How the modular synth has kindled my creativity!
Mar 14, 2021 22:41:58 GMT
admin, NightMachines, and 5 more like this
Post by johnpg on Mar 14, 2021 22:41:58 GMT
Hello again!
It's been a month since I broke cover and posted on this thread, and in that time I've spent hours (and hours, and hours) playing around with the AE. It's grown larger too - I've added several more modules - including the excellent Wonkystuff RBSS and QVCA (thanks John!)
I haven't contributed to the forum since my first introduction, as I don't have a lot of knowledge or experience that I can bring yet - being a total novice. I'm busily trying to absorb as much as I can from other people, and spending as much time as I can with hands on the patch cables and the pots! I'm starting to feel a little more confident in my ability to be creative - although I have to be careful not to compare my shaky patching with the myriad of phenomenal and inspirational material the rest of the community publishes.
One thing I've learned in recent years regarding art and creativity (I took up sketching a few years ago after a lifetime of knowing I absolutely couldn't draw) is that:
Your mistakes and errors are not mistakes and errors - they are your STYLE.
I've fallen into an AE workflow in recent weeks - I play around with a new technique (either one I've seen/read about in here or something I've dreamt up in my head) and slowly as the sounds develop a patch grows and the AE becomes a "playable" instrument with a particular piece of music/soundscape inside. Then I turn my cassette deck on and record a few variations - small snatches of a larger idea or a full "piece". I might play around with the patch for several days, in different ways. Recording different variations (often they're strikingly different to each other, from just one configuration of patch cables). Once the tape is full on both sides I take it out of the deck, put it to one side for a week or so while I do something else on the AE, on a new tape.
Then after enough days have passed that I've forgotten what/how/why I recorded a tape I'll take a walk(man) and listen to the tape. And I've been amazed that I'm often unable to imagine how I even made the patch, and what modules and connections and modulations were involved. I often can't see/hear how a particular layer/voice/effect was done and it sounds like it's been done by someone else. And often I'm happy, hearing my own "music". Imagine - I'm listening to my own music, for pleasure. It seems unreal!
Listening like this even, fleetingly, makes me feel as if I'm hearing a rough take of something by someone who actually knows what they're doing - although of course they lack the technical skill to record it properly and the performance is clunky, with poor transitions between parts etc.
All of my recordings are done as a single pass, no external effects or EQ. I have no external sequencing/MIDI/Keyboards. All just Pure AE. In recent days I have found myself feeding in the audio from a Shortwave receiver - and last night connecting a morse key to inject some hand-sent morse code into some pieces. (I'm feeling like I'm channelling Scanner and Kraftwerk together at the moment, but having great fun).
I also realize that there's more to synths and to synth-derived music/sounds than <enter your own preconceived idea of what synths are>
In many years of trying to play guitar/mandolin/melodeon etc. etc. all I've really been doing to trying to get enough skill/dexterity/timing/accuracy to be able to play other peoples' music and I never got comfortable/confident/skilled enough to even get that far.
I NEVER tried making up my own stuff. EVER. It didn't even cross my mind that I might "write some tunes". Playing stuff that already existed was hard enough, how could I make up new stuff?!?
Modular synths are DIFFERENT. They are inherently creative because until you bring something of yourself to them they don't do anything.
You have to create the instrument before you can create the music. And the form that the instrument takes is deeply intertwined with the form of the sound/music that's in your head.
You don't think in terms of "I'm going to practice some Tangerine Dream tonight, I must get that tricky part in the second bar right".
You might have some Tangerine Dream soundscape in your mind's ear, but that's just a vague hint at the direction you might want to go with today's incarnation of the instrument. Where you end up is often nothing like where you set off for, and you deviated from the initial direction due to your own style and taste and creativity - choosing between options as they present themselves, discarding parts of patches/rhythms/melodies/timbres and selecting others - as they appeal to your sense of where you REALLY want to go.
Many blind alleys.
Many lightbulb moments of inspiration and happy coincidence. Something as simple as setting an ENV attack or delay "just so" and hearing a new voice that sends you off on a tangent....
Anyway - a long ramble from a novice who hasn't really got much to add to the knowledge base of the community, except perhaps an insight into why I'm happily finding that modular in general, and AE in particular, is so startlingly different learning a "traditional" musical instrument.
And I suppose I should show you some of the stuff I've been doing - all very much rough and ready, and of fairly limited technical, and musical/creative quality, but you have to start somewhere. After 40+ years of trying to play "real instruments" I've never been prepared to record ANYTHING that I'd 1) feel happy to listen to myself and 2) share with others.
So this is a big step for me.
My "tapes" at Internet Archive:
archive.org/details/@johnp_g
I found, playing with the RBSS, a combination of patch cables and module settings that made a noise like a caveman chuckling to himself. I used it in a small piece with other voices as the patch got more and more complicated. I had a pleasant few hours trying different things, but the basic Laughing Caveman was so funny I had to record just it on its own. So I left it playing, unattended, to fill up a 45 minute side of a cassette while I went out on a walk - truly "press-play-generative" stuff.
Now I can put it on in the background and find myself breaking out in my own chuckles at various parts of the tape...
How would that be possible with a guitar?
Here it is: "The Laughing Caveman" - a full 45 minutes of RBSS-induced-generative chuckling noises:
ia801400.us.archive.org/5/items/ae_tape4_side_b/ae_tape4_side_a.mp3
And finally:
Old GPO Morse key and AE Modular, such fun!
A badly recorded jam with my morse key attached to my AE (a marriage made in heaven). I just propped my phone on the bench and let it record the "noise in the shed" of me noodling... if you can read morse code you might get a bit more out of it :-)
I've got a couple of different stereo audio-only versions on the Internet Archive site
archive.org/details/ae_modular_tunes
Cheers again,
John
It's been a month since I broke cover and posted on this thread, and in that time I've spent hours (and hours, and hours) playing around with the AE. It's grown larger too - I've added several more modules - including the excellent Wonkystuff RBSS and QVCA (thanks John!)
I haven't contributed to the forum since my first introduction, as I don't have a lot of knowledge or experience that I can bring yet - being a total novice. I'm busily trying to absorb as much as I can from other people, and spending as much time as I can with hands on the patch cables and the pots! I'm starting to feel a little more confident in my ability to be creative - although I have to be careful not to compare my shaky patching with the myriad of phenomenal and inspirational material the rest of the community publishes.
One thing I've learned in recent years regarding art and creativity (I took up sketching a few years ago after a lifetime of knowing I absolutely couldn't draw) is that:
Your mistakes and errors are not mistakes and errors - they are your STYLE.
I've fallen into an AE workflow in recent weeks - I play around with a new technique (either one I've seen/read about in here or something I've dreamt up in my head) and slowly as the sounds develop a patch grows and the AE becomes a "playable" instrument with a particular piece of music/soundscape inside. Then I turn my cassette deck on and record a few variations - small snatches of a larger idea or a full "piece". I might play around with the patch for several days, in different ways. Recording different variations (often they're strikingly different to each other, from just one configuration of patch cables). Once the tape is full on both sides I take it out of the deck, put it to one side for a week or so while I do something else on the AE, on a new tape.
Then after enough days have passed that I've forgotten what/how/why I recorded a tape I'll take a walk(man) and listen to the tape. And I've been amazed that I'm often unable to imagine how I even made the patch, and what modules and connections and modulations were involved. I often can't see/hear how a particular layer/voice/effect was done and it sounds like it's been done by someone else. And often I'm happy, hearing my own "music". Imagine - I'm listening to my own music, for pleasure. It seems unreal!
Listening like this even, fleetingly, makes me feel as if I'm hearing a rough take of something by someone who actually knows what they're doing - although of course they lack the technical skill to record it properly and the performance is clunky, with poor transitions between parts etc.
All of my recordings are done as a single pass, no external effects or EQ. I have no external sequencing/MIDI/Keyboards. All just Pure AE. In recent days I have found myself feeding in the audio from a Shortwave receiver - and last night connecting a morse key to inject some hand-sent morse code into some pieces. (I'm feeling like I'm channelling Scanner and Kraftwerk together at the moment, but having great fun).
I also realize that there's more to synths and to synth-derived music/sounds than <enter your own preconceived idea of what synths are>
In many years of trying to play guitar/mandolin/melodeon etc. etc. all I've really been doing to trying to get enough skill/dexterity/timing/accuracy to be able to play other peoples' music and I never got comfortable/confident/skilled enough to even get that far.
I NEVER tried making up my own stuff. EVER. It didn't even cross my mind that I might "write some tunes". Playing stuff that already existed was hard enough, how could I make up new stuff?!?
Modular synths are DIFFERENT. They are inherently creative because until you bring something of yourself to them they don't do anything.
You have to create the instrument before you can create the music. And the form that the instrument takes is deeply intertwined with the form of the sound/music that's in your head.
You don't think in terms of "I'm going to practice some Tangerine Dream tonight, I must get that tricky part in the second bar right".
You might have some Tangerine Dream soundscape in your mind's ear, but that's just a vague hint at the direction you might want to go with today's incarnation of the instrument. Where you end up is often nothing like where you set off for, and you deviated from the initial direction due to your own style and taste and creativity - choosing between options as they present themselves, discarding parts of patches/rhythms/melodies/timbres and selecting others - as they appeal to your sense of where you REALLY want to go.
Many blind alleys.
Many lightbulb moments of inspiration and happy coincidence. Something as simple as setting an ENV attack or delay "just so" and hearing a new voice that sends you off on a tangent....
Anyway - a long ramble from a novice who hasn't really got much to add to the knowledge base of the community, except perhaps an insight into why I'm happily finding that modular in general, and AE in particular, is so startlingly different learning a "traditional" musical instrument.
And I suppose I should show you some of the stuff I've been doing - all very much rough and ready, and of fairly limited technical, and musical/creative quality, but you have to start somewhere. After 40+ years of trying to play "real instruments" I've never been prepared to record ANYTHING that I'd 1) feel happy to listen to myself and 2) share with others.
So this is a big step for me.
My "tapes" at Internet Archive:
archive.org/details/@johnp_g
I found, playing with the RBSS, a combination of patch cables and module settings that made a noise like a caveman chuckling to himself. I used it in a small piece with other voices as the patch got more and more complicated. I had a pleasant few hours trying different things, but the basic Laughing Caveman was so funny I had to record just it on its own. So I left it playing, unattended, to fill up a 45 minute side of a cassette while I went out on a walk - truly "press-play-generative" stuff.
Now I can put it on in the background and find myself breaking out in my own chuckles at various parts of the tape...
How would that be possible with a guitar?
Here it is: "The Laughing Caveman" - a full 45 minutes of RBSS-induced-generative chuckling noises:
ia801400.us.archive.org/5/items/ae_tape4_side_b/ae_tape4_side_a.mp3
And finally:
Old GPO Morse key and AE Modular, such fun!
A badly recorded jam with my morse key attached to my AE (a marriage made in heaven). I just propped my phone on the bench and let it record the "noise in the shed" of me noodling... if you can read morse code you might get a bit more out of it :-)
I've got a couple of different stereo audio-only versions on the Internet Archive site
archive.org/details/ae_modular_tunes
Cheers again,
John
