Wednesday 26 January 2022

Helios

More music, this time made with a Korg ARP Odyssey, this chap here:

And a new Mac Mini, but I'll write about that in a separate post. In retrospect I'm not sure if the key changes work; they're harmless, but they don't add anything.

The video is a bit of a cheat, because it's a playback, not a live performance. And the Meris Hedra pictured above doesn't appear. It's not even plugged in. The only effects are a bit of overdrive, some EQ, and panning delay, which was good enough for Lee "Scratch" Perry back in the day.

The Odyssey isn't generally associated with acid music. It isn't particularly bassy, and in the 1980s it was big, awkward, and expensive on the used market; at the very beginning of the decade the likes of Ultravox and Gary Numan still used it as part of their touring setup, and despite its longevity it never sold in the same numbers as the DX7 or Roland's cute early-80s music boxes. Nonetheless the ring modulation, shrieking self-oscillating filter, and oscillator sync are all excellent as a means of turning the acid quotient up to 11.