Walking Piece
This short composition was mixed in real time. It features the formant effects of one of the Electronotes filters, creating a vocal-like quality.
1980 Music
These recordings were made between 1980 and 1982 using my first DIY synthesizer. They were all made on cassette tape with varying levels of quality.
Style
I was into drone music by 1980, having been influenced by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. This is evident in two of the pieces here, Voices One Through Four, and Environment for Norman. I was also mixing recordings in real time, and actually performing in real time.
Live at Norwich
My foray into live performance. I set up a patch with the Generalized Resonator and controlled the VCO pitch and other tracking parameters with the keyboard. I’m playing the monophonic keyboard in this performance. A cool feature of that keyboard was a random sample and hold switch that I used to spice things up. Note that the patch sounds a lot like a step sequencer. But it’s not. I seldom use a step sequencer, because I find them overly deterministic. A sequence-like effect is obtained by a combination of LFOs. The live sound was powered by a 400-watt Cerwin-Vega amplifier driving two Cerwin-Vega PA speakers with 18-inch woofers and horns. It was magnificent! This recording is the best quality of those posted here, due to the use of metal tape without noise reduction.
Environment For Norman
This is a 10-minute excerpt of an aleatoric drone that features some interesting resonance and an analog delay unit that I had built, also from Electronotes. I remember recording it in a studio at the State University of NY at Binghamton. I have no idea what the patch was like. The recording was very noisy.
Voices One Through Four
Four different sounds were patched up simultaneously and mixed in real time. I used a monophonic 1V/octave keyboard for some of the control. The first ‘voice’ is composed with an Electronotes Multi-Phase Waveform Animator (EN #87 and #108) and a low pass filter. The second is filtered noise. The third is a bouncing ball created with an envelope generator and an VC LFO. The fourth, semi-random pulse sounds, was created with a Cascaded-Monostable Type Generalized Resonator (EN #93). This piece represents an attempt at composition, having a beginning, middle, and end with a recapitulation. It is twenty-three minutes long.