Sunday Synth Jam: Australian synthesist ascetik shared this ‘Ambient Frippertronics’ piece, inspired by the Fripp & Eno tape loop albums of the 1970’s.
Here’s what ascetik shared about the technical details of the performance:
Playing the Waldorf Blofeld through a 15 second delay, to create a constantly evolving sound-on-sound mosaic; this is a technique popularized by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp in the 70s and is the sonic equivalent to an artist continuously layering paint on a canvas.
Hope these ambient vibes can help instill a sense of calm during these uncertain times.
what are you using for the delay? are the tape artifacts from the delay unit or the blofeld? the distortion is nice and warm
Hi, I’m using Soundtoys Echoboy set to the Memory Man algorithm. I’ve cranked the saturation about halfway on the delay leading to warm, smeared repeats and I’ve also used a generous amount of filter drive on the Blofeld itself (tube algorithm). Lastly, I’ve overdriven the inputs slightly on my audio interface, adding an extra layer of warmth and grit. The patch has a random LFO modulating the pitch of both oscillators, and the oscillators themselves are detuned, adding to the ‘tape warble’ effect. Apart from that, the patch is fairly simple, just two sawtooth oscillators and a 24db LPF set about about halfway with a bit of resonance. A tiny bit of attack and release on the envelopes. At some point I increase the attack considerably to turn the patch into a pad swell, and later I introduce some pink noise to emulate wind.
I enjoyed what you pulled off here. That musical period featured a lot of bleeding edge techniques based on making do with what you had. Its an area I especially appreciate because it was where Ambient was born, in a sense. The pure “Krautrock,” Terry Riley and the ways Eno/Bowie/Fripp took to it all made a great stew. I let your entire piece roll and IMO, you got it right.