TOMS Workshop #002 is offering a tutorial on Reaktor by Paul Stillwell and live performances by Derek Simmons and Amoeba Starfish.

Hosted by 2Egress Sound & Design.
Canada’s #1 Choice for Bespoke Recording Studio Furniture and Eurorack Modular Synth Cases.

Saturday, July 18, 2015 from 4 – 8PM.

Paul Stillwell

Paul Stillwell will be showing how to build a Reaktor ensemble that is inspired by the SnazzyFX DroneBank module from scratch – with some extra features. The SnazzyFX Dronebank is a module that provides 5 triangle oscillators for creating pulsing drone effects, chords, frequency beating, etc. Paul will show the construction of the oscillators as well as how to implement LFO’s for modulating amplitude and pitch, how to achieve overall balance of the levels of each oscillator, a master output section that provides panning and overall volume control, and how to expose the various controls to your DAW so that you can adjust the droaning with automation.

Reaktor is a graphical modular software music studio developed by Native Instruments (NI). It lets musicians and sound specialists design and build their own instruments, samplers, effects and sound design tools. It is supplied with many ready-to-use instruments and effects, from emulations of classic synthesizers to futuristic sound design tools.

Paul Stillwell has been a member of the Canadian Electronic Ensemble (CEE), the oldest continuous live electronic group in the world (founded in 1971 and still going), for the past 20 years. In that time he has been both mentored and influenced by the other members of the group (Rose Bolton, John Farah, David Jaeger, Larry Lake & Jim Montgomery). He favours an approachable compositional style based on direction communicated via text, notation, graphics, charts, etc. combined with a healthy portion of improvisation.

Recently enamoured by modular synthesis he has rapidly adopted an approach for both composition and performance that combines the computer world with the analog hardware synthesis world. This approach has also prompted an exploration of the vintage instruments in the CEE’s collection. Most notably, the EMS Synthi ‘A’ and the Yamaha CS40M.

Paul will also be bringing his modular set-up to perform an improv set.

You are welcome and encouraged to bring your laptop with Reaktor to follow along.

Paul’s music can be heard at Canadian Electronic Ensemble, as Intrepita on Sound Cloud, and at Bandcamp.

Derek Simmons (rezzn8r)

Derek Simmons (rezzn8r) is an aural enthusiast with a strong interest in modular synthesis. His experiments with sound are often aleatoric in nature, and explore the beauty that can sometimes arise from chaos.

Derek’s experiments can be found at Bandcamp.

Amoeba Starfish

Amoeba Starfish is a duo consisting of Phil Ogison Guitars and Jeff Howard Phonometrics (Percussion, synthesizers and effects).

Jeff and Phil met in 1987 and together helped form the Rock/Electronic Music/Multi Media Collective ‘Making Big Pictures. The pair also played together in Starblanket. Many years of playing together in various genres of music made the roots of Amoeba Starfish eclectic. They coined several new genre, including Zen Classical, and Quantum Jazz, but in the final analysis they rely a lot on their great chemistry and lively improvisational skills.

Amobea Starfish’s music can be heard at ReverbNation