experiments and atmospheres. adventures into unexpected places and textures. modular synth, with and without other instruments and field recordings.

modular

ambient improvisation for piano, modular synth, and effects. little crackles and imperfections from the mannequins "just friends" module.

recorded for weekly beats 2016 #40: http://weeklybeats.com

20161009

ambient improvisation for keys, modular, monome, field recordings, and fx. the last gold gently drifts down. california sycamores stir and sigh.

modular: mangrove through ripples, played with earthsea and grid. envelopes generated by peaks feeding into just friends.

recorded for weekly beats 2016 #42: http://weeklybeats.com

when autumn whispers

layered improvisation for keys, modular synth, effects, and field recordings. sudden rainfall in the late afternoon.

this week's track was created with weekly beats 43 and disquiet junto 0252 ("sonic palindrome") in mind. to have a song begin and end in the same manner (ABA metastructure), and to have individual palindromic sections in between that contain their own mirrors, with little variations throughout. the shifting pads created with the modular were another way of adding symmetry, in the attack/release envelopes.

modular notes:  a few tracks of mangrove, played by earthsea and grid, running through ripples and clouds (and then through el capistan and bluesky), with just friends and peaks providing amplitude envelopes.

recorded for weekly beats 2016 #43 and disquiet junto 0252:

http://weeklybeats.com
http://disquiet.com/2016/10/27/junto-0252/

20161030 (disquiet0252)

ambient improvisation for piano, modular synth, effects, and field recordings. piano stretched and reamped through modular and outboard fx.

despite incredible physical pain over the last week as my health deteriorates, God gives overwhelming peace. a joy that can't be explained, only experienced; greater than all my suffering.

recorded for weekly beats 2016 #46: http://weeklybeats.com

a wondrous place

shimmery ambient techno. an excerpt from midnight experiments. performed live on modular synth and ableton. monome ansible+grid running kria, sequencing four tracks of sounds.

kicks: mutable instruments ripples resonant filter.
percussion: mutable instruments peaks, monome/mannequins isms white+pink noise & LPGs+VCAs, with gate lengths set by kria. shades used to sum the perc tracks before sending that submix to isms' line-level mixer and then into the DAW.
pads: ableton live, from an unfinished compilation project.

recorded for weekly beats 2016 #47: http://weeklybeats.com

20161127-modularbeats

live performance video: https://vimeo.com/ioflow/restlesssea

a live performance in one take. ambient improvisation. monome grid and arc, modular synthesizer, strymon effects, mlrv. recorded into ableton live.

patch notes:
the piece begins with the monome grid playing rhodes melodies i recorded earlier and loaded into mlrv.

monome arc is connected to ansible, running cycles, which opens a gate and envelope (happy nerding ADSR) that lets through white noise. that noise is generated by mannequins cold mac. (crease patched to survey, turn knob to noise at 3 o'clock, mac out to audio interface.)

flipping the switch at top left of isms connects the grid to monome earthsea, containing four patterns recorded earlier. notes are sent to mangrove, gate to just friends in sustain/shape mode. mangrove square out to 3sisters' "all" input. audio from that lowpass filter is sent to mutable instruments clouds, and then out to the strymon delay and reverb pedals (el capistan & bluesky).

recorded for weekly beats 2016 #48: http://weeklybeats.com

restless sea

video: https://vimeo.com/ioflow/gloriousblue

live performance in one take. an ambient drone improvisation for modular synthesizer, monome, cassette tape, effects, and field recording. gentle music for winter weather.

it's been mostly cold and gray where i live; intermittent rain showers and chill winds. yet every now and then, the clouds vanish entirely, and the deepest, palest winter blue fills the heavens.

for this week's song, which includes disquiet junto project #0258 (http://disquiet.com/2016/12/08/junto-0258/) and weekly beats 2016 #49 (http://weeklybeats.com), i wanted to place all that loveliness into a song using a new workflow. i recorded four long improvisations on rhodes and juno 106 to cassette tape, each one mono track. the tape deck, a yamaha mt4x, got one channel of the mixer, and two more for the modular, one for melodic swells and one for the field recording of the rainstorm at home.

i played melodies on the monome grid, via earthsea (oscillator: mannequins mangrove into three sisters filter, then mutable instruments clouds), while also bringing the tape drone sequences in and out by sliding the faders in real time, playing it like an instrument. constantly shifting between the mt4x, modular, mixer, and effects pedals. yet there were some moments so surprisingly pretty that i had to keep still and let the waves wash over me, as i had not heard everything together before starting the live session.

a glorious blue between storms

live performance video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5gfjG0A6sg

an ambient+drone improvisation for modular, effects, and field recordings from a winter vacation in the southwest. sparrows and crows stirring, icicles shattering, snowclumps falling from bushes, the trickle of tiny drops. little worlds thawing.

modular patch notes:

a monophonic recording of a rhodes '73 is run through mutable instruments clouds and other effects; the resulting audio forms the pads throughout the piece. clouds parameters were modulated with envelopes and scratchy random motion from mannequins just friends and cold mac.

melodic swells were played with a monome grid connected to earthsea, controlling a mannequins mangrove oscillator, sent through the three sisters filter in lowpass mode. that audio goes through the isms spring reverb tank, then into strymon tape delay and reverb pedals.

the rhodes and winter sounds were captured with a zoom h5, then brought into ableton live for a tiny bit of normalizing and EQing.

recorded for weekly beats 2016 #52, my last song of the year. fifty-two weeks of completed songs. thank You, God, for making this happen.

meltwater, sunrays warming

modular, effects, and field recordings from a winter vacation in the southwest. a brief respite from the cold. snows melt and fall, icicles drip, sparkling rivulets flow down to the sun-warmed earth.

for this disquiet junto project, the first of 2017, i returned to the process of my last track from 2016: https://soundcloud.com/ioflow/meltwater-sunrays-warming

i still had unused raw material from vacation less than two weeks ago, so i decided to use some of those rhodes sessions and nature sounds as the basis for this track, along with a new recording just for this piece: miniature ice cubes periodically rattling in a glass. i chose my instruments and effects for the frozen, chilly appeal of their names.

i recorded two tracks with the modular, one at a time. first, the rhodes improvisation was run through mutable instruments clouds, which has nearly all of its parameters modulated by envelopes from mannequins just friends and cold mac, themselves attenuated by shades and isms. that audio then goes through a strymon bluesky reverb pedal, set to "shimmer" mode, which provides crystalline higher-octave harmonics.

for the second modular track, i used mannequins cold mac, which is normally a summing/logic utility, as an audio source. by patching "crease out" to "survey in" and carefully sweeping the survey knob, several points of scratchy whitenoise can be obtained from "mac out." i gated this noise in software to allow only the occasional click, and with heavy EQ it sounded much like additional shattering icicles or rattling cubes.

the modular tracks were combined with field recordings of snowmelt when temperatures briefly reached the low 50s, a most welcome thaw before winter returned.

recorded for disquiet junto 0262, "ice code." http://disquiet.com/2017/01/05/junto-0262/

a welcome thaw, midwinter dazzling

a song from my album "spring," released november 30 2017. piano + lapharp + modular + field recordings; birds and water.

https://ioflow.bandcamp.com/album/spring

spring

lines // lakesounds

quiet midnight reflection. improvisation for keys, modular synthesizer, effects, and field recording.

this week's disquiet junto prompt suggested a certain hazy quality; flickering light filtered through a paper lantern. i improvised a gentle rhodes melody, run through just a touch of tape delay and reverb pedals. i then added a few more instrumental layers: lap harp swells via an ebow, through a modular synthesizer (mutable instruments clouds), and then through the same delay+reverb chain, with differing settings for each pass, to bring out the slight chorus effect on each monophonic line. also present are sparse single notes from mutable instruments rings, which, when run through the same effects, sounds remarkably like the rhodes melody. i had a hard time telling them apart; they blended nicely. this was probably the first time i obtained a usable "pleasant" sound from rings. next, i sent the recorded rings track back through the modular, this time through clouds and the delay+reverb pedals, and placed that sound very faintly in the background, to extend and thicken the "plucked" rings notes.

i constructed a paper lantern, a luminaria, and took it outside at midnight. i filmed it from several angles, as well as the modular playing its tracks. i pointed my zoom h5 at the luminaria to capture any sounds the flickering candle might make, as well as crickets chirping, leaves scraping, and the neighborhood in the small hours. once that field recording was added, the whole song was placed in this video, which was rendered with davinci resolve 14b6.

modular patch notes:

both the lap harp and processed Rings audio run through mutable clouds. its parameters (POS, SIZE, TEXT) are modulated by unsynced LFOs from monome arc and ansible (Cycles mode). that audio runs into strymon el capistan and reverb pedals. mutable instruments rings runs through the same fx chain, with different parameters each time. rings notes are played by monome grid and earthsea.

recorded for disquiet junto #0291, lantern effect:
https://disquiet.com/2017/07/27/disquiet-junto-project-0291-lantern-effect/

watch the video:
https://vimeo.com/ioflow/luminaria

luminaria

an ambient experiment for three instruments, playing them by hand for 100 seconds each: piano, juno 106, and harp.

for this project, i chose to treat each instrument a little differently, using progressive shaping. the piano was untouched except for a bit of reverb. the juno ran through the modular synthesizer--mutable instruments clouds, and then strymon delay and reverb pedals. the lap harp swells and plucks also ran through the modular, this time through makenoise morphagene, then clouds and the strymon fx. i let morphagene run through its reel, modulating its parameters and splice playback in real time, with assistance from qubit chance, which doubled as a fine random source for clouds. this was my first time using morphagene, actually.

with all three instrumental tracks in place in ableton, i applied some random modulation to the juno and harp, letting them fade in and out behind the piano, which plays a sparse melody of the chosen chord--something like Amaj2add6; a major pentatonic scale.

recorded for disquiet junto 300, "the 300th project."
https://disquiet.com/2017/09/28/disquiet-junto-project-0300-the-300th-project/

20171002 (disquiet0300)

the soundtrack of a small video in support of my album "spring," released november 30 2017.

https://ioflow.bandcamp.com/album/spring

arcs // lakesounds

gentle sounds for the cold season. the closing song for the final lines community album of 2017, "solstice."

https://lcrp.bandcamp.com/album/solstice

piano improvisations, lap harp through modular synthesizer and effects pedals, found objects through microphone and modular synthesizer, field recording of trickling stream and tiny birds cheeping in the trees and canyon all around.

solstice

free download

winterstream

ambient improvisations for piano, rhodes, modular synthesizer, effects, and field recording.

for the first disquiet junto project of the year (my last contribution was #0300 in october 2017), i followed the "blind recording" process i developed in 2016, starting with the field recording: crushed ice swirling in a glass, occasionally poured into another glass. as the ice melted, only the sounds of water and the largest ice cubes were left.

i then recorded the piano improvisation without listening to the ice; those clinks and little swishes serendipitously lined up with individual notes and longer phrases over different octaves.

finally, i recorded the rhodes swells by twisting the mixer volume knob, with that audio running through the modular synthesizer and strymon effects pedals. the whole thing was assembled in ableton live and audacity, with no other effects, eq, or compression.

recorded for disquiet junto 0314, "cold start."
https://disquiet.com/2018/01/04/disquiet-junto-project-0314-cold-start/

20180108

my song for the ambient compilation "Friends," released december 6 2018, on @seilrecords.

modular synthesizer + piano + field recordings + effects. gentle melodies and birds; slow sunshine and cool shadows.

https://seilrecords.bandcamp.com/album/an-ambient-compilation

Friends

tanagers in paradise

ambient live performance for modular synthesizer. midnight. explorations and preparations. new material; looking ahead.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Pxva56dFs

modular patch notes are on the YT video page. recorded june 1, 2019.

nightglow

live performance for eurorack modular synthesizer. ambient atmospheres. once more around the midnight sun. explorations and experiments with make noise morphagene.

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiyozPdUxVs

modular patch notes are on the YT page. recorded september 28, 2019.

aphelion // beyond the horizon

an experimental ambient/drone live performance for modular synthesizer, originally as a four-part video for instagram. seven voices, gently drifting.

video: https://www.instagram.com/p/B3r7h7rhBoT/

modular patch notes are on the IG post. recorded october 16, 2019.

static currents

slow scenes from a few days ago. coast live oak and california scrub oak. tranquil groves and dappled sunshine. layered ambient improvisations: piano, modular synthesizer, rhodes, field recordings. birds, rings, clouds, keys.

video: https://www.youtube.com/c/ioflow

the sound of light shining down

experiments. moments. images. play. beautiful things to reflect the joy and peace of the Creator.