Playing around with some varied synth voices on a new project. The recipe cards that come with the Arturia Microbrute-- those perforated orange sheets behind the keyboard in one of the images (you put them over the console, and they’re marked up to direct knob-twiddling for the creation of certain timbres)-- allow for templates I can tweak for further editing of unique voices. Pretty cool. I’ve also looked up some patches on mbpatches.com, and originally I was noting each URL I cribbed from for recall, but I wound up tweaking them all so much that eventually I didn’t even bother with that. Instead, the photo documentation of knob settings (plus post-it note to remind me of modulation actions) in the other image depicts the high-tech method I’m using in case I ever have to recall any of those. And of course, none of this is just an excuse to mess around with my synth. No siree Bob. Not a chance.
A new composition I’ve been working on. I woke up one morning with this melody in my head and liked it a lot. Sang it into my phone, which is kind of a sonic sketch pad that I use in place of a memory. I wondered if it was one of those things where you realize how dumb it is once you wake up a little more, or if I’d still like it once I was more awake. I did like it as much once I was more awake, though it is still definitely dumb. For some reason it made sense to have some wacky analog synth noise way in the background, maybe as a mirror for the wacky bass line. I love that I have no idea how to describe what genre of music it is. Anyway… enjoy!
More music by Mike Hallenbeck
I hardly do any work for the stage these days, but this was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Charles Cambpell and I have been something of a mutual appreciation society for the past few years, and it’s been a lot of fun to finally get the chance to work with his company Skewed Visions to create this performance piece. It’s very difficult to describe, and we’re still not sure exactly what we will have put together by the time it opens this coming Thursday, but suffice to say it’s unlike anything I’ve ever worked on before, and I’m grateful for the chance to explore such a wild and weird soundscape on the way there.
More info on “Birds of the Future”
