mxv

The sun shines high above The sounds of laughter The birds swoop down upon The crosses of old grey churches We say that we're in love While secretly wishing for rain Sipping coke and playing games

September's here again

— David Sylvian “September”

And here we are again, Synthtember. It certainly doesn't feel like a year since the last one.

For those who are blissfully unaware – Synthtember is something I've done for the past few years whereby I record a synthesizer-based song / track / noise of some kind every day through the month of September.

Generally, most of the tracks are a live recorded improvisation performed on analogue synths, sometimes accompanied by Jolanda, other times performed solo. I've previously had “no overdubs” and “no tinkering with the mix” rules, but I've decided to relax that particular stipulation this year.

The past few years of Synthtembers have resulted in several albums worth of song bases – that is, I've used them to further build upon to eventually create album-worthy tracks.

Sometimes it's just noodling. Sometimes I don't feel up to recording at all, but force myself and find I've created something far better than expected. Also sometimes the result is just waffle. Whatever the result, the discipline of the process I've found to be quite rewarding and enjoyable.

So, let the drones, wooshy noises, bleeps and bloops commence!

Earlier this year I decided to full re-write this website using hand-written html and css, using the Zola static site generator. I've been hand-writing html, and later css, for exactly thirty years now, so I've no problem with that, but using a static site generator was new to me – I'd tried a few out over recent years, but while I like Zola much more than many of the others I tried, it always seemed like a massive faff compared to writing everything by hand. Well, after a fairly steep learning curve, I managed to get things working to about a 95% satisfactory level, but never managed to get that last 5% working to my liking. Thus, things stalled.

It seems I just don't have the time, focus and perhaps most importantly enthusiasm to tinker endlessly with computers any more. I'm going to try to persevere, as one of my primary technological goals over recent years has been to greatly reduce my tech footprint – that is, reduce the environmental impact of the tech that I use.

By reducing my tech footprint, I mean not only using no frikkin' AI, no world-destroying war-mongering mega-corps such as Google etc, but also reducing the footprint of the websites and services I run – GoToSocial instead of Mastodon, WriteFreely instead of Wordpress, XMPP instead of Matrix, etc. As far as not using AI or all GAFAM companies goes (ie Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft), I completely block all of the those companies at network level, using Adguard Home. Not only do I feel a great ethical weight lift from my shoulders, the web is a massively more pleasant place to frequent without those companies polluting it.

I hope to write an extended article on this subject in the future.

Now that the dust has had a chance to settle, not to mention my scattered brain cells having settled somewhat too, I'd like to reflect a little on my experience of Synthtember this year.

I'm quite happy to say that I managed to record a track every single day – I didn't succumb to weariness, as I thought I might, and even more fortunately I didn't succumb to any child-borne lurgies, which I fully expected to experience. The process started the evening of returning home from an expedition interstate to Brisbane – with a new synth under my arm, I should add (a Behringer MS-1 – a very satisfactory Roland SH-101 copy) – and left again for Brisbane the day following the 30th of Sept. It was a pretty epic experience.

The exercise of Synthtember for me is to attempt to record a track of some sort every day through the month of September. Mostly, something like 25 out of 30, it was live performance improvisations wherein I select a few synths, come up with an idea and record it all in a single take – ie no overdubs. A few of them were layered multitrack recordings, but mostly I was trying for the “first thought best thought” method of recording.

I think the exercise is useful for a number of reasons. One, that it encourages a disciplined recording regime – that of playing even if you don't necessarily feel the muse descend. I often found that some of the best tracks were ones that I went in thinking I had no mojo for recording that day, but pushed myself through. Not that it always worked out that way.

Secondly, having done this last year, I ended up using almost ninety percent of the tracks as the basis for more fully realised songs. Omnia Bene is the first release composed of er re-composed versions of last years tracks. The forthcoming Homeostasis album Enshittifination is also drawn from heavily reworked versions of some of this material.

In terms of quality, there's only one, maybe two, tracks that I'll most likely happily consign to the “artefacts never to be seen or heard again” folder. Everything else pretty much has at least the kernel of an idea that I'd like to revisit to see if it has any legs.

I intend to keep all posts with the full improvs up on this site, for the one deranged person out there who for some reason is interested in this kind of thing, and I'll keep the whole collection on Funkwhale at least until I start releasing mixed, composed & mastered versions of the material.

Mission complete! Strange and incomprehensible noises made and documented every day of the month! Hurrah! I hope to write a few words by way of a debrief over the next few days.

Everything, parts I-V” by jlmxv

Sound is Hot by jlmxv

A day of rain & rest, a holiday from patch cables via Bitwig.

Relaxation Event by jlmxv

All Synthtember available on Funkwhale.

Miller by jlmxv

All Synthtember available on Funkwhale.

Now We Must Wait by jlmxv

All Synthtember available on Funkwhale.

Brass Til the End of Time by jlmxv

All Synthtember available on Funkwhale.

Reality Pocket by jlmxv

All Synthtember available on Funkwhale.