Bob showed up in North Barfthesda and we educated and learn’t each other to make this thing.
Used: Volcas, MicroKorg, Kaossilator Pro, MiniKP, Phone
We have made and are making more of the best you have ever heard. You will have so much more you will ask for no more more. Believe me. Stay tuned.
This is a song played on all black keys. I wanted to work a little harder on creating with the MicroKorg and Kaossilator alone.
There are still some minor time issues, but HOLY CRAP THE SOUNDS ON THE mICROkORG ARE AWESOME. So many presets and this is with little to no variation of these stock presets. The quality and variety of the sounds are amazing. I went through as many as I could.
Geek Notes:
Note: This is terribly long (12 minutes and 23 seconds)… bump it around if you get bored. I think the last 2 or 3 minutes sound the best (thanks to a bent, reverb’d, and delayed string chord I liked and it notably ends in this). There’s a really loud over-modulated bass bit in the middle thats hilarious and may destroy your speakers.
Once again, no sense of time or self control. This is just too much fun to make! I couldn’t stop myself. 🙂
This is a bit I made called “Fugue You”. Let us now define the “Fugue”. There are two definitions. First one musical, the second one psychiatric.
Either of these definitions seem appropriate. I thought the image above suited the musical concept the best. At least this is how I felt while performing it, with middle fingers everywhere.
There is a four note simple melody that was banging around my head from The New Deal song Navidrome. I reproduced this as best I could on the Volca Bass (at the very beginning), then just built crap on top of it. The final turned out to be 10 and some minutes (originally 12… I deleted some off the top before I was done).
Geek Notes (All are Korg products unless noted):
Let’s play the game, “see if you can hear Chad screw up in 10.5 minutes”.
“Did you hear it?”
“I HEARD IT!”
“All right Janet!”
Since I did the (Overmodulated) Jamola Number 3 yesterday and left out the Volca Beats, I thought I would do one real quick INCLUDING the Volca Beats.
Here’s a bit called Volca Waves. It started as an atmospheric “hearts of space” thing and then I decided to put the driving Kaossilator studio drums in the middle. I admit everything is a little “make it up as you go”. Lately I haven’t been really arranging anything. I’ve been striving to do things without any arrangement and just spew it out live. This was the reason for the little errors throughout. I have been trying to learn the “one man band live experience” by playing everything live in real time with little to no preparation. There are some things done ahead of time. Obviously the sequences and SOME selection of sounds are done in advance of pressing the record button. I have literally been writing MicroKorg presets I like on scrap paper to remember them. But I will admit, that a lot of times, I start swaying in time and stabbing a setting with my finger and biting my lip as I hit a key. Results can be bad, some can be good. You, the listener, get to hear BOTH the good and the bad which is my gift to you.
Either way here are the geek notes:
Hope you find it interesting.
PS Thanks to those who bother to comment. It means a lot and it makes having this blog worthwhile. I dont want to use facebook for this, because if one of these little bits IS really good, I would prefer to own the rights to it (which wouldn’t be the case if I posted them to facebook).
Well…..
I wanted to take this rainy, do nothing, Saturday and have a little jam session with myself. I made a 14:30 whopper. The object was to get the Electribe synced with the set up. I got it synced in the chain and it’s TOO MUCH FUN. Here’s the geek details.
Kaossilator pro is the master clock (still). The master clock (tempo) MIDI signal is split and fed down 2 chains.
Chain #1: Sets the tempo for the Volca Bass to the Volca Keys and then to the Electribe.
Chain #2: Sets the tempo for the MicroKorg whose audio is output through the Mini KP (red box for effects… mostly heavy delay) where the tempo is set manually (matching BPM to the master clock, Kaossilator Pro).
My levels are really bad. For this I am sorry and hang my head in shame. It seems these bad levels are coming from my mini mixer that couples the Electribe and the 3 Volcas. I have since adjusted this and will make sure next time this doesn’t happen. This was so much fun I may take another shot with a different spin.
Most of the drums come from the Electribe however there’s a little bit of a conga loop in there from the Kaossilator pro. There’s a small bass and key sequence from the Volca bass and keys respectively that I drop in and out. I didn’t use the Volca Beats on this as there are enough drum devices working on this thing already (and you will find it gets mighty busy).
In the words of Todd Rundgren, “Yer gonna wanna get yer headphones out… Cuz they’re really gonna help you on this one…”
This is done in the “Key of Yo Momma” in the “Scale of my Ass”. Time=14:23. Filesize=13.5megs. Hope you enjoy as much I did making it.
Two slapped together bits.
The first experiment uses a repeated note on the Volca bass then the LFO rates and intervals are tweaked manually. It creates a skippy bass pattern that I noodle with using the Cutoff knob. The Volca beats is playing some random pattern in one of the 8 memory slots. It’s a bit Out of Sync although everything is at 97bpm. Once again the Kaossilator Pro is the timekeeper and does some little loops. The MicroKorg does solo arpeggio notesy padsy crap on top of the whole mess.
So here we are… Experimenting again. Reason? Because it’s fun!
And for interactivity sake, which do you prefer?
Loading ...
An “ambient” thing I did with Volca Keys, Volca Bass, and Microkorg. The Microkorg is running through the Korg MiniKP (red box). I know it’s glitchy and out of tune in places, but I’m not a musician and I thought it sounded cool either way. It’s at a 40.8 bmp in the key of “whatever”. It’s 7 minutes and 37 seconds of a 2 chord breathing type of thing. Actually this is probably the fastest I’ve ever made anything on an electronic device. All recorded in one take. No editing other than fading the open and close.
I wanted to post it right away but my internet went down AGAIN. Just like the intermittent electricity here, it’s a problem with the ghetto ass’d infrastructure down here in the shittiest place on earth, the DC metro area. I don’t even want to begin explaining how much this area sucks. You pay and pay and get SHIT. That summarizes it. Worst place I’ve ever lived EVER.
Here we are. Finally after a lot of dough, a lot of youtube tutorials, and plenty of loneliness, I have finally dove into working with MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface). For those who dont know, MIDI is a way for digital musical instruments to talk to each other. It took two weeks for the MIDI interface cables to come in from Amazon. I needed a bunch. The magic table of devices looks like a spaghetti disaster. I’m starting to learn the magic is how you have things wired. This makes all the difference.
In this case, the Kaossilator pro is set up as the “master clock” meaning, this device holds the tempo. I’ve also found a way to use the sequencing/looping aspect of the Kaossilator pro to make things a bit simpler. It’s really interesting to speed things up on the Kaosilator and watch all the device’s blinking tempo lights speed up at the same time. It gives me a bit of a power rush. So this means the Kaossilator’s Master Clock is running the tempo of the MicroKorg (including arpeggios) and the Volca Beats. A MIDI Solutions Quadra Thru box is used to handle and divvy up the MIDI signal from one device and handing it out to 4 others (in this case only 2, the volca beats and the microkorg). Also there’s the Rolls Mini Mixer in there to handle the audio signal cables flying around (1/8″ stereo jacks). Here’s a crappy power point explaining.
Annnnd after hours of goofing around and filtering MIDI signals making sure that changing the settings on one device wasn’t changing the settings on another, I made a recording. I used the vocoder on the MicroKorg so don’t laugh at my singing, “Yer gonna have to get it right”.
This was time consuming but was quite fun. I think there is a lot of room for me to improve. Should go a lot faster the more I do it. In summary, WOW, WHAT POWER (and was really a load of fun)! I plan to make another really soon! 🙂
For now enjoy the track “First MIDI Exploitation (Yer Gonna Have To Get It Right)”
Special thanks go out to Todd Smith’s Synthesizer YouTube Channel. This guy is inspiring because it looks like he just has a good time doing what he does and he teaches stuff too! He’s awesome!!
Another quicky slapped together moment for everyone’s enjoyment (or loathing).
With the Korg MicroKorg Synthesizer Vocoder
That’s right. Got a Korg MicroKorg for a steal (I hope it aint hot) off of craigslist. Picked it up from a guy at the Tenleytown metro stop in a garbage bag, no manual, and no AC adapter. Seems a bit shady, but the thing works like a charm. I got a lot of learning to do but this thing is an arpeggiating monster. Listen to this shit!
This second one has more “verve”.