korg – funharm

New song on Bandcamp and YouTube – “downotocot”

Last month I finished working on something I started at Mono Lake in mid-January.

Back then, it was 10 degrees, with the wind chill often dropping below zero. Three feet of snow on the ground, and the long driveway half-plowed, with a stalled backhoe blocking the last 300 feet. The property’s solar panel arrays had 3 inches of iced snow stuck to them. To get power to the house, the ice had to be chipped — gently — off the panels. It was my first extended experience wearing snowshoes. Parts of it were painful, but, mostly, I enjoyed working to be independent off-grid.

Last month, when I returned to the space, it was the hottest weekend thus far this year in Mono County. The temperature on the veranda was 95F, and I heard the fans start up on my MacBookPro for the first time since I bought it.

After a few hours of sweat, and too many bug bites, I figured the track was ready.

This Friday, August 4, “downotocot” will be made available on Bandcamp. It’s available to be streamed now.

The accompanying video was recorded in January, during my approach to the Mono property from the east, since 395 was closed due to snow between Bridgeport and Conway Summit. You may notice there was only one other car on the road, most likely because it wasn’t that smart to be driving on roads that were, sometimes, less-than-half plowed.

As always, thanks for listening. And watching.

New Track: “Wilder So”

Today is Bandcamp Friday. This morning I recorded a new track, “Wilder So.” This afternoon and evening I worked on a video to accompany it. This is the result.

The track can be streamed and downloaded/purchased on Bandcamp.

Thanks for your support, and thank you for listening.

Special thanks to Kate Burkart and Ruth and Glenn Garland. And this track would not have been possible without the assistance of Dan Phillips.

Another Mono Retreat

View from the patio of my temporary Mono Lake abode (from December 2019).

In early December, I spent a week at my favorite place, Mono Lake.

The weather, for 7700 feet high-desert elevation at the eastern foot of the Sierra, in early December, was disturbingly mild. I was hoping for cloudy days and some snow, but there was none of the latter and little of the former. I did a lot of reading, writing, taking photos and videos, offroading in my truck, some volunteer work, and relaxing (somewhat).

I also spent some time working with the Korg wavestate, tweaking programs, recording, and tracking and processing some existing stuff.

October 13, 2020October 13, 2020 paul audio|bandcamp|korg|poly-800

What Month Is It?

Mono Lake, December 2018. Shot with an iPhone 7 by Paul.

Now for sale on Bandcamp — “What Month Is It?”, a track recorded on cassette in 1988 in a frumpy ground-floor townhouse rental in Davis, CA. I think this might’ve been one of the few things I worked on that didn’t cause the upstairs neighbors to bang on the floor.

Scrolling, cursoring, taking notes

A couple months back I traded in the defective Modal Electronics Argon8 for a Korg wavestate. The latter isn’t especially easy to learn, with a lot of menu-diving involved.

The stock “performances” that were oh-so-cinematic in the YouTube wavestate demos turned out to be, with few exceptions, not so alluring after a few listens; I spent last evening scrolling through program presets and making a list of favorites.

I’ve also been working on learning the ins and outs (and sends and inserts and returns and busses) on a new Mackie 1642VLZ4 mixer. Initial forays include incorporating blends from three different Buddha Machines, as well as continuing to digitize long-neglected Funharm cassettes dating back to the early-to-mid-eighties.

Funharm track on Bedroom Cassette Masters 1980-89 Volume X

Today Bedroom Cassette Masters released a free (well, pay-what-you-like) compilation on Bandcamp entitled 1980-89 Volume X that has some very snazzy PDF liner notes.

It also has a contribution from Funharm — track 13, “Ideal Planes”, from 1985. A portion of said PDF snazziness is screengrabbed above.

Thank you to Bedroom Cassette Masters for including my song, tracking down highlights from 80s (and 80s-influenced) home-recorded electronics, and putting together an impressive package.

KORG Poly-800 softsynth from Full Bucket Music

I still have my Poly-800, and it still works fine, right down to the noisy 256-note sequencer. My dad lent me the money to buy it in 1985 — I got one with the reversed keys, of course.

A lot of stuff was recorded on it that remains unreleased; “Ideal Planes” was probably one of the more listenable things I came up with, but I’m still going through cassettes from that era, and finding other segments and experiments that may be of interest.

I downloaded the the free version of the softsynth emulation this morning, though, because

“[It] raises the stakes slightly by offering two DCOs per voice – on the original, this was only possible when using the Double mode, which halved the polyphony. You can choose from two waveforms and each oscillator has additive harmonics ((16′, 8′, 4′, 2′).

Elsewhere, there’s a low-pass VCF, Noise, three envelope generators and a pseudo-stereo chorus effect. Enhancements in comparison to the original hardware include up to 64 voices of polyphony, and a ‘God Mode’ for real polyphony. The interface might seem a little fiddly, but MIDI Learn means that all parameters can be tweaked using a controller.” (from Music Radar)

Although I haven’t used the plug-in yet, I look forward to that extra DCO without the stolen polyphony. I’ll report back.