I was feeling homesick after so many years away and so I felt inspired to make this jam as an homage to Moabit, my favourite district of Berlin. I also tried to make it sound a bit like Berlin School.
The 5th Volt
Sequencers and Quantizers
An introduction to the use of the AE Modular SEQ16 sequencer in combination with the QUANTIZER.
Wonkystuff’s qvca for AE Modular
Introducing and explaining how to use the new quad VCA module from Wonkystuff.
Jamuary 2021 – #3 – A bit like Berlin School
Here I was playing with a new Grains firmware and ended up really enjoying the digital oscillators in my system, the SAWVOX and WAVETABLE, which, with some careful filter modulation, sound really nice and fat analogish (if that’s a word).
Jamuary 2021 #2 – A Meditative Jam
This jam is much slower and almost follows a very slow breath – in – out – in – out. The finale somehow became strangely ominous, but as I don’t really know where inspiration leads me, I just have to follow.
Again the thumbnail was made by my son Robin, who’s getting really good at this!
This recording is also the first made with my new audio interface, the Behringer UMC-404 HD and. oh boy, does this make a difference! No more hissing noises! Clean sound, manageable levels, I should have bought this ages ago! This time I’ve also recorded it straight into Reaper and applied some light compression to the mix.
Happy Jamuary 2021
This is my first jam for the year in the spirit of Jamuary. Already the year starts much better than last year with plenty of rain instead of bush fires! Now I have a few more days of holidays and want to spend them jamming!
Interview with Tim Held at Podular Modcast
Tim Held has established quite a following with his weekly podcasts which he aptly named Podular Modcast. He approached Robert and I at Synthbooth and asked us whether we would like to do an interview with him to which we gladly agreed. This was again one of those 2020 Zoom interviews over 3 continents: Tim in Seattle USA, Robert in Germany near Munich and I in Australia. It was a very relaxed interview with Tim being a fantastic host and interviewer.
At the end he posed a patch challenge for the words “PURE DAWN” to which I obliged mainly because coincidentally I had recorded a good 30 minutes of birdsong one morning just a few days prior and I always wanted to use this in a song anyway. So my track at the end of the interview features our early morning bird concert.
I hope when you listen to this interview you will enjoy it as much as I did while being “on the show”. Thanks to Tim for doing this and thanks again to Robert for the creation of this fabulous synthesizer system.
Presenting AE Modular at ELK ELEKTRONIK
Last weekend I travelled the 5 hours up north to Wollongong for the Synth Meet at ELK ELEKTRONIK to perform and present the AE Modular system.
There were only 10 people due to the COVID restrictions, but it was fun and totally worth it.
Thanks a lot to Jono who let me stay at his place and to Ed and Hannah from ELK who organised the event.
Jono has so much gear and his blog is a treasure trove of knowledge on how to use and repair it.
AEther Waves Vol. 2
Today we released the second volume of AEther Waves, a collaborative album, made by 26 members of the AE Modular Forum. It features almost 2 hours of a wide variety of sounds which are all 100% made with the AE Modular synthesizer from tangible waves.
All proceeds are donated to support Musicians Without Borders who use the power of music to bridge divides, connect communities, and heal the wounds of war. Their vision is to inspire people worldwide to engage as peacemakers and use music to transform lives. You can find more info on their website: www.musicianswithoutborders.org
Livestream for SynthBooth 2020
Today I was on a Zoom call with Robert which was streamed live to the tangible waves YouTube channel. Robert talked about how the AE Modular system came about and we gave a quick overview of the various modules that are available from the tangible waves website. I then showed a performance that showcased most of those modules.