41 SONIC SKETCHBOOKS - Morphagene by sonic sketchbooks published on 2021-10-11T03:14:39Z release date: 12 october 2021 F requent or perhaps even occasional listeners will by now be familiar with my sonic interests - unusual combinations of slow, strange and stochastic sounds. T his weeks episode presents a series of sketches made with the small Eurorack modular synthesiser I’ve put together and have been experimenting with over the past few months. The system is intentionally oriented to manipulation of files from my samples library - recordings of the art instruments I make, found sonic generators such as the floating pontoon from episode 40 and sonic events performed for the recorder made with repurposed found objects. Modular systems are attractive to me for their generative, unpredictable and exploratory qualities combining control and chaos, order and randomness. The core of my tiny system is a MakeNoise Morphagene which is fed multiple Control Voltage signals from a chain beginning with a Bastl LFO generator feeding into a Mutable Instruments Branches then a TipTop Audio MISO. The series provides order from the LFO, randomised CV pathing through Branches, fine-grain signal control at MISO and extremely variable CV and manual audio sample manipulation at the Morphagene. Working with this system is pure experimentation - each module has multiple variable controls, the tiniest twiddle of any dial can dramatically alter the sonic endpoint and it can be next to impossible to recover a state of interest once even a couple of dials have been tweaked, buttons pushed or cables re-patched. I like this - it keeps me creatively in the moment of making with all its pleasures, frustrations, intrigue and addictive hold. And like any instrument, it requires hours of attentive engagement to develop any useful level of skill or sense of knowing. Genre sound art