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Intelligent Synthetic Music

Please peruse the links for this site on the left to find out more about myself and for more information about certain tracks not feature here. There are also links that take you to additional sites with further new mp3 downloads of my music.

Below is a selection of tracks composed from 2004 to date.

Xon Xoff

A clear tribute to Kraftwerk made using two different Speak and Spells, computer voices, synths, samples and a picture of my face!

2.4GHz Athlon PC, Adobe Audition 1.5, Emu Audity 2000 for organy type sounds, Emu EIIIx for harp glissando, Original Speak and Spell, Super Speak and Spell, Say IT speech, Zap MS20 samples, drums samples including an 808 open hi-hat. Lots of mangling, time stretching looping, EQing, effecting and mixing all done using Adobe Audition 1.5. Final mastering performed using T-Racks plugin.

Very difficult to write in the end and some of the samples were hard to get sounding right. Several melodies were tried and abandoned. The drums also went through a period of evolution. After some hard decisions the track started coming together. Lots of time was spent tweaking before an acceptable mix was made.

I had a few ides that I wanted to write a homage to Kraftwerk. Also I wanted to think about transportation in a different way. This was the transportation of data and information. Modems can be used to do this. To continue the computery theme Speak and Spell and computer speech was used.

Xon Xoff (pronounced eks-AWN eks-AWF) is a protocol for controlling the flow of data between computers.

Step To It

Made from samples from this great website www.miniorgan.com

The Release

A tribute to the great Dr Robert A. Moog who died on the 21st August 2005 from a brain tumour.

Made using Moog Modular and Minimoog softsynths from Arturia, a Moog demonstration record and Bob Moog speech samples.

This track got to the attention of Arturia and made it as their November 2005 Highlight Of The Month. This is something I found very flattering as you can imagine!

Highlight Of The Month

The Dreams We Make Real

I was inspired to make this track after chatting to a Fairlight owner - Hi Gerald!

I'd been making banks of Fairlight samples both from the standard library available from the Digital Domain Fairlight IIx CD and from Trevor Horn's use of the IIx on various albums he produced notably Yes' 90125.

All Fairlight samples, percussion and effect sounds come from my Casio FZ-20m. The choir pad comes from my recently put back together Roland S770. Polysynth pad and bells at the end come from my Roland JX-10. The sequenced motif and portamento lead type synth sound are from my Roland Juno-106. The track was mixed, EQed and effects added all in Adobe Audition 1.5. Mastering courtesy of T-Racks VST plugin.

Voynich Tour De France Etape 2

Another homage to Kling Klang this time taking on their more modern style. This track is my response to a friend's request (Hi Mike!) for a Kraftwerk tribute album to be released for fun in the near future (Jan 2007). I've replicated the arrangement of the original and used closed sounding synth voices but I didn't want to clone the track exactly. I still wanted it to be one of my synth tracks in essence.

Audity 2000

This was made mostly with an Emu Audity 2000 synth module with support from a Roland VP9000 for vocoder effects. All the tracks were sequenced using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. Mixing, EQ and effects added using Adobe Audition 1.5. Mastering with T-Racks VST plugin .

Voynich Kraftwerk Live Introduction

Kraftwerk have always introduced themselves using a computer generated speech phrase. I have done my best to emulate this using this great free speech progam called SayIt.

Kraftwerk Live

Meine Damen und Herren

Ladies and gentlemen

Heute Abend aus Deutschland

Die Mensch Maschine

K R A F T W E R K!

Voynich Airwaves

OK yet another homage to Kling Klang this time from the very retro Radioactivity album from 1975. Again, I've replicated the arrangement of the original and used close sounding synth voices but I didn't want to clone the track exactly. As before, I still wanted it to be one of my synth tracks in essence.

Radio waves in the air

This was constructed using a Korg DW8000 in unison mode trying to be a Minimoog for solo lines and the bass line (it sort of got there). The original Vako Orchestron strings were faked using my Emulator EIIIxp and its Mellotron violins and Chamberlin strings samples. The percussion is from my Yamaha CS-10 analogue synth sampled into and spat out from my venerable Casio FZ-20m sampler. The modulated sweep intro is from my Juno 106 using only its filter forced to self-oscillation with me manipulating the cut-off freq and LFO rate sliders manually. Glockenspiel news intro sound from my EIIIxp and the vocals were my own.

All the tracks were sequenced using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9 from a MIDI file found on the internet. However, there was a lot of repairing needed to be done to that file before it emulated the original track. Mixing, EQ and effects added using Adobe Audition 1.5. Mastering with T-Racks VST plugin.

Voynich Pocket Calculator (Crazy Frog Mix)

This is a bit of a mash up - I just can't seem to stop or I just can't get enough! Pocket Calculator is from the 1981 album Computer World which then got remixed (completely reworked) on The Mix album of 1991. I have taken it yet further with additions from the annoying thing that is the Crazy Frog. My kids love the Crazy Frog so I had to incorporate him into this track to make it so daft.

Ding! Ding!

The bulk of the song was derived from a MIDI file found on the net sequenced using Cakewalk Pro Audio 9. Then the song was crafted using the Audity 2000 again for all synth, bass and drum parts. The sequenced Ding Dings are Crazy Frog samples loaded into my Roland VP9000 sampler. Additional Crazy Frog samples were arranged in my digital audio workstation software. Mixing, EQ and effects added using Adobe Audition 1.5. Mastering with T-Racks VST plugin. The vocals were my own - they were hard to do when you have your tongue firmly implanted in your cheek!

My face in a spectrogram

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