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| Friday July 4, 2008. 03:22 AM |
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Since you all have a long weekend, it's time for one of our monster threads, I think. (I should point out that I don't have a long weekend; Audio Damage is perforce a 7-day-a-week job, and the majority of our customers don't recognize our Independence Day as a legitimate holiday, to their detriment, because this holiday inexplicably consists of blowing shit up, which is always fun.)
In any event, here's the topic, and it's a doozy. How do you start writing a song? Speaking strictly for myself, although I've had a band for going on 20 years, I've never actually written in a band context, so I don't know exactly how one goes about it. But since the majority of the readers here are either "producers" or work-at-home-alone electronic musicians, we can sort of toss that whole concept out the window anyhow.
I personally almost always start with trying to make an interesting drum part; once in a while (usually when we're working on the design of a product) I'll accidentally create an interesting bit out of some synth sound or whatever, but generally I start with the drums. Once I've done that, I do bass. If I'm doing a vocal track, it'll be real bass, of course, and then guitar. If I'm doing a Micronaut song, which is instrumental electronic music, it's synth bass, followed by synth. If I'm gonna add guitar, I generally do it after the song is mostly arranged.
What's your method? Do you start with a melody idea? Or do you have a more rhythm-based method like me?
1) The Flame Echometer (info at Matrixsynth here if you missed it) looks hot as hell. I can't really figure out what the fuck it does. All I know is I want one.
2) When I start Live 7, the clocking on my Lynx AES16 changes from external wordclock to internal. This is obviously somewhat distressing, as the Rosetta should nominally be in charge of clocking duties. Is there a workaround for this?
3) My new mountain bike is showing up today. You can safely assume my next post here will be about how I broke my collarbone or punctured my spleen or some other stupid shit.
As you're no doubt aware if you're in to such things, there is a Raymond Scott documentary in the works. Judging from the trailer (above) it looks like a fairly comprehensive and cool movie. Naturally, since the producers are making a documentary about a semi-obscure electronic music pioneer, for some bizarre reason they can't get the backing of a major studio, and cash is in short supply. They could use a little help. Just to prove we don't use all the money you spend on our plugins for hookers and blow (well, I don't; I can't speak for Adam), Audio Damage has donated $500 towards the film.
Even if you can't spare $10 or whatever, you'd do yourself a great disservice by not reading the Wikipedia article about Mr. Scott at the very least. This guy invented a lot of the techniques we use today, and on top of that, provided the soundtrack to our childhood. He deserves a bit of remembering.
Goldbaby Productions, makers of the Tape 808 sample set, as well as a bunch of other odd yet extremely cool sample sets, has put up a free set of Moog MG1 (better known in America as the Realistic Concertmate) sound effects run through Audio Damage effects. You can grab it on the "Free Stuff" section of the Goldbaby site.
Adam and I were having a conversation today about operating under self-imposed constraints. I do this sort of thing all the time to keep making music interesting. (e.g. "Today, I'm going to write a song using only instruments made in Norway" or some such ridiculous thing.) Specifically, we were talking about getting away from using the computer as a recording medium, an operation in which it usually becomes an instrument as well.
What I was wondering is thus: are there any readers out there that specifically use an 8- or 16-track analog tape deck, then dump the tracks to DAW for mixing any more? This seems like a rather refreshing manner in which to work, and I'd be surprised if there aren't several readers that do just that. I'm pondering methodology; my comment to Adam was that this would be a singularly excellent manner to record if you did ambient music, especially if it was improvisational in nature.
I notice, whenever I go on an Interwebs trawling expedition, that I invariably come across one or two well-trafficked blogs for whatever subject it is I was researching/whatever, blogs that I've never heard of. This leads me to the natural assumption that there are good music industry blogs out there that haven't caught my attention yet for whatever reason. Or yours, perhaps?
As far as I'm aware, there is Create Digital Music, MatrixSynth, MusicThing, and this very site, as far as "big" music blogs go. (Where "big" is defined by a relatively frequent new post policy and a large readership.) This blog tends to get more comments than the other three, with the occasional exception of CDM, but that's because we pedal editorial here for the most part, whereas the other three are more interested in news. Of the four, this site probably gets the least traffic, with 1500-2000 unique visitors a day.
But I'm wondering if there are other English-language blogs out there that are just as popular, or maybe should be popular, that haven't come to any attention. Other than the four mentioned, where do you go for your music industry gossip/news/whatever fix and why?
The disco folks all dressed up
Like they's fit to kill
I walk on in 'n' see 'em there
Gonna give them all a thrill
When they see me comin'
They all steps aside
They has a fit while I commit
My social suicide, I'm a
Dancin fool
Is it just me, or does this article read like a plot synopsis for Spinal Tap III? I especially like the following quote:
"I think it's really sad, because at the grassroots level, as indie and hip hop devolve, metal evolves. If you want to see the most open-minded, most integrated, most accepting audiences in the world, go to a metal gig...
That's cute and all, but not my point. It truly staggers me how little the majors understand what the hell is going on in the industry these days. Frankly, I'm surprised to find out that Q Prime is still in business. I had to check. But you have to mark this sort of thing in the "You Lose" column by default, because one blogger sitting in his Captain America underoos eating a Hot Pocket while he mainlines Red Bull trumps an entire PR firm.
In other news, I'm in Decompression from a weekend spent on the beautiful sunny Oregon coast, frolicking (or was it prancing?) in the sand with my extended family. Back at work on our next product, the which I will perhaps drop some hints on later in the week. We will now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
It's true. The end of the world is nigh. You heard it here first. Don't believe me? Check it. Turns out, the "30 biggest and best alternative rock hits of all time" have been decided, so we can all stop wondering. I'm wishing I had beaten the shit out of that douchebag singer for Sum 41 when I had the chance, I'll say that much.
But "Smooth Criminal?" Really? Kill me now.
It seems that API has taken a page from SSL's book and finally deigned to make a little something for the plebeians, although I'll grant that their idea of "inexpensive" is still "expensive." They've started a spinoff brand, Arsenal Audio, and announced three sexy new products.
R 20 Dual Mic Pre: Pictured above, this is a 2U 2-channel mic pre for $1195.
V 14 4-Band EQ: A 500-format four-band EQ cartridge for $695.
R 24 4-Band EQ: This is a 2U 2-channel rack version of the APSI 562 EQ for $1195.
Information at the Arsenal Audio site, although things are a bit thin right now. Don't know how they sound at all, because I just got the email from API like 6 minutes ago and I haven't ingested near enough nicotine or caffeine to do due diligence in the research department, but they sure do look like a nice addition to your steampunk audio rack.
EDIT: The rumor is that this stuff is made in China. I'm still trying to ascertain the truth of that, but suffice to say, if it is, I withdraw my "t3h awesome" comment, and say that it is, in fact, overpriced. Someone from API is more than welcome to contact me with the facts one way or the other. This page strongly implies they're made in the API factory, and I have no reason to doubt that, as API is a reputable company not normally in the business of hyperbole or bullshit (like, e.g., just about every mass-market audio company).
Here's a fairly nice DIY modular, with some crafty etched-brass faceplates. The modules are pretty standard fare for the most part, the usual collection of Thomas Henry, Ken Stone, and Electronotes modules favored by straight DIY modular builders, but the net result is fairly impressive, I have to say, even though it takes a modular the size of Bonn Harris' Doepfer rig to really impress me any more.
I imagine this was already posted several other places, so people that actually care about this sort of thing more than "oh, that's pretty" (which describes me) know all about it by now, but in the event you missed it, the builder's blog can be found here, and there's an interview with the builder on the Steampunk Workshop site here. Quite frankly, to be truly steampunk I believe a touch more attention should be paid to the wooden portion of the thing. But I do like the etched brass bits.
As an aside, I find it somewhat interesting that, completely unlike almost all other aesthetic movements, steampunk doesn't really have a soundtrack. I suppose that a modern electronic remake of "The Lights O' London" wouldn't really cut it. And for the more America-centric neo-Victorians, there's really only so much Stephen Foster a person can take before they want to gouge out their eyes with an engraved brass letter opener.
But the real reason, I believe, is that "steampunk" as an aesthetic movement is largely propelled by wannabe engineers, rather than wannabe creative types. Color me crazy, but I'd rather see cool Victorian stuff and cool modern stuff in separate wings of the museum. I guess that's one reason I don't wear welding goggles all day just because they look cool. (Which, I'll grant, they kinda do, in a weird Tank Girl sort of way.)
On Thursday, I'll be celebrating my 40th birthday. Whee. Some random pondering of that fact led me to some unnerving realizations. They are, in no particular order:
1. The number one song in America the day I was born, June 19th, 1968, was Simon & Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson." (If I had held out another 3 days, I would have got a Herb Alpert jam. Shame, that.)
2. The first new album I purchased was Joe Jackson's "Look Sharp." That's a fond recollection; it could have been way, way worse considering the time period in question. I believe that was 1980; the album came out in '79, according to Wikipedia, but I'm fairly certain I was 12, not 11. This is still one of my all-time favorite albums, and I think I'm on what could quite possibly be my 10th copy. Interestingly, this 10th copy is the first album I purchased on iTunes. Go figure. At least I can't wear it out now.
3. The first stadium concert I attended was the Cars "Heartbeat City" tour in 1984 at Forest Hills Tennis Stadium. Wang Chung opened. That's hard to swallow, but I think I still get karma points from the Joe Jackson purchase to cover for that.
4. The number one song the day I graduated high school (June 3rd, 1986) was "On My Own" by Patti LaBelle & Michael McDonald. In all honesty, by that time, I wasn't that interested in pop music (read: at all), so it's not a real surprise that I have no recollection of that particular gem.
5. When I was born, putting an 8-track deck and/or FM radio in a car was a pretty new idea. By the time I could drive, putting a cassette deck in a car was a pretty new idea. Now that I can go and buy a relatively expensive vehicle with many options, putting satellite radio and a hard drive music player in a car is a fairly new idea. But that car still can't fucking fly. What the hell?
6. A high-end recording console that left the factory on June 19th, 1968 that still exists today has somehow gained the ability to make songs better in the intervening four decades. I guess consoles are like wine.
Anyhow, happy birthday to me. In lieu of buying me something, you're more than welcome to just Paypal me cash.
This video is a demonstration/explanation of la Léode (although how that particular noun came to be feminine is completely and utterly beyond me; I have a hard time coming up with an instrument more singularly phallic.) This is a one-of-a-kind controller made for the "keyboardist" of the French prog-rock band Lazuli. It's sort of a red-headed crossbreed of a Continuum and a Chapman Stick, of all things.
I'm not going off in alternative controller la-la land, but I just thought this video jibed somewhat with our previous conversation.
I was looking for some information about Thomas Bloch, who plays ondes Martenot on a recording of Messianen's Turangalila that I just picked up, and I came across this video on the 'Tube, which gives a great overview of how the ondes Martenot works and how it is played. As we all know, the French Connection is mostly modeled on the ondes Martenot; it doesn't work quite the same, but is similar enough, I guess. But the controller part aside, it doesn't really sound like the ondes Martenot, mainly because it doesn't sound like anything at all, being a controller and what-not.
What I found interesting was the range of tones the real one can produce; that, coupled with the control method, results in an incredibly expressive instrument, something that isn't that easy to do with electronics. I find it odd that the early electronic instruments (this, the Theremin, the Trautonium, etc.) all concentrated more on the ability to express the note as it is played than the base sound. This has the net effect of giving an instrument with a somewhat more basic voice than your average monosynth a much broader tonal palette than, say, a MiniMoog, interestingly enough.
There are controllers out today that allow a similar amount of expression; I think the Continuum is probably the best example of this sort of thing, if you program your sounds accordingly (and why wouldn't you? You just spent $5K on a controller.) And I don't think anyone would deny that the piano itself, the most basic (or most complicated, depending on your viewpoint) keyboard instrument is the single most expressive musical tool ever created by man.
I guess I just find it profound that the first half-dozen electronic instruments ever created all tried to give you the same amount of control over the note that you would get on your average cello. That isn't much of a concern nowadays.
(Note: it's worth it to watch to the end of the video, although it is somewhat tedious. There's a really funny bit at the end which makes it all worthwhile.)
I like to think that the readers of this site are generally above average intelligence, so this won't be useful at all to you. However, I provide this helpful tutorial, in the hopes that when someone Googles something like "why does everyone hate me?" this will show up as a possible answer, and all will become clear.
Q: What's the best way to get an answer to a problem I have with some software I just bought?
A: Don't write the company an email and make the sum total of your communication "This software does not work!" Chances are quite good that yes, in actual fact, it does, but you fucked up somehow, or your computer is hopelessly tooled. It might be worth letting the company know, e.g., what sort of computer you own. Stuff like that always helps.
Concise is nice, but the simple fact is that the more information I have, the more likely I am to know exactly what it is that is wrong and how to fix it. The vast majority of problems are quite common, and easily fixed. On the Mac, permissions are always screwed, or someone unzipped with Stuffit Expander; on PC we get a lot of people that can't quite get it together with respect to buffer sizes. (Thanks a lot, Image Line. You're my hero.) We will occasionally get system-specific problems, always on Macintosh, that are simply baffling, but they never fall in to the "This software doesn't work!" category.
So, when you write a company with a problem, include your operating system and its specific version, the host(s) you're experiencing the problem with, your audio interface, basically anything you can think of that might be related. If you don't do that, the company (in this case read: "I") will just have to ask you, and that's one more unnecessary go-round.
And if you were wondering, that quoted email above is one I received today, not two hours ago. In the unlikely event that person is a reader here, this may come as a shock to you, but I'm not omniscient, despite what I may have led you to believe.
I've decided to keep the Biz Mk mic pres that Purple was kind enough to loan me to try out. It was a fairly good tactic, I have to admit. "Hey, Chris is thinking of getting some SSL mic pres. Huh. Well, let's send him a couple of our much more expensive ones, and get him liking them, and he'll whip out the ol' credit card. It'll be awesome."
Well, it worked. I ain't sending these lil' guys back because they're pwncakes covered in awesome sauce, plain and simple. This is the first mic pre I've met that had such a broad range of tonal possibility you could almost consider it an effect rather than an input. The reasons for this are various.
First off, this bad boy has two op-amps instead of just one like virtually every other 500-series pre-amp. (If you're nubsauce, the discrete op-amp, the heart of a class-A mic pre, is the part that actually does the "amp" in "preamp.") That's not such a big deal, because only one is used normally. But whack that "DUAL" button and it's a whole different ball game, as the input is split and sent to both op-amps, resulting in the most monster-ass gain you're gonna find in a 500-sized cart. They say 75dB, and I have no reason to doubt that, although I didn't check it directly. Obviously, in use as a D.I., it's going to bypass the input iron, so you can halve that number for front-panel work.
The next fun bit is that it has a level fader; what this means is that you can really crank the gain, and then pull the level down with the fader, resulting in some nice fuzzy op-amp distortion that makes everything nice and juicy. Some caveats apply; I thought this would sound good on bass, but it makes the bass a little too knocky for my taste. It sounded fantastic on drums direct from the MachineDrum, and I was able to get a really nice heavy rock vocal sound, and D.I. guitar (as in "meant for an amp simulator") sounded better. As in "not completely shitty." It's no secret that I find amp simulators to be a ridiculous waste of everybody's time, and it's not like some magic box is gonna change the fact that they just sound like shit, each and every one.
In normal (read: without the gain jacked to the ceiling) use, it actually makes a really nice synth and bass D.I.; my MKS80 was never very happy about the various mic pres I have, and I usually just took its balanced out straight in to the Rosetta, but it definitely likes this pre; so did the Source and the Crumar Performer I also jacked through it, and if you don't kill the gain, it makes a good bass D.I., although I would, as per usual, recommend an Avalon in that application.
I didn't have occasion to try it on real drums or amped guitar yet, but I get the feeling that is this pre-amp's happy place. I still stand by my comments in my initial post, that it has the flavor of other American class-A designs (512C, et al) but it has a much broader palette. Strong "buy" recommendation from me.
(Note: I feel it is important to point out that I received no special consideration whatsoever from Purple, either in the initial loan or for this post. I paid the price that is listed on the website, and in order to get the loan I put down my credit card number as earnest. Just so we're clear on all that. I only whore myself out for real cashy money, not gear.)
That photo is the reason Portland, Oregon is awesome, and whatever joint you live in is Shitsville. I can go buy a maple doughnut with bacon on it at Voodoo 24 hours a day, and you can't.
No musical context for this post; I just wanted to gloat.
EDIT: I'm done gloating. I've apparently gone in to some weird combination of diabetic shock and catastrophic heart failure. Perhaps I'm too old to eat things like this, and maybe your town isn't so bad after all.
Got my office all re-wired today. Took me two days to strip it to the bare walls, clean everything, and put it all back together. Thank god I don't have more shit.
Well...
I actually have a ton more shit, but it's all out in the studio. I can't record guitars in the house, because my wife would kill herself then kill me. In the interests of marital bliss, all actual noise takes place out in the studio. Also, I've ordered speaker stands because the speaker placement makes me want to stick a rusty spork right in my left eye, but they obviously aren't here yet.
This is a much better placement than my previous iteration, I'll say that much.
I was just getting some chuckles from reading this thread at KvR, wherein it is determined that the first third-party commercial VST plugin was Prosoniq's NorthPole. (Which, incidentally, is still freely available but good luck using it on a modern Mac. The PC version still works fine, a fact I verified myself in Cubase 4 and Live 7 on a Vista machine.) NorthPole, along with the first of what would become many MDA plugins (RingMod), and two classics from Dave Brown (ProComp and ProDelay) were all released the day the VST SDK was released, 8/27/98.
An inherent appreciation for InterCaps aside, that was two months shy of ten years ago. On the one hand, when you compare these old plugins to what is currently available, there are light years of difference between them; one of the knobs on an AD product probably has more code in it than the entirety of NorthPole. On the other hand, you can see how these early products informed all future plugins. NorthPole may not be sophisticated, especially when you compare it to something like Dr. Device, which is a direct descendent, but damn if it doesn't sound pretty good, and it's not like you have to figure out how to use it or anything. (You do, however, need to go find that old BPM->Delay Time chart you haven't needed for about 6 years.)
The interesting thing to note here is that the ProSoniq folks didn't have any competition when they released this plug. They just thought "hey, wouldn't a filter/distortion/delay effect be cool to make?" They had to actually invent a market where none existed before, and in doing so, essentially created the baseline effect that all companies end up releasing. It seems like virtually all plug-in companies have a filter/distortion/delay combination plugin of some sort, and that combination is definitely the Happy Place for plug-ins that have no hardware equivalent.
I was a (militant) Logic user in 1998, and Logic didn't develop VST support until the following year. The first plugin I bought was D-Pole, another filter/distortion/delay that is still available to purchase, and completely current as VST2.4/AU/UB. While this market is relatively young compared to, say, guitars, it still has its standards, and an accepted methodology for doing things, which I think is somewhat interesting to note. Now that Audio Damage has an entire line of effects, we're going to do some truly whacky shit, and maybe, if we're lucky and imaginative, we can come up with a new baseline (unlikely) or something groundbreaking (more likely) that will inspire the next ten years of development, and some guy in 2018 will be writing in whatever blogs have become about that Audio Damage effect he bought in 2008.
A boy can dream.
In addition to the two things still in Adam's Yard Sale post, I have a Brent Averil 312A mic pre for sale. You can read all about it here. It is the top one pictured, single channel with power supply. Obviously, you can plainly see what I paid for it. Selling for $800 cashy money. I'm actually quite fond of it; it is one of the better mic pres there are, in my opinion, and a bargain at twice the price. However, I'm switching to 500 form factor, and need to free up the rack space. (I'll be using the money to buy 500-sized 312A pres.) Shipping in the US is included. Anywhere else, you pay actual cost.
It was a fairly hectic couple of weeks 'round these parts, and I'm about to have another hectic week soon (my 40th birthday occurs simultaneously at a family reunion; I'm not sure which I'm less excited for, but the lack of excitement seems to go down exponentially, trending to dread, when you combine the two). These things, among many others, have conspired to lower my creative output to what could generously be called "nil." So I took the opportunity yesterday to go recharge my batteries.
For me personally this has, for the last couple years, involved going by myself out to the desert in Central Oregon and either taking pictures, looking for interesting rocks, or both. I don't know why this works for me, and I was surprised to discover that it did, entirely by accident a couple years ago.
So, not-so-bright-and-early yesterday, I took off for the sprawling BLM-managed Prineville District area and climbed some small mountain-type-things, found some nice picture jasper and moss agate, and generally admired the planet. (The picture above is on my way home. I live on the other side of those mountains.)
So, magically, I wake up today full of motivation and creativity. I'm sure there's a lengthy treatise somewhere on L-Dopa levels and self-adjustment thereof, but the simple fact of the matter is that if I take a day just for me, and that day doesn't involve making plugins or music, when I come back I feel much better, ready to work. Today and tomorrow, I'm taking my office/studio down to the bare walls, cleaning, and re-wiring. Whee.
How do you recharge your creative batteries?
Kombinat has been updated to 1.0.1 on both OSX and Windows platforms to fix an issue with the compressor, which wasn't... uh... compressing. The new installers are available for download. If you're using Kombinat in a current project, plan accordingly, as this will change the sound of any preset or program which uses the compressor at all, and the change is drastic in some cases.
EDIT: This problem is like genital warts. It simply can't be tamed. The VST in the OSX of the installer is fixed, but the AU (our special friend) is not. New installer as soon as I can prod Adam to life. The Windows version is 100% fixed, though.
EDIT AGAIN: It's almost worth deleting this post and starting over, isn't it? Anyhow, a new OSX installer has been put up, and it's golden, I swear on the baby Jesus.
An apology is necessary, it seems. The version of Kombinat that went out the door (in the figurative sense), well, the compressor doesn't seem to be compressing. All it is do is gaining.
The problem has been found and fixed. Unfortunately, all the presets are in a shambles now, so those need to be touched up; we'll be doing that over the next several hours, and v1.0.1 will be swapped in the store. And just when we were congratulating ourselves on the smoothest release we've ever had, with nary a problem that wasn't a system-specific one (as in that person's computer is fucked up in some way).
Oh, well.
EDIT: Okay, I've got all the presets rebuilt; just waiting for Adam to get back so we can rebuild the installers. This will be somewhat comical as the compressor was something of a crowning achievement of this plugin. With it actually working, it will sound drastically different, especially on "live" drum loops. People that have already bought the plugin are in for something of a surprise.
Sorry for the complete lack of postage, but I was in the mandatory post-release decompression over the weekend (which, for me, consists mostly of trawling the various forums and answering e-mail), and as far as I can tell, nothing worth conversing about occurred in the music industry since Saturday morning.
Work has started on the design of our next product, and I'm not gonna let out a single peep about it except to say that this is a whopper and will put all other plugins in its genre to shame, including one of our own.
I also got some work done on my Blip synth; it is now making sound, and this sound is even kind of interesting. All I have to do now is finish the MIDI part of the operation and that'll be that. As it turns out, there will be no AD IP in it, so I'll be able to post the code for both of you that are interested in such things.
In any case, we'll be back to our normal vitriol and such on the 'morrow. Consider this an open thread. I can't for the life of me think of a topic, so that joy shall go to the person who first posts in this thread.
Adam asked me to post this for him. This stuff isn't mine; don't write me and ask me about it. Write Adam instead.
_________________________________________________
Clavia Nord Modular G2 Engine (rackmount G2), with original packaging (such as it is), manual, and
nifty red-tipped USB cable. Excellent condition, hardly looks used. $650.
Encore Electronics Expressionist MIDI/CV converter, with manual and AC adapter. Looks nearly new. $450.
TC Electronic PowerCore Element PCI, with original box, packaging, manual. The CD is obviously out of date but you can obtain the current software from TC's website. $150. A helluva good reverb for the money.
MIDIverb II with original AC adapter, docs and quick-reference card. I'm not gonna pull your leg and tell you that this is a "vintage" reverb. $50 or offer me a guitar pedal of some sort.
[Editor's note: That's from an Apogee/SSL/Eventide studio, I think Adam should have pointed out. -CR]
I accept PayPal only, and I ship only to addresses within the United States. (Sorry, but I hate filling out customs forms.) Prices do not include shipping but I charge only the actual cost. I can ship by UPS or USPS, whichever you prefer.
I'd sing Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'" now if I wasn't busy sobbing in my morning caffeine-laced beverage. One of the features of Kombinat (and Dr. Device which birthed it) is the fact that the filter self-oscillates, like a "real" analog four-pole lowpass. Now, I'll grant that this isn't the most useful thing in the world, and was really just a way to show off a bit, because it is hard to do in software.
I had a feeling that this would cause a bit of consternation because so few software filters resonate on their own, so we inserted a special mention of this fact in the Kombinat manual:
...this filter can self-oscillate at high resonance, resulting in a tone, with the pitch determined by the setting of the frequency knob. This is not common in software-based filters, and may surprise you the first time you hear it.
I thought this perhaps unnecessary and overcautious, but as it turns out, I was right. (And let me tell you, I'm never shocked by that occurance, nosiree!!!) I got an email last night from someone that bought Kombinat that thought the filter was broken because it was emitting a tone when the resonance was all the way up.
And yes, that thump you heard was the sound of my forehead banging on the corner of my desk.
This, in and of itself, is not that big a deal, but it brings to light a greater question: how much does the software we use inform our creative methods? I know that I've entirely got out of the habit of key gating and sidechain compressing as a result of using Cubendo for several years, and these were both effects I commonly used when in a "real" studio. I'm sure if I thought about it, I could come up with other examples. Is there something you're drastically missing as a result of the Big Switch from 2" tape to DAWs?
(And as an aside, if one of my dear readers speaks native German and fully comprehends why a filter that self-oscillates isn't a bad thing, could you drop me a line; there is a serious language barrier with this particular customer, and I'm having a hard time explaining to him why it isn't actually broken.)
EDIT: Never mind with the German stuff. My friend Ned hooked me up.
Okay, refresh monkeys. Kombinat is now available for purchase. Go git some. US$49.00 to murder yr bitz.
Purple were kind enough to send me a couple Biz Mk mic pres to try out, and the UPS man just dropped 'em off. Haven't plugged 'em up yet, so I can't speak to them at all, except to say that they sure are purdy little things.
EDIT: Okay, played about for a bit. These are, in fact, the Biz. I'll have to do some recordings, but I'll say on an initial examination with vocals and bass, these sound fucking great. They do have a bit of color (and can, depending on the knob settings, have a lot of color) which I would describe as generally "American" in sound, and that's music to my ears, being an unrepentant API lover. However, these are able to do a much greater variety of tones than a typical API pre.
One of the roughly 8,000 projects I'm currently working on is a small synthesizer built almost entirely on an Arduino. The only external chips are the DAC and the opto-isolator for the MIDI input. It remains to be seen whether the Arduino will be fast enough to pull this off. I would like to make it a normal 1-osc subtractive synth, but Adam (who has far more experience with microcontrollers than I) says that the Atmega 16 (the Arduino's brain) isn't fast enough to do the real-time math necessary for a resonant filter.
We'll just go ahead and see about that. I have a sneaking suspicion he is right; when my DAC shows up from Digi-Key, I'll find out. If I can't do subtractive synthesis, I'll just do FM and leave it at that. That will be nearly as fun.
In any case, despite the artiness of the shot, you can clearly see that it has six knobs, one switch, and one LED. You can probably make out the corner of the MIDI input on the upper right. The entire thing fits in a Hammond 1690BB box, believe it or not, as there isn't much external to the Arduino. I thought about not even having panel knobs, and just making it controlled by a VST plugin or some such, but that thought left me feeling slightly just a little bit gay, so I went ahead and did a panel. After wiring it, I wished I had gone the first route. Granted, a plain grey box with an LED on the front wouldn't have been very sexy, but I wouldn't have had to solder that rat's nest together, either.
In any event, I'm mostly documenting this through my Flickr page. The photoset is here. I almost certainly won't be able to put up the code when I'm done, as it will almost certainly contain Audio Damage IP (hey, why reinvent the wheel?) but if it doesn't, or if I'm able to remove/replace it and dumb it down a bit, I will.
In any event, the next post you'll see here on AI about this particular subject will be a YouTube video of me quaffing from the Flagon Of Victory as I perform Grindhouse Greatest Hits on my lil' Blip.
I'm a fan of our space program here in the U.S.A., and it is one of the very few things that can excite patriotic fervor in me; I tend to look on nationalism as the fountain of all things stupid that aren't directly a result of religion in this world, but in this one little case I do give myself a little bit of leeway. Today, the Phoenix lander plopped its fat little ass down on Mars, and I got the itch to start farming the data for interesting tidbits.
I've referenced NASA many times in the various Micronaut releases. Starting with Io, I got in the habit of mining the various NASA pages for data which I would endeavor to use in interesting ways. Many of the sounds on the various Micronaut albums are telemetry from various NASA missions imported in to Sound Forge as RAW, then carved in to interesting things. NASA also has a pretty vast well of sound files, if you know where to look, and these can be used as source data for various things.
One nice feature of all the data that NASA puts out on a daily basis (and there is a metric fuckton of it, believe you me) is that it is all bought and paid for by the American public, and is thus public in its own right. You can use any of the raw data NASA puts up on its various sites without having to sweat copyright or get permission or any of that nonsense. (Some of the data is owned by universities, and some images are the result of private citizens or companies parsing the raw data in their own mechanisms, and these are copyrighted, so you do have to pay a bit of attention. The safe bet: if there's no copyright information on the page, it is free for all.)
In any case, the easiest thing to do if you're grabbing raw telemetry data is to open in the editor of your choice as RAW. Finding the raw data for a particular mission can be kind of tricky, but trust me, it's all out there somewhere. That link is for some raw telemetry from the Galileo mission, for a blast from the past. The .PKT files are the raw packets. The vast majority of data from these deep space missions is imagery, but it will be in formats from 20-30 years ago, so it's not like opening a GIF or JPEG. Your mileage may vary.
So, that's my general methodology, and sometimes it can provide useful results, with a bit of trial and error. Is there any funny source that you like to farm for interesting sounds?
I read with some puzzlement an email from Tom Whitwell (essentially what he later published in his blog for all intents and purposes) regarding the trouble that STEIM, a Dutch electronic-music think tank, is in. Apparently, their funding is likely to be pulled, because they "only appeal to a niche audience," according to the Dutch government official in charge of such things.
I hadn't, to the best of my knowledge, heard of STEIM prior to the email from Tom. I know about the Cracklebox, of course, but to hold that up as a shining example of government funded music research is perhaps a mistake, especially if you're thinking of the other well-known electronic music think-tank that relies largely on government funding, IRCAM.
Of course, I (and most anybody who's interest in creating electronic music goes beyond finding cracked VST plugins for their cracked FL Studio install so they can work on the latest Justice rippoff) am fully aware of what IRCAM hath wrought. While the music that emanates from those hallowed halls is generally much the same as the ambient noises generated by my kitchen (and that's not a bad thing; it just is) they do shit out a surprising amount of software and research in to DSP for musical use, and we all benefit from that.
Furthermore, please don't take this the wrong way. I'm just not going to jump on a bandwagon and beg the readers of this site to do something I don't fully understand just because some Dutch guys came up with the Cracklebox. I have no desire whatsoever to offend anyone, at least in this particular instance.
So, now that I've mea culpa'd everything I've said so far in to essential non-existence, I have two questions. One is specific, and you can answer if you have direct knowledge. The other is more general, and is open to everyone. Please understand that (absolutely unlike my normal remarks) I'm not asking these questions to be snide. I'm genuinely curious and consider myself not knowledgeable enough on the subject at hand to make an informed decision. So, with that out of the way:
1. What has STEIM done for me lately? I'll gladly throw my support (which includes begging for your support, something worth considering because there are quite a few of you) behind something with merit, but there isn't a lot to glean from the website other than some tweaky software that isn't very well updated, and a concert series. Someone from STEIM is more than welcome to post some thoughts in this regard. Tell us what it is you do.
2. This is more of a meta-topic, really, on the nature of government-funded research in the fields of creating and performing music. This is obviously far more common in Europe than the United States. To the best of my knowledge, the vast majority of research in to performance methods and expanding same in the United States takes place at the MIT Media Lab. The NEA (for those of you not Americans, the National Endowment for the Arts) does issue some grants for electronic music, but nothing on the order of what IRCAM (or I assume STEIM) does. Obviously, while government funding is pretty sweet, the main purpose of European countries funding such things is not for the betterment of mankind, but to compete with the MIT Media Lab and America's vast store of garage tinkerers. (We have a fuck of a lot of garages here.) Is this, in actual fact, kosher? Does anyone here have experience with creating or inventing under the auspices of the government of your respective country? How does it work in Japan? These are the things I'm curious about.
Anyhow, I just want to reiterate that I'm not trying to be mean to STEIM the way I would be to Digidesign. Obviously they in no way merit the kind of flippant remarks I have been known to make from time to time. It's just that I'm not a bandwagon-jumper, and I don't know why my help was solicited or what good it would do, and whether these guys are actually serious scholars sitting around thinking big thoughts or a bunch of hippies living together in an Amsterdam loft smoking weed and beating each other with MIDI-enabled wiffle-ball bats.
I read with amusement (bemusement?) the recent go-round over on CDM wherein Mr. Kirn aired some grievances from users regarding the state of Digidesign and M-Audio drivers viz. Leopard and Vista. The VP of Lollipop Land... errr... I mean "Head Of Customer Support And Services" of Digidesign and the General Manager of M-Audio both responded at length to missives that Mr. Kirn put up.
*snort*
The responses remind me of the old joke:
Child to sister: "You're stupid."
Parent: "That's not polite. Apologize to your sister right now!"
Child to sister: "I'm sorry that you're stupid."
Obviously I have an extremely biased opinion, and am eminently unqualified to make comments regarding that company's business practices, but naturally I won't let that stop me from shooting my mouth off. When you aggressively seek market share and it gets away from you, and people eventually complain about it getting away from you, blaming the results on the OS vendor (which, long story short, is exactly what occurred in both the responses) is a fairly silly thing to do.
I'm sure many long-time readers will say "yeah, but Chris, I seem to recall you bashing on Apple fairly frequently." 'Tis true, I've been known to maybe drop a hint that the Emperor was in his skivvies now and again, and that's doubly amusing in the music industry, where apparently the OS you choose to use defines your entire existence, and must be defended with your life. But that's just venting. When Apple throws us a loop, we cowboy up and fix whatever it is they broke, or we broke, or whatever. We certainly don't let 19 months go by. There isn't a piece of hardware made, by anybody ever, that has software so complicated that a multi-million-dollar corporation can't manage to make new firmware in 19 months, unless that corporation is lazy or just doesn't give a shit, or both. I'm sorry, but I call bullshit.
Bullshit!
That aside, they're in a fairly uncomfortable situation right now, and while that is bad for the consumers that are directly invested in the two companies, I think it is a good thing for the computer music industry as a whole, as it allows other smaller companies an opportunity to take advantage of the situation, should they see fit. This, in turn, benefits all of us by resulting in (theoretically) higher quality and (theoretically) lower prices. Capitalism in action.
I've been pondering how business in this day and age works, and it seems to me that small agile companies (I'll use Apogee as an example) are far better at serving the needs of their customers than big bloated piles of shitsauce (let's go ahead and use Digidesign for the shitsauce.) I'm sure that the guys at Apogee would love to have the resources of Digidesign, but the fact that they have a specialty market and don't really work outside that market much kind of keeps them small and agile. While the Apogee products carry a premium price, they are far longer-lived and higher quality than the products their competitors at Digi and M-Audio make, and are thus technically cheaper when you get down to it. To use one single product as an example, the Trak 2 was released in late 2000, just shy of eight years ago. It is still sold today, and if you bought one of the first Trak 2s (I have a close friend that did exactly that) you have a product that works almost exactly the same as it did in 2000, except better. If you bought an M-Audio inter... oh, wait... they were called MIDIman then, weren't they? Did they make audio inter... oh...
Okay, if you bought a Digide... oh, wait. You bought the Apogee convertor because the Digidesign one wasn't very good, didn't you? And you use ProTools why, again? Because it is stable? Well, that is demonstrably untrue. Because the DSP farm in an HD system takes the load off your CPU? Yeah, that eight-core Mac Pro really needs a lot of help. It can barely do anything. Because it sounds so god-damn good? Spare me. Bits are fucking bits whether they're shit out of Logic, ProTools, Cubase, or Sonar. Next thing you'll be telling me that it has a "wider soundstage and greater depth." Yeah, and I've got a nice wooden volume knob I want to sell you.
Long story short, while it fucking sucks for the people that are having a hard time with M-Audio and Digi shit (and I'll take this brief opportunity to get a tiny "I told you so" in, just because I can) in the long run you'll be better off. Either that company will have learned its lesson after getting slapped around by the clue fairy, or it won't, and will go out of business. Either way, the consumer is well served. What annoys me is that everyone is patting them on the back for actually coming out and "apologizing." We're in a sad, sad state of affairs when people are generally shocked that someone should own up to their mistakes.
Okay, I've ordered my "prosumer" digital piano, plus a stack of other jank I needed, and I still have some $650 left on my AudioMidi.com credit. I'm seriously entertaining the thought of getting a Kore 2. I currently own Massive, FM8, Kontakt 3, and Absynth 4. While I don't possess everything they make, NI definitely occupies a warm spot in my heart.
I know we've had this conversation before, but this isn't the sort of thing I would normally buy (because it isn't tweaky and boutique) so I just need some reinforcement. Tell me again how awesome Kore 2 is. Or isn't. I'd especially like to hear from those who have used it in a live situation, and how that worked out.
Please follow these steps:
1. Find wherever the Stuffit Expander applet is hiding on your computer.
2. Delete it.
There is a program that comes with OSX now, called "Archive Utility." This program, entirely unlike Stuffit Expander, is not hopelessly, completely, tragically, totally FUCKED. Use that instead. You'll be happier, and so will I.
Thanks for listening.
Above is the final full-size screenshot for Kombinat, something I don't think I've put up to this point. (Click for the actual size.) We've also made the Kombinat store page live, and put up three new audio demos.
The development itself proceeds as usual. We have the VST versions done on both platforms except for a couple tiny touch-ups, and Adam is working on the AU port today. Hopefully we'll be sorted for testing this weekend, and you can get yourself a Kombinat early next week. That is, if things go according to plan. Long-time readers will note that they rarely do.
Regarding the preset subject we touched upon the other day, I had a bit of hilarity today as I was merrily making presets for Kombinat. While I generally use a straight 16th programmed drum loop (made up of 606 sounds, if you want to know) to write most of the presets for most of the products we make, because I've found that's generally the best source material, once I have a pile of presets I go through them with other source material and touch them up (or dumb them down, more to the point) so that whatever I'm writing presets for will generally sound okay, no matter what you put through it.
Obviously, a plugin like Kombinat is terribly input-dependent, so this habit of mine isn't so hot. To give an example, I made 30-odd presets using my normal method with the 606 sounds, and then I loaded up Kore Player and proceeded to put some other material through it. At this point, I discovered that, with Kombinat, what sounds good on drums doesn't sound good on, well, anything else. To illustrate this, I made an MP3. This has a Kore Player patch of some techno-piano-anthem-thingie, and I'm just flipping through some of the Kombinat presets I made earlier. All of the patches I'm going through sound from fine to fantastic on drums. However, other source material, not so much it appears. Much comedy ensues.
I think I'm gonna have to take pains to mention that how Kombinat sounds depends heavily on what you're sticking in the inputs. It is an excellent plugin if you just want to give a little furriness to the bottom or whatever, but loading it up as an insert and just flipping through presets will probably equal instant headache. I can see this being a problem.
On the flip side, I suppose most people wouldn't normally put a monster "destrtioon" fiesta like Kombinat on a sound like that which I used, unless they're looking for a really tripped-out special effect. I think I can safely assume a certain range of sounds (drums, bass, leads of various sorts) that would be normally used, and program accordingly. This is definitely a tough one, though.
(As an aside, I find the new preset mechanism in Cubase 4 to be one of the most annoying things in the music industry, on par with Diamond Dave and Recordproducer.com. It's a perfect example of taking something that was broke and "fixing" it by throwing every possible feature at it until people just scream "ENOUGH! OKAY! I GIVE UP!!!")
I think it's time to get back to my roots and get an 88-key weighted controller. I know I'm going to thoroughly regret asking this, but I don't have any way to test out the current crop, as no one has seen fit to open a music store in Mill City, Oregon. (Which staggers the imagination, quite frankly. There are 1,450 people here that would all be the next Lennon and/or McCartney if only they had access to the tools of the trade.)
The parameters are that it has to be less than $1400, not made by M-Audio, and sold in the AudioMidi store (because I inexplicably find myself with a boatload of store credit. No idea how that happened.) If we include stuff that actually makes sounds, we're left with the following options: Roland RD-300SX, Yammy P140, P85, S08, and KX8, CME UF80 and VX8, and the Studiologic VMK-188+.
My thinking is as follows: I don't really care about the sounds, one way or the other. For actual piano use, I'll use a sample set, and none of these are gonna have a sample set of the quality of the ones I have already. I also don't care about knobs and sliders, because I have a mouse, and if I ever get bored with that, I have a bunch of other shit that can send MIDI CC. I also know that I don't have a lot of love for StudioLogic, as they've let me down on stage before, and pretty badly. (Although for what it's worth, a Fatar keybed sure does explode nicely when you give it a swift kick from the bottom. Too bad I did it in soundcheck and not during the show. Your loss, Tulsa.)
My reasoning would suggest that of all the companies above, Yamaha are the only ones that actually make actual pianos, so they would be the ones with the know-how to make a keybed that doesn't completely suck. But considering the fact that I've been playing semi-weighted synths almost exclusively for the last 22 years (since I moved out on my own, and found that a piano was a hard thing to move on the NYC subway) I assume that any full weighted keybed is gonna be pretty hard on my hands regardless, so I suppose that last point is academic.
Thoughts? If you know anything outrageously bad or good about any of the above, now's the time to speak up.
The Audio Damage store got a facelift today, and we (and by "we" in all cases, I mean my wife) swapped out the sorta-not-working screenshot code with the same little gee-gaw that all the cool kids are using, the name of which escapes me. We made some other minor back-end changes which you'll not notice, and like that.
We're taking the AD store off-line for a couple hours to do some internal updates and a mild face-lift. The way the store works, as far as you guys are concerned, will be un-altered. Back up about 4:00 PST (GMT -9) or so.
Just got back from the symphony; it's odd that such a city as small as PDX would have such an excellent symphony orchestra. Who knew? Carmina Burana was t3h awesome, as expected. The soloists, and the baritone in particular, were extremely good. I know that Carmina is kind of a gimme as far as orchestral music goes, but shit don't get to be popular by sucking, right? (Don't answer that...)
Anyhow, our heat wave is over, and I can go in my office again without instantly breaking in to a sweat, so we'll return to our normal programming now. We have the VST versions of Kombinat pretty much done at this point, and are going to start the AU port here in a minute. If all goes well (and wishes were horses) we'll be in full beta by the end of the week.
Presets are next on the schedule for me personally, while Adam tries not to punch his iMac repeatedly. It'll be kind of tricky to do the presets for this, as it is rather input-dependent, on top of the fact that it has a semi-complicated gain structure which takes a little bit of getting used to.
I'm of the opinion that there are two kinds of computer-musicians: the kind that hunt through the presets then touch one up to suit what they're doing, and the kind that will sit and tweak for hours on end, starting from a more-or-less empty patch. Speaking strictly for myself, I'm of the former sort, and unapologetically to boot. Writing the presets for our products almost always falls to me, and I try to give a broad overview of the most useful aspects of the plugin, and also do a few little tricks that any given plug might be capable of. For more limited-use plugs, we have fewer presets, for reasons I would hope are obvious. For this one, I think I'm gonna have to lay down 8^2, and put them in useful groupings on top of that.
So, the open question for the day is how useful are presets to you? Do you find yourself just browsing through until you find one that sounds close to what you were thinking, or do you like to start from a blank slate?
Sorry for the lackadaisical posting, but these last two days have been something of a struggle. Our little Valley is getting mercilessly beat by the sun, which is unusual since this is a fairly temperate place. To go from 55 on Wednesday to 97.4 today (Fahrenheit) is a recipe for not feeling too good. My office is about 90, as we, like most other people that live here, don't have AC. It is fairly unpleasant. Hopefully we'll be back to normal here in a day or two.
That aside, the wife and I have tickets to the techno-viking masterpiece that is Carmina Burana with the OSO on Sunday. Looking forward to that. I don't know if they're doing full text or not, and I doubt they'll have the 8 timpani players the score calls for, but it should be fairly heavy duty regardless. Some 250 voices in the choir.
I've been pondering making a touchplate controller, along the lines of the various Buchla and Serge ideas, albeit with a back-woodsy homey (homie?) flavor that is inherent to my lifestyle choice. While I've been researching how one would go about such a thing, I've come across several (read: dozens) of iterations of the same basic idea, which is "I can't play keyboards, but I want to trigger sounds in a logical fashion."
Obviously, the original Buchla and Serge arguments for their touchplate stuff was that the synthesizer was a new instrument, and the keyboard paradigm was inherently flawed for controlling this new instrument. Personally, I think it was a bit snobbish, as a keyboard is a perfectly good controller for a synthesizer, and lowers the barriers to entry significantly.
Of course, it bears mentioning that anyone that can actually play keyboards can probably play most any other similar instrument with reasonable competency, and for someone that can't play keyboards, it really doesn't matter. But, that said, most everyone can puzzle out keyboard parts. Controlling a synth with, say, a guitar is an exercise in futility for the most part, and the guitar is far more difficult to learn. And to save the Mad Typerz from rebutting, I've done it plenty, and I know it's stupid. So do you. The only one that didn't get the memo is Alan Holdsworth.
Anyhow, what's your favorite alternate controller? Why? Anything truly freaky out there that we may not have seen?
Kombinat lives. We spent the day fixing minor quibbles with the UI, and are just about done with that. All that remains is to "de-click" the knobs and add the presets, and the Windows version will be complete, and can go out for testing. I imagine this will occur tomorrow evening or Wednesday. We'll probably have the OS X VST shortly thereafter, and then the week-long battle to build the AU starts. It's still too soon to say for sure, but you will have a Kombinat in your hands by the end of May.
And, I must say, this would be an excellent tool for the recreational DJ.
To extrapolate further on my comments in the previous posting, here's an example that showed up in my in-box yesterday:
Did you know that becoming a recreational DJ is America’s latest and greatest hobby? Consumers young & old are embracing the newest trend by attending scratch academies, purchasing mixers, turntables and headphones. Not only can you learn to become a DJ in your spare time, you can also make your own mixes and share your personalized creations with your friends and family. I think your readers would be interested in learning how they can begin DJing. I have provided all the information you will need below, including: products, industry terms and tips from professional DJs.
This sort of mass e-mailing, which serves no real purpose whatsoever, just goes to show how retarded the internet has become. The letter that follows is essentially a complete blog post, and provides links to purchase all the pertinent "recreational DJ" gear, already formated for Blogger so you can just copy and paste.
In my opinion (ho, ho, ho) there are three viable forms of blogging. They are the index site (like MatrixSynth) which is a clearing house for material of a particular well-defined subject, the op-ed like this site, where the audience is visiting because the author makes a spectacle of himself, and the magazine blog, like CDM (and to a lesser extent MusicThing), where each posting could easily lay in a print magazine.
All other forms of blogs seem to run the gamut from faintly annoying to out-and-out bait 'n' switch ad farms. The letter above and its attendant pre-made post are obviously designed for the latter. These "How To Get Rich On The Intardtubes" motherfuckers are, of course, perfectly welcome to their corner of the 'web, but they can seriously leave me the fuck out of it. So, Breen Halley of the Max Borges Agency, when you google yourself on your lunch break and this post comes up, it will hopefully serve to reiterate my earlier direct reply that you need to update your fucking address book, titface.
And the entire semi-professional audio community breathed a sigh of relief. Luckily, while I was driving about the Northwest, Adam was hard at work, and Kombinat is nearing completion. We should have all major coding done today, and all that is left are the usual tweaks and touch-ups. I wager the Windows side will be out for testing tomorrow, and the OSX versions by the end of the week. Theoretically.
In other news, I'm gonna pick up a new 2-channel mic pre, I think, and I'm going to sell my Averil 312a. So if you're interested in purchasing same, don't be afraid to drop me a line. It'll be a week or so before I can part with it. It is the single-channel version of this, with external power supply, of course. So if you're looking for a single API-flavored channel, you could do far worse. I'm thinking $850, but I'm open to trades. Always looking for the analog, naturally.
And finally, to all commercial enterprises, be it software, t-shirts, albums, musical instruments, your mom, whatever the fuck: stop sending me press releases. This isn't a news site, and I could give a fuck if you've revved your PoleSmoker 2000 to version 2.04b. I especially don't like it when you say "I'm sure the readers of your site will be interested in our new PoleSmoker 2000!" No, you're not. In fact, you don't have the faintest idea what the readers of this site are interested in. I barely do, you presumptuous twat.
I'm going to Idaho for the weekend. Gonna visit the mom for Mothers Day, and like that. So I'll be away from the interwebs for two days, and I swear, if you guys have a party in here while I'm gone, you're grounded for the rest of the year.
As an aside, does anybody have a copy of Rez for PS2 lying about they don't want any more? Drop me a pm or email if you do. I can, of course, easily get one off eBay, but I'd rather not use that service unless I absolutely had to, because it'd probably take three or four tries to actually get a copy, but I'd have to pay every time.
So talk amongst yourselves. What's the ideal music game?
Just a quick note that our co-lo company is taking our box down for maintenance tonight at 11pm PST (GMT -8). They say it could be off as long as seven hours, but more likely just a couple. All posiNET sites will be affected. This will also affect Audio Damage, obviously, since it's the same computer. So no need to panic.
I wonder if the "maintenance" is the same as I do here. When I do "maintenance" on my PC, which is the only time it is ever turned off, it involves laying it on its side and vacuuming out all the cat hair. I hope that's not what's happening at our co-lo center.
I have to be honest and say I'm actually a bit surprised that we made it through that entire conversation in the thread prior to this one and I didn't have to delete a single comment. There was one misinformed statement that had me hovering my mouse over the [KILL!] button, but I'm loath to delete anything just because I don't agree with it. That's probably a good habit to have, since I'm always right and most others are therefor not. Ho, ho, ho.
One other point to make before we move on: that post excited not the most comments we've had in a conversation on AI, but certainly the most rapid response. There were 40 comments in that thread in the first three hours of its existence. If you read many music blogs and forums (I assume you do; I read 'em all, for the most part) you'll notice that sort of thing is unusual in the extreme. Obviously, I want to get traffic to my site, like anyone else that craves attention and manifests that craving in this particular fashion. It would thus behoove me to continue posting topics that excite responses like that one; this is easier than it sounds, because it really isn't hard to elicit the ShitCock response. All you have to do is set reason and thoughtfulness aside.
However...
The simple fact of the matter is that staying on top of a thread like that can quickly get tiring, and the whole site would rapidly turn in to something akin to the DailyKos. While I religiously read the postings on the front of that site, I hardly ever look at the comments, because it's just short pithy remarks. Putting up a thoughtful response to something and not just saying "SHITCOCK!" requires the understanding that you're not gonna get lost in the shuffle. Since I prefer that manner of discourse here, I'll try to limit that sort of thing. I think everyone would be happier.
Keeping that in mind, I'll do the polar opposite right now. This is not really an open thread. I'd like you to post a simple thought on where you see the music industry (or at least the part that is involved with manufacturing and selling music) in 10 years. Perhaps we can build a consensus that we can all hew to, in order to stop reacting to change, and start making change. I'll start:
In the year 2018, I'll submit that there are essentially no brick-n-mortar music stores other than specialty shops for vinyl and what-not. The entirety of music sales will be handled by iTunes and its mimics, including Amazon, and will take place digitally. Most music sales in that regard will be back catalogue, whatever pop music is in 2018, and R&B. The large independent record label (I'm loath to use TVT as an example, so we'll use Anti or Warp) will cease to exist, because it is financially unwieldy for an independent artist to expect to actually sell his output. All mid-sized artists (as opposed to those that play at Madison Square Garden) and lower will just put up their output essentially as they create it, for free, and their personal incomes will be realized either by touring, merch sales, or bartending. In short, the era in which a small or mid-sized artist can reasonably expect to sell records in order to make records ended on May 3rd, 2008.
Okay, your turn. Where will this business be in 2018?
I gotta say I don't have a lot of love in my heart of hearts for NIN this particular minute. We (and by "we" I mean the group of people that work in the music industry that aren't insane or blinded by money) have been working hard these last few years to teach consumers, those fickle little creatures, that the cost of music isn't inherent to that little round piece of plastic it used to come on, but rather that it had an intrinsic value.
In one fell swoop on Monday, Mr. Reznor pooped all that hard work right out his ass by offering the latest crop of NIN recordings for free, no strings attached. On the one hand I say more power to him; it's great that he has a revenue stream based upon mechanical royalties from previous recordings and touring that can provide him and his dependents with the means to pay the rent. God bless.
On the other hand, it tells the consumer, who really isn't all that sharp when you get down to it, that we weren't that serious when we said "hey, those plastic disks aren't where the value is; rather, it rests in what's stamped in to them." The consumer isn't that swift on the uptake, I'll grant, but he has a good eye for bullshit when he sees it.
Now, I'm perfectly aware that all this is just pissing in the wind. Music itself may not have a desire to be free, but consumers sure do want it to be free. So this is really more of a vent than a question in and of itself. But let me posit the following, and I'll leave it alone:
I've heard the demo tape that Mr. Reznor sent to Wax Trax! before he got signed to TVT. Wax Trax! passed on it. TVT heard something (which oddly went against their normal habit of not hearing anything) and sent Mr. Reznor off to England to hang out with John Fryer, Adrian Sherwood, and Keith LeBlanc, and then we get Pretty Hate Machine.
So, logically assuming that Mr. Reznor would not have his current fame without the success of Pretty Hate Machine, and logically assuming that he could not have afforded the services of the producers that worked on his first album without the financial backing of TVT, one is only left with the assumption that the free music world to which Mr. Reznor aspires precludes the creation of his catalog which supports this aspiration. I can't come to any other conclusion, frankly.
(And to those that would take issue with the preceding paragraph, I direct you to the Tackhead album "Tackhead Tape Time," wherein you will find the Adrian Sherwood/Keith LeBlanc track "Reality." Other than Gary Clail's robo-vocals, this is essentially "Down In It" instrumental, and pre-dates "Down In It" by three years. "Down In It" was, of course, the track that put NIN on the road to where they are now.)
Adam is back from vacation, so that means I am too, and we're slogging away at Kombinat today. I made a little MP3 that demonstrates some of the more heavy-handed techniques available in Kombinat. The sample is a 2-bar loop without Kombinat on it, then eight repeats of the same 2-bar section, and each repeat has a different flavor of Kombinat destruction.
I won't go in depth as to what each section consists of, as since you don't have the plug in front of you, you can't really follow along, but all the available types are used in some combination, as is the filter and compressor. These samples are neither displaying Kombinat's ability to work as a subtle carving tool or its ability to reduce a signal to what is, for all intents and purposes, a continual stream of ones, as far as the DAW is concerned. They are somewhat middle-of-the-road, at least as far as this plugin goes.
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