a live album... who'd a thought it!
why "Press Play" I hear you say, and the answer to that is, oftentimes peeps that use sequencers are criticised for only having to "press play and turn a few knobs"
and, to be fair, that's pretty much what I do here, with the addition of some guitar and minor playing on my Beatstep Pro
but it was damn hard work, as I am much more used to recording stuff to REAPER, my DAW of choice, and arranging "in the box" while adding software effects and stuff
I can play, to a degree, but will often "fix stuff"
for the Press Play album I developed a so called "performance patch" on my Eurorack modular system
that was done over a period of around two months, maybe a bit more, during my livestreams on YouTube
as well as my modular I also used two semi modular synths, the West Pest and Moog Mavis, and also roped in my eldest son's Mini Brute for a bit of arpeggiator stuff early on in the main piece
I went to town on the patch and at one point needed to order more, and longer cables and each weekend I would add "just one more thing" to the collection of sounds
Because of module limitations I ended up using both of my disting EX modules for effects, mainly delay
the main reverb was provided by my old Lexicon MPX 500 which I have set up as a send effect within REAPER
the only software used, besides my DAW, was SPAN, while jamming, so that I could at least try and keep frequencies under some sort of control, and I used EQ "in the box" to help balance things out a bit more
Track 1 - Press Play, this is a 34 minute long recording of a session I did on Saturday March 9th during my weekly livestream on YouTube, which is the closest I will likely get to playing "live in front of an audience
Press Play consists of many sections, some guitar/ebow and some sequencer stuff, played over drone soundscapes
I tried to remember everything I wanted to include but my memory ain't what it used to be haha!
I ended up with two stereo tracks, one from each disting EX, two mono modular tracks, a guitar track and the Mini Brute track, so I did have a little bit of control of levels during post processing, but not for all the voices that were fed into the two disting EX, of course
during the livestream one of my cameras powered down because I had forgot to turn on its power supply, so there is a forty second section where I had to take my eye off the ball to get the camera turned back on, and in post I tried to fix what in my opinion turned out to be even more boring than normal
other than that, Press Play is presented "warts and all"
you can watch the video here
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOjfL5zZuww
in the video description follow the timestamp for the second performance
Track 2 - Pass The Maple Syrup Please, was a live performance that took place on Sunday March 3rd but not streaming this time
Maple Syrup was played using the same performance patch but is more drone and soundscape based with very simple sequence stuff and some guitar
because of this Maple Syrup is really just another version, if you like, of Press Play, but I wanted to include it on this release
you can watch the video for this performance here
www.youtube.com/watch?v=19dpVpmfaQA
Regarding my livestreams, I would like to thank everyone who has been tuning in for my verbal rambling and modular faffs for anything between two to six hours each time, you are all very much appreciated
cheers,
andy
released March 14, 2024
