Ambient Noodlings

Happy Sunday evening! Today’s track is a bit of noodling on an Arturia Minifreak. It has been a while since I’ve played an actual keyboard. I’m not much of a keyboardist, but I like the tactile and expressive nature of a keyboard synth. No sequencing in this track, just manual playing of keys and filter sweeps. Reverb by Eventide Space.

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Happy Sunday! I’ve got a lot going on this weekend with preparing for some home repairs to start tomorrow. It’s going to be a fairly big disruption in house for a week or so. I didn’t think I’d have time to jam today, but I managed to work in a quick session. Mostly, I just tinkered with some wave tables on the Digitakt. Sometimes I can find something inspirational with a minimal of effort by using the grid machine in the Digitakt to dance around an interesting wave table.

Grab some headphones and enjoy!

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Happy Sunday evening, ambient music fans! I’m headed back to work tomorrow after taking a bit of time off for the holidays. I was feeling a dark drone today and noodled around on the Lyra-8 for a bit. What a strange device. I don’t claim to understand it yet. It’s kind of meditative to play, although it plays nothing like any standard instrument. Anyway, grab some headphones and drift along with the drone.

All sounds by Lyra-8 with some help from a Vongon Paragraph pedal and Eventide Space reverb (Blackhole.)

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Happy Sunday evening! Hoping everyone is having a good holiday season. I’m enjoying a little time off from work myself. Today I put together this little tune on my Digitakt using just a couple of samples I made the King of FM app on my iPad. I was inspired by a video I was watching by Hans Zimmer the other day. He was talking about using just a note or two and tweaking it with things like filtering, EQ, modulation, envelopes, etc. to create something that tells a story with something very simple.

I also tried an app called Grand Finale 2 for mastering the track on my iPad. I’m always looking for ways to streamline my workflow since the time I can devote to my ambient explorations is very limited. My usual workflow involves using Garage Band on my Mac to add compression and EQ. This time I went straight from my Zoom recorder through Grand Finale 2. I just picked a preset, tweaked a couple parameters quickly, and that was it. Just a couple of minutes spent before uploading the file. I’m sure a much better job could be done by someone with advanced studio tools and an ear for mastering tracks, but that’s not me.

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Happy Sunday evening! Last weekend before Christmas - wow! Doesn’t feel much like it with sunny and warm weather here. Today’s track isn’t very holiday fitting either, unless you’re like me and watched Krampus last night. Maybe that inspired today’s auditory meanderings. Grab some good headphones for this one. It’s got some deep bass rumble going on.

The audio is all from the Lyra-8, manually played, no sequencing. Eventide Space is doing the reverb and there is some manual manipulation of a filter pedal, the Vongon Paragraph.

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Happy Sunday evening! It has been a cold-ish gray day here and I decided to put together a dark and brooding drone. I’m still getting to know the Lyra-8 I mentioned last week. All sounds are from the Lyra with some help from a Vongon Paragraph pedal and an Eventide Space reverb. No sequencing here, everything is manually manipulated. Grab those headphones and chill out in the dark for a while.

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Happy Sunday evening! I’m down to the wire getting a new jam kicked out today. I didn’t have time until late this evening and I decided to try and record something with a new synth. I traded off some modules I wasn’t using any longer for a Soma Lyra-8. What a weird little beast! Probably wasn’t the best idea to perform and record on something as odd as this thing, with no previous experience or much of an idea of what I was even doing.

The Lyra-8 is a retro looking device with 8 oscillators that have to be tuned individually. I decided to tune by ear - basically twist the knobs until I liked what I heard. Trying to get perfect notes is kind of futile, since the tuning and timbre can change drastically depending on what other controls you tweak. It’s kind of maddening at first. I learned to let go and just see where the instrument took me. It became almost meditative after a while.

Digitakt is doing the percussion. Everything else is the Lyra, running through an Eventide Space reverb.

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Happy Sunday evening! It’s the end of a few days of holiday for me. Back to reality in the morning. I’ve missed a few weeks of posts now and I’m happy to have finally found some time to do something I enjoy tonight. It has been a been a difficult past couple of weeks for a few reasons. The synths provide some needed joy now.

Today’s track is primarily my Digitakt, with a backing drone by Piston Honda in my modular rack. Grab some headphones and check it out. My Black Friday find was some new Bose QC headphones for half off and they are way better than my old Sonys. I pushed the mix a little more than usual since the Bose deliver a much cleaner sound and better dynamic range. I’ll have to go back and listen to some of my old recordings through these things.

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Happy Sunday evening! I can’t believe October has come and gone. It has been a busy time for me. For the first time in over 3 years I missed posting a new tune last weekend. Too much going on with my work and getting a post in last weekend would have meant forcing myself to squeeze it in when I was physically and mentally exhausted. I do this to relax, not to add to my workload.

I didn’t get as much time as I’d have liked today. It was enough to play with pressure and I managed to get a recording down. Hope you enjoy. The accompanying image is a little spookier than normal. Had to do something in the spirit of Halloween!

This one is all on my Digitakt, just a couple of sequences of simple sounds.

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Happy Sunday! I’ve got a chill jam going today. It’s something I recorded last night while playing around with different timbres on a wavetable oscillator. This particular oscillator can really shred, but run through a good filter it mellows out nicely. I’m amazed out how many different sounds I can get with just filter frequency and resonance modulation. Grab some headphones and check it out.

Patch Notes

* Sequencing by Digitakt II

* Voices are Piston Honda oscillator (sequenced and sampled by Digitakt)

* Dual Dagger filter

* Data Bender for some glitches

* Delay by Mimeophon and reverb by FX Aid

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelconnell.substack.com