last night (more questions)
2005-11-04 by jfm3jfm3jfm3
As the mileage on my van hit 66666, I pulled up to the home of my good friend, John. John's house is tastefully decorated with one kerjillion interesting musical instruments, including several organs, vibraphones, a broad selection of clay and frame hand drums, and three 10x5U MOTM panels. I hadn't expected to be able to visit until next week, but one of his rehearsals was canceled at the last minute. John and I work a day job together at adjacent desks, so upon my arrival no time was wasted on needless social behavior. As I started in with the patch cables, John left the room to make some phone calls. He had set up a more or less, shall we say, "aleatoric" sequence on his K2000, which drove an Encore Expressionist. I had things burbling and squeaking in no time. John has a lot of musical instruments. He often remarks that he reaches the point with each of these instruments where, to go further, one must turn the instrument into a lifestyle, and at that point he backs off. He's just being mopey when he says this though, he's an awesome player, and has crossed the "lifestyle" threshold with several percussion instruments. I don't think he's ever recorded himself using his MOTM system, but you can hear other recordings of his at his website http://www.soundgate.org. I knew I would only have room in my initial 10x10U system for one or two of the different filters, so I spent some time listening to the 410, 420, and 440. The 440 has a lot of character. With it, I arrived at that burbuley mad scientist sound that you hear whenever there are mad scientists around. Okay, maybe I'm the only one who hears it, but whatever. Nice. John also has a lot of tattoos. One of the most interesting things he has to say about them is that a good tattoo must at some level involve regret. Permanent marks and regret go together. By the time I had begun to figure out how to patch the traditional "sample and hold the LFO" patch, John had returned from his phone calls and was digging around in old closets for modular synth bits he had not yet assembled. There seemed to me to be a lot of regret, for not finishing all the kits, for having so many instruments and only one life upon which to place a lifestyle, and probably for some unknowable reasons. Regret was just the vibe of the evening. This is what tends to happen when Polish men gather socially. There's a satisfying and super-real kind of melancholy. So this morning I decided put together a manifest of what I wanted in my SKB pop-up mixer case. upper: 300 101 310 440 420 890 lower: 820 380 800 800 650 950 I'm on the fence about the 820. My thinking is that I'll use it to smooth out the CV outs of my Schaltwerk and/or the S+H, to create "mellow texture" patches. I might replace it with a 120 to create "not mellow rather like a noisy car alarm" patches, I'm not sure -- I like the distortion I can get from my Blacet Frequency Dividers, the 120 may be superfluous. Maybe I'll leave the 820 section blank and fill it in later. The 950 seems to take up a lot of panel real estate for an on-off switch. I'm also not certain whether I need additional cables and/or distribution boards to power all the other modules from the 950. In pictures of more or less finished systems, I rarely see a 900 panel. Maybe a future project will involve making a 1U on/off switch panel, and finding a way to mount power supply on something else. Being as it is a 12U tall rack, I figure I'll put a row of mults in at the bottom. I already own 1/4" TRS patch bays that can be rigged up this way. John's system didn't have any mults, and I found myself missing them. I need to drill holes for 1/4" jacks in my Schaltwerk and bring the CV/GATE outs to its front panel. There will probably "drill press and Polish supper day" at my friend John's house in the next few weeks. Later, I hope to refit two Blacet DSCs, two Blacet FDs, and a Blacet KW into MOTM panels and load them in a second SKB rack. Maybe by then I'll have gone completely insane and built some better portable case. All of this message belongs on the "web site so we can see what you're up to". I need a new digital camera for this project. Hello. jfm3