#blade runner inspired

[cyberloops]

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Splash image originally created by craiyon, edited with paint.NET.

This was one of the first dawless jams I’ve done in a while that didn’t rely on the Novation Circuit as the centerpiece of it. The entire thing was done by recording a single loop on my Yamaha CS Reface, and I only used the Circuit as a controller to play both the Crave and MS-1 in unison.

This was a test. I don’t have any analog synths with more than one oscillator. All three analog synths that I have can create more than one waveform, but they all use a single oscillator to do so. Which means that one of the most subtle things that one can do with analog synthesizers, that beautiful faint ebb and flow of two nearly identical waveforms that are just barely out of sync, is not something that I can make. I tried to see if I could duplicate the sound in the Novation Circuit, and I made a fairly decent Blade Runner-esque horn sound, but it just wasn’t QUITE right. And part of that may have less to do with the digital waveform and more to do with the fact that the Circuit has a digital filter as well, since so much of the character of a synth sound comes from the filter as well.

So I decided to link two of my synths together and try to do my best to recreate that particular sound. I didn’t try to add vibrato, so it’s missing that, but I think it turned out pretty good.

And it just makes me want to get my hands on an analog synth with more than one oscillator. And a decent reverb unit.

[unearthlydust]

For the fic prompt: Cherik & "Don't fucking touch me!" Pretty please? :3

It’s three in the morning, Erik thinks as he glances up at the Geisha advertisement crossing the sky, always at the same hour.

It’s three in the morning, and it’s cold and dark, pollution heavy in the air, mist licking his surroundings, quiet and oppressive at once.

It’s three in the morning, Erik thinks, and he’s going to die.

 —

Charles takes Erik’s wrists, turns his palms up, revealing dried blood and ashes, and with excessive care he touches the thick and rusty nail driven through his left hand, grasping at composure, at calmness, for whose sake he doesn’t know, but Erik can feel the fear coursing through his veins and the rising panic reflected in his shining blue eyes.

This isn’t supposed to be happening, Erik thinks. Charles shouldn’t be here with him in this dark alley, witnessing his long and torturous death.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Erik tells him, tone severe and unforgiving, but Charles ignores the warning, the burning sensation around his neck, around his annular finger, and he grabs his face, swiping the treacherous tears spilling from the corners of his eyes. Erik recoils, straightening his back against the damp brick wall, but he doesn’t try to stand up, to put more distance between them.

He can’t.

“Why do you never listen,” Charles asks, voice faltering when a sob catches in his throat. “Why must you take so many bloody risks, chase eagerly after danger? For God’s sake Erik stop heating the metal on me I’m not leaving you here alone,” he continues, frustration tainting his words. “I’m not leaving you.”

Erik gasps.

Charles’ look is unbearable, too imploring, insisting, charged with warmth that makes his heart ache, but he’s too weak to escape it, fingers twitching uselessly at his sides, legs heavy and numb, the fire inside him consuming him inch by inch, efficiently shutting him down, and he desperately wants to hide, to disappear, to spare Charles the view…

“You should. I killed them, Charles, I killed them all, and I enjoyed it,” he sends, thinking vividly of all the ways he found to make them bleed, scream, beg, for mercy, for death – a quick one – as bones and skulls exploded under his powers, the metal in the tower singing to him. He bites the inside of his cheek, clenches his jaw. “Leave now Charles.” He goes rigid, forcing himself to forget the sharp pain assaulting his body and mind. “Leave,” he shouts, but Charles doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch after seeing all the heinous acts he committed hours ago, doesn’t abandon him like he wants him to. 

 “Charles –”

“No,” he cuts him off, crouching down to kiss his pulse, and Erik whimpers slightly, the soft lips lulling him into a false sense of security, of hope. “Enough.” Charles kisses him again. “Did you honestly believe I would accept that? That I wouldn’t come after you? After all these years? Please…”

Erik is cornered, literally cornered, but he ruffles his feathers one more time and hangs on the last shred of harshness in him even if he knows deep down that it’s all pointless, that soon everything will end.  

“Charles, you don’t – ”

“What? Understand?” He looks him squarely in the eye and frowns. “Oh I think I do actually. You can’t fool me.”

Erik hisses through his teeth and closes his eyes for a moment, traces of resistance crumbling as an all-encompassing exhaustion bears down on him, almost paralyzing him entirely.

“Bitte verzeih mir…”

“Erik, you’re not going to die.”

“I wasn’t made to last…”

“You will not die.” He caresses his cheeks with his thumbs, prompting him to open his eyes. “Listen. I will not allow it.”

“It’s too late. Four years have passed…”

“I know, and I promised you I would find a way to reverse it, but you don’t make things easy do you, running away in the streets among so many people who think very loudly. You shouldn’t have left this morning, Erik, you shouldn’t have. Why couldn’t you wait, I… I have…” 

Sliding a hand at the back of his head, Charles pulls him towards him awkwardly, Erik’s body remaining unresponsive, unable to reciprocate the embrace, and he puts his face into the crook of his neck, distractingly petting his hair. With his other hand, he raises a small syringe full of dark liquid. “It will… it will work, Erik, so please… He presses the needle against his skin. “Stay with me for a few more seconds…”

 —

Erik doesn’t know what time it is anymore, and he doesn’t know why he’s suddenly on the ground next to an empty syringe, but his skin, feverish minutes ago, is now awfully cold and his legs keep kicking empty air, his hands holding onto, onto…

Charles.

Charles. Charles. Charles, who flutters his eyelashes, spiky with wetness, and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s raining, and he, he, and he –

He throws his head back, arches his back and moans, shaking violently, but then he chokes because there’s something – blood he can smell it – coming up his throat, and he can’t breathe, but he’s, he’s, he’s still, still, he’s still, he –

He screams.

[cyberloops]

After a couple months of blah, I decided to actually do some experimenting with my instruments. Something I hadn’t really been doing lately.

One of the analog synth sounds that I absolutely love is the sound of two oscillators together, slightly out of phase with each other. It adds a certain natural shimmer and life to the sound that just isn’t there with a single oscillator, no matter how nice that instrument may sound.

The problem is - I don’t have any analog instruments with more than one oscillator. So I set the Behringer MS-1 and Crave to the same channel and set them both to make that lovely horn-like sawtooth wave with a low filter that is so iconic, and instead of using the Novation Circuit Tracks as a sequencer, I just used it as a MIDI controller and an audio mixer to add another layer of reverb to the two instruments. I whipped up a quick pretty loop on the Yamaha CS Reface (ironic that I was using the CS in this track, since the most popular use of the double-oscillator filtered sawtooth sound is from the classic CS-80 in so many 80s and 90s soundtracks) and just started recording. And just to emphasize the subtle difference between one and two oscillators, I occasionally played the MS-1 directly, just to get a plainer, more straightforward hornlike sound in some parts, and I cranked up the filter FM a few times to get some deeper bass rumble mixed in.

No real plan going in. Just a pleasant loop, two synthesizers acting together as one, and a lot of delay and reverb. I would say that was a successful test... but I still want to get my hands on an analog synth with more than one oscillator at some point.

[cyberloops]

Final version of Demesne of the Beast. I wanted something that had the feel of being in the territory of a megacorporation. Whether you belong to them or not, the ground you stand on does. Very much inspired by the soundtrack of the original Blade Runner. (Which I just noticed recently is on Netflix in my region. I should re-watch that...)

Lately I’ve really wanted to get my hands on some actual physical synths and equipment, because as much as I’m used to using a DAW (in my case Acid) to do my music, there’s just something about actually having tactile devices that can be hooked up and modded how I see fit. But I haven’t had the money. So at the very least, I decided to use this piece as a learning experience. I did some things with mixing the audio live that I’d never done before, and some more with balancing EQ that I’d never really worried about before. I think it made this final version a lot subtler and more ominous than the first few drafts. Still not 100% happy with how it turned out... but there’s only so much tweaking I can do before I start making it worse. (Just ask George Lucas!)

[cyberloops]

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Here’s the modified version I was dabbling with across most of yesterday. I haven’t balanced this at all, it’s just a straight render. I’m not even home right now, and I left my good headphones in my other bag so I’m listening to this on the cheapest set of earbuds I have ever seen, touched, or otherwise interacted with. Literally we were going to give them away, but the person we were going to give them to didn’t even want them. But I wanted to listen to this quickly before I uploaded it, so I’m using them before I throw them out. So I have no clue if it sounds decent. All I can tell with these earbuds is that I used the right instrument tracks when I rendered it.

I actually did modify the MIDI a tiny bit, just because I had to separate out the left hand pulsing bassline in one section and render them with a more precise punchy synth. The slight rhythmic oddities of me sucking at playing with both hands was way more apparent there, so I quantized the bassline at least.

Of all the instruments that come with the version of Magix that I have (2016), only one was actually a synth. The rest are all romplers. But the synth they have is actually pretty decent.

[cyberloops]

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Tentative final cut for my Tyrell Test piece, for now I’m renaming it The Demesne of the Beast. I’ll keep tweaking it for a bit before I officially release it on bandcamp.

[cyberloops]

From Tyrell Test piece to final draft. A fun little experiment that I finally got around to rendering into a video and putting up on youtube.

[cyberloops]

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Slow Motion - draft

I just noticed that I hit 5k subscribers sometime overnight. I’m kinda blown away. I wasn’t expecting to get this kind of response in this short time. I’m a little too introverted to really be any good at online engagement and actually reaching out to people. All I’m good at is putting myself out there and seeing who likes what they see. Well, hear mostly for this blog.

Today I delved a little out of the Neon Streets style I’ve been working in mostly to try and do something a little more sound-track/cinematic. I don’t have the space or money for much in the way of actual synthesizers, most everything I do is purely digital. If I label something as analog, it’s because I’m trying to make it sound like older analog synths, not because I actually have the equipment. This was another attempt at trying to capture that sound and feel. There’s a bit of odd mirroring, using purely digital technology, often cheap and free plugins which are the only ones I can afford, to imitate the more analog sounds of earlier sci-fi cyberpunk soundtracks... that were trying to sound more digital and synthetic than most soundtracks of the time.

I did take a little bit of inspiration from my Neon Streets series, and I used two sets of synths for every instrument and layered them together in different ways. One track will fade from one instrument to the other. Another uses filters to slowly lessen the effect of one or both throughout. Some lean more towards the right channel while their counterpart leans towards the left. All in all, I was trying to use what I’ve learned while doing this blog to make something deep and rich, without having the sounds blend together into a muddy mess. And in spite of Acid crashing halfway through the first draft and losing a few minutes of my work (I thought the entire hour or so I’d already put in was lost until I found the backup file it had saved before it glitched up), I think I made something halfway decent by the end.

Thanks for sticking with me, everybody. I know I’m not good at communicating back to people, but I really appreciate knowing that people out there actually like what I’m making.