Post with 2 notes
at last making music after a hiatus for academic work. (to the right of the mixer LEDs in the photo, you’ll notice two champagne corks cluttering up the desk; those were popped at the dissertation defense in january.) newest addition in the studio is a grendel drone commander, elegantly designed for creating analog drone music from 2 manually-tuned oscillators, 2 LFOs, and a filter. it is housed in a military ammunition case. my protestations of militarism in audio-technical language notwithstanding, it is a lovely synth. as others have pointed out, electronic musical instrument developers have long drawn from military-industrial castoff materials to build their machines (like artists at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the 1960s raiding the Radiation Lab at Berkeley). and contrary to the command-and-control connotations of its name, i quite like the drone commander’s soothing sounds and the impossibility of precisely lining up the oscillators in tune. adding some spring reverb and analog delay for atmosphere…
