Robert Henke’s Granulator (Part 1)

Posted on April 16, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

By now most Ableton users, especially Max for Live developers, know about the latest update and price cuts to Max for Live. Peter Kirn has written a couple of articles on the topic (see Music Patchwork: Ableton Makes Max for Live Cheaper, Showcases Creations by Henke, Hawtin, More and Ableton Delivers Max for Live Improvements and Guidelines, Responds to Feedback). Consequently you may already know that Ableton is giving away several amazing Max for Live instruments. These are perfect devices to explore for my One Synthesizer Sound Everyday project, and although I’m already backed up with weeks worth of analog sounds in the can it won’t hurt to interject some experiments from the M4L pool.

The first one of the new devices that I tried was Granulator by Robert Henke. Within a couple of hours experimenting I had enough material for a couple of weeks! Granulator is brilliant. Having developed my own M4L instrument, Grain Machine, I can really appreciate what Mr. Henke has done here. I even opened up his perfectly organized patch in Max for Live to get a look under the hood and I fully endorse his work (not that this means anything coming from me, but trust me it’s good). Here’s the first of a series of sounds I produced using Granulator with a recording of Three Wind-Up Snow Globes. Absolutely no processing was applied before or after the Granulator instrument, or to the snow globe recording.

Snow Globes Granulator Demo 1

DGK at “Try This #3”, Friday, April 15, 2011

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

If you didn’t have the opportunity to “Try This” the first or the second time, now’s your third chance. If you already “Tried” DGK, you know what’s up and will be there on Friday. Click here for details. Here’s a piece of DGK history from “Try This #2”.

DGK at Try This 2 (Part 1)

Ninths Chords on Stacked Polysynths

Posted on April 14, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

I played these dense open ninth chords triggering both the Roland D-50 and the Roland MKS-80 simultaneously.

Ninth Chords on Stacked Polys

Stacked Polysynths Part 5

Posted on April 13, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

For the fifth installment in my series of stacked polyphonic synthesizers I decided to combine the Casio CZ-1000 and the Roland Super Jupiter MKS-80. The Casio is making the whistle like sound, while the rest of it is produced by the MKS-80.

Stacked MKS80 and CZ1000

Manually Modulated Polyphonic Wind

Posted on April 12, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

I created this polyphonic wind sound on the Roland MKS-80 using the Bitstream 3X to manually modulate the filter to give it a more natural and irregular sounding whistle. I did this rather than using the LFO because although I could adjust the rate the sweep would be automated and too regular instead of being based on human judgement. I am presenting it here in mono with no processing. If I were to use this I would process it in several ways including some volume automation, panning, equalization, probably a bit of slap back delay for stereo imaging, and a fairly short linear reverb that doesn’t sound too roomy.

Manually Modulated Polyphonic Wind