Make Noise - System Concrète

  • Published
    Jun 1, 2016
  • Released
    November 2015
  • Share
  • Collecting modules is still considered a marginal pursuit, but modular synthesis has never been more mainstream. Some modular enthusiasts seem more interested in sonic possibilities than making music, and it's become de rigueur to moan about your favourite artist losing their edge after "going modular." This might have something to do with how the typical modular workflow gets you to build sounds from scratch. While greater value is placed on creating supposedly unique, personalised sounds, it's common to miss the wood for the trees. There's certainly something to be said for carefully sculpting the nuances of individual tones, but isn't what you do to a sound and how you contextualise it more important than the sound itself? This is what drew me to Make Noise's System Concrète skiff. The System Concrète, as its name suggests, is about manipulation of sources rather than generating sound from scratch. Instead of using oscillators as a source, the System Concrète encourages you to take sounds from the outside world or use pre-recorded audio. It might not seem like a big difference but it entails a different way of thinking about sound creation, one that's much more utilitarian and case-specific than building sonics from a blank canvas. The skiff houses seven voltage-controlled Eurorack modules: the Maths signal generator, the Phonogene granular sampler, the Wogglebug random voltage generator, the MMG filter, the Echophon delay and pitch shifter, a mult and an optional extra cue/output module called Rosie. There's a lot of information about these individual modules online, so here we'll focus specifically on how they work as a self-contained system. Like any modular rig, there's huge scope for getting lost, and sounds tend to get extremely weird quickly. But unlike some setups, with System Concrète you can get something interesting and highly usable with minimal fuss. The Phonogene is the centrepiece of the system. Most of your audio will pass through its 1/8-inch input. You could connect your laptop running a DAW with a work-in-progress project, solo tracks you'd like to manipulate, record them into the Phonegene and get to work. Or you can connect a YouTube clip or a field recording from your phone—the sources are only limited by your imagination. The Phonogene's audio buffer length is in direct proportion to the fidelity of the recording, meaning short samples will be higher quality than longer samples, so don't expect to loop long segments without bit-crush style degradation. Once you've recorded your sound, you can move it backwards and forwards at different speeds, zoom in to the granular domain, cut the sample into pieces and scrub through the slices, among other techniques. Having never used Make Noise modules before, I was getting stretched, jittering sounds to suddenly zip up like an elastic band within minutes of figuring out how things worked. You don't need to be a genius to try sending an LFO from Maths and a random pulse from Wogglebug to the Gene Size and Varispeed inputs on Phonogene to get your samples squiggling about.
    I found the System Concrète to be a relatively easy and fun way of adding unique flourishes to a largely finished track. I would set my DAW to record, load a sample into the Phonogene and start improvising a patch, generally by combining the Ecophon's pitch-shifting functions with the granular textures of the Phonogene. This combination is great for producing metallic, almost physical modelling-esque tones, and I found particular joy in switching the polarity of the Ecophon's feedback while modulating Gene Size on the Phongene. Obviously, some moves are better than others, so I'd go back through the audio recorded in the DAW, find the best bits and stick them around a track as appropriate. In this example, you're sampling yourself, so the sounds gel with the preexisting mood and you don't waste time searching for new elements to add to the mix. These sounds were often useful for smoothing out or adding character to structural transitions. I'd often end up resampling the Concrète's audio, particularly for percussive sounds, and this process would often lead to a completely new track idea. While the System Concrète excels at this sort of set-piece studio work, it's also a potentially powerful live tool. It certainly takes a lot of practice to build the confidence required to centre a live set heavily on the System Concrète, but, with a couple weeks of practice, you could use it to devastating effect as an effects send in a DJ set. Imagine using dubbed-out, pitch-shifted granular sampling as a means to transition between disparate genres, or to add impact and character to breaks and drops. This is possible because of the Phonogene's Sound On Sound control, which allows you to dial in a balance between your recorded sample and any other incoming audio. This means you can grab little bits of a continuos chunk of sound to manipulate while the source keeps playing untouched. What's more, the Rosie module has a cueing option, so if you do take a System Concrète into the live domain, you have the safety net of editing your patches to taste before the audience hears you. It also has a send and return function for connecting external effects or any other sound source. This all barely scratches the surface of the System Concrète's abilities. If any of it sounds appealing, you absolutely must read deeply about every module in the system before laying down the big bucks. It's also probably best to have a clear idea of what you want to do with such a system, because it's not too hard to imagine someone purchasing one of these, messing about for a week and never using it again. My favourite thing about the system is the way it makes you focus on altering qualities already inherent in a sound, leaving you more mental energy to think about the bigger picture. Having said that, you could ignore the bigger picture entirely and focus purely on composing on the modular itself, rather than using it as a tool in a bigger setup. Just be sure you know what you're getting yourself into before taking the plunge. Ratings / Sound: 4.0 Cost: 3.2 Build: 3.8 Versatility: 4.2
RA