Dedicated track page · synth + tracker · 2026

Grundlast.

Base load. The city edge on an overcast October Sunday: a line of pylons, a roundabout with one car, a power plant and its plume, a solar field hidden behind the bushes. Everything is running and nobody is around. The mains hum is the tonic, and the piece drives like a heavy car through the roundabout.

Listen · mastered preview

Everything is running

Mastered Grundlast stereo waveform and logarithmic spectrogram

Tempo 93.75 BPM at the home gearTonic G on 50 HzMode G Aeolian, E♮ held back for the turnMaster −14.3 LUFS · −1.0 dBTP

Tuned to the mains

G1 sits on 50 Hz, about 35 cents above equal temperament, and every patch states that offset where it states its own tuning. At 48 kHz one mains cycle is 960 frames, and at the home tempo a sixteenth lasts eight of them, so through the approach every row of the score starts on a whole cycle of the hum. That is why the bass can start each note half a cycle in: its low G then lands in phase with the hum and reinforces it instead of cancelling it. The tempo settles only in gears in which a sixteenth is a whole number of cycles; each shift ramps over a bar or two, and inside a ramp the rows fall between cycles.

Gear	Tempo	Bar	Where
8 cycles	93.75 BPM	2.56 s	Home: the approach, and back through it on the way out
9 cycles	83.33 BPM	2.88 s	Braking into the roundabout, and again accelerating out of it
10 cycles	75 BPM	2.8 s in 7/8	The turn: eight bars of 7/8 in which the arpeggio's seven-step lap and the bar are the same length
7 cycles	107.14 BPM	2.24 s	Accelerating away and the departure

Layout

The form is one pass of a heavy car through the roundabout: far approach, close approach, braking, the turn, accelerating, far departure. There are no section cuts. Each instrument is off, passive or active, and takes three bars to change state. One voice is active at a time; one or two are passive; an accent answers the active voice, and on the way out the grains sing a counter-line of their own; the hum runs throughout and the percussion stays underneath. The car and the crow are effects: active only, and rare.

Bars	Car	Gear	Active	Accent or counter	Passive	Passive	Percussion	Effects
1–6grundlast 0:00	far approach	8	—	—	—	—	crackle, sparse	the car passes once; the crow calls in the bass's rhythm
7–22leitung 0:15	far approach	8	Leitung, spinning up from far away	—	Sonnenfeld, low	—	crackle	the woop at phrase ends
23–38	far approach	8	Leitung	Kreisverkehr, in the bass's rests	Sonnenfeld, low	—	crackle; the kick approaching	the woop
39–46wolkendecke 1:37	close approach	8	Fahne, taking over from the bass	Wolken, morse pings	Leitung	Sonnenfeld, low	kick, clap, crackle	—
47–62	close approach	8	Fahne	Kreisverkehr, over the plume	Leitung	Sonnenfeld, low	full	the woop
63–70kreisverkehr 2:39	braking in	8 → 9 → 10	Sonnenfeld, opening as it brakes	Kreisverkehr, half speed	Fahne	Leitung, half-time	half-time	—
71–78durchbruch 3:01	the turn, 7/8	10	Sonnenfeld in full light: E♮, Gm6 → C	Kreisverkehr, circling: the lap is the bar	Fahne	Leitung, lap figure	in 7/8	the woop at the turn
79–94rueckfall 3:23	accelerating	10 → 9 → 8 → 7	Leitung, spinning up: quarters, eighths, phrases	Kreisverkehr, full speed again	Sonnenfeld, low, closing	Fahne	full	the woop
95–110	far departure	7	Fahne, its last plume	Wolken, a counter-line: GRUNDLAST in morse, sung	Sonnenfeld, low	Leitung	thinning	—
111–118	far departure	7	Leitung, its last phrase alone	—	—	—	crackle, sparse	—
119–122	gone	7	—	—	—	—	the last crackle	the crow answers; the hum alone

Who can be what

The four voices of the band, like the four people in Kraftwerk, trade the front between them. The bass, the plume and the lead can lead or hold back; the arpeggio only answers, and the grains answer until, on the way out, they sing a line of their own.

Voice	Active	Passive	Accent	Counter
Leitung · bass	Eight-bar phrases from one root-and-fifth cell, with its acid edge, and the woop at phrase ends	Motor eighths, darker	—	—
Fahne · pad	The plume as melody: swelling chords whose top voice carries the lead's line, slowed down	Held or puffed chords that answer the lead's long notes	—	—
Sonnenfeld · lead	The line, open; at the turn its E♭ becomes E♮	The low form: fragments of the line behind a nearly closed filter	—	—
Kreisverkehr · arpeggio	—	—	A seven-step lap that plays, skips a lap, plays a variation, skips again, circling the stereo field	—
Wolken · grains	—	—	Morse pings spelling GRUNDLAST, two octaves above the plume's line: in a busy stretch, they introduce the voice	The same morse sung at twice the length, in the band the arpeggio leaves, against the plume and the bass: slow enough to read. The first word opens with the arpeggio's falling triad; the second is the first one backwards

Mix

Distance carries the roles. A voice that steps forward gets louder, brighter and drier; one that steps back, or arrives from far away, is quieter, darker and wetter, through its route level, its reverb send and its filter. The bass's octave glide, the woop, plays on a part of its own, and the stage clears for it: the line group (bass), the traffic group (arpeggio, high-passed at 150 Hz) and the drums group (kick, clap, crackle) duck under it, the music group (pad, grains, lead, high-passed at 220 Hz) ducks lightly, and the kick skips the beats it would play under it. The car and the crow share a field group. The hum and the woop stay outside the groups. The delay is timed in beats, so its echoes bend while the tempo shifts gear.

FFT view · the mix braking into the turn, each stem where it plays most

Spectrogram contact sheet of the mastered mix while braking into the turn and 12 Grundlast dry stems, each over its busiest stretch

Instrument map

Netz

Layered · a sine on the 50 Hz tonic and a saw an octave up under a low-pass that follows the load: the hum, from the first row to the last.

Korona

Layered noise · high-passed crackle looping thirteen steps against the bar, as dense as the air is damp.

Leitung

Ladder · the bass line in eight-bar phrases from one root-and-fifth cell, phase-locked to the hum.

Schwung

Ladder · the bass's octave glide on a part of its own, with the stage cleared around it.

Kreisverkehr

Layered · a plucked seven-step arpeggio that circles the stereo field once per lap.

Fahne

Prophet · two detuned saws with a slow attack and a slow LFO on the cutoff: the plume.

Wolken

Sampler · a sixty-millisecond grain of the plume, looped through a crossfade, pinging GRUNDLAST in morse over the plume's line, and on the way out singing it as a line of its own, slowly enough to read.