Charity album contribution

Three years ago Stuart Russell organised an album of new music with all the proceeds going to Shelter’s “Crisis at Christmas” appeal.

It’s been decided to run the project again this year, there are 15 tracks from various composer/performers on this complication and I’m one of them.

Using the (still limited) keyboard skills I have acquired over the last two months of piano lessons I managed to play the synth parts all in one session  using the Nord Lead A1 and the Moog sub37. After that I just added the two (octave and normal) electric violin parts. The violin parts were, again, played straight into the DAW via my pedals, there’s almost no post-processing on any of the tracks. The strange reverb effects come from the T2 reverb pedal on my board.

So I managed to complete this track quite quickly (over a weekend) and I’m quite pleased with it.

There’s a good variety of styles on the album, you if you like modern / electronic music there will likely be something to your taste. Special thanks go to Martin Tanton for the cover as well as a great track.

Please have a listen and give generously. All of the proceeds (after VAT and bandcamp fees) will go to charity.

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Roli improv

This is my last post about expressive interfaces for synths. I’ll be using the techniques I’ve learned and developed in future pieces I’m sure. To close here’s a rather rough improv I did using the Roli Seaboard RISE.

Because I prefer hardware synths to software ones I’ve used the Waldorf Blofeld as the only instrument in this video. It has two different voices, one controlled from the Roli and the other from the standard keyboard – though the Roli is the main focus.

It was recorded in a single take with no effects.

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Aftertouch update

My quest to add violin-like expression to keyboard playing continues …

The keyboard I ordered on eBay arrived eventually (a Roland/Edirol PCR-300) and it’s quite a nice keyboard (it stinks of smoke so, after a brief play with it, it’s now confined to the outside shed surrounded in cat litter to try and mitigate that!).

But it doesn’t do polyphonic aftertouch 😦

Well. It will send PolyPressure messages but they are the same as channel aftertouch. it averages the aftertouch on all the keys and sends one value as a single PolyPressure message. Which is good in its way, but not really what I was after.

One nice thing it does do is send release velocity messages – so the synth can know just how quickly you took your finger off the key. This seems to be most useful for extending the release time of a note, but it can also be used to add strange pitch shifting sounds too, which can be quite fun. Again the Blofeld is the only synth I have that supports this … oh, and also the Proteus 2ooo rack synths I have too!

So I’m getting nearer, but the results are not hugely satisfactory for ‘normal’ keyboards.

After much umm-ing and ahh-ing (and the arrival of a Christmas bonus) I bit the bullet and ordered a Roli Seaboard Rise. It’s arrived and I’m still playing with it. Initial impressions are that I BLOODY LOVE  IT… more soon!

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