LYRA-8 Organismic Synth (for soundscapes, FXs, pads, complex textures)

Yeah, they can be pretty responsive to climate. It’s gonna be freezing here next week, might do a garden session, for science like.

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I’ve been very busy with work , haven’t had a chance to do anything music related recently, but last night got the chance to play (together with?) the Lyra 8.

Seems like it has used its time to start learning some rudimentary form of communication using clicks and whistles. What I don’t understand is how it managed to hang out with either dolphins or donkeys, I’m not quite sure.

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My wife bought me a Lyra 8 for Christmas last year. After I started playing with it, she asked me to sell it, and cannot understand why I won’t. She hates it–says, “you don’t make any music with it, you just make bad sounds.” I have told her that “playing it” (touching the capacitors and nudging knobs and flipping switches) brings me to unexpected results nothing else I’ve ever played with can do.

I am a family therapist by profession. I sometimes use the following analogy when talking to parents about raising a teen (the best results often come from telling your teen what not to do instead of telling them what to do), which I think really also applies to the Lyra 8 (so I guess that means messing with the Lyra 8 is like parenting a rebellious teenager). When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time at the State Fair (in Minnesota) because we lived near there and you could sneak in (and we were poor, so not too many options for kids). I spent a lot of time in the cattle, horse, sheep and swine barns (because we liked animals and it was different from the railroad tracks and abandoned buildings we’d often trespass into when the fair wasn’t happening). In the swine bar, you might very well see a 10-year old girl manage to direct a 400 pound pig from its pen to the arena for a show. She’d walk behind it and use a kind of long fly-swatter and lightly tap/slap the pig on the side of the head to tell it where NOT TO GO when it veered off into an unwanted direction, thereby steering it where she wanted it to go. You could also watch two or three grown men struggle with the same pig to get it to the wash basin area, pulling, pushing, swearing, because they were trying to direct the pig where it HAD TO GO. Playing the Lyra 8 is like using the little fly swatter with the pig. You nudge something, the Lyra 8 does something vaguely, but not entirely, predictable, and then you nudge it a little more, until it starts to stray into territory you don’t like (or want at that moment), and then you nudge things back a bit, and you keep doing this until your pig (Lyra 8) is back on track to the arena (somewhere you hoped to get to, but not necessarily at all how you expected to get there).

So, I will be keeping my little pig (Lyra 8).

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This! Sometimes i used it a couple of days and wonder if i could be better of selling and the next moment it feels like a total different machine and it suddenly sounds like a string quartet, or Beth Gibbons riding whales or a massive dubstep bass. Sometimes i wonder if it’s rhythmically gating the connection between my third eye and my :brain:. Weird instrument.

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I miss my green piggy.
To my ears there’s something ‘hollow’ sounding to the delay. Thats really the only thing…what a absolute unit of a beast

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Did you end up doing it?
reminds me of this piece a guy in my college class did, written for and rehearsed by chamber orchestra members who had to put their hands in ice water for 20 minutes before playing, a detail left out until the time of the performance.
they were pissed.
it was kinda awesome though.

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That was something I noticed when I first started messing with my Lyra. You can get real close to replicating those distorted, washed out fuzzy tones so prominent in harder “rock” music. I can easily see a band doing it’s thing using a Lyra as the rhythm guitar section. Guitar solos are so last century anyways.

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Nope, got some pretty serious house issues to deal with taking up all my spare time.

WindingTerrificBeardeddragon-max-1mb

If I applied that rule to the instruments I use I’d need to take up a new hobby

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Does anybody here have any experience with mobile power solutions for the Lyra 8? Any tips are welcome, could not find much online so far. Cheers.

Short industrial scene, filmed at one of Europe largest steel factory’s.
Scored with a Lyra 8. Part of a multimedia project I recently started.
@ shameless plug: coastofsteel.com

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Absolutely the appropriate instrument to score that. Nice!

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This was really cool! Good job!

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Many thanks! @ViolentMeals @MichaalHell Much appreciated!

I would really love a full album of this, that’s a solid sound you got here !

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Hey guys!

I am not sure if any of you have seen my little Soma Labs Lyra 8 tutorials, here are some links if you guys missed it! I hope it helps some of you understand it more and maybe for people who want to look into it as gear to get!

Basic Overview

How to create ambient drones

There are others in Exploring Modulation pt 1-2-3 but I can only post 2 links right now :slight_smile:

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