Friday, 17 June 2022

Nils Frahm - Sydney - 2022 concert

 Some pics from a recent concert at the Sydney Opera House.
 
 
Well worth seeing. Nils crosses boundaries between Classical & Electronic music, combining instruments from both disciplines seamlessly.

He is touring Australia at the moment, promoting his upcoming album,
Music for Animals.
I think it's coming out around September, 2022.

Packed House. It's great to be able to attend concerts again after the covid lockdowns.
He opened the set with a Glass Armonia. I thought it was some midi controller, or light controlled device.
Turns out it's a 300 year old instrument made of rings of glass.
Looked very fragile, and I can only wonder how he managed to transport this through airport customs without breaking anything.
As an interesting side note, the Armonia was invented by Benjamin Franklin. 
He was inspired to create his glass armonica after hearing an English friend playing a tune on wine glasses filled with water.

Mozart, Camille Saint-Saëns , Richard Strauss  & Beethoven, used and composed pieces for this instrument.

In the pic below I can see a Mellotron, Minimoog D (& sample/hold) , some Junos and I think Roland Chorus Echos -- Re 501??  

Nils moved between the left & right stations, mixing melodies and looping sounds from pianos, with electronic synthesizers.

At one point he inserted what looked like microphones into the pianos and I think sampled the sounds
into looped tape machines, then played over this.

Some pieces were very chilled minimal electronica, others were sole piano.
Beautiful stuff !!!
 
I think there was a Fender Rhodes Piano under the right Juno 60

MiniMoog D with Sample & Hold
Roland Juno 60
Mellotron ??
 

Get out and see him if you can.

Wednesday, 15 June 2022

Abelton CV tools - CV triggers (ES-9)

Using the ES-9 with Abelton's CV triggers module.
The initial setup page & info on CV Instrument is here :


Its Part of CV Tools.
CV Tools is a Pack of ten devices for Live 10 Suite that generate and receive Pitch, Control, Clock and Trigger CV. Send and modulate CV to and from your modular setup or other CV-based gear and Ableton Live 

The devices are 

CV instrument
Cv triggers
Rotating Rhythm generator

CV envelope Follower
CV In
CV LFO
CV Shaper

CV Clock in
CV Clock Out
CV Utility


CV Triggers lets you sequence your modular drum modules from inside Live.
Just drag this module onto a MIDI track.

It lets you map notes to triggers


In this example Ive mapped C3 to C4  to trigger outputs 1 to 8 on the ES-9.


The type of trigger can be a gate, trigger or Ping.
You can set length, velocity, polarity


Vivid Sydney - 2022

 Some pics from the Vivid Festival in Sydney Australia.
 

 
 

 

The Rocks, Sydney.


Circular  Quay

..
 




Museum of Contemporary Art,  MCA








Monday, 6 June 2022

NLC Tracky Dacks - build notes


 For those of you who aren't Australian, Tracky Dacks are Aussie Slang for tracksuit underpants/trousers.
To dak someone is to pull their pants down.

The module is a nice easy build. Easygoing, just like these clothes.
It's a voltage controlled envelope generator.

Its a bit like the Triad module, but the attack & decay use vactrols.

it is a simple circuit and the results are fun; lots of wobbly, evolving envelopes and it makes an interesting burst generator. 

It has an End-of-Cycle trigger output which restarts the
envelope if no gate is applied to the ‘Do It’ input

The official NLC Build guide is here

The wiki page is here:


"there are quite a few options to
choose when building this circuit or you can build it as per the PCB if
you prefer. The short version is build it as per the PCB except install
two 10M instead of the 2M2* " (NLC Build notes)..

Andrew recommends just installing 10M Ohms for both up & down vactrols


Some pics of the virgin PCB/panel


ICs first. 
a 555 timer and two 072 op amps


resistors next.
I'm installing 10M resistors for the vactrols instead of 2.2m





Caps next


BC847 transistor

and some signal diodes ...LL4148




to be continued....

Part 2:
https://djjondent.blogspot.com/2022/06/trackydacks-build-notes-part-2-nlc.html


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You can find more NLC builds here.
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NLC Motherload for 2022

 Andrew  of Nonlinear Circuits has been really busy this last year and I'm just catching up with a backlog of modules.


These are in the latest bunch of eurorack :



Frolic*
Intimacy*
The Sup of all wisdom*
Ming Rod
FM OP - six 
4HP Mix - 3 
Valmorification*
Encephalo Adjuster*
Poultry in Motion*
Flipflop chaos*
Tracky Dacks*
VC ADSR*
Sauce of Uncle*



I love building NLC modules. Andrew's build notes are educational in addition to making the builds easy.


Links to Past motherloads:



Links of past builds:




Links:

Saturday, 4 June 2022

NINA - 12 Voice Polysynth with Motorized Recall & Automation

...

Can't wait to see this. 
They will be launching on  kickstarter in about a month or so.
Finally, motorized rotary encoders which show your updated settings when you recall different patches.
It's interesting that drone technology is behind this development. 

 Its a twelve voice analog desktop polysynth with motorized knobs, from Australia.
https://www.melbourneinstruments.com/


Thursday, 2 June 2022

Rome Panaromas

 Some pics of the Eternal City.

..



These  were taken with a old film-analog (panaromic) camera.
The Camera was a Russian Zenit Horizon 35mm.
I attempted to scan the negatives -- a bit washed out. One day I'll get these printed properly.


The Mausoleum of Hadrian, usually known as Castel Sant'Angelo




St Peters, Rome - roof









Roland JP-8080: Trance like we're back in 1999!

Monday, 23 May 2022

Elk Elektroniks Workshop Meeting, Sat, 21st May 2022

 It's been too long since the last meeting.
Covid virtually shut everything down last year but Australia is tentatively returning to normality.

They call this the "New Normal".

Anyway, facemasks and check-ins seem to be a thing of the past ... let's hope so.



This is the first Elk Elekroniks meeting in a long while. I understand the plan is to hold one every 2 months.

So the next will be in July, 2022.


80T


Korg Wavestate.




80T 




Many thanks to Heather for her demo of the Koma Elektronik Field Kit


Cool way to experiment with electronics
Thanks to Ed of Elk Elektroniks for holding these meetings.