Checkout the eighth installment of Hand Made Music Minneapolis on July 25, 2011 at 9pm at the Hack Factory.
This time the line-up includes Rifflord playing heavy music on handmade gear, Mike Hutchins talking about the same gear, Adam Loper playing his modified organ and leslie cabinet, and Dust Buns.
More information is available here www.tcmaker.org/blog/2011/07/handmade-music-minneapolis-number-eight/.
On June 4, 2011 the Battle of Everyouth was staged and performed outside of the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA). I performed improvisational music non-stop for three hours with Luke Anderson (electronics), Jon Davis (bass, bass clarinet), and Graham O’Brien (drums, percussion). This video documentation is accompanied by bit and pieces from the board mix during the event. My instrumentation included the Rhodes electric piano, Sequential Circuits Pro-One, Electro-Harmonix Memory Man Delay, and Korg Monotron.
Here’s another attempt at programming an effective bass patch on the Roland MKS-80. This time I put the oscillators in sync using the square wave for both the upper and lower partials. Then I tuned the synched oscillator until I heard the most bass. For some odd reason it ended up being tuned to the D# above C. In other word a minor third above created the thickest bass result. What’s nice about this patch is that I can adjust the filter to make it a bit brighter if necessary and it still maintains the bottom as long as I don’t turn up the resonance too high. It sounds the most bassy with the resonance all the way down. I added a touch of reverb for presentation purposes.
The Quest For Bass
Jack Sack alerted me to the work of Cheryl E. Leonard who makes instruments, sounds and music from natural materials such as stones and ice. Visit her blog for more information about her work.
The Roland MKS-80 is an exceedingly versatile synthesizer, but one thing that it seems to be known for are punchy brass patches. These are probably a result of the sawtooth waveform available on each of the sixteen voltage controlled oscillators and fast hardware envelopes. Here’s a brassy string patch I programmed for a melody line in a piece I am working on.
Brassy Strings