Buchla Thunder + ASM Hydrasynth | Noise Improvisation

video upload by Ryan Gaston

"I recently took delivery of a vintage Buchla Thunder—a MIDI controller I've been dorking out over for years. In this video, I'm exploring a tiny bit of what it can do when combined with an ASM Hydrasynth desktop module...in the form of a mostly noisy/textural improvisation. (Note—the laptop is there purely for the sake of recording. All sounds and effects are coming from the Hydrasynth.)

Released in ~1990, Thunder is bonkers. Like many of Buchla's prior instruments, it uses touch-sensitive plates as a way of interacting with electronic sound engines. There's no "default" setup...you have to program everything that it does from scratch. It can translate touch directly into MIDI notes, or your touches can be used to initiate/conditionally influence programmed strings of events. Keys can even be used to conditionally modify one another's behavior—it's very deep, and things can become complex quite quickly. That's much of its charm: it's very easy for simple interactions to unwind into complex, unexpected flurries of sound.

So it's quite powerful...but given that I've had it for only a short time, I'm still barely scratching the surface. That said, it's already proving to be super inspiring to play, and I'm excited to keep digging in from here."