I’ve been a Clavia Nord Modular G2 user/patcher/programmer/tweaker (pick any that applies) for over 4 years, and I’ve been using the ‘classic’ version (a borrowed Nord Micro Modular) for 3 years before the G2 era. It’s an amazing machine and I’ve seen some people doing some “crazy shit” with it. By the way, if you have a lot of spare time you can dig through this.

I got Native Instruments Komplete a week ago but I haven’t had the time to install it until today, and I only installed a few of its components to start with - Absynth and Reaktor. After reading through the first 50, or so, pages of the Reaktor manual - yes, I’m one of the very few who actually reads an Operational Manual - I started building my first synthesizer.

In the Nord Modular you start off by adding an oscillator and connect it to an amplitude envelope generator before connecting the envelope to the outputs. You also need to connect a gate signal cable to the gate input of the envelope generator. That’s an extremely basic, and quite boring, sound. In Reaktor, however, you start by connecting a gate to the an envelope and the envelope to the input of an oscillator. If you only connect the oscillator directly to the output you won’t hear a thing. But if you connect a Nord Modular oscillator directly to the output you’ll hear a drone - an E4 if I’m not mistaken. So Reaktor actually feels a bit backwards, as I wrote in my tweet earlier today. I’ll probably get the hang of it but I must say that I think the Clavia approach is more logical. Besides that, I really love the way Reaktor is structured (pun intended - but you probably need to be a Reaktor user to get it, sorry) with building blocks and macros and so on. That’s something the Nord Modular G2 is lacking. I’ll try to recreate some of my G2 patches next week if I’m too bored with composing new songs. I know they won’t sound the same, but it’ll just be for fun and I might discover something cool to blog about.

The downside of having a powerful tool as Komplete 5 at your hands is that it actually CAN affect your creativity in a negative way. But it’s just sooo darn fun tweaking, patching and fiddling around with all the nifty tools and toys!

Any hint on where I can find some cool graphics to use in my panels?

Happy patching fellow Reaktorians!

We’re back from the Norbergfestival with tons of fun memories.

To sum it up shortly to not keep You, readers, occupied too long, this is what we did:
Travelled the incredibly long (not) 160 kilometres to Norberg from Stockholm. Checked in at Klackbergsgården and headed off to the Norbergfestival. We met a lot of friends, from both Sweden and Norway (Hei gutter!) and had loads of laughs.
We managed to get through sound-check hell with rebooting synthesizers and some gating issues regarding the microphone used for the vocoder. Nothing that wasn’t sorted out, but scary enough to raise our pulse and use our French vocabulary. Made me think a bit though, since I’ve written about it before, and this time (again!) we had hardware trouble on stage.
The gig was amazing! Wet met a few fans before the show who’d came to dance to our music, and we met Pål and Glenn who had come all the way from Norway just to see us perform.
Pål shot a video, with his mobilephone, of us performing. You can watch the 4 minute clip at YouTube.

Drop a line at the mindXpander fanpage at Facebook and we’ll keep you up to date with releases and more gigs (if there will be any).

Back home, at my fortress, I’ve created a short jingle for a show at Radio Nova called Magic Beat, and I’ve completed my remix of a track by Hearts of Black Science.

There’s a couple of pic’s I shot at the festival here.

Time to meet some friends over a cup of coffee in the sun before floorball practice begins.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately - mostly regarding music, what I’m doing musically and why.
What’s the point, really? Why do I have all the gear I’ve got? What’s my goal?

I don’t strife to be in-the-spotlight-famous - don’t think I could coup with that. But I’d like to become someone. I’d like to produce and be a part of something people refer to as “really good” or “simply amazing”. I’d like to play live at more trance parties. I’d like to support, or produce, a big music act.

I’m not giving up, nor am I selling my hardware equipment even though I’m using software solely today - and I got more software coming…

I ended up in third place in a remix competition which was extremely fun, but it didn’t seem to get me anywhere.

But in the end, it’s the heart-warming comments that really is the driving force behind my music creativity.

Tongue-tied Twisted at the Digitally Imported forum wrote the following when listening to Heliosphere:
“was gonna call it a day at wrk… simply cant now….!!!!! yyeeaahh”
There are some other really amazing comments as well which I’m reading a little now and then when I need it. Those can lift me up when I’m down and inspire me to continue creating music.

Fans, friends, family and lover - Thank You for Listening and boosting my driving force!

Next up: mindXpander Live @ Mimerlaven, Norbergfestivalen. See you there!

Digitally Imported is playing the Ypsilon 5 track Heliosphere on their psychill channel, and today someone voted it “Simply Amazing”.

Thank You!

The track is from the Binary Sky album released by Tranceform Records back in 2003. You can hear a sample of Heliosphere here.

Still going strong!

I’m trying to put it on iTunes Music Store since the album itself is out of print.

Just read on Waldorf Music’s webpage that Largo is under way.

It seems to be meeting all the previous specifications and my expectations are high!

KVR says it’ll cost you $299 / €165 (+VAT) to get your hands on this little bugger.

There are some sound clips available in this post over at Waldorf.