[sdiy] my musical ideas & my guitar synth

[anthony]

I was listening to music today and it seemed liek a good idea to share with 
you guys (& gals?) what I'm trying to accomplish musically.

Imagine a melding of Pink Floyd's first LP, "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (my 
favorite Pink Floyd album) with the track "On the Run" from "Dark Side of 
the Moon" (my favorite Pink Floyd song - I really wish they'd used that Moog 
a LOT more... Yoko Kanno did a great redo of it...); throw in a bit of 
"Psycho Candy" by the Jesus & Mary Chain, everything by My Bloody Valentine, 
Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works" and the works of Edgard Varese.

I was thinking about the concept of "psychedelic" music. I think American 
psychedelic was geared towards listening to while under the influence while 
the British version more sought to act on the mind in lieu of mind-bending 
drugs (and of course as an adjunct as in American). I never could get into 
the Grateful Dead whether trashed or not and I much preferred the frantic 
fairy-tale of Piper to the swollen-hand torpid groove of later Pink Floyd 
(although I love Dark Side and Meddle).

But anyway what I'm getting at is the best music >is< psychedelic. I mean 
listening to Beethoven's 14th String Quartet over and over is quite 
mind-bending for me. I want to make music that is maximally mind-bending for 
listeners. Partly because I think it would force my music into the realm of 
the sublime, but also to encourage the healthy abstinence from mind-altering 
chemicals. My health has been permanently damaged by drug and alcohol abuse 
(for starters I only have one kidney that still works and it isn't 100%) so 
if I could do one small thing to keep people (especially young people) from 
experiencing what I've had to then bonus.

I'm rambling like a big goofball, but onward...

This has been affecting the design of my guitar synth. I started out just 
doing something relatively simple like maybe the Arp Avatar, but it's ending 
up to be mostly effects controlled in the manner of analog modular synths. 
It's way heavy on filters and light on VCO's: probably up to 6 lowpass 
gates, 2 MS20's, a CGS Synthacon, & an Arp 4072 for the filters and 2 4069 
VCO's (one using a 4049) along with a lot of other control modules like an 
ASR and a gated comparator. At first having room for all of the patch points 
was going to be a problem, but I worked out 2 flip-out patch panels (using 
banana jacks) on the sides which complements the basic Korg-style patch 
panel (using 1/4" jacks) on the front.

Getting those MN3011's on eBay will allow me to ratchet the whole works up a 
notch. I'm only using one because I'd have to allow for way to many 
connections in one small space with 2. One multi-tap delay should suffice. 
I've been greatly inspired by an Ohm Force VST plug-in called Ohmboyz. 
There's one setting which has an LFO panning the regenerated echos which are 
running through a resonant filter. Awesome. I wanted to make up a delay box 
just liek the Ohmboyz, but incorporating the multi-tap delay into a modular 
synth will let me take it to the next level...

aa