I have been spending some times with the hardware synths.
I am not a massive fan of the sound of synths used as musical instruments.
There are certain electronic sounds that I do love.
Mika Vainio’s Stratostaatti comes to mind. Or anything by Ryoji Ikeda.
I love synths when they sound like electricity. When I feel like I can hear the circuits inside. Fuzzy, tingly clicks and pops. Like popping candy on your tongue.
The one I ended up hanging out with the most is Mood Mother 32. Not having a keyboard keeps me from thinking that I need to make something musically playable, yet it’s less intimidating than its’ bigger brothers and sisters.
If I said the choices I made when patching were intentional, I would be lying.
*insert sound here*
The one thing I found frustrating working with the Mother 32 was the inability to syncronize the LFO frequency to a DAW. I can see myself using the results as textures.
I also gave the Doepfer a go. A lot more complex but a lot of fun. I only managed to get noise out of it so far. I find the analogue synthesizers (at least these two) to have a much richer and pleasant tone when it comes to noise. I am trying to get to a point where I am confident enough in the textures and tones of my sounds to let the tracks be as sparse minimalistic as I imagine them.