Improvisation XXV – este tren no para

First piece of music this year. This is a rather „old-fashioned“ one, I hope you will enjoy it!

Instruments used: Doepfer A-100, GForce M-Tron.

I’m starting with a little sequence: three A-110 VCOs (two triangle waves and a sawtooth) through an A-108 Ladder Filter (24 dB lowpass mode), an A-188-1x BBD and then an A-132-3 VCA. Filter and VCA are controlled by an A-140 ADSR, VCO frequency is controlled by an A-155/154/156 Sequencer with Quantizer. (The A-154 is triggered by a master clock.) At around 3:02, the sequence sounds quite unharmonic. This is due to some „spicing up“ via heavy BBD frequency modulation… (listen closely and you will recognize the slight delay)

Straight from the beginning, we hear a percussive voice: this is made with several kinds of noise (A-117 / A-118) sent through an A-182-1 (flanger/delay mode) or an A-188-2 Tapped BBD, respectivly and then switched rhythmically with a combination of an A-182-1 Switched Multiple (manual pre-selection) and an A-152 Addressed Switch (driven by a master clock). Then we go into an A-124 Wasp Filter and an A-132-3 VCA. Filter and VCA are controlled by an A-140 ADSR.

The M-Tron (starting ca. 0:30) is used for melody / chord stuff, I like those cheesy flutes (and others) quite a lot… Played directly via keyboard (LMK2+ in split mode).

The percussive voice is soon (ca. 1:57) accompanied by a bassdrum-alike sound: white noise (from an A-118) through an A-105 SSM VCF and an A-132-3 VCA. To create some atomatic bvariations on drum length / tone, the Filter and VCA are controlled by an A-142 VC Decay (with a random variation on decay length via A-149-1 Stored Random Voltages).

Starting at ca. 4:05, reappearing ca. 8:28, there’s a solo (doodle) voice: two A-111 VCOs, one being processed by an A-137-1, the other by an A-137-2 and then mixed with some sub-octaves from an A-115 and finally filtered with an A-106-6 XP VCF (24dB lowpass mode). VCA is another A-132-3, VCA and VCF controlled by an A-140 ADSR. After this, an A-127 Triple Resonance Filter is used in conjunction with an A-138m Matrix Mixer: the three individual outputs of the A-127 are spread in stereo via two output channels of the matrix mixer. This voice is played directly via keyboard (LMK2+ in split mode).

Finally – after ca. 5 minutes – you will hear a sequenced bass line: another three A-110 VCOs (pulse width modulated square waves) through an A-101-3 Phaser and then then an A-108 Ladder Filter (24 dB lowpass mode) and an A-132-3 VCA. VCF and VCA are controlled by an A-140 ADSR, VCO frequency is controlled by another A-155/154 Sequencer.

Both sequencers are transposed manually via keyboard (LMK2+ in split mode, connected through a Kenton Midi interface). Recorded and mixed with Ableton Live, Mastered with Steinberg Cubase 6.

Here we go:

Track length: 12:03.

Have fun,

Andreas