Lockdown Modular Sessions - Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 (4k Final Mix)

video upload by John Belew

This one was sent in via John L Rice. One more below. "I've always wanted to do this one since I was young. I blame the Exploratorium commercials during Captain Cosmic on KTVU with Wendy Carlos music. Now that I'm stuck at home, here goes. One of my favorite Bach pieces, almost impossible to play live and just as difficult to mix. Keep creating people!

Details for the eurorack nerds out there ... I pulled out Yarns for this one, but even with the two A4 CV outs, I was only able to do 6 parts. Cello is Klavis and the sub going through Evolution with a touch of distortion so it pops, Viola is Klavis through a Wasp with heavy S/H on the cutoff. Lead violin is the E352 going through an SEM (very Depeche Mode sounding) with the remaining violin parts coming from Chord2 in poly mode going through Belgrad with just enough input clipping that it sounds like a harpsichord at times. Listen to it on real speakers, the voicing really comes together in the third movement. And yes, I added a kick to the first movement, it just seems to work for me.

Lesson learned is how powerful ADSR's are (thanks Peaks x2) instead of just AR's on the Quadra. Recorded the individual tracks on a Zoom L-20, then fine-tuned the mix in Reaper. It's got the right level of rumble to my ears, but I wish I was better at EQ'ing and mastering."

Modular Classical Sessions - Excerpts from String Quartet No. 8 by Shostakovich


"Excerpts from Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op. 110, my second project voicing and interpreting some of my favorite classical pieces in eurorack (See the first, Brandenburg Concerto No. 3" above.

And Generative Modular Installations by John Belew:

Roland G-202 Guitar Synth Controller & GR-300 Synth

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"Rare & fine Vintage Roland Guitar Synth set features the GR-300 Polyphonic Guitar Synthesizer floor unit, 24 pin connecting cable and G-202 Guitar Controller (with it’s original hardshell case) in excellent original condition. This outfit looks, plays, and functions fine. These older analog units are prized for their quick synth latencies, great analog and hex tones, and are famously used by artists like Pat Metheny, John McLaughlin, Adrian Belew, and Robert Fripp to get some amazing, unique sounds. The G-202 Guitar Synth Controller is a solid-body, offset double cutaway body with bolt-on solid maple neck, Gotoh tuners, dual Roland PU-120H humbucking pickups, built-in hex pickup, onboard synth controller electronics, Controls: guitar volume, tone, synthesizer VCF cutoff, guitar/synth mix, VCF resonance (feedback) and LFO depth (synth vibrato). Fully adjustable Hardtail Bridge. Guitar shows light player wear & one small paint chip; that’s about it. The GR-300 Guitar Synthesizer has six VCOs (one per string) that are controlled by the string pitches as well as hexa-fuzz plus an LFO, tuning presets and some control over the attack of each note. You can apply vibrato to open strings, secondly each string can now produce two notes (one from the divided pickup and one from a VCO). The pitch of the VCO's can be offset by two preset controls that can be selected by footswitches. Envelope attack can be slowed down and the strings that will have a synthesized tone on them can be individually selected. There is a compression on/off switch as well. Many of these functions can be selected by footswitches; the LEDs flash if the function is off or steady if the function is on. The GR-300 combined with the GK1 pickup offers clean and fast tracking and this system are still considered one of the greatest guitar synths ever manufactured. The floor unit looks good and shows light wear. It seems like the ENV INV led doesn’t light though the footswitch works fine."

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