i staggered mentally

part of 'document' will include postings regarding the software we deploy in modern day portion control as well as comments regarding our long time existence with music technology. this article looks at the equipment used to produce i staggered mentally 1982/In Phase

our principle synths were the roland SH-09 -a single oscillator machine with just PWM, ramp, square and noise waveforms, despite these limitations it became a pc workhorse machine supplying many leads and bubbling/noise effects. next the roland RS-09 which was a string/organ synth best heard on out of order - it was possible to blend organ and strings into some sort of a pad sound then fatten it further with the onboard chorus - the drumatix drum machine TR-606 and the, now legendary TB-303 bass line were deployed on drum and bass duties, both boxes were bought on day of release, from londons camden town rock shop - prior to this we were using the roland CR78 which just didn't have the edge we hoped the new machines would... roland had developed a 5 pin DINsync connection which locked these two silver boxes together the other synthesizer, and breaking the roland monoply, was was the moog rogue a cheap analogue subtractive monophonic moog with two oscillators that continuously drifted but gave it a thick unison buzz best of all we could force it to feed back on itself and it created some huge saw sweeps he is patriotic is a good example as well as pretty good bass tones and screeches higher pitched washes that contributed to the overall chracter of the material-sex crimes shows these to good effect - the sample and hold feature allowed us to experiment with pulsing tones and throbs which were synchronised manually- the manual had a spare A4 patch sheet which we photocopied to carefully recorded the slider and switch positions, it felt good owning a box with the moog logo- cassette tape voice sections, toy whistles and some manual percussion - materials were clamped into a large bench vice and played with drumsticks, the vice had a metal resonance which added to the effect - i staggered mentally was recorded to 8 track 2" tape with all parts played manually except the drums and bass- effects were spring reverb, roland space echo, rack reverb, mxr guitar distortion, phase pedals- some parts were driven through a guitar amp and miked up, various tempo and vari speed tape techniques were also used - once mixed to 1/4 tape some parts were cut and spliced to add repetitions and to tighten sections - pat bermingham the in phase label owner engineered and recorded it at gants hill on the east london/essex border, apart from sort out that was recorded with van kaye and ignit at ding dong discs in holland

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