Lovingly mixed on cheap ear buds, this micro track consists of a cut up chunk of low frequency Rhodes running through auto pan and a bit of amp modeling, out of key FM synth bass, and frosty beats that were partially programmed using the GMS (Gestural Music Sequencer). It’s not a habit of mine to mix blind (or would that be deaf?), so I hope there aren’t too many nasty surprises when I hear this through proper speakers.
Recycled Rhodes Microtrack
This segment of unprocessed Rhodes was used in Processed Rhodes Pedal Noise. Why 138.72 BPM? The reason is that when the Rhodes was originally recorded I was using tap tempo to beat match another musician during a late night recording session. Obviously, naturally produced music is played in fractional tempos, so it’s funny what you end up with for locked-in tempos in electronic music using this technique. Update: just replaced the loop with a version that matches the zero crossings and doesn’t click.
Unprocessed Rhodes at 138.72bpm
Today while testing some code I had written to help lock in the GMS with external MIDI synchronization, I made a brief recording of live looping the output from the sequencer by capturing the notes in Ableton Live. Ableton was also acting as the clock source. The new feature works by initializing start times to the nearest quarter note. This way if the sequencer produces an odd number of fractional durations a simple start and stop of the GMS with the space bar will lock it back onto the quarter notes provided by the master clock. This may be a precursor to how I end up using this instrument once it is a complete package.
GMS Live Loop Experiment
Here’s the orchestra tuning sample from Orchestra Tuning delayed and then reversed.
Reversed Orchestra Tuning
I looped a section of high speed GMS glitches, similar to what I’ve used in a few previous posts, to make this awkward pattern of percussion based micro-samples.
GMS Glitch Loop