Combining circuit bent music with conventional rock band music?

[samspike]

So I'm making conventional rock music. Real gtrs, bass, vox, and sequenced synth/drums. A lot of trouble has been gone to make the drums sound like real drums, etc. not mechanical. e.g. varying tempo realistically in the song, changing drum patterns, etc.

I want to combine circuit bent sounds with this.

Syncrhonizing circuit bent rhythms, however cool sounding, is a problem, and some of the bent keyboards are, well-how can I put, totally random/glitchy and often out-of-tune (in a good way, but that means they don't always combine well with conventional instruments).

So I'm looking for ideas or suggestions how to bring the two together.  Using the circuit bent stuff for keyboard solos, or wierd middle sections like the middle of Whole Lotta Love, seems to be under utitlizing them.

[noiseybeast]

I would think that easiest + most reliable ways to do it would be to either rig up some of the midi control units that are available for bends or to sample your favorite bends and use them that way.

Saves on wear and tear of the bent instrument too.

Wait, you're not talking live are you?

You mean for recording.  The way to do it then is to lay down your basic tracks and then just jam over and over again until you find something that fits.  You can always fake the thing being in tune by layering or by just saying screw it and not worrying about tune for that particular instrument.   Jarring and out of tune is often a better sound than everything being musically perfect. 

[Gordonjcp]

I second sampling it.  You can pick up extremely good hardware samplers for *pennies* these days - a friend and I picked up a Yamaha A4000 and an Emu ESI4000, with a battered Roland U220 thrown in for good measure - £220!

You can pick up a fully-loaded Akai S5000/S6000 for two or three hundred quid - amazing considering what these sampling wunderkinder cost new.

[samspike]

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes good idea on sampling.

I actually have an ESI-32 (with ZIP and full memory) and Yamaha SU-10 - both got cheaply on ebay. So yes sampling is definitely an option.

I especially looking/interested for ideas for musical integration between the two worlds, rather than technical means to achieve it.

So now, so far I have 3 main ideas using circuit bent instruments

1. Keyboard solos
2. Weird middle sections in music (scifi? prog rock?)
3. Sample notes (or maybe phrases) and use them as a keyboard instrument in rock song

[phantompowers]

I think you need some musical inspiration!!!
Have a listen to the 'Odelay' album by 'Beck', its covered in circuit bent wangy-ness. As is a lot of his early stuff. He's been known to play a circuit bent SK-1 and a bent Speak and Spell live on stage, along to his band.
A band called 'Tortoise' combine really tripped out grooves, played with live bass and drums, with circuit bent noises, but in a really tranced out, ambient way.
If you haven't heard Can and Neu!, do ya Krautrock homework! It's not circuit bent but they were modifying and building synths and using them along to live drums and bass in the 70's.
Also 'The Silver Apples' have to be checked out. They were a two piece from New York in the 60's. Very ahead of their time. One band member played drums and sang backing vocals, whilst the other dude played a severely modified hammond organ with all sorts of oscillators added. And he sang lead vox. Listen to 'Program' by 'The Silver Apples' it'll blow your mind, especially when you realise they made it in 1967!!
I hope you get some musical inspiration.

[phantompowers]

Sorry 1968!!!

SILVER APPLES-Program

SILVER APPLES Oscillations & Seagreen Serenades

Can: Moonshake (Future Days 1973 Krautrock classic)

Beck with The Flaming Lips 12.24.02 KCRW


Hope you find some inspiration.

[phantompowers]

Sorry, I meant to post this as well

Tortoise - Salt the Skies

[jamiewoody]

on sampling...an sk1 is good for this!

[Timodon]

I've been playing guitar and circuit bent gear together in a band for about 2 years now so I've got a little experience in this area

It really depends on the style of your music and, as has been pointed out, whether you're playing live or just recording. Recording's usually a lot easier to work out as you can overdub and experiment at home to prepare before you go and start using studio time.

In the live arena here's a couple of issues worth bearing in mind-

- The wild differences in level between different bits of gear - if you've a lot of keyboards/ toys etc might be worth investing in a mixer of your own so that you can give the house sound engineer a stereo line out and keep him happy!

- keeping in time with the drummer. If you want a drummer to stay in time with a pre-sequenced pattern or any rhythmic pattern with a fixed tempo this will depend on 2 things - 1 - how well the drummer can hear your loop over his/ her own racket, and 2 - how good the drummer is. Again your own mixer with an aux out could help here to give the drummer a headphone feed, or you can just rely on the venue having decent monitoring and make sure that you're turned up loud enough. This can be a little hairy as every venue sounds different.


Two live bands I've studied tackling your problem with different approcahes are NIN and Holy F*ck. This is all from watching them and guesswork so I'm not claiming that this is all true - if anyone knows better say so!

NIN only really seem to use their sk-1 to make random industrial noises with no direct rhythmic connection to the music - this is probably the easiest thing to do as it involves nothing more than turning up with the bent keyboard and pressing the right button at the right point in the song and then going mad on the patchbay. It's more of a "featured" instrument than a distinct member of the band, but it's that authentic sk-1 sound and look! there's an sk-1 on the stage and he's playing it! cool.

Holy Fuck's drummer(s) appear to be excellent at listening to what the guys with the bent gear are doing and staying in time with it. The two main guys also adjust stuff like their delay times and tempos in real time on stage so occasionally you hear stuff drifting out of time and then hear them fix it. I don't really mind this as they manage to keep most of it in time and the imperfections add to the live feel. In general it seems to be the preset drum loops from an SA-1 and similar that they all appear to be using as their master clock. I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that the main two keep in time with each other with some sort of sequencer.

A final general point - linked to the others suggestions to sample your gear - It will also depend on what aspect of your bent instrument that you want to integrate with the other sounds. I have a bunch of stuff that I've modified that I use live but I also have an SA-1 that I'll probably only use for recording. I love the SA-1's deep crash for it's unpredictability but it's precisely this that means I would never inflict it on a room full of paying customers. In the studio I can spend 20 minutes recording crashes and guarantee that I'll come up with something interesting enough to base a tune or part of a tune on. but live it could just as easily give me a blast of static or nothing at all, so if I ever do this I will definitely sample it! The oscillating fuzz bend on the same keyboard however is much more predictable and reacts to your actual playing, so If I write a tune using this mod I could happily play it live on the SA-1 without any sampling - which ultimately would feel (and look) more authentic. After all, anyone can sample any sound and play it back right?

[Timodon]

Ha! serves me right. After banging on at length I've just notice the post where you say you're more interested in the musical inspiration side. Oh well. Here's my contributions to that!:-

My favourite bent band:-

Holy Fuck "the Pulse"

the other big bent band with F*ck in the name:-

Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love For Planet Earth (live)

Can anyone point me at the NIN clip where trent uses an sk-1? I'm sure I've seen it somewhere...

As mentioned above Tortoise are a good call for this sort of thing, as are Jaga Jazzist, I lost count of the number of different instruments, electronic and otherwise:-

Jaga Jazzist - I Could Have Killed Him In The Sauna (Live)

[phantompowers]

Cheers for those links, I'm always searching for new music. I really liked Jaga Jazzist.

[Circuitbenders]

All the early stuff by Download was built from 4 or 5 massive live jam sessions with a load of circuit bent stuff, modular synths, 'real' instruments and bizarre random kit. You can see one of them with a pile of toys on the left at the start of the first video.

Download - The Turin Cloud

Download - Possession

DOWNLOAD - Mother Sonne - 1995

[Timodon]

I'm liking where this thread is heading! share those influences people...

Is this an SK-1? (from about 2.15):-

Nine Inch Nails - The Great Destroyer - Live in St Louis 8.20.08

[jamiewoody]

i have to make and upload a vid for my sk1...with all of the mods i've done to it, it sounds freaking amazing!

you know, i discovered one of these sweetspots. with the lfo mod i did, if use the "chord" function of the keyboard, and make the sound really glitchy, then start doing different patches, it sounds so weird!!!

[jamiewoody]

the drums on the sk1 too! experimenting with patches and getting a filter sweep going, it just sounds so sweet!