Modulations: Recent Episodes
Nick Lewis
I want to introduce you to “livecoding” which in essence is the concept of coding on-the-fly, and quite often to share the experience with others. Just imagine writing code live on stage to perform music. Kind of DJ meets programmer, well that is literally what it is. So far I’ve been learning about 2 different applications, Sonic-Pi and Tidal Cycles, the latter runs off another product called Supercollider. Details: NickLewis.blog/posts/happy-new-year/ I am a developer (or softwareengineer programmer if you prefer) who nowadays concentrates on javascript frameworks such as vuejs and so on so forth. When not programming I am very much into composing music using Bitwig, Vcv, Ableton I am based in the lovely county of Berkshire, England and have never ventured far from the area, hopping over to hampshire and back for a number of years. Website: NickLewis.blog Hive: peakd.com/@nicklewis Mastodon: octodon.social/@nicklewis Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/nickeblewis
In todays video I start exploring 4 Pockets brilliant MIDI plugin called Progressions which if you’ve ever used Scaler 2 before you’ll like this not because it’s like Scaler in any way,...
Harmony bloom is an incredible MIDI sequencer that works on a mathematical principle and can now output across eight different channels, which means it’s possible to play 8 instruments simultaneo...
jamming last night with GeoShred which is an incredible piece of software. This is what the iPad Pro was made for!
In this video I explore just a single voice using the OXI One Sequencer as a keyboard instrument in Chord mode, towards the end I switch into arpeggio mode and discover some nice ideas there too, especially when setting a wider spread of notes, the result is rather beautiful.
I’ve recently started building a modular synth rack and currently using it in conjunction with apps such as AUM, Ableton and Bitwig to record and process the sounds. I hooked it up to my iPad via an audio interface running AUM with the Visual Synth plugin to create this video. I love this thing, I’ll do some more for sure!
Nick explores the realms of sound design using a Make Noise Strega and 0-CTRL sequencer, exploring patch ideas with tonnes more of this stuff to come in the future! The Strega is capable of some interesting textural sounds. I will be adding som...
Why “Project 40”? Well a little while back I switched to using Logic Pro for recording and mastering anything from musical explorations to audio podcasts like this one where I talk Norns? What the heck is this? Do you remember me covering Supercol...
Yet another update, I might have repeated some of the stuff I talked about previously but I’m playing around with the new camera. I’ll probably upload some daily content for awhile from Tuesday next week in conjunction with Pinmapple posts and there will be some cool stuff coming up.
In this video I mention Instagram and paragraph, here are the links.
https://instagram.com/nicklewisphotography?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
https://paragraph.xyz/@nicklewis
This is the outcome of said jam!
I employed a number of plugins for this piece of music, the outcome sounding a little bit like Boards of Canada meets industrial techno. I kept going for about 7 minutes or so.
In this track I used:
AUM, always and forever. I even use AUM now for recording my audio podcasts, such as the previous post on this Substack that went out earlier in the week, thanks for your lovely feedback on the podcast episode! Why not comment on this newsletter or recommend us. I may gift you a paid subscriber subscription if you do!
Glitchscaper - this is a new one I’ve bought, let me tell you something, it is quite something, very cool bit of kit. These apps always impress me, especially when they come from a developer who keeps on delivering amazing value each and every time. His name is Igor Vasiliev, who developed other apps including Spacefields which is also brilliant, I have that in my collection, will do a video.
Fluss - was created by Bram Bos (Ruismaker) and Hainbach
Hammerhead (Ruismaker again!!) - Rhythm station
Ruismaker Noir 2 - relentless rhythm synth, and it is indeed amazing
Looperator (Sugar Bytes) - chopping and dicing sound in real time to create new loops on the fly, I love this one
Other Desert Cities (Audiodamage) - Now how do I describe this effect module? Lazy copy ‘n paste coming up - Other Desert Cities, named after a famous sign on the I-10 highway leaving Los Angeles, is a workshop for creativity. As its namesake implies, there are many strange and wonderful things lurking inside. With six algorithms, each with its own unique personality, and extensive modulation capabilities, Other Desert Cities can fill multiple niches, from basic stereo dual delays to never-before-heard granular pitch-shifting chaos. I love this one too!
A great combination of instruments and effects here, they compliment each other really nicely.
Hot on the heels of my previous podcast, I have recorded another, this time a short edition to share the lovely new Speldosa instrument with you.
You can find this app on the App Store, it can be played standalone or used as an AUV3 within other apps such as AUM, Cubasis and so on.
Download links:
https://klevgrand.com/products/speldosa
https://ruismaker.com/hammerhead/
Welcome to the rebranded podcast called “Modulations” which is all about music created on nothing more than the iPad and ok maybe some other bits and bobs too such as an attached MIDI Keyboard or some other controllers.
In today’s episode I talk about my Hive Sound Library project. If you are interested in making a contribution to this, please feel free to ask me about it in the comments below. I will be more than happy to chat about it until the cows come home (or other animals if you’re not a fan of cows).
This 2 minute synth performance is the result of a little jam on the ipad this evening. Using Textquencer, Copperhead and AUM to create it with a little bit of live tweaking on the synths various knobs and buttons. Textquencer allows you to write music using plain English text! It’s quite a novel way of composing music that is for sure but it works really well. Enjoy, just 2 minutes long.
In this video I demonstrate one way I create melodies using Loopy Pro as my DAW host, a piano emulator plugin and a MIDI sequencer that is based on Euclidean. I even demonstrate how to do live-looping with my very bad singing voice. The piano melodies are good though, so stay for those!
Useful links:
https://loopypro.com
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/pure-piano/id1336486618
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/euclidean-auv3-sequencer/id1605757270
I’ve been talking a lot about Tidal Cycles recently for creating music but I wanted to share with you some other tools I like to use. Last year I spent a lot of time making music on my iPad, a lot of the music is on my soundcloud account. There are various apps for the iPad you can use that are very sophisticated, I’ll share some with you here.
In this video I experimented with SQSL Temp, which is a sequencer and MIDI controller rolled into one. So you need to connect it with something else, such as other apps on the iPad or external hardware. In this case I connected it with AUM, which if you’ve not heard of that before, is a mixer and MIDI controller in itself. You can create any number of channels each with instruments, as in Audio devices, MIDI devices and or as many effects as you need. It warrants it’s own series of videos.
I mention in the title for this video, something called Nambu, it’s the synthesiser I’ve used for this jamming session.
So have a watch and a listen, I will produce more of these and take a break from Tidal for a little while, as I need to get my head around so many concepts!!
I've been trying to get OBS working properly, no sound was being recorded but in the end it turned out to be user error or maybe idiot error in my case! Let's not go there, other than to say time wasted overlooking the obvious.
This is just a quick post this time round, exploring different kick sounds and how they can be grouped together to make some interesting drum patterns. No talking this time, just a case of pressing record and then messing around with ideas in real time. I'll get more adventurous with these and will be interesting to see how it evolves.
Have a nice week everyone.
It's episode 3 and we take our first steps into making music with Tidal Cycles. I walk through a few simple and not so simple examples, to hopefully give you a flavour of what it's all about. If you are interested to try out the software, then please visit their website which is: https://tidalcycles.org where you can find the latest downloads, docs and other support information to get up and running. Once you've done that subscribe to this podcast.
I aiming realistically to publish once a fortnight, maybe once a week, though of course I've released 3 episodes in one day today. I got carried away and from here on, I need to do more research and prep work.
Plenty of scope for this cast, it's going to be a fun journey!
This is my first proper audio episode and I introduce you to the premise of this cast going forward. Tidal Cycles is a software tool for creating music with programming code, code updates made on the fly can be executed to make changes to the sound or music. It's difficult to explain in writing, easier to tell you about it in an audio podcast. Enjoy and I look forward to creating music to share on this channel.
This is an older video I recorded demonstrating what you can do with VCV, a virtual Eurorack modular synth system.