Lately I have not had the Pro-One setup in my studio since I’m using it frequently for live performances. Today I had a rehearsal for the Battle for Everyouth in my studio so afterward I decided to record something from this magnificent little machine. Here’s a drone that I programmed by tuning the oscillators to a major third, then letting them hold while the LFO swept the filter and I adjusted knobs on the Pro-One and Memory Man delay.
Pro-One Major Third Drone with Memory Man Delay
While still in the process of mining sound from previous sessions I came across this arpeggiated sequence that evolves over time as I adjusted the speed of the LFO which was mapped to the VCF.
Evolving Arpeggio with LFO on VCF
One of the very special things about the Roland MKS-80 is that is has true analog, voltage controlled oscillators or VCOs. Unfortunately (or fortunately) VCOs are sensitive to environmental conditions especially temperature, not to mention lunar cycles and barometric pressure, but I can’t confirm those reports. In any case, this means that the synth needs time to warm up before the VCOs are stable.
Fortunately the MKS-80 has an autotune (no relation to the ubiquitous vocal processing of the same name) button that tunes all sixteen of the oscillators to each other automatically. Although, if you just turn it on, press autotune and start playing then it will drift out of tune again as the components warm up to a stable temperature. Below is an example of me doing just that followed by a pause where I pressed the autotune button and tried again.
Although an inconvenience to some, to me this gives the instrument more soul than its digital counterparts. As a piano player I know that a piano is never perfectly in tune. Also, the frequency of the notes played on a piano change slightly as they decay. Voltage controlled analog oscillators have a soulful, mysterious character to them that is partially defined by their imperfections.
Out of Tune In Tune
On Saturday, June 4, 2011 from 9pm until midnight I will be performing with DKO (Davis, Keston, O’Brien) and DJ Luke Anderson at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) for the Northern Spark Festival. Our experimental music will be live accompaniment for an amazing piece called the Battle of Everyouth (Jenny Schmid and Ali Momeni). Here’s a more detailed description of the piece.
The Battle of Everyouth is a projection-based performance which blends live cinema, participatory theater, music and live animation. A miniature set, the Circarama serves as a tiny stage for projections and stop motion animations, while wireless devices offer ways to engage with live theater and contribute to the resulting projection panorama on the facade of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
DJ Luke Anderson joins the amazing trio, DKO, which features Jon Davis (Bass, Bass Clarinet), Graham O’Brien (percussion) and John Keston (Rhodes, Pro-One, electronics) for live experimental music on the steps of the MIA.
Students from Washburn High School are audience guides. This group has been studying youth and violence in their Art, Geography and Literature classes during the Spring, 2011 term. Their studies have included a mock United Nations focusing on child soldiers, the reading of graphic novels Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Maus by Art Spiegelman as well as discussions about artists that address controversies about borders, faith and security.
Artists Jenny Schmid and Ali Momeni are stationed at a “mixing station” which combines live video feeds from these numerous dispersed performance contexts. Jenny layers drawings and words over the input imagery, while Ali animates and manipulates the many visual elements of this project.
In preparation we have begun rehearsals to formulate musical strategies and create a vocabulary of ideas. Here’s a short segment from one of these rehearsals featuring Luke Anderson on electronics, Graham O’Brien on drums, and myself on GrainMachine with some Rhodes toward the end.
Battle of Everyouth Rehearsal Segment (Part 1)
Here’s another arpeggio from a previous session where I recorded a broad collection of Roland MKS-80 sounds arpeggiated by the Bitstream 3X. What I like about this piece in particular is the way the free-running analog LFO is modulating the VCF. The typical behavior of a digital LFO is to restart the waveform from zero for each new note. However, on the MKS-80 we can hear the continuous, counter-rhythmic pulse of the LFO on the notes as they are played.
Arpeggio with LFO Routed to the VCF