excerpts from "Utility Music"

Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a couple hours in the library.
—

Utility Music is the result of a year long exploration of a Doepfer A-100 modular synthesizer system of my own planning, beginning on January 1, 2019 and ending December 31, 2019. It was my attempt to learn more about the foundational building blocks of synthesis and to explore the idea that interesting and compelling synthesizer-based music can be realized without the aid of modern DSP and “fancy” hardware within the format.

Beginning each week on Monday, I would begin a new patch from scratch and continue to develop it until the end of the week. On Saturday, I would freeze the patch and "perform" it without making any new additions. Sunday was set aside for recording the result, taking down patch notes, then taking the patch apart so that the process could begin all over again the next day.

The final audio portion of the project is a mosaic assembled from these weekly stems. Accompanying the CD is a 72 pg. perfect-bound book containing further information on the project as well as weekly point-to-point patch notes and insights into process.

https://j-w-m.bandcamp.com/album/utility-music

Josh Mason "Utility Music" preview

Rediscovery of a Doepfer classic - the A-112 Sampler/ Wavetable Osc.
More info: http://navsmodularlab.blogspot.com/2011/07/doepfer-112-sampler-wavetable-osc.html

Doepfer A-112 Demo

a piece I'm fond of but without a place in the collections I'm putting together.

option

find a place (120216)

Tsone is Phoenix, Arizona artist Tony Obr, who returns to Whitelabrecs having released ‘Dovetail’ with us back in May 2016. Over the last ten years he’s also released work with the likes of Home Normal, txt Recordings and Audiotalaia. Tony’s background includes playing woodwind in school bands as well as Jazz ensembles but particularly over the last decade his focus has been in making electronic music. He teaches electronic music and regularly puts into practice his visual arts background too and this all adds to his creative focus.

Purification Verses is a record that has been complete for quite some time and has been mastered by Home Normal label owner Ian Hawgood. It’s a record where Tony set himself the rule of using only two production tools: A cheap children’s keyboard synthesizer and a looping patch constructed with Max/MSP. He also limited post-processing on the sound to keep a consistency throughout. Tony would usually use a large pool of tools including hardware synthesizers, samplers, effects pedals and custom built software instruments. However, for Purification Verses, he focuses on a more singular approach by limiting the tools at his disposal. He wanted to investigate all of the possibilities available to him through this stripped-down and limited choice of tools.
The result of the investigation yielded a series of songs with an inherent unity and cohesion that runs between them. This unity is most apparent in the formal organisation of each song, namely, two looping patterns played against each other for exactly 5 minutes.
Tony drew upon his visual arts background for influence as the methods used to compose these pieces are similar to how one might construct a series of paintings of formally similar variations on a theme.

Written and produced by Tony Obr
Mastered by Ian Hawgood
Artwork by Harry Towell

Purification Verses

wlr032 Tsone - Purification Verses

A simple melodic modular impro session with a hertz donut mk1 : two swapping melodies driven by Argos Bleak into the donut ... some Tyme Sefari delay, a CP3 Addac mixer to distord and a little verb ... Enjoy

190128-Smooth-Donut

Modular jamming using Hertz Donut + Borg 2 + EHX Cathedral (with CV mod)

Josh Mason "Utility Music" preview

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