Monday, 6 June 2016

Buchla Easel Variation 3


Published on May 21, 2016
Some easel exercises & experiments. A homage to A.C.
A simple but quite beautiful tune.
Sorry for the distortion in the audio. My sound cards playing up a bit.


A special wine for a special occasion.
The vines are 40years old. The current vintage is 2013.. its a steal. Dan Murphys is selling this at $339 for a 6pack. It will cellar very well, probably to 2028 & beyond ???
This bottle is from 1994... OMG, thats 22 years. Beautiful to drink.

Back to the synths:


303 Marf

Some fun with a Buchla & of course a 303.

Sunday, 5 June 2016

Wine Links

Some wine links:

This will be index page devoted to all things wine.

Wine, esp red wine is one of my joys (along with electronics & travel).
 References to some of the nicer drops drunk recently are all over this blog, and I sometimes forget where these pages are. So this is kind of a wine diary.

+++Mutable Instruments Grids ...& Wine
      1990 vintage port from Steins in Mudgee NSW.
      Tollana Cabernet Sav from 1995. (Eden Valley, South Australia)

+++Buchla - Wall of Sound & Wine 
     1995.“Barwang” - Hilltops region of New South Wales.
     http://mcwilliams.com.au/our-wine/regionality/hilltops/

+++Buchla Tempest Glitch & Wine

+++Korg Volca Beats Mod  & Taylors Shiraz, 2001. Clare Valley, SA.
       http://www.taylorswines.com.au/

+++ Buchla Easel Variation & Lindemands St. George, Cab Sav. 1994.


 

Monday, 30 May 2016

Basic Chords & Arpeggios for synths

 Some basic chords you can learn which are useful for lots of tunes:

C, F, G and A minor.

It's important to be able to play these chords in many different shapes and inversions.
Synths offer hundreds , if not thousands of different ways of playing these simple chords.

All these chords come from the C major scale.
 
The only difference between an arpeggio and a chord, is that in a chord, you play
the notes simultaneously, while in an arpeggio you play the notes one after the other. 
Arpeggios are sometimes referred to as broken chords. 

C chord
The C chord contains three notes – C, E and G




F chord
 F Major : F A C





The G chord
 G Major: G B D





The A minor Chord
A min uses A C E



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Chord progressions
A very basic chord progression is C, G, A minor, F
Another good progression is  F, G, Am, C, F G Am, Em

You can play these keys in any inversion.
The left hand may play just one or two of these keys to form the bass notes.

The right hand plays all 3 keys of higher notes

The lowest note played with the left hand has a big effect on the whole sound of the chord.
It's often the one its named after  (the root note).
This is a kind of a default but you don't have to always follow this rule.

Practice , practice, practice.....

Many thanks to Bill and Jordan for their great tutorials around which
these notes are based:
 
Of course once you have got these under your belt you can think about
layering arpeggios of these chord notes over their root chords

1, 3, 5 ... remember these numbers 
They belong to the Fibonacci Sequence.
 --- welcome to the world of the arppegio.
 
The 1, 3, 5 pattern is known as a triad.
It makes the most simple chords. 
The C major, the F chord, the G chord and the A minor chord are all in the
basic 1,3,5 sequence.

Links
 

Sunday, 22 May 2016

Korg PS 3100 - Temperament Adjust

The Temperament Adjustment allows you to tune the synth to different scales.


In the manual, it's described as a 12 note Temperament Adjust
Eg: Mean tone system, the Hepatonal Scale & the Just intonation scale.

In the Western world, we are used to the "Well Tempered Scale"

Saturday, 21 May 2016

Korg PS 3100 - Signal Generator - Oscillators

The signal generator (SG) is Korg speak for the oscillators.
The different waveforms are TRI, SAW etc.

PWM, Frequency adjust... fine & coarse.

Immediately below the SG section we have the modulation section.

For this to be active push the right orange switch to "on".
Notice the reverse switch on the left.
This section allows you to route MG1 (LFO) , the GEG (General Envelope Generator) or some external modulation source to the SGs.
So you can frequency modulate. :-)




Friday, 20 May 2016

Korg PS 3100 - Dynamic Low Pass Filter

The Low Pass Filter.
You have your standard controls ... Cut off frequency (Fc) & peak resonance (Q).
Remember that the PS 3100 has a independent filter for every key.
The Peak resonance (Q) knob adjusts the degree of emphasis at the cut off point, determined by the Fc knob


Below this is the KBD Filter balance & expand.
They allow you to adjust how the filter behaves along the span of the keyboard.

The KBD Filter Balance adjusts the Fc of each of the key's independent filters over a rising or falling slope corresponding to the scale of the keyboard.

The EXPAND knob adjusts the degree to which the Fc is varied by the envelope signal formed by the EM section (to the right).


Below the filter section is a modulation section.
You need to push the orange switch to "on" for this section to be active.
There are controls for the MG1, GEG & external CV modulation signals.
The MG 1  & GEG knobs adjust the depth of modulation.

 It's very similar to the mod section of the Signal Generators.