Me and Rachael have already completed a few tracks for Coast Green, and now that I got a bunch of new gear to play with, the last thing which, admittedly, should have been higher up on the priority list, was a pair of good monitors, preferably in the sub $800 range.
I burnt a CD of music from various genres, with different bass levels, and production values, made sure I got up on time, which I certainly didn’t, and took a quick skytrain trip Downtown to play the tunes in the monitors room at the Tom Lee Music store.
Now, I remember that I set a goal to talk more about composing music, or at least be more understandable for the beginners, so I will try to be as less technical as possible.
Continue reading ‘Monitors at Tom Lee Music’
I found this video by mistake. My friend told me to search for “Being Boring” but I found this instead.
Now, allow me to confess that I never really was a Pet Shop Boys fan. In fact, I missed out on most 80’s music, with it being introduced to me (or forced into my ears, rather; at first anyway) lately at work. I despised the reverb snare, but then started recognizing and admiring the unusual atmosphere and airiness behind 80’s records (all of that happened in the past few months, really).
Continue reading ‘Sodom and Gomorrah Show’
I’ve looked at quite a few audio related weblogs, and man, most of them are about synths and software. Who’s gonna actually make music with all that stuff?
So, what I’ll do instead is I will try to talk more about making and analysing (I’ve never thought about it, but it kind of makes sense there is “anal” in “analysing”) music more than talking about gear. I will, of course, still post about weird stuff, can’t do without that, but the idea is to, on occasion, post things that, perhaps, reveal the way the mechanisms behind music work, and/or ways of improving the way they do.
This is more of a resolution to myself, but as to you, here is a rhetorical question - is there such thing as too much punctuation?
A few months ago I subscribed to the eBay “rhodes” RSS feed in Google Reader (it’s pretty neat - do a search for, like, “moog prodigy”, and then you can subscribe to all new postings with that keyword), and during all this time, this one auction for Rhodes kept surfacing, over and over. And every time it would, it would be taken down by eBay before I’d get a chance to even see what it was for. Recently I was finally able to read the item description, and save the page to my HDD, right before it was taken down again.
I am not sure what the deal is, but I have a pretty good feeling it’s a scam, especially the whole “contact me by email” thing. So if you’re on the lookout for one of these beautiful things, which are rediculously overpriced as of late, beware of this!
Just when I thought I was done replacing chips, another one on my Juno chips started acting up. I think I should get one of those rebuilds that last at some point later. However, after getting pissed at the thing for ruining a perfectly good bassline, I cut all the oscillators, and started playing with the weird sounds the self-oscillating dying filter was producing.
There is something unusual about the way it sounds. It’s almost like an encrypted transmission from space. Rather than getting rid of the chip straight away, I sampled it for your (and more importantly, my) pleasure. I’m sure it’ll make its way into some weird sci-fi film, or an Autochre song if nothing else.
Amazing what you can find on CraigsList. It’s like a big dump, full of scams, free Hammonds and pianos, no Wurlitzers or Rhodes, and stuff like this beautiful Casio Rapman.
I dropped a tear of happiness looking at the plastic turntable but the pricetag of over $20 made me decide in favour of a pizza.
In case you were weirded out - I’ve changed some things around.
I’ve been to quite a few weblogs, and most take the time to painstakingly organize each of their posts by categories. You look through the list, and there are like 50 freaking categories.
Let’s get something clear - people don’t surf blogs. They type in a URL, or subscribe to the RSS feed just to make the time pass faster at work or in college. No one’s actually opening up their browser thinking “Okay, tonight I’m going to learn some very useful information from this new weblog I found!” People who want the information will find it through Google, and maybe if they find the weblog itself interesting enough, will subscribe to it, or bookmark it.
Continue reading ‘Blog Categories’
Prodigy Pro’s got a very interesting thread on their board by buttachunk about modding a Tube MP and an MXL 990 to sound “like a $5k+ vocal chain”. Personally, even I, who thinks there are gnomes that move my slippers around the floor at night, find it a bit hard to believe it can sound that good, but at that price tag I’d be grateful if it sounded at least 1.5 times better.
Now I just need to dig out that physics book, and try to remember how to decrypt those schematics. It just feels wrong to miss the vocal chain deal of the millenium. Also, I’m worried that the Internet will implode before I get a chance to act upon this, so I saved the page into an .html file on my HDD. Gullible AND paranoid?!
Found this ad I’ve saved some time ago in the depths of my Documents folder. It’s kind of like going through the stuff in that closet that you look in once a year to find a saw for the Christmas tree. Or a corpse, I don’t know what you need it for.
That folder reminds me of the silly days when computer and Word were synonymous words, and when having a computer at home was like having a monkey. Would crap out on you just about as often too.
Okay, you thought I’m done pimping Coast Green, but you were wrong. I promise I’ll post some more useful articles.
We have a small website up now, with links to the tracks and a paragraph about othe project. We figured that it’s all about the tunes in the first place, and talking about ourselves for two pages would be pompous and unnecessary. Just listen and tell us what you think.
Speaking of that, I have uploaded what I’m pretty sure is a final mix of Life Is. A few synth tweaks, a bunch of new sounds added, and you have yourself a nice little pop track. I personally like it, it’s rather relaxing.
I tried to throw in some unusual but subtle organic sounds in there (and by organic I mean household item sounds), see if you can spot them.
