Buchla Musings

Yes, I've been pondering what I'd get if I had a chunk of money to spend frivolously, on something expensive I wouldn't ordinarily buy. My first thought was Serge - but not so east to realise. Sounds fab but I don't really like the format and the boring layout. So next I thought Buchla, and went off to research the Easel. I had a head start since I've already heard the groovy stuff Paul did with his - and he really likes it, which is important too. The album Automaton was done mostly on one and it's one of my faves of his. The clear, sharp, percussive tones are really distinctive but of course it can do a lot more.

So I first off looked at the Easel-K with its amazing controller and dense panel to program the controller. Paul put me off though as he had one and found it a real faff, especially as you need another module if you're to store several different configurations. The regular keyboard would make it self-contained, I guess.

The Easel is a deceptively simple synth - just 2 oscillators, one of which is complex and the other can either be an audio or mod source. A single envelope, a 5-step sequencer, some random voltages, a reverb, pulser, not a lot more. I decide I probably want the aux card expansion - even if it winds me up to pay over £800 for a single digital oscillator and some extra CV control over the envelope. This shit is expensive - and not well made at all. Looks like they didn't even bother with a manual - the existing one is from last century but the new machine, supposedly, has MIDI. Worse, for your five grand (!), you get a synth with an external power supply. WTF!!

And yet...

Despite all this, if I had a chunk of money to toss away frivolously, it's still there at the top of the list. I like its sound, I've watched videos, I should probably go play Paul's again.

Friday afternoon came and went. Recorded some mad Synthi noises into the Octatrack, enjoyed them all afternoon. At the last minute I added a drum part and a sequence, totally killing it. This was the version I put on bandcamp for free download, only to take it down again this morning when sober.
You can always tell when the beer to weed ratio is too high. Subtlety is lost, basic crap tossed in. Fortunately, I did at least keep the original idea and can carry on with a few more Synthi noises replacing the ER1 and Pro2 parts. I appeared to have drunk all 3 bottles of beer that I bought, which is 1 more than I usually would. No wonder all I could do in the evening was sprawl in front of Sense8.

This morning I moved a ton of soil to our new patch - good timing as it is now chucking it down and a storm called Bwian is supposedly coming to blow at us. Continuing to read Voyage to Arcturus and wondering what it's all about, if anything.