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Sound a Day 010 – Korg Study 001 0:25 998 KB
For several years I’ve had the idea of doing a collection of ‘Korg Studies’ – short pieces that explore a particular sound or technique on the Korg MS-20 synth (and also the Korg mini-KP Kaoss Pad). Here is as good a place as any to start.
KS001 demonstrates my usual technique of using an external input to drive the control voltages. In this case it’s a random song playing on my iPhone. There are two square wave oscillators an octave apart, their pitches mapped to the mod wheel. One is modulated by the amplitude and the other by the frequency of the incoming signal. The low-pass filter is also being heavily modulated. When the incoming sound hits a certain level it triggers the envelope generators, which have a percussive shape. Continuous tweaking of parameters is done to shape the sound into something interesting.
These are techniques that I’ve developed and refined over the past few years of working with the Splinter Orchestra. I was also very impressed by Asmus Tietchens‘ performance at Liquid Architecture this year, and I think his approach to the synthesiser may have influenced me recently.
I just saw some of the cymatics pages (visible sound page) via the Share this Course site/project/class I’m on (maybe u should come & play there too & share your SADs). have u tried any of those? making the images too from the different sound inputs?
I love cymatics, but haven’t tried making my own. Might also be a fun exercise for one of my uni classes. I would like to do more audiovisual stuff, and am in the (slow) process of teaching myself Max/MSP/Jitter.
Share this Course looks good – thanks for the tip! I’d get involved if I wasn’t so busy right now.