I was recently invited to create a steaming piece for the Wayward in Limbo series presented by Nonsequitur of Seattle. This series is their effort to continue to support artists:
With the Chapel closed indefinitely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wayward Music Series now moves from the concert hall to the living room. In place of our usual ten monthly concerts, Nonsequitur is curating and commissioning ten Seattle artists each month to create a series of streaming audio sessions of exclusive material. Many of these will be essentially “live” performances recorded at home for this occasion. Others may create a mix of pre-recorded material that has not been previously released elsewhere.
https://www.waywardmusic.org/event/wayward-in-limbo-40-jason-e-anderson/
I first learned about the Korg Wavestation many years back in a conversation with a friend of mine, Chris Madak (Bee Mask). We were about to do a short tour of the Northeast, this was around 2010. I was in his small studio and he gave me a bit of a tour of his gear. He mentioned the Wavestation, how deep of a synth it was, and that he had used it to realize very specific spectral ideas in his music. It was on a shelf at the time. About a year later I thought about it and asked him if he wanted to sell it. It turns out that he had sold it to his friend Dan Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never), and that he might be selling it. I knew Dan and his earlier music, I still play those tapes, but after his Juno 60 era music I must have dropped off a bit. My guess is the synth was likely around during the making of Replica, R Plus Seven and Games. He sold it to me soon after and that is how I came to acquire it.
When it arrived the screen was a little sketchy, it had lines through it, and the backlight was mostly non-existent/very faded. I found a screen replacement mod outlined at tellun.com and its been working ever since… 9 years now.
For this piece I chose to use the Wavestation A\D. It gave me an opportunity to really explore the synth on a much deeper level than I’ve had since owning it. To be honest, I’ve only used it a handful of times, and really only skimmed the surface of its potential. And that’s in part due to the structure/menu being somewhat foreign. But after wrapping my head around it, I really found the menu structure / setup very well organized.
I used SuperCollider to send MIDI data to the synth with Patterns/Pbinds and a LinnStrument to play MIDI data. I played around for a few days and then began making recordings the next few days until I had about an hours worth of material that I was happy with. These files were then imported into Ableton Live so that I could perform a live mix of the material. The mix was played back through stereo studio monitors in a barn, recorded with an X/Y pair of Audio-Technica AT4033 large-diaphragm condenser mics and direct to disc to give the music a bit more definition. The mix was performed in the evening, surrounded by wheat fields, so the recording includes the background sound of insect chatter and does a decent job of capturing what it would be like to be there.
The Wavestation is a PCM-based synth that came out in 1991. It’s often referred to as a rompler (ROM), meaning it has sampled waveforms and/or single-cycle waveforms stored on a chip. What set it apart at the time was that it featured vector synthesis, wave sequencing and the A\D version of the Wavestation had more waves, built-in effects and external inputs. Vector synthesis, allows the user to crossfade between groups of samples either manually with an XY joystick or programming this crosssfade to happen over time. The wave sequencing functionality provided the ability to cycle between a list of samples, which can get interesting when applying modulation.
The synth has an extensive sysex implementation, and where I had hoped to alter parameters via sysex with SuperCollider for this piece, I found that it was different enough from the sysex on my MKS-70 as to require a bit more research to achieve (and likely help from the SuperCollider forums!). I’m hoping to have a closer look at this, as I’d love to sequence envelope settings and effects parameters to alter the shape and timbre of notes as they’re played.
The piece documents my exploration of the synth (in its initial release) and its unique features. I didn’t really approach this on a conceptual level, I simply wanted to make music on this synth and share how it would be heard had the listener been present. Upon beginning to record, I found myself very attracted to sounds that seemed to emulate strings being plucked or voices appearing within wave sequences. Those passages guided much of the overall shape of the piece, but were broken up a bit with passages where I played the LinnStrument, using aftertouch and velocity to modulate the synth, and using the builtin arpeggiator and sustain features to generate more intuitive/less-precise parts. I took advantage of the effects too, gravitating to the reverb sounds and the exciter, which seemed both totally alien to my ears, and maybe tied to the time the synth was released.
Though I hesitate to use the word ‘dated’, as using a reverb from the early 90s, for example, is simply using that sound/that function, separate from the associations or references the listener may or may not identify, or the composer’s intention of pointing reference to, or not to, that time/place. Presets and effects are weird in that way. Many would shy away from using a synth like this because it might mark their sound to that time, or that using the synth would be a sort of retro shout-out to those synths or the scene that put them to use which they want to avoid. Others would use it for those reasons, and many do. And its easier to do now more than it’s ever been, through the various versions of this synth now available: the VST version of the synth Korg Collection 2 Wavestation, the iPad Korg iWavestation, or the newly released Korg Wavestate.
And its here where I run into my own brand of tweaked hard-headedness, or possibly BS-purist limitations. It would be so much easier to run the VST of this synth and control all the parameters, all within the computer, and not have to be concerned with how much MIDI data I’m sending/receiving at a given time, external connectors, translating sysex values or menu diving. All of those things provide limitations that I think are actually valuable to me and my process, they provide challenges I have to work through, technology I have to wrap my head around, and the need to consider what is and is not possible with the OG hardware.
Enough with all that… the Alesis MMT-8! I just replaced the screen on this thing and it’s looking way better. I bought a replacement from an ebay seller, which was a simple drop in install. I actually bought a battery to replace the internal backup battery for memory, but it was still testing at 3.6 V after 30 years.
Turning this on and reorienting myself with its functions has definitely got me thinking about sequencing some new music… I feel myself getting significantly closer to making new SDI tracks.