second one as a highpass. There is an A-199 Spring Reverb in the feedback path of the first A-106-1 and an A-126 Frequency Shifter in the feedback path of the second one.

All four voices are mixed and sent through an A-101-2 Lowpass Gate, an A-188-2 Tapped BBD and then into an A-101-3 Phase Shifter. The trigger signals for the four voices are created with an A-113 Subharmonic Generator (misused once again for dividing a clock signal instead of audio). Each voice has its own A-140 ADSR, used for both VCA (some A-132-3’s) and filters. The LPG mode is switched by gate signals from two A-155/154 Sequencers, both running most of the time in random mode.

Then we have an additional percussion voice: Digital noise from the same A-117 is sent into an A-132-1 VCA and then into an A-121 filter (bandpass used) and an A-134-1 VC Panner. It uses the same trigger as the (a) percussion voice mentioned above. This is quite useful to keep the rhythm going when the main rhythm voices operate with an almost closed LPG filter.

There are two melodic voices used here, each one is built from three A-110 VCOs sent through an A-108 ladder filter (one uses the bandpass out, the other one the 24dB lowpass). Tonal control is done with one of the A-155 Sequencers and an A-156 Quantizer and with an random voltage output from an A-118 sent through an A-148 Sample & Hold, an A-172 Max/Min (with a static voltage from an A-183-2 and the „Min“ out used to reduce tonal range) and said A-156 Quantizer. Both voices are transposed by manual keyboard action (via Kenton interface). As always, the interface to the VCOs are two A-185-2 Precision Adders.

String sounds are taken from a GForce M-Tron, an additional synthesizer sound from NI Massive. Everything has been played directly (keyboard split) and without any overdubs. Recorded in Ableton Life, some (well, kind of) mastering with Steinberg Cubase.

Have fun,

Andreas