March 2022 – Simon Hutchinson

31 March 20223 April 2022

New Music: “Cybernetics & Feedback”

I’ve released a new collection of pieces, “Cybernetics & Feedback”, available on bandcamp:

Inspired by the cybernetic and feedback works of Roland Kayn, Éliane Radigue, Bebe Barron, and Jaap Vink, and embracing an anything-goes noise music aesthetic, this collection of works from early 2022 explores analog feedback loops and self-regulating patches in Eurorack modular.

In these pieces, audio signals are routed back into themselves, and used to control processes and trigger events. While these are performed improvisations, “performance” in this case does not mean strict control, since these systems influence themselves as much as the performer does.

One of my sketches. I think this is Track 6.

A quick acknowledgement that these noisy soundscapes might not be for everyone. Don’t worry. I won’t be offended.

I do have something a little more crowd-pleasing:

As a bonus, I’ve put up all the audio tracks from my “Ambient Chiptune” videos as a free/pay-what-you-want download.

(Definitely easier listening on these!)

Enjoy!

21 March 2022

Reaktor 6 Easy Portamento / Pitch Glide

A super-quick video on adding portamento to your Reaktor synthesizers and the theory behind it.

Portamento is a glide between notes, so, rather than jumping from pitch to pitch, we have an uninterrupted, continuous connection between the notes. Since we know our low-pass filter “rounds off” our audio waveforms, let’s see what happens when we apply that to our pitch control data.

Pure Data Patch from Scratch: “Complex Oscillator”

A quick and easy Pure Data patch-from-scratch tutorial building a “complex oscillator” with two sine waves cross modulating each others frequency for noisy, sophisticated sounds.

In this patch, we set up a simple FM synthesizer with one sine wave modulating another’s frequency. Then, instead of leaving it there, we take our output and use it to modulate the modulation oscillation, leading some wonderful, unpredictable complex sounds.

There’s no talking on this one, just building the patch, and listening to it go.

0:00 Sine Oscillator
0:42 Simple FM Synthesis
1:50 Cross Modulation
2:37 Commenting the Code
4:11 Exploring the Controls

Pure Data introductory tutorials here.
More no-talking Pure Data jams and patch-from-scratch videos.