Synthfonietta

We live in an age of remakes, so I decided to do a remake of one of my earlier works called „Sinfonietta“ from ca. 2007 (first attempts even dating back to 2003). This was a composition inspired by Minimal Music and originally created for orchestra. A lightweight piece in ternary rhythm.

Of course, no orchestra would play my music. So I used some of the popular orchestral libraries to render my score into something like music. The result was not exactly unlike orchestral music but at least you could listen to it. Here is the „Orchestral Music“ blog entry:

http://blog.andreaskrebs.de/2009/12/17/sinfonietta/

More than a decade later, I decided to give it another go and re-orchestrate it with my Doepfer A-100 modular synthesizer. I did neither intend to create a Tomita-alike modular orchestra simulation nor something as out-of-this-world sounding as my modular improvisation series. My goal was to build a homogeneous soundscape with clearly detectable individual voicings, more merging „Mischklang“ than „Spaltklang“.

Everything was done with the analog modular synthesizer, with some slight digital effects (echo, reverb, chorus) created with the DAW (Ableton Live nowadays).

Here we go:

Have fun,

Andreas

Emotion

Emotion was created 01/2009-02/2009.

Emotion

Instruments used:

Native Instruments Absynth, 4Front TruePianos, Arturia Moog Modular V, Native Instruments Kontakte 3, Korg Legacy MS-20, Toontrack EZdrummer, Steinberg Cubase 4.5.

Andreas

BlueSequence

BlueSequence was  created 08/2008-11/2008.

BlueSequence

Instruments used:

Native Instruments FM8, Korg Polysix, GForce Minimonsta, Korg Monopoly, Korg MS20, Korg Wavestation, Arturia CS-80V, Toontrack Ezdrummer, Native Instruments Kontakt, Korg M1, Native Instruments B4, GForce M-Tron, Native Instruments Absynth, Native Instruments Reaktor, Steinberg Cubase 4.5.
Andreas

Blackbird

Blackbird was created 11/2009.

Blackbird

The piece begins with some noise, created with Massive. It is modulated and will be amended by two more Massive instances with different noises. The noise has nothing to do with blackbirds, it is more like the “sfumato” in renaissance oil/tempera painting (a kind of haze that makes some details remain unclear).

From 0:06 on, an MS-20 is controlled in pitch and filter with a recording of a singing blackbird. The oscilators are tuned down some octaves, everything is put trough a distorted simulated tube amp (Guitar Rig: Gratifier).

At 0:32 there’s the second Massive and a first blackbird voice. The voice is made of two recordings, with 1 octave difference, resynthesized in Cube and morphed around with a fast and more or less rhytmic complex envelope.

At 0:58 the “hymn” begins. The noted are again derived from the same blackbird recording. The midi notes are from Cubases pitch recongition, with a second voice being the crab canon of the first voice. Both voices are different Absynth sounds (remotely reminding of woodwinds or brass). This is doubled two octaves below with celi and double basses from Peter Siedlaczek’s Strings, put through flanger and delay and an additional tuba added. The melody is several times slower than the original bird song.

At 1:04 we have the third noise generator (Massive).

In the middle part at 2:24, there’s again the original recording, transposed up and put through a granular effect made in Reaktor.

Around 3:22 again the melody derived from pitch recognition. Now faster than before and as three voiced canon (3:30 and 3:38 are the starting points) with violin ensembles, heavily highpass-filtered and modulated.

The piece slowly dims, and at the end we have the original recording again, amended by a virtual ARP2600 that plays the extracted midi notes in the originally sung tempo.

Instruments used:
Arturia ARP2600V, Korg Legacy Collection Analog Edition 2007, NI Absynth, NI Guitar Rig, NI Kontakt, NI Massive, NI Reaktor, Virsyn Cube, Kontakt Libraries from East West and Peter Siedlaczek, Steinberg Cubase 5.1

Andreas

Singularity

Singularity was created 10/2008-11/2008.

Singularity

Instruments used:

Virsyn Cube, Korg MonoPoly, Native Instruments FM8, Korg Wavestation, GForce Minimonsta, Arturia CS-80V, Toontrack Ezdrummer, U-He Zebralette, GForce M-Tron, Arturia Moog Modular V, Steinberg Cubase 4.5.

Andreas