Koyasan - New Module Experiment - Bloom and WMD PM

This started as an experiment with some new modules – Qu-bit Bloom, WMD Performance Mixer and Mutable Instruments Beads. It turned into something I liked so I figured I’d try another video (but I didn’t actually use Beads in this recording). I spent a ton of time balancing the voices, so I'm curious if the mix sounds decent.

I'm really liking the PM and the extra channels and bells/whistles vs the Roland 531. The aux outs and ins are awesome, so I no longer have to wash the whole mix in reverb just to get reverb on tracks that I think want it – no more swimmy bass lines. ;-)

Bloom sits nicely between Rene 2 and Marbles. I haven’t had time to deep dive with it yet, but it was easy to immediately get cool sequences going. It kinda feels more like an arpeggiator than a sequencer, but that’s great for this rack.

Full routing description is in the video comments.

EDITED Aug 17th 2021, 13:41

Hi TumeniKnobs,

Oh my goodness! What is this? Is this for real? This is so beautifully done, so... so... much the real thing, I hear here a professional modern mixture between J.M. Jarre and Tangerine Dream. So nicely composed, at one stage I was thinking (well at least trying to think) that I was missing something, and indeed when my face went blue I realised I was missing oxygen, I totally forgot to breath, so tense I was (and I still am) listening to your beautiful track!

One thing is for sure after this. Hans Zimmerman can pack his stuff and you can take over seamlessly and do even a much better job than he does ;-) There is still one thing left, I don't understand... why didn't offer any hotshot from Hollywood you a soundtrack contract yet? They must be nuts to leave you unused here! :-)

For me this sounds professional and top notch material you got here, thank you so much for sharing this with a peasant like me ;-) Keep coming with this serious stuff but if I would be you, I would look around if they indeed all lost their mind in Hollywood or if you indeed can manage to get a serious contract there any soon! Thank you and kind regards, Garfield.

P.S.: Nice video too. It's great to see your two racks together with your sequencer running. Lovely! :-) I am going to listen for the third time, I still can't believe this :-)

Thanks Garfield. Maybe you were having a bit too much wine and some really strong cheese when you were listening? ;-) You’re definitely right about one thing - those Hollywood folks certainly are nuts! Cheers and thanks for checking it out.

EDITED Aug 18th 2021, 13:01

Really enjoyed that @TumeniKnobs...very nice!
All the sounds play well with each other...are you running into a DAW at all with the laptop in the background? Care to share what you're doing sequence-wise with this?

Hi TuminiKnobs,

Ha, ha, how did you know that I love the combination of French (preferable a good Bordeaux) red wine with strong French cheese? :-) But no, I didn't had that for a long time :-( Instead I enjoyed your lovely music ;-)

Kind regards, Garfield.

Hi TuminiKnobs,

Ha, ha, how did you know that I love the combination of French (preferable a good Bordeaux) red wine with strong French cheese? :-) But no, I didn't had that for a long time :-( Instead I enjoyed your lovely music ;-)

Kind regards, Garfield.
-- GarfieldModular

Ohhh! Who doesn't love that combination? I lived for over 40 years just outside of New York City and I could get any French wine or cheese you can imagine, even the Mont D'Or. It's not so easy here in Indiana...

Really enjoyed that @TumeniKnobs...very nice!
All the sounds play well with each other...are you running into a DAW at all with the laptop in the background? Care to share what you're doing sequence-wise with this?
-- jb61264

Thanks JB! The audio recording itself is through an iRig into the iPhone directly out of the WMD PM headphone jack. It's not horrible and I can avoid messing around with video/audio sync later when doing a touch of mastering. For this track the laptop is there to provide a midi clock to the Intellijel Midi 1U into PNW, and the KeyStep Pro (I have been struggling to get reliable syncing between PNW and KSP). When I am not doing video I do use that laptop to record audio with Studio One through a Presonus Audiobox USB96 interface.

There are four sequences/arpeggios in this track. Since it started as just an experiment with Bloom, I just tuned the first eight steps in Cm and adjusted its Branches and Path knobs until it was doing something I liked. I think it ended up with three branches with right path bias, playing in forward order. That's the first sequence that you hear. PNW is feeding an 11/16 euclidian rhythm to the Bloom Clock in to give it something more interesting than a straight pulse. That same clock is feeding input 2 of the Disting EX to drive the hi-hat type sound so they line up.

Rene 2 is providing the simple bass line. It's 16 steps that I broke out into four separate four note sections with the first two notes of each section being the same and the last two notes different for each section. Nothing crazy, but just varied enough to not be super repetitive. Originally I had a ton of modulation on the osc and filter, but dropped it all to just get a consistent low end foundation going with the very plain kick/hi-hat beat.

Marbles is providing the third sequence feeding Rings set to that guitar pluck sound that I love (cliche perhaps, but still a lovely sound). PNW is feeding a steady clock to Marbles and I am using the t3 gate and x3 cv to provide irregular timing. I tuned Marbles to Cm with the KSP so it stays within the scale but it still does its Marbley thing with note selection and rhythm.

There's a very subtle track with the Piston Honda that just a pulsing C panning around with some filter freq modulation and some delay being mixed in from an LFO to give it a double-time feel rhythmically. But it's not exactly a sequence since it's just one note.

And finally I am using the KSP in arpeggio mode to manually play constantly changing arps into Plaits. I just improvised on the keyboard within Cm. The arp octave control is set to +1. I used "Order" mode so I could control the direction of the arp up or down or jumping around based on what order I pressed the keys. I did manually change the clock division from 1/8 to 1/16 and back to break it up a bit.

Cheers and thanks for listening.

Lovely stuff indeed :)

Beautiful! Really enjoyed this.