„riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay …“ (J. Joyce)

This is a relaxing piece, running like a river – always the same, always new. Some rhythmic things may appear to be somehow strange at first listening. Don’t worry.

Here we go:

Track length is 17:23.

Some technical details:

We start with some kind of percussive noise. This is done with an A-188-2 Tapped BBD. Digital Noise is amplified via A-132-1, modulated by an A-142 VC Decay and then put into the BBD. The result is put into an A-108 Ladder VCF (48 dB output) to reduce BBD noise and then into an A-132-3 VCA, controlled by an A-140 ADSR.

Then we have an ostinato bass line: three A-110 VCOs are mixed (A-138) and then put into an A-106-6 XP VCF. Two VCF outputs are usd here: 2 pole LP and 3 pole HP/1 pole LP. Both outs are fed into an A-134-1 VC Panning Module (modulated by an A-147 VC LFO, reset by a trigger derived from clock signal). Then we go into an A-132-3 VCA, controlled by an A-140 ADSR.

The bass line is coupled / transposed with an NI Absynth voice.

A second percussive voice: coloured noise from an A-118 Noise Generator is fed into an A-188-1X BBD. Then, we have again an A-108 – A-132-3 combination for final processing (both modulated by another A-140). Then we go into an A-101-3 Modular Vactrol Phaser (modulated by sine and negative sine of an A- 143-9 Quadrature LFO) and stereo out.

A bassdrum is made with white noise from an A-118 fed into a resonating A-105 SSM VCF and then into an A-132-3 VCA. Both VCF and VCA are controlled by an A-140 ADSR. Trigger comes from an A-160/A-161, synced to DAW clock.

Two A-155/A-154 Sequencers are used: the first one for the percussive BBD voices, the second one (in 16-step mode) for the bass line. Sequencing is a bit special here: everything is controlled by a sync trigger from Ableton Live. The bass-line sequencer is triggered directy by this one. The other sequencer not. I put the DAW trigger into an A-165 Trigger Modifier. The „+/-“ output (triggers when the input trigger raises and again when it falls) is sent into an A-162 Trigger Delay to create a gate signal instead of a short trigger. The resulting gate is then inverted by an A-165 and then used as clock for the A-154. To create constantly changing patterns, the first and last step of the A-154 are modulated by two independent LFOs (slow triangle waves).

Then we have GForce M-Tron Mellotron strings.

We hear an NI Massive arpeggiated voice.

No overdubs (only the starting points of a few Absynth bass sounds were adjusted to be more „out of sync“). Have fun!

Andreas