"Cicada Nocturne" by NICU - 90 Minutes of Moog DFAM & Eurorack Modular Ambient Music (Outdoors)

"Cicada Nocturne," a live late-night outdoor ambient performance by NICU and built around the Moog DFAM analog synthesizer, spatial effects & additional Eurorack modules. A nocturnal atmospheric soundscape created live out in the warm, mellow dark of our backyard on my birthday. Part generative music, part hands-on synth improvisation, making ambient music on a modular synth at our picnic table after midnight is a great way to turn 35. The intention is to let the piece evolve from start to finish, but if you want some specific areas to explore, I have timestamped them below: 0:00:00 Gathering Darkness 0:15:00 The Wind in the Night 0:30:12 Swaying Branches 0:49:43 Cicada Nocturne 1:00:45 Alone Under Evening’s Curtain 1:09:40 Elements Patch Notes: This was originally intended purely as a test run of my outdoors recording setup, but ended up becoming something I thought other people might enjoy. This performance was heavily influenced by my love of Brian Eno's groundbreaking "Ambient 4: On Land" album (as well as the Belgian beer I was drinking). I was seeking organic dissonances, layers of interesting sounds, and vaguely-unsettling slow evolution and exploration. I wanted this piece to feel like a living landscape for me to wander through. It was rewarding to try making a restrained and slow ambient piece using mainly the Moog DFAM as my sound source and centerpiece - typically considered a drum machine, percussion synthesizer, or industrial noise generator. But the "Drummer From Another Mother" is an excellent source of bass, bell tones, drones, and long slowly-fading envelopes for sound design or for unifying other sounds. Plus, it can be quantized to force it into musical scales instead of noise - or you can just decouple the onboard sequencer entirely and send it pitch information directly (like I did here) to get something more typically "musical" from it. Speaking of pitch information, the Expert Sleepers Disting EX was a critical piece in this patch. I used the F6 "Quantized Random" algorithm on both sides of the module - the first time I've ever played with this mode before. Very fun! The Quantized Randoms are sending two sets of Turing-machine style pitch info to the 2x DFAM oscillators. (Simply put, it made the drum machine sound pretty). And though the two oscillators on the DFAM are somewhat slaved to each other, there are many ways to partially decouple them or to mix and separate them in interesting ways. The rest of the modular is mostly playing support for the DFAM - to help different sonic elements fade in or out or modulate tones from other sources. For example, the LFOs help provide subtle Vibrato or Tremolo; the Envelope Generator fades noises in and out; the Attenuators and VCAs shape the voltages if they are too big or too small. The Pico Drums module gets an interesting role, since I used it as a sampler instead of a drum machine. It's loaded with the alternate "Pitch Black" sample set and is used near the end of the set to add new sounds to the mix. Still, it mostly stays in the background of the DFAM. Spatial effects (Delay & Reverb) are obviously critical. My Erica Synths Zen Delay and Eventide Space Reverb are two of the jewels in my setup. I'm also occasionally using these effects units as sound sources or instruments in their own right. Additional dynamics processing was done after recording to bring quiet and loud parts more in balance. Was it an improvement? I miss the large swells and fades to silence from the unprocessed version. However, I think there is a sonic payoff: as the volume of the delay and reverb tails is brought upwards, it forms an enveloping cushion of ongoing sound that becomes a new element of the piece. Different - not better or worse. In the future, it would also be cool to include the ambient sounds of the night around me or mix them into the synth for further processing. So, I just got a new stereo field mic that I might start to use in upcoming outdoor ambient performances. Stay tuned and don't forget to subscribe :) ---- PRIMARY GEAR ---- Moog DFAM Expert Sleepers Disting EX Erica Synths Zen Delay Eventide Space Reverb Motu M4 Audio Interface Additional Eurorack Modules Used: Noise Engineering Horologic Solum (Clock Divider) Acid Rain Technology Junction (Quad Attenuverter) 2HP S+H (Dual Sample & Hold) Mutable Instruments Veils (Quad VCA) Instruo Ochd (8x LFO bank) Instruo Ceis (ADSR Envelope Generator) Erica Synths Pico Drums (used as a 2x sampler) Intellijel Steppy (Step Sequencer) Endorphine.s 2HP Power The beer: Une Anee Tripel (8.7% ABV) Amateurish color grading done in Da Vinci Studio because I'm a State Azure fanboy. Recorded on the night of my 35th birthday - 4/4/2022 NICU is inspired by my baby daughter Luna who fought very hard to be here. You can support us by liking, subscribing and leaving a comment. #ambient #darkambient #ambientmusic #dfam