Planar Crystal Live Rig

Demo of the rig.

Planar Crystal Live Rig

My planar Crystal live rig consisting of Waldorf Pulse processed by Lexicon Vortex, Korg MS2000, MPC500 for sampling and sequencing, Thing 2 and Sequencer processed by Kaoss Pad.  Midi clock originates with MPC500 and controls arpeggiator speed on MS2k, Pulse, and KP3. I used Velcro to connect the Vortex to the pulse.

Planar Crystal 020

The planar crystal is a device which can transport someone spatially, temporally, and inter-dimensionally upon touching.  Those who touch it accidentally may wander the multiverse searching for the way home.


Motif ES7 with PLG-150DX (used for Skrillex sounds, Waldorf Pulse, Dune (Plug-in), mixed in Reaper, Kicks from Pulse and Little Phatty, some effects using Lexicon Vortex.  Drums using BFD Eco and MPC500.  Sound effects include home made electronic drones, filter modulated bulldozer samples and glitched effects.  Audio damage Replicant, Michael Norris Drone and glitch plugins.  Final noise sweep is a Thing 1 Noise generator modulated through a Korg EMX1.  Vocals recorded with DP004 digital recorder and modified using Michael Norris FX and Replicant.  Voxengo Elephant used for mastering compression.  EHX Stereo Talking Machine used on arpeggios near the end to give vocal effects.

Planar Crystal

I am currently working on a psytrance piece.  This piece is somewhat inspired by groups like Infected Mushroom, Ott, and Shpongle.  It is still a work in progress and may be so permanently.  I am using the creation of this piece to help me learn Reason better.

(Note: The latest version is above in a more recent post.)

I started by listening to some psytrance songs to get a better feel for the type of music I wanted to create.  I decided Heavyweight by Infected Mushroom was close to the feeling I wanted to create.  I picked up a simple kick snare rhythm from another song and started working on that.  I set up a couple of kick tracks with one set up as a straight 4/4 beat and the other a somewhat more complex rhythm.  I then set up a snare track to complement the kick.

I set up a track for the hhats and combined hhats and snare and sent to an outboard processor (Lexicon Vortex flange delay effect).  It took me a while to figure out the correct configuration that would allow me to send output to the processor and record the input while monitoring it.  I kept generating feedback loops when I would try to monitor the effect.  I ended up having to go through a mixer with a headphone output to listen to it.

I also figured out how to use Reaper's folders so that I could group all of the drums under one master track.  That way I can "collapse" the folders down so they don't take up so much space as well as control the overall drum volume with a single envelope.  That makes this much more powerful for producing music.

I then used Dune to create the introductory bubbly bass synth sound and played a few notes until I found a groove that sounded good.  I used Reaper's MIDI editor to add filter sweeps to the sound.  I went through my collection of samples and tried to find some that would make good sweeps to be used before a transition.  I put a few sweeps at different spots throughout the song.  I also added some background sound effects with a drone generating plug-in.

Next I wanted to get some analog synth in the song so I went to the Motif and figured out how to send the output from the arpeggiator to Reaper to record an arpeggio while listening to the instrument.  I recorded the MIDI sequence into Reaper then used Reaper to play back the sequence to the Waldorf Pulse Plus.  I modulated the sound of the Pulse with the filter knobs while it was playing and recorded the result directly to Reaper.

Rig with Motif Pulse and MPC

I have been attempting to make a psytrance song lately.  This is a picture of my keyboard rig.  The wood ends on the Pulse make it much more control friendly.

The MIDI connection is as follows:

Motif MIDI In <- MIDI Out of Computer
Motif MIDI Out -> MIDI In of Computer
Motif MIDI Thru -> Pulse MIDI In
Motif Local Control = Off
Reaper is Running on the computer with a track set to:
  I/O = MIDI Out
  Record enabled
  Record input: Audio or MIDI
  Monitor enabled
  Input = MIDI In (All Channels)

That way I can play the arp on the Motif (Note the Motif arp can be set to a different MIDI channel than the regular MIDI channel!) and either record it to Reaper or listen to it on the Pulse.

MPC is not connected in this photo.