Unusually for me, I play the keyboard somewhat in this piece, but I don’t claim to have any proficiency. It helped me to express my emotions at the time though.

Dominated by a rich throaty bassline, a pair of soft ‘spacy’ Arps decorate the entire piece, complemented by two different melody lines, one from the sequencer, and the other played on the keyboard. A drone occasionally makes an appearance to accentuate the key. Multisampled strings from Disting EX add to the atmosphere, and some light percussion keeps things moving along.

Recorded live, directly to a stereo master, with no edits or overdubs apart from some limiting in post. (Can’t “fix it in the mix”!).

PATCH DETAILS:

Arp 1 (pink, lane A)
Surface whose level is controlled from Shades 2. Doepfer A142-2 Envelope/VCA softens the attack.

Arp 2 (purple, lane B)
Rings in modal resonator mode, whose level is controlled from Shades 3. Doepfer A142-2 Envelope/VCA softens the attack.

Melody 1 (black, lane C)
Cursus Iteritas in Fourier mode. Width and Struct modulated by Twin Waves in LFO mode. Envelope provided by Quadra and Quad VCA. Via Qpas, whose Freq 1 is modulated by the envelope.

Bass (white, lane D)
Chainsaw via Ripples Mk2 overdrive input. Envelope provided by Z4000 ADSR and Quad VCA. The envelope also modulates Ripples frequency. Level control of Ripples from Tetrapad 3.
Tides in high frequency Mult/Div mode provides modulation of chainsaw shape at octave and perfect fifth via a flying passive mixer.

Percussion (blue, lane E)
Three Sisters which is pinged by noise chuffs from Kinks via Quadra/Quad VCA. Level control provided by 2HP VCA from Tetrapad 4.

Strings (red, lane F)
Disting EX in multisample mode using High Strings Long samples. Passed via Shades 1 for level control.

Drone (yellow, lane G)
Arbhar playing a sample of my grandson singing.

Melody 2 (grey, Keystep)
Plaits in Harmonic Oscillator mode via Mimeophon. Envelope from Quadra into the Plaits internal VCA. Harmonics and Morph modulated by 0chd. Envelope modulates Timbre. Mimeophon 'u' modulated by three outputs from 0chd, summed by a flying passive mixer. Pitch CV from Keystep. Keystep modulation strip controls a 2HP VCA which attenuates a sinewave from Modbox to the Plaits FM for vibrato.


Sequenced by Eloquencer in D Minor. Lane H provides the chord progression by offsetting lanes D, F.
Swell reverb effect from Strymon BigSky added via the mixing desk Aux.
Cases: Tiptop Mantis and Eowave.

Audio captured live via Yamaha MG12XU USB into Audacity as a Stereo master (no overdubbing, post mixing or processing apart from some limiting). Monitored on Yamaha HS8's.