Making Textures With An Arp Explorer I Monosynth

Making Textures With An Arp Explorer I Monosynth from Nick Franglen on Vimeo.

"This is a my eye view of a live improvised session, playing an Arp Explorer I analog monosynth through a Line 6 Echo pedal. I did this mainly as a 'texture-gathering' exercise, but I find this piece interesting on its own so here it is.

I like the idea of only using one instrument to make a whole bunch of sounds, the restriction pushes you to be more creative. The Explorer is a deceptively versatile synth; despite looking plasticky and cheap it can make some really varied, often aggressive sounds with a bit of application. I planned to use the textures as building blocks to be used in more structured pieces of music, and I will probably still do that.

I hadn't turned the Explorer on for several years so I couldn't remember how to use it at first. Quite a few keys triggered strangely or sometimes not at all, playing odd notes on release, and most of the sliders played up a bit, the filter and resonance sliders most obviously. You'll see the smallest movements I make with the filter slider (slider panel top right, one in from the end) having a big effect on the sound, but only in the very top of its range. You'll also see me drowning the controls with contact cleaner to see if that would help.

This shaky, hand held film takes quite a while to get going which makes for slightly dull viewing, but I've left all that in because people have asked me how I build up my textures and this shows the process from start to finish. The film making was very much secondary to the music making, so there are bits where I didn't pay attention to the picture while I was concentrating on a button or a slider. You'll see quite a lot of the floor. The ending didn't quite pan out as I would have liked. The signal just failed - I don't know why - so that was the end. That's live for you.

I played the Explorer into the Loop Recorder bit of the Line 6 Echo, activating the record button from time to time to build up some textures to play over. This is a mono recording with no overdubs. I've edited out a couple of sections where the signal collapsed or got REALLY LOUD for some unknown reason, but this is effectively a live performance with no computer jiggery pokery.

This film drifts out of sync, I don't know why. It seems to improve if you click on the time line somewhere near to where you are. Anyone got any ideas how to sort that?"