Tag Archives: cassette

Side B

Noggin – untitled b17

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Title: Untitled b17
Artist: Noggin
Album: Side B
Date: 2010

Here’s some house jam I recorded to cassette tape one night in Anacortes with the MS-2000 hooked up. That is pretty neat little synth. The one I got for dirt cheap from the pawn shop has been mounted into what looks like was once a amp head. So it’s a self contained unit with a carrying handle now, instead of a rackless-rack synth. Fits the amp head perfectly, props to the person who did the modification.
Bonus mildly related lulz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXLnnDKqvMg
Download: noggin-b17 (right click and choose ‘save as’)

collaborations Old Town Acid (demo)

Noggin ft. Mr. Sprott – Cepstrum (mix 3)

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Title: Cepstrum (mix 3)
Artist: Noggin ft. Mr. Sprott
Album: Old Town Acid (demos)
Date: 2011

ALMOST instant jam (and request, too). Recorded this last weekend with Kyle in an effort to wrench some tweaky acidity out of his nord micro modular. That there is a hell of a synth packed into tiny little red box. It is also kind of a testament to where music technology itself really stands. Bear with me for the ensuing rant…
When the Nord red boxes started coming out, they were insanely popular. I remember being 15/16 and just lusting after this seemingly super synth, the Nord lead 2. Seemed like all my favorite producers were using them. They had power and they worked just like an analog synth. This is important to note, because, more recently, synth manufacturers have been including ‘analog’ parameters onto their synths, in an effort to quantify ‘analog-ness’ (but let’s be frank here, it’s a binary friggin option). Usually these knobs do nothing more than introduce some jitter and/or detune into the main oscillator’s frequency. The Nords didn’t have this. But people still went crazy for the sound.
First point: Isn’t it funny how nowadays you’ve got to have that ‘analog feel’ knob, in order to ‘fake out’ the listener that his digital synth sounds ‘more analog’…therefore…better. When VA synths WEREN’T a dime a dozen, the Nords didn’t need this knob because, damn, they already sounded good….like a theoretical analog synth (not an ACTUAL analog synth). I find it funny that one of the most popular VA’s out does very little to fake the analog side of things…it’s some pure oscillators with some controls set up in the same fashion as an analog synth.
Moving on, with the Nord modular synths, they literally give you access (via a computer) to a blank canvas where you can patch various synth building blocks together to create your own synth. The possibilities are limited only by how much processing power is required to compute each building block….it’s plenty of power for most things. MOST NOTABLY, a direct reincarnation of a Nord Lead! Yea, you can actually patch the modular in such a way that the tones it outputs are the exact same as from a Nord Lead. What is further enlightening into the matter, is that you can download the Nord Lead banks of sounds to the Modulars, and then you get a behind-the-scenes look at how the nord leads actually produce sound.
GUESS WHAT? It’s pretty damn simple. It’s your basic subtractive synth…oscillators, some envelopes, and a filter. It’s also interesting to note that every one of the Nord Lead patches I brought up used the exact same modular patch, only with the settings/knobs tweaked in different ways.
Second point: By allowing us this behind-the-scenes look inside such a popular synth as the nord lead, one can see how so much of synths is in the marketing, vs the technology. Here you have this modular synth, which can do a perfect emulation of a very popular synth (it actually looks like said popular synth was built directly out of this modular patching environment), plus a whole hell of a lot more, and still wait silently in the shadow of the infamous red boards.
I don’t think it’s a problem, but I applaud Nord for allowing me the chance to explore around, what looks to me like, the basic skeleton they have used to build their own synths.
Think about it this way…imagine if you could create a totally bitching patch in the modular environment, lock it in so it can’t be messed up, then put that patch in another box and call it another synth….Nord can.
Disagree? Agree? Let my ranting encourage your own.
Ok so about this track, yea, it’s MPC and nord micro from Kyle’s living room in Austin. It’s noisy. It’s acid. It’s got fm. Kyle claims to have made these patches that we pulled from 6 – 7 years ago on Walter st. in San Francisco.
Enjoy.
Download: cepstrum20110505 (right click and choose ‘save as’)

In the Corner

Zoe’s Concussion – Old (My Buddy Bone)

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Title: Old (My Buddy Bone)
Artist: In the Corner
Album: Zoe’s Concussion
Date: 1996

Yep. I closed out my more industrial / lofi / garage noise album with a mouth harp solo. How very Beck of me.
This was written somewhat for my homey Bone from Hearne but I think he would have preferred a gangsta rap version better. I cut out the commentary where I just go into detail about how the harps get after you play them so much. Pretty sure I was bent over a crappy microphone held between my knees for this one…but how cool is the multitracking using a just-as-cheap karaoke machine? That’s a quick route to lo-fi city if your interested.
Download: Zoe’s Concussion – 16 Old (My Buddy Bone) (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Dirty Tape demos

RedHouseGreenHouse – Untitled 11

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Title: Untitled 11
Artist: RedHouseGreenHouse
Album: Dirty Tape Demos
Release Date: 2010

In honor of the newly resurrected Ensoniq EPS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM2o0W5Y0pI), here is more dirty tape from the Red House. This one features Karl Blau doing dubstep.
The cool thing about the EPS, is that the LFOs are key dependent…you can hit a key, get the LFO going, then alter the LFO, hit another key, and as long as you hold down both notes, you can hear both LFOs going independently. I don’t know another synth/sampler that does that. So anyway, this was a two man, 10 finger collaboration.
Download: RedHouseGreenHouse – Untitled 11 (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Dirty Tape demos

RedHouseGreenHouse – Untitled 2

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Title: Untitled 2
Artist: RedHouseGreenHouse
Album: Dirty Tape demos
Release Date: 2010

Same story as last one…ambient lo-fi sound snippets from an unexpanded EPS sampler + nylon guitar.
Download: Noggin Etc – 02 – Track02 (right click and choose ‘save as’)

Dirty Tape demos

RedHouseGreenHouse – Untitled 3

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Title: Untitled 3
Artist: RedHouseGreenHouse
Album: Dirty Tape demos
Release Date: 2010

This is one that my buddy Rocky and I threw together one spring day in Anacortes. Another friend of ours had donated a superbly awesome keyboard sampler, the Ensoniq EPS, and these short few lo-fi tracks came out of the first breaths that machine took in our studio.
We weren’t sure how to or even if this thing would work, and all we had for a sound source was my recently pick-up’ed nylon guitar. So every sound is from that guitar.
Major props to Rocky.
Download: RedHouseGreenHouse – 3 (right click and choose ‘save as’)