Live Modular Performance By FreqGen, ‘Orbital Drift’
Synthesist and producer Scott David Albert (Klayton, Celldweller) shared this live modular performance, Orbital Drift, under his FreqGen project.
“I haven’t done this in a while,” notes Albert. “No softsynths. No presets. Just raw voltage, evolving sequences, and semi-controlled chaos, captured in real time.”
He also shared detailed modular patch notes for the performance:
“I’ve had Intellijel’s Metropolis for a long time and have used it on many songs. A family member bought me Metropolix as a gift and it was time for me to wrap my head around all the upgrades and new features, so that was the impetus for this track and the foundation it was built on.
Intellijel Metropolix to Livewire AFG. Modulating pulse width and harmonic animation with Ornament & Crime. That’s run through one of my fav filters of all time, the Cwejman MMF-2 modulated by the Tip Top Z4000 EG for a bit of snap but mostly as seen in the vid, manual modulation of the cutoff. Hands are handy.
Drums are sequenced by the Erica Synths Drum Sequencer with kick, hats and percussion all in random mode. The Drum Sequencer is controlling the VPME QD & QEX which I loaded up with my own selection of drum samples.
I used Make Noise Pressure Points/Brains for the main played lead, controlling pitch of the XAOC Devices Odessa. Gates fired from PP/Brains trigger another Z4000 EG which mults through a Synthrotek mult to a Pittsburgh Modular VCA and the Roland 521 VCF (The thing I keep looking up at, hoping it would wave or say hi. It never did, but it did an amazing job at filtering the Odessa.)
The little arp I added at the last minute. It lives on another rack which contains all my 5U stuff. Sadly it’s not in the video bc I didn’t know I was going to utilize it when I set up the cameras. Next time. The arp uses all Synthesizers.Com modules, sequenced by the Q119 and filtered by the Q150 Transistor Ladder filter.
Delays and reverbs from multiple Tip Top Z-DSPs. Some EQ & compression and maybe a delay in Cubase which mainly acted as my tape machine to record the performance. As I normally do when I patch, it’s all synced to Cubase clock using Expert Sleepers modules & Silent Way software.”
Orbital Drift is available as a single via the FreqGen Bandcamp page.
