Analog Synthesizeer Ensemble -- Synth Circle Updaye --

For those of you who remember my Synth Circle post, here is Hal’s site with some pics and sound files.

http://www.halmcgee.com/Music/TheAnalogSynthesizerEnsemble.html

There is a picture of me with “The Beast”. Funny, it doesn’t look like such a giant in the picture but I think it outweighs Jay’s couch.

Sorry... make that Update....

Hi, Digs--

Thanks for posting the link... I like listening, more than I would have guessed.

That is, given so many monosynths, my expectations were lower... but everyone was using them so well, especially in the creative-noise department.

Thanks, Brian.

I think there will be some more mp3's posted soon, including the session where I played theremin. That came out better than I thought it would, too. I didn't do a whole lot on the CS-50 but there is some of that, also.

For those of you who do the MySapce thing there is a MySpace page about The Ensemble as well.

This is pretty much Hal's baby and he has mixed feelings about including much theremin, if any at all. Even though it technically qualifies as an analog synth he is not sure he wants a bunch of it on the CD's.

Even though I love the theremin, I understand where he is coming from. Theremin has a way of stealing the show and overpowering other great sounds but I think there is room for some of it in this project.

We talked breifly about a doing a double theremin thing some time. Maybe that will be a separate project.

I have been anxious to play with someone better than me on the theremin for a while. (Not that I am all that by any means but every time I have played with another theremin the other guy was just woo-woo ing all over the place.

Yup, I can also understand the theremin issue in such an ensemble, especially in light of the more noise-oriented sounds I enjoyed so much.

That is, when it comes to expressive performance, the theremin leaves keyboard synths in the dust (unless you insist on, you know, rapid arpeggios with accurate intonation)... but in the range of available timbres and manipulations thereof, the theremin requires an armload of stompboxes even to begin to compete.

I think the thing to do would be to restrict the theremin to a handful of tracks and put it away for most of the pieces.

That might be the best of both worlds, giving a nod to the theremine while not letting it take over.

I'm wit' ya a hunnert-percent on this. Too bad I'm in the wrong part of the country for a live collaboration.

Hmmm... maybe a long-distance collaboration is possible: we could each record a sparse track, then exchange them, add another layer, exchange them again, add another layer...

For that matter, more than two could play... the trick, of course, would be matching up people with complementary but compatible styles.

Paging Mr charlton....Mr. Gordon Charlton....

Hi. Been there, done that. Kind of.

This was how it worked. The splendid Mr Peter Pringle supplied a custom made karaoke track, to which a bunch of us in various countries played along, recording our playing. I then lined all the recordings up in GarageBand, removed most of the backing track, played producer with the settings and the result was this...

http://secretsurprise.blogspot.com/

Loads of fun. Well worth the effort. :-)

Here's an interesting idea. What it needs is someone who is clever with software to implement it. Maybe someone already has. Is Max/MSP TCP/IP savvy?

The problem with jamming online is latency - it takes time for data to traverse the Internet. Like an echo on a long distance phone call. And worse still, the length of the delay is variable and unpredictable. It makes playing in time a bit tricky.

One way around this is to [i]increase[/i] the delay to a predictable length. Say fifteen seconds or more. More than enough time for your computer to blend the audio stream from your instrument with an incoming audio stream, normalise the volume and transmit the result. With compression and decompression as required. And still plenty of time left over to record a local copy of your own playing and buffer out any variation in internet lag or stalled connections.

Think of a circle of computers behaving like this, like elements of a multi-tap delay loop. You hear what your predecessor in the loop played fifteen seconds ago, and the next person will hear what you played in response to that, and what you played along to. Each successive person will hear your playing at an increasingly reduced volume, as it fades along the loop and is overlaid with your successors' playing. Someone kicks off, and when the next person in the loop gets it, they join in. And so on... By the time your own playing comes back to you it will be well down in the mix, but everything that you hear will have been informed by it, and by the contributions of everyone in the loop.

One might call it a Geodesic Looper. Literally world circling.

Afterwards you can combine and mix down the local copies to hear how it would have sounded to an audience located at the centre of a circle of all the players in the loop.

And then hack away at it, taking out the bad bits and leaving something actually enjoyable to listen to, rather than the raw sound of everyone having at it all the time!

Aha... I'd heard the birthday track, but didn't know how it was assembled.

I do like the Geodesic Looper concept.

I would still be interested to try the e-mail version in which multiple layers are combined successively, rather than simultaneously. I suspect that the hardest part would be leaving enough space for the next player. This might be less of a problem if each player has the option of mixing various portions of the previous aggregate (and his/her own contribution) up or down before mixing the whole schmear together and sending it on to the next person.

This could be especially fun (and/or confusing) if there's no initial backing track... i.e., just starting with portamentastic thereminical goodness/madness.