Mark Thibideau Archive 4


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October Afternoon - Fall 2004 
Composed on a sunny afternoon in October 2004. 
Gear used: main chord progression - Korg Monopoly, claves - Arp 2600, ringmod synth - Studio Electronics SE-, bassline - Oberhiem SE-1, drums - Akai MPC-1000, Boss DR-110

Tilta Whirl - May 2004 
This track was composed using mostly monophonic synths doing strange little noises.  The idea was to create the sound of a tilta whirl cart spinning around and making you dizzy.  
Gear Used: Korg 770, Mini Korg 2, Arp 2600, Oberhiem SEM, Moog Prodigy, Monopoly. SE-1, DR-110, TR-808, Akai S950,  Evenitide H3000 using its famous "Band Delay" ... a rising filter sweep on delay feedback. 

Ignition -  Sept 2006 
Almost all the synth sounds in this track are the Emu Emulator III keyboard. Sounds were sampled from various sources around the studio. Waldorf Microwave and PPG Wave taking care of main chord stabs. Also most of the Drums in this are the Emulator.  Bassline is Dave Smith Evolver. 

Devices - 2001 
This was recorded around the time of the first sub-static release "B-Films". The lead synth chords are ensoniq mirage.  Other synths on this Track include a pulsating sound on the Micromoog and Bassline from the Roland Jupiter 8. 

Jumbled Mass - 2004 
Gear used: hi hats DR-110, main drum loop - Roland TR-626 through Arp 2600, ringmod accents Moog Micromoog, bassline - Oberhiem SEM, pads - Prophet- 5.

Hiway 40 to Sarnia -  December 2006 
This track is about my experience as a kid driving down the Hiway 40 from my hometown Wallaceburg to Sarnia. In the evening you can see the factories all lit up. But the disturbing part of this experience is seeing these huge flames about the smoke stacks burning off toxic chemicals into the air.  The flames were so big they would light up the night's sky. 
Gear Used : pads - Jupiter 8 through Eventide H3000, drums -  Emu Emulator 3 keyboard, Boss DR-110, bassline SE-1, Oberhiem SEM, main synth chord - Waldorf Microwave sampled into E3 , added bouncey synth at end- PPG wave 2.2 







Scott Stanley Archive 3


Available now on:
iTunes
Beatport
WhatPeoplePlay

Into Winter  - recorded in 2000        
Written in my studio in Kensington Market.  I used an Emu Emax SEHD, Emax II, Kawai K3M, Casio FZ10 and Roland JX8P.  All recorded on VHS tape. 


Another Day - recorded in 2001
this was recorded at a music store that I used to work at.  I used a Waldorf Microwave XTK, Q, Pulse, Nord Lead, and a Novation Drum Station.  All recorded onto cassette.

Metrognomes - recorded in 2004 
Written in my Bloor St. studio.  I used a Roland SH-5, MKS-80Emax II, Korg Polysix, A3, SDD-1000

Unnatural Flavours - recorded in 2007 
Written in my Richmond St. studio.  One downfall to this studio is that it was very close to the CN Tower.  I constantly picked signals and noise from CBC.  One of the sounds in the song is literally a faint news broadcast that I sampled from my board and manipulated.  The basis of this track was mainly weird digital sounds.  I used an Emu e6400, Yamaha FS1R, Waldorf Microwave XTPulse, Jomox X-Base 09, circuit bent Roland TR-505 and SH-5.

Slow Grey Sunday - recorded in 2001
Recorded in the Kensington super studio.  This studio took over our entire living room and was a collection of some of the best synths from 4 people's studios.  The title of this track is exactly what the day was.  It was raining and there was nothing to do but write music.  I used a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5, Roland Jupiter 8, TR-909, Ensoniq Mirage, Casio FZ10, Emu E4XT Ultra, and Yamaha E1010


Next Level - recorded in 2008             
This track was recorded in my Richmond St. studio.  I used a Korg EX8000Jomox X-Base 09, Sequential Circuits TOMWaldorf Microwave XTPulseRoland SH-5, Jupiter 6Emax IIe6400, Korg Polysix


Sounds Like You - recorded in 2004                 
Recorded in my Niagara St. studio. I used a Roland Jupiter 6, Sequential Circuits Prophet 600, Emu Emax IIe6400Waldorf Microwave XT, Korg A3 and SDD-1000.  

Roland System 100 (pt2)

Roland System 100m - Small and Mighty!
see part one of this blog entry here

 Old Roland synths are known to hold a legacy. Not to be confused for their digital replicas (JP8000, GAIA, SH201 to name a few). These replicas pale in comparison, desperately trying to recreate the magic of the Jupiter 8, or SH2, and coming up thin. 

 The System 100m lives up to its legacy and royal status by commanding attention with It's punchy, tight and thick sound. Its drippy square wave and screaming resonance can rattle a room like nothing else.
    
 This synthesizer has a colorful history. Released in 1978, it caught the eye of many great artists. Artists such as Vince Clarke, Depeche Mode, Daniel Miller, Human League, Nitzerebb, and Orbital to name a few. Not only was this synth designed to be flexible and portable, but its also as big sounding as its sibling, the system 700.

 A standard System 100m consisted of 5 modules : Dual VCO (112), Dual VCF (121), Dual VCA (130), Dual Envelope/LFO (140), Ringmod/Noise/LFO (150).
A single module often has several functions. For example the Dual VCF contains 2 identical filters with resonance and hi pass switch.

  One of its greatest assets was that it was simple to expand. You could purchase extra modules from Roland to make your system gigantic. Some modules we would like to get for this are the sequencer (182) and the  Delay/Phaser (172) modules. But currently the unit we have is the standard system.

  Matt picked this one up off the local craigslist site. The original owner of this machine used it in an 80's cover band.  We are now the second owners.

  Where the system 100m shines is through its ability to patch anything to anything. The results are precise yet un-expectable. The many rows of multiple jacks at the bottom allow you to copy cv signals : as many as you have patch cords for.
               
 To make things more interesting, the 100m is located next to our 2600 and SEM for added flexibility. With patch cords running between the 3 synths, some unexplainable sounds will be coming from our studio.

 The track I made with this synth is all sounds tracked one at a time into protools dry with no FX. So everything you are hearing is pure system 100m being sequenced with Protools through midi/cv, tracked into the Mytek convertor and mixed through the Toft atb..

  We gladly give a warm welcome to our system 100m to the Repairlab. May many great patches be made.

Mark

Roland System 100M

this machine just arrived, and is sounding very very good to us.we will have further updates for you as we progress with our research.


reboot.fm

 via kanadische inhalte


   Matt Thibideau, Live PA @ BreakandEnter , Kanadische Inhalte, reboot.fm, Berlin, 27-08-2010 by reboot.fm
Matt has released tracks on Sub-Static, Dumb-Unit, Cynosure and performed with Jeremy Caulfield, Mike Shannon, Richie Hawtin, Mike Huckaby, Pantone and Jake Fairley...
He also releases tracks on the Obsolete Components label he runs with his brother Mark and friends.http://obsoletecomponent.blogspot.com/
Current live setup is
1. Akai MPC-1000 sampler / sequencer (I use this to sample sounds from all of my old synthesizers and drum machines that I have in my studio at home, and also as the main sequencer where all drums and parts are programmed).
2. Waldorf Blofeld Synthesizer (A digital wavetable synthesizer that is small and reliable, works best for most of my bass lines and extra synth sounds)
3. Korg Electribe ES-1 (This is also a sampler / sequencer which I treat kind of like a second turntable. I use it to mix between songs mostly and also as extra added parts)
4. Electro Harmonix Memoryman w/ Hazari (This provides effects like delay and reverb that I like to manipulate with sounds while performing)
5. Lastly a Hardware mixing console that is used to adjust the volumes of all of the parts.
track listing for the set.
1. Achenar - Cynosure
2. It Could Happen - Cynosure
3. A Love Letter Is Like A Bullet From A Gun - Cynosure
4. Further - Blue Recordings
5. Signals - Obsolete Components
6. Icebox - Cynosure
7. Tuning Fields - Sub-Static
8. The Slow Club - Obsolete Components
9. Polarized - Blue Recordings

Jakob Thiesen Archive 2


Available no on:

octav edit: based around an ambient loop containing yamaha dx100 and emu emax samples, all reasmpled thru efx and dropped down an octave, hence the title. 

moon: samples from a cassette of a famous english synthpop duo layered with other tech sounds.

clocks: string sample from old orchestral vinyl, layered with gentle acid line.

behaviour: flute sample with masking tape holding the keys down, also layered in a late 80s album intro that is dear to my heart.

octav (reduced): ambient loop from track 1 for those who like their junk 12-bit and beatless.

 

Matt Thibideau Archive 1


Available now on:

night drive  - recorded in 2004       
this song was inspired by a drive on the autobahn from dusseldorf to cologne. ppg wave 2.2 was one of the main synths used here.



the slow club - recorded in 2001    
this was recorded along side of the cynosure "velvet blue" e.p. it gets it's title from a club visited in the movie "fire walk with me" by david lynch.



sk-drone - recorded in 2008           
this song was created with several samples of a toy casio sk-5 sampler that was then resampled into my trusty emulator II. A few other synths were added for bass, extra chords, and percussion.



signals - recorded in 1998              
this song features samples I created on a hand held digital recorder (that died shortly after I used it on this one) of some random radio talk shows combined with secret recordings of my mother and aunt having a conversation. one sampler also featured in this piece is the ensoniq mirage.



mirrors - recorded in 2004              
this one meant to be the b-side to "night drive". it was recorded during the repair "convenient arrangements" mix sessions.



sk-grain - recorded in 2008            
another experiment featuring samples created with the casio sk-5 and then sampled into the emulator II.



freeze - recorded in 2000                
recorded in the winter, I wanted it to capture the essence of a canadian snow storm.


The Synclavier


It was always in our dreams as young producers to work with the Synclavier.
The Glossy shots of it in Keyboard magazine as we grew up always caught our attention. After learning that this was the secret to part of Depeche Mode's early sound, we knew we had to have it some day.

So 1 year ago luckily Mark and I managed to purchase a Synclavier PSMT system.
Mark, David Lush (Thanks again for lugging it around!), Jakob Thiesen, and Myself got in David's mini van and took the excursion all the way out to Scarborough for the Synclavier that awaited us disassembled in a garage mostly!
We purchased it from a guy in that used to use it on the show's "Street Legal" and  "The Relic Hunter".
Included with it was the 32 poly voice sampling system with 32 meg,  16 voice FM synthesizer, 16 track Hard disk recording system, midi, the apple mac and VPK weighted keyboard controller.
After an evening of moving the massive and heavy system to our loft we slowly powered it up to encounter several problems with the system. We knew there were going to be problems with this system, but not near the extent of the problems that we faced.
 
An old friend John Southern decided to help us out with the technical side of fixing the Synclavier. We are so thankful to have him involved in fixing this beast!
We all kind of walked into this blindly.
Keep in mind there is very little support for these machines. Just a few select people online that sell parts and offer expensive servicing options.
After many hours of trouble shooting over the winter we discovered these problems...
1. The main computer rack (called the ABLE computer) cards were not in their proper place.. according to the information we found online.
2. The Floppy Drive was not connected internally making it impossible to boot up.
3. Although we had most of the cards for the FM synthesizer , none of them including the power supply and cables were installed into our system.
4. The Poly sampler was also missing a power supply and the Sample to Memory module was also located in the direct to disk tower. This means that we would have to have both towers powered up just to sample sounds (an insane amount of voltage)
So after many months of troubleshooting, researching, emailing, we were able to get the machine configured well enough to boot up. Many thanks to Steve Hills of Synclavier in england for guiding us down the right path!
After boot-up we noticed that the Able computer would crash randomly, the VPK keyboard would not respond as a controller, and that computer was not seeing all of the ram that was located inside the machine.
This is when we were learning how the machine worked.. unlike modern equipment, the synclavier has cards that carry out mostly one function... and it is modular in it's approach. This makes it easy to try and narrow down what the potential problem could be.
Luckily included with our system was several boxes of spare parts, cards, a few power supplies and disks.
We did however have to order a few things that we did not have.
Once we got the parts we needed , we started by replacing the power supplies on the Able computer, and the Poly sampler. At this time we luckily found another Synclavier PSMT tower that had been gutted of a few parts in the suburbs of Toronto.  It was mostly a full system. We were able to take parts from it to put into our system and start testing everything.
-We started by replacing the Ram cards, and it didn't recognize any of it.
-Next up was the card that controls the Ram and that fixed that problem.
Our system all of a sudden was reading all 35 megs in it (3 meg was for computer / sequencing functions)
- Our next goal was to load in samples to listen to them. All that played back was static noise.
Frustrated and annoyed we turned to the spare FM cards we had in the parts collection and installed the 16 voice FM synthesizer with it's new power supply.
Without the working keyboard, the only way that we could hear if the Fm synthesizer was working was to learn how to input notes into the 200 track sequencer or midi up a controller. We were in luck, the FM voices worked beautifully. We were so shocked at how much nicer they sounded to Yamaha's DX variety of FM synthesis.
At this point we had to get the VPK keyboard working. It would really be the easiest way to test the machine, and program sounds since there is basically a control for every parameter on the front of it. We had all of the spare cards to fix this keyboard.. and we discovered that card that was telling the keyboard to send information to the computer was faulty. Once we replaced this it is working beautifully!
It is amazing how easy it is to make complex sounds and sequence them via the VPK. It was apparent to us now why the lucky producers and studios loved the Synclavier so dearly!
The next portion of work needed to be done to get the sampler playing back it's sound properly. Something that was converting the sounds was not playing them back properly. So our guess was that the D/A controller card was faulty.
After switching many cards, we got it to work. The samples sounded amazing! 
Our final project with the Synclavier was to instal the Sample to Memory module. This is located usually at the top of the tower and has a very large power supply that works with it. The problem is that our system had a custom floppy drive / hard drive installed. this needed to be taken out and controlled externally. The sample inputs and power supply would need to take up that space and have proper ventilation to keep the system cool.
Once we installed the sample to memory and power we immediately turned the system on and started sampling.
Somehow although we were able to load and play back samples, what we recorded into the machine played back as noise.
We were so close to having this machine running perfectly.
After discovering software called "Logger" for the synclavier, we were able have the computer perform tests on itself to tell us what was wrong with it.
Sure enough another card that controls the Digital to Analog playback was not working and we replaced it!
Now our system is up to snuff, working how we always wanted it to.
To describe the way the synclavier sounds, I would say is huge, warm, clean yet grainy. We are still learning how to use certain aspects of it.  We have started making a library of our own sounds.
But it will be a main tool for creating our next records and hopefully for years to come.
Matt


Students : Tapes 1-8




recorded between 2008 and 2009 at bentobox and repairlab studios in beautiful toronto, canada.
all tracks are live board mixes performed on hardware synthesizers, drum machines and samplers to analog tape.
there were no overdubs and minimal edits to the tracks.
students are Mark Thibideau and Jakob Thiesen.
thank you for listening.

   Tapes 1-8 by students


students tapes 1-8 is also available as a screenprinted, hand packaged CDR, email obsoletecomponent@gmail.com

regroup! repress!

things are happening here again... (albeit slowly)

a repress of our beloved vol 1 is in the works, as well as other surprises we will tell you about soon.

babies, houses, loves won and lost, monster synthesizer restorations, city streets and deep forests.

these things have filled our year, and will soon fill our tracks which will fill your ears.