Wiardgroup

Thanks for that Norman, I'd love to have heard that set.

"It went full on and just totally overwhelmed everything.  I
was grinning like a maniac, but at the end there was just this shocked
silence from the audience."

Sounds like a "Back to the Future" moment - "I know that didn't seem like
much to you, but your kids will love it. ..."  =0)

Cheers,
Scott


----- Original Message -----
From: "Norman Fay" <vietgrove@gmail.com>
To: <wiardgroup@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 01, 2005 7:37 AM
Subject: [wiardgroup] My wiard synthesiser made its live debut.


> I played a concert in Leeds, UK last night, doing this kind of spacy
> synth music/prog rock thing that me and my guitarist friend Mark do.
> I thought it would be fun and perhaps creative to take the
> Wiard/Blacet synth along, and indeed it was.   I planned to use it
> partly to cover sections where I was loading in backing parts to the
> sequencer, and partly for improv bits.  After we'd done our proper
> soundcheck, and when the other musicians were doing their soundchecks,
> I turned off our onstage monitors and set up the modular on
> headphones.  Obviously, I didn't have time to set up some great
> detailed patch, and it would have been stupid to do so anyway, given
> the nature of what we were playing.  I set it up as follows, dividing
> it into as many different sound generating "cells" as I could:
>
> 1/the noise ring fed one of the waveform city wave shapers, which was
> set to one of the quantising wavetables.  This then ran into the omni
> filter, and this went into the x1 input of the LH mixolator.  The omni
> filter cutoff was controlled by the ar envelope of the waveform city.
> The idea was to have a kind of randomly generated sequence.
>
> 2/the other waveform city ran into a blacet frequency divider, which
> ran into a borg filter, then into the x2 input of the lh mixolator.
> The idea here was to have a manually controlled drone, where I could
> control the timber of the drone via the borg, and add interesting
> subharmonics via the level controls on the frequency divider.
>
> 3/a woggle bug output via a borg to the y input of the lh mixolator.
> the clock out of the wogglebug triggered a blacet EG1, which
> controlled the cutoff of the borg.  I took the step cv out of the
> other half of the wogglebug, and stuck it into the decay cv of the
> EG1.  I was kind of hoping for the transmission from outer space thing
> the wogglebug can do.
>
> LH mixolator x+ out went to x in of RH mixolator. LH mixolator x- out
> went to a blacet time machine.  The output from the time machine went
> to the y input of the RH mixolator, using the joystick I could control
> the balance between the wogglebug and the 2 more, er, "tonal" elements
> on the horizontal axis, and the blend between dry sound and delay on
> the vertical.
>
> I used the wiard/blacet during 2 improvised sections.  During the
> first, I mainly used the wogglebug.  I suppose you'd have to say it
> was a failure, though I had an absolute blast -
> I didn't realise just how overpowering the sound of the wogglebug
> would be!  It went full on and just totally overwhelmed everything.  I
> was grinning like a maniac, but at the end there was just this shocked
> silence from the audience.
>
> The second section was better.  I brought up the noise ring controlled
> sequence pattern, and since the soundcheck it had settle into playing
> this beautiful harp glissando like riff.  When I turned it up, I was
> just like wow, listen to that.  It kicked us off into this great,
> albeit somewhat disjointed improv.  Just about exactly what I was
> hoping for. noise ring thru quantiser is such a great source of
> inspiration.
>
> The strengths of the Wiard in this situation are/were plain - mainly
> the way in which it can easily be divided into several
> sound-generating cells, but also its unpredictability, the way it can
> throw up something to surprise you, and give you something to strike
> off from.
>
> Also, of course, it sounds great.  This goes for the Blacet modules
> too - I had the Binary Zone in the rack as well, and I wish I'd used
> that last night.
>
> In the music scene the event was aimed at, the most common/accepted
> way of using a modular instrument on stage is "berlin school" style -
> a Moog, or more commonly an "arrick" set up to play step sequencer
> patterns and thunderous bass drones a la Tangerine Dream "Ricochet".
> While I have respect for several artists creating music in that style,
> Wiard-style is more inspiring to me, I think.  I'll certainly do this
> again.
>
> So, although it may be scary to take yr Wiard instrument out to play
> live - the fear of theft or damage is obviously pretty grim, I
> recommend it very strongly, it's a real thrill.
>
> Apologies for any typos, and for rambling on so.
>
>
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