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Showing posts sorted by date for query shasta cults. Sort by relevance Show all posts

Saturday, July 20, 2024

Waveshaping in Buchlas - Timbre & Digital Nonlinear Waveshaping


video upload by Shasta Cults

Above: Shasta Cults - Buchla 700 - wave shape editor

For those interested The Buchla Archives have an extensive article on wave shaping in buchlas here: https://www.buchlaarchives.com/blog/timbre-digital-nonlinear-waveshaping.

Opening paragaph:

"Ask most modern modular synthesizer enthusiasts about the hallmark characteristics of Donald Buchla's instruments: no doubt, one of the first things they'll mention is the idea of a 'complex oscillator.' Today—generally speaking—the term 'complex oscillator' refers to a general synthesis structure typically composed of two oscillators, a waveshaper, and various forms of inter-oscillator modulation. Typically, one oscillator is treated as a 'primary' or “principal” oscillator, and the other as a 'modulator.' The primary oscillator's sine wave output is typically hardwired to the waveshaping section, which provides a series of controls for continuously altering the waveshape/sonic character of the sound. The modulator usually has the ability to modulate the primary oscillator's frequency, amplitude, and aspects of the waveshaping process."

Sunday, May 12, 2024

1st FAUX HUNDRED Audio Demos





This one is in via Soviet Space Child.

See the FAUX HUNDRED label below for additional posts.

Monday, March 30, 2020

The Buchla “System 3”


via Shasta Cults

"Shortly after selling his company to CBS in the late 60s, Buchla was tasked with designing a less expensive system to market to schools and universities. EMS had just released the VCS3 and it had started to overtake that market due to low cost and high functional density. Don seemed more interested in researching computer control and had started devising his 500 series system which CBS was not willing to fund. In early 1970 to meet contract requirements 6 prototypes of the 'System 3' were delivered to CBS before Buchla and CBS parted ways."

Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Nihilist's Xmas by Shasta Cults




A future classic!

It's bleak.

released December 25, 2019

Programmed and Recorded in 2017 by Shasta Cults
Mastered by J. Stevenson


Outtakes from Configurations featuring the Buchla 700.

(pictured below)

Saturday, December 07, 2019

SHASTA CULTS - DA3


Premiered Dec 6, 2019 Shasta Cults

https://shastacults.bandcamp.com/
https://importantrecords.com/products...

Buchla Touché

Wednesday, November 13, 2019

Shasta Cults Self Titled Release Featuring the Buchla Touché



Pre-order on black and clear vinyl at IMPREC, and digital at BandCamp.

"Wonderful to hear such beautiful, billowing sound clouds emanating from the legendary Touché." - David Rosenboom

Shasta Cults is the musical project of Canadian electronics technician Richard Smith. For almost two decades, Smith was the official Buchla & Associates repair tech for studios, collectors, and musicians around the world. Having worked for artists such as Aphex Twin, Suzanne Ciani, Morton Subotnick and institutions such as The Library of Congress and Mills College, Smith has had the unique experience of restoring and interacting with nearly every model of Buchla instrument constructed over the past 50 years.

Recorded over the span of three months in the fall of 2018, this album was programmed using the only fully functional Buchla Touché. Developed in the early 1980s with hardware by Donald Buchla and software programmed by musician David Rosenboom, the Touché features waveforms generated internally by twenty-four digital oscillators and uses frequency modulation along with sophisticated digital and analog signal processing to produce complex timbres.

This LP is a continuation of themes first heard on Configurations, with more consideration given to the generation and recording of the pieces. The album's six tracks – a collection of sonic experiments and hypnotic drones – span almost forty minutes, showcasing not only the incredible fidelity of the Touché but also Smith's evolution as an audio engineer.

Put on some headphones, find a comfortable chair, and let this LP transport you to the mystifying southern cascades of Siskiyou County.

RIYL: ELEH, Sarah Davachi

released November 13, 2019

Programmed, recorded and mastered by Shasta Cults - Fall 2018
Artwork by IMPREC

all rights reserved

Thursday, October 31, 2019

October by Shasta Cults





All Buchla 400 EP from Shasta Cults, available on Bandcamp and Hard Wax.

Shasta Cults recently released Configurations featuring the Buchla 700. Excellent album BTW.

Image of the Buchla 400 below via @buchla_archives


Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Sarah Davachi PS-3300


Published on Sep 25, 2019 Shasta Cults

---

This appears to the previous location of the NMC (National Music Center) Calgary. The EMS SYNTHI 100 now appears to be in be Live Room B at at the current location. See: https://www.studiobell.ca/living-collection.

Friday, September 20, 2019

Configurations by Shasta Cults Now Available



Announced back in July 31, Shasta Cults' Configurations composed on the Buchla 700 is now available on Bandcamp.

"Recorded in 2017, employing the processes of non-linear waveshaping, frequency modulation and feedback, Configurations consists of eight programs captured live to multitrack using a rare, fully functional Buchla 700 digital-hybrid instrument designed in the late 1980s. Whereas previously released works made with the 700 almost always consist in simple manipulations of the single factory preset, this album delves deep into the instrument's rich sonic vocabulary to offer the listener a more elaborate demonstration of the system's capabilities."

Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Shasta Cults - Configurations - Buchla 700 Release


Shasta Cults - Configurations - Available Sept 13, 2019 Published on Jul 30, 2019


"pre-orders available now via: imprec.com

A ship sinks beneath the silver mirror of the sea-top, temple gongs ring through an empty valley, industrial machinery sputters, heaves, lurches forward, stops, falls apart… These sound events may be the most acute musical referents of Shasta Cults, the music project of Canadian synthesizer technician Richard Smith. Using obsolete electronics, Shasta Cults pursues the true sound of the instrument, freed from the tyranny of emulation, no strings/woodwinds/piano presets. Shasta Cults' compositions seek out unchartered territories where sustained drones may swell, build, or evaporate; where timbres collide, amplitudes fluctuate, sounds emerge, raw, primeval, new hybrids form from the collisions of electricity and frequency. There may be stretches of silence punctuated by bell-ish tones from futures unheard; a sequence of notes may verge upon melody before mutating into ugly moans, the sonic equivalent of funhouse mirrors. But the end result is far more than chance operation, sporadic sound fields, or indeterminate academic exercise. Instead, Shasta Cults brings us back to nature, back to the possibilities inherent in nature, to the truth of evolution, stitching both musical tones, and the sounds of 21st century living into a form which is as real, as imponderable, and as ungovernable as our own memories.

Recorded in 2017, employing the processes of non-linear waveshaping, frequency modulation and feedback, Configurations consists of eight programs captured live to multitrack using a rare, fully functional Buchla 700 digital-hybrid instrument designed in the late 1980s. Whereas previously released works made with the 700 almost always consist in simple manipulations of the single factory preset, this album delves deep into the instrument's rich sonic vocabulary to offer the listener a more elaborate demonstration of the system's capabilities.

Presented here in limited quantities this release is intended as a high fidelity audio archive of this obscure musical artifact."

All Buchla 700 and effects.. a 266 controlling filter cutoff on one track.

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Faktizität by Shasta Cults Featuring the Buchla Touché



"use headphones"

Previous posts featuring the Buchla Touche
.

Wednesday, April 18, 2018

Mk1 Synthi A Test


Published on Apr 18, 2018 Shasta Cults

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Shasta Cults - Buchla Touché Waveshapes


Published on Apr 8, 2018 Shasta Cults

This is the first video ever featuring the graphic output of the Buchla Touché waveshapes, from currently the ONLY Buchla Touché with the ability to display them. This is as rare as it gets in the synth world.

"The Touché uses non linear wave shaping for timbre generation, same as the 360, 400, 700 and 259e (a distortion based wave shaping technique).  It has 9 native  wave shape tables (6 user programmable). A sine wave is generated digitally and then sent through the selected table. Timbre is effected by the amplitude of the sine wave, so it accents high and low harmonics more, based on sine wave level.  Timbre modulation was Don Buchla's wave shape technique. This particular Touché is a development model that will display wave shapes, as well as allow you can program your own…  if you can figure it out." See this page for some technical info on Waveshaping from ussb.edu.

The following was composed on the Touché using sine waves.



You can find previous posts featuring the rare Buchla Touché here.

Wednesday, March 07, 2018

Buchla 300 - Patch IV loading and overview


Published on Mar 7, 2018 Shasta Cults

"1981 Buchla 300 Electric Music Box.    A quick demo of the process of loading Patch IV, setting up the 221 controller for 300 control, and a walk through the various programming screens."

Note, this is the same exact system pictured with Morton Subotnik below, and previously featured here on MATRIXSYNTH.

The following is a recording of the system from 2007.



Tuesday, March 06, 2018

Buchla 300 - PATCH IV


Published on Mar 6, 2018 Shasta Cults

"This particular Buchla is from 1981, one of the last modular systems Don would have made before he introduced the 200e 20 years later."

No audio, but that is a rare bit of synthesizer history right there. You can find the Buchla 300 featured in the following posts in order of appearance:

Morton Subotnik's Buchla 300 at IRCAM, 1981
Morton Subotnik and the Buchla 300 - same pic as above but reversed.
Buchla 300

Friday, December 29, 2017

Buchla Touché by Shasta Cults


Published on Dec 29, 2017 Shasta Cults

Buchla 700 - first wave shape table by Shasta Cults


Published on Dec 29, 2017 Shasta Cults

"just a little trailer to celebrate my 1st wave shape table"

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Vergers by Sarah Davachi on the EMS SYNTHI 100




"Released (LP) November 2016 by Important Records

Composed, performed, recorded, and mixed by Sarah Davachi
Mastered by James Plotkin
Layout by Konrad Jandavs
Special thanks to Richard Smith

Vergers is Davachi's third full-length release following Barons Court (2015, Students of Decay) and Dominions (2016, JAZ Records), and her second appearance with Important Records following 2014's August Harp cassette on the Cassauna imprint. In this work, she meditates on a single electronic instrument, the EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer, while also weaving sparse acoustic elements – her own voice and violin – into a series of three long-form, muted gestures.

Elements of distance and alienation are certainly at play in the textural quality of these compositions, a feeling that is further defined by track titles that reference the spirit world and an album title that calls to mind the solitary tasks of the church orderly. The record opens with the aptly titled, 'gentle so gentle', a side-long movement that harkens the glacial character of Davachi's previous efforts. 'ghosts and all' and 'in staying' suggest a more disjointed path, with the latter culminating in a subtly dissonant dirge that leaves little absolve between the organic, the artificial, and the impermanent.

released November 25, 2016"



Sarah Davachi - Vergers Promo Published on Nov 29, 2016 Shasta Cults

In the video above Sarah Davachi plays with a SYNTHI AKS.

Update: via Sarah Davachi's bio page:

"Sarah Davachi (b. 1987, Calgary, Canada) holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Calgary, and a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California. As a composer of electronic and electroacoustic music, Davachi is engaged in practices of analog synthesis, psychoacoustic manipulations, and studio composition. Davachi's compositional projects are primarily concerned with disclosing the antiquated instruments and forgotten sonics of a bygone era in analog synthesis, with concurrent treatment of acoustic sources – particularly organs, strings, and woodwinds – often involving de-familiarization through processing. Her work considers the experience of enveloped sonic dwelling, utilizing extended durations, gradual transformations in texture, and simple harmonic structures that emphasize variations in overtone complexity and natural phasing patterns.

Her work as a music researcher concerns aspects of experimentalism, organology and archival study, and phenomenology and perception, and has been published and presented within Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom..." You can find her full bio here.

Be sure to check out some of her other releases here: http://sarahdavachi.bandcamp.com

Monday, March 16, 2009

Magneticring (synthi AKS) & Osama "Sam" Shalabi

via echo7even

"Feed&Seed Records just released 2 CDrs featuring some music made by humans with rare synths.

Magneticring (synthi AKS) & Osama "Sam" Shalabi

also a rare live recording of Shasta Cults an elusive modular synth duo who use Buchla and Serge performance instruments.

info here"
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