Electronic Music 411 - Ignatius - Circuit bent kawaiK4r fodder

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I posted this on the elektron users forum a week or so ago and thought i'd dump it here as well. circuit bent noodling exploration. just checking out the bends on a new synth

so, i got around to noodling away on the kawai today. basically, i had a loop of some random midi notes playing and i changed up the synth presets while it was playing and then started throwing switches. so, you can hear how far the sound can get away from the generic stock presets in the synth. adjusting envelopes and other synth parameters effects the sound greatly. so as soon as get into writing a bunch of my own presets i'm sure there will be so much more to come out of this box.

just some info, the synth is unchanged w/all the switches and the one knob set to the off position. it can be used as intended and be a normal kawai k4r at all times just by turning the switches to the off position. also, it can be edited like normal and patches can be saved like normal while the bends are happening via the switches however the patch won't be saved as a bent patch.. that would be crazy.. however, those bends aren't part of the memory system so..

anyway- it's very easy to find a sweet spot w/the bends. there seems to be a lot of FM/aliasing/AM and other kind of things happening but also some distortion, noise, and all kinds of harmonics get added to the signal depending on what combination of switches are in the on position.

there are no effects in this synth.. no delays or reverbs or chorus or anything like that so everything you hear is a bend happening. waveforms get looped or something and things can get awfully mechanical sounding and clangorous and then at times it will sound just like you expect a bent instrument to sound like.. but throw one more switch and something spectacular happens to the wave forms or the modulation or who knows what and you have a whole new sound on your hands that sounds nothing like well.. anything..

the controller is connected by a 10-12 ft ribbon connector that is nice and secure. it can be disconnected and the synth will keep working just fine though w/o the bends.

i'm sure you'll get tired of hearing the same midi loop going and going (i did) but there's a wide range of notes.

a word about the audio.. there are a couple of pauses and lot's of fodder until i find some kind of sweet spot of which there are many.. i tried to cram a lot in there but i forgot to do long pad type sounds with lot's of evolving stuff going on in the tail of the pad. it does that type of thing really well because the bends set in motion all kinds of wavetable like synth stuff that loops or not.. depending on what switches etc..

here's some half assed pics

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and here's the 35MB audio clip

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Billy Neenos is the guy who bent it.. he hasn't launched his website yet but it should be up and around pretty soon. i know he's gonna list a bunch of stuff on ebay soon. i'll drop a line on that when he does...