Name: Orion Nebula by Mark Vail
Duration: 11 min 1 s
Description: A freeform jam during the late 1970s in Menlo Park, CA, featuring Brian Smith on Fender Strat and MXR Pitch Transposer, an unknown electric bass player with an Echoplex, and me on Minimoog, Vox Jaguar, and Paia Stringz ’n’ Thingz.

Here is a piece I composed in 1994 and have recorded a number of times. It's for a unique electronic instrument called the Thunder that was invented and realized by Donald Buchla. The Thunder is controlling a multitimbral synthesizer called a TX802 (made by Yamaha). This is from a video I recorded July 31st 2021, mainly because I now have the ability to capture better sound onto the video than I had in the past. For Uncommon Instruments Awareness Day (July 31st). The piece is called Thunder Piece #2 (Spin Vector In Cold Isolation).

Thunder Piece #2 (Spin Vector In Cold Isolation) July 31st 2021

A quick low-n-slow throw-together pair up of the Vermona DRM1 MKIII along with a VIrus TI producing the drone -- two fantastic German musical instruments. Added in a few effects to taste.

I've had the Vermona for less than an hour as of this recording, and I love it already.

Vermona Meets His Other German Cousin

A freeform jam during the late 1970s in Menlo Park, CA, featuring Brian Smith on Fender Strat and MXR Pitch Transposer, an unknown electric bass player with an Echoplex, and me on Minimoog, Vox Jaguar, and Paia Stringz ’n’ Thingz.

Orion Nebula

First improv recorded August 20 in East Portal Park.

In the Park

Small Furry Animals Grooving with a Picnic Table

Four voices of e370, all of them doing 4 voice Morphing Clouds using User Waves ABCD, loaded with the Chebychev functions I made last week. Voice 1&2 are panned left/right, playing different pitches, with VCA envelope but no filter. Voice 3&4 are panned left/right, playing the same notes (the bass) through a pair of e440 filters. They start out with narrow spread, then the spread widens and modulates. A slight echo is applied to everything. 

The intention here, in part, is to test how specially made User waves, similar but different banks like the Cheby banks I made with intention for Z-Mod continuity, can be panned L/R for a rich stereo effect.

E370_RRichDemo_4xCloudArpsChebyWavABCD

Impressions of afternoon rain. The bass line is
the Moog Minitaur doing an ostinato figure in F.
The drone is the Radel Ranjani +5 (again in F).
The two other rhythmic voices are sine waves
from two Synthesizers.com oscillators with inputs
from a quantized sample and hold (low frequency 
noise inputs). Everything was corollated rhythmically.
There is a slight bit of Mellotron Cello voice over
all of this. This was recorded in real-time on October
10th 2018 in Naperville IL USA.

Wednesday October 10th 2018 Rain

Live set recorded at Knobcon 2019 in the chill out room

Orion Nebula

Mark Vail

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