MRE 000 by Swircle 987

MRE, i.e. "Modular Rhythm Experiment," 000 is my first attempt at putting together a rather comprehensive percussion section using my semi-modular synths. Well, at first it was that. Less than entirely infrequently, however, some sort of awesome, albeit non-percussive, sound would emanate from the synths which had to be recorded as such.

Woke up "in the middle of the night" -- my favorite time to wake up -- and decided to go ahead with my plans to patch up such an analog rhythm section. I should mention, before I forget, that the primary bass drum, cymbals, and hats sounds are actually digital, improvised with me Akai Fires whilst tweaking away at the parameters of me synths.

Somehow or another the tempo became 70 bpm, tapped out to the feel of the sounds coming from me synths, although I effectively doubled the tempo by adding more bass drum events in the last three takes. Just FYI.

Essentially, the plan was to create a couple of layers of pulse width modulations, PWMs, one controlling the other, which would both be controlled via a semi-self-generative patching on another synth, the latter turning out to be me Crave this time. The former layers of CV were performed on one Neutron. Then all of these signals were sent to another Neutron, which was intended to be the percussion synth sound source. Well, turned out the control Neutron sounded cool, too, so I recorded that as well, although in a separate track simultaneously with the other Neutron. The Crave itself is not, per se, heard explicitly in these recording. Instead, it acts more like the brain of these sonic organisms.

Well, it turned out that not every CV parameter I dreamt up was available on me synths, e.g. a noise level CV input, so I had to improvise some alternate plans based on me sketch. To be sure, attenuation was applied to every control signal in order to obtain finer ... control signals.

I've been wanting to create modular style percussion sounds for some time now, so I am quite happy to have finally started doing so. I say "started" because I intend to create many more of these sorts of pieces, hence the "000" in the name of this one.

Perhaps we should refer to the genre of these pieces, minus the last three, as "Mod Step"? as in "Modular Dubstep" ... .

Should also mention: each of the takes which comprise the tunes culminating from this experiment are much more loosely connected to one another than any number of other variations of a single tune; really they're all separate tunes, although they share some commonalities and, of course, the same patching.

Swircle 987, aka Will Beazley, is an abstractician. An abstractician deals primarily with things in the abstract such as Mathematics, Music, and Art. Swircle 987 is the name Will Beazley has given to himself for the purpose of representing his music and art.

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