Nebulaceous

A modular synthesizer is really good at making abstract sounds. If you’re seeking conventional tones suitable for melodies and bass lines — well, there are people who enjoy doing them with a modular, but frankly, there are better tools for the job.

The challenge, with abstract sounds, is how to use them in a way that makes some kind of musical sense. Because there’s nothing resembling harmony theory to fall back on, it seems to me it may be useful to be entirely intuitive — to not know, intellectually, what’s going on in a piece, and not to worry about it.

Here’s a modest example:

 

Borrowing a line from a poem by Gregory Corso, I call this piece “Scarlatti goes hip-hop through demented halls.” It was created using the Qu-Bit Nebulae, a few electronic beat loops I had lying around on my hard drive, and very little else. Well, some knob twiddling, and maybe a filter here or there. (I have no idea where the loops came from, but since they’re not recognizable, I’m not too worried about copyright violations.)

I recorded several raw tracks of Nebulae improvisation into Reason as audio, and then copied and pasted bits until I had something I liked. Generally there are at least two separate takes layered, sometimes three. The reverb on one track is Reason; everything else is straight out of the modular.

Oh, by the way — the Corso poem quoted above was published in 1958. The term “hip-hop” is not as new as you may have thought. Not that this music has anything to do with hip-hop.