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Post by andrewwerdna on May 10, 2019 17:07:58 GMT -5
This is my project. The primary goal with Illusionment is to satisfy my curiosity about what a particular synth or keyboard will sound like when channeled into dungeon synth. I choose a different instrument for each album and use only that for its entirety, without even any external effects. I just released a new album, Trepanation, made with a Roland JD-990, with all original patches, no presets. illusionment.bandcamp.com/
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Post by nahadoth on May 10, 2019 20:30:50 GMT -5
Killer Stuff. Havenβt checked Trepanation yet, but Iβve enjoyed the first three immensely.
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Post by poppet108 on May 10, 2019 21:25:53 GMT -5
Illusionment is some great stuff, I must say. This fourth album, trepanation is really good as well.
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Post by curwenius on May 11, 2019 8:30:52 GMT -5
I didn't know this one were yours. I used to listen the three first releases in a row. I found the project in a list, here in the board, and I immediately liked it. It's great news that it is you behind it. Trepanation is awesone, congratulations.
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Post by Summerless on May 11, 2019 8:54:42 GMT -5
What a cool album and project - I'm thoroughly impressed.
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Post by Pilgrim's Shadow on May 11, 2019 9:44:15 GMT -5
Good to know who's behind it! Great stuff, very inspiring. Especially Trepanation and Secret lore of Ocean.
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Post by andrewwerdna on May 11, 2019 10:11:41 GMT -5
Thanks guys, glad to hear you're liking it. I didn't know this one were yours. I used to listen the three first releases in a row. I found the project in a list, here in the board, and I immediately liked it. It's great news that it is you behind it. Trepanation is awesone, congratulations. Yeah, I was keeping it anonymous for the first three albums, which was a choice I was happy with. I can't think of a simple explanation as to why I'm breaking the silence now, but it just feels like the right time for it. One big reason though is that I'm starting to do some more complex synth stuff with Illusionment, with this album and the previous one, which I'd like to be able to talk about. When I'm just using cheap keyboards from my local thrift store, like the first two albums, really no explanation is needed, but when I'm simultaneously building my own (virtual) modular synth as well as making all the initial oscillator samples from phonograph cylinder recordings, like I did on Limbus Patrum, I feel like that does warrant more discussion than just a sentence or two. But now most likely I'm going to end up talking about it too much and killing the mystery, haha. At the end of the day though this is just a fun hobby for me, so I think talking about the weird synth stuff should be part of that fun. Speaking of Limbus Patrum, because I was keeping the project anonymous I wanted to somehow explain what was going on in terms of the modular synthesis (which was only half the work, it took at least as long collecting and editing the samples), but I didn't want to post a wall of text on my bandcamp page, so I decided to make a video of myself building the modular arrangement which I used for essentially every patch. I feel like people might've overlooked that video though, so if you guys missed it please check it out:
I could explain in more detail what's going on there if anyone's interested. VCV Rack is really fun and fascinating, though definitely a major distraction from actually making music, still surprised I managed to stay focused long enough to finish that album.
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Tyrannus
Verified Account
Knowledge is Night
Posts: 806
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Post by Tyrannus on May 11, 2019 19:55:41 GMT -5
Amazing stuff man
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Post by Pilgrim's Shadow on May 12, 2019 8:36:01 GMT -5
Thanks guys, glad to hear you're liking it. I didn't know this one were yours. I used to listen the three first releases in a row. I found the project in a list, here in the board, and I immediately liked it. It's great news that it is you behind it. Trepanation is awesone, congratulations.
I could explain in more detail what's going on there if anyone's interested. VCV Rack is really fun and fascinating, though definitely a major distraction from actually making music, still surprised I managed to stay focused long enough to finish that album.
Yea i'd like you to go into more detail if it is not too much of an effort. I never had the chance to actually use modular synth, but i find it fascinating and have been activley interested in it's theory. It would be great to know about it, especially in this unique niche for Dungeon Synth sounds. I wonder if there are other DS projects using modular synthesis. When i make Dungeon Synth i uselly program my own sound from pure sound waves using subtractive synthesisers. it really is a fun part of creating the music, almost like a ceremony. I am not pretending to know if other projects use presets or not, nor does it matter for me, but i find it difficult for me to feel as if i am creating something of my own when i'm using pure presets. Modular synth seems to take it to a whole new level.
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Post by andrewwerdna on May 12, 2019 22:25:58 GMT -5
Yea i'd like you to go into more detail if it is not too much of an effort. I never had the chance to actually use modular synth, but i find it fascinating and have been activley interested in it's theory. It would be great to know about it, especially in this unique niche for Dungeon Synth sounds. I wonder if there are other DS projects using modular synthesis. I'm glad you're interested! It's been over a year now since I worked with VCV Rack, so I can't break it down step-by-step at the moment, but there are a couple things to point out which might not be clear from just watching the video. Before that though I'd like to say that I don't think modular will make one's music sound better for a long time, if ever. I spent at least a month following tutorials and learning about it and only really got the stage of reinventing the wheel in a crude way. Why are there four of everything? Well that's because it was the only way I could figure out to have the minimum amount of polyphony for how I like to play. Mono is good for one layer in a DS mix, but for me I feel like I need at least four voices per instrument most of the time. So the patch shown being built in the video is just one of four that makeup the mix of the song. The "Midi CC to CV" modules, on the left with all the numbers, that was mapping the various parameters of the layout to my midi controller, which is something I like to do in any case but here it was really essential because I needed to control the parameters of all four iterations of each given module so that all the voices of polyphony were affected in the same way at the same time. Like if I were to go in and turn one of the filters with my mouse then I would have to change the next three filters next to it in the same way otherwise the filter would be different for each subsequent key press. About the "Quadsimpler," that was where I loaded my samples that acted as the oscillator. There was a very similar module that just had one sample for each module rather than four, but because my samples were so thin I found it to be important to mix that sample with detuned layers of itself or other samples to fatten it up, which I could mix around on the fly with those "Vector Mixers." I personally think the traditional dungeon sound is most at home in short simple samples like those found 90's romplers. It's difficult to make saw, square, sine, triangle, pulse etc. sound traditionally dungeony, at least not when that makes up the entire mix. As soon as I found out about that sampler module that's really when I was off-to-the-races with that album concept. The reason why there's three filters, VCF, pErCO, and Stabile, well I could not for life of me figure out how to get the LFO filter, envelope filter, and just general cutoff adjustment to work together within one filter without sounding very lame so in the end I just split them up. I'm sure there are far more elegant ways to do these things, but I think I had a fairly functional first subtractive prototype for a beginner. I have nothing against presets personally, in fact I think using presets is the smarter way to go because you can put more effort into the composition, and that's really where the meat is of what makes an album a good listening experience, and in most cases professionally-developed presets are going to sound better than hobbyist patch attempts. I think proper synthesis should only be done by those dungeoneers who feel compelled to do so or enjoy that part of the music-making process more than actual composition. But I would like to know when other artists are making their own patches because unless they directly say so it can probably be assumed to be presets (or slightly-modified presets). But it would definitely change my listening experience to consider that the timbre has not been heard in exactly such a way at any point prior. About modular synthesis, actually I don't think it should seem as intimidating as it does (at least not in the software form, can't speak for hardware). Oddly enough I found the JD-990 to often times be more overwhelming because of the sheer extent of the possibilities. With modular you are really locked into the strict limitations of your synthesis understanding and intent. You got to go out of your way to do a specific thing, rather than having a smorgasbord of possibilities ready to go at your fingertips. VCV Rack is great and a lot of fun (and free!), but like with monophonic analog I think it can be hard sometimes to sound dungeony rather than futuristic.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jul 5, 2020 21:03:34 GMT -5
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Post by curwenius on Jul 6, 2020 11:08:17 GMT -5
Mesmerizing music, walking on the boundary between dungeon synth and ambient, if you allow me to say it. I've enjoyed it, it evokes to me something that I listened to a lot in the past, years ago, but now I can't remember. Good work.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jul 6, 2020 21:26:24 GMT -5
Thanks man!
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Post by ranseur on Jul 7, 2020 0:20:48 GMT -5
Yeah I didn't expect it to be so ambient but once I let it roll I was like fuck, this is dripping with that dark dungeon atmosphere. Serious moods here.
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Post by andrewwerdna on Jul 7, 2020 20:59:42 GMT -5
I appreciate that. Was wondering if it verged a bit on dungeon noise territory, so I'm glad to hear you're into it.
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