#61

As I’ve been using mostly using Kria in my own sequenced explorations, I’d be interested in hearing more about your breakthrough and how it’s affecting your process / practice methods :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes
#62

I posted this in another thread recently, but “patching backwards” can be fun - start with a cable plugged into your output jack and work from there. Any time you want to make a new connection start with the destination jack and then decide where to source voltage from for that jack. Imagine constructing the entire patch diagram from the output and moving upstream, rather than starting from the original CV/signal generators and moving downstream.

Another useful exercise: give yourself a short time limit to build a patch and play with it. Don’t record anything you do! Focus purely on exploration without the pressure of recording/“creating” something good. Tear it down immediately when you are done, to emphasize the ephemeral nature of the exercise. Or hey, if you really love it, then keep working on it! Maybe see what the craziest noisiest thing you can get going in 10 minutes is, play with it for 10 minutes, and then totally deconstruct it and re-initialize everything. Maybe you have a more specific goal: set up a basic rhythm, lead, and atmosphere voices in 10 minutes. Jam with it for 10, and then deconstruct and start over. The general idea is to give yourself small challenges or goals and to work in a manner where you are not necessarily interested in the final output, and giving yourself freedom to explore in a controlled/educational fashion in a non-judgmental way.

Another exercise: pick a module that you normally use in one manner, and try building a patch around it that is totally different to how you normally like to use it. For instance, use your clock divider for generating subharmonics rather than clock divisions. Use your Slew Limiter as an envelope generator rather than for portamento. Use a s+h for sample rate reduction instead of CV sampling. Etc.

This thread has some really good ideas - there are others like it on lines and elsewhere too!

9 Likes
#63

It’s really a small idea and one that’s actually written in the docs somewhat, but I hadn’t internalized it: phasing and alt notes are really more core to Kria than I was thinking. Even playing with this simple configuration has really taught me a lot:

play Awake on Kria

turn on each step for track 1 in the trigger page, write a simple 8-step melody, doesn’t need to be fancy on the notes page (make sure to set the note page loop length to 8!), and then press the note button again to get to the alt-note page. Set the loop length to 7, but write something relatively spare—two or three notes different from the root is plenty. Now you’ve just written 7 bars of music, with the added benefit of the feeling of musical progression coming from the phasing of the alt-note sequence against the main melody. And then of course there’s plenty to explore from there, but having that as a baseline is very exciting to me.

14 Likes
Kria strategies
#64

@alanza, @voidstar and @soggybag: this is all super helpful! Can’t wait to go home and try out some stuff after work tonight.

2 Likes
#65

This is fun…

https://www.tips.modularparts.net/book-bad-ideas-v2-pdf/

3 Likes
#66

reading through the exchange and perspectives was very interesting @soggybag @emenel. It made me remember a feeling during a performance I had yesterday that I hadn’t felt in quite a while. Kind of tangential to the conversation here, but just popped into my mind when reading.

Some context, for the past year or so, I have done maybe 10 or 15 performances focused around the modular, kind of all over the place in the way I’ve set things up (sometimes partially performative with a keyboard-like interface, sometimes generative with control over various parameters, lots of times mixing voices in and out).

I broke out the guitar for yesterday’s performance and there was a moment where I was playing a sort of complicated (to me, probably not really to someone well-practiced hah) melody, and I knew that I needed to move to something else, but I felt like I couldn’t focus on figuring out what that move was (because I would mess up the thing I was currently doing if I took a second to “stop” and try to remember).

I hadn’t felt that same brand of “pressure” in any of my modular performances (though I’ve definitely had to do some troubleshooting while playing). That isn’t to say, it’s not possible to set up a single-voice patch that was very much “performed” (as in the sound stops when you stop), but I’ve never been drawn to build something that doesn’t have a few things going on that I can let take up the space for a second while I gather a “plan”.

3 Likes
#67

When I talk about modular, either in discussions, presentations or in a casual conversation with other modular users, what I always point out is that the major difference between acoustic and electronic performance is that in the latter, more often than not, you can take a breather.

Being able to take a step back and listen to your performance makes all the difference in the world. And it’s far from an easy task to do. It might sound easy, but it’s not, and as such it takes practice.

I used to let the thing play (either when using a looper, a sequencer, etc) and step down, and listen with the audience for a few seconds. It seemed like a gimmick, a gesture of sorts, but it was mostly to put myself in the right position, that of the audience. This was and is important for me in many different levels (soundwise, performance-wise, psychology-wise). One of my biggest gripes with modular performances (I don’t exclude myself from this) is that they can end up being of more interest for the performer than they are for the audience; I mean, let’s face it, it can be really fun to play with a modular system, it’s one of the best aspects of it as an instrument.

5 Likes
#68

Thanks for these ideas! I think that finding ways to short circuit judgment is one of the biggest challenges for people of all skill levels. Starting out it’s hard to explore without worrying about sounding “bad” and I think for established musicians it’s a challenge too (since they have an idea of how they “should” sound), even though the most growth can come from exploring without worrying about the result.

4 Likes
#69

Nahre Sol made a good video describing some of her process practicing challenging piano compositions. It’s nice to see someone with a high pedigree going through the same process as the rest of us. I especially like the part where she listens to a recording of a different person’s performance, gets discouraged then immediately tries to practice as fast as the recording…and fails miserably. I do this a lot, especially after watching youtube videos of world class performers and think something like “I could do that if only I had more time to practice.” Though sometimes it’s about spreading that small amount of time over many days rather than brute forcing all at once.

2 Likes
#70

extremely helpful insights thank you