Acrosynthetics is a patching practice built around a Serge modular synthesizer. The name comes from the Greek ἄκρος: edge, extreme, the highest point — but also the flexible, that which moves on its tips; the same root it shares with ἀκροβάτης, the acrobat. It describes a practice that works at the limits of the instrument with the agility of someone walking along the edge.
The work consists of treating electrical current as material, shaping it through waveshaping and wavefolding circuits and feedback cells: small clusters of modules connected so that the sound forms itself, growing into larger networks. It operates as a cybernetic system in which signals regulate one another in real time, without memory, governed only by the continuous flow of the present. The work inscribes itself in the tradition of David Tudor's feedback music, where the system itself becomes the composer.
Around this practice, hundreds of recordings accumulate, made during the very process of patching, in the manner of medieval marginalia: annotations, drawings, glosses and figures growing at the margins of the main text — here, a way of thinking with sound while it is being built. These recordings inhabit cascade, a web piece meant to keep the archive alive while letting it be played as an instrument. The page takes the browser's verticality as its own material: scrolling makes the sounds fall alongside a spectrogram that slides downward, coupling gesture, listening and visualization.
APROC can be (dis)connected as a performance aid; it will insert an offset, affecting greatly the fb loop.
The ResEQ is very useful for coloration of the feedback patch. It can also be a performance tool to help set emphasis on certain areas of the sonorous impulse.
The WM A is being used as a VCA, both receiving CV signals from the distings 2 — this way it's a way to cut the flows of electricity of the feedback daemon.
Keep the input levels of WM B and WM C low, so there's more headroom for the sounds to get through before pushing the folders to a noise-like spectrum.
Moving the mix in the phaser output will, most of the times, get things moving.
The freq and the VC freq IN within the VQVCF will play a very important role in the general pitch of the daemon circuit.
The TWS module has a switch that connects the three waveshapers, going from bottom to top. It can be used to (de)activate the circuit.
When pumping up the Q values of the VQVCF, it's possible to insert the self-oscillation of the filter into the demonic synth patch.
SG 2B set as Envelope Follower.
The speed of the cycling slopes would determine if, later in the signal chain, the output would be treated as a voltage offset in the WM B, or if it would be treated as an oscillator.
Both SG 2B and SG 2A set as Envelope Follower.
Setting different fall values on the slopes would generate interesting modulation shapes when passed through the Peak operator.
PEAK is a non-linear signal process which takes the highest voltage of the input signals at any given point. Also commonly known as MAX.
Rungler type circuit.
Pattern generation through feedback in the ASR.
Changing the weights of the DUALPROC A can ignite movement when the patch reaches stasis.
The Smooth section of the SSG acts as a Clock by cycling. When oscillating at higher rates, it would serve as an audio-rate oscillator.
The main pulse is extracted from a comparison of the signal in SSG A and SSG C; this signal goes out from the coupler out in SSG B.
Points of playability are found in the SSG C rate and VC rate and NCOM params.
From the french "to cut", inspired by the definition of Machines by Deleuze & Guattari, as the mechanisms that cut flows. In this case, daemonic intensity, or the separation between cascades of sounds and silence.
Changing the clock divisions in the Distings transforms the behaviour of the whole patch.
The WM A is acting as a VCA, gating the feedback signal. As a performance feature it's also fruitful to open the gate to achieve noisier and fuller sounds.
Distings translates CV signals into MIDI.
Distings and ES-9 are connected in the rear area. Thus ES-9 can receive MIDI signals to control it when used as a digital mixer.
In this case, only panning for two channels is used.