New Video: Music for 5 Octavios

Earlier this week I decided to film another video using the prototype Octavio I borrowed from Jamie. I decided to do something musical again cause that’s fun but I thought perhaps I’d try to incorporate the Octavio into the music to make it more interesting. There are two ways of making sound with the Octavio that I could think of – hooking it up to an audio source and cranking the volume and pounding the sturdy mdf cabinet like a drum.

I thought I’d pursue the pounding first because this was enjoyable and easy to film. One advantage was that I was able to show the VAF Octavio logo closeup which I thought would make people hungry to purchase one. Actually I just thought it was hilarious because it’s such a cheesy thing to do.

In playing sound through the Octavio I thought it would be important to make sure that the Octavio is more important than just a way to convert the electrical signal to sound waves so I figured the knob on top would have to come into it. The knob can do two things: switch audio source and adjust volume. Being the psycho overconfident testosterone-fueled teenager I am, I decided to do both. The tracks I used for all of this are detailed below.

• Two percussion tracks
• One synth where the switching between the Octavio’s audio inputs mutes and unmutes the synth (cause one input is wired and the other isn’t)
• One synth where the switching between the audio inputs of the Octavio switches between left and right panning (with a muted period in between). I did this by only wiring up the left channel of input 1 and the right channel of input 2.
• One track of an organ sound with volume swells performed using the Octavio’s volume knob. It’s hard to hear it in the video but I like the slightly glitchy sound of the Octavio’s stepped digital volume control.

I just recorded a small section of most of the tracks while filming and then looped the sound of the last track with the video progressing to the next.

This job is so much more fun than what most of my friends are doing in the holidays.

Thanks for listening

Jacob for VAF