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A live synthesizer jam, with acoustic guitar and bass added afterward.

I got the Bastl Kastle Arp as a gift for Christmas. At first, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, or how useful it would be useful for making songs, but I started to stumble into really nice spaces with it as soon as I switched it on. I ran it through the Walrus Sloër, one of my favourite current reverb pedals, but it was too hot and the Arp has no volume, so I routed through a little mixer first.

Because the Arp's time intervals change when you're twisting the dials, I thought I'd connect it to the EP-133 to keep the rhythm with a kick drum. And once those two were together, I could hear where the rest of the song needed to go.

For extra melodies and development, I added the Moog Subharmonicon, which is remarkably similar to the Bastl Kastle Arp in many ways. Since I already had the mixer hooked up, I thought I'd run the Subharmonicon through the Sloër as well.

I've been playing a lot with a different tuning on guitar these days (E A D F# B D), so I tuned the Arp to D major and played a song in B minor on the acoustic guitar. It worked really well.

At first I was playing the whole thing live, but I didn't have the time or capacity (or camera angle!) to capture the whole thing, so I broke it into three passes, one for synth, one for guitar (well, doubled), and one for vocals.

For sweeteners, I added a simple bass patch on the Moog Mariana plug-in, an Arturia CS-80 V synth doubling some of the guitar parts, and some harmonies.

I like where the end result ended up, dreamier and more introspective than I'd thought it would be. Seems a great encapsulation of my mood this holiday.

Thanks for listening.

Bastl Kastle Arp - main melodic arp thingy
Moog Subharmonicon - second and third arps
Mackie Mix 5 - audio mixer for Arp and Subharmonicon
Walrus Sloër - reverb for Arp and Subharmonicon
Teenage Engineering EP-133 - a lonely kick drum
Larrivee P-01 ISS Commemorative Parlour - acoustic guitar
Moog Mariana plug-in - bass
Electro-Voice RE-20 - vocal mic

https://jayhosking.bandcamp.com