"Steel Percussion Climax" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
Recorded and arranged in Ardour (Linux version)
Featuring: SammichSID, Elektron Machinedrum & Octatrack
Some beats on the Machinedrum were "found" (i.e., left in ROM by the previous owner). I tweaked them quite a bit, but, hat tip to GYS.
Also, check out the actual house around 2:30. If I didn't get bored and need to change patterns, that would be the whole song.
"Stretched and Unstretched" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
Same basic instrumentation as "Machine Song Throwdown," except the arrangement is done in Ardour (Linux version) rather than in the beatboxes. Also, the vocal sample is from an earlier tune, "Antimatter Park": yrs truly saying the words "external hard drive" (perhaps the least sexy thing anyone could utter), "creatively mangled," as they say in music software advertising-speak.
"Machine Song Throwdown" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
Elektron stopped making its Machinedrum so I found one used. It can be connected via MIDI to an Octatrack to expand the number of available tracks. That's what happens here. All the sounds are either one device or the other, except the videogame-y riff, which was done with the SIDguts module and Doepfer A-154/155 sequencer (and then further sliced up in the Octatrack). The BPM is 141, so the machine song goes by so quickly its mongrelization of different moods and motifs isn't as apparent as it would be at a slower rate. It's a PoMo ThrowDo.
Some beats on the Machinedrum were "found" (i.e., left in ROM by the previous owner). I tweaked them quite a bit, but, hat tip to GYS.
"SID Pleasant" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
Two versions of the ADDAC Wav Player Eurorack module are used here (101 and 111).
They are played simultaneously. In the first part they are triggered by the Expert Sleepers ES-40 computer-to-cv module (gate outputs, playing in Ableton). In part two they are triggered by the Doepfer A-155 sequencer. Drums, bass, and percussion from Ableton and Octatrack sample kits were added.
The samples in the ADDAC are from NI Battery's "OpaSID" and OpenSource" kits. Commodore 64 game-y sounds predominate here but that was somewhat accidental. Was just running with the samples (haphazardly loaded into the modules) that sounded best.
Arranged and recorded in Ardour (Linux version). Some loop-wrangling was done in Ableton (W7).
Update: Minor tweaks; re-uploaded.
"Deep Blue Mainframe" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
Recorded/arranged in Ardour (Linux version).
Burbling along throughout, some live recordings of the Doepfer A-155 triggering the A-112 sampler, playing Adventure Kid "fm synth" and "vgame" waveforms in wavetable mode.
For accompaniment, several Linux softsynths: Loomer Aspect, Calf Monosynth, and one not used before, PhaseX. It's not a plugin like the others; instead, MIDI out from Ardour (via JACK) triggers the synth. Simultaneously JACK brings PhaseX's audio output into Ardour for recording and further editing. This required using Ardour's latency compensation, which I thought was only for hardware, but it helped to get PhaseX mostly in sync with the Ardour grid.
For percussion, the ADDAC 101 and 111 wav players, again triggered by the A-155; with samples from a couple of NI Battery kits, OpaSID and OpenSource. Some additional beats from the E-Mu Orbit soundfonts play in Calf's Fluidsynth ROMpler.
None of this has anything to do with Deep Blue or mainframes.
