So good.
Yes, this album is a mystery to me. I love it, as I love Der Zyklus’ Biometry. These two sound somehow different in terms of design compared to both what came before and after. I always wondered whether Gerald Donald had tried to play with computer music software such as Max, Super Collider, etc. Both the sound and the sequencing suggest this use to me.
Some of the tracks sound like he had read some of Bill Sethares’s papers on adaptive tuning. Listen to this for example:
https://sethares.engr.wisc.edu/mp3s/morphine_crystal.html
I might be completely off my mind, but I find resemblance. Donald’s interviews are always pointing to the relation between music and science, and I wonder how much of these claims transfer into actual sound in his music.
But yes, if anyone has knowledge on how Quantum Transposition and Biometry were done, that would be cool!
Lots of KORG Triton sounds in Der Zyklus.
I am not sure he has used computer software for sequencing.
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Yes, I do not know. Might as well be the Triton all along 
I have no experience with it.
Actually discovered them few weeks ago…
Listening to Harnessed the storm ever since
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To go on with this sound design bit, @darenager made a Model-cycles only track in the Cycles music thread where the bass sound reminded me a lot of the sound on Species of the pod on Neptune’s Lair: Model:Cycles only music
so I guess we could state that they also resorted to FM, a statement that is helpful/not helpful 
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For the telephone sound - you can use a saw/square wave oscillator with the pitch modulated by a square LFO - different LFO rates will get you different pitch intervals.
I found out that the U-HE Repro-1 has a wicked preset that sounds so characteristically ‘electro’ - it’s called Cybotron Bass I believe maybe you could reverse engineer that and apply principles to the Monomachine? I had some success taking this approach using my Novation Peak.
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Always keep in mind that it all needs to sound like the water level in video games, but with more adrenaline! 
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Just sample this, speed it up 2x and pitch down to taste
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I was wondering this as well re: the sequencing. At times it sounds as if he is interacting in real time with the sequencing… so dynamic. I’ve been trying to emulate the interaction between the different riffs with the A4 in direct jump mode… efforts have been fruitless so far lol… but at least making something interesting even if it doesn’t sound like arpanet.
I felt like the most recent Dopplereffekt had some similar vibes and was stuff i’ve preferred most from GD in a while.
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I agree about the dynamicness of his composing. It could be also that he is playing with loops in a clip fashion. What is funny too is how the timing of his sequences is sometimes more than approximate A small modular set-up would also open this opportunity.
What I love about analyzing this is the sheer amount of work-arounds everyone comes up with to mimick this. Sometimes it opens very interesting paths!
I really appreciate this man thank you
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I toss up the sysex later today if anyone wants to fuck around and expand on it
Analog-style exponential FM was very important to alot of the sounds they would make. I don’t remember the best way to achieve that on the monomachine, but some things that come to mind:
- FM+Dyn engine (I think that’s the right one)
- SID engine with ring mod
- Ring Mod FX with the SuperWave engine
Also, experiment with lots of LFOs and FX like chorus, flanger, and phaser.
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Happy to see this thread!
I’ve always loved the bass sound in this track and thought about trying to emulate it with the Monomachine. A lot of the other sounds seem like pitched down atmospheric samples.
I also love the way the chords jump around in this one
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A Drexciya style track was one of the first things I did with the MonoMachine when I got it.
This is all MnM, except for the arpeggio (minibrute), live 1 take.
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For some of the classic Drexciya trax, you should look into the Spectral Audio Neptune 2 synthesizer.
That’s if “You don’t know”. :- D
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I like a lot the tone of the discussion here!
Just as a place to store info, I point below to a Gearslutz thread that has interesting info in it:
Check messages 195 and after.
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wouldn’t mind some opinions and ears here.
a friend and myself went on a deep dive last night listening to our favourite Drexciya records and ended up comparing the originally released mixes alongside the recent clone reissues mastered by Alden Tyrell.
I’m cautious that i don’t want this to come across as a hate stirring post, definitely more confirmation of what we experienced and an open mind to detrimental mastering in recent years.
also i’ll caveat this by saying our comparisons weren’t laboratory certified. we listened on a nice system but our sources were a mix of youtube encodes from the last (upto) 15 years vs CDs where possible and the bandcamp wavs.
a truly authoritative comparison would be to have the original 16bit CD versions and reissued 24bit bandcamp digitals.
but christ was the disparity evident.
the originals sounded alive, with so much detail and depth (especially on the snares with their famously swooshing flangers and phasers).
the remasters sounds totally dead. loud but dead. with everything pushed and the snares loosing all their fizz and nuance.
this really struck me! the original versions sound amazing, and anyone discovering these recordings for the first time may do so via the clone versions and miss out on so much…
has anyone else noticed this!?
i’m especially sad as the last new release was the Abstract Thought 12, whilst i love these tunes i’d love to hear the original mixes as i’m sure they’d sound better.
separately the first track of grava 4 sounds like an autechre mix from the last 5 years, amazing 20+ year old electronic music that deserves to be heard as intended, not squashed to sound loud out a phone speaker…
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Gotta try this with the Opsix
Edit: opsix can’t pw modulate the waveform in ringmod mode.
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