Category: studio journal

There have been multiple generations of the Buddha Machine from the duo FM3 (comprised of Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian). The 2017 version was a collaboration between FM3 and composer Philip Glass on the occasion of the maverick minimalist’s 80th birthday. That device had various samples of Glass’ music, including organ and, heard here, voice. The Buddha Machines all consist of short prerecorded loops that play on repeat. The choral loop on the Glass Buddha, as it were, has a dramatic gap between the repeats. Here I use twin delays to fill the choral void. I tried granular processing first, but the result was too artificial for what I was after. Instead, I here combine the unaltered audio with two versions, both delayed via the ER-301 (the large module on the bottom left). There are three strands coming through the mixer to the final output. The second strand, following the unaltered one, is the audio of the main strand set to delay by about 10 seconds, and from that delay only a narrow band, toward the high end of the spectrum (let’s call it the alto line), actually makes it to the mixer. The third strand takes another narrow band of the spectrum (let’s call it the baritone line), and sends that back to the ER-301, where it is delayed even further, about another 6 seconds, roughly. In addition, some slow-ish and flat-ish LFOs (from the Batumi, via the SPO) are continuously (and out of sync) modulating the volume of the alto and baritone lines, giving it an ebb and flow, a sense of call and response, that wasn’t in the original source material.

Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfYmduTEziY). There’s also a (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MIM4mCYe17nERi9xeEWAD2w) of the Buddha Machine Variations.

A quick lunchtime office-ambience experiment, taking Buddha Machines by the duo FM3 and making new background music loops from them. Two Buddha Machines (the blue device is generation one, the uncertain color generation two), each going into separate channels, the input gain adjusted according to the selected loops. The gen-one device is split, half right to the voltage-controlled mixer, and half into Smog (a remix of the Mutable Instruments module Clouds). The Smog route provides some haze in the background. Both the gen-one and gen-two lines are then being operated on (their amplification adjusted by voltage control) thanks to dual pairs of rapid, unsynced LFOs (originating from the Batumi, those combined levels then adjusted by the SPO). And a much slower LFO from the neighboring Dixie II module is occasionally introducing a higher frequency range, which adds another layer. This experiment started off somewhere else entirely (that somewhere involving envelopes), and then was employing very slow LFOs throughout. But then the sound of the rapid LFOs worked even better. A very fast LFO can, in a manner of speaking, serve a slow LFO as well. The title, “Glass Horizon,” is a joke about how down the road there would be a Philip Glass collaboration on a Buddha Machine, but for now these automated arpeggios will have to suffice.

Today’s home-office ambience: six Buddha Machines (including two of the first generation and one from each of the subsequent four generations), plus a guest star in the form of the somewhat less meditative Gristleism box, which is the black square one on the right. Gristleism was a 2009 collaboration between Buddha Machine creators FM3 and the band Throbbing Gristle. Note that, in true Buddha Machine style, the battery on the green one was starting to go (following a weekend of [significant](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/18/buddha-machine-variations-no-5/) modular-synthesizer [effort](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/19/buddha-machine-variations-no-6/)), which is why the light turns on and then suddenly off at one point.

Two Buddha Machines, both from the first generation, playing different loops through the modular synthesizer. Each of the pair of loops is running through a different preset on the ER-301 module (that’s the large module with the dual screens in the lower left). The green Buddha Machine’s output is affected by a ladder filter, and the blue one by a grain delay. Aspects of both presets are being, in turn, modulated by slow-ish and flat-ish waves emanating from the Batumi and tempered by the SPO (note the four, short orange cables toward the upper left). Hence the sense that the filter is changing on one, as is the speed, subtly, of the other. The output of the green Buddha Machine (via the processing) is going straight into the mixer. The output of the blue one (also after having been processed) is having its spectrum sliced up (via the FDXf), with two bands (and those two bands alone) going separately to the mixer, their volumes adjusted further before being output. If you keep your eye on the equalizer-looking vertical bands in the ER-301’s larger screen, you’ll see the volume of the two Buddha Machine inputs on the left going up and down, and the LFOs from the Batumi (via the SPO) doing the same on the far right. Keeping an eye on those four signals will help the ear correlate shifts within the audio.

On the weekend, the home office is just home. After four days of combining various Buddha Machines, I thought, “Why not run one through the modular synthesizer?” Someone on Instagram had mentioned pairing it with Morphagene, a module which I have (it’s the central, colorful one on the top row), but I decided to send the first-generation Buddha Machine loop through Clouds (a Clouds variant, Smog, fourth in from the right on the bottom row). Aspects of the live sample are being varied in Smog based on some fairly level and quite slow LFOs (the Batumi through the SPO, where those short orange cables are visible toward the upper left). Only two spectral bands of the Smog-processed audio are being heard; they’re coming through the FXDf. And an unmolested version of the Buddha Machine loop is also heard, quietly in what for much of the track is the background. And yes, I do, definitely, need to sort out a better way to capture the audio for these videos (I’m just doing it on my phone currently).