vogelscheiss: chuck graef’s sonic blog

Patch, a short film by Chris Romero.  More info here.

• Friday March 20 at 8:45AM
• Friday March 20 at 11:45PM
• Thursday March 26 at 8:55AM, and
• Friday March 27 at 5:35AM

Plugging away at notating an hour’s worth of some pretty layered and complex orchestration.  Quite the project, moving along.  To think this ball started rolling in July ‘07.

Strongly emotive full-scale symphonic work in 5 movements, 61 mins.:

1. Movt. 1: Largo lacrimoso
2. Movt. 2: Scherzando - Presto agitato con fuoco
3. Movt. 3: Andante cantibile - Allegro
4. Movt. 4: Scherzo
5. Movt 5: Adagio grandioso - Andante luttoso - Allegro con brio

The symphony is on a grand scale, more than leaning toward the heroic, featuring enlarged percussion and brass sections and piano.

The Scherzo is the symphony’s light comic relief, and can function by itself as a standalone piece.  Hear it below (two other clips can be heard here and here):

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A quickee demo I whipped up using Spectrasonics’ new Omnisphere instrument, the successor to Atmosphere, with an incredibly broadened palette.

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I work from my NYC home studio, where I  utilize everything from classic analog synthesizers to keyboards and drums to an extensive range of symphonic, ethnic, vocal, and electronic libraries and effects, allowing me to realize and mix complete orchestrations in a wide spectrum of styles quickly.

Sequencers:

• Digital Performer 5
• Live

Scoring:

• Finale 2009

Sampler:

• Kontakt 2

Orchestral Samples:

• EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Platinum
• Vienna Instruments - Solo Strings, Orchestral Strings 1 & 2, Woodwinds 1, Brass 1, Elements
• Vienna Symphonic Library: Epic Horns, Woodwind Ensembles, Chamber Strings, Mallets, FX Percussion
• EWQL StormDrum, Bosendorfer 290, Symphonic Choirs

Other Sample Libraries:

• EWQL RA, Colossus
• AMG Kick Ass Brass
• RealGuitar
• LPC Electric Distortion & Clean Guitar
• Spectrasonics Vocal Planet, Distorted Reality 1 & 2, Omnisphere, Trillian, Stylus RMX (with expansion libraries - Retro Funk, Backbeat, Ethno Techno, Skippy’s Big Bad Beats, Liquid Grooves, Burning Grooves)
• Tonehammer Alien Drum (aka Hang Drum), Anti-Drum Vols. 1 & 2, Bamblong, Bamboo Stick Ensemble, Bongajon, Circle Bells, Clack, Cylindrum, Didgeridoo, Epic Dhol Ensemble, Epic Tom Ensemble, Forgotten Voices: “Barbary,” “Cait,” “Francesca,” Frendo, Kalimba, Lakeside Pipe Organ, Little Pump Reeds, Marching Drum Corps, Mini, Old Busted Granny Piano, Propanium, Rust Vols. 1 & 2, Small Epic Percussion Vol. 1, Waterphone, Whaledrum.
• Sonic Couture Hang Drum, VA Brush Kit, Abstrakt Bass, Abstrakt Breaks, Konkrete Drums, Bowed Piano
• BFD

Keyboard Controllers:

• CME UF8
• Roland RD-700

Synths:

• Native Instruments Absynth 4, Reaktor 5, FM8, B4, Electronic Instruments
• Camel Audio Alchemy
• MOTU MX4
• Synful Orchestra

Audio Processing:

• Camel Audio CamelPhat, CamelSpace
• PSP AudioWare Vintage Warmer 2, PSP 608 MultiDelay, PSP Nitro, Lexicon PSP 42, PSP 84, PSP Mix Pack
• WaveArts Power Suite 5

Analog Synths and Processing:

• Doepfer / Analogue Systems / Analogue Solutions / Blacet / Plan-B modular synth
• MacBeth M3X
• Cwejman S1-Mk2
• Vermona Perfourmer
• Alesis Andromeda A6
• Micromoog
• Korg Electribe ER-1
• Roland JX-8P
• Electrix FilterFactory and Mo-FX
• FMR Audio RNC1773 compressor

Provided music for Shopping For Trouble, a film by Seth Berg, “ringmaster” of the Telluride Film Festival.

In the fall of ‘99 I fulfilled a dream I’d had since junior high, of acquiring a modular synthesizer.  I started off with a medium size 5-oscillator system chosen from Doepfer and Analogue Systems modules, including AS’s brilliant RS-200 analog sequencer.  Over the next few years the systems mushroomed to about 115 modules, including 13 oscillators, a couple of sequencers, all manner of filtering (including analog vocoding), envelopes, clock division, and electronic switching, mostly Doepfer but also including modules from Analogue Solutions, Plan-B and Blacet.

I adored the system and recorded with it constantly.  It was (and is) an incredibly musical machine, always meeting my efforts at least halfway, sounding better at everything than any synth I’ve messed around with before or since.  My approach was 100% wag-the-dog, finding the music inherent in the modules, with all kinds of Rube Goldberg interlocking synchronizations, led by the analog sequencers.

At its peak, it was one of the larger modular synths I was aware of.  There were definitely some behemoths way, way beyond it — John Duval’s “Fist of God” and Bakis Sirros’s giant Doepfer system among them — but it was pretty insane.  In the computer world, of course, it’s trivial to have 13 oscillators, or 78 for that matter.  But the sound — nothing like that sound was ever going to come out of a software app.  More than that, the pleasure of patching sounds and controls with patchcords was unbeatable.

Below is an example of the kinds of rhythmic/chordal things I was doing with my analog sequencers at the time.  I had a page of these up in an earlier version of this site.  I’ll add other clips from that page soon.

Like most of the recordings I did, this is simply the live output of a patch, with outputs from various stages mixed by VCAs or faders.

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Big orchestra, big intervals, culminating in a big filmic finish. Instrumentation includes alpenhorns and bowed vibraphone. EWQL SO Gold XP, EWQL RA, Vienna Instruments Solo and Orchestral Strings, Vienna Horizon Mallets, Vienna Horizon FX Percussion.

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Short and plaintive. Quartet for violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Vienna Instruments Solo Strings.

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