Waldorf Blofeld tutorial - how to use wavetables & arpeggios

Here I do a walk-through of the sound design for arpeggiated soundscapes with sweeping wavetables.

Sorry about the stray cat hair hanging off one of the knobs. Didn't spot that till I was in the "cutting room"!

The Circle K by Miles Cosmo - progressive drum & bass

Miles Cosmo's music is bursting with ideas and crosses genres like electronica should. This drum & bass track is a great example. It evolves constantly throughout, and ends in a beautiful space with a harp revisiting a synth theme from earlier in the song.

Waldorf Nave iPad synth + Elektron Octatrack, Analog 4

Another of my demonstrations of Nave's sound design possibilities. Accompanying are some loops on the Octatrack made using Omnisphere and Access Virus C. Plus some arpeggios from the Analog 4.

Dave Smith Instruments - Pro 2 [Spacewhales]

Legendary synth designer Dave Smith has a new instrument on the market, the Pro 2. I want one of course, but it's not especially cheap. Trooper Starship has done a Space Music demo all with voices programmed on the Pro 2, apart from the percussion parts.




The Pro 2...

"October North East" by Seen From Space

OK it's no more October yet than it's still August! (See previous post.) Not absolutely sure why the months keep on creeping into the titles.

Here are some more underground synthetic beats with a middle based on a classical piece. This time an instrumental snippet from Brahms' German Requiem. For this I've used the absolutely gorgeous 12-string guitar sample in Omnisphere - that's the soft synth that does the spooky drones on the telly when someone lets themselves into their house at night and doesn't turn on the lights, and you just know they're about to become another corpse to be investigated. It has other more cheerful uses though.



More music from Seen From Space...

"New August Moon" by Seen From Space

I know it's not August any more. Never mind about that!

This is ambient dubstep with a drum and bass groove, and a middle section lifted from an oratorio by J.S. Bach. Who says baroque music, especially Bach, doesn't lend itself to the synth treatment?

Hearing "Blue August Moon" by Brian Eno for the first time in years, I was prompted to try something similar. As usual things turned out utterly different from the first idea, but the homage remains in the title at least.



More music from Seen From Space...

"Silent Seas" - ambient drone on 5U modular synth

Another great example of programming a complex synth patch and letting it wend its own unpredictable way. From John L Rice.

"This is an Aleatoric ambient drone created with my large 5U format modular synthesizer. Aleatoric in this case means I setup the patch, turned on the recorder and then walked away for an hour while the synthesizer played 'on its own', creating a semi random piece of music, more or less ;-). This is 25 minutes of that recording. This was done in response to a composition challenge on Muff's modular synth forum (although I cheated and used a reverb plug-in during post processing ;-)"

EMS Synthi E moondrone - more from Ebotronix!

I can't keep up with this guy! He keeps on turning out these many layered soundscapes with synth voices of real quality. Where does he find the time to do all the programming involved?

From Ebotronix.

In the Seen From Space studio

Just updated my website with a montage of the studio hardware; of interest perhaps only to hardware geeks like me! See a larger image and more info on the website.

EMS Synthi E, Jupiter 6

The prolific Ebotronix keeps on putting out these intricate improvisations on a huge sound palette. The blue synth is a machine made by British company EMS for the education market in the early '70s. If you're at all familiar with Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Roxy Music, Tangerine Dream, BBC Radiophonic Workshop and others from this period, you'll certainly know the EMS sound.

"Ambient Chillout/Space Music" on the Roland JD800

I wouldn't normally post videos simply demonstrating equipment, but this synth has such a beautiful sound, and David Hobson's playing/programming is very tasteful. I tried one out in the shop when they were first available and found it a most expressive instrument. It's one of the great digital synths of the '90s IMO, and a doddle to programme because of the all those one-function sliders. I'd love to get my hands on one now, but no room in the SFS studio: it does have quite a footprint!

"Silent" concert at Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art, St Petersburg

From Nicholas Lem.

This concert is silent in that the live audience wear wireless headphones. Lemnik is one of the recognised masters of these very complex Elektron instruments (from Sweden) and one of the top exponents of "dark ambient".

Two fathoms below deep: dual Monomachine demo

From MIDERA. Far better than just a 'demo' I'd say.

I'm a fan of these Elektron boxes too; their complexity is bewildering sometimes, but they're wonderful creative tools when you get the hang of them.

AsteroidKiller: "Live in the Studio"

From AsteroidKillerMusic. "This is a patch I've been working on over the last days. It's recorded live and nothing is added in post."

The way the arpeggios syncopate randomly keeps the old attention going. Unlike so much of what I rail against in this genre i.e. a 1 bar groove that goes on for 8 minutes with no variation, so doing in one's head. I also appreciate the stereo production - a sense of space in a mix lifts the whole thing out from the steel box, and if you're listening on headphones, out from your sinuses!



See the two keyboards on the left, close to the camera? I once owned both, but sold them for next to nothing when such gizmos were right out of fashion. They fetch 4-figure sums on eBay now. There's many a similar tale told by gentlemen of a certain age who lived through the arrival of digital synths in the early 80s.

"Synths that block out the sun" - number 4

"Cyrusrex + Baseck", from Muff Wiggler.

We may entertain the delusion of free will, but in fact HERE is where it's ALL controlled from.

A Zen Minute

"Mixing the Buddha Machines with the modular..." A dreamy hybrid of Tibetan gong samples and old-school analog synthesis. From kv3x.

"I must get one of those" - number 5

Last chance to get a Thingamagoop 2x. The golden age of mad wacky instruments isn't ending any time soon despite this.
 

"Synths that block out the sun" - number 3

"Form Thirty Five"

More interestingly structured noise from the Chicago lab of sound designer and composer, Surachai.

Arjen Schat - Silent Ritual (Album Sampler)

Don't mistake this for spa music! The packaging suggests that, and you could just about play it at the spa and not frighten anyone. But it's got a bit more height and breadth than that for me.

Kick.S / Ambient sequence

Unusually ambient chops from these grooveboxes.

From Kick.S.