Video - Navs live at Powwow

I had a lovely time playing at Powwow last week. If you missed the stream, here is the full video.



The line-up was Navs, Uchi, Wilted Woman, Goldwiener + Luma/Chroma and Hainbach. It was the first Berlin Powwow to be held at Patch Point’s new store in Neukölln and in stereo.

My 6U case contained the usual suspects - Cwejman, Mungo, Makenoise, Toppobrillo - with the new additon of a Harvestman Piston Honda MkI. It's a wavetable oscillator, packed with timbres and glitchy surprises - an oldie but goldie.

Thanks to Darrin and Stefan for organising the evening and setting the stage, to Uchi and Wilted Woman for their wonderful sets, Luma/Chroma for her mesmerising visuals, to Paul for his excellent camera work and Wouter for that suit!

Bleeps & Bloops Reimagined

A fun experiment, applying events that might be clichéd in the modular context to preset sounds. Inspired by the CV to MIDI compositions of Konstantine, the piano playing of Quentin Tolimieri and rediscovered due to this forum thread.



Recent discussion of a piano module reminded me of something I did a few years ago where I used a simple Clavia G2 patch to control a Yamaha QY10. It’s a small MIDI notepad from the 90’s that has a rubberised keyboard, sequencer and PCM sounds … drums, piano, double bass, horns, strings etc. In other words, the antithesis of the timbres we know from the modular synth. Here’s what it sounds like ‘sequenced’ by a stream of random MIDI events:



The Patch uses the G2’s MIDI modules to send both keyboard and random notes to the QY10. Flicking through the MIDI channels on the Yamaha itself causes hanging notes and weird stuff.



It’s all quite entertaining - the above recording was played live and edited for brevity. If you want to hear music made by someone who does this properly, check out Konstantine aka Paranormal Patroler. He knocked us out at his Basic Electricity concert with his CV to MIDI set using Doepfer and ADDAC conversion.