TMA-2.5

Mr Sandbags

Being as I am in something of a musical trough of despair (it’s not as much fun as it sounds) right now I thought I’d try messing with my TMA-2 Reaktor instrument and try and coax some better results from it.

From a promising beginning TMA-2 has become something of a problem: How do I make it into something more than a curio? Can it be something more than a machine for making random, largely-unmusical, noises?

I took some steps towards that by adding more direct controls for length and pitch range. I recorded a few pieces and found that I could begin to give them some “shape” to them by varying the range of pitches to include or exclude higher pitches. Varying the length control had a less obvious effect.

I’ve now started thinking about possibly adding key-tracking for pitch control. Beyond that I think it needs some kind of filtering and then I’m not sure.

Anyway of the flotsam and jetsam that I made tonight this was my favourite few minutes. I think because there seemed to be some short “movements” that were quite pleasing. It was made using a sample map containing flute & pizzicato violin samples.