WORM CEM Studio

This week Thomas Margolf and I spent a few days noodling on the synths at WORM's CEM studio at their building in Delfshaven.

The ARPs
In my view, the stars of our visit were the two ARPs. The ARP 2600, famous for hand-played synth-jazz stuff (Herby Hancock) was capable of dark, rich rubbery/metallic electronic bass in a sequenced context too. It's predecessor, the ARP 2500, is an modular giant. Thomas got it speaking a language of zaps and squiggles by having its sequencers modulate an overdriven filter. I think that the crosstalk inherent in the slider-based patching system was adding to the sense that that particular patch had a life of its own.

Arp excerpt by basementhum

Grit
The pots and faders of the synths often felt gritty, and some were outright broken. In particular the poor Putney VCS3, the Doctor Who synth, was in bad shape. Despite its damage (or perhaps partly because of it) it provided a spooky batch of squeals, gargles and farts. Among the remaining instruments we used, the odd modules that were either broken, or that we just couldn't figure out, didn't stand in the way of making great noises. The fact that we hadn't set out with a clear goal beyond experimentation and sample collecting also helped avoid frustration. For next time, a multimeter or an oscilloscope would have been a useful debugging aid.

Connections
Sequencing the old synths from Ableton Live was done with the help of two Kenton MIDI to CV boxes. Generally, the pitch CV cable needed be wired to a synth input called something like 'Keyboard CV', while the gate CV cable was wired to a correspondingly named input (and sometimes, needed to be fed to a 'trigger' input too). The synth audio gets routed to a big mixing desk, which in turn feeds the main speakers and is linked to the computer for multitrack recording. We left on friday with the huge Ableton Live session copied to our memory sticks.

If you're a musician living anywhere in the neighbourhood of Rotterdam, and would like a chance to use these amazing machines before they become even more rare (there were only around 100 ARP 2500's ever made), get in contact with Henk from WORM. To get the most of your visit it'd be good if you had at least some knowledge of subtractive synthesis. I think WORM organises workshops too, which could give you a leg up in this area if you're new to it all.

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