Two New Additions to The Blue Zone Series… |

Tape Dreams is a double offering with a common theme…

Controlled distortion is something that absolutely fascinates me and is something I’ve been exploring for a number of years now and is very much part of my sound. Guitarists have drawn apon the potential musicality and movement imparted by complex distortion for decades, but it often surprises me how its potential is often overlooked when it comes to synthesis. There are many forms of distortion and the complex interplay between input source material and all number of non-linear effects in controlled situations can be very beautiful.

For me, more often than not, I use tube circuits and analog effects to manipulate source material but increasingly I’m becoming very interested in what analog tape has to offer…

Armed with a gorgeous 1967 Revox G36 all tube half track which I fixed up last year and a Watkins Copicat which I totally rebuilt from a wreck I set about trying out two concepts…

The first sound I’ve called Twisted Tape and was made by feeding a slow PWM wave from a CS01 into the Copicat for a few seconds and then pulling the (delightfully worn out!) tape loop away from the erase head and muting the input signal thus leaving a continuous loop of lumpy saturated organic goodness – how typically analog! – it started off as a cold PWM pulse train and is almost flute like off tape.

Wave Reversal was made by recording an arpeggiated effect and blending it with some other source material of mine. Several seconds of the resulting composite was then recorded fairly hot onto the Revox at 7.5 IPS, the tape was reversed and then played backwards at 3.25 IPS. The sound was then transposed down a further octave. Several long loops were created in Kontakt and a random round robbin configured to trigger them.