Skylight

Moments

Christmas

This now near 90 year old 1/4 ton 163 valve behemoth never ceases to amaze me - Over the years I have found that no matter how you record, sample or process material from this beast it always ends up sounding like something from another planet and I'm still left staggered to think this was the brainchild of a small team of talented men in the late 1930s truly motivated to break the norms and see their vision of the future come true.

In this case I had a go grafting together two excerpts of a test recording I made back in 2020 played at half speed and the result is fascinating - you can hear the effect of Novachord's 6 free-running LFOs affecting both pitch and timbre and the remarkable dynamics and frequency range of the instrument happening before your ears in slow motion. Remember, this thing literally has a VCA and envelope generator for every single one of its 72 keys just like the Polymoog and PS-3300... in 1938 technology!

Composition & Recording Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2020/25.

1938 Novachord #346: The Beast Doth Gently Awaken in Slo-Mo...

i am a bit in microcontroller-programming and made a hardware-controller for the kawai k3m synthesizer. this is a demo song for a youtube-video i recorded to prove the controller is really working :) ... the song got some ugly passages but i quite like it. you can see the programmer in the icon.

2010 09 24 K3programmerDemo

Mrs. Software dances the funky chicken with Mr. Hardware...
Rhodes: Nord Electro 5D; guitar: Ltd EC-256; bass: The blooo VSTi; drums: Line Of Legends VSTi; strings: The Deputy Mark II VSTi; flute + trumpet: Behringer Model D
Recorded with Reaper 64

Funk The Tombs

Funk The Tomb

A series of live improvs whilst trying out three new patches made with the superb StereoPing Controller hooked up to a newly overhauled 1987 Böhm Dynamic 4x9.

The Böhm dynamic is turning out to be one of my favourite classic sine-only 4OP FM synths - an amazing 12 YM2203 voice generator chips lurk inside this beast giving up to 36 voices fed into a genuine BBD based analog triple chorus ensemble generator circuit resulting in a textures and colours not so commonly attributed to FM synthesis.

The new StereoPing Controller for the Böhm Dynamic has really opened up this little synth - these three patches popped out of the box in no time at all.  The second patch makes use of the rather unusual Repeat function that automatically retriggers sounds when in sustain at a user defined rate which I have found came make for some interesting evolving/cyclical effects.

Recording & Composition Copyright D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2020.

1987 Böhm Dynamic 4x9: StereoPinger

1958 Tefifon KC-1 In Action:  A linear record embossed on plastic film.. in a cartridge!

Here are two excerpts transferred from Tefifon cartridge TD/S 2195 "Deutscher Sang Und Klang" following some light restoration in iZotope RX and fed through a touch of reverb..  I have been really quite surprised by the potential sound quality of this long lost format - despite this 60 year old cartridge being really rather worn, parts of it still sound great!

To be honest I was expecting much less of this long lost audio format.

Transfer made via the tube phono amplifier and tone controls from a 1965 Bush SRP31D record player which works remarkably well as a preamp for the KC-1's ceramic pickup.
 
Tefifon Audio Transfer & Restoration D.A.Wilson, Hideaway Studio, 2020.

2010 09 24 K3programmerDemo

stereoping