I am excited to announce the debut album, Unauthorized Modifications by Ostracon, my duo project with drummer Graham O’Brien. It is scheduled for release on Tuesday June 21, 2011 with a release show happening on Friday, June 24, 2011. I will be posting excerpts from each of the tracks weekly leading up to the event, which I will have more information about soon.
Probability Defect (excerpt)
Tomorrow morning I am going to be discussing some basic concepts of sound synthesis including subtractive synthesis with my sound design class. We’ll be looking at some hardware synthesizers, listening to some sounds, then creating sounds of our own. Tonight I created this pulse in Reason using the Subtractor instrument followed by delay and reverb as an example to show, although rather than showing this example I will create something else using a similar technique during the demo.
Subtractive Synthesis
Tonight I am demoing my Grain Machine Max for Live instrument at Handmade Music Minneapolis #6 (click for details). Lots of other people are showing off their goodies including Kris Peck of Xenharmonic Instruments, Adam Loper showing his DIY MIDI controller, MCTC students sound synthesis projects, and more. Here’s a few seconds of typical Grain Machine output to wet your appetite.
Grain Machine Demo
For a limited time Unearthed Music is offering the DRM free 320kbps download for my debut solo album, Precambrian Resonance by Ostraka, for as little as one penny. This album emerged during a year long period of random recordings and sound design experiments exhibited here on AudioCoobook.org during my One Sound Every Day project. Click on the title to pay what you want for Precambrian Resonance. Here’s one of my favorite tracks from the album for your listening pleasure. Thanks!
Three Phase Oscillator
This unprocessed, lawnmower-like, drone was generated on the Roland MKS-80 by modulating a sawtooth waveform with the LFO configured as a sawtooth waveform as well. I found the pitch (a low C) on the keyboard that closely matched the top speed of the LFO then manually swept the tuning of the oscillator by no more than a semitone. This is what created the phasing that can heard throughout the recording.
Sawtooth Modulated Sawtooths