Signal Flow

Playing live with Serge & GRM Tools Atelier (in quad)

• Signal Sounds • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In this episode, Luke breaks down his setup for a recent live performance at GLOSS (the Glasgow Library of Synthesised Sound), which involved GRM Tools Atelier, Max for Live, and a two-panel Serge Paperface system (hand-built by Tom). We also round up a few new arrivals in the showroom, including the UDO Audio DMNO, ASM Leviasynth and Shakmat Modular Ballista Blast, and share a few recommendations.

Some of the gear discussed:

Recommendations:

Get in touch with questions, feedback and suggestions via signalflow@signalsounds.com

Find out more about the gear discussed: https://www.signalsounds.com

SPEAKER_03

Hello, and welcome to the third episode of the Signal Flow podcast. I am one of your hosts, Luke, and I am here with Tom. And take it away, Tom, what are we talking about today?

SPEAKER_00

We are talking about your live performance settings.

SPEAKER_03

I believe I've batted it over to you to just bat it right back.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I think we're gonna go deep on what you did recently in your quadriphonic um hybrid software-hardware live set, which we mentioned in the last episode. Uh, we'll round up a bit of news before we get into that. And um, yeah, we'll see where that conversation takes us. And we'll maybe just talk a little bit about live performance of electronic music in general.

SPEAKER_03

Which is a a very difficult thing in general, basically, from our experience, I think. Trying to figure those out things out, it's always a bit of a challenge.

SPEAKER_00

So many possible approaches to performing live with whether it's with modular or other hardware or laptops. So um, yeah, lots to get into with that.

SPEAKER_03

But yeah, we can talk about some of the stuff that's been new in this week. So um I was away last week on holiday. I went to Lisbon, so I kind of came back and there was loads of new stuff in. Um, notably the Udo Dominoes have arrived. Um had a very brief play. Have you had a chance to play with it?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I've had a little play, and I had a play when they kind of unveiled it at Machina Bristronica last year, too. Um, so this is Udo Audio Bristol based um synth manufacturer, makers of the Super Six and Super Eight and Super Gemini. Their new synth is the Domino, which is kind of inspired by the Oberheim Full Voice a bit. It's got two four voice poly synths in one with some kind of interesting ways to combine those two halves, whether you stack them or layer them or alternate them, things like that.

SPEAKER_03

And this one's kind of a bit more um it's a it's a step away from the previous three synths that they've done as well, in as much as it's a different voice architecture for the first time, because the Gemini, Super Eight, and Super Six are all based on the same sound engine, um, and it's just kind of varying degrees of like uh two layers of that in the Super 8 and Super Gemini. So it's it's quite interesting to see them tackle a slightly different voiced synth. And it sounds a bit more aggressive to me in the in the sort of like uh noodlings that I've had. It's a bit more of a sort of punchy bite bitey sound, I guess.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's got a different what it's called an effects engine in it as well, you know, like a fairly comprehensive multi-affects engine, too, which I think opens up the sound palette quite a bit.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it sounds really good. I was uh my first impressions were that the presets were slightly less catered to my uh tastes. But the thing that I've always loved about Udo Sense is they boot up in an init patch, uh kind of almost implying you should be making a new sound every time you turn it on, which I really like. Um and when I started to mess around with the sound engine, I was like, oh, this sounds really, really good. So um I'm sure it'll be one that I lust over at some point.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I don't have room for it at the moment at home, but um, well, I'm in the process of moving as well, but I think maybe it's one, it's on my sort of like maybe list for sure. And I'm definitely looking forward to playing on it a bit more in the showroom. Um the other thing that's a ride which I've not had to play with yet, but similarly in the kind of big fancy synth kind of um realm is the ASM Leviasynth.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and that one's quite uh that's like a big chunky because the Hydra Synth is uh a pretty strong classic at this point, I feel like, from a perspective of just how much of a sound design weapon it can be. Like there's so many, it's like five LFOs and five envelopes. Um and the way that the sort of mod matrix works and makes that all really inviting and really quick and easy to use. Um, so I've kind of always really had a soft spot for that one. Um this is an eight oscillator engine, which is kind of nuts. I almost feel like I'd I almost top out at like two or three. I kind of I've never been like, God, I wish I had another five, but maybe there'll be sounds in there that are gonna absolutely blow me away and I'll I'll be completely ruined. It'll ruin synths for me, and I'll only want an eight oscillator synth from now on.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's pretty, it's kind of over, over ridiculously overspective, really, isn't it? Um the ASM stuff is kind of very yeah, very powerful. But as you say, a bit of a sound designer's kind of instrument.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um Jason had a hands-on demo from Daniel Troberg from ASM uh recently, and I think he came away kind of pretty blown away by the possibilities too. So yeah, one I'm looking forward to exploring a bit in due course as well.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, absolutely, myself too.

SPEAKER_00

Um, another thing that you mentioned, well, we both spotted, and then you have acted very quickly to make sure that we get these in the shop, is the new um Reaver pedal from Fairfield.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so Fairfield Circuitry are a bit of a weird boutique pedal manufacturer. And I think it would be safe to say that Is it called Placeholder, the new one? Is that the name of it? Yeah. Yeah. Placeholder is the unless that is a placeholder name and they'll announce the real name shortly.

SPEAKER_00

Um you never tell when things are announced around April the first either, can you?

SPEAKER_03

It's like um but it it their their sort of whole product lineup, I think it would be fair to say was a perhaps maybe in its early stages a little bit more guitar focused. But um certainly from what I can see on things like Instagram and people like sharing the compositions that they've made, um, that pedal brand have really sort of found its way into the sort of synth world. And there's definitely like a few pedals that crop up all the time. The um shallow water and the meat mod are two that I think I've seen a lot of people use. And this placeholder pedal is a really interesting concept where it takes bucket brigade delay technology, so the classic BBD chips, um, and then it has three of them that it runs in a early digital reverb algorithm configuration, such that you then get like a like an FDN feedback delay network. Yeah, like the kind of primitive reverb yeah, so it's like super early reverb like uh sounds, but done in an analog way. Um the sound demo, you if you actually look at the comments on the YouTube video, there's like loads of people being like, I would buy this album if this was an album. Like the YouTube video is amazing and it does a really good job of like getting across the sound. But the sound's really unique. It's sort of almost a little bit spring reverb-y. It's got that sort of spring reverb thing going on, but I don't know, it just sounded really unique. And a mono reverb is something I would have never been like, I I want this immediately. But as soon as I heard it, I was like, I really, really like the sound of it.

SPEAKER_00

You know what's gonna sound really good through that?

SPEAKER_03

The surge.

SPEAKER_00

First mention of surge. I think we're uh um three minutes in. There we are.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Uh well, in fairness, we are gonna talk a bit more about surge later today because of my live set. But uh yeah, uh the first thing I thought of was like, well, that's gonna sound really good on the surge.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It does, it's got that, like you say, it's got the a bit of the DNA of a BBD delay sound, as in the kind of slight, you know, darkness and um grittiness and sort of character, and then a bit of that spring reverb sort of vibe. But it just doesn't really quite sound like either of them either.

SPEAKER_03

And those are also two sounds I really love. Like I love a spring reverb sound, and I also really love a good BBD delay. So the idea of something that is like this hybridization of those two things, I was like, uh I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna just like put an order together, Jason, if that's all right. I'm just gonna like, you know, should we should we get these pedals in? They've been on the radar for a really long time, in fairness, but this was the one that was like, yeah, we should definitely.

SPEAKER_00

I think when you were doing the quantities, I mean we need to just factor in an extra two, don't we? Definitely factor in another two of those. So um what was the other, just um going back a bit to a previous conversation we had, um what was this the BBD delay pedal that you were talking about um a little while ago?

SPEAKER_03

Oh yeah, so um I have a Chase Bliss therma. That's the one. Um and that is essentially uh BBD-based delay that has digital control for the sort of way that you can control the delay time, and it uses that to shift the pitch. So you can set it to musical intervals of the tap tempo, so you can go like an octave down or a fifth down, and then it's got a three-step sequencer where it'll go between its normal state, the knob one position and the knob two position. So you can kind of do like uh normal, half half like uh normal octave down, octave up, and it'll shift through them and you get that sort of lovely glide between those. Uh it sounds really, really lovely. I think I I was like talking you into buying one, and then you were like, I could probably just do this with it. I think was it the Chaos Devices?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the Sarajevo BBD, um, and also the new uh Samakanda can do that in its analog mode as well. But that's one of the things I really like doing with um Sarajevo and Samakanda is those musical divisions of the if you sync it and then you jump it, you jump through fifths and octaves and you get that lovely kind of pitch shift as it as it moves and then stabilizes again. And if you sequence that, then you get these lovely kind of like shifting delay melodies.

SPEAKER_03

And with the feedback as well, you can kind of control that really nicely. It's almost one of the things that I like about it with the surge in particular, because that was kind of the primary thing I've been using it with so far, is it's almost like the surge five-step sequencer can sometimes be it's it sort of like can be a little bit not necessarily basic, but like sometimes you're just sort of locked into this really nice little five-step sequence, and I'm like, well, I don't really want to I really like the notes that are involved here. And just by mixing in um a bit of that pitch-shifted signal, you can get some like really interesting shifted phrases from that. I really like it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it turns a simple sequence into something a bit more complex with those extra shifts.

SPEAKER_03

With a with with the combination of it also like having a character of a delay as well, which is nice. Like it's not just like, oh, I've added another note into the sequence. Yeah, and the fact that you can tap tempo to like a sort of complementary rhythm that's not just like bang on 4-4. Yeah, you know, you can get some really interesting, like rhythmic and pitched stuff. So yeah, big fan of that.

SPEAKER_00

Delays are good, aren't they?

SPEAKER_03

Bloody lover delay, lover delay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um good. Well, um, yeah, looking forward to getting those Fairfield things in. Yep. Um, the other thing I was gonna mention in the sort of newsy roundup was we had our event with um Shack Matt in store. Yeah, I wasn't here, I wasn't here for that one, so I kind of were having fun eating custard tarts in Lisbon and living the high life. Um, we were we were um listening to Francois playing some punishing bass music, um, which is great.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, everyone who uh has seen the set told me it was absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_00

It was great. I mean, he did a little improvised sort of 10-15 minute set here, which we've recorded. It'll be on maybe even by the time this podcast comes out, the recording should be up actually, so you may be able to go watch it now. And then he did a kind of walkthrough of his live modular case, um, which is surprise, surprise, heavily full of Shackmat modules. Uh, and including the new Ballista Blast, which is also now in the shop. That's their new digital voice, which a lot of people are quite excited about, I think.

SPEAKER_03

You were uh speaking quite highly of that as well. You're saying it sounded really good in the demo.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's great. It's kind of you know, it's it's got Shackmat's kind of um presets system, which they they're really kind of one of the few Euro brands that uses the uh the select bus on the EuroApp Power standard to kind of send information to switch presets, which is really useful for live stuff. You can kind of get changes that occur through various modules at the same time. But yeah, it just sounds really good in all three modes, and I think it's another really versatile member of their lineup.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Did we you also did the DIY workshop as well? We had a like building DIY kits. What one did you build?

SPEAKER_00

I haven't actually built it yet because um during the workshop I was on sort of getting kebabs duty.

SPEAKER_03

And uh much more important.

SPEAKER_00

It's a really important role in the DIY workshop, is making sure people are fed. Um, but I am gonna build the dual dagger. Are you gonna have a kebab while you build it? Yeah, I'll have one afterwards to celebrate. Yeah, a little celebratory post-build kebab.

SPEAKER_03

We're playing the classic grandmaster.

SPEAKER_00

Very good. Um cool. So, yeah, that's kind of the newsy stuff, I think. Um we will probably be seeing a lot more stuff ahead of Superbooth. And we should probably mention that our next edition of the podcast will be recorded, all being well, uh, at Superbooth.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We are both going for the first couple of days, and we're gonna try and speak to a few people there, do a bit of recording on site, um round up what we are seeing, and um try and give you a little bit of a flavor of the event. So for anyone that doesn't know Superbooth is the big modular synth and well, all sorts of synths, kind of um how would you describe it? You did a really good blog about this um for first timers as well.

SPEAKER_03

It's sort of like a somewhere between a music festival and a trade show. It's kind of got this outdoor indoor thing where there's a lot of uh people exhibiting inside, showing their stuff, and that that part feels a little bit more like a traditional trade show because it's quite noisy. Um but then very quickly most of the vendors are in tents outside, getting caked in dust as well. Some of the dustiest equipment, but by like the day three, it's it's a dust fest. But um it's this really lovely outdoors. Usually Berlin has great weather at that time of year as well. Um and it's got like loads of live music and it just sort of feels like a bit of a hybrid of those two things, really.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. No, so looking forward to that. And um, yeah, if you've got any questions, um anything you want to um want us to cover while we're there or anything you're particularly interested in checking out, then you can send us questions at signalflow at signalsound.com um or comment on the video or you know, send us a message anywhere you like. But we always love hearing your feedback and questions. Should also say we've got some great questions in, which we probably won't have time to cover all of or maybe even any of in this episode, but we are saving all you know anything that you send us. Do keep them coming because they are really useful for us. And uh all the feedback is much appreciated too.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, we're surprised that anyone cared.

SPEAKER_00

So we uh we we will as I said last time, we're gonna we're not gonna cancel it yet, we're gonna keep going until further notice. So, shall we get into the meat of the episode, which is gonna be a kind of exploration of your live setup, I guess, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so I'll start by talking a little bit about um the the whole night in a sort of more generalized sense, um, because this was also the first time I've ever organized a gig myself. So it was myself and Sonia Killman, um, we both were sort of looking for uh places to play quadriphonic music, having both sort of started to delve into that and thinking it was really great, and then sort of realizing that Glasgow didn't really have anything to sort of cater to that. Um and so rather than just sort of wait and hope that someone else puts it on, we just decided that we'll um figure out a way of kind of doing something ourselves. Um and the main reason I think we both wanted to do it was as we started to explore um working in quadriphonic, we kind of realized there's this the the sort of spatial aspect is is so interesting to work with from an artistic perspective. Um and it's so I guess unique as well because not many people I think ever really experience quadriphonic. It's it's not really a thing that happens, you know, all that often. It's quite a rarity. Um and so I just being able to sort of share this sensory experience with people we thought would be really nice.

SPEAKER_00

Uh and just to just to very quickly state the obvious for um the actual sort of configuration of that, then is it a speaker in each of four corners of a room? So you have a kind of two-dimensional sound field.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so every gig you've ever been to is usually stereo. So you have two speakers at the front of the room. Quadraphonic adds two speakers at the back of the room, ideally in a square, but we were a touch more rectangular just to fit as many people in as possible. Um and it's the nature of having uh two at the front and two at the back, and the ability to sort of control what channels audio passes through that allows you to create sort of these like whooshing, swirling sensations of particular stems and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_00

Um it's obviously gonna be hard to convey that aspect of it in a video like this, which is stereo, but I believe we'll have a couple of clips maybe with a bit of a so people can get a little bit of a flavor of what the um space was like. And um, I mean, I'll I can describe it as well very briefly for our audio listeners. It was a kind of rectangular rib, you should say, held about 70 or 80 people there about 70 people, yeah. And it's um it's in an old school building, beautiful old building in Glasgow with like nice kind of vaulted ceiling and and um skylights and stuff. And um, for me, as someone that's come from slight, slightly more um, I guess, gigs and clubs which are a bit more uh active and uh you know full on. This was very much people sitting on cushions and under blankets in some cases and deeply. Sleeping bags in one. Sleeping bags, yeah, yeah. It was it was really refreshing. It was um yeah, a really interesting, you know, young crowd, all really um open-minded in terms of the music they were hearing and some first timers too. So, yeah, if for if there's a little flavor of it we can intersperse here, we will do so.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so um basically we kind of wanted it to feel there's there's no way that you should experience something like that stood up, and you're like standing, because it's it was four 30-minute sets, and quite frankly, that's just too long to be stood while you're also trying to deeply listen. So we almost knew from the get-go it was going to be like a really seated affair, and we just kind of leaned into that by saying you can bring your own pillows, and we brought some yoga mats and stuff like that, just so that people could sprawl out. And it turned out that pretty much as far as I could see, as many people who could lie down were lying down and just sort of closing their eyes. Um, and it was it was a really it was a really profound experience in some ways because the first time I experienced quadriphonic, I had a very similar thing where um it made me realize how little I actually listen at a gig. Um because when I'm at a gig, I'm like watching someone perform, and there's like this performance aspect of like I have to see what they're doing and I'm interested in what they're doing, and then there's light and there's visuals and there's all of these things. Um and the actual time I spend really focused and really like deeply listening to something is actually quite small. Like it's almost like so secondary, and it's like a passive thing that I'm doing as I'm as I'm sort of watching this wider experience. And in certain circumstances, that's great. Like I saw David Byrne recently, and that was such a feast for the eyes that I wouldn't have wanted to have like had my eyes closed. It was beautiful, but it was quite nice to sort of almost reverse that and be like incredibly minimal minimal lighting. It was basically just a few orange orbs around the room. Um, there was very little to pay attention to, even though some of the performers were doing like live improvised stuff. Um the whole point was more to just get you to to focus and listen. And so closing your eyes was like very much encouraged at the start of the gig. Um and yeah, it what was your experience like of that aspect? I don't know if you were closing your eyes the whole time.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I did have my eyes closed for most of it, yeah, I've got to say, which was quite new. And um, yeah, I was sitting on a cushion um with uh yeah with my friend Paul, and we were um yeah, really quite different from your average gig for sure. I mean, I've been to a couple of gigs in the past where the performers have played behind a sheet or something, you know, because they don't want the focus to be on them. Um, you know, I've been to you know, Moody Man from Detroit and Basic Channel in the years gone by have paid, you know, played behind sheets. But um so that concept of like not looking at the performer isn't completely new, but certainly the kind of sitting down in an immersive space and deep listening was something I'd not really done before. Yeah. Um and it was quite, yeah, it was good. It was um the sound was really nice. The re you know, the room acoustics sort of complemented it well as well. Um, and the first performer, Matthias, was it?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Um, he was doing some interesting stuff with a a speaker on a stick, which he was kind of um with like insect sounds that he was kind of waving overhead and tiptoeing through in his socks. So it was like, I mean, that was actually quite. I know people had their eyes closed, but there was a slightly performance aspect to that.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Which I I did open my eyes a couple of times, and I was like, there's a guy with a stick tiptoeing around in his socks. I mean, that's that's hard to ignore. It is hard to ignore.

SPEAKER_03

I find it interesting as well, though, because uh I think that you mentioned the idea of like a performer being um in some way like obfuscated and like out of sight. Um you still have all the sensory experiences of like being around people and an awareness of like all of the other things in the room. I feel like it's only when you close, like for me at least, it's only when I fully close my eyes at a gig that I'm like the only sense that I actually have at this point is just the sound. Um and I don't know if that that was true for you of in terms of like the difference between what some of those gigs where you you you couldn't see the performer and that wasn't the point. But almost like you still had the sense of like I'm in a room with these.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you were still dancing in a club sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. It was still quite full on it. That's what I mean. It was yeah, it was very different. It wasn't a kind of um this was more like this is closer to you know, like a classical concert or something, I guess, where it's really just about listening. But whereas a classical concert, you're looking at the performer on the stage, yeah, and it's very much a kind of you know uh one way traffic from the stage to you. This felt bit more like you were just in your own world but together with other people. Yeah. Which is quite a nice little nice nice place to spend a couple of hours.

SPEAKER_03

It was a nice place to spend a couple of hours. And and I I would have to say a big thank you to Gloss as well for uh Lewis in particular as well for uh all the help in getting it all set up and stuff. It's such a lovely space that they have. We've mentioned Gloss on the podcast before, but just very briefly there a library of synthesizers in Glasgow. Not too dissimilar to our space, but it the whole function is as a library so you can go in and like book some time and try some stuff and they've got some lovely gear. And we were using essentially an offshoot room in that building to kind of run that gig.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah it's good. I'm kind of excited about what other stuff might be possible to do in that space in future because it's given me a few ideas.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah it we're definitely going to do another uh gig like this uh because it was a really big success. Like it's sold out and it's the first time we've ever put on a gig. Would you do another quad one or would you Oh yeah I think I think it would be like trying to figure out other uh other avenues of like you know spatial stuff and maybe it's like we do a bit of a mix similar to this of like performance uh based artists and then maybe more sound design artists and dispersing but um it went really well so I guess I can talk a little bit more now that we've kind of set the scene a wee bit I can kind of talk more specifically about the music in my set and also like what I had done in the sort of build up yeah yeah what do you want to just very briefly kind of well not even very briefly do you want to just kind of tell us in as much detail as you like um what what the setup was because it was quite unusual I think. Yeah so I've played gigs before that have been um one of the main considerations I have when I'm sort of like preparing a live set is figuring out how much risk I want to have and what that risk might look like and then I sort of once and also what am I going to use? It's almost like what is the what's the equipment that's going to be in front of me and where does the risk become involved and then sort of exploring that. And oftentimes with the live sets in the past I've maybe incorporated it's usually about like 50% of material that I already had and then 50% of it is purposely written in amongst that that other 50% just so that I can get these transitions to work really nicely. And so it's not all like just pre-recorded material that I already had. I kind of like almost like trying to create this like long continuous set that doesn't have this like defined endpoint. It's just like this lovely it's not like one song ends.

SPEAKER_00

Like a DJ mix.

SPEAKER_03

Like a DJ mix yeah but like a somewhat more like ambient y like an ambient DJ mix. Like an ambient DJ mix. Oh god for this was uh my first time in all three aspects so the three main things I were you was using were um GRM tools Atelia which um I've mentioned very briefly but is sort of a bit like VC V Rack if Fab Filter designed the user interface um and in that you have the ability to play back samples and also have uh like tones. So it's got like you know essentially signal generators that can do oscillator sounds it's a very unusual way of um working compositionally in a lot of ways because there is no sequencer in it whatsoever. So if you have a tone, the only way that you could change the note would be to send it modulation via like a square wave or a sine wave. And so I wasn't really actually doing much in the way of like tone stuff. I was using the sampler and playing back surge samples as well as other samples and kind of incorporating those in some of which were sounds that I would be triggering manually so I could control when an event would happen. And others were almost just like constantly looping and so it was just a case of bringing those sounds in and out. So there was probably about a third of the set that was all in GRM tools um including like the field recording sounds that I sort of interspersed throughout so it was kind of nice to always have this thing where in between songs or in between sections I could kind of just bring in these these like foley sounds that were all like phone recordings. In fact one of them was a little Sony recording but most of them were just like iPhone recordings while I'm out and about and I'm just like I hear a sound and it's nice. So that was like a third of it. The other third was um surge. So um Tom here built me a for you surge at my request um which is two panels of um prism circuit stuff which is in their sort of paperface era design. So um there's not uh I don't actually even have like things like the triple wave shaper or stuff. So it's it's it was a little bit more of a sequencer focused setup that I was looking for at the time. And essentially how it was running was I had a patch that had um the two oscillators that I have in the system. One of which had a lot of quite wild and unstable FM, which I'll talk about in a little bit going to it. And then the other one was had no FM but had some modulation for like the wavefolding shape. And they went into a cross fader so I could kind of like C V control which of the two oscillators you were hearing at any one time. And the crazy FM stuff brings me to the final third of the the configuration which was um I was using Max MSP for the first time and I'd essentially built a small little system that was um multiple channels of sample playback um and the ability to then decide at any point to send those out of the computer directly into the surge into this chaotic feedback patch that was using a ring modulator and the multiple outputs of the filter as well as some of the like utility mixes for kind of doing some cross feedbacky stuff. And so essentially what I was ha having was like this sense of you were hearing the stems through this chaotic feedback patch. But that chaotic feedback patch was also the source of the FM to one of the oscillators. And so as I would kind of like bring in and start sending some of these stems through the surge, you would get the um the tone of the oscillator would start to have something of the characteristic of the stems that were also playing and it would start to like waver or get a little bit squealy at times. And it was really fun to kind of that was my risk basically was like the GRM tools the risk is that the surge I hadn't built for you might my back in midway through.

SPEAKER_00

I was very I was quite nervous when I saw you were taking it out on the road because it's like if if this goes wrong it's all on me.

SPEAKER_03

No I would never be on you. It would never be on you. But yeah the the risk for me was like uh because it it really is like as I was sort of like in the rehearsals I'd realized that like it was minute movements in how much I was sending a stem to the feedback patch that could go from like oh it's really starting to like sputter in a really beautiful like it's starting to like just pick out this little resonance that is like beautifully tuned and everything's great to this sounds like shit. This is like completely chaotic now. It's gone well beyond and so the risk for me was like even though it wasn't necessarily the loudest sound in the mix there was always a possibility that it could really jump up and like poke out and be a little bit chaotic.

SPEAKER_00

Some people would lean into that I think in the performance but I think with your style of music that would have it would have been quite jarring.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Especially because the because the atmosphere you had kind of cultivated with everything else. I think if you did have anything that was completely out of control and chaotic yeah to to to that to that extent it would have it would have really like yeah like you say there's there's a bit of jeopardy there in in terms of it.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah and and also artistically I I actually feel like that's the interesting point for me. Yeah it's kind of really easy to make it sound totally chaotic because you just send a bunch of stuff into it and it will naturally just sound a bit crazy. And similarly on the other end it's easy to make it sound a little bit boring or vanilla. Like the interesting point for me is where it's like it's just starting to become unstable. It's like at the point where everything is only just about hanging in there.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Like that's the that's the fun stuff for me. And and that's part of the reason why I got so into the surge was like um identifying and realizing the way that I could patch in particular because it's banana in the 4U world it's so inviting to just start sending signals back in on themselves after having gone through some other nonlinear process to just immediately end up in this like just this precipice of of chaos that is like really fun. And I'll have some sound examples just here. So um there's a point in the set where I'm kind of like segueing between two songs and you can kind of hear there's like almost like these two notes happening um interspersed um like kind of like uh panning between not panning between going between two notes um and that was controlled by the just a cycling envelope generator determining the the speed but um that was kind of this this little section that we'll play a clip of here that's the the sort of what the surge was adding into the set um and uh you'll hear the character that that has just now the compositions and the stems that I had I basically had like a Faderfox MX twelve so um the quadraphonic aspect that's really important to mention was every single stem I could decide if it was going to go to essentially all four speakers at once or I could push a button and then it would start to spin. And then the top knob on each of the corresponding channels of the Faderfox, we could probably put a little screenshot of what they look like here. The top knob was essentially how fast is that going and I didn't have it go up to audio rate, but I got it to the point where it started to just sound like a tremolo. So um I could like essentially go past the point where it got so fast that it just sort of started to sound like this almost like fluttering sound or I could then bring it back to sort of like much more slow, gradual movements.

SPEAKER_00

The knob below that was the knob for how much is going to the surge basically and was it when was that actual um just so I've got it in my head is where where um was it was it the max patch that was delivering the final output to the four um was it max was was max the kind of audio heart of the yeah of the system. Yeah with the fader volts control in that and then you had four outputs going into the four speakers.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah essentially like the there was one uh one of the channels was just the GRM tools Atelia so the VST was running inside the Max patch. Yeah got you um so I had one fader that had all of the GRM tool sounds in it.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And then the remaining channels one of them was a master output that I had and then the remaining channels were all individual stems that I could bring in and control. And one of those channels as well was also the returning surge oscillators in fact sorry not the returning surge oscillators just the surge oscillators and then one was the returning feedback patch. Yeah so I could actually also have the surge going into Mac and there was a dedicated channel that I could then send the output of the oscillators back into the feedback patch. So it was sort of oscillators back out back through the feedback patch and then it created another feedback loop that was through Macs as well.

SPEAKER_01

So starting to glaze over but yeah it's my turn to glaze over now after you took the piss out of me last week.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely fair. But yeah it was essentially like everything could be sent to the surge including the surge.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah yeah I've got to say all this I mean it's it sounds complicated but the end result was was incredible. Like it sounded it sounded great.

SPEAKER_03

It was um like yeah my my companion Paul Maguire shout out Paul was also very very impressed and I think we I mean all the sets were great but um he said on the way out of Luke's was really really good wasn't it um so you guys so yeah well done it was um yeah yeah it was it was really fun to to explore i I must admit there was elements of like other than uh the surge stuff um a lot of of the other stuff was a bit more of a like there was a safety net there. Um and I should also just quickly add that the tuning of the oscillators was essentially just done by ear as the songs progressed. So I had a QMix that was just the oscillators. Right. So before I could bring it into the audience I would be listening and essentially like queuing up and tuning the two oscillators by E.

SPEAKER_00

I was going to ask about that because I think you'd mentioned beforehand that you're gonna be sort of live tuning the oscillators and I wasn't sure whether you were doing that so that everyone could hear you or whether you're gonna you're gonna do a kind of cue. It takes it takes a second.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah yeah yeah I mean I've I know those oscillators they are they they do take a bit of um finessing don't they yeah especially when there's already FM going as well so it would be like I would be kind of cueing it up as well as like dialing in a starting point for where the FM would be.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And then I would start to bring that in. And yeah I I also figured as well um I was okay with having less risk in this set um mainly because I feel like quadriphonic is such an interesting spatial sonic experience that I didn't want to feel like I have to I almost wanted to spend more time focusing on well how fast are these sounds moving and how am I crafting this experience. And I was actually also like watching the audience and sort of then being like oh I'm gonna maybe move this sound up a little bit now I want to speed this sound moving around. So I was kind of in some ways that there was this element of risk but I could almost always fall back on the stems and kind of just allowing myself to to just focus on that aspect a bit more. Because as you'll know from live performance like it's really not fun if you have no risk at all because you just feel like an absolute loser. You're just on stage being like I've just there's I'm just playing back so I'm just a phony. Yeah. But conversely like to to go on stage with no pre-recorded idea or no like no prerequisite of what you're gonna do is terrifying. Very terrifying.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah yeah you need you need a there's a balance isn't there of safety net and and you know unpredictability as you as you say.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And how have you approached that in your live set? Because you did machiner last year.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah I mean I don't play live very often um I say I don't you know as if as if it's even a regular thing. I I've I have played live in the past a few times and in you know but this is like 20 years ago um and at that time I was using Ableton and a laptop and stems and kind of just kind of doing live arrangements fairly basic just a MIDI controller and a laptop. But yeah when um Marco asked me to play Machina um I thought I'd do a an all hardware no laptop kind of live set for the first time and for that um I kind of it was kind of a fairly old school traditional approach in a way in that I was using a Digitect your old Digitect in fact which was part of payment for the search um nice nice exchange of stuff there so that that that got that got used uh so I had that and the Ableton move um which were both which were all you know synced synced to each other and the Digitect was doing essentially the drums and the move was essentially doing melodic parts but then I had various other bits of gear so I had the Super 6 I had a a 303 clone I had a very small modular rig um so everything was kind of there wasn't really any melodic audio loops it was all MIDI and I just had like eight tracks eight songs worth of multi-track MIDI data basically so I was just um in the old like if you anyone saw Orbital play in the 90s that whole thing of just having the studio on stage having sequences which are playing eight bar loops and you mute and unmute things that was kind of the approach which is there's a fair bit of risk in that because you are basically taking a whole studio on on stage you've got lots of MIDI connections you've got lots of points of failure for that um there isn't really a quick safety net if it all goes wrong I kind of there was quite a lot to keep track of in my head so with hindsight I think I think if I was playing week in week out it would be much easier but because it was a one-off for me really I had you know written notes and stuff about oh channel eight is the high hat on this track and that kind of thing. So it was I made life quite difficult for myself in hindsight. But it worked okay and I I had a the sort of safety net in mind was I had a a bit halfway through basically where I was going to kind of reset and just kind of like calm down slightly. So I had a kind of a little pre-recorded sort of ambient interlude bit which I just used to kind of because I had to reset the sequences and you know reconfigure a couple of things at that point and I I just you know I'd written on my instructions breathe at that point just take a breath and and don't rush um and I still rushed a bit I think we talked about this before it's very easy when you're all in that all consuming live zone to kind of just rattle through stuff quite quickly.

SPEAKER_03

The pacing of your set recently that that set was was very seemed very measured didn't seem like you were kind of did you did it did the timings work out as you had it in your head um look looking back it was basically within a minute of all the rehearsals I think so it was it wasn't any more rushed for being live. I did also have on my notes on my things to check before I started playing the last one was um be patient. Like especially with this the kind of music that I'm doing this sort of ambient stuff like if you rush through it it it it doesn't really work. The whole point is that you're kind of like you you get to these places nice and slowly um and it's obviously that's also how I've rehearsed it. So if I spent all this time like rehearsing this thing and it sounds really good in my room and then I go out and I do it twice as fast because I'm nervous it's sort of like kind of missed the mark I think.

SPEAKER_00

And I guess also with the kind of audience or the sort of setup in the room it's not like you're trying to keep people dancing and you're sort of like you know I was playing in a big room and it was daytime rather than nighttime so it wasn't like a full-on club thing but I was still mentally I think my it was a bit more of a drums focused you know clubby house and techno kind of music I guess so I was slightly more conscious of keeping it interesting and keeping things changing and and I kind of burned through my stuff a bit quicker than I intended. Yeah but you know I'd rather leave people wanting more than never leave them wanting less as my anorboss of mine used to say I try I try and do the same.

SPEAKER_03

And we've spoken a little bit about I think a little bit ago we were sort of discussing the idea of surge live and this was before I then did this um this first uh foray into like using the surge in a live context.

SPEAKER_00

Is that something you might do in future have you kind of thought any more about that yeah definitely I mean and especially in light of your your your gig it's I'm I I I actually came away from that not just your set but Sonia's and uh Matthias's as well I was kind of like there's quite a few things for me to think about here in terms of like what I do with with my own stuff. And yeah I think if I did something with the surge I would probably do I think maybe we talked about this a little bit before I would maybe do a combination of a surge with the Digitect or something and I might just set things up so that I've got drum sounds in the Digitect but they were all made on the surge if you know what I mean. Yeah so I'm trying to use the surge as the only sound source for the set and but rather than it all being kind of like generated via the surge in the moment I'd have some stuff I pre-recorded some loops maybe as well and then I'd have some stuff and maybe some of the more tonal stuff so I didn't have to rely on the tuning being bang on in the um you know in the moment uh and I could do you know some more processing stuff. So I haven't really figured out what that might look like but um I would quite like to do a bit of exploring in that kind of sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

It's definitely it adds another layer when it's something like Surge where there's there's not really this sort of obvious choice about what you how you could use it because the the way that you would be using it is so different to the way that I would be using it for this previous set. Yeah. And that would also be like even with the same I could give you my system and I think you could do the the sort of the thing you just mentioned on my system. And it's almost like a complete different foray you know depending on how you approach it.

SPEAKER_00

And having said all that I I am also quite keen to I could just do a massive drone patch thing, you know, and just do something really quite out of character for me and a bit more I have been doing I mean I've been you know after Eliane Radig passed away recently and there was a great video by La Sinthese Humaine where he was you know talking about a patch which he had set up for a week or so and was kind of you know I I did inspired by that I kind of built something similar and and I've increasingly found myself quite drawn to these quite slow moving you know kind of quite experimental and drony for me stuff. You know I'm I I tend to always in my music tend to kind of you know need to know needs another chord or something here doesn't it needs a melody or something and I'm having using you know using the surge I'm definitely more drawn to this quite kind of a different style for me of kind of more experimental more um more about the kind of sound design and a bit less about melodies and and chord progressions and and even rhythms and drums and stuff are kind of yeah you know not essential. So I might yeah maybe I'll do a quadruphonic ambient surge set for one of your future events. Yeah come on come on down happy to have if you could squeeze me into your lineup.

SPEAKER_03

It's funny you mentioned uh Ilean Radie because I mean I to be honest we we have the exact like I also watched that laser Lasynthes human Close enough.

SPEAKER_02

Good enough.

SPEAKER_03

Video and the first piece in the live set is uh like one of the stems is just essentially that's playing in GRM is just a 10-minute long drone that I made that I sort of slowly start interacting with and it gets a bit more chaotic as it goes on.

SPEAKER_00

But it was just the the patch from that video uh that I'd done and then just kind of like tinkered with two pairs of oscillators FMing each other and then ring modding a couple of them and things like that, and you just end up with one small change on one thing, just kind of like has this ripple effect that kind of Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. And I think you you kind of mentioned the idea as well of like your your potential idea for a surge set being almost like the whole thing is surge sounds, uh like from the drums that you're using all the way to um like the the synth component. Um I didn't quite have it fully in this, but it was probably about 70% of the sounds that you're hearing at any one time were either surge or processed. Well, in fact, if you include process through surge, then it was all of them. But like um yeah, certainly from a perspective of like I wanted it to feel tonally that the surge was the center of everything. Yeah. And then there were other things that were like layered within the set that were acoustic, because I really like that blend of uh acoustic sounds and electronic sounds. And there's something like reasonably organic to me about the surge in in those sorts of contexts that suits acoustic sounds quite well as a company and an accompaniment rather.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, definitely. It sits nicely with that kind of the sort of foley or the field recording kind of stuff as well, doesn't it? And there is, as you say, it's it's got a very organic, natural, unstable sort of sound, which lends itself well to that.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00

Good. Well, um thanks for breaking down that live patch in so much detail. And hopefully the little sound samples we've interspersed through that will give people a little flavour of it. Um and I'm sure we'll return to the topic of live performance in electronic music in future episodes. If you've got any questions or anything you'd like us to discuss, or you've got things you want to share about the way you do things, then um signalflow at signal sounds.com is the email address. Um, shall we uh round things off today with a few recommendations? Yeah, anything anything that's been floating your boat lately.

SPEAKER_03

Um so I've been really enjoying there was a release that came out on Twelfth File, um, which is Innis Connell and Loris S. Sarid, and it's called Looking for Mount Sylvan, and it's like two tracks. Um and it's got this like lovely textures throughout. There's something about it that's kind of like speaks to some of the slightly earlier the golden era, in my opinion, of Fortet, like the rounds era stuff. It's not quite like that, it's got a bit more of a modern sound, but there's definitely something about it that was that sort of harked back to like slightly earlier Fortet, which for me is like the stuff of dreams. Um, and I've been really, really enjoying that. Um and I just started reading uh Calvino's If on a Winter's Night A Traveler after a recommendation from my friend, and that's kind of mildly frying my brain in a really good way. It's like a very meta novel where he used like the first three chapters are sort of him talking about the book that you're reading in your hands, and it's it's a little bit heady, but I kind of like when stuff is a bit playful in art. So uh been really enjoying that.

SPEAKER_00

But uh what about you? Um yeah, I've got an album recommendation, um, which is was recommended to me in turn by my good friend Bobby Cleaver. Shout out, Bobby Cleaver, if you're watching, if you've made it this far. Um, it's a great album. It is by um Eleni Saxel and Henry Solomon, and it's called Seeing is Forgetting. Uh it's you didn't have that written down at all though. That was so so expertly handled. My memory is no good these days for titles and things. It's got a good I couldn't see the cover. Yeah, it's got a blurry picture of two people on the cover, but it's a really nice combination of live um sax and clarinet uh with Juno 106 stuff. It's just a really, really nice ambient album um done by two very, very good musicians, and it sounds fantastic and it's um yeah, highly recommended. Sounds one to float away to, yeah, it's one to one to enjoy um in uh an environment of your choice. Let's leave it at that. Let's leave it at that, yeah. Um and I suppose the other thing just to recommend you mentioned him already, but the the videos by La Synthese Humaine, which I'm probably butchering the pronunciation off because I can't really speak French, but apologies. Um but yeah, they are great videos about patching and surge, um, but from quite an interesting standpoint that incorporates theories of economics and other stuff as well.

SPEAKER_03

And what's the what's the word that um cybernetics. Cybernetics, yeah. It's it's quite it's it's almost like um whole concepts of uh almost things that I would have never thought of as being related to synthesizers and then kind of like relating them to synthesizers. Um it's really good. And uh although it's obviously quite surge focused, uh it's largely more patch programmable modules. Like you could do it in your right.

SPEAKER_00

A lot of it is, yeah, it's conceptually about it's it's there's there's there's kind of an aspect of philosophy and stuff to it which is not surge-specific, you know. It's um although he's kind of using a surge system and it's um, but yeah, interesting stuff. So that's recommended from me.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and this definitely has been the first episode in which we wet the whistle of Surge, but there will be another episode where we go into more detail, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, there will. I've been building quite a few systems. I've been doing a lot of soldering lately, so um, and I've been yeah, playing around as well, and I've got lots of stuff on the go. So maybe the fumes are why you can't remember your record. Yeah, maybe you've been huffing too many soldering fumes. But yeah, so next time we see you, thanks for watching again. Uh, next time we will be at Superbooth, um, all being well, unless anything goes disastrously wrong. So um we'll we'll report back on all the news from there. Um keep and if you see us, say hello. Feel free to say hi. Yeah, you know, wondering about. You know what we look like now if you're watching the YouTube version. Um and then yeah, also just uh your regular reminder we also have an audio version if you're watching, and if you're listening, we also have a video version. So follow us on both platforms, and we always love getting your feedback. So thank you again for that. Um, that about wraps it up, I think. I think so. See you next time. Bye.