New track I recorded last night.. somehow drifted from rearranging the studio into making a nice spacey acid track. 303, 808, 909, 727, and a really key loop from my Hammond Auto-Vari 64.

Dragon

 

Elusive
An old-timey style track, with lots of 303 and 808 and a little 909 and that’s pretty much it.

 

Nora's storm mix. I wanted to make a mix of songs that I've been sampling for Nora's music, so I put them together with some more (somewhat) soothing music, and layered them with a storm recording for that soothing ambient effect.
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Kubla Khan, another piece of music for the fourth trimester. This one is a little more melodic, less ambient than some of the others, with some poetry in the background.

Spurred on by Ben's cover of "Summertime", I started working on a cover of "All Through The Night" (I love the Ella Fitzgerald version on the Cole Porter Songbook CD). But it didn't really come together for some reason. Instead, I did this creepy remix of Miss Otis Regrets. However, E and I ended up deciding it's too creepy to soothe infants to sleep.

I just did a remix of Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry". The song has a great opening groove, and I basically took that and some other bits and made a minimal 100bpm track.

keph sent me some music for nora's collection: jack is lost, reveal, and my favorite, a cover of summertime (I've had "your daddy's rich and your mama's good lookin" stuck in my head all week).

Tom made Nora a lullaby, which I added to her album. Thanks Tom!

We've been listening to her music regularly, especially in the middle of the night. It does seem to soothe her, and it works pretty well for us. The KLF's "Chill Out" was one of my big inspirations, and it kind of works the same way for me, though I wouldn't say my Nora songs have as much depth of ambient sounds in them.

rich: now that i'm over music and am all about bitches and money, i should become a music critic

Three new pieces of music for the fourth trimester. E and I worked on wish you were here together. It has trains, lots of wind, and a clip from one of E's favorite songs. Persuasion is a bit different from the others I've done so far, partly because it doesn't have swooshy white noise stuff (I have some noise-based drum sounds going instead) and it has samples from a favorite movie instead of a song clip. Finally, I added an old song of mine, One Breath, that fits in nicely.

Dylan did a song for Betty's fourth trimester too. I just did another as well. This one features thunderstorms, subway trains, and some orbital.

When I posted the last one I forgot I was going to explain about my ocean waves patch. In here comes the sun, I'd done the standard synth waves patch: a low-pass filter sweeping up and down, occasionally playing with the lfo rate, depth, or cutoff. It's pretty nice and does suggest the ocean. But when we were in hawaii, I took a walk on the beach one night and tried to listen to the waves and figure out how to mimic them with a synth.

I ended up making a patch where each keypress is a single wave. Each wave has a gradual build (when the wave is coming in toward the beach), which is a low-pass filter opening. Then there's the crash where the filter's all the way open and you get the full noise, then a high-pass filter sweeps up and it fades out with high-frequency noise (like the wave washing itself out against the sand). I randomized the pan position of each wave, and use velocity to control the duration of the build and crash segments. I was pretty happy with the result, though it was much simplified from what I originally planned -- I don't have a hardware synth with enough modules, and the software I had started having trouble with the more complex pieces.

I added a couple more songs here, and Kent did a track as well. My new ones are here comes the sun and black mountain side. yes, I'm putting samples of songs I like into my betty tracks (and the first one I did was ceremony).

it would be cool if some of you wanted to make fourth trimester tracks too. all it takes is some whooshy white noise, maybe something resembling a heartbeat. throw in a soothing sample from a favorite song, heavily processed. and don't be shy with the noise -- it's supposed to be pretty loud (people often use appliances or radios tuned to static). it's fun!

A book we've been reading argues that babies are born not entirely ready and that their first three months or so are like a "fourth trimester". Therefore, the author says, to calm your crying baby, simulate the sensations of the womb. One of these sensations is the constant background white noise of being inside the womb -- which is why shushing, appliance noise, etc can help calm a baby. For fun, I spent a few hours today making some noise-based womb music. Aside from various noise sources and some of those wavestation sounds I love so well, I slipped in a pretty loop from one of my favorite songs. The first is the finished track; the other two are some bits of noise I recorded while assembling it. I plan on making a cd of stuff like this to try on betty when she arrives.

untitled 72/01
jupiter waves
juno phase

My remix of Scott's The Paperwork Explosion, from his album Manhattan Research, Inc., which is basically soundtracks from a bunch of commercials and "THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE!" type short films. There is some awesome stuff on there, and also some just weird (e.g. the track "Don't Beat Your Wife Every Night").

Also, by the way, I rerecorded Attack of the Tooth Fairies because the levels were too pegged. This one sounds a little better.

Attack of the Tooth Fairies. if you've seen Hellboy II, you know where I'm coming from. except for a little loop and a square wave, it's all a rhythm ace and an ax73.

ladies and gentlemen, so cold. I think you'll like it. if you're going to listen to it, I think you'll enjoy it more if you do so before reading the rest of this post..

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So.. I'm not really using my Doepfer modular much these days and am thinking about clearing it out to make room for other things. If you're interested, let me know (or if you know anyone who might be, point them my way). People around Seattle preferred, but I'll ship it, assuming you're willing to cover a very good packing job.

Everything is in excellent shape -- I recently checked through all the connections and everything's working fine. The one exception is a few small batz-maru stickers I added to a few modules for novelty. I'm probably looking for about 75% of new price, but I'd much rather sell this as a whole than have to deal with parting it out, so any reasonable offer will be considered. New price would be about $2700 for the case and all modules (not counting the AS modules, which don't seem to be available any more). Complete module list below the cut. I'll be happy to answer any questions about the modules (especially the analogue solutions modules, which are fairly rare).

I'm not parting it out yet, though if you're interested in multiple modules you can make an offer.

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Any of you guys interested in a free rolling rack? It's got a sloped top with something like 12U, and maybe 20U in the bottom. One caster is missing, but it's otherwise in fine shape.