Tin Can Synth Jam

This was recorded at PlayThink Festival 2021 while a chair-dance class was underway. Listening to your environment through headphones (and especially while being processed by a modular synthesizer) is wonderful, and highly recommended.

I built a new microphone! And I sounded so good to myself that I wound up talking for like fifteen minutes.My goal with this episode was to use my new mic to record a vocal sample onto one of my voltage-controllable ISD1820 chips (so noisy, don't know why) and pitch it into something interesting with one of my sequencers, then use that exact same sequence to control two other "quantizable" sound sources, first, my Atari Punk Console x 1.5 and then one of my Braids on a simple waveform.Also, contains my first ad, "brought to you by the Modular for the Masses EasyEi8ht trigger sequencer"

I listened to Podular Modcast's recent interview of Captain Credible who I'm ashamed to admit was unknown to me previously, and he talked about his creative process. He builds electronic musical instruments and then, without rehearsal or plans, gets up in front of crowds and performs! The courage!!!!I don't rehearse either, which I will now pretend is on purpose (it's not)... but I will recognize the value in a raw and honest approach to improvisation. The struggle of a person to wrest something pleasing -- or at least artistic -- from equipment can be art, even if the product is challenging.http://www.captaincredible.com/abc/https://podularmodcast.fireside.fm/

My first outdoor episode! I hoped to be able to talk to people and let them play my djembe, but turning on my synth's speakers created runaway feedback because my microphone is a bare elecret capsule so... Not a lot of rhythmic or tonal content in this one, but there's LOTS of WONDERFUL ambient audio.

The massive worldwide synth live-streaming event of the year was this past weekend, and I got to participate! But I wasn't as happy with the jam as I feel like I could have been, so to make up for it, I recorded a podcast episode. This is lots better LOL

This is my first jam with my Mutable Instruments Peaks module. Still in a tin can obviously. It's a LFO/envelope generator, quite complex, quite versatile. It's going to take some time for me to figure it out!A lot of the drumming on this jam is just me mashing buttons on my (tin-can-version) EasyEi8ht trigger sequencer. I'm thrilled with how easy this sequencer is to use, and the simplicity of just spamming the keys and getting pretty cool beats out of it!Follow me at Instagram: @juanitohmThis session was streamed on: https://twitch.tv/tincansynthjam

Expect to hear plenty of my Wav Trigger module playing vocal snippets, a whole lot of my noise module (white noise, shimmer, sample-and-hold weirdness), lots and lots of dynamic range, and on the right channel, you can hear my phone shouting at the cell towers. Thanks, Verizon, turns out I can hear you now dang it.Only 45 minutes! Enjoy?

There's a filter ping pattern through this entire 52 minute jam! At about 30 minutes, a section begins that's just incredibly heavy. One of my VCO modules has three VCOs inside, plus a VCF plus an LED saturation circuit, so instead of pitching one or all of the VCOs, I turned up the resonance on the VCF and sent a CV to the cutoff of that part of the module. This gave me the heaviest growling bass drone. Strange, right? I've never gotten decent bass out of mixed VCOs *plus* whatever resonance was being added by the filter! But anyway, get to that section of this episode even if you ignore everything else. It's GREAT.

I'm working on a trigger sequencer module. So far it's working okay, but needs some tweaking to get it to recognize triggers when I'm playing it naturally. In this jam, I play extensively with the "freestyle" mode I programmed in, which turns out to be amazing fun. In the coming months, I expect to have this be an actual product for actual purchase. Modular for the Masses Easy Ei8ht, if you're in the market.

Very lots of drones and noise. I'm having a hard time creating beats with my new trigger sequencer (a very DIY SWT16) so you can hear me talk about my new project, an eight channel trigger sequencer that's going to be developed into an actual product you can actually buy. It'll feature fancy Cherry MX keyswitches and lots of delicious, delicious easy-to-useness.

It's my first long jam with my Sparkfun/robertsonics Wav Trigger module. Near the middle, I play with using it as a sort of granular synthesis engine, which is fun. Some of the filtered drones in the middle-end made me get feelings.

I record many more of these than I upload, and I don't remember this one at all. So here it is, without any introduction. Besides this.

A new jam! This starts weird, gets really weird, stops being quite so weird, and then gets kind of good.The last five or seven minutes are actually pretty good. In the coming weeks, keep an eye on my Bandcamp page for an album of the best bits of the jams I wring from my modular synth.https://electronicjuanito.bandcamp.com

This jam features a microphone that sounds really great until I plug it in all the way, seven flashing LEDs that somehow make chirping bird noises, three entire Mutable Instruments Braids modules, a WHOLE LOT of experimental rhythmless somewhat atonal sounds, and me talking. Yay!

I spend some time figuring out my new sampling module. I spend a lot of time exploring the feedback going through one of my My Favorite Reverb modules. Usually the feedback audio path on those is useless -- most of the algorithms have too much going on to make feedback make much sense. BUT it makes for some interesting breathy tones and notes.Skip forward to minute 5 and hear gunshots just outside my house. Well, outside my neighbor's house. Fifteen shots fired. A car zooming off right after. And then? A beep. Nobody was hurt, just some holes in the front of my neighbor's house.Be well.