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Post by skirmisher on Mar 21, 2020 6:30:03 GMT -5
So I guess I feel like my work is evolving towards being too sterile for my own tastes and I've decided to try something else for a bit. To be honest I'm a little bit tired of looking at my DAW and I don't like the way I've started to correct my playing in midi files even when it's not necessary and recording with a "I'll fix this in post" attitude. I like recordings that are not very well played but I find it very hard to accept sloppy playing from myself. The joke is I'm not exactly a keyboard player so I can't play complex things and I also can't play super tight. But I feel like I am slowly losing charm and becoming overproduced.
Ok so now that I have that out of the way here's what I've planned for my next project. I have a four track cassette deck which records at normal speed only so it's not very hi-fi. The preamp/mixer section sounds very good and it also sounds good when driven. I have two digital hardware synths at hand and will be using one of them or both and nothing else for instruments. I have a rack effects processor for reverbs and the whathaveyous, a hardware multiband EQ and I'm waiting for my new interface and patch bay to enable proper routing. So for now I'll be recording straight to tape and using only my hardware stuff for processing and the whole point is that it will have to do. I feel like I've become such a princess with these things after being exposed to quality software it's becoming a little silly.
My main goals are:
-Explore the analog and hardware sounds. I'm old enough to have started recording music on tape in the first place but I haven't really done that on synthesizers yet. So I'm going back to my roots, really
-Get used to my playing not being amazing since it really doesn't matter enough to annoy me as much as it does
-Get better at keyboards. It will still force me to overcome my bad playing and get just a little better
-Play with a proper attitude. It will force me to get the proper feeling on tape right away and not rely on plugins and mucking around with midi notes
-Get better at planning. I can't record naked sounds and then decide the instrument. It will have to sound good right away so I will spend more energy planning and arranging before recording it.
-Know my hardware. I have some gear that I don't know well enough to justify owning them in the first place so I want to get more out of them.
-Get into a creative mood and not break it by staring at a screen
Anyone else feeling like this or thinking of going analog/outboard? I've been thinking about this for a long time and I decided to take the leap when I saw a proper cassette machine on sale nearby. So, here we go. We'll see what comes out of this and what my workflow will be after this. I suspect I will combine my DAW and outboard stuff in the future but for now. It's hardware only.
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Post by element0s on Mar 21, 2020 10:05:29 GMT -5
Yeah, I set up a DAWless rig mainly for live performances last month. I haven't done any gigs with it but I've written some tracks specifically using this rig and also sequenced parts to perform a few of my existing tracks.  L-R, Top-Down: Fostex Porta Studio 4-track Shitty Behringer Mixer Alesis MMT-8 Sequencer Power Conditioner E-mu Proteus 1 Roland JV-1080 Yamaha Keyboard (controls the synth modules) Yamaha SY-22 (not pictured) I also have a Roland Fantom G7 (my main studio keyboard where I recording into my DAW) but sometimes I'll load up a bunch patches onto a single live performance kit, adjust the keyboard range of each instrument, use the build-in faders to turn various instruments up or down and I'll just go to down with that while recording a stereo track into my DAW. |
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Alder
Magic User
Murky dungeon sounds: alderen.bandcamp.com
Posts: 228
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Post by Alder on Mar 21, 2020 11:49:02 GMT -5
I've been doing hardware-only DS recordings since I started into the dungeon world. Years earlier the synthy music I was making suffered from exactly that 'sterility' & "I'll fix this later" approach you mention, along with the tiring aspect of making the music mostly being futzing around in the DAW software. The disappointment of DAW/MIDI music for me & my style saw me backing off from recording for years, and I think I even musically regressed a bit from it. The full software approach seems best for people who focus on composing and perfection, neither of which describes my strengths or intentions. It's important to recognize what you're trying to do, right? I actually started tooling around playing dungeon synth in 2016 mainly because I wanted to learn how to play keys better and thought it would be a good way to focus that effort (it was). I've had no formal training with keyboards but have developed my own style as I enjoy DS so much I either practice or have noodle sessions ~ 4 times a week minimum. Even if you keep using DAW to make your released music, I would still strongly recommend spending some time with hardware to at least stretch your fingers and let your musical mind flow free and loose. Also, like you mentioned - the software approach gives you that "fix-it-later" mindset, which is probably having a greater effect on the music you are playing than you realize. The first time you play a melody might be the best, but there's a high probability of it naturally evolving if you instead play it over and over to get a feeling of what that musical expression really is. Another thing I like about live playing is how much the same song can change depending on the mood you're in when you play it! As much as I wish I could go back and fix those little mistakes that can ruin an entire track, I find the benefits of live/hardware playing much more significant. (In fact, I've learned some techniques to deal with some errors in live recording, e.g. huge volume swings or even a sour note or two). Here's an example of something I recorded completely live (no breaks, no editing, no after-effects, nothing): alderen.bandcamp.com/album/chapter-1-the-descentAnd here's an example of an album I made that layers a few successive live play-throughs, followed by software twiddling (in audacity): tidewalker.bandcamp.com/album/tidewalker-epI recognize that my music is purposefully very dirty and live/loose-feeling & that's a form-reflects-formation thing, but my preferred style would've remained "hidden" to me if I hadn't taken an aggressively hardware-based approach to this music. I highly recommend to everyone to play live hardware at some point, preferably starting that way, then only moving into DAW/MIDI world if you find that's the best tool for the music you want to make |
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Post by skirmisher on Mar 21, 2020 12:19:22 GMT -5
Yeah I agree with pretty much all of the above. I've been recording music the old school way for 20+ years so I do have some background for comparison. My first music I would label as Dungeon Synth I did somewhere around 2000. Back then it was general MIDI and primitive software with no keyboards since I didn't have access to anything else. Believe it or not even with all these years gone by I never took the time to learn to play the keyboard. It was all about acoustic instruments.
So this is just a matter of bringing my synth to what I already know best, really. Can't wait to get this project started.
But I have to say I also have a great appreciation for in the box stuff. It's pretty amazing what you can do with just a computer nowadays and it is not without benefits. Some people, like me, are just worse at dealing with the downsides.
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Post by skirmisher on Mar 22, 2020 5:37:37 GMT -5
Ok finally took the time to listen to the Tidewalker stuff and boy, this sounds really good. Wouldn't make any sense to use software for this kinda sound. Alder Deep is also one of my favorite projects. I really appreciate the way you "play" the noise / use noisy sounds instead of just gluing a veil of grainy noise on top of some other music. I don't understand why people do that. It's also the approach I've taken for my noise and power electronics. This is definitely the way to go for me. May I ask what are you driving your stuff with? Is it just a tape deck preamp being blown to hell or something of the sort or a distortion device added to the chain? If you don't want to disclose these things that's fine, I understand.
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Post by chaucerianmyth on Mar 22, 2020 19:35:32 GMT -5
I actually started tooling around playing dungeon synth in 2016 mainly because I wanted to learn how to play keys better and thought it would be a good way to focus that effort (it was). I've had no formal training with keyboards but have developed my own style as I enjoy DS so much I either practice or have noodle sessions ~ 4 times a week minimum. Even if you keep using DAW to make your released music, I would still strongly recommend spending some time with hardware to at least stretch your fingers and let your musical mind flow free and loose. I think this is a great point. Regardless of what anyone may say, I think that writing or composing music through different media will have different outcomes. Even though the final product of CM has always been with sheet music software/MIDI/software, I always use real keyboards, guitars, etc, to write the music, as I think that ideas can just flow and evolve more naturally when you start there. I think it's good for any musician to actually play some instruments, no matter what. |
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Post by stormcrow on Mar 23, 2020 2:49:17 GMT -5
many of my tracks was born on the guitar, than "translated" with synths. That said, I live in a very small house and most of it is full of LPs and CDs since I'm a collector....it's really hard to find a place for real synthesizers, once I thought about purchasing a real Korg M1 but I realized I haven't enough room for it. However, I use a modified Bontempi toy-synth (mainly for my side-project Il Generale Inverno) filtered through a quite aggressive chain of VST reverbs and delays. I also used it for some Sidereal Fortress tracks...this is made just with that synth, for example: siderealfortress.bandcamp.com/track/i-found-a-passage-to-arcadia-remix-2020Yes, hardware definitely gives more "warmth" to synth music, without any doubt. |
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Post by skirmisher on Mar 23, 2020 4:28:48 GMT -5
many of my tracks was born on the guitar, than "translated" with synths. That said, I live in a very small house and most of it is full of LPs and CDs since I'm a collector....it's really hard to find a place for real synthesizers, once I thought about purchasing a real Korg M1 but I realized I haven't enough room for it. However, I use a modified Bontempi toy-synth (mainly for my side-project Il Generale Inverno) filtered through a quite aggressive chain of VST reverbs and delays. I also used it for some Sidereal Fortress tracks...this is made just with that synth, for example: siderealfortress.bandcamp.com/track/i-found-a-passage-to-arcadia-remix-2020Yes, hardware definitely gives more "warmth" to synth music, without any doubt. That's a very good sounding track. If you're having a hard time finding room for synths but you'd like to get some, maybe look into rack stuff? That's what I've done since I have a pretty big keyboard and a four track that's on the larger side. I'm just piling up a rack I can fit on my table and if I ever feel it's too much, I can just put it on the floor under the table. |
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Post by stormcrow on Mar 23, 2020 4:39:18 GMT -5
many of my tracks was born on the guitar, than "translated" with synths. That said, I live in a very small house and most of it is full of LPs and CDs since I'm a collector....it's really hard to find a place for real synthesizers, once I thought about purchasing a real Korg M1 but I realized I haven't enough room for it. However, I use a modified Bontempi toy-synth (mainly for my side-project Il Generale Inverno) filtered through a quite aggressive chain of VST reverbs and delays. I also used it for some Sidereal Fortress tracks...this is made just with that synth, for example: siderealfortress.bandcamp.com/track/i-found-a-passage-to-arcadia-remix-2020Yes, hardware definitely gives more "warmth" to synth music, without any doubt. That's a very good sounding track. If you're having a hard time finding room for synths but you'd like to get some, maybe look into rack stuff? That's what I've done since I have a pretty big keyboard and a four track that's on the larger side. I'm just piling up a rack I can fit on my table and if I ever feel it's too much, I can just put it on the floor under the table. yes, I also thought about rack units. My main controller has MIDI connections, so it could be an option. We'll see... |
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Alder
Magic User
Murky dungeon sounds: alderen.bandcamp.com
Posts: 228
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Post by Alder on Mar 30, 2020 19:05:31 GMT -5
Ok finally took the time to listen to the Tidewalker stuff and boy, this sounds really good. Wouldn't make any sense to use software for this kinda sound. Alder Deep is also one of my favorite projects. I really appreciate the way you "play" the noise / use noisy sounds instead of just gluing a veil of grainy noise on top of some other music. I don't understand why people do that. It's also the approach I've taken for my noise and power electronics. This is definitely the way to go for me. May I ask what are you driving your stuff with? Is it just a tape deck preamp being blown to hell or something of the sort or a distortion device added to the chain? If you don't want to disclose these things that's fine, I understand. Yeah, these projects I've got going now are definitely " here's the sound generating set-up, now what music can I make?" much more than " there's music I want to make, how do i set up the sounds?" - I find I actually need some sort of limitation to be effectively creative. Otherwise, I'm much too side-track-able. Alder Deep was started as an experiment to see what was possible to do live. At the time (2016/7), whether revival-era DS could be effectively done live was still a sort-of unanswered question. Nazgul Dracul did a couple of inspiring live sets & I had the idea that if I leaned into the noise aspect a bit more, I could use drone and other self-repeating noise to add texture & avoid silence gaps while still keeping things fully dynamic and without any pre-recorded stuff. The "playing the noise" aspect actually pre-dates any of my interest in DS, so that was the tool already in my belt while halfway competent keys-playing was the brass ring I was reaching for. In that sense, the direct ancestor to Alder Deep was my 'Catsweat' project c. '09-'11, which was mainly a solo thing where I used an arpeggiator + delay + occasional drum machine to build intense soundscape textural messes where the initial sound-generating input was mostly me playing the saxophone. If you're interested in hearing that, there are 4 live recordings online, 3 solo and one a collab with a tape manipulator (sax not properly mic'd): soundcloud.com/catsweat/sets/live-tapesAnyway, your actual question - what am I driving my stuff with? I use cheap keyboards as the sound source, usually focusing on one specific keyboard for each album. The sound then passes through a simple analog delay circuit that has cutoff, delay speed, and delay intensity settings. Further noise comes from overloading the system - if I turn up the keyboards enough, they start to feed a blown-out sound into the delay filter. If I turn up the delay thing a bunch, it starts to send a blown-out signal to the recorder. I use super-shitty 3.5 mm to USB converters to run the sound into audacity, which then adds another option to twiddle with recording level, giving the chance to blow the sound out one more time. So, a large part comes from the delay, which is the only active effect I use and mostly how I interact with the noise live, but part of the sound also comes from balancing these multiple potential blow-out points. I especially like to send an overloaded sound into the delay filter, then have a non-blown out sound as the output. A lot of the noise is also serendipitous and unpredictable as working with overlapping, overloaded notes often turns up odd note interactions; resonances or something like that which can give distortion-like sounds from the beats produced from interfering notes, which can then be enhanced with delay. Hmm. I should make a video sometime...I've tried explaining this process several times, but only feel like I've actually done a decent job when showing someone in person....but, in short: [Keys] -> [Delay] -> [Audacity], with all very low-end equipment along the way. The one exception is for the live shows I've done within driving distance I also lugged a big n' beefy tube amp that adds another layer of visceral crust. |
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Post by skirmisher on Mar 31, 2020 4:09:11 GMT -5
This sounds interesting. I think we have a pretty similar mindset in this. I also gather up the sounds to be used for a project and then do it. Endless options is the toughest enemy we have and the most effective way to kill creativity. I've found that the concept of creativity by restriction can be found everywhere and in places as old as ancient Greece. There's definitely truth in there.
I love it when people use their gear "wrong" on purpose to conjure out something interesting. It's something I've grown very fond of in my psychedelic and noise endeavours. I've had great results with things like driving distorted vocals into a wah, playing guitar through a modular synth etc.
I have a fairly long history in building music gear and I used to approach playing guitar with that same mentality of looking for a sound and seeing what it can offer me. I used to build and modify stuff to come up with new sounds and new ways to play. In the later phases I exclusively looked for extreme sounds untypical to guitar to make it interesting. This was before I got completely bored with guitar and started looking into synthesizers.
But on the topic. I'm waiting for a powered case for my mixer which I use as a saturator and after that it's go time for my 100% hardware project. I already learned the ins and outs of the four track tape deck I'll be using and have an idea of where to start.
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Post by AndruJorj on Apr 25, 2020 19:33:05 GMT -5
π¬ππππππππ - Lost Among The Ruins aufhocker.bandcamp.com/album/lost-among-the-ruinsThe entire album was improvised in two sessions (over 2 days) using a single microphone to capture the audio coming from only two synthesizers; a 1973 Roland SH-1000, and a 1983 Yamaha DX9. Each synth was connected to a separate combo amplifier, and a microphone was placed an equal distance between them. Audio was recorded to cassette, captured onto TDK B60 Type-1 tape. I digitized that audio and adjusted audio levels before it became Lost Among The Ruins. No sequencers. No drum machines. Just me, my synths, and my fingers. |
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Post by disgustingcathedral on Jun 4, 2020 11:21:36 GMT -5
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Post by crystallogic13 on Jun 5, 2020 13:24:59 GMT -5
Niiiiiice man, so nice to see the double Spectrums ready for WAR  Respect! |
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Post by windgeist on Jun 5, 2020 14:46:08 GMT -5
Please excuse this question, but how do you use the speccy for music creation? AFAIK the musical capabilities of the original ZX Spectrum where just beeping with different frequencies. Or do you use the analogue video output (or maybe the output for datasette) to squeeze some sounds out of your mashine? This would be crazy shit.  |
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Respect!
