Memory Wheel
EPIC CINEMATIC RETRO PLANETARIUM MUSIC
About
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Man-made music. Created for cosmic adventure.
Memory Wheel is a retro space music project that encourages thoughtful, contemplative fun. Rich electro/symphonic sound featuring dynamic, propulsive orchestration, world class recording and the best in multichannel audio fidelity.
These compositions are deliberately designed to work as both contemplative background (e.g. "ambient for study" 😄) or for active listening, like a 1970s album-oriented experience.
SEE ALSO:
Vangelis, Isao Tomita, Jean-Michel Jarre, Wendy Carlos, Brian Eno,
Jonn Serrie, Tim Clark, Steven Halpern, Tangerine Dream,
Klaus Schulze, Constance Demby, Michael Stearns
You may not have nostalgia for analog planetariums and 1970’s space music….
Yet.
The term “anemoia” describes a sense of longing for a time or experience that one has never lived through.
Evoking the spirit of anemoia, imagine the first-time experience of the combined voice of the symphony orchestra and new sonic palette of synthesis. --Combined to evoke the awe and wonder of cosmic mystery.
Memory Wheel is your laser-fueled time machine to an age where light, sound, & space combined in a brand-new way.
Featured Transmission
Portfolio
Audiovisual voyages of cosmic introspection and symphonic retrospection
Analog circuitry & the modern alchemy of sonic sorcery
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70s and 80s gear, both analog and digital. VCOs (and better-behaved digitally-controlled oscillators) have their own specific warmth.
Similarly, tape saturation to can either destroy a mix or evoke nostalgia for 70s 4-track planetarium technology.
Echoes and reverbs make the term "Space Music" literal. Beside evoking space in a figurative sense, the ability to embed sound in both real and unreal environments creates a new sense of infinite space.
If you’re a teenager and need a digital reverb in the 80s, good luck finding one on Taco Bell wages.
Strapped for funds, I resorted to tape playback at 2x speed inside a cistern. When slowed down to normal speed it provided a dense, if noisy walah that could be mixed into the dry signal to stand in for depth.
The process sounds more romantic than it is. The cistern still exists today at my family ranch, filled with water and moss. Even today people are spending good money to do something similar 75 miles north in Rangely Colorado’s TANK center for sonic arts, a decommissioned water tower. The TANK is famous for its 40-second natural reverberation. It never occurred to me to measure the reverb tail of the space I called “the cistern chapel”. At full speed it was over 20 seconds, so at ½-speed, it was comparable to Rangely’s TANK, albeit much more inconvenient.
But just as our spatial universe is unbounded, I longed for a reverb effect that would go on forever.
What would that sound like?
In 1989 the Alesis Microverb II apeared as a followup to the original 1986 Microverb. Priced at 165£ in the UK, it was one of the few budget options for generating digital space. Still a princely sum, it was almost within reach. Especially if you had a girlfriend that really wanted you to have it.
ALESIS MICROVERB II (1989) FRONT PANEL
The Manual says the following about the large hall programs, part technical rundown and part tech-writer poetry:
Large reverberant spaces return initial echoes for a period of time from the onset of an impulse, where the period is a function of the room size. This initial period is uneven before the smooth exponential decay begins. The large programs of the MICROVERB II are similar to halls. Such a reverb sound has rnore character than the more bland Small room sound and lends a beautiful, open spaciousness to vocals and instruments, The large programs are not intended to be perfectly smooth...
To be fair, the late 80s Microverb II sound is a bit more polished than that of the original mid-80s Microverb. Alesis algorithms were renowned for pulling maximum lushness from the available processing power, and the rapid progress of RISC chip architecture and software evolution was a recent phenomenon.
But we are not here for normal plate or ambience presets. We are here because this unit can accomplish an effect that would be hard to achieve otherwise.
Deep Space
Before the two ubiquitous 1980 gate effects, the Microverb II programs grow increasingly large, from small ambience to the aptly named “Large 4: Deep Space”. Strictly speaking, Deep Space is a Hall effect (not to be confused with the Hall coefficient!).
MICROVERB II PRESET LIST
Deep Space is understandably useless to most musicians. Its something of an ENDLESS hall effect. You could do something like this with a Lexicon and a delay with the perfect feedback setting, but it likely wouldn’t sound as good as “Deep Space”.
With their preset “Large 4”, Alesis has produced an essential space music effect.
Use it on everything, or in a busy passage, and you’ve just muddied your mix.
Use it on the right thing, at the psychological moment, and you have drenched your sound in a space as big as the void between galaxies.
Deep Stereo (of a kind)
The Microverb II manual includes this cryptic section in its specifications list:
INPUT: MATRIXED STEREO
OUTPUT: FULL IMAGED STEREO
As a composer for multichannel surround, when I see “matrixed stereo”, I think of folded-down surround sound, such as any of the flavors of Dolby Stereo, Doly Pro-Logic, etc, based on the old Sansui QS matrix.
But when 1980s Alesis digital reverbs (such as the Microverb II) specify that they have “matrixed stereo input”, what does that mean? Do they sum stereo inputs?
Yes and no.
Here is how the signal path typically functions:
Dry Signal: The dry (unaffected) signal remains in true stereo. The left input passes to the left output, and the right input passes to the right output, preserving the original stereo image.
Wet Signal (Reverb): The left and right inputs are summed together into a single mono signal. This mono sum is what feeds the reverb algorithm. The processor then generates a pseudo-stereo reverb effect from that mono source to create width in the outputs. I hesitate to call it “pseudo-stereo”. It is actual stereo, just not original to the source recording. The original stereo image is replaced by the Microverb II algorithmic sound field. It’s good-sounding stereo, but the original soundstage has been lost.
This “matrixed” approach was a common cost-saving design in 1980s budget rack gear; it allowed the unit to offer stereo connectivity and a stereo-sounding finish without requiring the processing power of a “True Stereo” engine (which would require two independent reverb processors).
You may have already noticed that you can mitigate this somewhat by preserving some degree of dry signal, which retains the original stereo imaging.
Or, if you lived in the future and these units were cheap and readily available, you could just throw money at it…
True stereo deep space signal path
From the magic of buying two of them
So with two Microverb IIs (which do not add up to a Microverb 4) One accepting the left channel, and one accepting the right, you can get a big stereo deep space effect that is hard to replicate otherwise. One caveat is that you will need to sum the stereo outputs of both Microverbs to recover single channels to recombine to left and right.
You would be correct to expect that some phase cancelation will occur for each signal during this summation. You can test it by inverting the phase before summing and listening to the output. If what you are losing is unacceptable, consider going for the inbuilt “wet synthesized stereo/dry original stereo” mixing solution, which still sounds terrific.
The “Dual-Microverb Stereo Deep Space” trick is a special effect that gets pulled out when I want to make a statement.
Category:
studio
Date:
February 2026
Moog Model D
The Heart of the Signal Path
The Moog Model D is more than just a synthesizer; in the context of 1970s planetarium music, it was a Swiss army knife with enough internal modules to allow a strong synthesis workflow. When you hear those deep, resonant sweeps that feel like a starship engine, you are often hearing the three-oscillator drift of a Model D.
Why it matters for “Memory Wheel”
The original 24dB per octave ladder filter combines with the pretty narrow capabilities of the oscillators to provide a characteristic voice. Modern digital recreations often struggle to emulate this, but the digital hybrid Ensoniq ESQ & SQ-80 synthesizers have the right signal path to do a decent job, after passing the raw waveforms through the updated Curtis filter bank.
Hardware & Signal Flow Comparison
Minimoog
SQ-80
Oscillators: 3 Voltage Controlled Oscillators (VCOs)
3 DCOs (digitally controlled waveform oscillators
Filter: The legendary Moog Ladder Filter
The legendary Curtis analogue 4‑pole resonant filter
Use Case: Lead melodies and drone foundations
In many compositions, this unit is paired with a vintage tape delay to create the “infinite trail” effect characteristic of 70s space-ambient.
Category:
studio
Date:
February 2026
Replicate the Eventide Black Hole with Valhalla Shimmer, Supermassive, & FutureVerb!
Creating the Void
To Simon and Garfunkel, the sound of silence was a metaphor for an existential paradox that resulted in a famous commercial moneymaker decrying commercial fame and money-making. And just as Paul Simon may have been affecting the protective cynical shell of post-beatnik poetry, I am also not the cynic in this case. I think it’s a terrific song and it deserves its popularity. If popular music were a star, space music would float out in its Kuiper Belt.
Similar to classical music, in space music, silence is just as important as sound. The space between sounds is a psychoacoustic cue. If the silence is literally silent, listeners perceive a lack of space. Ironically, to convey vast nothingness, we need to fill that space with something.
Eventide’s Blackhole is an iconic, “otherworldly” reverb that originated as a algorithm in the DSP4000 Ultra-Harmonizer rack unit in 1994. Today’s familiar pedal and stompbox version is a modern version of that original rack processor preset.
To make silence feel “large,” you need a specific type of spatial processing.
The Geometry of Reverb
Unlike a “Room” or “Hall” reverb which tries to emulate a physical space on Earth, the Black Hole is designed to sound unnatural and vast.
Memory Wheel audio clip: Test of embedded audio player
Another take on the same motif:
Memory Wheel audio clip: Will this break?
Gravity & Resonance: By manipulating the feedback loops, I can create a “shimmer” that sounds like light reflecting off an icy nebula.
Modulation: Adding slight pitch-shifting to the reverb trails helps prevent the sound from becoming static, giving it an “organic” drift.
The Eventide Blackhole algorithm is not a shimmer reverb!
The Eventide Blackhole is primarily a massive, diffused feedback delay network (FDN), but it is not a “shimmer” reverb in the traditional sense.
While it lacks the octave-up pitch-shifting characteristic of shimmer reverbs, it uses internal modulation (subtle pitch variations) to create its signature “liquid” movement.
Unlike a shimmer reverb, the black hole does not feed audio through a pitch-shifter within the feedback loop.
At its core, Blackhole uses a series of interconnected delays and diffusers (Diffused Delay Networks). When you increase the “Size,” you aren’t just lengthening a decay; you are expanding the physical “volume” of the virtual space, which changes how the echoes interact.
Blackhole modulation
What we could consider the “Modulation section” controls the pitch element. The Blackhole Depth and Rate control modulate the delay lines. This causes very slight pitch drifting (chorusing), which prevents the long decay from sounding static or metallic.
The “Gravity” Control is the secret sauce. It allows you to change the decay shape. Positive Gravity gives you normal, expansive decay.
Negative Gravity is where it gets weird. An inverse, “sucking” decay where the reverb builds up before disappearing.
Valhalla Shimmer
Valhalla Shimmer is compared to Blackhole, but they share little in common. Valhalla Shimmer is a feedback reverb network (similar to Hall/Plate approaches) with built-in pitch shifters plus lush diffusion.
Shimmer provides a very distinctive effect, and you need to be judicious in its application. The “angelic shimmer cliché” happens because the high frequency pitch shifted wash on one recording tends to sound like the same high frequency pitch shifted wash on anyone else’s recording.
Independent of what instrument you are running through it, you always get a fluttering string section effect. Blame guitarists for its overuse in the form of the Strymon BigSky pedal. Some guitarists will do anything to change their sound. between you and me, I don’t think they even like the guitar.
Can Valhalla Shimmer Sound Like Blackhole? The answer is a qualified “yes”, primarily to provide ambient, evolving tail textures. But Shimmer’s pitch shifting is fixed to large preset intervals and isn’t intended to be easily modulated (although you can automate that). Blackhole’s architecture is more about algorithmic space than the octave pitch shift shimmer itself.
Valhalla Shimmer can approximate Blackhole’s vibe, especially for ambient pads and washes, but it isn’t a perfect algorithmic match.
General Tips for Approximating Blackhole with Valhalla Shimmer
Use long decay and high feedback.
Pitch shift up a few octaves for lush overtones.
Increase modulation depth/speed for slight movement.
Use pre-delay for dramatic entrance before tail.
Supermassive. Another Valhalla solution that cheapskates will like
A Better Valhalla Plugin for Blackhole-Style Sounds might be Valhalla Supermassive, the free plugin that I can almost hear people screaming when they clicked on this article. Supermassive is designed specifically for huge, evolving, lush reverbs and delays. Supermassive has modes like Nebulae, Cosmology that generate enormous tail lengths and dense feedback. Supermassive’s interactive feedback network makes it closer to Blackhole’s non-physical, other-worldly behavior.
General Tips for Approximating Blackhole with Supermassive
Set to modes with wide diffusion & long feedback.
Experiment with “Multiply” feedback for density.
Crank decay to maximum and auto-freeze if needed.
Use wide stereo spread and mellow pitch shifts.
FutureVerb. The Better-than-Blackhole Valhalla option
As of this writing, FutureVerb is the newest Valhalla reverb. FutureVerb uses new algorithmic reverb topologies that Valhalla says are their cleanest/most transparent yet. Its echo/delay section is built-in and dynamic, meaning you get reverb plus pitch/delay in one box, which admittedly isn’t the big draw for me that it seems to be for other people.
On the plus side, FutureVerb is more modular and has more flexible routing than either Supermassive or Shimmer. FutureVerb has real room/hall/plate style modes as well as ambient/nonlinear modes.
FutureVerb Can Be Better for Blackhole-Style Sound
If your goal is to get in the ballpark of the Eventide Blackhole vibe, FutureVerb echo and reverb routing allow you to place delay echoes (including reversed or pitch-shifted ones) before the reverb. This is closer to how Blackhole’s engine combines feedback, pitch, and space.
FutureVerb ‘s Nonlinear & Ambient Modes go beyond traditional rooms. Several reverb modes are designed for huge spaces and abstract textures that can rival Blackhole’s “unreal” tails.
FutureVerb ‘s Integrated Manipulation Tools, such as “Color” modes and filters, give you additional timbral shaping without needing external EQ or inserts.
For Supermassive fans out there, sorry. Supermassive is great, but FutureVerb is just more versatile. Supermassive is amazing for a free tool, but FutureVerb takes those concepts and embeds them in a reverb framework that give you more control, better sound, and better ways to shape the sound.
For a Blackhole emulation, FutureVerb provides much better control over creative echoes, pitch-manipulated tails, and reverb shape within one plugin. This is something neither Shimmer nor Supermassive alone fully accomplishes.
Replicating Blackhole with Valhalla
We are chasing the sound of the Eventide Blackhole, a non-physical, pitch-evolving, enormous feedback space with modulated diffusion and “infinite gravity” tails.
We will approximate that using Valhalla Shimmer, Valhalla Supermassive, and Valhalla FutureVerb. Since Supermassive is free, you might as well download it and see what you think.
BLACKHOLE IN VALHALLA SHIMMER
“Octave Gravity Well”
Concept: Use pitch-shifted feedback as spectral propulsion. Blackhole lowers pitch in feedback; Shimmer rises. We’ll tame the ascent and slow the bloom.
(Lower intervals feel more “Blackhole” than full octave shimmer.)
Routing:
Echo BEFORE Reverb
This is critical. It feeds pitch-shifted material into the reverb tank, approximating Blackhole’s internal feedback manipulation.
Mix Strategy
(may not match your workflow, follow as you see fit)
Put it on a bus. Aux send at 100% wet
Automate send level instead of decay
Use stereo widening post-plugin if needed (either on the reverb or on the mixed track, whichever makes sense)
Reverb Review and Technical Setup
The interesting thing is that none of these efforts exactly nail the Blackhole sound (although one of them is uncannily close). More valuable to my mind is that I have just provided you with 3 new cosmic reverbs that take you deep spaces which are very similar, but not the same as the Eventide Blackhole. And in each case they are spaces you would not be able to easily approximate with the Blackhole itself. Listen for these spaces in my music. I use Reaper’s pin matrix routing method with multiple instances of these plugins to create surround sound in the rear channels, which I then fold back into the stereo signal using an LtRt matrix encoding tool. I don’t think my versions of “deep space” sound like any others.
For specific instruments, (e.g. a mono Moog voice or similar, I typically double the voice with 2 units to create a “stereo Moog” (c.f. “the magic of buying two of them”). I run the signal through a stereo chain into the Eventide processors or a pin matrixed Valhalla bus. By keeping the mix at approximately 45% wet, the original analog transient remains sharp while the tail fades into a seemingly infinite horizon.
This specific combination is what creates the “Planetarium” vibe—dry, intimate hardware sounds floating in a massive, algorithmic void.
Some people have speculated that the universe may be mathematical in nature.
If so, creating space from numbers, these cosmic soundscapes may not be unnatural. They may hint at the very substance of the universe.
Category:
studio
Date:
February 2026
The Philosophy of Synthesis
The Current that sweeps away “the current”
In the realm of cinematic space music, the focus too often shifts from the music to the machine that makes the music. (see footnote 1)
My goal is to remain primarily focused on the composition and performance, and not the hardware. I’d like to think when composing for a dome environment, the spatial awareness required of the composer helps inform the composition much more than the hardware limitations. By this I mean not only the performance “space”, but the requirements of the musical setting; the form, the development, the orchestration…which is itself informed by the “hardware”. This is true for both acoustic AND electronic orchestration.
But it might be closer to the truth that the synthesizer and recording hardware of the 1970’s enforced a kind of musical argot in the same way that classical composers approached instruments like the harpsichord or valveless trumpet. The capabilities and limitations of the sound creation “machines” combined with the musical modes-of-the-day created the lightning-in-a-bottle that inspired generations.
Take for example Mozart’s horn concertos, composed originally for “natural” valveless horns, but now performed with modern French horns, or Bach’s Goldberg Variations, composed for dual manual harpsichord but now performed almost exclusively on piano.
Similarly, a live performance of a Vangelis piece would probably lean into modern synthesis devices over the expensive and temperamental Yamaha CS-80, the 50-year-old “king of synthesizers”, which wasn’t entirely reliable 50 years ago.
Nevertheless, we strive to emulate those early sonic signatures. Not as pastiche or parody, but as a genuine artistic exploration of both a style and a sound that have become iconic. I liken these styles to undiscovered continents that were briefly sighted but not fully explored, as the current of innovation rapidly zigzagged from fashion to fashion, just as innovation pushed it forward. More of a tidal wave than a tide.
It would be nice to take a step back and explore a musical moment that came and went very quickly.
Memory Wheel is an art project that explores retro 1970s and 1980s epic cinematic synthesizer-based planetarium music.
Concepts to think about:
Interface as Instrument: knob-per-function layouts reduce cognitive load (to a point). May drive and constrain the types of sounds you hear.
Signal Path Integrity: Maintaining a “human” element in purely electronic textures. Our ears are good at spotting imperfections, which can both be fatiguing AND reduce fatigue by adding complexity and interest.
Legacy Workflows: Why do we still reach for the texture of the Mellotron or the instability of the VCO? Is there more to it than nostalgia?
This article serves as the first in a series of technical deep-dives into the Memory Wheel studio workflow. We will examine the specific signal chains used in recent planetarium commissions and how simple oscillator textures often provide the most effective foundation for complex celestial visuals.
“The machine does not make the music; it merely establishes the gridiron upon which the game unfolds.”
— Studio Note, 2025
FOOTNOTE “the machine that makes the music”
Because I am not using AI music creation techniques, I am the machine (in this case) that makes the music. As AI music takes up more and more of the domain space, it might be interesting to talk about the methods and means that produce these generated units of content, but that will be a job best left to future historians to think about. Or possibly the machines that do the thinking for them.
Traditional Appalachian melody attributed to Annie Morgan. John Jacob Niles’ copyrighted lyrics and arrangement were not used.
No AI tools were used in this production.
Additional video footage courtesy Pexels.
Category:
Planetarium
Date:
December 2025
Going for a Ride on Halloween Night
Going for a Ride on Halloween Night!
Video: Going for a Ride on Halloween Night
About this track
Picture yourself on a wild roller coaster, careening through haunted woods on the spookiest night of the year!
Yes, there are lyrics for this tune!
But you will not hear them in this video.
INSPIRATION:
This video was the result of a disarming impromptu recording of the Silver Shamrock jingle which forms the basis of the track (see on-screen credits).
Music was inspired by Danny Elfman, Jerry Goldsmith and the innovative, quirky music of electronic pioneers Raymond Scott and Gershon Kingsley, formidable composers regardless of medium.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t direct you to the masters that defined “the symphonic sound of spookiness”, notably Camille Saint-Saëns, Edvard Grieg, and Modeste Mussorgsky.
The haunting wind intro and outro is part of the “Vortex Graveyard” soundscape available elsewhere on my channel. Like much of the music on my videos, it was entirely synthesized on 1980s hardware.
THE COMPOSITION:
Even after a hundred years of mainstream-ness, syncopation still has an effect on the listener, even if they can’t put their finger on it. Literally offbeat rhythms and the juxtaposition of orchestral and synthesizer timbre informs this spooky cue.
The concept of this track is a frenetic “wild ride” through an autumnal phantasmagoria, similar to Ichabod Crane’s final ride through the eldritch woods in Sleepy Hollow.
THE VIDEO:
The original idea for the visuals was a tour of Matt’s elaborate Halloween extravaganza, but my footage wasn’t ready for primetime. Maybe someday I can revisit the idea with the lyrics to “Going For A Ride On Halloween Night” married to the original visual concept.
I enjoyed working with Disney’s newly public domain Haunted House cartoon, a companion to the more famous “Skeleton Dance”. Aside from the tinting, I did a few additional color holdouts and extensions, changing the focus of the final iris-out.
METAFICTION VALEDICTION:
In the spirit of the season, to paraphrase Orson Welles, “That grinning, glowing, globular invader in your living room is an inhabitant of the pumpkin patch. And if your doorbell rings and nobody’s there. . . it’s Halloween!”
Category:
Halloween
Date:
October 2025
Space Age Terror Trilogy
Space Age Terror Trilogy
Memory Wheel Halloween 2025
Video: Space Age Terror Trilogy
Three (or more!) terrifying title tunes. Conflicting time signatures. Polyrhythms. If someone could interpolate all three cues in one arrangement, that would be spooky!
Title music from Suspiria, Zombie and Halloween III with a couple Easter eggs thrown in.
No Sampling. No AI. This is a new recording of a new performance.
LISTENER NOTES
I first came across the word interpolated in a musical context—or indeed any context—when I was 8 or 9 years old and discovered that John Williams interpolated a stealth version of “When You Wish Upon a Star” into his music for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”. It was a strange word and an exotic idea. I worked extra-hard in wrapping my brain around it.
Flash forward and I’m a classically trained composer who should be able to execute a little interpolation of my own.
So, for this Halloween season, I’ve chosen to interpolate Fabio Frizzi’s macabre Italian horror theme from Lucio Fulci’s 1978 film Zombie on top of the ultra cool John Carpenter and Alan Howarth cue “Chariots of Pumpkins” from the brilliant, underrated film Halloween III, Season of the Witch. Add Goblin’s haunting “Suspiria” for good measure.
Zombie
Fulci’s “Zombie” is variously known as Zombie, Zombie 2, or even “Zombie Flesh Eaters”. Whatever you call it, it may be among the top 10 movies you will ever see where a zombie fights a shark in hand-to-hand (hand-to-fin?) combat, probably inspired by the success of Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster Jaws. Zombie’s status as a recognized British “video nasty” may not be to everyone’s taste, but the third act is legitimately drive-in movie high-octane action fuel.
Shifting gears to the more thoughtful side of horror, I challenge you to debate the following:
Halloween III
“Halloween III Season of the Witch” is a bona fide masterpiece.
Somewhere in the multiverse there is a reality where the Halloween series went on to become a Nigel Kneale inspired anthology series, and Halloween III spawned numerous unique and thoughtful non-stabby, non-Michael Myers spook shows all centered around the concept of Halloween.
Meanwhile in this reality, Halloween III is a genuinely effective offbeat chiller boasting the gorgeous cinematography of Dean Cundey, and that is a Hill House that I will die on.
John Carpenter, in association with Alan Howarth, created the effective ’80s music for this opus. They were using a technique John Carpenter called his “musical electronic colouring book”, which is to say that they were improvising and recording live to tape while watching the film patched into a TV monitor.
Alan Howarth jokingly named this lush track “Chariots of Pumpkins” as a parody of Vangelis’ Oscar-bait synthesizer hit from a year earlier, “Chariots of Fire”.
The Halloween III theme has a melody of sorts, but in this case I’ve chosen to interpolate the long line melody from Lucio Fulci’s Zombie 2 (music by Fabio Frizzi), an effective theme that was underserved by its original recording, and to my knowledge has never received a quality re-recording.
Suspiria
Dario Argento’s Suspiria is another honest-to-goodness work of art. Prog outfit Goblin deserves their ongoing success. Like John Carpenter, they occasionally tour and are well worth seeing.
I set myself up for failure here by choosing three tunes in different time signatures (as well as one Easter egg in NO time signature). If you are so inclined, pay attention to the animated 70s bassline in Suspiria, which is meant to evoke a 5/4 feel, even though I adapted all three tunes to work together in the same time signature. Unless you know the original soundtrack quite well, you may be fooled into thinking that my bassline is the authentic original. It’s nowhere close.
Interpolation Accumulation
A year ago, Hurricane Debby was passing directly over my head. I spent the time to record themes for an imaginary movie about cowboy ghost pirates, which I thought would make a smashing film, or at least a decent Halloween themed music video.
Although the appeal seems to be exclusive, the themes are solid, and the high-concept idea is kind of trippy. Check out the link in my channel. Orchestral horror/adventure is a tangential match for my channel concept of space and planetarium music.
So the idea here is that I would adapt Halloween III, Suspiria, and Zombie 2 to somehow be “Space Music”.
Well you’ll be glad to know that for this Halloween, I’ve abandoned the “strictly Space Music” concept again. Please enjoy an only slightly spacey version of Halloween III Season of The Witch (“Chariots of Pumpkins”, if you prefer) with Suspiria and the brilliant but underserved theme from Zombie.
Tip of the hat to popular ambient producer @s1gns0fl1fe.
Listen to this music any way you wish! It has been deliberately composed and engineered to function as effective background but also reward active listening.
Additional sound-creation info:
The all-encompassing sound of ocean surf you hear on this recording is neither a digital sample nor a synthesizer re-creation. It is the sound of the Ensoniq ESQ-1/SQ-80 fulminating gong running through the unique bloom reverb of an Alesis Midiverb II and Alesis Wedge. The sound is comprised of sine, bell, and the distinctive ESQ-1 “noise 2” waveform.
You will hear unprocessed instances of the gong on this recording, but when coupled with the vintage Alesis algorithms, the uncorrelated stereo wash of the electric surf becomes iconic and powerful, reminiscent of “The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore” from Irv Teibel’s classic 1968 “Environments 1” recording.
Imagery credits:
ESO
NASA
Hubble Deep Field
Pexels
Category:
Tribute
Date:
July 2025
Inside a Glass Sphere
Inside a Glass Sphere
Epic Cinematic Planetarium Opus
Video: Inside a Glass Sphere
The Holographic Principle is our cosmic pretext for examining the more euphoric regions of propulsive Space Music.
“Inside a Glass Sphere” is a 70s-inspired epic cinematic planetarium opus. If you sat down in a cool planetarium on a hot day a half-century ago to experience some of that newfangled laser rock, I imagine this is the kind of ultimate trip you might experience.
00:00 Listener Notes
02:47 Inside a Glass Sphere
No AI tools were used in the creation of this music.
No loops or pre-existing “groove” content was employed.
Real Science disclaimer: The Holographic Principle described in this video is more of a thought experiment than a valid explanation of reality. Like the Boltzmann Brain concept, it is a theory which (as of now) cannot be tested. You can relax. You’re in a safe place and no one is hassling you.
Category:
Planetarium
Date:
May 2025
Long Distance Voyager
Long Distance Voyager
Video: Long Distance Voyager
Retro 80s planetarium anthem. Salute to the NASA Voyager missions and New Age artists of the eighties.
Bach 13: The Secret Clock at the Heart of the Universe
Bach 13: The Secret Clock at the Heart of the Universe
Video: Bach 13: The Secret Clock at the Heart of the Universe
Modern electronic tonalities for listening and relaxation. This study represents a Switched-On retro-planetarium Moog synthesizer tribute to the music of Wendy Carlos and Isao Tomita.
00:00 Listener’s Guide
06:37 Bach 13 (for laser and synthesizer)
08:00 The Secret Clock at the Heart of the Universe
Although several vintage hardware units contribute to this recording, only one of them is an actual Moog product. In the spirit of Switched-On Bach 2000, I leave it to the listener as an exercise in identification.
No AI tools were used in the creation, performance, or production of this music. It was arranged, performed, and recorded by a human being with feelings who uses the oxford comma inconsistently throughout the listeners notes.
Both of the artists of focus for this recording released treatments of the same two part invention during the 20th century. They differ significantly from what I have premiered here, and I encourage you to seek them out.
Carlos interpretation (1973)
https://www.discogs.com/release/21655…
Speaking of “tonalities”, visit synth wizard Kirk Slinkard’s channel @9KznfiS87f7 to hear the best sounds and learn how they were crafted. The white noise and PWM patches heard in this recording were accomplished through techniques detailed in his videos.
Some video elements courtesy Pexels.
Category:
Planetarium
Date:
February 2025
Space Angels
Space Angels
Retro Planetarium Holiday Space Music
Video: Space Angels
A 1970s-style planetarium laser rock odyssey for the holidays.
Possibly the world’s first retro planetarium Christmas track!
There have been hundreds of Christmas-themed planetarium shows throughout the years. Often centered on skywatching opportunities around the winter solstice. Occasionally explorations of the Christmas star provide opportunities to learn about meteors, comets and supernovae.
And the season was well-represented in 80s new age music catalogs, ranging from George Winston’s “December” album to the ongoing Manheim Steamroller series.
For this seasonal planetarium experiment, I’d like to split the difference between the propulsive Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO) approach to Christmas with a far-flung trans-Neptunian object (TNO) approach. Admittedly, this would not be a very close approach, as TNOs constitute minor planets which orbit the Sun at a distance greater than Neptune, averaging more than 30 astronomical units away from us (i.e. roughly 2.75 billion miles). So pack an extra thermos of hot chocolate, because the journey may take a while.
I’d like to think the season can spread a little warmth no matter where you find yourself.
Extreme trans-Neptunian objects
This video contains both a Listener’s Guide and the original cinematic track “Space Angels”, a new planetarium composition interpolating melodies from a couple traditional Christmas carols.
00:00 Logo
00:24 Listener’s Guide
03:25 Space Angels
Many thanks to Pexels for video footage.
Category:
Holiday
Date:
December 2024
The Jagged Gyre of Galactic Fire
The Jagged Gyre of Galactic Fire
The Jagged Gyre of Galactic Fire is a 3-part planetarium overture in a cinematic pop style for synthesizer orchestra.
1960s & 1970s Cinematic Synth music inspired by Vangelis, Tomita, Gershon Kingsley, The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, & many other influences from space-age pop.
Video: Jagged Gyre of Galactic Fire
A Listener’s Guide:
The Soundstage:
Big stereo sound is baked into this mix. As with most of my music, it exists as surround stems intended for multichannel performance. Atmos users will benefit from the Dolby Surround DSU setting. The encoded surround should unfold well with most matrix decoders.
The structure:
Intermezzo restates the sound collage that opens the overture. In support of the Italo-disco first section, I have constructed this overture in the Italian sinfonia overture format (fast-slow-fast).
The “intermezzo” (not strictly the right term for the middle section of an Italian overture) is an analog noise sculpture taking inspiration from 1970s work for the Rochester’s Strasenburgh Planetarium. The Strasenburgh famously had its own synthesizer when the devices were as rare as a round Rubik’s Cube.
No AI music tools were employed in the production of these tracks. Everything was through-composed. The orchestration aims for the “synthesizer orchestra” sound of the 70’s and 80’s, before sampling was available.
You say you hear sampled choirs and brass instruments? Nope! That’s the Ensoniq SQ-80 wavetable synthesizer. If you consider wavetables to be “samples”, you’re like one of those people who break a donut in half and leave it in the breakroom: You might think you are doing a good thing, but everyone considers you a horrible person.
Thanks to SpaceCinema Vecteezy.com for some additional space renders. All the movie posters in the 60’s section are fake (except for “Wild Wild Planet”).
Category:
Planetarium
Date:
July 2023
Supernova
PLANETARIUM SOUNDSCAPE: Supernova
Featuring title track, “Light of a Thousand Days”
A high-impact retro-planetarium audio experience. This sonic supernova is a sound design experiment in outer space ambience with all-new visualizations and a special bonus space music overture at the end.
Featuring the Hollow Sun Advanced Noise Generator, the Ensoniq ESQ1, Hydrasynth Deluxe, and 4-channel cues matrixed into the audio mix for surround systems such as Dolby Atmos or the Involve Audio Surround Master.
Video: This is the music-only part of the video
About this video
(Plays entire video)
Video: This describes the video, plays the Supernova exploration, and concludes with some notes and the title music.
Jump to Supernova Soundscape
Video: Journey through a supernova.
A Listener’s Guide:
At the boundary of music and sound design exists a zone of…uncertainty..
The traditional approach was to throw together some existing recordings of sound effects and call it a day.
But in the 1970s, pioneers like Suzanne Ciani demonstrated that vast, imaginative soundscapes could be created from the ground up, using synthesizers to generate the raw elements, and playing the recording studio like an instrument.
The cosmic soundscape you’re about to hear was generated directly from circuit-to-tape and waveform-to-workstation.
It never existed as audio until it strikes your eardrums after being rendered by speakers or headphones.
No microphones were used, and modern equipment was only sparsely employed to manipulate raw waveforms Musique Concrète-style.
A new kind of noise
In the spirit of analog 1970s planetariums, this sketch depicts the death and afterlife of a massive star, featuring a sound you may never have heard before:
–The highly detailed bone-rattling explosion is realized with the Advanced Noise Generator, built by the world’s leading KSP developer Mario Krušelj and the late Stephen Howell, a legendary figure in the world of sound design.
No demos of the Advanced Noise Generator seem to exist on YouTube, but it allows programming of tremendous detail of white noise sources. It is employed both in the cataclysmic stellar explosion and the cosmic winds heard throughout the composition.
A timeline at the bottom of the screen indicates all the “story points”. The astrophysical information is accurate both today, and relative to what was known in the 1970s.
Watch until the end of the video to hear a special “no talking” album version of the planetarium music that underscored the introduction.
3D Sound
If you have an “ambience head” (a brain that is particularly responsive to spatial cues), you may also enjoy closing your eyes and listening to this sonic sketch through headphones or a home theater surround system. 4-channel cues have been matrixed into the audio mix.
If that last statement makes no sense, but you are intrigued, try it anyhow. You may discover a new area of stereo enjoyment.
If that last statement makes no sense (but you are intrigued), try it anyhow.
You may discover a new and satisfying area of sonic enjoyment.
No AI, loops, or “production libraries”
This video, the audio elements, and the space music soundtrack were all constructed from the ground up as an original creation. No templates or AI were employed.
No stock footage was used except for some brief background clips and a MOGRT from Pixabay, which were used as a base to animate over.
The astronomical reference was based on NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory imagery, particularly the “pulsar wind” sequence.
The only sound not created specifically for this video was a brief snippet of the Outer Limits Control Tone, which seemed particularly salient to the sequence.
The visual effects were generated using Cinema 4D, Adobe After Effects and Adobe Premiere.
The multitrack studio was Reaper digital audio workstation.
ALESIS MICROVERB II (1989) FRONT PANEL
MICROVERB II PRESET LIST
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