Borderlands

Published on Jul 9, 2016 davidryle

"I recall driving along Highway 9 in south New Mexico from El Paso, Texas to Animas, New Mexico on the way to Tucson, Arizona. The long bouncy road made an unforgettable impression of the remote southern US border region.

I tried to produce the drone impression of the road noise and wide open scenic expanse in this project.

A live studio take of the modular synthesizer recorded in Cubase and captured by the iPhone. Video edited in Final Cut Pro.

Some module patch highlights include the MI Clouds in Parasite Resonator mode dealing with a few voltage controlled radio station audio signals and one of the melodic sequencer lines.

The bass line is a Q960 step sequencer sent to a Q106 vco through a Yusynth Minimoog LPF. It is sent through a Modcan dual delay and Lexicon studio delay. There is a doubling with the MakeNoise Mysteron through a STG Sea Devils filter and the TipTop Z-DSP with Halls of Valhalla.

Other sequencer lines play various slow melodic passages over the top. Some of the vco sources are half dozen Q106's, Mos Lab 901 + 904A suite, Harvestman Piston Honda and Ian Fritz Synthetic Sound Labs DDVCO through Yusynth Arp 4072 LPF. Effects included Strymon Blue Sky reverb, Behringer DD400 delay, SSL 1310 digital delay, Lexicon MX200's and TC Electronics D-Two.

A periodic low frequency drum sound is generated by an envelope to a STG Post Lawsuit LPF and noise from a Sputnik WCRS.

Clock timing handled by Cubase to Future Retro Mobius which drove the STG Soundlabs sequencer suite, 4MS RCS and QCD and Moon Modular dividers, Pressure Points as well as the Q960 and Q119 sequencers"