VIVALDI - Autumn Part 1 on SIX (5) ARP Odysseys

video upload by Richard Payne

"Been having a pop at Autumn Part 1 these last few days and this take I recorded (take 111!) has come out slightly 'dystopian' sounding and synthy. Have pushed the filters a bit more. There’s a bit of overdrive in places and some wobbly 'pitchy' stuff happening. But lots going on and lots of things to remember to do. Or not to do. This take here was only the 4th time I’d made it to the end, and the first and only without completely ballsing it up.

Odyssey #3 was briefly back in the fold last week and was ably handling the sub bass part all on it’s own, but it started going wrong again and has been taken back to the repair shop. So to cover that part here, I’m bringing in and out oscillator 2 on Odyssey #6, which is set to a square wave an octave down. I’d say a good 80 of those earlier takes that I mucked up were ruined by me forgetting to do this, or doing it badly, or at completely the wrong time. There’s a 'high jeopardy' patch change happening on Odyssey #1 too which I liked to get wrong, transitioning from a short filtery harmony part at the beginning to a long square wave lead line for the slow bit towards the end.

As before, I got the Midi parts online and processed them in Ableton Live. I combined and reduced them down from the 24 orchestral parts to the 5 here. Fixed up a few dodgy notes. Probably added a few of my own. Then I tempo matched to an orchestral performance of the piece, which is probably the fiddliest and most time consuming bit. There were a few more evenings messing with note lengths and refining the tempos further. So, I’ve been using Korg’s Odyssey plugins up to this point in the process, slouching on the sofa on my laptop, but the next step is to move into my little music room and to practice on the actual ones. Spent a couple more evenings working things out there and then a couple of days trying to film a good run through.

It’s certainly tricky trying to adjust each part as dynamically as I’d like when they’re all coming at me in one big terrifying lump. I’m not mixing or even EQ’ing afterwards so I’m battling to keep a good audible balance between the synths as I go. If I get too involved or too “two-handy” on a synth for too long, I’m neglecting the other four and I’ve missed 5 other things I wanted to do. So I’m relying quite a lot on the Decay slider in the envelope section, as it seems to offer a one-stop dynamic shop that I can adjust on two synths at the same time. I’ve modded all of the Odysseys to have a free-running LFOs also, so I can introduce a slow LFO to the filters to keep them shifting about on their own whilst I adjust something else elsewhere.

I have started re-recording these pieces 'properly', one Odyssey at a time, with view to putting them up somewhere for streaming or perhaps even pressing them onto vinyl. Would sound good on record I reckon. You reckon? And I have a whole shelf full of peculiar synthesizer albums from the 60’s and 70’s that it would be an honour to mingle with.

But hey, thank you so much, everyone who showed up and watched the last video. For all the views and subscriptions and above all, the kind and encouraging comments. That was nuts. I didn’t know you lot were coming! Absoutely amazing and thank you sincerely again.

Oh, to wrap up, here the Odysseys are going balanced out into a Behringer ADA-8200 Interface, which is optically connected into the Adat In of my UAD Apollo. They get their 5 channels of Midi note on, note off information down USB from Ableton Live which is in turn recording the audio coming back. I added some Hall Reverb from Arturia’s LX-24 but nothing has been EQ’d. It’s all how it comes out of the lovely boxes. I did however have a Limiter on the main channel, to put a bit of a lid on some of the more feisty bits.

Toodles!"