SynthModules

Well I was getting pretty happy/freaky Saturday night as I was playing
with my PSIM...  partly because of the massive amounts of vicodin I had
in me for my shoulder injury...  but it is a magic beast!  Between the
meds, the big pepsi and it being 3 in the morning my brain was all over
the place with ideas flying out of my grey matter and slithering down
the walls.

Here's one:  Imagine a bee's honeycomb, made of hexagons.  Start the bee
in the middle hexagon and follow him as he moves from one hexagon to the
next in a random path; six ways to move from any given location.  Put a
note in each hexagon (from a 4 octave dorian mode scale maybe) and the
software can create patterns.  Make a whole 'nother honeycomb with gate
times in it to associate lengths for each note.  Kind of like a "random
walk" from graph theory, but with six directions...  not all that hard
to do with the PSIM, but I'll be the Buchla can't ;)

Oh... you could use a Wiard joystick to move thru the honeycombs...  oh
boy

We do need to pin down an official title here, "simians" or psimians",
etc.  Maybe grab a Planet of the Apes image for a logo...

OK, enough rambling.  Now you all know I'm pretty weird...

Oozitron aka Andrew


>>> phdinfunk@yahoo.co.uk 04/06/04 1:59 PM >>>
I remeber when I got the program, "Buzz" on my computer.  It's buggy 
as all hell but you know what?  In 1977 I would have had to have 
been a PHD student at a major university and I would have had to 
schedule lab time in a multi-hunred thousand dollar lab to use a 
system even remotely resembling that.....  in some ways we have 
embarrassments of riches these days...

I guess I might modify some of my original statements to agree that 
this is like when PCs first were made available to the masses...  
Maybe it isn't anything completely new (didn't even Debussy try to 
make music based upon fibbonacci sequences? and I wrote a fibbonacci 
counting program in basic, I'm trying to think how to make envelopes 
somehow shaped on those curves....)...  still, with something so 
open ended as the PSIM, the synergy between our ideas on the PSIM, 
our complex modular patches, our musical melodies and progressions 
(you guys do make up those too, don't you? :-)...  it feels like 
there is an incredible amout of creative possibility there..  

God, maybe I'm just in a good mood or something because of 
springtime, I don't know, but I've always read about things like the 
Buchla 300 where you could pretty much make any key do anything, or 
things like that one guy's (maybe it was one of the EMS people) 
system where he had 128 formant filters all computer accessable, or 
a computer synthi.....  or a fairlight...  

If you gave each of us access to a full orchestra, all the time, and 
we could make the musicians do whatever we wanted them too, maybe it 
wouldn't be completely "original" but all of our creativities and 
personalities would be expressed in unique and special ways....  and 
if we spent enough time with our orchestras, tweaking everything 
untill it was "right," I think we could generate some really 
wonderful things.  I guess that's what I'm saying....

Okay, Now I've got this huge smile on my face.  I realize I sound 
kind of kooky right now....  I must admit I've been having lovey 
dovey conversations with my girlfriend all day and it's beautiful 
outside and I'd just blow off everything and drink wine and garden 
if I had the choice today (but I still don't think that invalidates 
what I'm saying about the PSIM.. can't we be in a terrific mood and 
be considered "rational" at the same time?  ;-)...

Jonathan


--- In SynthModules@yahoogroups.com, "john mahoney" <jmahoney@g...> 
wrote:
> > Suddenly it occurred to me that the PSIM would be good for all 
kinds
> > of scales....  couldn't we, for all intents and purposes, assign 
any
> > arbitrary scale here?  I mean, map any set of values against any
> > other set....  polyphonically?!?
> 
> Heck, yeah!
> 
> Versatile scaling and quantizing is why I once wrote that only a 
PSIM could
> interface an ARP (1V/Oct), an MS-20 (linear VCOs), an EML 
(1.2V/Oct) and a
> Synthi (0.5V/Octave?) together so they'd all play in tune with 
each other.
> 
> 
> > excited about that possibility....  a quantizing Shift register 
in
> > some exotic scale... the other PSIM with polyphonic quanting to 
that
> > same scale.... with that whole idea of one input plays unisons 
while
> > another plays scale-tone chords w/voltage controlled 
inversions....
> 
> Cool. I like that the "idea of one input plays unisons while 
another plays
> scale-tone chords" has become a recurring theme. :-)
> 
> 
> > And to think I could have all that in a multi program and just
> > switch programs to some wild and crazy modulation source, 
polyphonic
> > glide, or even a spare ADSR......  This module was a God-inspired
> > stroke of genius, whether anyone realizes that or not.
> 
> The PSIM can do things that I always wanted (Cycling74's) Max to 
do, but Max
> never had access to analog I/O (as far as I knew).
> 
> 
> > Does anyone else have the feeling that this could actually 
DEFINE A
> > NEW KIND OF MUSIC, or drastically change the way we make music?
> 
> As a devoted Psimian (the P is silent ;-) I hate to say no, but I 
think the
> answer is "No." I say this mainly because there are hardly any new 
ideas! I
> am pretty sure that concepts like "algorithmic harmony generators" 
have all
> been tried.
> 
> But the PSIM is exciting because the cool tools have been released 
from the
> laboratories and placed into the hands of the teeming masses 
(well, at least
> a small group of analog nuts). It's like when personal computers 
were first
> introduced. Although it might not be conceptually new, having 
access to this
> power is totally new for most of us.
> 
> 
> > In a way, it's like a modular within a modular...  It makes me 
feel
> > like I have a Buchla 300 system or something  [:-)
> 
> Like I said, nothing is *really* new.
> 
> 
> > These PSIMs are the most exciting thing in my entire modular
> > synth....
> 
> Now, why would you say that? Because it's a voltage controlled 
quantizer,
> scaler, logic module, sample & hold, LFO, Envelope Generator, 
Andrew's Dream
> Sequencer, and more, all in one? ;-)
> 
> --
> john <--(still deprived of synth-playing & PSIM-programming time 
due to huge
> project at work, but it's almost finished!)
> 
> 
> P.S. Why isn't Brice going to make any more PSIMs?




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