Analogue Heaven Northeast 2009

AHNE 09 YouTube via stretta
"Once a year, analog synth enthusiasts gather to socialize and play rare and unusual musical instruments. I captured the May 2009 gathering with a Canon 5DmkII and a 50mm f/1.4 lens. I simply sat the Camera on a tripod, frame the shot as I would a photo, focused and captured.

The music was produced using a Euro-format analog modular, controlled by Volta. Aside from the drums (MOTU BPM), everything was analog."
via The Stretta Procedure
I see a MATRIXSYNTH T in the background at :54 :)

monome kling glöckchen

monome kling glöckchen from occular on Vimeo.
"ittle monome impro of german christmas song on stretta's new tintinnabulome app. Merry Christmas !
monome.org/
occular.wordpress.com/"
via Stretta

A Small Abuse of Technology

YouTube via stretta.
"Short software hack that turns the amazing 40h into a very pedestrian scrolling sign."

I love it!!! Thank you Stretta!!! You can find out more about this here.

AHNE 08 Video Tour

AHNE 08 Video Tour from stretta on Vimeo.
"A two minute tour of some of the gear porn on display at the annual synth fest."
via The Stretta Procedure

maxforlive: monome integration

YouTube via stretta
"more cool stuff at http://stretta.com It is one thing to adapt max patches for maxforlive but it is another thing entirely to construct them so they can handle multiple instances without stepping all over each other by accessing the same data. Then there is the issue of telling monomeserial which instance has control of the monome hardware.

I wanted to make it elegant to use. For example, if you click on a track in live that has a monome application running, that monome application is in focus on the hardware. It is this level of integration that makes maxforlive so appealing. So, now you can run as many obos, polygomes, stepfilters, or automatorgators as you like, and the monome switches between them effortlessly. Once you have everything set up, you can save your project for later recall."

Modular Buying Tips on The Stretta Procudure

The Stretta Procedure has some good buying tips on a base euro-rack modular system. Worth checking out if you are in the market or just curious of course.

Stretta - workspace July 07 2011

flickr By stretta

You can read about it here.

"Today, my modular contains modules from Doepfer, TipTop, The Harvestman, WMD, Make Noise, Analogue Systems, Cwejman, Plan B, Malekko, Elby, Livewire. 4MS, Intellijel, and Analogue Solutions."

Note the date. We see into the future here.

Stretta on the Tenori-On

Title link takes you to an interesting perspective by Stretta on the Tenori-On. Of course this is all speculation, but it is interesting nonetheless. BTW, note the red lighted Tenori-On in this shot.

"Most of the unit is dominated by the button grid with a handful of extra buttons around the frame and an LCD. This suggests a limited opportunity to tweak the sounds or process. I suspect the LCD and associated navigation system is best suited to mundane tasks like selecting patches, loading samples from the card slot, and setting preferences - not editing. Perhaps software is included that will allow the user to more extensively edit using a computer."

straw

YouTube via stretta | October 25, 2010

"free music to download at http://stretta.com

On Saturday, I folded multiple loads of laundry, cleaned the bathroom, and played closet tetris in order to claim some space to put the air conditioner I pulled from the window. Then I cleaned the top floor. Feeling pretty good about releasing a 512 version of press cafe the day before, I decided to tackle an idea I had for the monome involving FM synthesis. The horizontal axis is pitch and a modal pitch map can be quickly generated on any base note, or you can edit the pitch map arbitrarily. The vertical axis is a modulation parameter that can be routed simultaneously to several destinations. Patch editing is very gratifying as everything is live all the time, so you don't have to re-trigger notes to hear the effect. This also opens the door to additional real time control. It is easily hackable. There are no polyphony/voice limitations. The downside is it isn't light on the processor. This patch consumes 20% of one core on my core i7. I'm using some hacked in support for the powermate knob to quickly make some parameter changes to broaden the range of timbres demonstrated.

I finished the patch on Saturday night and resolved to make a video on Sunday. I had in mind something more musical for a demonstration, but I was losing sunlight, so this will have to do for now. I added reverb after the fact (Valhalla Shimmer), otherwise, you're hearing the real-time output.

20 years ago, I wished for the ability to design a purpose-built synthesizer/instrument in a specific configuration, and use an adaptable, non-specific interface to control that synthesizer. Today this is possible. I wish I could spend every day making things like this."

Tiptop Audio Z-DSP Experiments on The Stretta Procedure

"I'm one of the lucky few beta testers of the new Tiptop Audio Z-DSP eurorack module, and boy is it a lot of fun. The Z-DSP is a lot like the Tiptop Audio Z5000, except embiggened. A lot. There are three CV controlled parameters per program. There is a feedback loop that you can tap into on the front panel so you can insert a filter or whatever module you can think of inside a part of the DSP process that is usually closed to tinkering. You can change the personality of the DSP by inserting a different card on the front panel. You can even voltage control the clock. This is serious sound-mangling mayhem."

more including samples at The Stretta Procudure Be sure to click on that image.

stretta's plane m | vi | cv released

Full details on STRETTA


"you don't need an arc to make use of plane. Also, you don't need a modular synth. plane m|vi|cv works perfectly well as a monophonic MIDI sequencer. Any size monome grid will work, but monome emulators may not."

Looks like the site has a new looks as well.

Where Are You? (part 2)

YouTube via stretta. I couldn't find a Part 1, so I'm not sure if Part 2 refers to just the piece or a prior video.
"I'm playing a French Connection controller against a simple looping phrase. If you listen carefully to the phrase, the pulses change vary slightly throughout the composition.

The French Connection is controlling a small collection of modules including a Cwejman VCO-RM2, MMF1, Plan B model 11 and Doepfer VCA. The left hand joystick is controlling various parameters including the frequency of the slave osc of the VCO which is also frequency modulating one of the filters.

Vimeo has a better quality version of this piece, including stereo audio. Unfortunately, this piece is not really mono compatible - all sorts of phase cancelation occurs when youtube collapses the file to stereo.

http://www.vimeo.com/707506

Go to http://stretta.com for more information"

Tiptop Audio Z5000 review by Stretta

You can find the full review on The Stretta Procedure.

The following are a couple of excerpts:
"I spent all of last night playing with it, giggling. Tons of fun. I love putting reverb before the amplifier so the lines you play are smeared, but still gated by the keyboard. A reverb module makes patching far more easy, and opens up creative opportunities you may not have considered before. The Z5000 also includes a handful of other programs like chorus, flanging, but the real focus is on various reverbs. Now I really want the Plan B Model 40 Elf-series headphone preamp - everything is contained in the modular case!"

"When you get a new module, your old instrument is entirely new again. This is the really cool thing about modulars, and a concept I'm dying to exploit in software. You want to try the module with everything else you already have. It makes the entire system more powerful. You're not just buying a single new module, you're gaining what that module can do, in interaction with everything else in the system."

It's also typically much cheaper to pick up a new module vs. a new synth if you need a quick GAS fix.

Nord Modular Overview

YouTube via stretta.
"Created for an ebay auction. A summary of some of the features of the Nord Modular G2"
Stretta also has a ton of modules up for auction here.

Arc Spectral Filter

Published on Jul 24, 2017 stretta

"This a demo of an FFT filter device I made for Ableton Live and the monome arc. Really satisfying how musical it is. The amplitudes of the FFT are determined by a 2D table which can be rotated. The lookup and rotation can be fed by two LFOs. You can import your own tables for an infinite variety of filter responses. The source audio is Stretta Cloud - just a pedal tone of detuned sawtooths."

µMicrolooper & µGrainstorm for monome arc, grid and Ableton Live

Published on Sep 25, 2017 stretta

"Demo of µMicrolooper for monome arc, grid and Ableton Live"


Published on Sep 25, 2017 stretta

"Demo of µGrainstorm for monome arc, grid and Ableton Live"

A Brief Conversation Resulting in One Less Child

YouTube via stretta
"This is an early prototype of Josh Boughey's stribe project. I'm attempting to write some software to turn the hardware into a musical instrument.

After a few nights of communicating with the firmware to light up LEDs in a meaningful manner, I switched gears and created a quick application that would hopefully result in a musical statement, albeit without the LED feedback I'm looking for. I'm still working on this.

If you're interested in what the stribe is, more information can be found here:
http://www.soundwidgets.com/stribe/

The software I'm using was created in Max, you can download the software at:
http://www.stretta.com"

AHNE 2009 Video by Stretta Update

I updated this post with Stretta's YouTube version. It plays all the way through unlike the prior Vimeo version, and includes embedded labels for all of the gear. Do check it out.

AHNE 2009 by Stretta

flickr set by stretta
(click for more)


Klee sequencer in an Oberheim DSX or DMX enclosure

flickr by ...photon...

I love my Monome!

YouTube via StarfireMX
"This is by far one of the most interesting musical device I've ever came across, to find out more go to monome.org.

This was made with Ableton Live and a Monome 64, using impulse in ableton for drums, and both the lower 'bass' line and the main melody were made using the FAW Circle VST.

The Monome was controlling the main melody using Polygomé written by Stretta (stretta.com) and using the tilt feature of the Monome to control Circle live for some added variance.

I know it got a little long but I was having fun with the Monome and got carried away, beside isn't that what music is about sometimes!

Thanks for watching, please comment!!"