Hello Patron friends!

Thank you all newcomers for joining in the last couple of weeks! Deeply thankful! All the small donations add up, you know! It's really helpful. So thank you!

Here's a little jam using the Analog Keys and the Analog Rytm to jam out a tune, and make a live performance. I'm gonna play on a sort of conference tomorrow. I'm afraid it's not gonna be covered by any media, so I thought I'd share some of my preparations, at least :)

My thought with live improvs is to prepare a few great kits in advance. Kits that I know really well. Full of Performance Mode changes and Joystick action. Since I'm very much a melody guy, I need to focus a lot on the keyboard, not making full potential of the Rytm. But just muting and unmuting the Rytm tracks is very helpful in making things move a bit :)

If there are any questions about how i set this up, or anything, don't hesitate to ask right here, ok.

Cheers for now.

CUCKOO

Hello,

I've started to work on a collection of new patches for the Analog Keys. This time I want to explore rhythmical sounds, percussions and new types of keyboard sounds where I'm not using the filters.

The philosophy behind this is that I think the use of filters can sometimes hide otherwise lovely raw synthesis. There are ways to make soft sounds without the filters, and then you get to keep the rich overtones too! Mainly it's happening with the feedback and AM stuff.

So here's a little jam where I'm using a lot of these new sounds. It's one of those jams where I build up everything from scratch in one take.

I'm using stuff like Multi Map Mode, for the drums; Performance modulation for all of the tracks to make variations, Quantize, Swing etc. Also making frequent use of the reverb.

I know I just posted a video yesterday, but I haven't done any music for all summer, so I'm practially bursting with musical needs. I hope you don't mind ;-)

Cheers!

CUCKOO

The Analog Keys' keyboard can be split up into zones where you can play different sounds in each zones. One zone can be used for an internal sound, another zone could be playing an external synth, and a third zone could be playing an internal drum kit etc. A lot of people have asked how to set this up, so here, finally, I'm trying to break it down into (hopefully) easy to grasp steps.

I'm sure you can use it more creatively than what I'm doing here. But these are the basics. I hope you'll make use of it, if you've got an Analog Keys, or an Analog Four. It is possible on the Analog Four as well. You just have to find the menu in there first ;-)

OK, cheers for now!

CUCKOO

This weekend I booked a day in Propeller Music Division here in Oslo, together with incredible drummer Hans Hulbækmo. I've always had this feeling that there's some interesting ground in synthesizers and acoustic drums yet to explore.

I was playing on the Analog Keys as a master, and I set up an Analog Rytm to act as an always in sync click track, and then the Continuum Fingerboard, with its unusually rich sound palette.

Mostly I set the tone first with a sound, perhaps a bass. Sometimes Hulbækmo started grooving before me, and then it was easy to tap sync the Analog Keys and jump right in. It was a truly interesting, and less chaotic than expected, experience. Definitely something I want to explore further.

I just recorded this one little peace on video. I think it's a nice example of what we were doing. For the next time though I think I'll try to prepare a little more, and perhaps rehearse a few times, and explore dynamics a little more. It's easy to end up in high energy land when jamming, but sometimes keeping it sparse and quiet can be really powerful.

I hope this can serve as inspiration for some of you. It was a really kick ass experience for me!

cheers

CUCKOO

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PS. I have absolutely no experience in mixing drums, so this is more or less the levels straight from the raw recordings, with some minor adjustments. Mixing multi track recorded drums I think I have to give to a professional mixing engineer for now :)

Hello, I made some more Octatrack progress today. My goal is to make several palettes of samples that are made to work together in groups. And then fill up the Octatrack with a set of pattern banks, ready for fast improv. I'm interested to know how fast, and how "live" you can play, and build up jams and tunes with the Octatrack.

I'm obviously still a beginner, but I'm getting into the workflow bit by bit, and I'm feeling more confident every time.

For this jam I didn't create any elaborate Scenes thought. It's a good thing to prepare the scenes. This is where you can get really creative.

Well, I hope it can serve as some inspiration :)

Cheers

CUCKOO