HOWA EP 98 - TONY ROLANDO

Mr maker of the odd circuits, Mr man with a vision to create a company from the ground up that dramatically changed the modular synth world forever, Mr maker of synth woven musics.

Please welcome Mr Make Noise himself, Tony Rolando!

We get into chatting about his excellent new album “Breakin’ is a Memory”

Which you can find here

Come and delve into this new work and imagine where Tony’s head is at. Making all these incredible instruments for us all make NOISE with whilst keeping his passion for the original motivation ---- the music making itself.

He has the irresistible urge to create sound and frame these nocturnal excursions into an LP. He's made all this in his few free hours outside MN to stretch out and fashion a record, his way in his home studio. I’m really glad found space for this. It’s a great result and this LP is a rich listen! We get into all the juicy inside knowledge about how it was made from Tony himself. What machines were used and how. The mindset, the techniques, it’s all here!

This chat is not an attempt to dive "Biographical". For that I highly recommend you listen to this interview that mylarmelodies conducted with Tony as it contains a quality insight into the Make Noise back story and Tony’s history, philosophy and such.

Fantastic listen! Click here

In the nitty I crack out an early version of the Make Noise Strega which was a collab with Tony and pod guest Alessandro Cortini. Such a powerful and fun little box! I put it together with a Befaco Noise Plethora (which is a self contained sculpt-able noise bath of a module) and use my voice to populate three loops that don’t care about one another. Like dogs, they all run free. Once you fill up these three, free loops, you can bounce them all to a virtual cassette deck alongside any input that might also be coming in to spin to tape. Once this new bounced recording stops, the 3 main loopers you used to make the 1st layer are emptied automatically and you can fill them once more and then bounce them to a 2nd tape deck until you reach the 3rd wave of loops that go to a final reel at which point you are all full up and need to delete either all or some of the parts you made to make room for new ideas. Birth and death is one of reasons to love looping. To know you must destroy to grow something fresh. So yes, I used the excellent Loopy Pro on an M1 iPad to build this looper with an Akai APC40 connected via a Hub the USB-C port on the iPad Pro. I was able to run signals to physical channels of a mixer using a class complaint audio interface with multiple outs. The whole idea behind this setup was to be as close to the moving parts as possible and to be able to reach all the controls extremely easily to manipulate all the important aspects that need to be influenced by hand as it’s all a performance and this makes it somewhat like making food. For stir fry, you need your ingredients right there. If you have to drive to buy ginger in the middle of a cook its akin to needing to halt the flow to get a machine recorded right if not easily connected and playable. This is key. All the factors from sound tone shaping, to levels to FX they need to feel playable. Having used loopers as my way of expressing myself live since around 2000, I have a very strong connection to working in this way. I made my loopers in Max/MSP but I must say, Loopy pro is a wonderful tool to build custom live looping setups in 2022 using a tool like an iPad that has a superb touch interface is a bonus. It’s all very welcome and I think it’s really the best tool you will find to make a custom looper that allows more options than a Boss 505 or any other hardware unit. I will include the loopy pro patch I made for this nitty for all the members of the HOWA Patreon on the soul science level :)

The music for EP98 comes from Raj Pannu. Really unique stuff I feel. He has a patient and detailed flow that bubbles along in an immersive bass aquarium with subtle motion charted throughout. It’s like minimalism in the evolution of parts with a lot of sound pressure pushing and with a bold forward motion. Here’s a link to some of Raj’s music.

I’d like to thanks Diana Walsh for her help prepping the interview audio

PLEASE

keep the music coming !

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[email protected]

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Highly recommended pod for these times:

LIVING MYTH with Michael Meade