Putting together a case for Ambient Improvisation (Patreon)

Hello all, 

it's Saturday and thanks to the power of the "schedule" button this is posting while I'm at Deershed Festival and about to perform my second Eurorack Yoga session. This will be a meditative ambient affair which should be very chilled all round.

Last year I shared the two rehearsals I had before the performance with you exclusively and I still have lots of content to put together from last year. More on that soon, including going through that case set up and the performance itself.

A year on and I'm performing again and this time ... due to a few reasons (mainly as I'm busy) ... I put the case together on Thursday, had a few hours through the day loosing myself into little musical and sonic corners I could improvise in and then I left Friday late morning for the festival. So no rehearsal and barely any prep. I did however think the set up through for a fairly long time. I find running things through in detail in my head (while in bed or travelling etc) and taking written notes away from the instrument (text files with ideas, module lists etc + modular grid set ups) to be incredibly helpful and with this set up it seems to have just clicked. Gone have the feelings of worry and nervousness as I'd left this thing so incredibly last minute and I'm genuinely looking forward to it. Of course there's always the pre-gig feelings of what might happen and opening myself up to perform solo and doing that entirely improvised feels like a pretty big thing. But I think it's a fairly bold move that I'll be really proud of should it all come together well. 

A bit of detail on the set up - above is the Modular Grid image so you can see the set up more clearly.  Below is a shot of Tendrils cables ... oh Tendrils you beautiful things! ... they have made this whole thing feel tidy and organised and performance friendly, I'm very happy. 

The power is the Studio Zeus board from Tiptop Audio. There's 4 of these (one per row) and two power supplies (one per side of the case). The case itself is a Lamond 12U DIY case that I had painted into a cosmic space scene. 

Now this may go horribly wrong and I'm sure as ever I haven't "totally cracked it" and nailed the set up. There's bits going somewhat unused as is (a channel of the Natural Gate, a couple of little gaps and a blank panel) and there's nothing like actually just doing the performance for guiding where the set up, my performance and approach should go. 

As well as performing this evening I've also got Friday through Sunday in the Science Tent at the festival alongside Mylar Melodies and Look Mum No Computer jamming and demonstrating modular, synths and hardware to families which in previous years has been great fun with a great mix of young kids really getting it and hanging around to jam. 

Deershed info - https://www.deershedfestival.com - and lots of video and follow up to come from both performances and the thoughts gone into the case. I'll break down the set up for Science Tent which isn't this case too. 

Have a great weekend!