DarkControl

wheew, been a long time.
lotsa stuff happened (played some more, started a new regular thing with Krist -WCCC drummer- and Wieter Dockx -tape loop whizzzz- of which rehearsal recordings sound verrrry promising indeed, new record released with Jean Martens &co., traveling to norway.. more info to come on all of that)

right now i just wanted to share this one little thingy:

it's a basic controller patch for Doepfer's Dark Energy, to easily access its internal MIDI driven settings, like the internal arpeggiator modes and changing note priority (last or highest).
it's a basic thing, in a first prototypey kinda way - so it certainly still has its faults, i would think. but it works ok for me. these are my first public steps in Max/MSP, so bear with me here. ;)

oh, and it's shit ugly. i know. i chose it to be.

for now, i'll just upload the separate patches. find them here.
made on mac, but this way it should work on pc as well.. you'll just need to have Max or MaxRuntime installed. (go here, under Extras, for a free download of MaxRuntime.)
you should start up the DarkControl patch, which needs the other two for reference.

let me know if it works (at all?), if you find bugs or have any suggestions for versions to come.
any help on improving the patch itself is absolutely welcome..

enjoy.

Live @Polonia

Gerard Herman played a brilliant set using his saxomophone, a tapedeck, a mic, and his grandpa's Snarenbalk (played automatically by a rubbery contraption, all very interesting.)
all i needed was the wink and the nudge and off we were.
mauro pawlowski's drums -already set up for the Club Moral show- decided to join me while their owner was laying down new dEUS vocal tracks two blocks away.

on the record: Doepfer Dark Energy, Gristleizer, Moogerfooger delay and a Roland spring reverb.

Gerard Herman / Remörk jan112011 by Remörk138

Club Moral/ Gerard Herman / Remörk

will be playing a show with

a) Club Moral
b) Gerard Herman
c) all of the above

on january 11th in a cosy polish soccer cantina!
more info on fleshbook.

did the mastering for Club Moral's archival 10" release
"Instruments of Attraction - II. Sociale Hygiëne"
which gets presented there, so should be grim. not fun.
things are never supposed to be fun, ok?
anyway, looking forward to seeing AMVK go wild on the Wasp again..

the Hohner Bass Threemörk, pt. XIII: more plans for expansion

in an attempt to expand on the Hohner - gotta fill that lid - i tried a 4011 pseudo ring modulator (scroll down on linked page) as found in the Korg MS-20, apparently.
started out combining one of the 4 octaves with the MCO, since it seems to work best with straight square waves.
didn't do much for me - more or less the same effect as combining the MCO with the sequencer the way it was already hooked up.
tried different combinations, and gave up on the idea in the end.
as it's not too much of an expansion (if any) on what's already there, it would be a waste of space. and i like mine better, so there.

so, next plan is a subharmonic generator - like a small part of the Mixture Trautonium.
i've already got 4 octaves now, meaning F, F/2, F/4 and F/8.
i'd like to try the subharmonics in between those even divider numbers: F/3, F/5, (F/6), F/7. maybe F/9 and F/10. lower than that is just gonna land me with clicks speeding up or down, and i don't really find those interesting - reminds me of cheap casio keyboards whose effects speed up or down with pitch.
have a 4017 on the breadboard for the first test to come (soon, i hope).
seems the easiest way, although i'll never have access to all subharmonics at once with just one chip, and that's only half the fun.

hmm, maybe running a subharmonic through that ring mod would be better..


++
edit: Ken Stone, Hero Eternal.
http://www.cgs.synth.net/modules/pic/schem_cgs36_pulse_divider.gif
might want to add that /9 and /10, but that should be ez shizzle!
++

Workshop presentation

i was invited by Champ d'Action to collaborate on a workshop on analog synthesis, to be given to high school students. plan is to have them build their own simple synth (coupla gated NAND oscillators) and then try to have them perform a 'piece'.
always nicer to make noise than to have to listen to someone else talking about the history of it.

this is a small presentation of the workshop idea, trying to convince teachers and the like to invite us to their schools, basically.
we had a single 4093 on a breadboard, aka 4 oscillators, aka 2 pairs.
each pair has a 'main' and a 'modulator' osc, and together they're gated by a control voltage sent from an Arduino.

on the left is Champ's artistic director Serge Verstockt, layering on some pitch shifter and delay, on the right is The Wiz Roel Das, gating the oscillators and thus controlling the beats with Max/MSP + an Arduino, and i'm in the middle turning knobs controlling frequencies.

i particularly like how it looks like we're floating in mid air. (we're not. sorry.)
Woop woop.

hindsight II

a live rendition of 'King Of The Cabin', as found on the Tropisch Excuus compilation cd-r. Which was put together by Leonoor of Mitt Land Och Leo descent.

had a perfect soundcheck, took my stuff down when other acts had to check, and then switched my stereo out when i came on - plugged into the wrong DI's.
hence the immense volume on the Casio at 1'36". that's how loud the beats should've been.. please do your own audio maths.

and then, due to Lord Tyfus' absence, i was forced to sing the next tune -
on the cd it's his lovely squeal doing the honours.




yup, that wood bee a sour take on the immortal classic, the apex of the mans' oeuvre:




hmm. i guess you shoulda been there. or sumpin'.

hindsight

thought i'd link to some older stuff.
this one's from the LaBambaNightmare, aka the Ultra Eczema record presentation
where i was kindly assisted by mr. Tuff Fins himself, who was willing and able enough to go Old School Hardcore on the Babelfish mashup i made of the spanish lyrics.