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Seven Held Tones for Great Grandfather

by Brian Grainger

/
1.

about

The Workingman's Drone series continues, changes, stays the same, and as I sit here watching the snow fall outside, held safely inside my wooden studio, considering the natural world as I often do while I write or patch or design, I once again feel that this ritual of ascetic minimalism is not a wall between myself and that world, but a communion with it.

I considered taking a year off from Workingman's, having run it continuously each month since 2021 when it resumed with Year Four, but the recent studio additions of powerful wavetable synthesizers, as well as multiple machines with re-flashable firmware options, led me to feel that there was still plenty of richness to be found in the series' current trajectory.

Year Seven follows the last two years of "Held Tones" sessions while also shifting its focus away from disparate points of interest around the world (either locations, events or structures that have fascinated me) as its writing prompts, and returning to the "roots" of Workingman's Drone, so to speak, with direct connections to trees. The series began with a simple visual indicator of two fir trees, which through the years would grow in size, and expand in number, until Year Five replaced terrestrial flora with imagined (perhaps cosmic) flora, sampled from the inexplicable Voynich Manuscript. So, while Year Seven continues this visual tradition of sampling from that source, the twelve writing prompts now reference twelve of the oldest living trees in the world, which bear individual names, and hold deep historical connections with their surroundings.

Thematic directions aside, the music offered here is identical in approach to Years Five and Six of Workingman's - a fixed number of voices, be they oscillators, LFOs, self-oscillating filters, noise generators, really any sound generator that can sustain a single tone, tuned by ear, panned and mixed accordingly. Year Seven will explore a system of seven tones, likely to be in a combination of mono and stereo, but always balanced and symmetrical, and designed to remain untouched for the duration of the recording.

From here, to another year of composing by way of listening, to another year of seeking stillness in that most paradoxical realm of oscillation, another year of stepping away and listening instead of speaking, always returning to the Earth, always becoming the world instead of outrunning it.

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March's 7 held tones are:

1. Cre8audio Chips, oscillator 1 (novel waveform)
2. Cre8audio Chips, oscillator 2 (novel waveform)
3. Doepfer A-188 (256 stages)
4. Doepfer A-188 (1024 stages)
5. Buchla 258t, oscillator 2 (novel waveform)
6. Synthesis Technology E352, Morph+Phase mode (2x Waldorf PPG wavetables, out 1)
7. Synthesis Technology E352, Morph+Phase mode (2x Waldorf PPG wavetables, out 2)

Inputs 1/2 summed via Dreadbox Utopia, then filtered via Behringer 1047 and 1006 low-pass filters, routed into Strymon Magneto. Inputs 3/4 summed to mono signal via SSDP switch mixer, then filtered via Behringer 1006 low-pass filter (input 2), also sent into Magneto. Inputs 5/6/7 summed via Tiptop MISO, with 5 filtered via Doepfer A-121-3 low-pass filter and 6/7 filtered via 2HP low-pass filter, and both signals sent direct to mixer for near-center pan placement. E352 was in Morph+Phase mode, using two different wavetables from the Waldorf PPG. Final panning/mixing via Behringer 305.

credits

released March 6, 2024

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live with minimal post-processing at White Pillar Workshop, March 5th, 2024 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text by Brian. Design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WD75, 75th in the Workingman's Drone series. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2024. All nights preserved.

"All work is never finished. The statue remains inside the stone."

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Brian Grainger Dayton, Ohio

Drone music, warm atmosphere and textural ephemera for the working man.

I also release music as Milieu milieumusic.bandcamp.com and Coppice Halifax coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com

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