Trash_Audio

“From a lonely rusted tower in a forest north of Moscow, a mysterious shortwave radio station transmitted day and night. For at least the decade leading up to 1992, it broadcast almost nothing but beeps; after that, it switched to buzzes, generally between 21 and 34 per minute, each lasting roughly a second—a nasally foghorn blaring through a crackly ether. The signal was said to emanate from the grounds of a voyenni gorodok (mini military city) near the village of Povarovo, and very rarely, perhaps once every few weeks, the monotony was broken by a male voice reciting brief sequences of numbers and words, often strings of Russian names: “Anna, Nikolai, Ivan, Tatyana, Roman.” But the balance of the airtime was filled by a steady, almost maddening, series of inexplicable tones.”

- Full Article
- UVB-76 WIKI

RCM: There must have been some artistic attraction even on a ‘pay the bills’ level.

KF: No. Somebody came in the studio door, everybody made noises, some noises sounded good in the studio and some didn’t. I figured out which noises sounded amazing and I reproduced them. Then I turned in the product.

- Continue

Formally known as Modular – The Documentary, I Dream of Wires has been updating its “artists and participants” section on Facebook with its recent interviews. Jason Amm, AKA Solvent, really has a talent for finding “special” pictures of us.

Schematic / Warp Records recording artist and sound designer, Richard Devine.

Surachai – modular-based black metal artist, and Trash Audio member.

Alessandro Cortini – producer (Ladytron), recording artist (SONOIO, Blindoldfreak, Modwheelmood), and master of the Buchla.

- I Dream of Wires

Local farmer Megan Paska has witnessed beekeeping as it morphed from an illegal (and possibly crazy) habit to a sustainable, community-supported skill. Mirroring beekeeping’s own ascendance, she found more than just a living: “This is the first time in my life when I’ve just felt absolutely on the right path.”

Music – Alessandro Cortini

Danjel of Intellijel on Muffwiggler.

Introducing the Intellijel Mutamix, the successor to the now discontinued Mutagen.

I went through many iterations and design changes to arrive at this final version (hence the long delay). Some of the designs involved elaborate integration of VC mixing, panning and bussing (based on the requests of many users) but the design became way too complex and convoluted. I have ended up with something that I think is unique and will allow for some creative applications (especially with regards to CV) but it is not necessarily meant to be a traditional audio mixer. I plan to make another companion product that will be purely focused on audio in the future (mono/stereo, panning, aux sends etc.).

So here is how it works:
In “NORMAL” mode all the buttons at the top act as mute on/off switches with a single click. The leds in the slider illuminate to indicate a muted channel. If I double click I will SOLO the channel and that channels led will flash on/off. I remain in SOLO state until all channels are unsoloed.

I can save the state of the muted channels into 6 possible locations (and recall them) by pressing the [SAVE] or [LOAD] buttons for about 1 second.

If I activate [KILL] all inputs and outputs are muted and all the leds flash at a rapid rate. Pressing any button will immediately exit KILL mode and return to the previous state.

[GATE] and [PULSE] allow me to select whether a corresponding channel MUTE CTRL jack toggles mute on/off (PULSE mode) or the channel is gated on/off (GATE mode) when the controlling signal is HIGH. On the mutagen this mode selection was done via jumpers on the back and the gating was inverted.

[XMODE] is a special mode. In XMODE single clicks of the buttons no longer toggle muting. Instead they instantly recall a mute state preset (the 6 possible memory locations that you would have stored using the SAVE function).
In addition to this, all of the MUTE CTRL jacks now become XMODE controls:
CLK: cycle through all the presets in a given direction (default forward) on every pulse
RESET: Start back at preset 1
DIR: toggle the direction that the presets cycle through
RANDOM: every pulse selects a preset at random.
INV: the current mute state is inverted (i.e if channels 1, 3 and 5 are muted then after a pulse, 2,4, and 6 are muted and the rest are unmuted)
MUTE-ALL: no matter what the current state, all channels are muted.

With all of these functions it becomes clear you can turn the Mutamix into an unusual sequencer!
For example: I could take a steady voltage source and feed it to a Buff Mult. I then take the 6 outputs of the buff mult and patch each one to one of the Mutamix inputs. Now the sliders will act as attenuators for the voltage and allow me to set a pitch cv level. If I then program 6 different presets where on each one only one channel is unmuted, cycling through the presets will give me a traditional pitch sequencer (although it is 6 stages).
It becomes more interesting if I replace some of the steady DC sources with audio or lfo cv and I store presets with more than one channel unmuted. Now I would get a weird sequence where different modulations are unmuted on different steps to get a very complex modulation control.

-18HP
-Skiff friendly
-6 led linear sliders for input attenuation control (leds can be easily replaced with other colors, they just slide out).
-jumpers to select pseudo log curve (instead of linear)
-All muting realised via VCAs opening/closing
-6 audio/cv inputs
-6 mute/function inputs (depends on mode)
-6 three way bus routing switches.
-3 audio/cv bus outputs
-2 linear master output level controls.
-6 control buttons + status led
-header to normal HexVCA output to the 6 inputs. (same as Mutagen).
-Expected price: $250.00

Availability. They are built! But I am just about to go on vacation and will be back in one week. When I am back Haven and I will program and test the batch and have them ready to ship out asap.

Big thanks to Haven for all the help with the feature set!

- Muffwiggler Thread

Background
I grew up in a village just outside Cambridge, England. After A-levels, I worked doing electronic technician work for a local firm. Outside of work, I spent most of my time at home making music & playing computer games. I work for the wonderful Version Industries (65dos & Big Black Delta fans will surely know of us) here in London as well, so I can’t see a need to move right now.

My first foray into music making was probably when I was 12. I gravitated towards people who looked and dressed like me (as you do at that age), hoping people shared the same taste in music. This being the early ‘90s in England, you either liked pop, indie, rave or grunge. Within the first week at school I clicked with a guy called Martin due to our mutual love of Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains & Soundgarden. At this time I couldn’t really play any instruments that well but Martin could play the guitar to a reasonable standard. Instead of following in the footsteps of our musical heroes, we took to forming a experimental-noise (read: shit) duo heavily influenced by our favorite band, Mr. Bungle. I took up vocal / FX duties whilst Martin basically played thrash guitar / white noise. We used to get together at weekends at his Mum’s house, get drunk and record an album of mad shit into a C90 tape recorder. I would then spend the next week at school designing stupid album covers before we recorded again the following weekend.

Music making got a bit more serious when I was 16/17 and started getting into u-Ziq, Squarepusher & Aphex, thanks to my friends Mike & Jos. I quickly got into programming on trackers (ModPlug being my favorite to this day) & and an outboard step-sequencer (Yamaha RM1x) to start making glitchy beats and weird FX stuff. I bought a couple of cheap Behringer rack FX units and a cheap mic and started making weird, experimental noise with Jos under the name, The Project Mindrape. It was when we were mixing down an album of this stuff in the cold, damp barn at Mike’s house, that I played Mike & Jos what would become the first tracks I made under the name, Accelra. They suggested I should probably put it under a new name, as this music was decidedly more melodic and tuneful than my previous stuff. Since then I’ve learnt how to play the piano and to a lesser degree, the guitar. These now form the building blocks within my music as interfacing starting points to the sounds I make.

When I started making music as Accelra, I used to just make music for the sake of it. Compartmentalizing tracks into albums with no planned release in mind, then just moving onto the next batch. I would then design artwork and give CDs out to my friends. This slowed a bit when I moved to London due to a lack of good space to make music within coupled with my increasing disposable income, that I ploughed into computer games (life’s great, wondrous, time sink of an activity). In more recent times I have been working on-and-off on about four albums worth of material at any one time. Most recently I have completed a remix for Big Black Delta. My friend & work colleague, Caspar pushed me to get stuff up online as I’ve been a bit secretive with my music for the past few years. I’ve now started releasing my earlier work on Bandcamp, which gives me time to focus on more recent projects.

Current Favorite Hardware
Squier Jagmaster guitar: Over the last six months I’ve strived to add new input methods to my music outside of my day-to-day keyboard interface. I felt the natural progression from my more recent music was to add a guitar-based input to my creative process. I didn’t have a huge amount of cash so I bought a secondhand Squier Jagmaster (with a Bowie-tastic, glam silver sparkle finish) and gutted the electrics and hardware so I could rebuilt it. My girlfriend’s brother, James, is a stunningly good guitarist (who also knows how to build and fix guitars) so between us we did it up. I’m a massive fan of the sound of the Fender Wide-range Humbucker so I got a custom one made and partnered that with a P90 in the bridge. Both these pickups react really well to layers of FX processing and can give me a wonderful clean sound.

Apple Magic Mouse: People may complain about the lack of a simple rechargeable battery solution but it makes navigating DAWs far easier. It must have sped up my workflow no end over the last year or so.

Current Favorite Software
In terms of DAW, I use Logic Pro these days as my main arrangement interface. Alongside that I use ModPlug tracker on the PC.

My Macbook Pro pretty much allows me to go silly with FX layering and process chains in Logic. I can essentially craft tonal palettes in terms of FX and then save that off as my own preset. That capability alone revolutionized my sequencing environment and Logic’s straightforward interface means it’s really easy to bring those processes into an existing track when you want to experiment.

ModPlug Tracker never gets old. It handles just about every tracker format and I still prefer the vertical timeline of trackers to that of modern DAW’s horizontal timelines. I can forgive the crude sample handling and VST support as it was born of a time when each new instrument channel meant lowering the sound quality of the whole mix. You had to be ruthless to get a good sound of it and I still think all my old tracker mixes sound like shit today. Luckily it doesn’t handle the lion’s share of duties these days but I’m loath to give it up entirely.

Plugin wise, I’m a massive fan of Apple’s reverb plugins. They work nicely out of the box and have low latency and CPU drain, which is all good in my world. I’m also a big lover of convolution reverbs (mainly as I can’t afford to utilize anything other than the space I’m in). I’m looking into getting IK’s AmpliTube or NI’s Guitar Rig at some point soon to muck around with some amp modeling.

Workspace and Environment
The space around me really does have a huge impact on my creativity. If I can’t control the space, I find it hard to concentrate when it comes to playing around with ideas. Because of this, when my girlfriend and I bought our first flat in London, I built a studio/workspace at the bottom of the garden. I have a background in electrical engineering & was always helping my Dad with home improvement projects, so me and my girlfriend’s brother, James, built the studio ourselves in about 3 months. After living in numerous Victorian terrace flats in London, it was nice to dictate the number of power points in the room by wiring it myself. Building the studio was a tough process but it’s really nice to be able to create music in a calm, sound-proofed environment.

It all started in my parent’s house when I was still living at home. Then I moved around a number of rented flats around in North London before building my studio space at the bottom of my garden. Initially I ran a crappy PC computer, dual CRT screen on a couple of desks in my bedroom but that has moved onto a control room style studio space with a Macbook Pro + PC laptop. If I move again, I’m planning on a larger space with a dedicated live room.

Ergonomics
An ergonomic chair is a must. I used to foolishly use one of those ergonomic chairs you kneel in but basically sat on it in such a way that I probably fucked my back up more than sitting in any regular chair would’ve done. I currently sit in a Herman Miller Embody chair in a very bright orange color. On a good day you can feel like Captain Kirk or Blofeld. On a bad day you’re just thankful that you’re not permanently damaging your back in a ‘stylish’ office chair that will turn you into a hunched Gollum within a year. I have a nice big white desk to work on that contains most of my stuff for music & work (again it could always be bigger!). Its set to my perfect working height so I’m not messing my shoulders up or giving myself early RSI. All boring stuff but it really helps when you are working / making music, not having to worry about the detrimental health affects of your workspace.

Ostensibly I would say that it’s more down to my mood than anything else when it comes to the style, quality and feelings found in any given piece of music I make. I am aware however, that the space around me heavily dictates my mood so I would say that although I don’t take direct narrative points from my surroundings, I’m probably subconsciously driven to sound ideas by proxy.

Ideal Location
As nice as my studio space is, it could always be bigger! I would like to say a countryside setting with nice views but the last time I was in space like that with a mind to write music (in this case the Big Black Delta remix), I ended up going to a local zoo instead. I did see some cool goats, so not a total loss. However, I do like seclusion if I’m honest. Most, if not all of the music I’ve made as Accelra has been made on my own, when no one else is around. As much as I like working in a vacuum, more recently I’ve been collaborating with some very talented friends of mine. Collaboration at the ideas level is a weird experience for me, as I am more used to a ‘show and tell’ method in terms of working on projects with others. I have some new joint projects on the go at the moment that are true 50/50 collaborative efforts and I’m finding it nice to get stuck into a new way of working alongside my normal processes.

Work Ethic
Sometimes I try to force ideas, which does throw up some good stuff occasionally. In more regular work I’m probably guilty of getting caught in stylistic moods that frame periods of tracks over a year. The positives of this is that I can have a lot of different and sometimes conflicting stuff to draw from when working out what to do with it. Bad points are that I’m a lot more ruthless when it comes to the care I have for the tracks themselves as more time passes. I’m doing my best to deal with this by simply releasing what I’ve sat on for the last three years rather just filing it away as stuff that just didn’t work out right or not having enough companion pieces to become something bigger.

Extra Curricular
Aside from my own projects I occasionally do original music, sound design & foley recording work for Version Industries on websites and other projects. High profile examples are the Beyond Apollo pre-production film website & the JLo Love & Glamour perfume experience website. In an ideal world, I would love to do music for computer games (especially RPGs) or film scoring.

- http://accelra.bandcamp.com/
- http://twitter.com/accelra
- http://www.versionindustries.com/

Richard sent the above video to me which reminded me of the Weddell Seals.

This video is relatively short as the modules are simple and in this case simplicity is beautiful. The beauty of the modules is that you can independently accent the modules rather than an entire step of the sequence where all instruments would be accented on the TR-808. There are some subtle additions to the modules that don’t compromise the original circuit such as a higher gain stage that creates harmonics not found in the original design. I recommend checking out the manuals are they are an interesting quick read to the functions and history.

SD808
Complete recreation of the TR-808 snare channel with Level, Tone, Snappy and Accent. “The noise source generator in the original TR-808 machines were revised in later production batches, resulting in variation in sound across the production run. The SD808 uses this later, revised ciriuit to create a snare drum hit that is slightly darker, has more body, and is more realistic”

HATS808
A module that expands on the original design. The HATS808 modules has everything from the original – level and decay but there is a very special addition: the Filter Q section. The Filter Q section has a bandpass out and a CV Q input so you can modulate the sound of the module.
“The original ‘choke’ circuitry that makes it sound so dynamic and tight is fully implemented, just like the original, but can also be disabled if needed by disconnecting the internal connection between the two hats”.

- Tip Top Audio

Here is the Tip Top Audio BD808 Overview video. Click HERE if you want to read the post.

This sound bank is a compilation of runout grooves from most of my record collection of as January 2012. The idea to record and document these grooves came about when I found myself picking out a record with the intention of listening to the runout groove, after the music, for an extended period of time. I wouldn’t exactly call it therapeutic but its a sound I’ve heard ever since I was a child, have yet to grow tired of, and enjoy listening to while working. The patterns are all unique, utilizing the same sound palette of pops, clicks and static but once in a while there is a strange creak, a steady hiss, or a resonant hum from the motor, all in a perfect repeating pattern.

As with all audio and sample banks there are unlimited ways to utilize them. Some basic examples are to use them as source material and mangle it up with plug-ins.

- Sidechained to a kick with Amp Designer
- Soundhack Decimate with Valhalla Room
- Uhbik G with Valhalla Room
- Timestretched with Native Instruments Guitar Rig

A few of the records have etched or blank back sides which create interesting patterns depending where you place the needle and some are picture discs which tend to be noisier. Some of the records have lock grooves which I’ve decided to omit for copyright reasons.

The grooves were recorded with a Pro-ject RPM 1.3 turntable with a Sumiko Pearl cartridge in stereo at 24 Bit 48kHz. The files are normalized -3dB, meaning there is some headroom to play with and dynamics to take advantage of. The approximate natural tempos for a runout groove at 33 rotations per minute (RPM) is 133.6510 and at 45 RPM’s is 180.4290. Every file has fades on the top and tails so that they will seamlessly loop in your audio player without clicking.

Here is a free sampler download. It contains 2 standards runout grooves at 33 RPM, 45 RPM, and a picture disc side. Download Here – 14 mb!

$18 – Full Edition
Includes all 310 Runout Grooves at a comprehensive 1.2 gigs. Over 100 albums recorded and 1 hour 8 minutes of subtle runout grooves, noisy picture discs, etched sides, blank sides and a few incidental sounds.

$12 – 100 Edition
A selection of 100 Runout Grooves 395 mb. An efficient and versatile selection from the Full Edition. 22 minutes.