Buchla Music Easel in Eurorack!

video upload by Electrum Modular

"Unveiling of the Easel-esque system! Demonstration includes three patches, with notes on each."

Modules:
ST Modular SHIKENSA (1st post to feature one)
Intellijel Scales
ALM Pip Slope
ALM Pamela's Workout
Intellijel Dixie II+
Shakmat Banshee Reach
Intellijel Bifold
Make Noise Optomix
Synthrotek MIXIV
ART Junction (1st post to feature one)
Mutable Instruments Beads
ALM MFX
Doboz Touch Plate Controller & Gliss
Expert Sleepers Disting

Switches + Faders = Power Sequencer!

video upload by Electrum Modular

"I love my main sequencer (Qu-bit Bloom), but it doesn’t have cv control over sequence length, direction, clock rate, glide, etc.
Then I realized that I had two ingredients to build a more patch-programmable sequencer:
Disting’s Multi-Switch mode, which offers up to 6 customizable switches, and a fader bank, Tesseract Modular's Sweet Sixteen...

Further details in the patch notes

Other modules used:

Shakmat's Banshee Reach
Intellijel's Dixie II+
Mutable Instruments’ Beads
Make Noise Maths
Expert Sleepers’ Disting Ex
Pamela's New Workout
Quad VCA
Dnipro Metamorph
Alright Devices' Chronoblob
Doepfer A121-3 filter
ALM's MFX
Behringer Neutron"

Sonic sculptures (generative modular music)

video upload by Electrum Modular

"(For Paula)

This patch was inspired by hours (weeks?) of listening to Morton Feldman’s exquisite music. It ended up quite different harmonically from Feldman’s pieces, partly due to the limitations of a modular system. The envelope generators and attenuators required some tweaking to get that balance between repetition and divergence, revolving and evolving. In retrospect, I could have left longer silences between notes.
NOTE: no delay effect used here, as it would have reintroduced a pulse.

“Almost all of Feldman’s music is slow and soft. Only at first sight is this a limitation. I see it rather as a narrow door, to whose dimensions one has to adapt oneself (as in Alice in Wonderland) before one can pass through it into a state of being that is expressed in Feldman’s music. Only when one has become accustomed to the dimness of the light can one begin to perceive the richness and variety which is the material of the music...Feldman sees sounds as reverberating endlessly, never getting lost, changing their resonances as they die away, or rather not die away, but recede from our ears, and soft because softness is compelling, because an insidious invasion of our senses is more effective than a frontal attack.”” -- Cornelius Cardew, quoted by John Tilbury in “On Playing Feldman”

Video sequences from Works of Calder (d. Herbert Matter, 1950), an experimental film featuring a soundtrack by John Cage; available at archive.org.

Title image: Tentoonstelling Kinetische Plastiek Am. beeldhouwer Alexander Calder in Stedelij, Bestanddeelnr (October 2, 1969); creative commons.

Modules used:
Expert Sleepers’ Disting EX
Disting mk4
ALM’s Pamela’s New Workout
Behringer Neutron
ALM’s Pip Slope x2
Make Noise Maths
Intellijel Quad VCA
Tesseract’s Sweet Sixteen"

Interlocking hands: Minimalist generative piano (Qu-bit Bloom, Disting EX)

video upload by Electrum Modular

"Recently I’ve been playing minimalist pieces on the piano (Phillip Glass, Howard Skempton) that involve both polyrhythms and overlapping hands.
For this video, I transferred the idea to my modular system, splitting an F minor sixth chord across two sequencer channels, and clocking the channels at different rates (x2, x3).
The sequencer (Qu-bit Bloom) generates 64 variations on this pattern, a stage sequencer selects 12 of them, and a multisample player (Disting EX) performs them. Further details in the patch notes.

Other modules used:
Disting mk4
Dnipro Metamorph
ALM’s Pamela’s New Workout
Doepfer sequential switch"

Flip your arps! Generating complex arpeggios with soft sync

video upload by Electrum Modular

"To begin phasing out my Behringer Neutron (the first piece of electronic gear I ever bought, back in 2018), I’ve just acquired two new oscillators: Intellijel’s Dixie II+ and Shakmat’s Banshee Reach. Both feature a 'soft sync' option, whereas Neutron has only hard sync. Oscillator sync is generally touted for its distinctive timbral effects. I’ve never seen any discussion of its use at lower (sub-audio) frequencies. But looking at its effect on the waveform, I reckoned soft sync might generate some interesting arpeggios. Here are the results of my experiments!

NOTE: the folded shape of these arpeggios led me to also experiment with using a wavefolder (Intellijel’s Bifold). This worked – and has the advantage of preserving the period/frequency of the arpeggio, and thus the time signature. But as you increase the fold, the arpeggio begins to sound too chaotic. I guess there is a sweet spot (or range) between a bog-standard arpeggio and a formless sequence of notes.

Other modules used:
Make Noise's Maths
Intellijel's Scales
Mutable Instruments' Plaits
Expert Sleepers' Disting EX
ALM's Pamela's New Workout
Low Gain's Short Bus
Alright Instruments' Chronoblob"

Terry Riley, Keyboard Study no.1 (as generative modular patch)

video upload by Electrum Modular

"There are several modular synth renditions of Terry Riley’s 'In C' out there, but none (as far as I know) of his keyboard studies, so here goes…

Although Riley played this piece in 1964-65, he did not write it down until the 1990s, and only published it in 2015: https://www.boosey.com/shop/prod/Rile...

His instructions in this book are pretty cryptic, so I try to explain the piece at the beginning of the movie.

I tend not to use MIDI in my modular (except when connecting it to an iPad or keyboard etc), as it’s less malleable than CV. But Expert Sleepers’ addition of a 'MIDI Player' algorithm to the Disting EX gave me the idea to use multiple MIDI files in a more generative way. Thank you to the tireless Os at Expert Sleepers for solving my technical issues (see Disting EX forum on modwiggler).

Robert Carl’s book, Terry Riley's In C:
https://www.google.com/books/edition/...

FWIW, my favorite piano recording of this piece is John Tilbury’s:
https://anothertimbre.bandcamp.com/al...
Released last year, but recorded 'in Hamburg in the late 1970s or early 80s—full details forgotten.'

Terry RILEY, 1972 photograph credit: © Bernard Perrine. All rights reserved 2023/Bridgeman Images"

Terry Riley's In the Summer (Buchla Music Easel)

video upload by Electrum Modular

"I’ve been reading Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco’s excellent book, Analog Days. Apparently, when Don Buchla unveiled his prototype Buchla Box at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in 1965, the most enthusiastic witness was Terry Riley, the pioneer of minimalist music. 'I think I’ll do some music on that,' Riley said.

Sadly, there’s no recording or other evidence of Riley playing the Buchla (at least that I can find). But given that they crossed paths at the Tape Music Center, I thought it would be appropriate to use the Buchla Music Easel to do a cover of one of my favorite Riley pieces: “In the Summer” (1974).

Composed for the soundtrack of art-house film, Lifespan, this piece was reissued in 2007 on the CD, 'Les Yeux Fermés & Lifespan.'

Listen to the original: [below]

On using Disting and Low-Gain Format Jumbler to interface Easel with Eurorack: [previously posted here]"

In the Summer - Terry Riley
video upload by hydrogenbomb

"Track 6 from the album, Les Yeux Fermés & Lifespan, by Terry Riley."

Aeolian pendulum: Buchla Music Easel with Eurorack

video upload by Electrum Modular

"Some tricks and ideas for combining the one-of-a-kind Buchla Music Easel with your Eurorack modular gear.
The 'Aeolian pendulum' chord pattern was inspired by reading Victor Szabo’s book, Turn On, Tune In, Drift Off: Ambient Music's Psychedelic Past (2023)."

Two Sketches: Doodling on the Buchla Music Easel

video upload by Electrum Modular

"This video suggests some ideas for extracting extra melodic mileage (and an accompanying bass line) from the Easel’s 5-step sequencer, using the keyboard arpeggiator and external delay and reverb. Further patch details in the captions.

Other gear used:
Mutable Instruments' Beads
ALM's Pamela's New Workout
ALM's MFX
Expert Sleepers' Disting Mk4
Intellijel Out"

Allemande (Disting EX's Poly Wavetable)

video upload by Electrum Modular

"I've been working on the Allemande from J. S. Bach's French Suite No. 4 in E-flat, BWV 815, and was frustrated that I couldn't hear all those long, held notes. Rather than select one of its cheesy organ presets, I decided to connect the piano to my (smaller) Eurorack case. It worked well with all of the polyphonic algorithms on the Disting EX, but the Poly Wavetable gives you the most options for using keyboard velocity not just to control volume but also to shape the timbre - via filter cutoff, wavetable position, etc. I set the envelope times/levels/curves so that the held notes would remain audible, but in the background.

Here is how I connected the piano to the modular: USB Midi cable - DOREMIDI midi host - 5-pin MIDI cable - TRS adaptor cable - MIDIXO breakout, which connected to the rear of the Disting via 4-pin ribbon cable. If there's a more direct way to connect them, please let me know in the comments!

Further patch notes in the video.

Other gear used:
ALM's Pamela's New Workout
Mutable Instruments' Beads
Tesseract's Sweet Sixteen
Expert Sleeper's Disting Mk4
Intellijel's Out

EQ and compression in Logic Pro

Keywords: #eurorack #modular #piano #Bach"

Serotinal (Buchla Music Easel)

video upload by Electrum Modular

"A two-voice track on the Buchla Easel, with stereo delay and a little reverb added externally. The idea was to generate an irregular rhythm via the “arpeggiation rate” input, while maintaining the time signature via a MIDI clock. Further patch notes in the video.

Thanks to Jean-Francois for loaning the Easel, and to my son Max for designing and making the Easel stand.

Video footage from the prairie park near my house in Iowa City.

Gear used:
Buchla Easel (2013 reissue)
Electro-Harmonix Cathedral pedal
Electro-Harmonix 95000 looper"

Polyphonic Plaits: Canon in G Minor, in Four Parts

video upload by Electrum Modular

"Trying out the new Macro Oscillator2 algorithm on the Disting EX, which gives you four independent Plaits voices. I'm using the iPad app, Fugue Machine, to sequence the four Plaits.

Gear used:
Qu-bit Bloom
Behringer Neutron
Mutable Instruments’ Beads
Make Noise Maths
Expert Sleepers’ Disting Mk4
Expert Sleepers’ Disting Ex
Pamela's New Workout
Quad VCA
Dnipro Metamorph
Intellijel Steppy
ALM's MFX

#modularsynth #eurorack"

Hoquetus modularis (featuring Disting EX)

video upload by Electrum Modular

"Exploring the wonderful world of hocketing, using Disting EX's 'Chord Engine'.
Recorded "live", adding only EQ + compression in Logic Pro.

Patch is described in the video. Just one clarification: as the sequencer spits out a new note every 2 bars, and the voices take it in turns to be the recipient of that new note, each voice changes note every 8 bars. As there are 7 notes in the sequence, this piece effectively repeats itself every 56 bars.

The piece excerpted in the first few seconds is “In saeculum breve,” a motet by an anonymous French composer, from the 13th-century manuscript, the Bamberg Codex. To avoid incurring the wrath of the copyright gods, I made my own version, inputting midi into Logic Pro and using brass instrument instead of voices, and adding convolution reverb with an impulse file recorded in a large church.

Gear used:
Qu-bit Bloom
Behringer Neutron
Mutable Instruments’ Plaits
Mutable Instruments’ Beads
Moog Subharmonicon
Make Noise Maths
Expert Sleepers’ Disting Mk4
Expert Sleepers’ Disting Ex
Pamela's New Workout
Quad VCA
ALM's MFX
Doepfer A-151 Quad Sequential Switch
Tesseract Modular's Sweet Sixteen

+ EHX Cathedral reverb

#modularsynth #eurorack #electronicmusic #ambient"

Ritardando (Disting EX's Granulator)

video upload by Electrum Modular

"Exploring the feature-packed granulator algorithm on the Disting EX, controlled via i2C by Tesseract Modular’s Sweet Sixteen faderbank. Thanks to Ed for supplying the Rachmaninoff piano sample. Detailed patch notes in the video.

#eurorack #modular #granularsynthesis #ambient #electronicmusic"

Jade Rose: Electrum (modular series pt. 7)

Published on Aug 1, 2017 Jade Rose

"This is a cyberpunk improvisation recorded on the Freestate FX modular in the Lawrence Library. Higher quality link https://soundcloud.com/user-249275247... [embed below]

The little box in front of me is a volca keys which is doing the chord and arp stuff, everything else is done on the modular. I added some fx and sparkles after as usual."



All parts here.

Public Library Modular Synthesizer Jam

Published on May 20, 2016 Jade Guitarmaker

"I made this patch using the Lawrence Public Library modular synthesizer. I love my library."

Update:

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