My Music - Paul Piko

That’s a nice one Paul. Seems fitting as appearently Eno made MFA with tape loops.

Yes, that’s right. The track 2/1 is the simplest, being 7 loops, each of one note sung by a choir. Each loop repeats at a different rate, from about 16 seconds for the shortest, to 33s for the longest. But because they were tapes the they would actually vary a little.

For this cover I threw in some randomness to vary the time the notes were played.

This was Eno’s notation for 2/1:

And Eno said this about the first track 1/1:

"…using a whole series of very long tape loops, like fifty, sixty, seventy feet long. There were twenty-two loops. One loop had just one piano note on it. Another one would have two piano notes. Another one would have a group of girls singing one note, sustaining it for ten seconds. There are eight loops of girls’ voices and about fourteen loops of piano. I just set all of these loops running and let them configure in whichever way they wanted to, and in fact the result is very, very nice. "

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Oh yes! It’s pretty amazing stuff actually. Endless food for patching thought…

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YouTube version of the Music For Airports 2/1 cover

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This reverb is beautiful :slightly_smiling_face:

We’re lucky to have such great modules :slight_smile:

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Trying out the new Valhalla Supermassive delay/reverb VST

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Aaaaaah, @PaulPiko, you cheated. Waaay tooo easy. OK, just jealous you got to it before me. Amazing what it can do to a simple patch.

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Ha! You have to be quick :wink:

Anyway, this is a throw-back to a couple of simple patches I made a year ago, when I was comparing Plateau with Valhalla Shimmer :stuck_out_tongue:

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Testing three second-hand Eurorack modules with VCV Rack and Valhalla Supermassive

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That’s a lovely little tune Paul, I like it!

Soooo… this is where I’m interested: First thoughts on Bloom? How do you like the modifier and branching knobs working on the base sequence? Is the concept well concieved and implemented? Highly musically useful?

And great that you got to play with the Chords, how do you like its sounds? How does Elements sound in real life? Are you going to get all three?

Eagerly awaiting your thoughts, especially as they will impact my wallet … :slight_smile:

First thoughts: in general I like Bloom, having a base sequence with its permutations, but there are a few things to be aware of.

  • I’d like to be able to reset the mutations and tree via CV; you need to press shift and reset.
  • I’d like to be able to control the range of the mutations; i.e. limit the voltage range. Sometimes the notes generated can be too far away from what I want.
  • I’ve seen the complaint that step editing halts the playing of the sequence, but that hasn’t been an issue for me so far because I rarely do that.

Oh, and “ratchets” is really “repeat”.

Too early to say :wink: . I did like sweeping through the root note waveform in the video. But I haven’t really done anything “chordy” with it yet.

They are very similar but there something about the physical Elements that’s a bit different. (other than having to tune it :slight_smile: ) Maybe it’s the attack/strike isn’t as harsh in it? I’ll have to experiment a bit more. Also still need to try out the drone sounds from using the external In, and hear how that compares.

We have a pretty active modular synth scene here, so I should be able to move a module if I bought it and decided I really didn’t like it. But you need to have the cash first :smiley:

I’ll post up another track later, I have it playing in the background, just letting it run - I’m modulating Bloom’s path and the root.

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Here you go, this is what I’ve had running while working today, driven by Bloom. It’s mainly the physical rack, except for modulation from VCV Rack, and reverb from Valhalla Supermassive.

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ah2H3vV3CDnzjvdYM-KuHiAGAbx0UA?e=brbIBj

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Thanks Paul.

Regarding Bloom: Yeah, I can live with the resets and I’m also aware that ratchets is really repeats, I plan to run it with a separate clock some of the time anyway so I can do whatever ratchets I want. I’ve also heard about the mutations straying too far from the base sequence, but that’s something they could fix in firmware if they wanted, and enough people write to them :wink:

I’m particularly interested whether you think the path and branches it makes sit well musically with the base sequence, since that to me seems to be the main selling point, apart from being a nice 2-channel sequencer with some nice features.

I did also have the idea, that running it unquantized, using the mutation knob alone, it could give me stepped-random output, and coupled with an attenuator for setting the range, plus an external quantizer, it can give a turing machine like functionality. Do you think that would be usable?

It’s great you have an active, local, modular synth community, have you been hanging out? We have one here as well, but I’m not sure yet how active it is. Kim Bjørn is occasionally involved though.

Thanks for the sound taster, sounds nice. A bit too slow to tell what is what, but never the less… I look forward to your thoughts in the future, and feel free to warn me against the Bloom if you think it’s a mistake.

Here are some more samples, based on a seven step sequence

https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ah2H3vV3CDnzjvdZlRMCkXMj2CcZLA?e=wMuu3q

Yes, an attenuator, or a quantiser that restricts the range would be nice. Or something with a comparator.

Not yet. They’ve been productive despite the virus:

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Thanks for the great examples Paul! They’re quite illustrative and I actually really like what the branches are doing, and mostly what mutation is doing as well. Very good. It seems to facilitate explorative and dynamic sequencing, which is something I want to do. I look forward to playing with it, and discovering how those different things can influence each other, and how it can be used in practice, also keeping in mind that it’s actually a dual sequencer. My gut feeling is that it’s both a practical sequencer as well as an inspiration machine, which is just up my street, and will be really good use of real-estate for a first case.

I quite like what the Melbourne group is doing, and I recognize Omar Haber in there. Maybe we’ll see you as a participant soon :wink:

An ambient track, based on Macro Oscillator 2 (Plaits)

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Nice soundscape, @PaulPiko.

A beautiful track Paul, I like the visuals too :slight_smile:

Beautiful piece Paul with a lovely tone and atmosphere. I really like it! Looks like the video I should have had for my Slow Midnight River piece :slight_smile:

Are the occasional squelshy’ sounds from the modulation of Freak, Ripples or the phaser? They work great. Totally calculated or happy accident?