After reviewing the Behringer VP-1 Vintage Phaser, I pluged the MicroKorg into it. The white noise going through it creates that great Jean-Michel Jarre Oxygene sound you heard in the beginning and end of the review/demo video. The phaser plays great with some of the factory presets, specially those on the SE/Hit section.
Not only does it sound great, it inspired me to record some riffs, I then started improvising on top of them and then it came the time when I decided to actually put some music sheet in front of me and write the melody and chord sequence. This took me about a week, just to make the chords work with the riff, then place a D Dorian melody on top of it (with a small modulation to D minor).
Ok, so this was my first experiment vloging on YouTube. I think it when well… except for the Volca that does not respond to MIDI, the head bump into the mic, my face on the video, and some attempts at assassinating the English language…Should I repeat it?
Ok, so this is a little bit of a joke. Earlier this year Korg launched the Minilogue, and soon enough the internet was flooded with cry babies complaining that the Minilogue clicks a lot. So last weekend I decided to do a kind of a parody over these complaints, using the clickiest of all my synths: The Monotribe.
So, the video is mostly raw footage from the backing track, with extracts from the movie “The Truth About Communism” obtained from the Internet Archive.
Musically speaking, this was a little more of a challenge. The backing track was performed live and the signal chain goes as follows: the Volca Beats gives sync pulses to the SQ-1. It is also giving me some rhythm track to guide me, although it is not recorded (in the video you can see the audio out is unplugged). The SQ-1 is controlling the Monotribe using CV and gate (to see how I did the adaptor, check this and this video). Since I have the Monotribe calibrated to accept the CV from the MicroBrute and didn’t care for tuning, the track sounds atonal. The Sound from the monotribe goes into the FX600 for a little bit of chorus, then into the Nux Time Core for some time sync’ed Ping Pong Delay, and then finally to the RV600 for some cave reverb (which has a little bit of a delay character). The idea was for the click to be musically meaningful… something between a kind of percussion and bombs detonating in the distance. I think I managed to do ok with that.
On post-production, three tracks were added using sounds from the Streichfett: a long Cello pedal, some vocal chords and an arpeggio for the second half of the song (using the arpeggiator from the MicroKorg). Finally the rhythmic pattern from the beats was recorded onto a fifth track. As usual, the audio production was made in ardour, and the video later edited using kdenlive. I hope you enjoy listen to it as much as I did making it.
This is the first of two videos dedicated to exploring the world of sound that exists when you hook up a MicroKorg with a MicroBrute. In this episode of Analogue Meets Digital the MicroBrute is used as a Sound module controlled and processed by the MicroKorg.
This is an extremely easy way to link the two machines: a MIDI cable goes from the MIDI OUT port of the MicroKorg into the MIDI IN of the MicroBrute (if you use a MiniBrute instead of the Micro, make sure you don’t accidentally connect both MIDI OUT ports). At the same time, use a TS 1/4″ cable to connect the Line Output of the MicroBrute to the Audio 1 Line In port of the MicroKorg. This is essentially the same setup I did with the Volcas, although working the MicroBrute is much more satisfying experience, in my opinion. One thing to have in mind: the MicroBrute is muck louder than the Volcas, so you have to be extra-careful not to clip the input on the MicroKorg. Despite this, the MicroBrute is a monophonic Analogue synth, much like the Volca Bass (and most voice modes of the Volca Keys), and the operation of the MicroBrute in this setup is similar to that shown in previous episodes.
The FAB overdrive is possibly the cheapest pedal I ever brought… indeed, I think it is the most inexpensive pedal I know of at the moment. Mine costed only £10 on amazon UK, but the price usually fluctuates between 10 and 25 euros (or equivalent). On the other hand, as you might guess by the mere 4-minute long demo I made, this is a rather limited unit. This is not necessarily a bad thing: it is cheap, light and simple, and an overdrive pedal is always a nice addition to your bass synth sound.
Just a little experiment in Drone Music. The composition process is actually quite different than what I’m used to. I recorded 12 minutes of uninterrupted D in the Microkorg, using the Volca Bass as an auxiliary sound source. Then, the audio was cut into four 3 min segments and overlaid, resulting in a lush, thick drone sound. Finally I had to re-EQ the whole thing to remove some of the fundamental and first harmonic, since they here very high, as expected in this process.
The video is just the speed up footage of the 12 minute drone recording, and part of the cut and line up process.
I hope you enjoy it, for this Sunday evening chill out. Have a great week!
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