Random Strudels – Ray Toler

I bought a new tool.

Yes, I buy a lot of tools, and most of them end up gathering digital dust when the newness wears off. In this case, though, I think I may have stumbled upon something that not only isn’t available in any of my other tools, but goes so far beyond what I expect that it could fundamentally change how I write certain tracks.

The tool is called Stepic, and it’s a step sequencer. Here’s where it gets fun. Step sequencers aren’t new. They go back to the very beginnings of electronic music and are, in general, quite rudimentary. You get a limited number of steps, set the note¹ and maybe the volume for each step. Some older (and quite expensive) step sequencers provide advanced functionality like divisions and probability triggers, but the vast majority of synths that have them have extremely limited functionality.

Random Strudels Ray Toler 3:23

Thief

When I was in high school in the 80s, a friend of mine introduced me to the soundtrack album to the movie Thief starring James Caan. The soundtrack was by Tangerine Dream and almost instantly became one of my favorite albums. I must have pretty terrible taste, though because it is generally disliked by hardcore Tangerine Dream fans. Pretty much any Tangerine Dream 80s soundtrack² is disliked by the hardcore fans even though Love on a Real Train³ practically invented the moody three-note underscore you hear on so many films these days.

Never mind all of that, though. The important bit is that a couple of the tracks on Thief featured this signature bass line that I was desperately in love with. I played it on the piano. I tried to program it into my Korg Poly 800’s step sequencer with middling success. As I would learn many, many years later, that middling success was because TD was using a very nice and expensive step sequencer.

You know what? Just listen to it. I’ll still be here when you get back. Listen to as much or as little as you like, but the bass line I’m talking about comes in around 2:20 or so.

You are probably now either thinking, “wow, that was pretty cool” or “well, there’s ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground.

Thieving from The Thief

So. Back to Stepic. If Stepic were a piece of hardware, I’m pretty sure it would be the most advanced, most capable, and most expensive step sequencer ever invented. This thing is insane. It has randomization, divides, key restrictions, memory slots, probability triggers, chained sequences, and eight assignable modulation lanes that can control anything that accepts MIDI control change data.

That last bit is particularly interesting. Obvious examples would be messing with the filter and cutoff values for instant acid bass lines, panning, or other audio modulation. But lots of things can use MIDI. Lighting controllers for instance…

Oh yeah, it’s also polyphonic meaning that each step can be a single note or it can be a chord. That’ll be important later. And on top of it all, this insane little plugin is only €39.

Random Strudels?

I think when I started this track, I thought it was going to be another of my Lo-Fi pieces, but I’d gotten Stepic earlier in the day and once I figured out the basics, the rest of the evening was blissful experimentation and repetitive aural meditation. As it turns out, Random was a perfect adjective because much of the composition process involved randomizing lots of things, picking out the musical bits, and then assembling them into some form that made at least cursory sense.

It features one of my favorite tricks from my ambient work of the last few years – duplicating some (or all) of a MIDI track, sending it to a different synth, then automating the volume controls to bring things in and out. Sometimes I do this manually and sometimes I use various periodic shapes. This one uses both methods.

The “randomization and tweak” method led to an interesting phenomenon. I’d start a sequence and let it roll for a bit. At some point, my brain would lock onto what seemed to be the first note of the repeating phrase. That is to say, my brain picked the beginning of the most musical sounding sequence. When I’d stop and start playback, though, I often discovered that what I wanted to be step 1, was somewhere else like step 6 or step 14. Stepic to the rescue! It has the ability to shift sequences forward or backward. All I had to do was decide where 1 should be, then move it to the beginning.

Random Strudels isn’t art. At best, it’s an étude based in learning and exploration. It’s not developed enough to even be a buried album track, but I do enjoy listening to it. And maybe it actually is an album track. When it comes time to put that album out, we’ll see if it makes the cut.

I’m even more excited that this “sequencer within a sequencer” can also talk to my hardware synths. Expect more of this stuff in the future.

Colophon

Instruments & Samples

XO, impOSCar, Hive 2, Diva, BassStation, Oddity 3, Repro-1, Serum

Effects, Mixing, & Mastering

Fabfilter, Gullfoss, Kraftur, PanMan, Valhalla VintageVerb and Delay, Portal

Image Credit: Marco Verch (CC-BY 2.0)

Notes

1
And sometimes duration, though that’s more like a legato/staccato thing instead of quarter note / half note thing.
2
Risky Business, Legend, Three O’Clock High, Firestarter, Sorcerer, etc.
3
From Risky Business