Link Here for Audio Excerpts from the synth rig at Ars Electronica 2004

One of my favorite pastimes with this synthesizer system is to make very complicated patches which produce a dense and varying autonomous sound. The system becomes a huge musical machine, with wires connected everywhere and lights flashing all over the place, while it drones out all kinds of strange sonic patterns (yes, I guess Keyboard's nickname of "Frankenstein" isn't often far off). The sounds in the files below are all produced in such a fashion; no human intervention occured at any time, and they were recorded entirely live. These are just circa 60-second "snapshots" into much longer episodes that I keep on tape.

OK, I'll admit it. I did use the synth to make actual songs for a while. I don't know if you could call them pop songs, but they have something of that format. I have a CDR full of them... Essentially all were done during the 1980's. The first was mainly sequenced (and uses the modular for drop in effects and a few live keyboard things). The second only used the sequencer and drums on the Casios; pretty much everything else was live. The third piece used only patched sequencing (of sorts) on the modular and some minimal live keyboard; the "bible" phrase was sampled into the Casio off TV (I was listening to lots of Front 242 and Kit Watkins at the time - this is kind of a weird hybrid). They're in inverse chronological order. The other pieces were from the mid/late 80's as well - Mutual Consensus was entirely sequenced and used a simple MIDI/CV interface that I built to control the modular, Shrouded was 3 live stereo overdubs heavily exploiting my Optigan, Eye Care was done an a 4-track Portastudio, and Dance... was pretty much all on the modular. My current students are mostly musicians, and have gotten me playing the keyboards again, jamming improvised Space Rock. Let's see where that goes...

These two sounds are transient sonic events that I made entirely with this device (again, recorded live). They were used as sound effects for a production that we did with Penn and Teller here at the Media Lab.

This is a really fun little classic that I cooked up one morning in Zurich (back in 83). It's extremely simple; the phoneme synth on one channel and the top-octave generator on the other, both tracking a minimoog square-wave through a pair of (barely stable) phase-locked loops. This one is dedicated to David Borden....

This is, I guess, a kind of Residents-ish rendition of an old classic, somewhat in the same vein - again dates back to the 80's:

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