It's been a while since the last post. I haven't had access to the kit for some time, but that has now been sorted. I was becoming rather disillusioned with Eurorack modules as they had moved so far away from the foundation laid by Mr Moog. That said, as soon as I started looking at recent modules, I was sucked into gear lust again. Two of particular note are Snazzy FX Dreamboat and the 4ms PEG, pingable envelope generator.

The main reason for this post is to celebrate Dave Vosh's recent publicity. Here's the link. In case the page disappears, this is too good to lose, here's the text:

Friday, Nov. 4 – Dave Vosh brings “bag of analog tricks” to the Lou! by ADMIN
Dave VoshSpecial guests Dr. Mabuse and Venus Slick Friday, Nov. 4, 2011 – 8 pmFloating Laboratories 4528 Ohio
HEARding Cats is excited to bring east coast synthesis sensation Dave Vosh to St. Louis for a rare Midwest performance. Vosh has had a lifelong passion for electronic music. After years of toiling in autodidactic obscurity

Dave Vosh
he summoned-up the courage to contact one of his idols, Karlheinz Sctockhausen, by mail. To his great shock, Maestro Stockhausen not only answered his letter personally but continued the correspondence with Vosh up until his death; offering advice and discussion on all sorts of musical issues. Emboldened by Stockhausen’s attention, Vosh assembled an arsenal of sophisticated electronic instruments and recently decided to take the bushel-basket off his lamp in the active DC/Baltimore avant garde scene. He now performs regularly in the Electric Possible and Sonic Circuits series, as well as at the Red Room, Hexagon, and Pyramid Atlantic. He appeared in the 2008 and 2009 Electro-Music Festivals.

In an unusual appearance on Baltimore’s Rams Head Live stage Vosh’s solo performance was described:
“He comes in, hobbles up to the stage on his cane, opens up a big briefcase of mephistophelesian landscapes, and settles into a chair. Then he takes up his little baton and calmly conducts a tour across the terrible beauty of the vast frozen steppes of Hades. …and when the show is over, he quietly packs it all up and lumbers off into the night. It’s a hell of an act.”

Back to my kit and noises, some rot set in with my unfulfilled lust for the Arturia Origin, but I'm still inclined towards a box of non-modular kit, notably the upgrade to NI's Reaktor and maybe play with some NI hardware such as the Maschine Jr. And returning to the subject of pedals, in addition to the 138d and Space Echo mentioned a year ago, this month's Sound on Sound waxes lyrical on the Eventide Space.

The piece I want to work on next is a corruption of O God our help in ages past as the first instalment in a series of implosions of Welsh Hymns. There is no sensible way to approach this with the modular.

Repeat broadcast by Armando Iannucci The Museum Of Lost Keyboards.

The Pittsburgh Timetable has just arrived.

and I notice that the Toppobrillo Quantimator has been announced.

I just managed to avoid the temptation of buying a wonderfully noisy cacophonator II. And here's a similarly-named diy project: I feel some wasted hours with a soldering iron are just around the corner.

I am still toying with the idea of an Arturia Origin: SoS review here (I think there are timed viewing restrictions for non-subscribers).

The Pittsburgh Timetable is nearly here. I think I will aim for a denser project next and want to organise four similtaneous tracks mixing in and out through the MX-4S, some LFOs and an inverter. The Cyclotron will feature. But first we're off to Paris for the Mondrian show at the Pompidou.

I didn't have a chance to record the video to go with the broken waltz so I'll post just the noise shortly. Here it is.

A terrific program in Late Junction on Tuesday 15th which I might post. Part of it comprised:

• Bradford Reed Motivational Music For Pedestrians
• Katsura Mouri Chess Piece
• Maxmillion Dunbar Breathe What You Say
• Ali Khattab Sueno Claro (not so keen on that one)
• Pierre Bastien Rousselliana
• Hitotsu Ayota
• world's end girlfriend Der Spiegel im Spiegel im Spiegel
• Mitsuo Ikeda and Terumitsu Maeda Cross Talk for Sam Francis

I love my Doepfer frequency shifter and there is a super post on alternative offerings from Cwejman and Synthesis Technology at Navs modular lab.

Would it be cheating to get an Arturia Origin? Could I afford it? Do I care? Why am I asking you?

This week's piece is another broken waltz, a return to a theme I first played with in January 2010.

A VCLFO feeds the 160/161 set controlling the triggers for the 1-2-3 (actually 1-3-5) and the double speed 'melody' over the top, reset on 7. The '1' notes are generated by the SoU driving the Plan B VCO; the '2&3' notes come from the Plan B ASR driving the MFB Triple (now reunited with the Cupboard); the melody comes from the Heisenburg and the AFG.

Just a single take this time. I'm hoping to get some video footage to combine with the noises this weekend.

Must chase up the Pittsburgh Timetable.

The reorganisation of The Cupboard has reached that happy state where a patch will sing to itself entertainingly all morning. That requires the rhythm and the dots and the noises to be sufficiently unpredictable and interesting, then remember an important lesson I took some time to learn - when it sounds good, stop fiddling and record it.

Central to the patch, as shown in the photograph, are two linked VCLFOs (with the new µstep) providing the rhythm and the Source of Uncertainty (with the ASR) providing the dots. Noises are the Anti-Oscillator through a 109 and Plague Bearer; the R54 through a 109 and Frequensteiner; and the AFG through the 109 and Wasp on one track and via the Triple Slicer on another.

I recorded three takes plus another with the VCLFOs linked via the Dual Slew Limiter. I'll mix and upload them later. Here it is, the aptly-named 27Jan2011.

The reorganisation continues and a new camera improves the picture quality.

The µstep is on order and the Timetable will soon go on sale. Then I'll be saving up for a Gravity Well.

I'm working on this week's piece

In accordance with the New Year Plan, I have taken most of the modules out and only put some back. The before is on the left and the after on the right. The new lights are in and jolly useful too. The Z8000 and Cyclotron are awaiting reinstallation and the LFOs and utility modules need relocation.

I stated that I would aim for one piece per week and so, only four days late, here is the first test piece on the current layout. The four channels into the MX-4S are:

• 1 - VCLFO - Wogglebug - Anti-Oscillator - 109Sig - A126VCFS
• 2 - Wogglebug - Noisering - R54 - 109Sig
• 3 - VCLFO - Heisenburg - AFG - 109Sig
• 4 - AFG - Dewanatron

Some more tempting modules, the Circuit Abbey Gravity Well and the WMD Gamma Wave Source.

I think I might greet the new year with a few intentions, if not resolutions:

• I have enough random note generators, a bank of co-ordinated random rhythm generation capability is needed
• with the Pittsburgh Timetable in the pipeline, get the µstep too and probably a 138c polmix. The rest of the necessary kit is already in stock. Or perhaps some MFB drum modules to make sounds easy.
• acknowledge that the Cupboard constitutes enough space and that I should be better organised
• reorganise it completely
• start by identifying my top 10 modules(/groups), get those in place and work from there. Initial thoughts must be
  • Cwejman MX-4S
  • Livewire AFG and Dual Cyclotron
  • Metasonix R54
  • a brace of 109 Signal processors with associated ASDRs
  • the best three filters
  • the above rhythm unit
  • the best three output processors
  • the best three random note generators
  • the best VCOs (AFG and R54 above, must have the Plan B Model 15 VCO and Malekko anti-oscillator)
  • two sequencers
  • half a dozen Doepfer utility modules
• having gone through enough cycles of and the next best 10, reach a conclusion which leaves at least 20% free space. I wrote this item before completing the draft list above - I have already more than half-filled the damn Cupboard. Nevertheless, a complete reorg will be done.
• sell the spares to generate cash for reinvestment
• sort out the IO to the Mac
• publish one piece per week
• incorporate visuals
• document all of this on the blog