Hello! I have a tendency to create a lot of patches and never do anything with them. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to put together an electronic “band” consisting of a few fellow synth enthusiasts. (see “my influences” below to get an idea of the genera)
I’m thinking:
We’ll have 3 to 5 “feeders” (content creators) including myself who are fairly good at creating content: Loops, samples, beats, ambient backgrounds, etc.
We’ll have 2 “assemblers”, who take the content and assemble it into music, ambient, noise, or whatever they come up with. (not me!)
We release everything for free, open source,etc. If we’re forced to earn money by a platform (spotify?), we’ll donate the earnings.
I’ll interview each potential contributor. Everyone should be friendly, compassionate, and supportive. You know, typical things: Loves the outdoors, good sense of humor, loves children, open minded about being in a cult. (Just kidding… except for the cult part.)
We’ll try to be democratic about things. We can work together at the onset to set some rules.
We’ll set up a space on discord for collaboration.
Let me know if you’re interested! There’s no big commitment. It’s pretty experimental, so we’ll see how it works out.
Hello Brett, I like putting together small fx based small patches. So I could be a ‘feeder’, samples creation, loops, ambient/noise backgrounds. I can do that.
I also like long walks in the moonlight blessing our ‘Lord Satanonaut’ but don’t like the taste of blood-yucky!
Ok, that sounds fair enough. Please be aware I’m back at work from 23rd Aug. So I won’t be able to put as much time into the project. Just forewarning u, still up for it though.
I’m interested in this if I get time. Definitely in the feeder category (not one of those American guys you see on documentaries with the massively obese girlfriends, just to clarify that).
I tend to export a lot of material to .wav files, then load it back into Rack and resample/re-process and blend different patches together. Guitar loops, effects etc. This is a rare example where I’ve edited a load together: Textures: Volume 1 - YouTube
Ambient guitar loops seem to be a speciality, as that’s what I enjoy making. I have other stuff though, beats, synth experiments - would be interesting to see what other people do.
I think you have to concede that it’s not really “experimental” , it’s just a trendy idea right now during this era of various competing myopia(s?), so you’ll probably get promo and interest and cobble together some tracks. A lot of people have sent and received stems and stuff over the internet before.
What exactly is the meaning behind the project? What is the point? Democracy does not lend itself to producing a good, clear, consistent vision, unless you all secretly worship Lord Satanonaut via consent or blackmail or deception . It’s solo, monarchy or cult only, I’m afraid. You can probably mash a few styles together and get some fun tracks out of it tho, it has happened before.
I’m old and lonely, and there’s a pandemic raging outside. I just need something new to try, and maybe we’ll create some interesting music or noise in the meantime? But what also appeals to me is simply communicating with others on projects. Even if there’s some drama or disagreement, it’s still exciting to me. And if it fails, that’s OK. No worries.
Although I’d love to take credit for the almighty Satanonauts, credit goes to my friend Kirt for the concept! I hear that the Satanonauts make an appearance in his next comic as well.
That’s a good question. My first though is to leave the format up to the “assemblers”. They’ll request a format that works best for them (samples, loops, or patches).
I don’t want there to be direct debate between the feeders and assemblers on exactly what the feeders create. This could cause arguments. Instead, the assemblers should be flexible enough to work with whatever the feeders create.
And in the same vein, the feeders should not be dictating details about the final songs.
The assemblers aren’t required to use all of the content created by the feeders. They can pick and choose.
The samples can be any length. I have some long recordings that are 8 minutes long! I’m not sure about commercial loops. I’d say “Yes” but as long as their somehow marked at commercial. The assemblers might avoid commercial loops though, depending on their preferences.
Finally, I haven’t figured out where we’ll swap patches, but I’ll work on that today.
So far, we don’t have very many assemblers. We could definitely use more!
I think this idea is awesome. I started using vcv a while ago because I needed to break away from my usual ways of writing music and I fell in love with modular synthesis. I wrote music always just for myself, so I cant really show off, but I would love to try to work in this team and write songs with different samples and sounds provided by you guys.
Since I work full time, I could only spend the evenings for this project.
So I hope you accept this small piece of my soul and consider me part of the team.
Hi Bret, I read your “Ground Rules” and they seem to be well thought out. I think there are some things missing in regards to the feeders input and the freedom of an assembler to transpose / timestretch / generally “mangle” the sounds / loops / melodies they will use.
I would suggest that especially for sounds with a lot of time-based effects (delay, reverb) a feeder should also provide a version without them. That way it is easier to unify reverb and delays and produce delay- and/or reverb-trails.
And a good naming convention would be great, i.e. Drums_Loop_74.5bpm or Melody_Loop_120bpm_CDorian.
I really would like to try to be an assembler, but I am fairly new to arranging (Let’s say I know the basics). I own the Ableton Live Suite and an MPC One, so the tools are there, but I don’t know yet about the outcome.
I have to say I’m not interested in a lengthy debate on process/ground rules/can we use this or that, etc. The way I see it is here’s a bunch of sounds, let’s make something with it!
I did something similar on another Facebook group, where everyone joining the challenge submits two samples, and then has to make a track just using the samples from the group. The only rule was having to use the samples exclusively, and no other sound sources were allowed. I’d scrap that for this project and say just do what you want, but it’s Brett’s idea so I’m happy to work within whatever boundaries are stipulated.
Anyway, I love some of your sounds Brett! Some really nice textures and beat mangling. I’ll definitely have a go at putting something together after I’ve uploaded some material.
Also, sorry for rambling on but Satanaut is the absolute dog’s bollocks. Modulate every input with S&H and it produces dangerous magic. I’ve even got some nice guitar sounds with a bit of low pass filtering to take the edge off.
I also used it to thoroughly ruin someone else’s track on another remix project, which you can hear after about 3 minutes here: Chords of Orion - Broken Signals Mix - YouTube
I’m also not interested in a lengthy debate on process/ground rules/can we use this or that, but I was really worried about bickering. I might have worried a bit too much, because everyone so far is super nice. Thanks for the compliment about my sounds! I’m struggling right now to come up with base-line sounds. It’s never been my strong suit. But perhaps I’ll finally learn how.
