In this video, synthesist and sound designer Julian “J3PO” Pollack talks about his new album, A Brief Odyssey, an ambient synth album created using one synth, the Sequential FOURM, stock plugins and the free Valhalla Supermassive.
Pollack says that the project started as an experiment in creative limitation. He notes that it can be easy to get overwhelmed with options:
“By removing almost every option from my studio and focusing on one instrument, I found myself working faster, trusting my instincts more, and spending less time chasing ideas and more time actually making music.”
Along the way, Pollack talks about he finds that limiting options can sometimes be helpful to in getting you into a ‘flow state’ for music making. He also discusses sound design, poly aftertouch and more.
You can preview A Brief Odyssey below. It’s available via Bandcamp.
The J3PO Sequential FOURM presets are available at Pollack’s site.
ive done groups of songs with just a microbrute and a bunch of pedals and its very rewarding, i recommend it to everyone, to strip down to a single
synth and add effects as you need, and if you are more creative than me, even do drum sounds and sample them and it would be even more wicked
Cool, can we listen to some of that somewhere?
For funzies and as a joke I made a live album all one take with just the D-lusion rubber duck soft 303 style synth…but it is so horrible and K don’t recommend listening….but if you want to, it is called
Dying Synthesizer – Rusting Relics
Can be found on YouTube and Spotify.
One synth was all I had and all I could afford many years ago. It was a slightly temperamental second hand JX3P and I ended up knowing everything there was to know about it. I recorded heaps of my own material with just that synth and I thought that it was about as good as you could get… my own synth, my own sounds and my own composition. That was over 40 years ago and now I have too many synths, too many VSTs and too many other sundry junk and none of it gets used as much as that old 3P. Good ol’ days ?
It’s an interesting idea. I have been thru the whole synth owning experience over the decades. I’ve owned many synth and enjoyed playing them but they rarely made it into my music. Over the last few years, I have been using Arturias V Collection. Even there, I only use a pallet of 5-6 synths plus my personal favourite – Pigments. They all make it into my music one way or another. I have more recently bought the Soundforce controllers for OPXa, Mini V4 and Pro 5. As a patch creator, they have been a game changer. I love the integration and the hands on patch creating. So, I agree, less can be more and a plethora of options can lead to choice paralysis. Personally, I have found it very rewarding to concentrate on a few synths and learn them inside out.
huh, i built a house with just one hammer. Korg Prologue is the last synth i will ever play.
Frédéric Chopin made a few albums with a single instrument… without stock plugins
on the youtube thumbnail,…
i somehow find it difficult to create any kind of album by connecting the synth this way. ie power chord only… ???
kidding aside, it was a nice listen, and imho it was something of a homage to the great v some moments.
i made my most creative music back in the 80s with just an oberheim OBXa, a roland TR707 and an alesis microverb on a tascam portastudio. now i own many synths, but too many options seem to be too many distractions.
There was an electronic pop project, a bit religious, called Joy Electric that took this approach to the extreme. They did a few albums with only a Roland System 100, then a few albums with only a Minimoog, then they moved on to some other synth I think. It was impressive how many timbres they could get out of a single synthesizer.
Joy Electric was rad, man I haven’t thought about them in awhile, Starflyer 59 too =)
The topic at hand isn’t really new, it used to be pretty common even. My favorite approach is to create all the sounds you need with the synthesizer dumping to samples as you go, then sequence said samples you just created with your .wav sequencer of choice. I used to use one called Magix Music Maker 3.0 back in the day but Acid started getting real popular for that sort of thing as well with friends, plenty of folks were dumping their samples into basic hardware samplers like an MPC or asrx etc., banging out the sounds you need from a synth you know well was the easy part IMHO, arrangement could get tedious but fun, I always sucked at the mixdown and mastering phase of the process
Polyphonic aftertouch is amazing. Now bring it with more voices!
Of course few things compare to the amazing Prophet T8 keybed.