Cole Slaw Dub

Drone in F#, made with 3MS Ensemble Oscilator and AudioThing Noises.

Scritchy Briggles

Made with Make Noise DPO on bass, Morphagene and Hydrasynth on chords, TR8S 909 kit and Mutable Instruments Grids on drums. Cover photo by Jennifer Smutek.

Sun Moose Dub

Spontaneous techno jam session. 

Pittburgh Modular System 10, Make Noise 0-Coast, Korg Volca FM, Electribe ES-1 Mk2 & Er-1, Lexicon MX200 & Alesis Midiverb 3. Sequenced with BeatStep Pro & KeyStep. 

Recorded with Tascam DR07

Doodles

March of the Crokus

Reaktor Newscool groovebox into Mutable Instruments Clouds. Jam session, recorded in 2018.

Blubby

Circuit Monostation through 4MS Dual Looping Delay. 2 channels of Eventide Blackhole reverb & RadioShack CTR-111 tape recorder. Voice is me reading "For the Love of trees", a poem by Evelyn Ripp.

*For the Love of Tree's*

In my mind's eyes
My far-off forest world
Comes vividly to life,
And again I hide.
The trees know
Why I'm here,
They nod their heads
As they watch over me.

They speak to me and they listen.
I tell them all that I'm thinking
And they keep my secrets.
And they groan and they weep.
Now and then a tree shakes
Frightened by a bad dream.
They're even capable of suffering.

Trees are self sufficient:
They adapt to every environment,
Bend in the wind and
Stand upright again,
And they regenerate themselves
With every spring.
Yet, something about them
Speaks sadly to me.
They can't respond to assault --
Fight, or run for life.
it's as though they opt
To stay dug inside where they grew up,
Tied to their roots
Within their native land.

I can still see the forest,
Though it is gone.
It had been harvested --
Cut down.
A new generation of spindly
Saplings sprung up in its place.
They don't cast shadows yet.
Will they perpetuate the traits
of those distinctive Old Trees?

My deeply heartfelt thanks to you,
Dear Old Trees of righteousness,
Givers of life and sustenance.
For two long years we sat together
Beneath wnter blizzards,
Torrential downpours
As the sky disappeared
Under flashes of lightning
And thunderbolts
Or winds so intense
Sending huge tree trunks crashing.

Without you
Survival was impossible.
And even now,
A longing breaks my heart.

- For the Love of Trees
  Evenlyn Romanowsky Ripp
  The Abandoned, A Life Apart from Life

For Trees

This is an excerpt from one of my "tiny concerts" here at home. Todays concert used my Morphagene skiff, my iPad Pro and my Meeblip Anode synthesizer. 

Background ambiance ("oh, this is us") is a recording I made at Pike Place market in Seattle, in April 2019. Sines and Bells are BeatStep Pro channel one playing Mutable Instruments Rings, processed with Mutable Instruments Clouds & Make Noise Morphagene, all being modulated by Make Noise Wogglebug. Lead synth is Meeblip Anode with a send return feed to an iPad running Borderlands Granular, Spectrum (iOS Clouds) & Eventide Blackhole. Mixed on Endorphin.es Cockpit mixer and recorded to my Tascam DR-07.

Oh, This Is Us (tiny counter concert excerpt)

Sound collage created with Azden SMX-10 shotgun mic, Tascam DR07 recorder, Mutable Instruments Clouds, Make Noise Morphagene, Kalimba, Bongo, and a recording I made outside of my house during a thunderstorm. A distant kick drum is from Novation Circuit.

Decomposition with Kalimba, Bongo, Desk and Thunder Cloud

Clapsticks recorded w/ my new Neewer NW-800. Kalimba processed with NI Guitar Rig. Pittsburgh Modular Synthesizer Box on bass, Novation Circuit & Circuit Monostation on bg pad/drone duties, lead parts are the Kanun from NI's Middle East Series, main drums are Maschine's built-in drum synths & percussion section is the "Revolt Kit" from the "Grey Forge" Maschine expansion pack. 

Recorded, sequenced, arranged, and mixed in Maschine.

Between

A short musical interpretation of the work of Agnes Martin, a painter best known for her parallel lines.

This piece is inspired by the piece titled Harbor Number 1, 1957, and was recorded for my first participation in Disquiet junto project.

For this recording, I recorded a series of 8 bar phrases using each of the following: A pair of Baoding balls, a pair of clapsticks, a small djembe drum, bubble sounds made by blowing into a heavy glass beaker like object with water inside, drum sound made by setting the beaker down on the table, and 2 seperate passes of my voice saying what came to mind.

My kick and snare are made using NI Maschine's built in drum synths, and the bass synth sound is my Pittsburgh Modular synthesizer box. The kick and snare patterns are dry, and the bass synth just drones a D note on and on. Make Noise Rene is clock synced to the project tempo and modulates filter cutoff on the Pittsburgh synth voice.

Everything was recorded in Maschine and then exported to Reaper for arrangement and mixing.

jimmy.smutek