choonzer

somebody posted this on FB earlier, but i'm reposting here



i listened to some other tracks from the album, and they're not all so blatantly BOC inspired, but they're all pretty pleasant submerged house / UKF stuff with synths that are all type of warbly. check it.

drum sequencing plus more gear nerdery as requested

So I've been working on some tracks lately, and I've been having a hard time finding an ideal workflow for sequencing drums. I've been working a lot in Ableton, but I've been doing drums mostly in Logic once I bounce down some synth parts and start mixing them (I love Live for working out ideas quickly and non-linearly, but all the bread and butter stuff like EQ, compression, reverb, etc. is a lot better in Logic IMO). I really like Ultrabeat as a sequencer for drums, but it's not nearly as good at working with samples as Battery, and it's hard to get past much more than a two or four bar pattern using that interface. What I've been doing sometimes is coming up with patterns in Ultrabeat with some stock sounds, then dragging the MIDI pattern to a Battery track and mapping it to my real sounds. I like using the piano roll editor to slide notes around and fine tune the pattern, but for just writing beats, I really like the step sequencer feel.

Understandably, this work flow is kind of annoying, but I wind up coming up with better patterns, I think, than I would with the piano roll editor; I wind up spending too much time trying to remember what note triggers what sound working that way. Unfortunately, there's no way to get realtime midi output from Ultrabeat. So I was just wondering what solutions you guys use for drum sequencing. I think I'm going to download the Geist demo and give it a try; I just really don't feel like learning a new piece of software, since I'm using software less and less lately.

On the gear lust tip, I've been looking at these two bitches lately:

The Jomox Mbrane - single voice analog drum synth

and


The MFB-503, an analog drum machine with programmable voices. I saw one of these at this local store that carries a bunch of refurbished analog synths and drum machines.

I still think the Machinedrum looks pretty rad, but I don't imagine I'd use the built-in sequencer much, so I just want something I can get some ballsy analog drum sounds from.

Also, I picked up one of these lately:

It's a German-made analog 303 clone with midi (just note messages) and a filter you can run external audio through. I saw it on Craigslist for $100. I could hardly find anything about it online, but I went to try it out, and it sounded good enough for a $100 analog monosynth. I can't say how close it sounds to a real 303, but it's certainly a usable piece of kit, and I thought I'd hip you guys to it as I don't think there's a big demand for them, so you might could find it on CL, a pawnshop, Ebay etc.

stoopid retarded

the lineup at bloc next march is bonkers.

it's like an artificial intelligence reunion or somethin....

and these dudes barely ever do gigs, much less all under one roof:

aphex
lfo
b12
global goon
speedy j
more....

if you can find reasonable airfare (i can't seem to), it is well worth the trip.

i went a few years ago and it was tight. try to hide the fact that you're american, though....the

brits, especially the ones at bloc, file us under "douchebag" by default (and we are).

gear lust part 50/11

For real analog polysynthness, holy crapstain that's cheap. Basically 4 of the Mophos Alex posted about earlier in one box.







Still way infatuated with this thing. Almost have the impetus saved up to purchase one.







Hey, Roland made a new VA synth with knobs and shit that doesn't look like it was made for 3rd graders, and isn't ridiculously large. Got to play with it a bit at a music store today. It's not bad. the voice selection switches that let you either edit one voice or any combination of them is kind of sweet, but you tend to get lost a little with the knobs' previous positions when you change groupings. It probably wouldn't be that bad after actually using it for a while, and I obviously didn't read the manual or anything.




In the non-plastic-and-metal realm, this is a pretty straightforward, cheap, and CPU-efficient plugin that sounds pretty boss. Or deck, or phat, or whatever the fucking kids are saying nowadays. Not that I would know, but my less law-abiding friends tell me crax are easy to find for both platforms. The built-in effects are kinda crap, but that's not the reason to use it. The reason to use it is 8 unison voices x 4 oscillators = 32 waveforms that'll make your shit thicker than Orson Welles, and the buttery (for a plugin) filters.

C'mon peeps. Share your funtime friends / wannabe fuck buddies. And I mean that metaphorically. Don't make me start doing some of my font diarrhea.

Living in the Internet is Weird and Surreal

movin' like bernie, as in "weekend at bernie's"

Living in NC is Weird and Surreal

This thing was ten foot tall.  He had beautiful hair.

Living in the Midwest is Weird and Surreal

I should have called this post "Give me mo Cowbell!!!!"  This is a photo I took somewhere in Missouri of a full cattle truck going to market with a cowbell tied to the bumper.  Beef, it's what's for dinner.

Wu-Tang Muppet Babies