Synthesist Matthew Davidson has released a new album, A Funneled Stone, that’s a “pure modular synthesizer album, realized the old-school way; tracking one monophonic line at a time.”
On his new album, Davidson combines analog and digital synth modules with computer-sequenced control voltages, which lets him explore new ground with modular synthesis.
Give it a listen and let us know what you think!
Here’s Davidson’s statement on A Funneled Stone:
When I see a photo of a modular synthesizer, I wonder, as I believe many others do, what the thing sounds like. What possibilities lurk within this strange hardware? I want to hear something orchestrated and controlled. I want to hear someone commanding the instrument with authority, not merely floating on waves of serendipity. I want to hear something composed for the instrument, leveraging its strengths, not a orchestration of an existing composition.
‘A Funneled Stone’ is a pure modular synth release, tracked in the old-shool, 1970’s way: one monophonic line at a time. Every sound you hear was created, patched and recorded for that moment in time. When a new sound is needed, the patch is torn down and a new one is built. Polyphony is achieved by tracking each voice individually.
A modular album is, by definition, unapologetically synthetic. I also tried to take a more minimalist approach to orchestration, so the individual sounds can be more fully isolated and appreciated. I spent much of the final month of production taking elements out, and editing for length. Sometimes this results in the remaining elements merely hinting at the underlying harmonic movement.
As you can imagine, this process is very time-consuming, but fun. I hope you enjoy the results as much as I enjoyed creating it.
You can help support Davidson by buying the album at iTunes or Bandcamp. You can also download it for the price of a Tweet from his site.
Some of the pieces are really nice (as in "I like them, would listen to them again, would maybe ask a DJ what he was playing, and so on"). Too bad he did not do away with the ritardandi and accelerandi that sound artificial in the worst way imaginable. Like trying to achieve the sound of accoustic instruments with a modular synth becomes painful real quick, trying to sequence (?) tempo and velocity changes can lead to disasters that ruin songs that could be quite listenable otherwise.
It's certainly a great inspiration to fire up a sequencer, Silent Way, and warm up the modular. If I had the time for this. What he says is true: It's very, very time consuming, and can be frustrating at times.
Playful, restrained compositions that bring out the beauty and weirdness of modular synthesis. (I've recently been listening to baroque compositions for recorder…which these pieces by Matthew Davidson happen to compliment beautifully.)
I like his mission statement. I'm downloading the thing from iTunes on the strength of that alone. Everything sonic can be previewed for free these days, which is fine. But my favourite music often strikes a chord with me only months after I bought it, so these days I think more 'why would I want to like this?' rather than 'do I like this?'