a Wiard on Autopilot
2008-01-24 by drmabuce
Hi Wiardos i tried to upload that bulky mp3 into the companion wiardfiles group but it slammed into a 5120k single file limit so the aforementioned SNOtrax1 mp3 may be found at: http://www.twango.com/media/drmabuse.doodles/drmabuse.10001 (thanx to John & Phil for the tips) This audio comes with a BIG disclaimer because i'd never release stuff like this into the public domain and wholeheartedly call it -music-. The backstory is as follows: In August of 2006 , shortly after mrs. mabuse bought me a dual borg II for my birthday (a woman of remarkable genius!) i used the SNO at an outdoor gig on Laclede's landing. i pre-patched five discrete voices on the SNO for use in various songs. By the end of the night. (We were the last band to go on) our normal set had gone over pretty well... or at least the audience was not in the mood to see the party end. When Tory announced our last song, the promoter came onstage and frantically told us to 'stretch it'. "How long?" we asked. "Till half of them go home " he said! ...!<oh boy>!... i sprung into action during a long intro and patched the five voices into five direct boxes and set them all up to sync to an analog MIDI clock in the SNO. Thus, just about 2-minutes of patching was all the forethought that went into what is in this mp3. At the end of the song we vamped into a 130bpm jam and kicked on a highly UNimaginative 130bpm techno loop (you know: doof! doof!doof! doof!) , i held on to my bass-guitar and told the FOH engineer that he was now the de facto DJ! He was running a little standalone recorder off one of the submixes and captured about 7 minutes of the 5 SNO voices plus the $#@! drum machine before his filespace ran out. i had no idea, at the time, that there was anyrecording gear on-hand at all. The crowd dug it and we played an extra improvised half hour while they danced. So, naturally my memory of the gig was fond, but i wince a bit when i hear these tracks in isolation. Nevertheless i reasoned that the recording was at least a decent demo of what one can do with a few wiards and not much time to think. Remember that there is no knob twiddling going on at all. It's pure hands-off autopilot. The only human interventions were fades among the five voices that the FOH engineer did from his mixer. So snigger if you want at the pedestrian groove and the goofy timing glitches. Our buddy at FOH even tried a 'break' and managed to select the ONLY unsync'ed track to isolate... Murphy's law!...but they just kept dancing! Please also keep in mind that this is a little submix direct to disk and the actual signals were EQ'd FX'd and performed LOUD through big piles of EAW bins and a formidable battery of subs. The situation truly defines the bromide: 'You kinda had to be there'... Also... i don't really remember much about the patches. The best i can do is tell you that one voice was un filtered, straight out of the mini-wave board and that all the voices that are filtered were processed with BorgI's BorgII's or a Boogie because those are the only filters aboard. The SNO and the SNO's sidecar contains: (DIY if no manufacturer is specified) Audio Sources: DOEPFER A-110 ,PAIA 9700 seies dual VCO , antioscillator, BLACET Darkstar Chaos, Pink Noise Gen., CV-variable spectrum Noise Gen. Audio Processors: WIARD MiniWave, , BLACET Klangwerk, peak folder, muliplier, Sawtooth animator, analog delay(SAD1024) VCFs: WIARD Dual BorgI, Dual BorgII, Boogie. VCAs: 2 BLACET dual linears, 4 SERGE modified blackmer cells, 4 DIY-hardwired to the MIDI clock dividers with CV-decay CV sources: WIARD Sequantizer, Envelator, Noise-Ring, heavily modified PAIA m2CV8 MIDI-CV converter,3 VC-clocks, 2 Schmitt-triggers, 4 sample/holds, 2 VC-lag processors, 4 VC-frequency dividers and a cable tester The JAG and joystick controller-box was present but it was unplugged when this was recorded -doc *my dislike for the mp3 format is already documented at length so i won't grind that story out again