Lokroi

Published on Dec 9, 2019 voltlife

"Exploring the Locrian mode with dark, sweeping techno.

I tried to get around the main problem with the Locrian mode (its root triad is diminished, so it never feels at rest) by swiping a jazz technique and omitting the 5th, using a shell voicing instead. By making the other chords in the progression more dissonant and emphasising the root with other synths, I think it manages to reinforce the Locrian feel while avoiding the feeling that it's about to resolve somewhere else.

Apart from Waldorf Streichfett strings, the main voices are a Mother 32 bassline, plucky AFG arpeggios through a Pittsburgh Filter (not Mangrove through Sinc Bucina as I wrote in the video) and drums using both dedicated percussion modules and the Synthtech E352 for noisy snares than morph into wavetable stabs. I used the triangle suboctave trick from my previous tutorial video ([posted here]) to add heft to the Mother 32 bass, and the rest of the patch is explained in the video."