If you've ever heard an FM ring modulator at work, you know what they do -- they make guitars and basses and whatnot sound like prolonged and wet-chunk-loaded robot farts. They're awesome. And for quite a lot of years I've fiddled with the idea of using synths to modulate, and be modulated by live input. Recently, the means and opportunity to do just this has fallen into my lap, and so, on this page you will find deposited some recordings of my experiments in fmodding. Yeah, that's my new word. You like it? My most recent experiments have been with applying synthesizer treatments to
some improvs that my friends Jesse and Josh (and meself) have played in the
basement of Josh's house. The direct treatment is limited to the bass guitar,
with the bass and synth sharing a kind of timbral symbiosis. The effect can be
fairly subtle (as in M77G), or a bit more intense, if you like (see M779).
My first experiments were aimed toward an idea I had for a band call ChimRo
(short for 'chimpanzic rockenbot'), whose schtick would be that two or more
young and impressionable musicians would interface with the space-traveling
cyber-simian, who would sing along merrily whilst eating and regurgitating the
music he consumed through his rockenbotomic interface. The less fanciful way of
looking at it is that a synthesizer plays the harmonic guts of a tune, while
an accompanist plays melody, which modulates the the synth's operators in turn.
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