Is it The Vanilla Synthesizer or the muSonics TVS?
I started working on this project a year and a half ago.
Originally my thought process was to make a new American format synthesiser that could be sold as modules, kits, and bare boards. I was concerned about the future of the format, and I felt a new line of basic modules and infrastructure at a variety of price points was important. I still do.
STG Soundlabs was a failure because I made things that ultimately the eurorack market simply did not want. Yes, I sold some, and will continue to maintain the line as best as I can, but it's very hard to find photos of eurorack installations with STG Soundlabs modules in them, but rare to find a nice big man-sized synthesiser without my modules in it.
Another thing I wanted to do was teach myself how to do my own engineering. It didn't start that way, but it became that way. I'd been a hardware product developer since 2005 but never actually laid out a circuit board. That is no longer true, and I've done things beyond this project that I haven't even talked about.
"My good friend Cory Flanigan, a drummer who plays drums and electronics simultaneously, came over a few days after I finished the first properly and fully functional MooSonics Vanilla Synthesizer, a new basic American format modular synthesiser based on and restricted to the functions and timbre of 1970s Oberheim instruments, specifically the Two Voice, which Tom said was his favourite of everything he made. There is also an LFO module derived from the MS-20 and a control bus module that allows you to address all pitch and gate modules in the system from only one place, instead of having a dumb mess of cables and multiples. The Moog modular synthesisers worked this way, and I think it's the way things should be.
I got it set up and put it through a couple of IK Multimedia pedals, the X-Time and X-Space, because I can't stand listening to naked instruments. It was also nice to spend more time with the pedals, some of the tweaks are Cory and some are me poking around them.
Controlling the synth is a 2 octave MIDI controller with an internal arpeggiator driving a Roland SBX-1 as a MIDI-to-CV converter.
He played with it for a half hour and I decided to hit the record button, he finished at literally 4:20 AM, about an hour and a half later.
I wanted to post the audio because I thought listening to someone who was not a "modular synthesist" but did actually know synthesisers (Cory spent years making sounds with the Korg Wavestation and Radias, Currently has TWO Wavestates) would do with a thing upon first meeting it.
I didn't edit this except for fades at the beginning and end. I just wanted to present it as something you could listen to, in whole or part, as a reference for what my new instrument sounds like.
Bubba Ayoub AKA Juggable Offense made 90 minutes of video art while listening to it so I could merge them and put it on U-Toob. It beats paying Soundcloud nine bucks a month but you will have to skip through some text-to-speech ads for total snake oil products (YouTube is fine with misinformation if you pay them enough money, it seems.)
It would be cool to do this with more people, putting a new instrument in front of them and seeing what they do with it as a first encounter with new technology.
I know what this thing is supposed to do and what it should sound like from my own perspective, but I'm more interested in hearing what other people do with it.
Also leave a comment if you would be interested in a livestream where I just play with this thing and have the oscilloscope handy to answer questions or make certain kinds of patches."
"My opening set for electronic jam band Chachuba at Kenny's Westside Pub in Peoria IL May 5 2023.
Since I was opening for a high energy (not to be confused with Hi-NRG) electronic jam band, I decided to keep my set as low-key as possible. My personal gravity is extremely strong with ambient dub, so I went with that. I would really like to explore this dynamic more in these circles. Hopefully this gig wasn't the end of it.
Something that has bothered me about my live music over the past 15 years or so is that I have wanted an extemporaneous approach, but the tools I chose were more suited to improvisation than composition, because flexibility is more important to me than structure.
What this means is that with very specific exceptions, I've been playing electronic free jazz for 15 years and the stress level hit a point where I just didn't even enjoy playing any more. I would spend my entire gig having a slow-motion panic attack, terrified that what I was doing was boring and made no sense whatsoever.
I started using a tool called The Force by a brand which used to be a division of a legendary Japanese home audio company but is now in the brand basket of an MI corporation that has many faces. I spent years working with it as a sound design tool but never live, and late last year I threw up my hands in frustration with a Very Complicated live rig I spent years building and chucked it all in favour of this thing ... and I can now do TUNES again. This silly looking, horribly typecast box lets me finally interact with an electronic composition in a way that I could do as a bandleading organist with tight relationships with a drummer and a guitarist.
I have some plans to re-incorporate "electronic free jazz" into my sets but I have to build a new (smaller) live rhythm section and it will require that I design and engineer at least three new products.
In the meantime, I'm pretty happy. I had no music-related anxiety about this gig. All of my visible stress was because my Suburban suffered a transmission failure right after leaving my studio, which delayed me 2 hours, but I still started on time. I also had forgotten how to use the Pigtronix Infinity 3 loopers, because their UX sucks, and they should be ashamed of themselves. I'll be designing my own MIDI controller for them soon which will solve some of its problems but those clowns need to get their act together. I think I wasted the first five minutes of my timeslot trying to figure out why they weren't doing what they were supposed to do. (I cut that part out. It was embarassing.)
Like all of my sets, there is an intro, incidents, and interstitials. This is a tracklist:
0:00 - Intro - Suitscape in Abm 4:00 - National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union (Ebm 70 BPM) 23:00 - Suitscape in Bbm 24:53 - Dub Force Rising (70 BPM Fm) 37:55 - Suitscape in Cm 40:33 - Summertime: Temporary Love (80 BPM Gm) 50:58 - Outro - Suitscape in Dm
I'd like to thank Chachuba for insisting that I open for them, and Kenny's Westside Pub staff for being so hospitable and their owner for being gracious and generous to me. Kenny's also shot and recorded this gig, and livestreamed it. That is so damn cool.
Also, I am contractually obligated to mention periodically, but not constantly, that I am a Hammond USA company artist. They make great stuff like the XK-1c I'm playing at this gig and if you're using anyone else's products for digital Hammond sounds you should probably re-evaluate your choices. I have been playing vintage Hammond consoles since 1998 and ever since I got the XK-1c I haven't felt that hole in my electronic music that existed before, where I had no connection to my roots. I could write paragraphs about this but I need to go to bed.
Bandcamp DL below. It's free, but any donations will go to The Synth Freq.
"Peoria IL has a a very strong Lebanese population, dating to the Ellis Island era of American immigration, who are as integrated as they are proud. Their roots go back to a town in Lebanon called Aytou, and have a club called the Itoo Society which maintains a hall for their meetings, but is also rented to third parties for special events.
This time, it was a dubstep show.
I had been booked for it, assuming that I would be closing and prepared a set of house music. I showed up and discovered that I was in fact now the opening act, so after hearing the old dub on the PA during speaker tests (which I'm only to assume was because the sound guys heard the word 'dub' in 'dubstep show'), I improvised the loneliest and most alienated set of retro-90s Laswell-style ambient dub I've ever played.
Video by my Lebanese-American friend Bubba Ayoub (AKA Juggable Offense), who prepared this specifically for Thanksgiving 2020.
"This Juno-60 is fantastic. Every slider is lubricated, all functions checked and working. DCB interface box is barely used and in mint condition with supple rubber on the cable. (I used the Juno-60 with the internal arpeggiator and external clock 99 percent of the time.)
It's been used on 10 years of recordings on my Bandcamp page if you want to check them out ... suitandtieguy dot bandcamp dot com. It breaks my heart to have to sell this but I have a very beat-up Juno-6 which Bela Fleck signed back for me back in the mid-90s that I'm going to rebuild and that is going to be the one for the long haul for me."
"Every year I play a Thanksgiving Eve gig at a pizza parlor here in Peoria IL called Oliver's. The location has changed but the gig continues.
This year STG Soundlabs' Minister of Hype Bubba Ayoub did video art with me. Tonight he recorded something similar to his art that night, here is the result. [he uses camera feedback, a Vidiot, a eurorack system, and a couple of video mixers to do this.]
This is only the first set. If you think I should upload the rest of the gig to Bandcamp let me know in the comments. Also let us know if you like this kind of video. Thank you.
"A brief demonstration of the forthcoming STG Soundlabs Wave Slicer/.SLC module. This video focuses on single oscillator applications but there will be future videos about multi-oscillator and other audio applications, control voltage, and even video synthesis applications.
This video was shot in one take at STG Content Labs, using a television-style process including two cameras, an oscilloscope with direct video output, and a vision mixer. I set up the cameras and lighting, and Bubba Ayoub was technical director (the television term for the guy who operates the vision mixer.) This process is pretty exciting to me as I worked at a UHF ABC affiliate (WHOI-19) for two years back before I built synthesisers.
I finally feel like I'm 20 minutes into the future.
Jon Sonnenberg engineered this module, and you can find his Knobcon Number Six talk about wave replacement synthesis here:" [posted here]
"Using two Radiophonic One systems to make a nice thick sequence. Two .VCOs tuned a fifth apart with Drift Generator rate set in the slow range, and just a little bit of their modulation added, into a .MIX with the sawtooth of both and a touch of the suboctave square of the fundamental mixed in, into the Sea Devils Filter modulated by pitch CV and a 23 second period linear trapezoid modulation from one Envelope Generator controlling the amount of the other Envelope Generator. The main Envelope Generator is used for a basic triggered pluck with the curve control set about 70 percent of the way towards Logarithmic from Linear. Effects are a Lexicon Alex hall reverb and a TC D-Two basic delay. As the video progresses I tweak the drift generator amounts and the amount of filter modulation from the VCAed pluck control."
"Two .VCO prototypes droning against one another, through a .MIX and a Sea Devils Filter. The only adjustments made are to octave, semitone, drift amount, and filter FM amount from the looping EG.
At a certain point I bring in some delay from an Eventide but it starts out totally dry.
"A TR-808 in perfect working condition, with brand new volume potentiometers from Syntaur and all other pots cleaned and lubricated.
It's been my friend for 11 years but I need to sell it to fund the development of new products for the next stage of my life. Maybe it can be your friend now?"
"William McCarthy plays "The Hallow Earth" on the Moog One with drums and a sequence via the Novation Circuit. The drums are Oberheim DSX samples on the Circuit, which is also sending MIDI to one of the three timbres on the Moog One, so all pitched parts you are hearing are coming from the One. All effects, reverb and delay, are internal to the Circuit and One."
"My friend William McCarthy came over and spent some quality time with the Moog One. He made the sounds and then merged them into a split preset, and then recorded it with his iPhone and a Roland Go:Mixer. Drums are MPC-1000"
"Testing out out some gain staging modifications on my Jupiter-6 to improve the very disappointing sound of its filters, and taking the new Behringer D out for a spin. I used the Novation Circuit to sequence the two synthesisers and drums are from the TR-8.
Gotta once again thank Synthmania for the very kind gift of the D. Thank you my friend!
Reverb is board reverb from a Behringer UFX1204, delay is a custom tape echo patch on the TC Flashback X4. Reverb and delay on the drums is internal to the TR-8.
Recorded to iPod Touch via Tascam iXR courtesy of Tascam.
Let's face it Wayne Coyne is the only guy who could effectively play The Toecutter if we had to cast Mad Max in 2018."
"Playing around with the Peak and the A-49, which is apparently my new hotel room workstation. The line audio is going into a Zoom Q2n's "ext audio" input, which has a mic pre in it. It sounds pretty good considering that and the video isn't bad at all, actually.
This is a neat little patch I just made on the Peak. Animate 1 modulates the amp EG release, and Animate 2 brings in 2 cycles of a positive only LFO on the start of the sound.
Animate 1 and 2 are mapped to S1 and S2 on the Roland A-49. these two pieces go together very well."
