No update on finished base tracks, as I ended up working on three at once, two of which are our longest songs, so are taking a while. The other day I spent a lot of time on the introduction to ‘Fairytale Propaganda’, which builds up gradually from a quiet and gentle start to a full-blown rocker. When I returned to work on it at the weekend I realised that it was just too ornate and over-orchestrated, so it will need to be stripped back a fair bit.

‘The Winning Smile’ also had to be changed, as I had set it up with a simple piano backing, but it just didn’t sound as good as it had done previously, so it now has a gentle guitar backing to start it off, but is still in the early phase of construction, so will also be getting some bass and strings.

‘Performance Evolution’ is our big concept number in about five sections which vary in style from ethereal dream-like harps and strings via neanderthal punk waltz and sugary pop to aggressive guitar serialism. Needless to say, this is taking a while to come together, though all the basics are there – it’s really only needing drums, vocals and lead guitar parts added. More on this when it’s done.

Another set of backing tracks have been completed, this time for a short spoken-word piece by Sean, called “The Bell Curve“. It is a very laid-back track, starting with an atmospheric build up of synth textures which give way to a gentle string-based backing. This was the first time I’ve extensively used my ‘new’ Crumar Performer on a recording – the resonant synth-brass sound sits in the background of the introduction, then the string sound was used in the main part of the track. It can be quite noisy compared to modern synths, but has a great feeling of movement which helps keep the fairly simple chord pattern interesting.

Some of the effects noises in the introduction came from the depths of my old TX81Z sound module, several of which were originally designed for the instrumental “Mick’s Astonishing Megamix (parts 1-4)” back in the Deserters – slowly evolving drain-like sounds. Great fun to revisit those things and find another use for them.

I have done a bit more writing over the last few months – putting a better structure to The Parallel Curve, a song about corporate lunacy, which we first tried recording back in March this year. I’m hoping to put a new demo together for it in the next week and possibly record it at the next session. I also have some bare bones of a song started which covers some themes about power, leadership and control through the ages – a verse, a chorus and some chords exist so far, and even a little bit for the celtic flute. I’m still struggling to get Jim Crow into a finished state – it rolls along rather nicely in its new doo-wop styling, but needs another couple of verses to do the subject justice.

That’s about it for the moment – I’ve been without a studio for a couple of weeks as I’m shuffling it around a bit now that I’ve had some time to live with it and can see improvements to my original plan. I’ve also got a very cool new-but-old keyboard which I needed to make room for – more to follow on that shortly!

RIP Joe Zawinul

The legendary jazz keyboard player passed away earlier today.

I first came across his work with Weather Report back in 1987 in a TV concert presumably broadcast following the death of bassist Jaco Pastorius, was immediately transfixed and bought “Black Market” the next day. Although I have only a handful of his recordings in my collection, his playing (and that of his collaborators) formed the bulk of my introduction to modern jazz and paved the way in preparation for my brain and ears to appreciate Zappa and more freeform improvisers.

So long, Joe.

Inspired in part by Sonicstate’s top 20 greatest synths and Matrixsynth’s The Most Underrated Synths, here is my alternative. This is my top ten list of synths. Not the greatest by any margin, though there are some classics in there. Not the most historically interesting, though one or two certainly have their place in history. Just 10 synths that I’ve enjoyed using over the years, despite or even because of numerous obstacles they’ve thrown in the way. Most were end-of-line bargains or second-hand gems, but they’ve all served me well.

10 Yamaha FB01

For such a little unit this comes with one of the most comprehensive and awe-inspiring manuals complete with extensive MIDI implentation charts and sysex data. The sound out of this is not great – 4-operator FM is not going to win many prizes these days, or even in the days it was first launched. However it is 8-part multitimbral, which was pretty impressive at its launch, and it does work will for a filler. I usually use it for background layers of choirs, brass or synth strings.

9 Casio CZ1000

Casio didn’t stay in the pro synth market for long, but the CZ series has endured. In theory it is a variant on FM synthesis, but in practice it is much easier to program and tends to sound a bit warmer, with some great synth bass sounds and a nice line in brass blasts. This is the full-sized keyboard version of the very popular CZ101. I don’t use mine very often these days as it is a big keyboard to house for the sake of its 4-note polyphony, but it does get dug out every so often to bring its own charm to the occasional piece.

8 Yamaha PSS780

This is a pretty wretched FM workstation with mini-keys, built-in drum pads, sequencer, auto-accompaniment, effects and basic synthesis controls. It is generally pretty weedy sounding, with less oomph than half a FB01 on a bad day, and is really a home keyboard with pretensions of being a synth. However, it is multi-timbral and MIDI-controllable and when the sounds are layered up and a decent drum pattern programmed, it can sound okay. Add some real guitar and vocals and you might just pull it off. This was the first ‘synth’ I had that I could control via MIDI, and it more than doubled the range of sounds I had available at the time. For that I pay it my respect.

7 Akai S950

Akai were several generations of their legendary samplers on by the time I joined the fray with this 3rd-hand bargain. Only 12-bit sample quality, but with all the bells and whistles of the pro favourite S1000, the S950 was quickly pressed into service as an enhancement to the meagre drum sounds of the PSS780, allowing me to mix professionally recorded samples with yobstick, bucket and kalimba samples amongst others, adding more detail to drum parts. I never did manage to get hold of the SCSI disk interface for it, so to this day I have to load it up with several floppy disks, which puts me off using it as much as I might do.

6 Yamaha DX7

What need I say about the DX7. THE classic late 80′s synth. Wonderful electric pianos and bells, wonderful evolving FM washes and great hammered percussion. It is a beast to program, but blessed with a bucketful of computer programs to make it easier, and my first synth was FM-based, so I was in familiar territory. The DX is still my master keyboard for controlling synths, though only occasionally do I use the on-board sounds – usually only for piano or pads. Mine is a mk1, with limited MIDI capabilities, annoyingly curtailed keyboard response and horrible membrane buttons, but it still has a great feel, is built like a tank and is easy to fall back on.

5 Kawai K4R

My first foray into Sample+Synthesis was with the K4r, the rackmount version of the K4. It took the place of the PSS780 as a general dogbody machine with a good collection of drum kits, 16-part multitimbral sound source and a selection of waveforms suitable for everthing from acoustic guitar to analogue lead synths with a filter section good enough to do it justice. I still use this regularly, and probably still could find new things to do with it.

4 Yamaha TX81Z

Another 4-operator Yamaha FM synth, but this one’s a little bit special. First of all it has a significantly improved synthesis engine over the old FB01, with a wide range of waveforms to base sounds on. Secondly it has the ability to store micro-tunings for more experimental music. Thirdly it has good support for breath controllers, making it an ideal partner for my Casio digital wind controller (DH100). It also has a range of good software supporting editing, which is just as well since it has a DX7-like unfriendly editing system. Like the DX it is great for metallic sounds and crisp basses.

3 Moog Etherwave Pro

It’s a theremin – does that count as a synth? I say yes. It’s my list. It is the top of the range Moog theremin and a thing of beauty. Curved walnut surface with gleaming chrome knobs. It is has a nice linear playing range, classic preset tones and enough filter and tone controls to provide a wide range of sounds from pure voices to cutting sawtooth buzzes, as well as CV controls for controlling analogue synths like a theremin. It’s my favourite of all the sound creating gadgets I have, but there are two more items that are currently in the lead for historic reasons.

2 Casio CSM10P

This is a tacky little black box with only 5 sounds – electric piano, piano, organ, harpsichord and vibes. I think it uses 12-bit samples – they’re certainly not great quality. It is preset-only with no editing, being designed to plug in and expand a home keyboard. I have used it time and time again, especially the piano and vibes, and it always wins me over with its simplicity. Just select the sound and play. Nothing more to it. It does have pretty good polyphony, or at least good enough for my keyboard playing, and I find the sounds sit comfortably in a mix (though the pipe organ can be a bit overwhelming at times). It really shouldn’t get used as much as it does, but I just can’t help it. Try listening to Yet Another Granfalloon (pt1) for an example of it in action.

1 Yamaha CX5M

WHAT? Surely I’m joking? Well, no. I cut my electronic / MIDI / composing / keyboard teeth on this bizarre creature, and for all of its many, MANY faults, it holds a slightly rose-tinted place in my musical heart. When I had the opportunity to buy my first keyboard, some time after The Deserters were formed, I spent endless hours scrutinising music magazines for the best synth for me. I had a few front-runners, including the DX100 and CZ101 which had just come out, though I wasn’t too keen on their small keys. Then the CX5M Music Computer came to the end of its commercial life and dropped significantly in price – I was able to pick up the equivalent in sound quality to a DX9, with in-built computer and sequencer for about the same as a CZ101. I pontificated for a while over this, even passing over the opportunity to pick up a Korg MS10 for 50 quid (ha ha, how very different things could have been had I gone down that route…), but eventually came to the conclusion that it was too good a deal to miss.

I wasn’t aware that it couldn’t be played from another MIDI keyboard, despite the presence of a MIDI in socket, so that blew the longevity of it out the water. The only useful sequencer for it at the time was the step sequencer which required some very tedious manual progamming. And the included keyboard was pretty pathetic. However, like so many limited things, these drawbacks just focused the use of the thing, and I soon got my head around FM synthesis using the built-in editor, complex harmonies and rhythms with the score composer sequencer, and drum programming by linking it up to a ZX Spectrum with “SpecDrum” fitted. So it was flawed, but it formed the musical base for a large number of Deserters tunes, try Phill Up the Glass to hear it in action, but most notably the 20-minute-plus instrumental extravaganza that was “Mick’s Amazing Megamix”. Unfortunately the only version of this recorded comes from a badly distorted tape – it has been converted into a more modern sequencer format so may eventually see the light of day using the TX81z to emulate the CX5 tones.

So that’s the lot. Not to everyone’s taste, and probably more biased in favour of a certain Japanese manufacturer than I would like, but impoverished gear junkies can’t be choosers.

They have been running a competition for new electronic compositions, which is not something I’ve done for many years, preferring to work with at least some acoustic, hands-on (or off in the case of theremin) instruments. Listening to some of the tracks on the site only confirmed that this was pretty hard-core electronica – mostly not the sort of music I would listen to, let alone attempt (or wish) to play.

Sounds like a challenge.

So here you’ll find the latest creation from The Lunacy Board. No lyrics. Lots of effects and electronic twiddles. Buckets of theremin. Not our usual fare, but what is usual for us?

Phill Up The Glass

Week 17 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

For the last ‘Track of the Week’ (at least for the next few months), here’s another original track from the Bordet / Leigh spin-off album ‘Mux-Ip’. You may have guessed from the name that it is inspired by the music of Philip Glass, in which case you’d be correct. However, the track started life quite differently as a study in using bird song in music. I transcribed the songs of a number of birds in the local area, with the plan of building up a whole piece of music, but on listening closely found that the repetition occuring naturally, when put in a musical context, ended up coming out like a minimalist piece, so I went the whole hog and filled out the birdsong themes with those repetitive-sounding arpeggios beloved of the minimalist movement.

This was one of the last pieces I wrote using the music computer I bought some years earlier (a Yamaha CX5M) and which required every note to be manually entered one at a time.

That’s it from the Deserters archives for the time being. I hope you’ve enjoyed the music as much as I’ve enjoyed re-visiting the past. Normal service will now be resumed, so don’t forget to check back for news of current activities (or use the RSS feed if you know about such things).

Click here to download.

A good week for music…

Engineering

The local band I’m doing sound engineer for are gearing up for a couple of gigs in the next month – they’ve build up a decent setlist now, and feel ready to perform in public. Should all be good fun, I hope. Final practice session next week, then the first gig after that.

Recording

Today also saw another get-together for the progressive project mentioned previously. I think it is safe to reveal we’ll be calling ourselves…

The Lunacy Board

Still a two-piece line-up so far, but we’re building towards a more cohesive vision of what we’re looking to achieve. We recorded a number of pieces this afternoon – some complete improvisations, some based on riffs or chord changes we’ve been playing around with, and swapping instruments between guitar, bass, drums, keyboard and theremin. This was the first time I’ve played the theremin within an ensemble environment, as I usually either pratice solo or with a quiet backing track, and it quickly became clear that the monitoring system I had tacked together was not going to be as useful for theremin as it had been for the other instruments. You can afford to not hear the odd note or two when playing most instruments as long as fingers are in the right place, but with the theremin this simply results in out-of-tune notes. I will need to invest in a little monitor amp for the theremin in the future…

The hope is that we can put some of these together to start to form some longer pieces, which can then be further tweaked and potentially lyrics added. We’ll be approaching our music from a couple of different angles including improvisation, music for film and music for the spoken word, which covers most of our interests at the moment.

Gear Hassles

I set out a selection of musical gear for us to use, but made the mistaken shortcut of using a previously unused recording package to record the music. For some reason the correct input to the computer was distorting, so I ended up using the microphone input, which is never a great idea. In this case it led to a pretty high level of background noise as well as our inputs being summed to mono. Not a problem for the recording stage, but it will make things awkward for the editing. A little lesson learned for the future, I think. Irrespective of this problem, I think we got some good base material recorded today, which will help to set us on our way.

Watch this space…

Soundtrack of a B-Movie

Week 16 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

In one of the periods between Deserters activity in the late 80′s, Jennifer Leigh & I recorded a limited run album called ‘Mux-Ip’, which was a collection of cover versions and originals performed as a duo. This week’s track, ‘Soundtrack of a B-Movie’, comes from that album (as does next week’s track).

This was one of my earliest uses of multi-track recording, and was recorded using a mini keyboard (a Yamaha SHS-10) and a dodgy Strat copy guitar. The low-budget nature of this track is emphasised by the lack of the original recordings to take this from, so this is a 3rd generation cassette copy. It does, however, have a certain charm, despite its failings.

The piece is effectively a 6 minute guitar solo with cheesy auto-keyboard percussion, some synth pads and the occasional effect (tubular bells, radio clips, etc.)

Click here to download.

Makkie’s Rhythm

Week 11 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

Time to wind the clock back again… This track comes from our second single, ‘Banned Practice’, and is a solo keyboard piece performed by Montepaldé Pentel on the Farfisa organ. Some years later this piece would be digitally combined with samples from the ‘Banned Practice’ sessions to create an extended piece, but this is the original in its simple, lo-fi glory.

Click here to download.

Being a bit of a skinflint, almost all of my musical gear is either second-hand or end-of-line stock, but I’ve got a deep hunger for the new Moog synth. It’s the last project from the legendary Dr Bob, and what a send-off it is. It definitely looks like a Minimoog for the neext century.

Not only does it have all the usual MIDI paraphenalia required of today’s digital synths, but it has several CV inputs that are just begging to have my Etherwave Pro plugged into them. I want one of these. Really very much. But I know it will be at least a year away before I can even consider thinking about it.

I haven’t forgotten about ‘Track of the Week’ either, just been incredibly busy this last week or so, and will make it up to you with 2 tracks for this week.

Fire Engine Disco Remix (part 2)

Week 6 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

Time for a little light relief. This one goes way back to 1985 and our first album. It features the whole band playing a minimalistic theme repeatedly on the range of instruments we were playing at the time. The tune should be recognisable to anyone over the age of about 10 from the UK. It is that lovely lilting melody which used to be played by fire engines (big surprise, there) as they sped to save the day – before they replaced the sound with that dreadful banshee wail that seems designed to replace your laxative of choice.

Anyway, the theme goes ‘Nee Naw Nee Naw Nee Naw’ and is repeated by the following instruments; piano, Farfisa organ, Slydee (see earlier post for details), Castrol Can (a large oil can fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece), VL Tone, Yobstick (see another earlier post for details), Yodeller (a large water tank fitted with a trumpet mouthpiece, voice and finally our friendly Bedford Fire Engine, George.

This was all recorded (apart from the fire engine) in our tiny Greenshed Studio on a wonderfully low tech mono cassette recorder, so don’t expect miracles with this little historical (hysterical) gem. All very silly and a lot of fun.

Click here to download.

The Woman In Red

Week 4 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

Both Lee and I have written ‘Mysterious Woman in Colour X’ songs for some reason. Mine was called ‘White Silk’, and may make its way here eventually. Lee’s song was called ‘The Woman In Red’ and is probably just about the slowest and most ballad-like song the Deserters recorded. It was recorded in a single shot with just Lee and myself featured, though I later went back and recorded some extra keyboard backing to fill out the sound a little more.

Click here to download.

Yet Another Granfalloon (1st movement)

Week 2 of the grand mp3 download extravaganza.

This mp3 is the first part of a three-part instrumental piece of music written in a semi-classical style for a small ‘chamber’ group, which would ideally have been the Deserters plus guests (on oboe and violin). However, it was never recorded in such a manner, and what we have here is a demo of the track with all instruments played by me, with electronic alternatives filling in where there should be flute, oboe and violin.

There is quite an interesting mix of electric and acoustic instruments – electric guitar and bass, mandolin, Nancarrow-like piano, e-bow (I think this was the first time I had used the e-bow on a recording). They don’t always blend entirely successfully, but I still quite like the overall result

Click here to download.

He has a contact who plays drums, and we talked about looking to put together a recording over a long term with a couple of other like-minded folk. I’m really keen, though it’s almost 2 hours to get to him in the centre of Glasgow which is a bit of a pain, though hopefully worth it in the end. I’d like to focus on keyboards and maybe backing or acoustic guitar parts, and even bring in the theremin once I’ve got a better handle on it.

In the meantime, I’ve still to get the Deserters’ tracks onto CD, which has turned into one of those jobs that gets covered in fits and starts and will hopefully come to an end soon….
]]> http://www.mickbordet.com/2005/12/embryonic-prog/feed/ 0 http://www.mickbordet.com/2005/09/the-etherwave-has-landed/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-etherwave-has-landed http://www.mickbordet.com/2005/09/the-etherwave-has-landed/#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2005 10:14:00 +0000 Mick http://www.mickbordet.com/?p=16 My theremin has arrived.

It’s quite wonderful.

It’s incredibly difficult to play, but that was expected. It looks fantastic – well-finished wood with 2 big wooden knobs and lots of shiny chrome dials. It sounds out of this world – with plenty of scope for altering tone colour and a wide picth range. It’s just so good to to finally have the Moog sound at my fingertips after years of using digital keyboards

I’m starting off with simple tunes to get the swing of it, then aim to move on to use it a bass and backing for other music before graduating to using it as a front-line instrument.