never too late, i suppose. i've missed doing my studio diary entries and can't believe it's been since 2015 that i did them. the year is half over but maybe i can still make some worthwhile contributions. i've been busy writing music but haven't uploaded anything to soundcloud. the studio diary series was always helpful to me to keep up my creative energy and seemed to be enjoyed by listeners. so here it is, 6 months late. enjoy.

Taylor Deupree 2017 Studio Diary

... as much as i'm a fan of waldorf synths i haven't yet gelled with the NW1 wavetable eurorack module. i don't find its wavetables as suitable for a monophonic situation as i do other wavetable modules (as opposed to my love for the microwave 1 synth)... however, the NW1 gets very interesting when you record your own samples into it and it tries to convert it to a long wavetable. the process is quite simple, all done from the front panel, and can yield interesting results.

this sound is a scanned wavetable loop from some bell type sounds i recorded into it. there is a 2nd layer, one octave down, courtesy of a make noise morphagene.

maybe if i experiment with wavetable sampling the NW1 will hold its place in my system...

this type of experiment is precisely why i do this studio diary.. to give myself time to test out and try new ideas, to experiment.

june 22, 2017 (nw1 loop)

messy but subtle. a smashing of filters, samples and tones generated from amplitude followers. testing out my new intellijel korgasmatron II filter....

june 23, 2017 (where they once thrived)

a rough mix excerpt from an album i have coming out this fall (i hope, exact schedule not determined yet) on a lovely label in japan. the album is based around, but not solely featuring, the piano and was started in december of 2016.

june 26, 2017 (untitled album excerpt)

first experiments with a sherman filterbank 2... processing some bell loops. i love how the harsh sound of the sherman puts such an edge and fragility on the bells, yet doesn't take away from the beauty. it's a knife's edge as the sounds hover on the verge of resonance.

june 27, 2017 (a bell's edge, a knife's edge)

one of my first experiments with the rossum electro-music morpheus filter. i'm pretty blown away by it. this example isn't the best thing that came out of it today (i should have been running the recorder earlier) but i love how it acts, in many ways, as a resonator, and is absolutely an unconventional filter module, without your standard "cutoff" and "resonance" controls. it really demands experimentation and comes alive with modulation.

here we have some bells from a looper running into the morpheus which is being modulated by a couple of random LFOs as well as a copy of the main bell loop's amplitude being converted into an envelope signal.

looking forward to diving deeper into the morpheus.

june 29, 2017 (morpheus belled)

post-rain late night resonating for 3 loops and variations.

june 30, 2017 (of resonating bodies)

this is a piano sound from a yamaha reface CP, looped and processed through a couple of strange guitar pedals. the skies are super dark and a really steady windless rain is falling. hitting the studio roof louder than this loop.

july 01, 2017 (loop for grey sky)

ok.. had way too much fun with this, but i think this could also be a pretty cool way to process some serious vocals.

what this is is a bank of available voices, radio broadcasts and other publicly available sounds for the Radio Music module that i used just as a test for this patch.

the voice (i'm not sure who it is because i never listened to it dry) is going through a mutable Rings module whose pitch is being sequenced by the make noise René. the output of Rings is going through a modulated rossum Morpheus filter for extra resonant strangeness.

there's something eerily musical about this, dynamic and surprising as well.

i've got some ideas for a poem....

july 03, 2017 (conversion, utopia, stars in the sky repeated)

made this loop late into the evening last night to use as a quick self-running sound as i troubleshooted a signal and gain stage issue in the studio. wasn't thinking much about the sound, but sometimes you make something quick just to use as a utility to troubleshoot.

i guess there are some interesting moments in it.. but, more importantly, i solved the issue i was having...

july 04, 2017 (utility loop)

a few oscillators playing off each other in a slow meander... a little field recording through a spring reverb mixed in...  a patch born from working and learning the Stillson Hammer MK2 sequencer playing very slow lines.

sway.

july 06, 2017 (sway)

july 08, 2017 (taiga)

an audio wavetable slowed down to the point of become a loop with discreet tones.

july 09, 2017 (faraway and blistered lands)

experimenting with the chords on the Akemie's Castle FM module. this is a 4 operator chord patch with about 6 modulations going on as well as 4 loops on the make noise morphagene being switched around as a background layer.

a little rossum morpheus filter thrown in for resonance...

a lot of nice, bell-like tones from Akemie's.. it is, after all, an actual Yamaha FM synthesizer chip in a module...

july 12, 2017 (fm experiments)

i've been working most of the day on a collaboration with fellow 12k artist Federico Durand, and it's coming out wonderfully. i toyed with the idea of posting some of those sounds... which may in coming days... but as my studio time was drawing to a close today i heard an owl in the woods outside in the rain, rushed to grab my field recorder and caught just one last hoot before it flew away.

if anyone can help me identify which owl (or other animal?) this is, i'd appreciate it. at around 0:32 there is a sound of a snapping twig in a tree. i believe this is the owl leaving the area as after this sound i heard her no longer.

a fine way to end the night.

july 14, 2017 (owl before midnight)

this sound is my first (well, second or third) exploration of the error instruments sonic lullaby eurorack module which basically places a music box and a contact mic on a module. it's absolutely beautiful and so much fun. not just the bell sounds of the music box, but all of the mechanical noises and squeaks as well.

this modular patch is quite simple:

sonic lullaby > make noise moraphagene > three sisters filter > intellijel rainmaker

there's a bit of bricasti M7 reverb on the end

enjoy!

july 15, 2017 (error instruments - sonic lullaby)

july 19, 2017 (music box 19)

further experiments with the error instruments sonic lullaby and make noise morphagene, this time with a 4ms Dual Looping Delay providing the backwards bits... and, overall, a longer loop in the morphagene for a more sparse sound. i like this one!

july 20, 2017 (music box 20)

i've been busy the past week with not too much time to play in the studio, but did a few bits late last night to send to federico durand for the collaboration we're working on. this was my favorite of the bunch.

august 02, 2017 (for federico durand)

experimenting with some simple objects for a concept album i want to start working on...processing with no more than some guitar pedals.

july 24, 2017 (bell for driftwood)

early experiments with the intellijel plonk module. here's the plonk looped by the phonogene and sent into a rossum morpheus filter. that's it for the patch. reverb provided by a pcm81.

august 08, 2017 (tapping, rolling, loop)

With over 100 physical releases since its inception by Taylor Deupree in 1997, New York-based music label 12k has decisively defined and developed the concept of minimalism in the realms of electronic music for more than a decade. Fusing elements from Ambient and Electro-Acoustic Composition with carefully arranged digital textures and associative micro-noises, the label's aesthetics revolve around a precisely-outlined, yet deeply emotional concoction of the technological and the organic. Eschewing the typical marketing mechanisms of the commercial music industry, Deupree has sculpted a platform whose influence today extends well beyond the confinements of the experimental community. 12k's integral approach, in which the label's instantly recognizable, elegantly spartan artwork enters into an inseparable symbiosis with the music, has created a timeless audiovisual language respected and appreciated all over the world.