{"id":577,"date":"2019-04-05T01:49:47","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T01:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/?p=577"},"modified":"2019-04-05T01:49:54","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T01:49:54","slug":"production-notes-heliopause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/2019\/04\/05\/production-notes-heliopause\/","title":{"rendered":"Production Notes: Heliopause"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Background<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve had a fascination with space and the larger cosmos since I was a child. To some extent, who hasn\u2019t? What lies outside our reach is always the most tantalizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between one uncle that worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratories and a father who was a science fiction aficionado, I couldn\u2019t avoid being pulled into the fantasies and realities of space, its mystery, its allure\u2026and its danger. Yet all the \u201cspace music\u201d I had grown up hearing seemed too facile, comfortable, and overall too\u2026optimistic? As formative as it was to my musical development, ambient and new age music (the two share a very<\/em><\/strong> blurry border, despite each genre\u2019s denials to the contrary) seemed too naive and utopian in its assessment of the human condition and the challenges we face as a species.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I went headlong into an exploration into what outer space meant to me: only partially knowable, certainly majestic, deeply transformative, and not a little bit terrifying and of course utterly indifferent to our species’ success or failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technique and Instruments<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This album\u2019s techniques are most closely related to my 2018 album, Chrysalis<\/em>. Like that album, this body of work was created primarily on a Buchla modular synthesizer. Only the second track features a Ciat Lonbarde Tetrax Organ, but otherwise this is a 100% Buchla album, if you\u2019re willing to forgive the few Eurorack modules in the Buchla Blade format adapter in my case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I chose this instrument \u2013 a clone of 200 series designs, not the contemporary Buchla USA 200e modules \u2013 because of its dreamlike quality and raw tone, and its associations to \u201cspace music\u201d of the 1970s. Unlike 200e modules, the Buchla 200 series clones are based on older circuit designs, are entirely analogue, and exhibit a less controlled, raw set of timbres than many of the other instruments I own. The system conveyed a sense of intensity and stellar aspiration that felt right for the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Like my \u00c9tudes<\/em> series, this album really focused on single-pass performances recorded in real time. A few specific performance techniques rear their head throughout the album. One is letting the Buchla 218\u2019s arpeggiator run free, uncorrelated to the primary tempo of the track, to have its notes masked or unmasked by either manual performance or other intervening envelopes. Another was amplitude modulation, an all-too-overlooked method of timbral shaping that impacts harmonics without disrupting fundamental pitch. I don\u2019t think there is a track on this album that doesn\u2019t utilize amplitude modulation, on a music platform better known for its frequency modulation characteristics. For reasons I don\u2019t quite understand, I also feel more free with clocking and tempo on the Buchla than on Eurorack or other systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recording, Mixing, and Mastering<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each song has between one and four tracks, each performed live. Most are two or three track live takes, with a few different voices of the Buchla tracked separately, with a handful that had one or two overdubs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Buchla features the legendary 208 module, which is the sound producing module in the Buchla Music Easel, and as a result, its spring reverb and massive low-pass gates dominate the sound. However, plenty of digital effects enter the picture. ValhallaDSP reverbs, SoundToys DevilLoc Deluxe and Decapitator, DMG EQuilibrium, and other plug-ins help sculpt the sound of this album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many of the tracks feature distorted parallel compression on the entire mix, but added back in at barely-perceived levels. This allowed me a degree of tonal control that didn\u2019t involve actual EQ. The mixes were passed entirely through tubes, for both compression and EQ. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Comes Next<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If it\u2019s not been obvious already, each of my recent releases is quite different, and there\u2019s no reason to expect that to change. You\u2019ll certainly hear a blending of electro-acoustic and electronic over my next few releases, and there are things in my album release pipeline that are also intensely experimental (compared to my past releases). I promised it\u2019d get weird, and this is just the beginning. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Background I\u2019ve had a fascination with space and the larger cosmos since I was a child. To some extent, who hasn\u2019t? What lies outside our reach is always the most tantalizing. Between one uncle that worked at Jet Propulsion Laboratories and a father who was a science fiction aficionado, I couldn\u2019t avoid being pulled into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/noisejockey.net\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}