If you’ve been tuned in to the #BonkWave tag on the Fediverse, you certainly found out about this earlier, but Disc B of the Not What I Call Bonk Wave album #003 has been released last Friday the 8th of November. Go get it!
This disc is subtitled “Bonked and Unbonked”, to fit the more mellow, and acoustic style of submissions sent in for the compilation. Once again it’s a joy for the ears, with a lot of variation, and some really fun tracks in there.
I also have a chill track on this disc at position 7, called “Robo Diner Jam“.
On disc A, I went for a straight four-to-the-floor style track, with a gritty bassline. Here it’s a more meandering melodic electronic tune, where 3 synths blend together in a bleepy mélange.
I wrote both tracks in BespokeSynth, a free and open source DAW of sorts. I say “of sorts”, because it’s not a typical DAW. It’s more like a modular system where you create patches with all the synths, effects and components (or VST’s) available to create music. On Robo Diner Jam I made extensive use of the randomization features of Bespoke’s “note change” effect. This effect lets a note pass/or blocks it, based on a randomization threshold.
Basically, I have 3 different types of synths (FM synth, oscillator & signal generator) that receive notes from the same note sequencers. In front of each synth, there’s a note chance effect that determines when the synth gets a note passed in from the sequencer. This creates an ever evolving, random, yet familiar sounding, complex melody, without having to program all the variations. Yes. Automation. I love it.
I use the same trick on some parts of the drums. Some snare hits are delayed, re-triggered, and depend on a note chance effect to determine if they make it through. There’s a woody percussion hit in there that also hits “randomly” that way.
This is a bit weird though when recording. Sometimes the hits are perfect, and sometimes not so much. No 2 recordings are ever the same this way. So every time I tweaked the mix, or changed a small detail here and there, I would end up with a different recording of how the melody changed or how the drums hit in certain parts of the track. But still, the overall vibe stays.
I guess you have to let go and let the small imperfections work out, or you’d better go back to sequencing each note out in detail in a more conventional DAW.
BespokeSynth turns out to be a lot of fun to mess around with, and create music in really. By combining the large set of modular effects you can create some very interesting and experimental tracks if you like. It also has great MIDI support, which I used to hook up a Korg Nanokontrol2 to record the ambient remixes on the NWICBW 2 remix album. Fun stuff!
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