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.

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.