I spent the evening mucking around with my new D1 and it really is a beast. I would say, in some ways, it beats my Voyager for sheer sound design capabilities and it even gives my modular serious competition. 

The key is that there is very little to no menu diving. Little things like trigger type, multi or single - that's a menu function on my Voyager but a front panel button on my D1. Which means, it's eminently tweakable while I'm playing. 

It also helps that everything is very logically and ergonomically laid out. The VCO section is beautifully simple and accessible, the same with the filter. This is crucial, not just when you're building a new patch but for those mid-song tweak times where you want 32' for a break or need to switch in some nasty digital cross mod. 

So far, I've been so spoilt with the complexities of the D1 that I've spent little time evaluating it's less convoluted sounds. But I have worked on a couple of 2 and 1 VCO patches and it does stand up to scrutiny here too. Some synths rely on baroque modulation matrices to cover up what is actually quite a thin and uninspiring sound. Not the D1. Just set up one oscillator, sawtooth or square, filter wide open and you will love that sound. 

My favourite patches so far are, however, the batshit crazy insane 3 VCO ones where each VCO is modulated by it's own LFO / envelope and there's FM mod going on and there's filter mod too. With the D1, it's possible to construct buzzing, swarming terrors that ooze and wobble, reel and collapse. But oh so beautifully!

I think this is the start of a great love affair! 

I'm so chuffed to finally have a Dominion 1 after lusting them for... at least a year? 

It arrived today and after the obligatory un-boxing phone pic, I set up in pride of place after shuffling a very sad looking Voyager off into the corner. 

Turned it on and ... INSTANT HEAVY FATNESS. 

This synth is a player's dream. Having three oscillators makes such a difference and the fact they're each so wonderfully addressable by modulators.

I did this little improv pretty much as soon I'd got it up and in-tune (cold storage to warm studio = analogue oscillator warm up time). 

This is such a deep synth. I'm gonna have so much fun with it!  

New Studio Pics & Synthpop Tune/Vid

Woah! I recently finished off a new song for my next album and it's quite synthtastic so I thought it'd fit nicely on here. The track is called 'Cut Out My Heart' and here's the vid:



I've also just taken some snaps of the studio which shows the gear used to make this ditty:



Click the pic to see the rest!

Hope you like the song! :-D

More Doepfer Modular Pics!

As much as I love my Doepfer for its bleepy blartiness, it sure is purty! Click the pic to see some revealing shots... Mmm...

More Andromeda Pics!

Click the pic to see some macros of my current fave polysynth!

Sound On Sound Modular Article!

I'm very chuffed that I wrote the cover feature for this month's issue of Sound On Sound, the best recording magazine in the world.

My article is about how I went from being scared of modular synthesizers to finally buying my own. You can check out an excerpt by clicking here.

My modular is the most fun bit of kit that I own. I wish I'd bought one years ago!

Some Pics Of My Modular!

Doepfer Locks

Doepfer Locks from Jyoti Mishra on Vimeo.

I got the power adaptor for my Encore Expressionist MIIDI -> CV converter today so the first thing I did was hook it up between my Monomachine and my Doepfer.

Then, I assigned two of the MM's CCs to CV outs from the Expresssionist, patched them into the cutoff frequency and resonance amount and that's the above vid!

Sorry for the shaky camera work and, for some reason, the sync is a bit off.

I love the Expressionist - the CVs it provides are smooth with no zippering whatsoever and it's very simple to program. It's lovely being able to bring the power of the Monomachine's parameter locks into the analogue modular domain.

I've assigned the two MM CCs to cutoff and resonance amount but there's no reason, of course, that they can't be plugged into any CV-able destination on the modular.

Imagine the mayhem! :-D

Doepfer A-107 Filter Demos

Doepfer A-107 Filter Demo1 from Jyoti Mishra on Vimeo.

I've made a couple of video demos of the Doepfer A-107 Multitype Morphing Filter. A lot of people seem curious about how it sounds and there aren't many samples around so I thought I'd help out! :-)

Above, the filter is being stepped through its types as a bassline loops. The resonance level is being swept by an LFO at the same time so you can hear how/if each filter type self-oscillates.


Doepfer A-107 Filter Demo2 from Jyoti Mishra on Vimeo.

In this slightly more musical example, I'm tweaking everything by hand, showing some of the lovely sounds you can get out of the A-107. It really is a killer filter that I've only touched the surface power of so far. I didn't go through each filter as the loop was driving me a bit barmy! :-)

By the way, both times the A-100 is playing a sequence from my Monomachine and in the second vid, that's providing the drums too.

Doepfer Bass Mutations

Doepfer Bass Mutations from Jyoti Mishra on Vimeo.

More mucking around with my new baby. It all starts off pretty normally and then goes silly.

This modular is amazingly good fun. If you're a synthesist who's considered going modular, all I can say is DO IT!

Doepfer Drums

Doepfer Drums from Jyoti Mishra on Vimeo.

This is a patch I created using my new Doepfer modular synthesizer.

Basically, the LFO (A143-3) I'm tweaking goes into the clock divider (A160) and clock sequencer(A161), giving me the gates to trig the quad ADSR (A143-2). I'm using three filters, one set to resonate (making the tinkly sound) and another resonating swept very low for the kick. The source is white noise.

Hope you like it!

(By the way, although the Doepfer is going through a Nanoverb, it's bypassed. The reverb you hear is the A199 Doepfer Spring Reverb.)

Doepfer Modular

This morning I got my Doepfer modular synth. This is the spec I ordered:

2 DOEPFER A-100 LOW COST CASE
1 DOEPFER A-107 MULTITYPE MORPHING FILTER
2 DOEPFER A-110 STANDARD VCO
1 DOEPFER A-114 DUAL RING MODULATOR
1 DOEPFER A-115 AUDIO DIVIDER
1 DOEPFER A-116 WAVEFORM PROCESSOR
1 DOEPFER A-118 NOISE/RANDOM
1 DOEPFER A-120 24DB VCF (MOOG)
1 DOEPFER A-130 VCA (LINEAR)
1 DOEPFER A-131 VCA (LOGARITHMIC)
1 DOEPFER A-132 DUAL VCA
1 DOEPFER A-134 VC PAN
1 DOEPFER A-135 VC MIXER
1 DOEPFER A-143-2 QUAD ADSR
1 DOEPFER A-143-3 QUAD LFO
1 DOEPFER A-148 DUAL S&H
1 DOEPFER A-150 DUAL VC SWITCH
1 DOEPFER A-160 CLOCK DIVIDER
1 DOEPFER A-161 CLOCK SEQUENCER
1 DOEPFER A-162 DUAL TRIGGER DELAY
1 DOEPFER A-170 DUAL SLEW LIMITER
2 DOEPFER A-180 MULTIPLES
1 DOEPFER A-181 MULTIPLES 2
1 DOEPFER A-185 BUSS ACCESS MODULE
1 DOEPFER A-199 SPRING REVERB

As you can see, Andy EMIS stuck the modules in for me as I'm a modular newbie and he packed it all up beautifully:



I've got loads of room for expansion so I'll be looking for other stuff to stick in there. Maybe some Cwejman alongside the Doepfer? Any other suggestions?

And that's enough typing as I'm off to play with it now! :-D

Click here for modular synthpr0n! :-P

Birthday Blofeld!

It was my birthday yesterday! My mrs. baked me this lovely cake:



And she also bought me this fantastic little synth:



Click the pic to have a look at a lascivious unboxing of the wee beastie! :-)

Sadly, my new baby is a bit poorly, generating grotty chirruping sounds, background distortion and spontaneous glitchtronic odysseys. So, I'm waiting to for it to be exchanged. Even so, with the burps, it's a great synth and I can't wait for a working machine! :-D

Mattel Synsonic Drum Machine / Pads

When I first got the Mattel Synsonic, I went mental.

Finally, I could act-out all my Kraftwerk fantasies and pretend I was Wolfgang or Karl, tippy-tapping away on my ubercool drum synth pads.

There was a kick, snare and two tom pads. They weren't up to Simmons drum standards but for what was essentially a novelty toy, they were pretty damn good. I used to whack the crap out of mine, so much so that the little piezoelectric transducers under the rubbery pads would occasionally fall off.

What's more, these weren't just whackalong pads - the Synsonic was also a drum machine. Yeah, programming was a bit hit and miss, there was no quantising of events unless you used the repeat buttons but it was awesome.

In some ways, it was more advanced than the beatboxes of today. My fave feature was the choke button that turned the open hi-hat sound into a closed. It wasn't a simple switch, like you would have on a sample-based machine, this was a gradual closing. Sounded lovely!



Eventually, I even modded my baby as you can see above, adding trigger ins and outs. This meant I could play my JX-3P and Rogue from the pads. Or play the pad sounds from my synths!

Can you imagine how many hours I spent, triggering great bursts of white and pink noise?

Ahhh... now that's what I call fun! :-)

Alesis A6 Andromeda Sounds

I only bought my Andromeda recently but I love it!

It's certainly one of the most powerful polysynths I've ever played or programmed. The sound is immense, I really haven't got to grips with all the modulation possibilities.

I've started to create my own patches so I thought it might be fun to post a few of them up on here, with little audio demos. Here we go:

Mod Cheez
This is a slightly cheesy sound, a bit organy which breaks up in a rather nice way when you tweak the mod wheel. I was going to assign the breakup to the ribbon but I kept that for the filter and used the mod wheel as it felt more natural and immediate.

MP3 here and the patch here.

Bassik
Just a bread'n'butter big bass sound. Little bit of release to give it a bit of, um, follow through but quite good for staccato lines. There's a touch of portamento to give the sound some movement and it could also be a lead bippy noise, as you hear near the end of the mp3.

MP3 here and the patch here.

Syndrum
I was trying to get a moany, groany synthtom sound here, halfway between the tom on Depeche Mode's 'Leave In Silence' and the Dr. Who scream. Note the lovely, deep bass frequencies as the sound grinds down the octaves.

MP3 here and the patch here.

My playing is a wee bit dodgy but hopefully you'll hear some of the loveliness the Andromeda is capable of. :-D

Alesis A6 Andromeda Synthporn

I love my new Andromeda! :-D

Click the pic for full-on synthporn...

Studio Pictures

Click above to see some shots of assorted synths and other gear in my studio.

Why I Love My Stylophone

Guess what I bought today:



Yep! A STYLOPHONE!

It may not mean much to you but it's a slice of my childhood. I wanted one for ages and, after much pestering, I got one when I was nine or maybe ten. I played and played that little box. I composed maudlin elegies and triumphal marches which, had they been preserved by sympathetic white-coated EMI engineers, would have made humanity weep, laugh and gnash its collective choppers in a wild-eyed funk. Alas, nothing remains of this output... only my memories...

Yes, I loved my Stylophone.

Unfortunately, I broke it.

This was in the phase of my life where I was taking everything apart but hadn't quite figured out how to put it back together again. A year later, I took apart a transistor radio and actually managed to re-assemble it, none the worse apart from some suspicious scratches around the casing. Had I opened up my Stylophone at 11 or 12, it would have been fine. But I was a little too early and, yes, it was fucked.

Ever since then, a corner of my soul has missed my hornet-toned first electronic instrument. Imagine both how happy and sad I was to hear Stylophone all over Kraftwerk's 1981 Computer World album. If I hadn't broken mine, I could have played along! Waah!

The decades passed by... synths came and went. Always, part of me pined for a Stylophone. But I never bought one on Ebay or elsewhere because... well, I don't know why, really. That seemed a bit too cold. Stylophones are warm, idiosyncratic beasts, their personalities as individual and unpredictable as the drift of their tuning. I didn't want to just go and get one off Ebay.

I wanted one to find me.

Today, browsing round the current hobby-horse of apathetic, apolitical whingers, I went into a shop.

And there was a Stylophone.



Brand new.

In a box.

For fifteen quid.



How could I resist? There was a rainbow, rooted right in that shop. And at the end of the arch was my little electronic friend.

He's been updated a bit - there's now a swanky socket named 'MP3,' to which one attaches ones iPod. The sound of doing that is, of course, gratifyingly terrible. (But it's still better than all you pesky kids playing music on your goddamn phone speakers. Where's the bass? GET A GHETTOBLASTER! Suckas!)

I've been playing it all evening. It's as magical as I remembered. The stuttering contacts, the glisses from white to black note (damn hard to perform on a normal keyboard), the honking, farty, wobbly loveliness of it all. It's one of the best instruments I have ever played, it's so expressive and very human.

I've recorded a little demo tune for you, so you may revel at its stentorian wonder. Here's the Stylophone, all by itself:

Stylo 1

And here it is in a slightly more musical context:

Stylo 2

If you already own the best album ever made, the tune should be recognisable. If you don't, check the ID3 tags.

I'm now tempted to do a whole tour only using my Stylophone. And maybe that mousemat that plays horrendously distorted drums. Watch out, Scandinavia!

I think I'm in love!

(Click here for a gallery of Stylopics!)

RIP Daniel Hansson

I just found out about Daniel's death.

I never met Daniel but we exchanged emails about MIDI, quantisation, timing - the usual geeky stuff that electronic music types love to talk about. He was always unfailingly polite, helpful and friendly. He even offered to give me a tour of the Elektron facility the next time I was playing in Gothenburg. I wish I'd taken him up on that last year.

Daniel Hansson is an example of how one person can reach out and positively affect myriad others' lives. If Elektron hadn't invented the Monomachine, I would never have come to this realisation. I might be still stuck in a musical rut, wondering why nothing felt as good as it used to and wasting money on plugin after plugin, vainly attempting to re-capture a lost feel.

And, of course, I'm not the only musician who loves the gear he helped create - I'm part of a legion of Elektron fanatics. Each of us has been touched and blessed by Daniel's creativity.

You'll be sorely missed, Daniel.

Shiny Synths, Buttons + LCDs

Click here to see a few piccies I shot tonight of my beloved glowing friends. And yes, they are electric.