Last weekend was the annual Deer Shed festival held in Topcliffe North Yorkshire. For the past 6 or festivals our pal Mylar Melodies and I have worked at the festival giving music making workshops to kids and adults in the Science Tent. Many bleeps, bloops, beats and noise was made as usual.
Longer term followers may remember this video “Building a Eurorack System for Kids” and then “Building a Eurorack System for Kids … AGAIN!” from previous years.
After discussing the festival with a few people the idea of sharing what I took with me and what we were doing came up, I think that makes most sense in blog form rather than a video this time so here goes.
This is the Simms Watt (I believe also branded as Hohner) ‘Echo Dek’ a basic, Copicat style tape echo. This was driven by a microphone for a range of singing, weird mouth noises and speech. I took the idea from an event held at the National Science & Media Museum where they have a Watkins Copicat and microphone directly into some speakers. Similar to that event people loved talking and whooping into the mic. Some mesmerised by the tape loop and speed control.
Unfortunately this one keeled over about half way through the event as the motor went crazy loud and aggressive, literally shaking the table. I should sample it. I need to test if it’s working at all and then pass it onto someone who can fix it.
A quick shot of the Science Tent at this years Deer Shed festival. Consistently busy, with lots of good stuff to do including thunkist, noisytoys, synthshed, dj_school_uk, gizmobots, madlabuk soldering workshops, bottle rockets, Rubiks cube, puzzle escape boxes, a laser maze and more.
A bucket of Tendrils cables, crucial to a good time! 😉 It’s funny watching kids with cables, they loved pulling them out of the bundle and picking colours.
A modern classic … the Akai RHYTHM WOLF! Joking aside I do have a soft spot for the Rhythm Wolf. It’s really well built, feels solid and ready to weather a festival audience beating and it proved popular at the show. Kids and adults drawn to finger drumming and making sequences for the beats and on board synth.
This was my view for the weekend. Making the gear accessible and providing workshops on electronic music making is a really great thing.
The main event! I ran this system as a guided workshop with the Arturia RackBrute and handle/bracket system attached to the MiniBrute 2s. The main activity was the Winter Modular Eloquencer sequencing the ALM Squid Salmple. Showing people how sequencing works and the basics of rhythm and making beats. With added FX swooshes from the Oxi Instruments META FX and synth sequencing and the basics of a synth voice on the MiniBrute. Added quick fader fun was happening with the Play All Day Play Fader.
The stickiest most horrible mess of a set of a knobs … the Arturia MicroBrute. An aggressive, fun little mono synth with the on board sequencer and plenty of nicely laid out hands on control. Good fun.
That’s it, already thinking about what to take next year, how much of a dirty sticky mess the Microbrute will be in another years time, whether the tape echo will survive … we’ll see.
