Øy rehearsal 2026-02-24
Synchronicity is a funny thing. This morning before our rehearsal I was woken up by the civil defense air raid siren being blasted in Oslo by mistake. And then when listening back to this recording it is hard to not hear how similar my synthesizer sounds. I can’t remember thinking about it while playing, but I guess it was still there in the back of my mind somehow.
I also love how there are still new sounds to be explored within my setup for Øy. Whenever we don’t play for a while I start thinking that I should go back to programming some new Max patches to give me some new features, but then we have rehearsal and I keep discovering new ways of playing it.
What happens in this recording?
So after the siren in the beginning we move into a distorted industrial territory. Here Janne’s tap sound is sent through a very distorted chain of effects where I also send in different instruments that start “fighting” over the audio space. Because everything is so distorted there is only room for one sound at a time, so they keep pushing back and forth. Are we going to hear the bass, the processed tap sound, or feedback? Sometimes we hear Janne’s clear tap sound, while other times it is mostly her sounds in between the actual taps. The scraping across the wood and her leather shoes stretching. We also hear some Roland-style kick drums, and the siren turns into a more melodic instrument after a while.
Then after this fight we go into the beautiful synthesizer part. Here so many things are happening on the same instrument that I will make a list of what I remember. I have made a custom controller for Madrona Labs Aalto:
- I am playing some notes live on my LinnStrument controller. We hear both the carrier oscillator and the modulation oscillator
- I have programmed a sequence of notes in a SH-101-style pattern sequencer. Whenever Janne taps hard enough it triggers the next note. Sometimes intercepted by my live playing.
- Envelope follower on FM modulation, filter envelope amount and modulation frequency (I think), following Janne’s sound.
- I keep varying noise->mod oscillator, FM, mod frequency (both in octaves and “free”)
- There is a loooong delay that gives it a sort of Frippertronics-style complementary synth
I thiiiink that is all parameters on the Aalto synth. There is also some granular noise.
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