Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: MOTM

Thanks to Les for the interesting review. I know a little bit about how Robert 'operates', so I
thought I'd share what I know.

The MOTM system (about 48 modules) is split into 4 "noise" voices and 4 "tone" voices. The
"noise" voices are thing like filtered white noise driving the PWM input on a MOTM-300 VCO, with
the Linear FM input driven by a fast AR envelope. By controlling the PWM Depth and the envelope
FM amount, you can get a pretty wide range of chirps, pffttts, and glurps.

Another "noise" patch commonly used is taking 2 VCOs and 'cross-modulating': the output of VCO #2
feeds the FM In of VCO #1 (VCO#2 usually set to SINE output). The ouput feeds a pair of MOTM-410
Triple Resonant Filters, that are externally swept by 2 MOTM-320s set roughly in quadrature. This
forms the basic "Talking Chaos" patch, but by tuning the center frequencies you get all sorts of
odds "gurgles" out of it. On several 1980's recordings, his favorite sound was a recording of
electric eels in a metal pail, using a Radio Shack piezo mic. This sort of sounds like that.

I have an excert of a live concert from 2001 at www.synthtech.com/news.html Scroll down, look
right above the shirt photo for the link. This is all MOTM at first, then a played ASR-10 sample
over the MOTM rhythm section.

The 4 'lead' voices are set to actually make 6 different timbres, using MOTM-700s to switch in
different LFO/DC offsets. So, it's like a crude preset. He does have to readjust the EGs. The
MOTM-830 Dual 3:1 mixers are used also to swap out timbres manually by him quickly going "gain
down, gain up" in sets of 3 input channels. This is what Les was observing in between the
sections: he was fading 2 or 3 sets of 3 In/Outs on the '830, then readjusting the EGs.

The MOTM is not "played" live on a keyboard: the ASR-10 is used for playback of layerd MOTM
samples (the other 2 keyboards are a DX-7II and a WaveStation). The MOTM is sequenced with a $75
flea market Apple Blackbird laptop and an Encore Expressionist, running StudioVision. 90% of the
MOTM portions are directly out of the modular, and not the ASR-10.

As far as Les' amazement on how smoothly it all went: that is simply an insane level of practice.
Robert started pacticing in mid-Feb. and I'm talking 5-7 hours a day, 6 days a week. Some of the
pieces played are off his CD 'Gaudi', and he was worried about "sounding like the record". Being
a 8-track overdub that took him 6 months to record. He practiced one that one piece (I think it's
the 3rd 'section') for the ENTIRE month of April. Not just 45min here and there. I mean he played
it 50 TIMES over and over. Amazing.

The remaining dates are listed at www.robertrich.com This is not dance or techno. This is
Robert's own unique style. MOTM or no MOTM, you won't see a more interesting performer. And as
Les says, he's nicer than Mr. Rogers. Try to catch him if possible.

Paul S.