tom moody

"My Robot Can Eat Your Robot" [4.8 MB .mp3]

Have been keeping scrupulous notes on how pieces were made, mostly for my reference in case I wanted to come back to something. This has a tendency to demystify the work, which isn't always desirable. #krypt

"Factory at Night" [3 MB .mp3]

Short "atmo" piece with electro textures.

"Spaceport Lounge Demo" [3.3 MB .mp3]

Was liking the middle section of "Electro Suite No. 2" with the jazz-like bass and synth combo so did this tune in 3/4, with piano and drums added. It ended up being shorter than I'd intended but I decided I liked the start and stop quality of introducing each of the 4 or 5 riffs and just moving on to the next one. So it's "postmodern."

"Electro Suite No. 2 (Short Version)" [4.6 MB .mp3]

This a leaner version of the previously posted track -- two minutes leaner. It's still a "suite" but the parts relate better to each other now.

"Electro Suite No. 2" [7.6 MB .mp3]

Trying out a variety of effects and modular routings with a handful of hardware devices:
--Doepfer A-112 (sampler): loop function, pitch shift, wavetable function (the klunky pulse at about :24), using an external LFO to alter sample rate/pitch
--Routing VCO of Vermona Perfourmer channel 2 to Doepfer mini-synth external input, then routing two mixed VCOs (Doepfer and Vermona, harmonizing) back to the Vermona's channel 3 for filtering and VCA
--Using the Vermona VCO as a control voltage on the Doepfer mini-synth's ADSR Gate input (don't know what it's doing--a fast tremolo?--but it sounds pretty good)
--Vermona channel 4 for a Les Baxter-ish bassline (didn't know it could do that)
All these elements were recorded, then mixed in Cubase into a "suite"--it's too much of a tossed salad to be a song but there are "recurring themes." Most of the snippets were MIDI-triggered so there are composed (simple) melodies and rhythms; one of the things that's missing on the modular forums is any discussion of music composition (e.g., "I wrote two tunes with different time signatures and different emotional impacts but they worked together") as opposed to electronic engineering and "that effect sounds cool, I'm buying me one of those when I get some money."

"Out for a Jaunt" [6.2 MB .mp3]

Messing with the Doepfer A-112 sampler module and Reaktor Rhythmaker softsynth (independently of each other; the results are multitracked). Almost nothing in here escapes a tweak or an automation curve.
The sampler makes the 8-bit quasi-exotic-bird sounds, some of which are further timestretched in Cubase.
Jaunting as in walking through a jungle but also teleporting a la Alfred Bester to a non-police-state, Bonobo-like society.

"Glass Ceiling, Parts 1-4" [10.1 MB .mp3]

The (slim) gag title will become obvious upon hearing.
The arpeggios are generated by a Reaktor MIDI sequencer called Spiral--a fancy interface where the notes spin in a spiral--I guess designed for drug use while composing. Except for some transposing at the very end, this is just switching the arps between major and minor keys.
I added all the beats, note for note, mano a mano, etc.

"Crickets II" [3.2 MB .mp3]

Demo of the delay and pitch-shifting functions of the Doepfer A-112 module. Was trying to keep the beats minimal so I could hear better what the effects are doing. The delay is not an echo, with multiple steps (you have to use another module--a mixer--to create feedback). It's a simple time lag. But if you patch in the original beat you get two beats and a kind of unpredictable slurring and distortion that the voltage-controlled sampling adds. Pretty nice stuff. The pitch shift can be heard in a tom-tom that starts dropping a few semitones about halfway through. Very noisy and dirty track overall, atmospheric (hence the title).

"Proteus Projects" [3.5 MB .mp3]

I rarely use the Cubase "tempo track" but wanted to hear what the MIDI pitchbend- and mod wheel-controlled voltages were doing to an analogue signal at different speeds. The drums were an afterthought; for that matter so were the bell-like melodies. The MIDI "crunched sweeps" create a vintage computer-y sound so I named the song after the lustful cyber-brain in Demon Seed (a great B movie).

"Thx for the Add" [5.9 MB .mp3]

This starts all 8-bit then a secondary theme comes in that is MIDI controller-controlled CVs altering a synth's filter cutoff (pitchbend) and pulse width (mod wheel). At about 1:30 the 8-bit part drops out and the secondary theme continues over various Reaktor Nanowave patches playing the main theme. It ends with piano! #genre_bending