New England Synth Fest on Saturday, May 18 at
SynthCube in Waltham, Mass.
Lectures, exhibitors, petting zoo 10am-1pm
(lectures from Richard Tarantino, Eric Crawley, and Jade Rose).
Performances 1pm-5pm.
Courtesy of Tron-meister, Nigel Hopkins, here's a no-talking, audio demo run-through of the Streetly Violins & Vox tapebanks, with a few patches thrown in for good measure.
As with all other Streetly Tape Volumes, Violin & Vox provides yet more sonic superfood for your M-Tron Pro, via a set of 25 tapebanks, this time focussing on the strong and varied vocal performances of Caitlin Downie and the virtuoso violin voicings of Claire Lindley.
As with all Streetly Tapes Volumes, this pack has been lovingly given the Streetly Skellotron treatment for that authentic sound of EMI tape wearing down playback heads.
Although these are recent recordings, thanks to the character introduced by the Skellotron processing, they have all the tron character you know and love, and sit perfectly alongside classic mellotron strings and choir recordings.
"A quick demo of a patch inspired by one of Caitlin's topics at the Secondary (High) school she now attends.
Here Make Noise René 2 is sequencing the 4ms Spherical Wavetable Navigator, Synthesis Technology E352 & E370 (with VCA controlled by Doepfer A-178 Theremin). Voice Samples are controlled by the 4MS Stereo Triggered Sampler (further pitch-shifted by the QU-Bit Nebulae). Drones via the Mother32. Keys via Behringer K2. Drums via Mutant Bass and Snare.
A tiny bit of reverb via Soundcraft Lexicon unit."
"Caitlin was invited to a special backstage tour at the National Music Centre in Calgary.
This included the chance to try out some unique and historic instruments, the highlight for her was undoubtedly creating and playing a simple patch on TONTO."
"We were excited to add a Qu-Bit Nebulae to the Mad Music Machine, especially as it is powered by a Raspberry Pi and the Mad Music Machine began it's life as a small network of Raspberry Pis.
Our last Raspberry Pi project used our Astro Pi code (which ran on the International Space Station) to make music, so we thought we should follow up with another space-based project for this video.
We downloaded the raw 'Martian Winds' sounds from the NASA website and loaded them onto the Qu-Bit Nebulae. The Nebulae has independent control of (playback) speed and pitch which allowed us to bring the 'wind' sounds up more into the audible range.
We created an 'industrial' rhythm by using a 'sample and hold' LFO within Bitwig (via our Expert Sleepers ES8) matched to our Make Noise Tempi clock. This modulation signal was used to 'Freeze' the output of the Nebulae.
We also created wavetables for our E352 by loading the downloaded 'Martian Winds' into the Synthesis Technology WaveEdit program. We sequenced the E352 with our Make Noise René 2 to create the "Touchdown Confirmed" bass line / melody.
We loaded the NASA commentary of the landing into our 4MS Stereo Triggered Sample which was sequenced and synchronised with the rest of the patch using our Tip Top Circadian Rhythms.
All sounds within the patch were generated from the InSight mission with the exception of the Hexinverter Kick, Snare and Clap.
We recorded the audio using Bitwig Studio with our Nektar Panorama P6 controlling the Mixer.
And finally, following previous feedback, Caitlin's voice was recorded using a RØDE Smartlav+ Lavalier Microphone.
We are aware the video focusing is not great in this video so that is the next thing we need to work on!"
"Here we test the latest E352 firmware which (among other things) adds a 'Morph + Detune' mode.
We detuned the 2nd output to be an octave higher than the first. One theremin modulated the E352 FM input, The second theremin modulated the 'Crush CV' on the Erica Synths Black Hole DPS2, theremins 3 & 4 were connected to the crossfade on the Morgasmatron to allow modulation between 'dry' and 'distorted' waveforms.
Caitlin then jammed using the Mother-32 sequencer and mixer to control the E352.
Other than the Mutant Bass Drum and Snare, all sounds in this video are from the E352"
"We took the Mad Music Machine to Horsham AmeriCARna and invited the public to interact with it via our Thermins.
Caitlin and her friend recorded some samples, setup some rhythms on Circadian Rhythms, and Jammed away on the Theremins to generate uScale quantized notes for the E352 and E370.
A Thermin controlled Disting produced the effects.
We had a great day with the public and are looking forward to coming back to Horsham AmeriCARna again!"
"This one's a bit experimental! We use the CV and gates of the Theremins to control E352 and E370 audio envelopes connected to the inputs of the Distings. The Theremin CVs also control the feedback to the B4 algorithm which is configured to output only the delayed signal.
We are planning to build another of these 'Double Disiting Theremin Instruments' to allow groups of children to jam together at our events.
Caitlin has had some great fun jamming with this and along the way has invented the 'crossed- theremin' technique :)"
'We were thrilled to be invited to run a demonstration of the Mad Music Machine at the Brighton Modular Meet.
We thought it would be a good idea to create a patch using waveforms generated from our Astro Pi data with samples we created from the European Space Agency commentary of Tim Peakes flight from Earth to the International Space Station.
We used the Synthesis Technology WaveeEdit programme to create the wavetables which on the E370 are taken from the pattern formed by the humidity data recorded in our experiment. The E352 uses a sample of the engine noise of the Soyuz TMA-19M which on which Tim Peake travelled - this is modulated in cloud mode to give the 'engine' sounds.
As the data was generated on a Raspberry Pi so we thought it would be appropriate to use Sonic Pi for for the sequencing :)
Her Caitlin jams with that patch :)"
Update:
Caitlin's live performance at the Brighton Modular Meet 2018
Published on Jul 2, 2018 The Mad Music Machine
"We had a fantastic time at the Brighton Modular Meet and met some wonderful people.
Caitlin enjoyed performing this and was very happy with the audience's reaction at the end!"
"Addictive TV have released to the public samples from their amazing 'Orchestra of Samples' project. The samples were collected over a 4 year period and involve over 300 musicians from 30 countries.
Here Caitlin live jams with a few off those samples that we have loaded into the 4ms STS. Caitlin mixes those samples with our own sounds & sequences generated in the Mad Music Machine."
"Last weekend we took the Mad Music Machine to Horsham Piazza Italia. We showed young children how we could sample their voices and gave them the microphone and told them to say anything they liked.
We had some interesting results from the many children (and adults) that took part!
Our favourite moment was when a family with 3 young children created a tune involving 'Peppa Pig' sounds - including of course, some 'oinks'.
Next time we do this we will ensure we can record their creations for them but here Caitlin is recreating their tune with the original voice samples, together with the beats as best as she can remember them.
For a bit of fun I have also added the Peppa Pig melody to the Mother-32 sequencer."
"We have been invited to take the Mad Music Machine to the Horsham Piazza Italia Festival which features many Italian (and other) high performance cars.
We thought it would be fun to incorporate samples of these cars into our music. Here Caitlin creates a basic drum machine using drum samples in the E370 and cars sounds in the Stereo Triggered Sampler .
The E370 makes for a great drum machine as the drum samples are very are easily tuned and triggered."
"Caitlin's first full jam with the Synthesis Technology E370 & E352.
The E370 has oscillator one connected to the Roland System-1m which is being used as a filter. Oscillators 2 ,3 & 4 form chords outputted via the E370's onboard mixer.
The E352's 2 outputs are fed to the Mother-32's filer and envelope.
The Mother-32 (along with a Pico Seq) provide the sequencing. MATHS and the Quadra/Quad VCAs the envelopers.
We also use the Hexinverter drums triggered by the 4MS Rotating Clock divider."
"Team STEAMCademy's Astro Pi code is almost complete and here Caitlin demonstrates how it will (hopefully!) be used to collect data on board the International Space Station.
In a previous video she demonstrated how she can use the data to generate waveforms using the Synthesis Technology Waveedit program, and if successful in the Astro Pi competition she will use it to generate wavetables from this code.
Caitlin then has a quick jam with the Moog Mother-32, Roland System-1m and the e352 Cloud Terrarium using wavetables she has previously generated from historic ISS data."