One of two "Song Fragments" written and recorded, today.

Meet You At The Spaceport

A little piece using only Rhythmic Robot's little VST plugins:

SpecTone
SpecTalk
SpecDrum
Commodore 64 Sessions Deluxe

Owning (many) Spectrums, Currah μSpeech, and Cheetah SpecDrums it was fun to use these implementations in software.

The Currah μSpeech (Microspeech) was an allophone based early speech synthesiser for the ZX Spectrum (and other computers).  59 allophones that could be combined into something approaching a robotic voice.  It actually used a very common General Instruments SP0256-AL2 chip containing the allophones, so the 'voice' was very common in the early 80s.

The Cheetah SpecDrum was a drum machine peripheral - technically an audio interface - for the ZX Spectrum.  The step sequencer software and sound data was loaded on the Spectrum from cassette.  It actually sounds pretty good, and quite crunchy - with it's 6bit samples (a whopping 7bit for the kickdrum) and limited polyphony (3 sounds at once, with limitations).

The Spectrum itself initially had just a 1bit beeper, rather than an audio chip (allowing the speaker to be high or low and nothing else) with timing and movement controlled by the main CPU.  Later 128K Spectrums added a General Instruments AY-3-8912 PSG chip (which had been around for years) allowing three voice polyphonic music, including noise.  It wasn't the greatest platform for making music, but some people did some amazing things.

The Commodore 64, by comparison, had a dedicated sound chip (SID) that was capable of amazing sounds.  Playground rivals might have argued over the merits of C64s vs Speccys, but it was obvious who won on the music!  I use the C64 sound just for the bass here.

For reasons I need not explain, I own three μSpeeches and two SpecDrums and - I think - eight Spectrums of various incarnations.

The artwork is a work in process piece of laser cut acrylic art, that is inspired by (and an homage to) the ZX Spectrum - which was genuinely fundamental in shaping me into the person I am today.

ZX Spectrum An' Chums Anthem.

A musical Sketch.  An idea-ette.  Half the fat of a real idea.

Sketch 1

A Sketch.  An inkling.  Nearly and idea, but not.

Sketch 2

A Sketch.  A half baked.  A single jigsaw piece.

Sketch 3

A little experiment, written and recorded on 15th October 2024.

Euphoria Of The Now

An unsettling piece using some field recordings of a friend's parents clocks.  And a little piano melody I've written, because that's safe and pretty, right.  Right?! Nothing weird to see here, move along.

Time At The Department Of Works - Andy Jenkinson

An experiment in using eurorack modular, interfaced with arp2600 (well, behringer's clone), to make something musical and generative.  Ornaments and Crime, Disting EX and some simple custom eurorack modules are the main driving forces, with 2600 lending its VCOs, VCF and VCAs

Tuneful Modular

A workout using solely eurorack and ARP 2600.


For those that care, my eurorack has two sequencers (generating chordal parts and pitch offsets here, at different tempos), which are quantised through a Kassutronics Quantiser, which I'm 'playing' throughout, changing the harmonic flavours.

There's an O_c (phaserville firmare in hemispheres mode). One half is providing a Turing Machine style melody that is changed by changing its scale.  The other half provides the ADSR for filter on the leadline (heard at the start).

The Berhinger ARP 2600 provides the VCOs, and lends its filter for the chordy parts.  (Plus some routing, and voltage manipulation stuff).

DistingEX in dual mode provides 1. a delay and 2. the Filter for the leadline.

Drums are endorphin.es Blck_Noir, with the filter being moved using expression pedal control (I made myself a DIY controller module) plus there's a homemade passive attenuator and switching that changes some routing.

An internal mod on the ARP allows tempo synced routing switching via e-switch).

PAM's Pro Workout provides the clocks, and Maths (well, Behringer Abacus) cycles in some chaos at the end.

will this bleeping journey never end?

A teeny tiny song-ette.

Composed and recorded today, 19/07/2025.  Between about 6:45pm and 8:30pm, while my dinner burnt.

Some piano, some (programmed) strings and Bass, and some singing.


Sometimes it's okay to just call a song done, and get it out there - no matter what.


The significance of the image (pencil sketch of rabbit) is just that I happened to draw that today.  I don't think the song-ette and the sketch are necessarily related.

What Did You Mean That Day

Quite a poppy little number.
And slightly smutty.
RPM 2017 - song - Written/Recorded Feb 16/17th.

Single

Not The Most Sophisticated of songs.  One which I've rushed to write and record today (21st Feb) as part of my RPM2017 challenge.  I quite like this one, in spite of (because of) it's brevity and quickness in coming together.

Not The Most Sophisticated

Can you tell the starring influence on this track?   Eh?  EH?  It's an instrumental piece of music for RPM2017 (my album in a month).

The 'Artwork' was a quick Teletext page that I knocked up.  Subtitles for this song are on page 888.

Communications Satellite 1962

A 90 second song, written and recorded on the evening of 12th June 2012.

Acoustic guitar, uke, glockenspiel, bass, slide guitar, tambourine, piano, singing, bells, shaker, melodica by Andy.

After a long day at work, I wanted to do something nice, so picked up my guitar and decided to record what came out. This is what happened.

I'd been listening to The Lilac Time at the weekend, which might explain the sound of this, a bit.

Your playground game 
Me on the side 
I'd count to ten and then 
You'd run and hide away from me 
I'd track you down 
And I'd tell you why 
It's time to come inside 
Would you cry if I gave you this kiss 
This kiss 
If I gave you this.

It's nice to work quickly.

uglifruit

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