The universe seemed to throw everything at me to prevent me from getting the Space Brain to work. The power adapter I bought to use it didn’t work, my old Arturia Keystep finally kicked the bucket, the newer model Grandmothers (newer firmware?) have a quirk when it comes to disabling local mode (likely something specific to this device), and I had all sorts of issues getting the three oscillators all tuned up tightly enough to get a good sound in the three-voice poly mode.
Anyway, I nearly chalked this up to a failed experiment and waste of money, but I messaged Austin over at Space Brain Circuits and he assured me it would work well, and gave me some tips. His customer service is incredible, so after a short nap and a walk with my dog, I decided I’d give it another go, and sure enough, it works like a champ.
Here’s my 2 cents and advice for anyone thinking about getting one of these.
Getting the three oscillators perfectly in tune proved tricker than I thought. I have no problem doing it normally on the Grandmother, but maybe you have more leeway if stacking for unison use. Anyway, don’t waste a lot of time like I did, just use a tuner and it’s a piece of cake to get them all perfectly tuned up (I used the one in Logic).
If you run into an issue where you seem to only be able to play in either a very low or very high register after you connect the device, it’s an easy fix. You have to hit a C note of the lowest octave you want to use before disabling local mode, and that fixes it. Apparently, that didn’t used to be the case. Something changed, and if you don’t know about that bug, you’ll think the device is pretty useless.
And my biggest piece of advice, if you are going to try this, don’t go in with too many set ideas about what three-note paraphony is going to be like. I had all of these ideas about how I was going to use it, and that all went out the window because having only three notes and one envelope really forces you to play a certain way. Also, you are using up a ton of patch points and modules just to set this up, so you will be limited in what all else you can do (no modulation, etc). I wouldn’t dream of trying to sequence it, although perhaps you could.
All of that might make it sounds like it sucks, but it’s actually pretty damn great when you get it set up. The beauty of the Grandmother is that it’s a really pretty sounding synth (unlike say something like a Korg MS20, which is awesome but harsh and nasally). Because you have to adapt to the playing style dictated by the device and the way that notes get cut off or trigger faintly because of the one envelope, it turns the Grandmother into this really quirky, amazing sounding instrument. It’s got this really vintage kind of vibe to it, and more than a synth, it feels like some kind of one-off weird old keyboard you’d find in Keyscape or something. Since I already had it plugged into my audio interface to tune it in Logic, I threw on some Valhalla delay and basically just got lost playing it for an hour or two.
Anway, I’m glad I didn’t give up. I think this will be another fun way to use the Grandmother.
