Arps in Space

Program Note: This piece was created right after I received a Roland Ju-06a (pictured in the banner above) as a birthday present from my father. I was inspired by the spontaneous nature of sound creation I could achieve with this synth, especially when compared to my processes with software synths that I had been used to. Though the Juno was much less powerful than Xfer Serum or ImageLine Sytrus for instance, the hardware controls and chorus created a space where I could make decisions that resulted in sounds that continuously inspired me to make more decisions. To explore the strengths of this hardware, I arranged some MIDI notes in my FL Studio and recorded eight takes where I fed the MIDI to the Juno and manipulated the Juno’s arpeggiator, controlled its volume and filter with envelopes and LFOs which I also manipulated, and the volume and filter cutoff and resonance by themselves. I then mixed all of these takes in FL Studio, arranging them in the stereo field to draw focus to what I thought were the most interesting parts of each take. This approach created form for the piece as more of an emergent property than one that determined the direction of the piece and made for a rewarding process. 

To hear Arps in Space, I have provided an embedded SoundCloud link on this page, but it can also be streamed on any convenient service. My friend Robert Read created the cover art.