All posts by Satri

Final Version of Satri’s ‘Model 15’ Album: Four New Tracks

Model 15, Playing,

I’m happy to have completed and now share with you the final version of my ‘Model 15’ album of improvised solos made with Moog Music’s ‘Model 15’ app during its Beta testing phase. I couldn’t resist the fun of releasing an album the very day the musical instrument becomes available to the world :-) That’s why you got an incomplete preview version. Please read the initial announcement if you haven’t do so already.

Those who have purchased the album already, THANKS AGAIN! :-) and please redownload the album for free on Bandcamp in order to get the full album as I intended it. My apologies for not having told you in advanced that I wasn’t done reviewing all the improvisations I did with the ‘Model 15’ app during its beta testing phase. I thought my first track triage was good enough but it wasn’t.

The four tracks I added are quite different from the previously released ones and I hope that you’ll like them as well :-)

The new total is 17 tracks and a running time now of 40 minutes. I also slightly shortened the ‘There will be more’ track for it to begin and end more smoothly. In a minority of cases, I truncated the beginning or the end of a track, which is provided raw without any mastering: that’s really how great the ‘Model 15’ app sounds by itself and played live :-) We really need quality headphones to fully enjoy such an app and the resulting tracks.

 

Here’s the updated list of tracks with the presets I used to play the improvised solos with Model 15. For the new version of the Album, I admit I haven’t respected the chronological ordering of tracks I used for the initial release, the new tracks haven been inserted attempting to make track transitions pleasant as much as possible.

Track list for the 'Model 15' album by Satri
#track nametimeModel 15 preset
1The wind0:41Pad / Drew Neumann
Polynoise
2Another blow1:09Pad / Drew Neumann
Polynoise
3Lumières2:01Brass / Fabio Di Mauro
Sperimenting in
4Learning to walk1:54Arpeggio / Kevin Lamb
Play one note at a time
5Constrained nonetheless2:49Brass / Trent Thompson
Wod wheelopoly
6Take off0:59FX / Trent Thompson
Ghost in the record
7Being real3:04Keys / Geert Bevin
Soft poly
8La foule1:22Brass / Trent Thompson
Wod wheelopoly
9Yourself alive6:05Tom Wies
Sequence I
10There will be more2:07Tom Wies
Sequence I
11Three trees2:25Tom Wies
Sequence III
12Through the rift2:59Modern / Geert Bevin
Between The Edges
13Steam loco1:50FX / Tony Saunders
Steam loco
14Ledom 51 test 145:54Tom Wies
Sequence I
15Légère2:04Keys / Geert Bevin
Soft poly
16Flat Earth horizon1:46Modern
Cosmic Organ Grinder
17D'autres traces0:39Modern / Geert Bevin
Sagittent Voluris

I’m rather happy with this album, I feel it brings something new I never heard elsewhere. That’s the feeling I get when I play solos with the Model 15 app. That’s fun music anyone can play live with the ‘Model 15’ app just like I did.

The album is of course still free, better actually as it is available as  Creative Commons CC-BY, and you can ready for Moogfest 2016! I think I’m now done working on Animoog albums for some time, there’s another music project I want to work on first. And yes, it’s Animoog related :-) I obviously won’t stop playing since I like it so much. And you’ll still hear from me since I have a few other Animoog-related posts to share with you.

Enjoy life! — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

  1. Announcing ‘Model 15’ by Satri, the very first album of Moog Music’s ‘Model 15’ app solos
  2. Video Tutorial: Connecting Animoog to Model 15
  3. 50% Discount on Animoog & Model 15
  4. Announcing ‘stars’ by Satri, an album of Moog and Seaboard synth solos

Luigi Bairo’s ‘Invisible Town’ Animoog Album

Playing,

While we can find lots of music tracks featuring Animoog on the web, I haven’t found anyone else focusing on Animoog-driven albums. Until now! :-)

in.town.prep

Italian artist Luigi Bairo contacted me to me to share his my own albums of Animoog solos, Luigi rode his bicycle around Turin in February 2016 to create a ‘geomusical traveling project’; all the tracks have been composed during his bicycle explorations in the suburbs and the woods around Turin, recorded directly in the places that inspired them. Here’s his Animoog tracks map!

Luigi Bairo is a writer, music journalist and musician from Turin, Italy. He published adventure books, pedagogy essays and books about bicycle philosophy. As a musician he has played in several underground bands of Turin as Stray King, Arigret and Harp1. In 2011 he began a solo career. In 2012, he released his album Valis in which he played all the instruments and in 2013, Forbidden Planet which combines traditional instruments with iPad apps such as Animoog. He is now a member of the Lefigurine duo since 2015.

That’s a pretty good and interesting album :-) I’m amazed at what others can do today with apps such as Animoog. Hope you’ll enjoy Luigi’s Animoog bicycle-driven creations! — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

  1. Final Version of Satri’s ‘Model 15’ Album: Four New Tracks
  2. Animoog solos: free ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’ album
  3. Announcing ‘Model 15’ by Satri, the very first album of Moog Music’s ‘Model 15’ app solos
  4. Announcing ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’, Free MIDI-Controlled Animoog Solos

Video Tutorial: Connecting Animoog to Model 15

Animoog App, Model 15, Playing, ,

Great news! Italian sound designer Tiziano Gileno Fasano, aka Subconscience, recorded a video tutorial just for us, showing how to connect Animoog to Model 15 with Audiobus, a process which further opens the door to endless possibilities!

Here’s the short video which shows every step and ends with a quick demonstration of how Animoog presets can be morphed from within the Model 15 app itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aEES5aiPUI

Thanks Tiziano! Now we know how to easily mix my two favorite musical instruments, Animoog and Model 15! Subconscience also provided 25 excellent free Animoog presets, you’ll find them here in our recent update to the table of expansion packs.

While we’re at it, here’s two videos he made with Animoog, enjoy! — Alex / Satri

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upMh2_UWKgo&app=desktop

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry1kKjS8urA&app=desktop

Related posts:

  1. New Free Packs: 2,224 Animoog Presets Now Available — Major Update
  2. Announcing ‘Model 15’ by Satri, the very first album of Moog Music’s ‘Model 15’ app solos
  3. 50% Discount on Animoog & Model 15
  4. Final Version of Satri’s ‘Model 15’ Album: Four New Tracks
Animoog Expansion Packs table

New Free Packs: 2,224 Animoog Presets Now Available — Major Update

Expansion Packs, Playing, , , , ,

Dear fellow Animoog players, I’m delighted to announce version 1.4 of Animoog.org’s table of expansion packs. This expansion packs table lists third-party presets and timbres that you won’t find anywhere else.

328 new Animoog presets are now available as part of this update. There’s now a total of 2,224 presets and over 4,500 timbres available for Animoog, lots of them free!

Version 1.4 brings presets from 4 sound designers: Steffen Presley, Rusk(i)k, Sound of Izrael and Subconscience. Here’s the updated version of the table of Animoog expansion packs. The table’s page includes the links to download/purchase the presets and timbres and installation instructions. Three of the four new packs are free, the fourth one being available at a very reasonable price. The full changelog is as well available at the bottom of the expansion packs page.

(click table to open the large version)

Animoog Expansion Packs table

Steffen Presley

I’m happy that sound designer Steffen Presley contacted me and that we’re now able to provide his expansion pack named Song-Haven. It is available for $6,99 by sending money directly to Steffen via Paypal. There’s a total of 50 new presets, with some of them requiring that you already purchased the Acoustic and R. Devine packs in order to access their timbres.




As you can see in the following YouTube demonstration video, those are high quality presets. They just got released and I haven’t tested them yet, but I soon will!

Steffen is also the nice sound designer who recently shared with us free Theremini presets.

Rust(i)k

Sound designer Rust(i)k is freely sharing with us 132 excellent presets. Here’s a part of Rust(i)k bio: “RUST(I)K is currently working on several projects and remains a major part of some of house music’s greatest venues and artists over the last 20 years. He now is experimenting with a variety of musical styles and methods as the IOS music world grows by the day.   In doing so, he routinely puts out preset or sample banks to various sites and several companies.” His full bio is available here. Rust(i)k’s excellent presets are freely available directly on Animoog.org: Rust(i)k presets.

Here’s two improvised Animoog solos, the one I just recorded named ‘San Andreas’ played with the ‘Lead PolyAnna’ preset, and the second one named ‘Going Rust(i)k’ I made with Rust(i)k’s ‘Lead Axe’ preset.

 

Sound of Izrael

Sound designer Sound of Izrael is sharing with us 121 new free presets. The instructions to download the presets are found this post from Sound of Izrael himself. Here’s the video that presents the presets:

Here’s an improvised Animoog solo named ‘Fatal Duel’ I made with Sound of Izrael’s ‘R Rusty boy’ preset.

 

Subconscience

Sound designer Tiziano Gileno Fasano, aka Subconscience, is sharing with us 25 free Animoog presets! Here’s Subconscience presets.

subconscience_041

Here’s an improvised Animoog solo named ‘It’s ongoing’ I made with Subconscience’s ‘Lead-polymulti’ preset.

Submitting presets

I added a new section to the page providing the table of Animoog expansion packs, here’s its content: Here’s what I need to know from you if you created great Animoog presets yourself and would like to share them with the community of Animoog  players, please provide the following information:

  • Your sound designer / artist name
  • Name of the preset collection / pack
    • Number of presets and timbres in the pack
    • Installed Expansion pack requirements (to avoid missing timbres)
  • Price
    • Look at the pricing of packs currently available
    • Many thanks in the name of the Animoog community of players if you decide to provide your presets for free, otherwise, 5$ is usually a good price for professional presets, pricing is up to you
  • Link to purchase
    • We’ll gladly host free presets on Animoog.org if you want us to, otherwise you are responsible to provide a download/purchase link that will endure
  • Some way for potential players to hear what the submitted presets sound like
    • Such as a YouTube video or a SoundCloud track
  • Description and anything else you’d like us to consider sharing in the preset’s availability announcement post

I’ll probably improve that list over time. Please understand that this list is updated only every few months.

The future has more surprises

As a bonus for having read up to here, I invite you to contribute to the documentary on Bob Moog being currently crowdfunded on Kickstarter: ELECTRONIC VOYAGER: Retracing BOB MOOG’s Sonic Journey.

Big thanks to Sound of Izrael, Subconscience, Rust(i)k and Steffen. Hope you’ll enjoy their presets as much as I do :-) Don’t hesitate to share this announcement with other Animoog players, the intention here is to ensure as many players as possible to benefit from those excellent presets! Cheers — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

  1. New Free Packs: 2,576 Animoog Presets Now Available — Major Update v1.5
  2. 1,713 Presets: a Major Update to List of Animoog Expansion Packs
  3. RUST(i)K X & K: 251 New Animoog Presets and 159 New Timbres
  4. Altermoog – 30 New Free Presets for Animoog and Version 1.1 of the List of 3rd-Party Presets

Announcing ‘Model 15’ by Satri, the very first album of Moog Music’s ‘Model 15’ app solos

Model 15, ,

A great day for synth players! Moog Music has launched a new musical instrument for the iPad, the app named ‘Model 15’, replicating the actual Model 15 modular synthesizer from the same company. It’s my pleasure to release my ‘Model 15’ album of improvised solos played live on the ‘Model 15’ app and provided raw, without any mastering, sequencing, overdubbing or external effects — Model 15 allows us to play amazing tracks live.

Model_15_app_Horizontal_4

It’s the very first album entirely created with the Model 15 app simply because I’ve been lucky to be selected as a beta tester for the ‘Model 15’ app. My previous experience was with the musical instrument Animoog, for which I published two freely available albums of improvised solos, ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music‘ and ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY‘, I had no experience with a modular synthesizer, and now I do! Over a period of a few weeks during late sessions once my girls were in bed, I’ve been able to explore the Model 15 app and discover the richness of its built-in presets.

The ‘Model 15’ app brings a classic modular synthesizer to the masses . An amateur like myself can have lots of fun playing this musical instrument live without any prior experience with modular synths — that was my case!

Model-15_cover-art_1400px

The album is filled with freetronica tracks: electronic music played live without any part of the track pre-recorded. No excuses and no preparation required: pick the instrument and play! Just like for Animoog, quality headphones are required to fully enjoy the depth of those sounds.

Despite being used to the diversity of presets available for Animoog, I was surprised when I found the ‘Polynoise’ preset from sound designer Drew Neumann, a preset sounding like the wind! I found myself happily smiling “I am the wind!”. The album smoothly begins with two tracks of blowing air :-) Then at some point I started messing with the Model 15 knobs while playing and wonderful sound modulations reached my ears. Understanding what the knobs and wires do is not a requirement, but it’s certainly an asset. The track ‘Constrained nonetheless’ is such a track where I turn knobs while playing live.

Some presets offer repeating patterns thanks to Model 15’s embedded arpeggiator which provided a different inspiration to me, such as this track ‘There will be more’:

This short 30-minutes album presents 13 tracks offered in chronological order. The various presets I leveraged are listed in the table below. Sound designers are able to do magic with the Model 15 app. My freetronica albums are brought forward by the Apptronica label, a warm and welcoming home for several ‘iOS musicians’. The album is freely available on Bandcamp and soon available in many other places online. Like my previous ones, it is available under the CC-BY Creative Commons license and consequently, free to anyone to copy, use and transform.

I’m impressed with the sound quality of the presets available for this musical instrument, and this is only day one of Moog Music’s
Model 15 app which officially launched today!

It’s incredibly fun to play such tracks live: instant freetronica gratification for lots of us! I still have lots to learn and to improve, especially that there’s now many more presets available than what was available during the beta testing phase. I expect musicians to start creating surprising new music thanks to the expressiveness capabilities of apps like Animoog and this new Model 15 app.

Track list for the 'Model 15' album by Satri
#track nametimeModel 15 preset
1The wind0:41Pad / Drew Neumann
Polynoise
2Another blow1:09Pad / Drew Neumann
Polynoise
3Lumières2:01Brass / Fabio Di Mauro
Sperimenting in
4Learning to walk1:54Arpeggio / Kevin Lamb
Play one note at a time
5Constrained nonetheless2:49Brass / Trent Thompson
Wod wheelopoly
6Take off0:59FX / Trent Thompson
Ghost in the record
7Being real3:04Keys / Geert Bevin
Soft poly
8La foule1:22Brass / Trent Thompson
Wod wheelopoly
9Yourself alive6:05Tom Wies
Sequence I
10There will be more2:07Tom Wies
Sequence I
11Three trees2:25Tom Wies
Sequence III
12Through the rift2:59Modern / Geert Bevin
Between The Edges
13Steam loco1:50FX / Tony Saunders
Steam loco
14Ledom 51 test 145:54Tom Wies
Sequence I
15Légère2:04Keys / Geert Bevin
Soft poly
16Flat Earth horizon1:46Modern
Cosmic Organ Grinder
17D'autres traces0:39Modern / Geert Bevin
Sagittent Voluris

I’d like to thank Animoog.org readers for their patience since the time spent preparing this album significantly delayed other Animoog-related content I want to, and will, share with you. I hope you’ll like my new album and that it will inspire you to create in your own way! — Alex / Satri

UPDATE 2016-05-16: Here’s a followup post named Final Version of Satri’s ‘Model 15’ Album: Four New Tracks, thanks — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

  1. Announcing ‘stars’ by Satri, an album of Moog and Seaboard synth solos
  2. Final Version of Satri’s ‘Model 15’ Album: Four New Tracks
  3. Minimoog Model D App Launched by Moog — An Overview of Resources
  4. Announcing ‘RISE 42’ by Satri, an Album of ROLI Seaboard RISE 49 Solos

New Free Theremini Presets, from Steffen Presley

Theremini

I’m happy to inform you that new free presets for the Moog Theremini are available, thanks to today’s contributions from Steffen Presley.

Animoog.org of course focuses on Animoog, but aren’t there always exceptions? ;-) This page will tell you where to find, download, install and play with over 100 free Theremini presets. In the latest version of this page, I added the free Theremini presets from Steffen Presley, thanks Steffen!

“Of these, two or three are variations of presets from the Moog Theremini app library. The rest are from scratch”

Here’s the list of the new Theremini presets:

  • SING HAVEN
  • STEFFEN VOX
  • BLACK WHOLE
  • HAND PUPPET
  • SING HAVEN 2
  • FLUTTERMOTION
  • BOW WOW Z
  • GYPSY DOCTOR
  • RESOROOM S
  • HARMONICAT S

You can download Steffen presets here (right-click link to save as file), or head to the Theremini page on Animoog.org. Steffen released an album last year, named Pluto Head, in which you’ll hear Animoog and the Theremini amongst other instruments. Furthermore, ““Attic Toy” (#10) is a rather sparse experimental duet using only Animoog and the Theremini.” Excellent instrumental album by the way.

steffenpresley

Hope you’ll enjoy the new free Theremini presets. I’m finally readying an update to the Animoog presets table, expect an announcement within about a week? Cheers — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

  1. Theremini page and user-contributed presets
  2. New Free Packs: 2,224 Animoog Presets Now Available — Major Update
  3. 4,300 Free Timbres for Animoog!
  4. Moog Announces Animoog-based Theremin – The Theremini

Satri from Animoog.org at Moogfest 2016

Animoog.org, Moog

I’m happy to inform you that I’ll be attending Moogfest 2016 next month, to be held in Durham, North Carolina, May 19-22th.

On Wikipedia, Moogfest is described like this:

Moogfest is an annual, multi-day music, art and technology festival. […] The performing artists are not only those who use Moog instruments for their own works, but also those who create musical experiences that embody the essence of Bob Moog’s visionary and creative spirit. The festival also offers interactive experiences, visual art exhibitions, installations, film screenings, panel discussions, question and answer sessions, and workshops.

I’m excited! Here’s a list of some of the participants, to give you an idea of who’s showing up (click the image for a larger version).

moogfest-2016_program-overview

The detailed 4-days program has been announced yesterday  and is accessible to everyone.

I’ll be glad to meet Animoog players there, if interested to have a chat at Moogfest, drop me a line in the comments below, I’ll reply privately

It’s my first time attending this event. I’ll probably share on Animoog.org my Moogfest 2016 experience, especially if there’s anything that can be of interest to Animoog players. I haven’t been able to publish as much as I wanted to Animoog.org lately, but more is coming and I hope your patience will be rewarded! :-) Cheers — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

  1. Moogfest 2016 Live Reports
  2. An Animoog Player Perspective on Moogfest 2016, with Pictures
  3. Announcing Animoog.org
  4. Final Version of Satri’s ‘Model 15’ Album: Four New Tracks

Animoog 2.2.5 and Animoog for iPhone 1.2.4 Released

Animoog App

Dear Animoog players, here’s about the latest Animoog updates.

But first I apologize to have not posted about it right after the updates, as an Animoog beta tester, my version doesn’t update when the actual Animoog gets updated. I have configured a tool to ensure I don’t miss the upcoming updates. While I’ve been publishing here all Animoog updates so far, what do you think if I only publish blog entries only when updates bring significant changes to the way we interact with the app? If you think I should post about minor Animoog updates as well, please let me know in the comments below.

Personally, I’m excited by minor updates. Of course, I’m eager for new features, but minor updates perfectly demonstrate that the app is being taken care of and that developper love is being sent towards it. Here’s the changes for the last two versions we haven’t mentioned here.

Animoog 2.2.5. March 11th:

  • Stability improvements
  • Updated AudioCopy library
  • Updated AudioShare SDK

Animoog for iPhone 1.2.4, February 4th:

  • Program change messages now work on all MIDI channels
  • Animoog now reacts to sample rate changes from IAA hosts or Audiobus
  • Stability improvements for when background audio is turned off

I haven’t found the log of what’s changed for Animoog 2.2.4 and Animoog for iPhone 1.2.3. If you know where to find it, please let me know in a comment. Since Moog appears to follow the semantic versioning principles, I suspect those versions essentially contain minor modifications such as bug fixes and updates to the latest third-party libraries (e.g. Audiobus, AudioShare).

I hope to share news of the upcoming free presets from sound designers ‘Subconscience‘ and ‘Sound of Izrael‘ within the coming weeks. They’re excellent presets! More soon :-) — Alex / Satri

 

Related posts:

  1. Animoog version 2.2.8 and Animoog for iPhone 1.1.10 Released
  2. Animoog 2.3.1 and Animoog for iPhone 1.2.1 Released
  3. Animoog 2.2.1 and Animoog for iPhone 1.1.3 Released
  4. Animoog 2.3.2 & Animoog for iPhone 1.2.2 Released

YouTube Videos about Animoog Music and Tutorials

Animoog App, Playing, , , ,

I started to populate YouTube playlists with the intended benefit of providing an extensive list of videos to help us learn more about playing Animoog and increase our fun with it.  The playlists I created and populated so far the the following ones:

If you found other videos that should be included in these playlists, let me know and I’ll be glad to add them! If you think we should maintain another complementary Playlist, let us know! :-)

Here’s what videos currently in those lists look like.

Animoog tutorials

There has been a surge of Animoog tutorial videos when the app came out but few recent ones as far as I could find. That said, do not miss watching those ‘old’ videos! They have been instrumental to my understanding of how Animoog works and how to exploit its features in order to have even more fun playing it.

One of those examples is the following video, an amazing live Animoog performance by Argon Vancouver in which layers of Animoog are added one after the other, along with additions from other apps. In the long intro, Argon Vancouver provides the details to help you create your own Animoog tracks with such beats and loops.

Head to the on understanding Animoog sound design.

Animoog Solo Performances

Don’t worry, I won’t annoy you further with my own Animoog solo performances on YouTube ;-) Here’s a nice Animoog solo performance from keksautomat which includes looping.

https://youtu.be/kY-hTFzNnX4?list=PLgK-NrQ_wqMk2xfnb8WJKcOilvgxJP8oo

It’s great to see the variety of ways Animoog can be leveraged to play music. The next video below is  alternatives controllers that players can experiment with and this is an excellent example.

Head to the ‘Animoog solos performances’ playlist to watch the other videos I found so far in that category.

Music with Animoog performances

Many Animoog musicians within the community are playing Animoog along with other instruments. In the following video we get two Animoog players playing together, along with a few other instruments, including Improvox, an app to sing in tune for those amongst us who aren’t Pavarottis.

Another example of Animoog’s flexibility is the following example in which Animoog is played from a MIDI Guitar along with the ToneStack app.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7RGsilkxfg

Head to the ‘Music with Animoog performances’ playlist to find out which other examples I found so far.

Animoog with other apps

Animoog is great in itself, and you juxtapose it to other music creation apps, you can play wonderful things! Watching how others leverage Animoog clearly inspired me to try some new combinations myself. Here’s a nice example of Animoog and the moodscaper app, currently in beta. Developer Rob Jackson informed us that moodscaper is itself using heavily-processed Animoog timbres.

You might also want to see Rob playing Animoog with Borderlands Granular. Head to the ‘Animoog with other apps’ playlist to get to the entire current list of videos where we see Animoog with other apps.

What about the other Animoog videos?

Think I should create a new and share a new Animoog playlist? Let me know about your suggestions :-) Don’t forget to watch the ones directly coming from Moog Music. One of such Animoog videos from Moog is the funny announcement of the ‘Biomimetically Augmented Synthesis Expansion’, also known as the ‘B.A.S.E.’ expansion pack, presented by Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater and iOS music app developer.

Making its way to my first free album of Animoog solos, a track named ‘Brutal awakening’ was somewhat successful at leveraging the ‘Heartburn Lead’ preset from the BASE pack. The BASE pack has brutal sounds, and in this case it resulted in a brutal solo!

More to come!

I plan to maintain these playlists up to date when new Animoog videos are posted online. If I miss any, let me know :-) I have to thank Animoog enthusiast Tiziano, who suggested me to pull together those playlists. You’ll hear again from Tiziano soon since I hope to update the list of third-party presets: there’s two new excellent free Animoog presets packs and he is one of the sound designers freely sharing his presets with the community of Animoog players. Cheers — Alex / Satri

Related posts:

  1. Live Animoog Performances: Makers of Sense & Discophone_
  2. Videos: Understanding Animoog Sound Design
  3. Satri’s Animoog solo ‘And back to space’ video
  4. Animoog 2.2.5 Released, Animoog in Tidbits and Other news

Announcing ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’, Free MIDI-Controlled Animoog Solos

Playing, ,

[ en français ici ]

Welcome! I’m one of many who thinks that we’re experiencing new levels of ‘live music creation’ thanks to the recent advances in computing. Even though their existence mainly consists of computer algorithms, today’s music creation apps really are ‘new musical instruments’ and are progressively gaining greater widespread recognition. One of these popular new musical instruments is the award-winning Animoog app by Moog Music. I happen to be a enamored of Animoog! :-)

Animoog allows us to play the synthesizer like never before. I sincerely hope more musicians will discover its amazing expressiveness capabilities

Pianimoog_cover

It’s my pleasure to present to you my second album of improvised Animoog solos named ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’. This time these improvised single-preset solos leverage a classic external MIDI piano controller to create Animoog tracks. They are provided raw, no sequencing or external effects applied in any way — what you hear is how it sounded played live. Anyone with the Animoog app and an affordable MIDI controller can play similar tracks live.

Don’t expect perfect execution ~~ it’s live single-take improvisations! What’s great about it is you can play similar tracks yourself by launching Animoog and selecting the same preset. This genre of music is named ‘freetronica’: electronic music played live without any part of the track pre-recorded. No excuses and no preparation required: pick the instrument and have fun exploring sounds!

You don’t have to like all of the album. The list of presets I played is provided and helps you identify sounds and melodies you can play yourself on Animoog even with little or no previous experience with this novel musical instrument

Next is the ‘Recording decades’ video, 10th out of 29 tracks on the album. The track leverages the ‘Apocalead’ preset from Alba Ecstasy, and yes, it’s monophonic: a single note played at a time for the whole track.

An affordable M-Audio KeyRig 49 was used on the first track and I then continued on my old Roland RD-300SX MIDI keyboard. No sustain or expression pedals were used, just the raw Animoog app played from the MIDI keyboard. For the ‘Retenue’ track, I played one hand on the Roland and the other on the iPad. Tracks are offered in chronological order, the listener being able to appreciate the evolution in my discovery of playing Animoog from a MIDI controller within the 5 months it took me to put to record the tracks during spare time. Credit is given to the sound designers for each preset I used.

The main drawbacks of using a classic MIDI controller are the loss of precise polypressure control, one of the best expressive capabilities of Animoog , and the loss of the sliding finger gesture. The use of an alternative MIDI controller may alleviate these shortcomings.

Next is ‘A beginner’s demo’ video. This track leverages the ‘4072 – Finger Detune’ preset from Vintage Vibe collection. It’s another monophonic track, one note at a time for the whole track, but this time I modified some of the preset’s parameters while playing, showcasing how a preset can sound different by tweaking it live. 

By watching the ‘I dream of wires’ documentary I understood where Animoog comes from and its roots in modular synthesizer, and in the process came to believe that Animoog’s potential has much remaining to be explored.

My previous album, ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’, featured raw improvised Animoog solos played live directly on the iPad. I was deeply honoured by the kind words of encouragement from many listeners and music publications, some nice strangers paid up to 15$ for it while is it available for free. I also felt privileged when Moog Music featured the album on their front page. I confirm all of this motivated me and I’m delighted to offer you this third album.

Next video is for ‘Le secret du nucléaire’. This track leverages the ‘WhereUpress’ preset from Daemian. It’s a melodic polyphonic track.

The ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’ album is ‘unmastered’, the sound levels of the raw tracks have not been corrected and no adjustments were done to convey an enhanced listening experience. These types of sounds and performances are best enjoyed by listening with quality headphones. The visuals for the tracks have been so far created using the amazing Uzu app. My two Animoog albums are brought forward by the Apptronica label, a warm and welcoming home for several ‘iOS musicians’. The album is freely available on Bandcamp and available in many other places online. Tracks are available under the CC-BY Creative Commons license and consequently, free to anyone to copy, use and transform.

Thank you for your interest in my musical projects, I hope you enjoy Animoog as much as I do! — Alex / Satri

Listen and get the album: https://www.animoog.org/satri/pianimoog

Info and links:

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  2. Animoog solos: free ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’ album
  3. Announcing ‘stars’ by Satri, an album of Moog and Seaboard synth solos
  4. Announcing ‘RISE 42’ by Satri, an Album of ROLI Seaboard RISE 49 Solos