Soma COSMOS

The legendary tape-loop experimental art setup pioneered by Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, later labelled “Frippatronics” has long held fascination for me. Tape loop overdubs that interfere, decay and randomly reassign have the potential as a musical system to elevate play into really different places.

I saw a post on HAINBACH’s youtube channel comparing and contrasting “loopers”, I was instantly fascinated by a relatively recent instrument out of Soma Labs in Poland – the Soma COSMOS. Labelled as a “Drifting Memory Station”, it is a modern re-creation of a tapeloop setup that has a huge number of variations, or algorithms, that have the job of repeating and distributing incoming audio across a number of tracks in various places in the stereo field. I knew I had to have one. Finding a distributer and subsequent back-ordering has taken an age but I now own a unit and wasted no time exploring it.

Initially, I patched in my Stylophone Gen X2 into the input, and began noodling to see what the various algorithms do. There is a 2 and 4 channel tape loop simulation, with loop lengths varying from 2.5, 9.5 or 22 seconds, a huge reverb chamber algorithm and an asynchronous granular delay algorithm – all 4 do really different things with the incoming signal.

My first recording used the stylophone, giant reverb and you can watch a recording of me performing it here:

The sound on the YouTube post-processing is a little grainy (and not true to the recording), the Soundcloud recording is as it was recorded during the session:

By noodling, I found the best results came from restraint – the loops get dense really quickly unless you throttle the feedback. “Drift” settings control how the input and subsequent repeats are distributed in the stereo field and “Blur” controls how quickly the signals melt into each other. It seems to prefer MONO input as it then creates the stereo picture as the sounds evolve – all very interesting.

Additionally, apparently i can download NEW firmware that reassigns the Cosmos into a percussion station and a conventional looper, so there is LOADS more to explore in this instrument. I have barely scratched the surface of its capabilities.

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Stylophone + Zoom H1n

Some time has passed since I last posted here. Creativity comes on me in waves, when I am stressed it abandons me – that is living a life.

I have been looking for a SIMPLE way of capturing performance. I have a DAW, but that requires me to cart my laptop to the place all the music gear is and… sometimes that is not easy. Sadly, my old MiniDisk recorder is clunky – it now skips and jitters on long recordings and hates ANY sort of vibration while recording. Getting recordings off the recorder requires me to re-record in something like Audacity, which is also inconvenient.

I have discovered a performance style I really like – it is a “sort of” overdubbing approach. Let me explain.

I like to layer audio – this requires me to be able to capture an initial performance, and then add another on top of it, and so on. Up until now I have been using my Ditto+ looping pedal – the down-side of this is that the recording is MONO – I learned that guitar pedals are all MONOphonic – necessitating my to clone the channel to the other channel to give the illusion of stereo – not ideal.

I also loooooove starting with a field recording (some spatial/stereo audio I have captured from the real world) like a storm, seascape, walk in the woods or whatever. I have a Sony stereo microphone that works pretty well, but batteries, cables and a thumping sound generated by just holding it makes that solution clunky.

I agonised (like literally for a year) about portable field recorders. The Zoom product range had some exceptional spec’d gear and, because of cookies and browser history (I guess), a “special” appeared in my DMs for the Zoom H1n – a discount bundle that was waaaaay cheaper than I had seen before, so I jumped on it (fully expecting it to be a scam – I have been burned with scam purchases before … leather alien face hugger mask for one).

It arrived, along with a multi-pack of mini SD cards (32Gb cards cost nearly nothing – how did that happen), along with an accessory pack (case, power pack, mike pop shield). In nearly no time (like, literally 10 minutes) I was using it, and I understood the feature set – sooo cool that someone can design a product that just works, and the internal GUI is intuitive. One SD card gives me a week of recording time at the highest sample rate WAV – the crossover microphones capture spatial sound deliciously – I just love it. I also love the “overdub” feature that allows me to layer performances – it creates NEW files of the newly combined layers – so easy.

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Narwhal

It was a dark and stormy night, after a cold and grey day.

I hooked my Clara up to my Ditto+ looper pedal, scrolled to an empty track, plugged the iPad in, selected a “tundra” wind voice and recorded a gentle wind that develops into a storm and then abates over a 3 minute period. Then, using the Ditto+ I player over that, layering ethereal voices strategically, concentrating on the narrative – a total of 6 extra passes to get an ambient piece I titled “Narwhal”.

The only post-production was to fade in and out cleanly top and tail. Very pleasing that a piece can emerge, as played – I like this style of composition.

It reminds me of an arctic soundscape … but you be the judge.

Mix

Furthering my home studio resources, I did a whole bunch of research regarding DAW components. A Digital Audio Workstation is something I have sort of messed around the peripherals of, producing audio on my laptop for decades, but hardware was limited to a good stereo microphone and mini-disk recorder.

After much research I determined I needed 2 channels input, 2 out, and wanted something that would essentially extend my laptop “soundcard” given nearly every laptop has a poor excuse for a soundcard that pretends to be more than it is – this is annoying. For example, although it provides a single 3.5mm STEREO plug out, there is no plug for an INPUT. I (foolishly) bought a USB C “SoundBlaster” external “soundcard” only to discover that it’s INPUT only captures MONO, even though the packaging and advertising material says different.

The soundblaster thingy is however useful for Zoom meetings etc as I can plug my wired headset into it and nicely separate microphone from speakers, but as a music capture device it is useless. I was using my wife’s gaming PC soundcard to capture samples form my MiniDisk as stereo digital files to use on my laptop – a clearly ludicrous and inconvenient solution.

When I was forced to buy my own laptop (as I recently retired and no longer have a school-provided laptop), I could not find a cost-effective solution built in to a laptop so looked for other options.

I settled on an Arturia MiniFuse 2 (2-in, 2-out), a lovely little USB C thingy that gives me external mixing capacity, allowing me to plug in both Theremins, or a Theremin and another device. When plugged in to my laptop it becomes the soundcard, and with it came some wonderful software to manage the DAW – including Ableton Live and the Arturia suite which I am learning to drive.

I also decided I needed some new cables, I had 2 “guitar leads” but needed more to connect things, integrate my loop pedal and also connect to the speaker, so bought some new TRS cables, and a quality Audio adapter to manage the 3.5 to 6.35mm plug issue. I also purchased a Music stand (for my iPad, which provides sound editors for both Claravox and Theremini), along with a quality USB C connector cable for the Vox.

Along the way I also decided that the microphone stand the Claravox was using (bought previously for the Theremini) was too high to play comfortably, so I bit the bullet and bought the stand designed for the Claravox (a beautiful art object in itself) – completing my Clara, finally.

I … think … I now have all the bits I need to support what I want to do. We shall see.

Amp

For both my Claravox and Theremini I usually use headphones, reasoning the god-awful din I am generally making should not be shared.

Annoyingly, the headphone socket on the Theremini is a 3.5mm plug, whereas the Claravox has a 6.35mm (1/4 inch), so I learned quickly that a QUALITY dongle that converts pays in the long run. I had some little one-piece converters that are microscopically loose so crackle, whereas the extender cable I bought is flush and positive.

While I was working at my last school I used to borrow a powered keyboard speaker from the Music department over the holidays because hearing the instrument in the room rather than through headphones is different, and sometimes I like it. This speaker cost a fortune (well, beyond that which I was prepared to pay) because it had so many features – I actively had to dial the gain down to near ZERO else the feed from the theremins were too loud.

Eventually I figured I would have a mixer feeding the speaker, and a laptop controlling that, so did not need all those inputs or advanced speaker control on the actual speaker.

Having a gig experience further drove my desire to be able to make noise that can fill a space, so set about looking for a powered speaker that had the dynamic range for both Clara and Theremini. I settled, after much agonising, discussion and comparison of published specifications on a relatively cost-effective Behringer:

It has a 10 inch speaker and a smaller tweeter, nice solid construction, handles and so on – a terrific (in my opinion) value package from StoreDJ, which I had delivered.

Connecting it to both theremins produces a lovely warm sound and fills the room even on low volumes. In tests I triggered all the dogs in my suburb by using high frequencies at high volumes – and boy is it loud without distortion at high levels.

The unit is nice and portable and, should I ever decide to gig again this will be a terrific tool. It is nice to see my home studio expanding.