Zen Wires - Albums and Patches and Things

Today was the release of my latest album Tone Poem. It was made in VCV Rack and all sound design was done by me for this one. It’s mostly ambient and experimental stuff but I did move out of my comfort zone on a few tracks here as the titles dictated to me how they should sound and I just put it together. I made this for my wife, first as a poem and then an album. So, I present to you, in words and sound, this work my muse inspired

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I like this. Good sound design, variety of atmosphere and structures…and I personally like it’s different from the “soothing, calming” ambient music that is currently very popular.

Thanks! I really tried to push myself with this one. How To Dance and I Forgot About The Music were both very much outside of my comfort zone, one being an almost EDM if not for the out of phase kick drum and the other literally being percussive sounds and nothing but the rhythm to keep it going. It was the most complex and complicated album I’ve done yet but it was the easiest thing I’ve ever created from start to finish. I had all track titles when I wrote the poem. I had the album cover in mind before I’d gotten into the studio. I even knew how each track should feel before I started working on it. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that, usually I name a track after it’s done and I choose a name to fit the music.

Solitude is Freedom, an improvised ambient piece made with Rack, the Behringer Model D, and Arturia MicroFreak and KeyStep Pro. Find it at https://youtu.be/hRZR5rtQRR4

I’m going to live stream some patching this morning https://youtu.be/x_5iebLCzQk come hang out and say hi

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Live streaming on YT tonight. Stop by and say hi if you’re around https://youtu.be/oh7A-49Vof4

I did a 90 minute set in VCV last night for Earth Modular Society. It can be viewed on their YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7KB-SePBL4. It was the first time I’ve performed like that and it was so much fun I’m looing forward to the next opportunity already

Streaming tonight for a couple of hours. Celebrating the launch of modularzen.com at https://youtu.be/COM7HSeHcUY

I’m doing a performance tomorrow on Earth Modular Society’s stream. I’m in the studio tonight doing some sound design and practice/setup for it if you’re bored and want to hang out

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I have a new track based on two samples I made yesterday. It’s called Ambience for Drone and Two Flute Samples in A minor. I sampled the flute in Rack, made the drone from those samples in Rack, and processed all the effects in Rack

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I have a new album out! Ruminations & Minimalism 1-3 is ten tracks and nearly 2 hours of ambient music. It can be found on all the streaming sites or at my site https://modularzen.com/album/ruminations-minimalism-1-3

Ruminations & Minimalism 1 - 3

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Congrats and well done! There’s some really nice pieces on that album. All made with Rack or…?

Thank you @LarsBjerregaard Yes, I do everything in Rack. There may be some VST voices or samples that I use but even they get direction from Rack sending CV and gate info telling them what to play and when.

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Nice sound, where do you get visual material?

I realized it’s been a while since I hopped onto the VCV community. Sorry for the delay in replying! For that video, I went to YouTube and searched for royalty free video and spent longer than I’d like to admit searching for something that worked. Then I downloaded that video and edited things together with the music.

My hardware modular is only a Disting Mk4 right now. So, I sent a square wave from it into VCV Rack and made this ambient piece where it’s the only oscillator

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Cool! I like the grittier layer we hear heading up to the 2:00 mark :+1:

Thanks! I was having to keep a hand on the volume knob for a bit there in the middle and I agree that layer adds a lot of life to the piece. It surprised me to hear how it came out after I got it where I wanted in a sound design way and that gritty sound wasn’t actually supposed to be there but I know a good thing when I hear it so I didn’t “fix” it :slight_smile:

Really nice patch, love it, very Eno! It sounds like it has a lot of audio glitches though.

New ambient track from today made 100% in Rack https://youtu.be/03rzk0gzVrg

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