music - tm

"PercussPerRCUsssPERsion" [mp3 revised and moved to Bandcamp]

Live percussion snippet is played "straight" at the beginning and then goes through many hardware-sampler-induced mutations. Mostly involving changes of sampling rate (pitch/speed) but also changing loop points and semi-granular rooting around in wavetables based on the data. Really like that you can "zap" an 8 bit .wav file with control voltages and have it change this much. Some post-recording tweaks, mostly to get everything at the same gain level. Also, some multitracking - this ain't real time.

"TipTop One Two" [mp3 removed]

Rather dorky, vintage videogame-like themes made with a modular monosynth. Sounds kind of 8-Bit but this is analog-recorded-to-24-Bit all the way.
The way it works is X amount of time to make a patch (with knobs and cables) that sounds interesting and then back to the computer to write MIDI notes that exploit the patch in some way. Then record and in the case of "One" here, overtrack.

"TipTop Three" [mp3 removed]

Drum & bass version of two mono-synth themes (including the "Sonar Death Ray 2" riff).

"Pianissimo" [mp3 moved to Bandcamp]

Production notes:
The first theme is modular patch, forget how I did it; there was a lot of routing and interconnection among modules (not saved). The gritty percussive slaps are probably the LFO doing something to the signal.
The high-pitched whistling-like theme is a triangle wave FM-ing a sine with ADSR modulating both the program and carrier. It was as punchy as an icepick through the temple so I softened it with a slight convolution reverb (small room).
Often the tunes I write start as MIDI prompts to hear what a patch is doing and end up becoming real melodies. That was the case here, so I played the same MIDI notes with a piano (sampler) to hear the tune without all the synth distortion. The tune is then tweaked in the piano roll to add pauses, discords, and accents that a live player might have.
Then the synth themes come back in, with the piano bass line changed to a latin jazz sort of thing for some counterpoint to end the song.

"MIDI Drum Theme" [mp3 removed -- this track is now on Bandcamp]

A commercial MIDI drum pattern was used to generate a bassline on the modular synth (sine wave). Then the same pattern (and a related one) were used to trigger General MIDI-esque drums from a couple of kits. The bass and drums were overtracked; then modest "lead" lines were added on the synth (triangle wave).