one faint deluded smile

Saturday, November 26, 2005

arpeggiated

ion side-on

There's been a bit of discussion on the Ion-Micron List about the lack of features in the Ion's arpeggio especially in comparison to it's cheaper Micron cousin. Indeed, you would expect that an update to the Ion software should be able to fix this pronto but there's little word from Alesis about it as yet.

However, I've enjoyed every sound I get out of the thing! I suppose this is mostly due to the newness of the machine (and arpeggiators in general) to me. Just setting it off and letting it run... It's all so different to how I made music in the 80s. And, to be honest, I know I'm only scratching the surface - sequencers, midi control via PC software, etc are all unknown entities to me as well.

In any case, here's my 1st attempts at (a) recording solo in this golden age and (b) using the Ion arpeggio functions:

mp3: arpeggiated (nb - almost 10mb)

I think you have to do 2 things to make arpeggios sound good:

(1) Select the notes and the number of notes to be played judiciously.
(2) Ram it into a delay unit and sync the delay to the arpeggio tempo.

With this in place you get a repetitive sequence of chords and single notes that, depending upon the complexity of the interactions, sounds almost endless.

This track has got 3 of these overlayed and when they all join in there's a rather silly banjo plucking thing going on that makes me smile. Overdubbed on this are a deep, deep kick drum, a few bass notes (with my annoying tendency to fluff the notes as I lose concentration left in) and 2 wanky "lead" runs on the Ion and the Arp Odyssey.

You can see it as my homage to Church Of Anthrax by John Cale and Terry Riley, if you like.

3 Comments:

  • Oh, that was good :-). Terry RIley for sure, but also Giorgio Moroder, no?! Hypnotic, propulsive, and weirdly tuneful.

    It's hard to believe you haven't done the whole PC / MIDI / etc. thing -- they were a godsend to me and my musical partner all those years ago... (as someone who can only play keyboards one or two notes at a time, I had no choice).

    By Blogger Jimmy Little, at 8:47 am  

  • glad you like it. i'll fiddle with it some more until i can't stand it no doubt. i suppose it'll be on my solo album - ya know, the one i put out when the band has become too ensconsed in majorca. as for midi - i stopped playing music in '84 and it was really around then, was it? but i was happy with my 4 track teac reel-to-reel and oddy (+ m2 studios, ofcourse!).

    By Blogger Phil, at 4:49 pm  

  • I didn't actually start using MIDI seriously until the mid-90's, but I can't imagine doing anything now without MIDI for sequencing and something like ProTools for the recording and overall control. I don't miss my old 4-track TEAC (yeah, I had one in Sydney all those decades ago..) or much about that time really -- digital is so much more amenable to experiment, to revisting, to fiddling, than the old technologies. I was always a studio nerd....

    Looking forward to the solo album :-).

    By Blogger Jimmy Little, at 8:48 am  

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