Some time ago i posted about a little analog synth i bought, the doepfer DARK ENERGY…
And although it sounds quite cool out of the box it mainly whet my appetite for more…

My dream is to build a tool for sounds that are full, warm, original but still have an edge, are exciting. For the warmth and “aliveness” i´d like that tool to be analog not digital. Full and “fat” screams for several different oscillators and to have punch but still give “room” for thick drums i like to combine a lowpass and a highpass filter… I dont think that all of this can be achieved by only expanding this little synth, but its a great opportunity to check out several things: Does analog still sound “better”? Is it that easy to “build”? Will playing it be more fun and inspiring than “mousing” with plug ins?

Good that there are many modules for a system called “Eurorack” that is compatible with the size and the voltage of the DARK ENERGY. These Modules not only have knobs to play with but you also can plug in cables to route signals as you like. I only had to chose modules, build a box around them…

…and put cables everywhere to “pimp” my synth.
Born was the EXPANDED ENERGY.

A mixture of modules from MFB and Doepfer are giving the newborn synth the total of 4 Oscillators, 4 LFOs (all 4 can reach audio frequency!), 2 Envelopes and 2 very different Filters. The new Filtermodule is a clone of the famous Korg MS-20 Filter which is known for its dirty sound and nice distortions. Appetite!

Then i started patching sounds. This is a snippet starting with one single bass sound with a different sound doubled left and right later.

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This is two recordings of the same synth sound spread left and right.

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Here again is a single sound followed by two additional recordings of another sound left and right. I used some patching tricks to get an aggressive but still playable sound…

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And here are those three sounds with some drums in the “musical context”. All synth sounds done with the new EXPANDED ENERGY.

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And here is some percussive stuff and some bass tracks i did with it:

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Oh, and its painted white now:

Creativity is by definition rather the breaking of than a set of rules. But there are rules with creative work that stood the test of time and are really making the creative process easier and more results oriented.

One fundamental rule in producing (and mixing) music is: Find the most important element of the song and emphasize it!

Many mixing and songwriting tricks are kind of “subtractive” to fulfil this rule. A great melody doesnt need dozens of notes. See if you still can cut down your songtext or your arrangement. Dont play the stuff that isnt helping the main element (or mix it really soft). Try to mute clashing instruments. Prefer subtractive EQ etc… A lot of producing and mixing is “taking away”.

And i had this song with too many elements. Several minutes of multiple tracks of edited synthetic percussion, a piano melody, string hits, an acoustic drumloop and two electronic drumloops, sampled string harmonies, a lot of sound effects, re-amped synths, loops and strings… and moreover i found that fat bassline… normally i had to trash half of it and split the rest between three songs… but i wondered WHAT WOULD IT SOUND LIKE to put it ALL IN…

It was a total mess For example there really are THREE drumloops playing at the same time… here is a snippet that plays them one after the other and then together with another bassdrum and a ride cymbal like in the final song…

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That was fun and i went on producing in such a “maximal” style… the number of elements is exceeding the number of elements in three normal electronic songs by far, but i liked it somehow… mixing wasnt easy, because conceptionally i didnt want to mix parts too soft… otherwise it would count as ALL IN

Here are the elements of one part at the end of the song being played briefly one after the other - in the  song they all play simultaniously of course…

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So it began as an experiment to break a firm rule of music production for the sake of creativity, but finally it became one of my personal favourite 5 of THIRTEEN STORIES.

…and then i experimented with different spirituous beverages and found out that a 60/40 mixture of Pitu and Bacardi gave exactly the sound i was looking for… after a great deal of tuning (pitch up means taking a nip) i felt the need for a bassdrum…

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Today i started tuning glasses by filling them with water VODKA. I now experiment with playing techniques and hope to find a kind of sound not to be found in any existing sample library…

here are the “singing glasses”… its only layers of recordings of those glasses and one synth sound (from second 55 on)… no sampling involved for now…

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..so i had this uptempo track with a recorderd flowerpot and a generic d&b beat… the beat could definitly not stay that way and i wondered…

what if the beat had one scheme but myriads of sounds… snippets and cuts from various sources, modulated, compressed, copy&pasted following that fast beat… not a single second should sound like another…

What a mess ! Said someone… TURN IT UP !! is my response….

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Today i was sitting on my balkony, looking at an empty flowerpot as i wondered what it would sound like if i ´d insert a recording of thumping that flowerpot into a drum ´n bass track i was working on.

So i did.

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and this is how the beginning of the track now sounds… 

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