I like to make tapes to hand out to my buddies locally. First I make a beat tape and then to cleanse the pallette I make a droney noisy tape. This is the contents of the last droney noisy one.
I like side 2 better so we’ll start there. It’s Lyra with filtering and weird delay provided by my mixer.
Side 1 is Lyra and Monotron delay with filtering from the mixer and I can’t tell if it’s one of the mixer’s weird distortion effects or this (also weird) super aggressive phaser that goes right into distortion sounding territory. I really should write this stuff down.
Considering a Lyra for use in my band, but I wonder if I would just end up frustrated with tuning. Instability and the sorta wild nature seems to be part of the magic here. Wonder how well it would play with guitars/bass/keys if I tuned it to a standard scale. Maybe I am just asking for a headache.
By all means tune it up, but don’t expect it to stay in tune.
If you’re the sort of person that needs everything to be in tune all the time, run away, but the beauty of the Lyra is that it’s a very inclusive sort of apocalypse, all frequencies are welcome, often all at once.
I could see Lyra being amazing in a band setting. Two ideas: 1) don’t worry about it being in tune and bust it out for the atmospheric, sound effect, noise, or improv portions of the songs 2) if it needs to be in tune, sample it and run your sampler through the onboard effects
I haven’t touched the tune knobs on mi e in a week or two. I got it to a good place and have had multiple, fruitful jams with it. I will say that the tune knobs are very precise… touchy even…allowing for all sorts of microtonal intervals. You get all the places “in between”. So, while @Fin25 isn’t wrong, I’d argue that you can get the Lyra tuned without too much difficulty. As for tuning it up in between songs? You might be asking for it there…
Do it!
One idea would be to tune it at the beginning of practice / performance to a versatile scale and leave the tuning alone. When using it in my own jams that is much less of an issue.
Next time y’all have a practice, try passively recording the rest of the band (if possible) and see how it works playing along to the backing.
This, it’s not just good for soundscapes and FX but I feel like using it tonally, in scale-context might be a bit limiting.
I’d be interested to hear how people have if not tamed it, use it alongside more traditional band structure. I could see synth-rock like Add N to X or Trans Am, of course.
Totally do-able. I use the Digitone to tune mine and I utilize the scale mode. Makes it pretty damn easy to do. I find that if you leave the knobs alone, the tuning stays pretty much where you leave it. I feel like mine drifted a bit over time, but I’m talking about days, and a small amount of drift.
If you can, run it through something that can handle the low end…. It makes the earth move.
Also, the Total Feedback circuit is amazing.