Analog Drum / Rhythm Synthesizer Project @ workshop

[Mike Zee]

Hi All. Been long time ..ehhhhhh
How's everybody doing here?
I myself have not recorded a single "piece of art" for pretty long time now. Maybe some day I get inspired or something. who knows.
meanwhile I've somehow I've got myself into making some gear ...well, at least I'm doing something related to music, than nothing at all.
So I thought maybe someone be interested to check out this one of my lates projects.
It'a kind of rather a "monster" DIY drum synth, but it can do a bit more than just drum sounds, it actually can work together with analog sequencer (that was another project on itsown) to create all sorts of grooves/beats and riffs. It also, of course, can generate various sound effects etc. It also can be used with trigger pads (something I'll have to built someday yet ) .
I have a page at workshop with all the details, there are some audio samples there and couple of demo video-clips. The sounds there are just for demo, it's hardly music, if you know what I mean ,heh heh, just some technish grooves and also I've made some random single sounds demo and FX-es. See there links to mp3s.
Here's the link: http://www.mzentertainment.com/studio_w ... sizer.html

If anybody interested in this sort of diy gear and if you have any questions or what ever, let me know, I'd be happy to blah blah

Hope everybody is OK and still dubbing around. Keep it up.
Happy coming New Year.
and Merry Christmas and Happy "Hollies" and Days and all that stuff

Blessings!

[interruptor]

Hey Mike!
Nice to hear your new project.. This looks and sounds brilliant. Although you said it's hardly music I quite like that acid demo track. It's funky!
Those percussion and bass sounds have their own character. I find the cymbal type sounds particularly interesting. They sound very old-school.. cool . The tom sounds with VCO modulation would be perfect for dub purposes.
A club music producer would probably also use a more aggressive bass drum and a snappy sounding snare (as heard on the 909 resp. 808) from some other source. But maybe you could actually dial in such sounds as well.
I also wish you happy holidays and a great 2009.

[interruptor]

p.s. That giant VU meter in your studio is insane, haha!

[Mike Zee]

Hi Daniel. Nice talking to you, my friend
Thanks for taking time checking out this project and comments.
Well, I've said "hardly music" simply because that's what it is, as it's just some examples of what can come out directly from just this unit alone without involvement of any other instruments and without re-recording or any external processing etc. It's just what you get as example by "driving" the unit by the sequencer and mixing four of its channels on the mixing board, while on-the-fly flipping switches and adjusting knobs on the sequencer , on the unit itself and on the mixer.
Making actually tracks/songs with such set-up is the whole different story and there is many ways of how exactly to do it. Something I have not done yet, actually. As a matter of fact, I am not even sure myself about clear reasonings for why I've got into this stuff. It was like a chain reaction, as I've started with some simple synth project for fun of it and then it goes like this: you get ideas as it goes and about want to ad/build next and next and next. And the more you do - more "ideas" you get. It seems like there's no end to it... endless project in a sense
For me, I guess, the most exiting thing about this whole deal is the process of getting interesting result starting from the very source of the sound (the sound/source which is very simple and primitive in its origin).
The somewhat "negative" side of this is that it takes time, energy and you get less to spend on actually 'creating / recording tracks/songs'. It's like a sort of competition between you being a musical recordings maker and you being a recording equipment / musical instruments maker. And then on top of all you may actually want to have some time left for practicing guitar or drums or what have you ...heh heh , life is short
uh, anyhow...

Oh, the "giant VU meter" thing huh huh, thanks for noticing
Yeah, Daniel, this is a one pretty cool acting thing in my studio. Also it's not a VU-Meter, even though it may look like one and act like one of those. This unit is a special and pretty freaky multi-meter monitor / +V supply / Resistance-To-Voltage "converter", that I've built specifically to support the operation of the Sequential Controller. Here's the page link to that meter unit project, that explains what it does and how it was built: http://www.mzentertainment.com/studio_w ... meter.html ,

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Daniel, again, Happy New year and hope you'll have great time during these days and beyond.