Eerie Pseudo Oscillator Microtrack

Posted on January 15, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Here’s another result of experimenting with the Roland Juno-106. I created this sound by using the VCF as a pseudo oscillator. I cranked up the resonance to full, and put the cutoff at about half way, then turned off both the square and sawtooth DCOs. You might assume that with the oscillators off, including the noise and the the suboscillator, that the synth would make no sound, well it doesn’t really until you almost max out the resonance. Maxing out the keyboard slider changes the pitch of the notes on a roughly twelve tone scale, but it’s not well tempered, so this creates an eerie detuning between the notes. See the photo above for the exact settings. In the recording you’ll notice an abrupt key change happening a few times where I turned on the sawtooth oscillator. I also nudged the LFO on the VCF here and there to add to the spooky factor.

I’ve done a similar thing with the Pro One before, but it sounds really nice in six voice polyphony on the 106. My guess at what’s happening is that a sort of controlled resonant feedback on the instrument’s noise floor is creating the pitches. This is something that doesn’t really work with digital filters on modeling synths, as far as I know. I know that I haven’t been able to reproduce this behavior on the Korg MS2000. I don’t fully understand what’s happening, but that’s my theory. If anyone has better insight, please share a comment on the article.

Eerie False Oscillator

Roland D50 Microtrack No. 5

Posted on January 10, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

This microtrack was made with a D-50 factory preset called Twilight Zone. The D-50 is quite capable of generating sophisticated special effects. Still looking for a PG-1000, but might start using some librarian software specifically designed for the D-50 to at least be able to use a mouse or track pad to program patches.

Twilight Zone

Roland D50 Microtrack No. 1

Posted on January 6, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

As part of my One Synthesizer Sound Every Day project I am producing a series of microtracks inspired by the textures of factory presets or custom patches, found or discovered within a variety of electronic instruments. Today I’m presenting the first of these microtracks that I produced using my Roland D-50. I have had this synth since it was new. Yes, the one with the custom, spray painted, yellow stripes on it. Back then I had to have my father co-sign a loan for me to afford it. Although it was impossible to sample with it, the D-50 had a huge variety of sounds possible at the time using the built in 8-bit PCM sample library combined with Linear Arithmatic Synthesis or LAS.

I lost interest in the D-50 to analog, sampling, and modeling instruments for almost a decade, rarely bringing it out to use as a controller, or for an FX patch here and there. After seeing Roy Ayers keyboard player using one recently, I’m rediscovering the instrument as well as enjoying the nostalgia of hearing it again. One thing I don’t miss about it is how time consuming it is to program your own patches. Without the PG-1000 (BTW: I’m looking for one of these) it is a very tedious process, although it does have a joystick to modify selected values.

Fortunately the wealth of presets available for the D-50 still makes it a desirable instrument. To create this track I used the “Clock Factory” preset to produce a percussive loop. I can’t claim this composition as my own, since I’m simply playing a key and using aftertouch to alter the pitch, but it’s fun to appreciate the evolving patches that the Roland engineers managed to come up with.

Clock Factory

One Synthesizer Sound Every Day Debut

Posted on January 5, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

It’s been more than fifteen months since I finished posting a self produced sound everyday for three hundred and sixty five consecutive days. This all happened in the One Sound Every Day category. As a result I produced my solo debut under my Ostraka moniker titled, Precambrian Resonance.

In the spirit of One Sound Every Day, I am starting a new project called One Synthesizer Sound Every Day. My plan is to use hardware synthesizers from my collection (and eventually soft-synths) to produce a sound, musical phrase, or microtrack to share here on ACB every day for a year. As well as my own sounds, I’ll be accepting select sounds from other artists and ACB readers to share on the site in the daily article.

My long term goal is produce a synthesizer album where I focus on inventing new sounds and allowing these textures to inspire the compositions. I’ve already got a good start on this by writing nine or so tracks in the few days since I conceived of the project (some of these tracks can be heard in the mix I shared here). I’m looking forward to sharing more of these sonic textures here as I discover them.

Let me start with a sub bass patch I made for my newly acquired Casio CZ-1000. I used to own a Casio CZ-101, which is virtually the same synth except that the CZ-1000 has a full sized keyboard compared to the mini-keys on the CZ-101. Years ago I misplaced my affectionately renamed Sleazy-101, probably in a move. Pining for the sound of this under-rated little instrument, I picked up a mint condition CZ-1000 on eBay recently for a steal. Here’s a bass line using my new patch.

Casio CZ-1000 Sub Bass

BMW Burnout in the snow

Posted on January 3, 2011 by lost track

Hey all,

Boy Racer – Burnout in Carpark on snow – BMW exploding exhaust revving tyres squealing

photo credits Kemmish from sw-pc.com

This winter in the UK everything has been incredibly foggy and snow-bound. Awesome! I had some family relatives visit and one of the youngsters asked me what gadgets I had (as naturally all self respecting men should always be armed with several gadgets). The only thing I had on me (which I take everywhere) was my sound recording gear, so one dark night we went for a walk to the park to see what we could record.

From about a mile away we could hear some burnouts, so we ran through the park to find a highly tweaked BMW and driver having a fun time ripping it up in a snowy car park. Picture the scene, it was pitch black and extremely foggy, so the car cut through the silence of the night like a knife. We had to conceal ourselves from the driver, behind a hedge, and the car was sliding just metres away from us! The exhaust explosions sounded great, and the car lit up the snow with its headlights.

I recorded the following, and it’s unprocessed. Sounds RAW!!!

Boy Racer – Burnout in Carpark on snow – BMW exploding exhaust revving tyres squealing