Light Splitting | minimal ambient with test equipment, pedals and four track cassette

Published on Feb 6, 2020 HAINBACH

"In which I perform a composition on battery powered test equipment, pedals and a four track cassette recorder.

This track stems from many ideas - the first inspiration was my visit to Willem Twee studios and their beautiful setup of sine wave oscillators, with which its possible to create all kinds of amazing tone clusters. It gave me the idea of trying a minimal take on that technique. I did not feel like engaging the test equipment wall, I wanted something small, maybe even portable.

I started with he Brüel & Kjaer 1621 bandpass filter I got as a gift from Felix of the fabolous @Fewjar , as its small and runs on batteries. It takes a saw from the @KOMA Elektronik RH301 and filters it, creating pulses as it jumps from high-low setting. The TouelSkouarn Ar Merc'het Brao is a dual filter but I love it as an oscillator, controlled by the infra-red sensor of the RH301. One out goes into the Cooper FX Outward MK2, which creates more brassy pulses and new harmonies. I then realized that I could power this all from the Koma Elektronik Strom Mobile, which lasts for about 5-6 hours on a single 6000ma USB power bank with this setup. So I set that up instead of crawling under the desk for a free power slot.

Because the setup is small I thought of ways to get more voices, so I did what Stockhausen did - record the sounds to tape. The Fostex X28H to the top right has a cassette loop running. I recorded different pitches on three tracks and play them into the Alesis Wedge reverb to the top left.

When composing and playing it I recalled Silences by John Cage, and tried to think of leaving a broad empty canvas, with music only filling up small parts of it. I hope you enjoy it!

get this track and support what I do on http://patreon.com/hainbach"