[Gear] No Input Mixing

I hadn't used this mixer for years, mainly because it sounds absolutely horrible and clips the minute you look at it in a very nasty way. It's a Behringer... I won't say any more than that.

Finally, however, I have found a use for it - no input mixing. This seems to be something it is vaguely good at. I created feedback loops all over the place with it as you can see, so every control actually affects the sound and unlike the other TEAC mixer I use for no input mixing, this one works in stereo. Some definitely good fun to be had by plugging and unplugging the connections to create some fairly intense bursts of noise. Interesting that both mixers sound different when you create feedback loops on them and work in different ways. I think I prefer the sound from the TEAC but that is currently being used as a prop in a play. Also, the Behringer is tiny so it's easy to carry around to gigs and stuff.

One really cool thing is that by using the headphone socket for the output the level of the output signal can be attenuated which doesn't happen on the TEAC. This is good because it means you're not just sending peak output to a PA or soundcard.

I used it on Resonance FM - more pics here where I played a couple of sets with Vultures Quartet and Anton Mobin who was over from Paris recording with us and playing live in London.

Anyway, nice to find a use for crappy old equipment that never really worked in any satisfactory way.

I am now wondering what would happen if I start trying this stuff with a 32 channel, 8 buss Mackie desk ;-)

[Recordings] New Audio Online

I've uploaded a few new things to my website - at the bottom of the audio page as usual.

There are a couple of no input mixing tracks. Everyone who comes round here seems to be fascinated by this method of making sound and I have to admit I am not entirely sure why or how it works but it's very powerful and expressive. I do wonder how long the mixer will last, but considering it is about 40 years old anyway I suspect it won't be long.

I finally uploaded a track based on the Karplus Strong algorithm which also makes use of some drum synthesis which sounds like the most basic sounds one can achieve with a Roland TR808 which I made mainly using [noise~], [adsr~], [osc~] and [lores~] objects - basically kick, snare and hi hat sounds (sort of).  It's a bit of fun. I also recently made a recording with Seth using a heavily modified version of this patch - more on this soon - it needs some heavy editing and mixing but uses the patch in a more interesting way.

Another new one is Yuri which is created using a fairly complicated Pd patch. It has no "user" controls at all, it just uses various ways of creating random numbers to control the subpatches and how and when they fade in and out. I also used the bowed string and marimba from the PeRColate library (contrary to the Wikipedia article PeRColate has been ported to Pd).  I need to make it more interesting.

The above patch was inspired by listening to the music on PatchWerk Radio which is great. On a Mac I needed to download the ogg stream and play it in VLC.