natural park #3 / ambient mutable instrument in the wild

video upload by Tom Leclerc

recorded in Auvergne, France

// instagram //
@tom__leclerc

no external processing

thanks for listening

Ondes / outdoor modular synth session

video upload by Tom Leclerc

"Location : Saint Hilaire de Riez, France

FR //

Ondes
Récit d’aventures, d’harmonies et d’imaginaires sobres

Les idées reçues sur la musique électronique ont la vie dure. Quand on s’interroge sur les nouvelles manières de diffuser et de produire on se heurte à des murs parfois systémiques. Renouer avec le vivant avec une pratique des plus technologique offre un terrain de jeu et d’exploration qui a besoin d’être documenté et expérimenté. Les nouvelles contraintes de sobriété et d’autonomie font parties intégrantes de ces nouvelles échelles raisonnables de création. « Ondes » est la preuve de concept qu’il est possible de danser, écouter, ressentir en consommant moins - l’équivalent de faire bouillir de l’eau ou de quelques minutes de clim’ - mais également de pouvoir performer en autonomie et en mobilité. Tom Leclerc est ingénieur et artiste et travaille à l’élaboration, l’écriture et la documentation de ces nouveaux moyens.

EN//

Waves
A Tale of Adventures, Harmonies, and Sober Imaginaries

Stereotypes about electronic music are persistent. When we contemplate new ways of broadcasting and producing, we often encounter systemic obstacles. Reconnecting with vitality through a highly technological practice provides a playground for exploration that needs to be documented and experienced. The new constraints of sobriety and self-sufficiency are integral parts of these new, rational scales of creation. "Waves" is a proof of concept that it is possible to dance, listen, and feel while consuming less - the equivalent of boiling water or a few minutes of air conditioning - and also to perform independently and on the go. Tom Leclerc is an engineer and artist working on the development, writing, and documentation of these new means."

natural park #2 / ambient mutable instrument in the wild

video upload by Tom Leclerc

"EN//
The Residence - The Tale of Silence - in Auvergne, France is a collaboration between photographer Joséphine Leroux and artist/musician Tom Leclerc. Capturing suspended moments of life, composition, exploration, and optimism lie at the heart of this journey of writing and documenting Tom's upcoming album. This album is the creation of a genuine natural park that can be listened to, where details, microcosms, and sonic curiosities blend in a unique acoustic ballad.

The challenge today is to offer a new, friendly, inspiring, and curiosity-inducing imagination for the delicate and bucolic nature. With this collaboration, it is also a genuine artistic exploration of the narrative of tomorrow and tranquility.

Armed with his experience with the Moss Explorer collective, Tom Leclerc is accustomed to the mountains and their inspiring secrets, which lead him to discover new forms of art production and dissemination in nature. Composing with nature is not an easy task; one must learn to let go.

In the age of capitalist anxiety, the search for tranquility becomes a difficult endeavor. And when we finally find it, we are already thinking of finding it again. In these places, the natural and ephemeral orchestra is alive; it can invite us to compose with it. I seek to bear witness to these moments to offer the world these new imaginaries.

And there are those moments, at the turn of a mountain's contour, where sound comes to life and offers us a true tale of silence.

FR//

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Tom Leclerc - Moss Explorers

video upload by Bastl Instruments

- Skis 2 as envelope for Pizza
- Magneto as an effect for Pizza sequenced by Hermod
- Ensemble Oscillator for bass, Surface for strings, and Sample for drums

"« Tom Leclerc is part of Moss Explorers which is a multidisciplinary cultural and artistic association, between laboratory and exploratory discovery of new forms of dissemination and artistic expressions. This French collective of artists explores nature, mountains, and forests through sound and image. They hike and capture the beauty of wild nature in analog photography. Armed with their equipment, they film ambient sound performances that combine recordings of the natural environment where they take place and improvisations with a modular synthesizer. This is what we can see and hear from their excursions into the splendid untouched nature.
This association also includes a real laboratory of arts and techniques, questioning new forms of cultural diffusion. Transmission and awareness are also at the heart of this particular facet. Real efforts are being made to popularize and document these techniques: production of light scenography, energy autonomy, printing, production, etc. Many areas are addressed by the collective. Keeping in mind systemic and ecological issues, the collective also sensitizes cultural actors.
It is through this multidisciplinary approach that this project mixes the arts and can forge links between musicians.ne, photographer, visual artist, poet.sse and other artists as well as various craftsmen or public. Leaving free their imagination this collective allows the incubation and realization of the eclectic and conscious project.
In this changing world, we need to systematically change the arts, productions, and broadcasting. Many concepts are addressed by the collective, especially in terms of digital and new ways of designing devices for live performances, installations, and performances. This comes in large part through a low-tech approach to digital art. Given the climate emergency, it is important for artists to be at the forefront of new techniques requiring sensitivity and accessibility. Awareness of the impact of art and digital technologies is also a point of honor, as is the knowledge of equipment and material choices. Beyond the technical aspect, there is a new way of living and creating. We can talk about 'project infusion' with the idea of soaking up a place in the long term in order to better understand the social fabric of these territories and to do the best for them."

Kompas & Tom Leclerc - Study of Getting Lost and Finding The Way Back (Petit Bois)

video by Bastl Instruments

"Marbles as thinking head and clocking Kompas, Kompas triggering Skis and Seed from Beads Rings, Plaits and Tides as sound sources. Tides is envelopped by Skis and a doepfer VCA. Plaits filtred by Ripples and processed by Beads. Rings and Tides processed by Clouds"

Tom Leclerc

New Mutable Instruments Beads Texture Synthesiser Eurorack Module

Playlist:

1. Mutable Instruments Beads - exploration and tutorial by Tom Leclerc
2. Mutable Instruments Beads (no input) by Robin Rimbaud-Scanner

First play with the Mutable Instruments Beads texture synthesiser. And here's a wonderful surprise - if you leave both audio inputs unpatched, then after 10 seconds it begins to granulise a collection of stored raw waveforms taken from Mutable Instruments Plaits wavetable module. So here's a piece using Beads as the lead voice on this cinematic piece, with no other inputs. I added other instruments afterwards for rhythm and bass, and the singular pulse that holds throughout is from the Make Noise Mysteron. This is just an idea to show Beads in a very musical context

3. Heidi Concrète (featuring Mutable Instruments Beads) by Robin Rimbaud-Scanner

An experimental piece using Mutable Instruments Beads, the texture synthesiser, processing an audio file. No addition effects or processing were used. This is simply a live exploration of a single audio file with Beads. The original voice introduces and closes the piece so you can compare the two sonic worlds before and after Beads. The voice is taken from a scanned phone call in the early 1990s that features on my Delivery (1997) album.

4. A Little Beat with Mutable Instruments Beads (Wavetable Mode) by midcentury modular

This is Beads running in the internal wavetable mode (and a kick drum from plaits). I've got a gate going into freeze that acts as a mute when the kick comes in (sort-of side-chain like), and I'm also manually pressing it to mute and sustain the random sequence.

The pitches are not from an external cv source but generated internally with the peaky random distribution into the time knob. The pitch changes with this parameter seem to be somewhat harmonically related (though I'm not sure what specific scale) to the root set by the pitch parameter.

5. Overdriven Ambient Looping with Mutable Instruments Beads by midcentury modular

This video is some improvised choir sounds (from the Ableton Operator synth, played with a midi keyboard) ran into Mutable Instruments Beads in the delay/looper mode (with "sunny tape quality") Throughout, I add to the buffer by tapping out of freeze mode and back in. When the feedback is up, things stick around, so you can progressively add more and build up the buffer. I'm also experimenting with overdriving the input (by turning up the audio level going into beads from ableton with the top left 1U knob)

6. Mutable Instruments Beads (Scorched Cassette Mode) and Ciat-Lonbarde Plumbutter Deerhorn by midcentury modular

This patch is my attempt at using Beads to add some Cocoquantus-like magic to the Deerhorn. I think the downsampling, lower-bitrate and whatever other DSP tricks are happening in the Scorched Cassette mode are crerating a somewhat similar vibe to the 8-bit dolby loopers in the Coco, and I think this adds some really nice fizzy textures to the warm, raw-oscillator tone of the Deerhorn). Beads is also pitching down the two tones from Deerhorn to add a bit more melodic content.

There is some very subtle modulation coming from the orange out on Deerhorn, but it's not really doing a ton and could probably be left out and you wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference. There is some audio-rate modulation coming out of one of the white deerhorn outputs into the density input, which is modulating some of the AM stuff going on when density is high towards the end of the track.

No idea why the snapping gesture with the density knob caused the "knock on wood" sound, but I think it was a pretty cool accident!

7. Noisy Experimenting with Mutable Instrument Beads, Blades Ripples and Plaits

This patch (at least as much as I remember it...been a while since I made this) is Beads and Blades in a sort-of feedback loop. Blades is over-driven and self-oscillating, and the outs are sent to control seed and freeze on Beads (which is using the internal wavetable generator as audio input). After trying out various ones, I found these two control inputs on Beads the most interesting with audio rate signals. The outs of Beads are going into the audio inputs of blades. Both modules outs are multed out and into veils which is acting as a stereo mixer. Ripples (which is getting some noise into its cutoff modulation input from Plaits) is providing some audio rate modulation to some of the Veils channels.

"Beads is a reinvention of Mutable Instruments’ Clouds.

The concept is the same, live granular processing of an incoming audio signal, and the labels on the panel remain familiar.

The similarities stop here. The hardware and software have been redesigned from the ground up, with several goals in mind: a crisper and broader sound palette, more control, better playability, and direct access to exciting new features.

DOTTING THE I’S AND CROSSING THE T’S

Beads’ vastly improved specifications allow a higher audio quality, a longer buffer, the use of better interpolation and anti-aliasing algorithms, and key DSP blocks to run at a faster rate. Granular processing can now go to new territories, such as formants, wavetables, hard-sync-like sounds, or crispy noise.

The range of parameters, their response to the turn of a knob or a CV modulation have all been refined, for new possibilities such as reverse playback or percussive envelopes.

CONTROL, CHAOS AND CHARACTER

Control. To trigger or schedule grains, Beads provides new features to divide or randomize an external clock or trigger stream, spray bursts of grains in response to a gate, or get the grain rate to track a V/O CV or the frequency of an external oscillator.

Chaos. Each key parameter of a grain comes with its own attenurandomizer, which allows direct CV control, CV control of the randomization (spread) of this parameter, or internal randomization using some of Marbles’ algorithms.

Character. Beads provides four audio quality settings, which go well beyond buffer sample rate and bit-depth: they affect the clock of the converters, the amplitude limiting and saturation of the signal path, the tone of the reverb, and additional media-emulation effects. From a pristine digital device to a dirty cassette, through a mode reproducing some of Clouds’ characteristics.

MODES?

Beads can operate as a delay without the need to switch to a different mode: just ask it to play a never-ending grain. Its DENSITY, TIME and SEED controls are repurposed to allow various features such as tap-tempo, beat slicing, time-stretching, or comb-filtering at rates tracking V/O.

Without any audio input, Beads will granularize 8 internal banks of wavetables.

All parameters have a dedicated knob."