I used to only make Hip-Hop beats back in the 90's and as time progressed, bpms got slower, my ears got more in tune with the vinyl records I was collecting to sample. On one of my record digging missions, I was led to go hit the experimental section to find some gems my beat making peers wouldn't be up on, most diggers in the 90's were hitting the Soul and Jazz crates heavy.
This was the day that changed my musical direction. I found a bunch of experimental records by these synth composers I never heard of...
Morton Subotnick - Silver Apples of the Moon
The Moog Machine - Switched-On Rock
These are two of the many records that helped me break out of the 4/4 prison that beat based music had me trapped in for so many years. The more I listened and absorbed these frequencies I started feeling the rumble to express myself outside of the grid and away from the computer.
As time progressed I acquired an analog synthesizer and started to take a deeper look into the thought process and philosophy of this vast auditory world I jumped into.
One of the synth techniques I enjoy are self-generative patches. When you lift up the hood of the modular you will find that under the sea of wires and knobs is an analog computer for sound synthesis. The programing language is the patch, and a synth patch is a network of interconnected synthesizer modules. A self-generative patch is like a primitive form of artificial intelligence based on the rules and randomness you program into the patch. I use random voltage generators in a lot of my compositions, these voltages can be applied to pitch, clock, filters etc. this keeps an element of surprise and will keep your compositions unpredictable. Another thing I rely on is lots of LFOs to keep everything in motion. Another effective technique is to frequency modulate a train of LFOs into each other for more chaos and sonic surprises with this feedback loop.
Here are a few more examples of my generative compositions:
