North Coast Synthesis Ltd.

Cruel Angel's Thesis/MSK 008 fake stereo demo

Neon Genesis Evangelion opening theme in fake stereo, like the old-time Capital Records "Duophonic" process. The MSK 008 is patched as a mid-side decoder. The strictly mono mix goes into a Doepfer A-188-1 bucket brigade delay module; dry signal is multed to CV1 of the MSK 008 and delayed (full wet) signal to the CV2 input. Then the two channel outputs are the left and right fake-stereo channels. Listen carefully with headphones and you can hear a bit of spatialization; it may come through better in the FLAC version than the streamable MP3. It's not hugely perceptible or realistic, but it's definitely there, and back in the day, vinyl records processed like this were supposed to be a big deal.

This is meant to be a demo of the MSK 008, not of other modules, but behind the scenes, what we have here is three voices: lead consisting of sawtooth waves through an Erica Polivoks VCF, accompaniment pulse waves through a Dr. Octature II, and percussion red noise through a Z2040. I don't have many envelope generators so there are gates being sent directly to the VCAs in several places, creating a bit of grit and clickiness. I'm using a couple of my own MSK 006 VCA channels, and one of the VCAs built into the Z2040. And modulation from an MSK 010 is also in play. Note it's all real-time and MIDI-controlled, no multitracking.

MIDI version of the song arranged by Ranma@umich.edu, rearranged for three-voice modular synth by Matthew Skala.