Off his head: man makes absinthe-powered synth

The sound is intoxicating.
The sound is intoxicating.

Some of music's greatest works have been composed by artists who were under the influence; now we have a synth with a sound that's controlled by the demon drink.

Confused? Allow DamagedMeat, the man responsible for this liquor-based lunacy, to elaborate.

"I love Absinthe, and I love modular synthesizers, so I thought it would be a good idea to do something featuring those two wonders."

That something involved plugging a mic into a modular hardware synth (a Doepfer A100, to be precise) and then using said mic to capture the sound of absinthe dripping into a glass.

This sound was then used to change many of the synth's parameters - pan, frequency modulation, filters and delay clock - resulting in the bizarre musical creation that you can watch and hear in this video.

Once the recording was finished, it seems that DamagedMeat decided to drink the absinthe, which, as he explains, did cause one problem.

"I had to make several takes and edited the thing while I was totally drunk."

(Via Synthtopia)

Ben Rogerson

I’m the Deputy Editor of MusicRadar, having worked on the site since its launch in 2007. I previously spent eight years working on our sister magazine, Computer Music. I’ve been playing the piano, gigging in bands and failing to finish tracks at home for more than 30 years, 24 of which I’ve also spent writing about music and the ever-changing technology used to make it.