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Danelectro FAB Overdrive: Review and Impressions

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.

Continue reading “Danelectro FAB Overdrive: Review and Impressions”

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Ambient Kaos, Chapter 7

This improvisation starts with a Dubstep pattern (Dubstep 2) at 80 bpm, and the One Delay on the Mini KP2, to give the illusion of a faster tempo. This is the first, and longest, of 5 takes I did for this track. The other ones, although interesting, are not worth publishing. But they can still be usable as source material for loops in future venues. The general ambiance of this music reflects the rainy weekend I had. Thanks for watching and listening. The Tape Delay kicks in for the last segment of the track, granting it some chaotic character.

This video was recorded Live, audio was recorded directly using a focousrite scarlet 2i2 into Audacity. Post recording treatment was only trimming the silent bits at the begining, fade out at the end, compression and normalization to -1.5dB peak. The final video was produced using Kdenlive.

Setup for the Kaossilator2:
Key: E
Scale: Minor Blues
Tempo : 80.0 bpm
Range: 1 Octave

Setup for the mini-KaosPad2:
FX: One Delay (Tape Delay after 10:51)
Tempo 80 bpm
FX Depth: 65%

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Experimenting with Drones

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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Mantra

Here’s something I made last weekend… partly inspired by the Delay Lama plugin (hence the track’s title), which I tried to recreate in the Microkorg. One nice thing about programming synths is that you start of with an idea of what you want, but then you start talking to the synth and new ideas emerge… All I ever wanted was a patch… ended up with a track.




The Volca Beats provides a much needed fill of the sonic spectrum. I hope your weekend was as good as mine, and which you a good week. Thanks for watching and listening.

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Analogue Meets Digital 2: The Microkorg and the Volca Keys

The Volca Keys we all know and love (it is still my favourite Volca) can play up to 3 voices in POLY mode… It’s not true polyphony, because it shares the same filter and envelope, but it is still useful for playing chords. However, the envelope generator of the Keys is rather limited and playing good pads on the instrument can be very frustrating. In this video I explore the Microkorg-Volca Keys hybrid (analogue/digital) system. During this process you may hear a handful of interesting pad sounds.

The Microkorg and the Volca Keys are connected the same way I used with the Volca Bass a few days ago: the Microkorg is the centre of the system, sending MIDI data to the Volca, and receiving the audio output of the latter through its Line In for further processing. One thing I didn’t mentioned in the video is that Continue reading “Analogue Meets Digital 2: The Microkorg and the Volca Keys”

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Behringer FM600: A Happy Accident

Earlier this ear I was shopping on amazon for cheap distortion pedal and  a pitch shifter. However, I must have been drunk, or something, because I ended up with this purple pedal on my doorstop. But I’m happy as I could be with this purchase, as this pedal is capable of bringing a new array of sound to my pallette, for a very modes price (about 40 €).

So, what is the pedal I’m talking about? It is the Behringer Filter Machine FM600. It comes in the same plastic box format as the FM600 and the RV600, but with a purple lively, that somehow matches the one on my Streichfett.  Continue reading “Behringer FM600: A Happy Accident”