Ambient jam with Moog Matriarch, Novation AFX Station, Hologram Microcosm, and Eventide Space

video upload by Jay Hosking

"A live, semi-improvised track performed entirely on hardware.

I wrote this piece while tinkering on piano, and then arranged it for synth. The Matriarch excels at monophonic parts that sound huge and rich despite only playing one note at a time. Here I've got its four oscillators each tuned to a different octave, and its stereo delay offset in that horse-galloping sort of way. Once you add some reverb on top, it's sublime.

For melody, I wanted something small but also "messy". The Novation AFX Station was the perfect choice, as it fulfills these criteria and also has its own sound to the oscillators and filter that differ from the Moog sound. For the AFX Station, I use both the onboard filter drive and distortion to add a lot of harmonic richness, and some pitch modulation to get weirder toward the end. Once I placed the Hologram Microcosm at the end, doing its weird not-quite-reverb-not-quite-delay granular thing, the lead line came alive.

Moog Matriarch into Eventide Space — Main sequence
Novation AFX Station into Hologram Microcosm — Melody

Performed and recorded live with EQ, compression, and limiting on the master.

https://jayhosking.bandcamp.com/"