Jamuary 2521

Another long, cold day at work. It’s amazing how much energy the cold saps from you when you can’t get out of it. This means another iPad day today. Tomorrow is a day off from work and a new module came in, which I just might explore.

Today should feel familiar, but not the same as my other iPad patches this Jamuary. The Alexandernaut Fugue Machine sent four separate midi streams to four separate software instruments: Klevgrand Pipa, Klevgrand Speldosa, and two instances of Decent Sampler, one playing violin, the other playing low strings.

Ultimately I like the result as a sketch, but it needs some work. I need to actually envelope the voices in Pipa. There’s a lot of competition for space in the mix, and I think a bit too much reverb is probably a contributor.

Software Used:
Alexandernaut Fugue Machine
Klevgrand Pipa
Klevgrand Speldosa
Decidedly Decent Sampler
Eventide BlackHole

Performed and recorded in 1 take in AUM on iPad.

Jamuary 2516

Another long day at work and little time after for music making means another iPad day. In the spirit of Jamuary, the show must go on. Today I further experimented with using Alexandernaut’s truly excellent plugin, Fugue Machine. But rather than using Speldosa or some other bright and plucky sounds or cello, which I’ve done already this month, I decided to go very slow, sparse, and somber, using three of the four Fugue Machine outputs to feed the Decidedly Decent Sampler with Flannel Piano, while the fourth output fed a second instance of Decent Sampler and The Quiet Choir by Joshua Meltzer (available free on Pianobook). I can’t wait to have the ability to use Fugue Machine with the modular.

Plugins Used:
Alexandernaut Fugue Machine
Decidedly Decent Sampler
Eventide BlackHole

Performed and recorded in 1 take in AUM on iPad.

Jamuary 2507 – A Radical Change

I don’t use software very often. I’ve never recorded a piece of music using only software. Until today.

With work looming early, and the promise of a late evening, a full modular patch just isn’t in the cards today. So I decided to pull out the iPad and create…something. Though just a little bit of effort went into it, I’m supremely happy with the result.

The patch is simple. The Alexandernaut Fugue Machine, a wonderfully conceived four head interactive midi piano roll where each head can be sent in any direction, at any speed or octave, sent 3 channels of midi data to Klevgrand Speldosa, a beautiful music box plugin for iPad, while sending a fourth stream of midi data to Decent Sampler loaded with the DK Solo Cello Spurs sample pack. Both software instruments are sent to the Eventide BlackHole Reverb, and out.

It’s not a super low effort day, I needed to figure out how to do a few things, and come up with a quick and dirty improvisation, but it’s not a high effort day. Whatever effort, the result is wonderful; in the spirit of Olafur Arnalds. After eight modular recordings in six days I think I can forgive myself.

Software Used:
Kymatica AUM
Alexandernaut Fugue Machine
Klevgrand Speldosa
Decidedly Decent Sampler
Eventide BlackHole

Performed and recorded in 1 take in AUM on iPad.

0:00
0:00