modularrific

Here's a new piece I just recorded for a fashion installation.
Sndtrk by recompas

More info on the patch etc. on patchatoms

Urban Remix Times Square Performances

Yesterday I did two performances in Times Square as part of the Urban Remix Times Square project. The first performance took place outdoors in the square, the second in the Times Square visitor's center in the evening. It was great to see the typical visitors to Times Square react to our performances. We got a lot of positive feedback. I was also very interested to see what I would come up with for this project, having performed a piece for the Atlanta Beltline Urban Remix last year, I really enjoyed the contrast in source material. All sounds on these recordings came from recordings made in Times Square, no additional synthesis or sampling is in there, just filtering, compression, delay, re-arrangement, etc. A little musique concrete.

Urban Remix Times Square 5.12.11 perf 1 by recompas

Urban Remix Times Square 5.12.11 performance 2 by recompas

Modular Recording

Here's the recording we made on the gear pictured in the previous post.

Loft- Untitled 2 (collaboration with Recompas/Voice of Saturn) by alter/break

For more info check out at PatchAtoms.

Modular Madness at SAIC

Modular Madness at SAIC, originally uploaded by recompas.

Recording coming soon! Got a chance to play on this with my co-conspiritor in loft

Voice of Saturn II

Voice of Saturn Synth II Prototype from Travis Thatcher on Vimeo.

Here's a quick demo of the mostly completed prototype of the Voice of Saturn Synth II. Its actually going to be a sort of modular oscillator system, with a circuit board for each vco, and a mixer board. This will allow you to have 1 - ? VCO's depending on what your space requirements are. My prototype will eventually have 5 VCO's, and 2 will have caps for super low speed LFO timing. Once I get the pcbs prototyped and working, I'll be doing a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the first board run this summer.

The Voice of Saturn - Cronus Free Digital Release

Check out my new single Cronus. Its got a wicked remix from Judi Chicago's Kid Pyramid. Its out available for free download on Double Phantom Digital!

=> the voice of saturn & chuck!

Somebody did a killer implementation of the vos synth circuit in the Chuck programming language. Find it in the LICK library.

custom midi controller for animal collective

diy midi modwheel controller


Custom modwheel midi controller with Arduino from Travis Thatcher on Vimeo.

Using the Doepfer's modwheel assembly and an Arduino I built this midi controller for a client that needed a standalone box with a center detented, spring loaded pitch bend control and a free moving volume control. There is a switched that puts the device into calibration mode to learn the min and max values of each wheel. The code is pretty simple (though messy and uncommented for the time being) and basically just reads in the analog values of the wheels, scales them to the appropriate midi controller values and has some smoothing applied to take care of jitter. You can download the Arduino source here. It requires the MIDILibrary.

live set

Live performance from 3.26.11 @ Siren Records, Doylestown, PA by recompas

Playing a set @ Siren Records, Doylestown, PA tomorrow

Back in NYC today. Doing a sort of new hybrid recompas/voice of saturn ambient disco set tomorrow night at Siren Records. Its part of a night called 'A Very Communal Commotion' and should be pretty fun. Set will be posted here later.

Patch Atoms

So Nate and I started a new blog called PatchAtoms. Yup. Its basically for us to refer to - each post will have a sound, how it was made, and what it was made with. Because the ladies love it.

(Un) Pleasant Over Drones

Check out the ambient compilation (un) Pleasant Over Drones put togother for Resound Falmouth 2011 here. I've got a piece on there.

Winter Music

Winter Soundscape from Travis Thatcher on Vimeo.

recompas - visitor

New recordings February 2011

recompas & visitor by recompas

Modular track

Kosmiche Drei by recompas

More Telephone mics

I got a few really ancient handsets off Ebay recently and have made some microphones out of them. They sound a bit more lofi and gritty than the Bell Model 500 handsets I've been using and I had to put the jack in kind of a unique place. I like it. These are for sale, $100 each.

Email me if you are interested.

Schau

In November I got to spend some time at the Watermill Center working on sound material for a production being created by Alexandra Sachs. Selections from the performance were presented as a work in progress at the center on Nov. 20th and here is some video from the performance. I really enjoyed using live sound elements in the compositions - in particular the 'zoo' scene records audio from the audience, processes it and then plays it back into the environment as a sort of feedback loop.

SCHAU / work in progress / watermill center 2010 from Alexandra Sachs on Vimeo.

The Shrine of Native Rites for Electric Winter

Saturday night myself and Mikael Jorgensen created some ambient music as part of an installation at Eyebeam for their winter mixer. We performed inside of a structure built by some colleagues of mine that was meant to create an atmosphere of meditation and calmness. Up to 6 audience members at a time could tune in on headphones, sip peppermint tea and realax while we played and videos were projected on the ceiling of the structure.

The Shrine of Native Rites for Electric Winter @ Eyebeam 12.11.10 by recompas

LoFi Telephone mics updated

Been making a few of my LoFi Telephone mics for clients lately and have has some custom work as well. This one was an input for the earpiece and an output from the microphone (this time using the active mic element scheme). More info and pricing is on my site.

DIY Volta - Max/MSP + Audio interface CV output

The main reason I put together the little portable modular rig in the post below was to have something that would be easier to travel with than my tb-3031 rack but still get the live tweak-ability and sound of the 303. One of the biggest sonic features of the 303 is the envelope control over the filter and the accent circuits which are responsible for the punchy, funky acid basslines. I was using Massive through Ableton Live for my basic oscillators and then running the sound out to the waveform processor and wasp filter, with the LFO doing some modulation. I got close, but not quite what I wanted. In order to get the filter accent and envelope working I created this max patch that takes midi in and splits the notes depending on their velocity, to trigger a line~ object connected to my soundcard's output. I'm not sure if this will work with all soundcards, but I'm actually using the built in output of my MacBook Pro and it generates a nice little ramp voltage that I can connect to CV1 or 2 of the filter. End result - not a perfect 303 by any means, but punchy, funky acid basslines for sure. The large rotary control changes the length of the envelopes and the slider at the bottom controls the total amount of output.