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Echoette Shura Pulsar Effects
Playing Next: Stive Morgan The Synthetic Person
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Echoette Shura Pulsar Effects is an electronic music and video composition showcasing modular synthesizer textures and sequences, and vibrant colour video collages. The work was originally going to showcase the Eurorack modular synthesizer, but morphed into a more visual experience - drawing upon the inspiration of a video synthesizer from the 1980s - the Fairlight CVI Computer Video Instrument. I wanted to emulate two main functions of the Fairlight CVI - animated colour cycling of monochrome images, and motion control. The CVI had a motion-controlled frame store design, and capable of paint effects and colourising. Objects could be painted into the machine, stencils could be made and the frame stores had a flexible addressing structure which meant they could read out the picture starting from any X or Y position so that images could be panned, scaled and mirrored all over the screen. I was fascinated by the video work of Peter Callas, and his use of the Fairlight CVI, so I studied his compositions, and set about emulating the colour-cycling function, and the X-Y 2D plane animation. For Peter Callas, the CVI became a kind of electronic collage device which encouraged the serendipity of random associations. I used the Grass Valley Edius software to create the animations in the composition. The colour-cycling of each monochrome image was achieved by assigning each luminance level a chroma-keyed colour modulation sequence, and building up the colour modulation layers until an interesting composite image was created. This was a painstaking process, but well worth the result. Clown faces, temples, birthday cakes, gloves, dolls, armillary spheres and the planet Jupiter were colourised and animated within a 2D X-Y infinite plane. The music was created by various modules within the Eurorack modular synthesizer system, and the G-Stomper Android rhythm software. The G-Stomper rhythm software was used to create a rhythm that was subjected to a ring modulation that rendered it to the point of high-tizz beats. Another rhythm was bit-crushed slightly and fed through stereo reverb. The melody line is a strange one - a G-Stomper rhythm flanged, and Noise Reduction used creatively as a kind of severe filter. To this, the whole piece was slowed by a factor of 200% with a heavy reverb. The ambient texture tones were created by various Eurorack synthesizer modules including the Blue Lantern Mini Shimmery, the MakeNoise DPO, Din Sync SARA filter, white noise, Doepfer Thru-Zero VCO, 2 x Blue Lantern Mr Fill Gates sequencers, 2 x Pittsburgh VCOs, and the Intellijel uMod II. The Intellijel uMod was used in the ring modulation and MIN and MAX modes to create the wonderful choral effects when two sine or triangle waveforms are combined. The Elby Analogue Shift Register was put to very good use when combined with the Doepfer Audio Divider to create evolving textures and high-choral effects (particularly effective when processed by a delay and phaser). With careful sequencing, an Analogue Shift Register can create some very interesting textures. The composition as a whole is very surreal and mysterious. Other dimensions of reality are alluded to. Forms and functions of alternate modes of perception are explored with aspects of dynamism and movements studied. Regal contemplation is reflected by the colour-modulating Queen Elizabeth I doll. The end of the composition explores a more Universal consciousness.
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