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Since migrating my modular system from the basement studio to a smaller desktop setup a year ago, I've adopted a different workflow that has been shaped by a very selective approach. With an L-shaped desk, with the computer in the corner, I've only got so much surface to use for hardware, so my primary recording rig has consisted of my three modular racks, my Vesta Fire tape machine, my 10-string acoustic guitar on a stand and one or two rotating desktop machines of choice. Today, I finally "retired" my Blue Marvin ARP 2600 back to the basement, and replaced it with my Korg ER-1 drum machine (my favorite drum machine, bar none) and Arturia's Keystep Pro, a motherbrain of sequencing and probabilistic capabilities with four discrete channels, built to be used with modular/CV in particular. Along with this change of scenery, I felt compelled to test the new setup using the first VCO I ever installed in the Audioholistics system - an SSDP Jade series VCO, which is more specifically an as3340 chip with a novel waveform. Very simple, but very powerful, and very toothy. This VCO was used only once prior in the Vibra series, siring the Apennine Hashish session header for all subsequent recordings made using the 3340 VCO, and while plans were always made to conduct more session work with this source, it never quite happened that way again, until now.
Routing the 3340 into a 2HP pitch shifter, where it was modulated slightly and doubled with a lower pitch to create a fifth chord, it was multed out to two different low-pass filters (2HP and Doepfer A-121-3) which were swept open and closed by a Buchla 281t quad function generator. These two filtered signals were routed into two different Clouds modules - one with a reversed sample buffer and its output pitched up an octave, and the other set to a normal pitch output with a standard buffer - and these two machines both probabilistically sampled and re-conveyed the 3340's output in differing (but similar) directions. The higher pitched of the two was also sent through a Strymon Magneto multi-head tape delay unit, and from there both signals were summed and panned via a Behringer 305 stereo mixer.
For sequencing, the Keystep Pro was given 64 steps and only four of them contained any input whatsoever - four different pitches in the Dorian scale - and told to randomize the sequence on a continuous basis. Between this, and the buffer-scrubbing in two Clouds units, Apennine Hashish emerged as a constant stream of spacious melody and distant twinkles of sun burning through soft white cumulus. Multiple takes were recorded using varying degrees of master clock information, different octaves of sequence playback and alternative settings for the filter cutoffs and granular buffer sizes, and these takes may yet manifest later on in this series.
Altogether, the effect of this patch has been sunny contentment, feeling welcomed back somewhat to this early discovery, like a camp in the woods, and vaguely remembering what happened the last time we were here, but happy to let it go and simply create new memories as the somnolent waves of sound drift on.
credits
released December 1, 2022
W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded at White Pillar, November 7 2022, using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system and an Arturia Keystep Pro. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number AVB54, 54th in the Vibratelepathos catalog. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2022. All nights preserved.
From the always-excellent label Past Inside the Present comes this stunning work of sustained tone and timbre. Gorgeous. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 1, 2022
Minimalist compositions that take their time unfolding, bands of sound melting glacier-like from one end of the song to the other. Bandcamp New & Notable Aug 6, 2023
