a live performance in one take. an ambient drone improvisation for modular synthesizer, monome, cassette tape, effects, and field recording. gentle music for winter weather.

it's been mostly cold and gray where i live; intermittent rain showers and chill winds. yet every now and then, the clouds vanish entirely, and the deepest, palest winter blue fills the heavens.

for this week's piece, which includes disquiet junto project 0258, i wanted to place all that loveliness into a song using a new workflow. i recorded four long improvisations on rhodes and juno 106 to cassette tape, each one mono track. the tape deck, a yamaha mt4x, got one channel of the mixer, and two more for the modular, one for melodic swells and one for the field recording of the rainstorm at home.

i played melodies on the monome grid, via earthsea (oscillator: mannequins mangrove into three sisters filter, then mutable instruments clouds), while also bringing the tape drone sequences in and out by sliding the faders in real time, playing it like an instrument. constantly shifting between the mt4x, modular, mixer, and effects pedals. yet there were some moments so surprisingly pretty that i had to keep still and let the waves wash over me, as i had not heard everything together before starting the live session.

Tags: ambient, cassette, disquiet0258, drone, fieldrecording, juno106, mannequins, modular, monome, rain, rhodes, strymon, tape, week 49 2016, View by:ioflow