↬ Twenty-three – 04: Modules, Photographs, A Mixtape

Hi, I’m Rudiger Meyer and this is my monthly newsletter covering what I’ve been up to and what’s been catching my attention.

After last month’s work on the Scales and Tuning modules in Audulus, I made a return to the updating some of the Hordijk modules that I’d put together back in 2018. One of the aspects that I very much enjoyed while recreating his system the first time round, was spending months involved with the details of sound and how it might be shaped, with hardly a thought for notes or scales, or how they might be organised.

Jeremy Smith set the whole thing in motion again with his version of my version of Hordijk’s Harmonic Oscillator, and that set me off on something that I’d been wanting to implement ever since oversampling was introduced in Audulus 4, given the improved waveshapes that it would enable with Hordijk’s design. As always with his modules it’s impressive how much one get’s out of a fairly straightforward circuit and a couple of controls. Ingenious and well thought out.

That whet my appetite for jumping back into some updates of the other modules, starting with the Sync Oscillator, Triple LFO, and the one I first tackled back in 2018, the Twin Peak Filter. Updating the internals for the new version of Audulus has given me the opportunity to reacquaint myself with how they work and make improvements and adjustments. And since the possibilities for creating a somewhat decent UI have been greatly improved in A4, and it’s been fun to work on something more satisfactory in that department. I’ve since also done some work on the 24dB Filter, finally solving some of the issues that I hadn’t gotten quite right the first time round. I still need to get round to the UI for that one though.

The modules/patches can all be found on the Audulus Discord and Forum.

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Marcin Wichary is a designer, writer, and typographer, who grew up in Poland but has been living in the USA for a number of years. He recently ran a Kickstarter for what looks like an incredible book on keyboards – computer and typewriter keyboards, that is. He’s also created an incredible site for the book: Shift Happens.

I follow him on Mastodon where he often posts photographs as he wanders around various cities from time to time. I really enjoy that kind of thing. Walking around and taking pictures of things that catch one’s eye.

I have a few photographs of my own in that category – but for some reason haven’t been very good at posting them lately. I’m really enjoying Mastodon, visit it on a daily basis, but for some reason have been feeling a little burnt out when it comes to sharing on social media – either there or Instagram, even my own site. Between work and music, family life and events, there hasn’t been the extra space for it. At least within myself – it’s not like it consumes huge amounts of time, though it does some. Perhaps I’ll gradually find my way back, though it seems like I’m not the only one going through a period of re-evaluation.

In the meantime I’m happy to be able to share some of those pictures here:

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Something else that I’ve been busy with is a mixtape for Don’t Look Back Records that’s coming up for release on Friday 28 April. Keep an eye on the mixtape page on their site.

Here’s my teaser text:

Listening Back – a Mixtape

Sounds of 80s experimental pop that echo Stockhausen’s electronic works from the 50s. The test equipment used to create those first studies, revived to once again create music today. Environmental sounds from South Africa recreated in the WDR studio in Cologne in the 70s. Minimal music from the WDR studio in Cologne in the 70s. A piano in Italy. Songs from Iran over the shortwaves. Vibrations ‘in the air’, fusing together.

The planets have apparently been in retrograde since I for some reason ended up including a number of tracks (in what ended up being a very layered mix) that go back to my formative years. A life story in some ways, or at least one of the possible threads. And assembling all that for a label that calls for one to ‘not look back’, I felt the need to explain (to myself):

Listening back. To a take, a recording. One’s own. Someone else’s.
Like the old process of developing a photograph. Or a print. How did it turn out? What was ‘captured’? Forms gradually emerge. Details can slowly be made out. It’s not the past. It’s now.

Once it’s released I’ll post a longer text on my site, covering it in more detail with a full track listing and individual commentaries. Music that I have loved, and still love, speaking to music that I’ve discovered more recently. It’s been fun to put together and a joy to share.

All the best,
↬ Rudiger