Capture-riffic

Better living through technology.

I see...

The Horror, The Horror

After this many of these, it really _is_ like Groundhog Day, except with a lot more blood. Surprisingly, still creatively fun.

Goings-on

...somewhere between what was, what is and what will be soon enough.

"...Since this is an exceptionally bad case of 'old'..."

My Mirage better appreciate the effort it took to get this SE/30's RAM upgraded to a whopping 32mb, PRAM battery changed, HD replaced, System 7.5.3 and Sound Designer Universal installed, just so I can send tiny samples down to it. That's all I have to say.

Mmmmmm, functional

Normally I'd put this in the "who the hell cares?" column, but after searching for an accurately-tracking bass octave divider pedal recently, I came to the rather shocking realization that there appears to be only one on the market currently, despite the fact that this tech has been around for decades at this point. Worth the dosh, this MXR is. Keith Barr originally founded MXR and went on to develop some great things for Alesis in their early days (namely the Midiverb and Midifex)...Even though Dunlop apparently owns the MXR name and products now, this thing lives up to the quality of their classic stuff.

Fail

I suppose if you're gonna have 3 important pieces of gear all fail at
once, it might as well be when you're in between projects, right?

Thank fucking god

It's a pretty barren landscape in the world of high-end hardware reverbs at the moment. Lexicon is now essentially Digitech, it's hard to get parts for a 480, the 960 and TC M6000 are out of production and almost nobody is stepping up to fill the vacuum, except these guys. This is the real, built and priced for professionals and it sounds fantastic.

Let me say this about that

I've always tried to look out for the possibility of new creative/collaborative situations where I saw the opportunity, the underlying idea being that if one can manage to produce some genuinely good work once in awhile, it will somehow balance out the uninspiring bullshit one has to put up with the other 98% of the time. It's a sad moment when your first thought of a potentially exciting collaborative circumstance is immediately quashed by the realization that the person you have in mind has, after many years, finally managed to piss you off to the degree that even your relentlessly idealistic desire to make something good can't overpower the weight of history any longer. It's a threshold I never thought anyone could really make me cross.

I know this isn't exactly a news flash, but it's true-
Humans are poorly designed.

Digital Flotsam

...I just finished a significant amount of work. Now to send it where it's going and start the next chapter of things. In the meantime, it's time for (you guessed it) another narrowly-targeted technology mini-ramble.

It's interesting when random technological detritus from the "obsolete" pile of history can be repurposed in a modern context. Case in point:

Please find enclosed one Oberheim Systemizer. An obscure MIDI box from the late 80s, it allowed an entire studio full of MIDI instruments to be marshaled conveniently and powerfully under the control of one MIDI controller, no matter how unsophisticated that controller was. For up to 16 MIDI instruments you could layer, create keyboard splits, positional and velocity and aftertouch crossfades, as well as a host of other musically powerful functions such as having each successive note you played be sent to a different instrument, just to name one example.

These devices never really caught on at the time- While undeniably powerful, their cryptic programming method (via a cheap two-digit LED display that was common at the time for low-end MIDI devices) and dubious plastic hardware neither won friends nor influenced people. However, this quirky little box has proven interestingly useful lately when brought into the modern world of software instruments- It allows for some fascinating and unpredictable sonic possibilities, and cost precisely $40 on Craigslist. And interestingly, there is no readily available way to achieve the Systemizer's functionality these days without a significant amount of custom programming, which results in a certain potential for interest and uniqueness. Everything old is new again (again.)

Soon the beast will live...

The saga continues.

More is more.

...innit?

Good exists

You just have to wonder what Nikolais would do with today's tech.
Whatever the case, this is fantastic.

..oh.

In the center of this photo is my friend Huanita, surrounded by a few of her friends.They live in Rio- This was taken on the beach at 7am or thereabouts. What does this have to do with anything? Strictly speaking, nothing...but as I've been living the vampire nocturnal ivory tower existence lately, the sheer "otherness" compared to my current day-to-day almost shocked me somehow. Her smile speaks volumes. Apparently they had me in mind (I'm told) when this was taken. Hu, if you're reading this, thanks for the window into an alternate reality.

The future of the past is getting scary

Depending on how long you've been reading this...whatever-this-is, you may or may not know that I tend to collect vintage gear which gets used heavily in my work. Unfortunately, it is becoming harder and more expensive to keep some of this stuff running these days due to a combination of parts becoming scarce and/or obsolete, lack of skilled techs around who are versed in the care and feeding of these devices and a number of other factors. It's on the verge of becoming a crisis now though, and there are a lot of people using a handful of industry-standard "staple" pieces for which this situation is the case. Strange as it may seem, as advanced as modern software has become lately, the sound of these older hardware machines (from the 80s and beyond) simply hasn't been replicated by plug-ins, at least not yet. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but for the moment it looks a bit grim.

Shameless, outdated self-promotion

I really, _really_ hate it when people use things like Facebook status updates to promote themselves. Wake up, idiots! It's not your website, and people aren't going there specifically to hear about your little career moments, so why annoy everyone? This blog, however, _is_ mine, it's about me and particularly since I never use it to "promote" anything, I figure an occasional me-related link falls firmly within the realm of the appropriate for a forum such at this.

This is old - from earlier this year - but I figured what the hell. The print edition was scarce (ironic, since I wrote for this mag for years and never had trouble finding it on newsstands until I'm finally in the damn thing), so for anyone that missed it and is interested, here you go.

Hit it

Laurie

Electronic music is a bit like sci-fi; The good seems modern forever, while the bad becomes laughable in a cruelly short time. So in keeping with the general intent of this "blog" (ick), here's a reminder of someone doing some great things over 30 years ago on a then-experimental instrument that still sounds fantastic. Watch the performance clip, then the interview- Laurie Spiegel is a thoughtful, articulate speaker and she crystallizes some important aspects of computer music that are still relevant today, 25 years on.

Performance

Interview

Yes, another obso-elite post

This was 16Mb of RAM. Actually, it still is- It's just that this sort of thing has gotten rather considerably smaller in the past 25 years, not to mention cheaper. Still, a fine example of brute-force, macho problem-solving of yesteryear.

How The Mighty Have Fallen

This is a 16-track digital recorder. It weighs hundreds of pounds, is over 5 feet tall and requires its own dedicated power and cooling. It cost over $100,000 in the early 90s. Nowadays, its functions can be eclipsed by your average PC from Best Buy (though admittedly not with the same stellar sound quality), rendering it worthless to pretty much anyone except obsessive eccentrics. Like me. I nearly herniated my entire body moving it.

Speaking of Awesomeness That's Back...

Wal basses are back as well. Fuck yeah. It's rare that anyone bothers or even knows how to make The Real Shit these days, and even rarer that it comes back after going away. Super turbo.

Awesome.

Looks like reports of the SX-70's demise were greatly exaggerated.
These guys seem to have succeeded, at least for now. Click...

Tinkering

Ahhh, surplus electronics. I found an Ensoniq Mirage - an ancient low-fi sampler from about 1985- at a local electronics graveyard for $15, dead. An easy fix and some internet-ordered OS disks later, and I soon had a charmingly grainy, wonderfully limited machine sitting atop my considerably more expensive but equally-ancient Synclavier (see previous post.) The Mirage worked as it should, but I decided to do a mod which would allow it to have multiple outputs, since it was originally a mono-out machine. Several hours, a trip to an electronics shop and a lot of solder connections later, it works; I now have fake stereo! This basically means that the machine's 8 voices will randomly appear on either of between two and eight outputs, depending on what kind of multi-pin connectors I feel like wiring up, which adds A LOT to its usefulness. So while I'm only using the two-output ("stereo") version at the moment, it's a vast improvement. An added bonus of this mod is that it bypasses the Mirage's noisy output summing and taps directly off its eight CEM filter chips, which dramatically reduces the hiss level.

Encouraging.
I'll probably do this mod next.

Photos: Mirage atop Synclavier, Mirage multi-output mod detail.

Profoundly Quaint or Quaintly Profound?

Behold. Astronomically expensive in days of old, this instrument is a gloriously anachronistic testament to an era when men were men and 8-bit FM/Additive Synthesizers were 8-bit FM/Additive Synthesizers. It doesn't get more "base model", primitive or tragically beautiful than a 16-voice Synclav with no sampling or hard disk recording. Totally uncompromising design, great interface, the Big Dog of its time. They don't, wouldn't and simply couldn't afford to make 'em like this anymore.

Pioneering

I first saw this piece called "Sunstone" by Ed Emshwiller back when I was about 15, at the home of a family friend called Howard Wise. I didn't know it at the time, but Howard was an important and forward-looking patron of video artists in NYC; He founded Electronic Arts Intermix in 1971. I'd never seen anything like the piece before; It was my first exposure to pure video art that affected me in a meaningful way, its imagery iconic, dreamlike and memorable. Like electronic music, video art is inexorably linked to fast-evolving technology and as such it is very often prone to becoming hopelessly dated in the wrong hands (there's a quote that reads "Nothing is sadder than yesterday's vision of tomorrow"), but this was different. It was clearly the work of an artist, someone who had a real idea and wasn't just playing around with the newest gear of the day.

I later saw an excerpt of Emshwiller's "Scape-Mates" on PBS around 1981, which I also found evocative and riveting. Worth seeking out if you're into the aesthetic...

There is a Sunstone page by Alvy Ray Smith, one of the creators of the piece's CG, here.

Well?

One of those periods where all seems quiet on the surface, but...etc.
I'm composing for me, mixing for someone else and working on a video game for a High Profile Company™ with an excellent friend.

On another subject, long ago someone warned me, "Never work with your heroes- You'll always end up disappointed for one reason or the other."

Welp, it turned out to be the other.

Anyway. Time to focus on helpful people in my life instead, by way of a random shoutout:

Big up to my homeboy MJ at That Death Star Music Tech Company for years of good-natured support, and to CC for equally good-natured generosity. Much appreciated, y'all.

Old hobbies die hard

It recently occurred to me that handgun and amateur radio enthusiasts generally tend not to fit my political or occupational profile, let alone come from my background. I'm not exactly sure what this means, but it is and has always been a bit weird.

Fuck You, Waves

So.
I recently had a bad experience: I lost a USB copy-protection key containing software authorizations for many of the programs I rely on for my work. Or maybe it was stolen;
This has not yet been determined. The net result was that I was in an unfortunate position -
I had to contact all of the software companies whose product authorizations were contained on the key and see about obtaining replacement authorizations (worth thousands of dollars in total) for my hurriedly-purchased replacement key. My point? It's worth noting that all of the companies were willing to provide replacements for prices ranging from free to modest. All, that is, except for one:

A company called Waves.

I had previously bought one of their packages, costing about $1200, and they of course had a record of this on file. I had reported my lost key missing to the company which makes the key and handles all the coordination of software authorizations to and from their users' keys, and notified Waves of this. However, I was informed that the best they could do on a replacement authorization (which costs them nothing, as it is not a physical product but merely a one-time electronic process) would cost me 50% of the list price of the product I'd purchased ($2000). In other words, $1000. My only recourse, I was told, would be to have already purchased Waves' own insurance policy against key loss or damage, which of course I hadn't known about. What a fucking racket.

This is unacceptable.

In the process of obtaining the replacement authorizations from the various companies, I was warned by many people that Waves would be hardasses and impossible to reason with in my situation, and this proved quite true. As it happens, they are infamous in the industry for this, and now I see why. This approach has made them universally reviled as a company, despite the fact that they make very good products. A lot of people hate them and have subsequently refused to deal with them further. In fact, I was told by my local music shop about a customer of theirs who'd bought $7000 worth of Waves software and had lost his key like I had. The company refused to do anything for him, so he'd given up in disgust and switched to a "cracked" version of the software. While I don't advocate this sort of thing in general, it's not hard to understand in this scenario- A legitimate customer, having paid full price for a completely non-physical product, being treated with absolutely no respect or courtesy whatsoever by the manufacturer.

I believe this attitude will ultimately be Waves' undoing in the long run. You can't survive long-term if your customers hate you, and they've done a lot to create ill will among their user base. The moral of this particular story, however, is insure your damn iLok and try not to lose the fucking thing.

And don't buy Waves products.

Not even a little recession-friendly

These guys are not fucking around. They're going for the jugular-
making THE BEST chocolate ice cream ever made. It's worth noting that they've lost distribution at most supermarkets around town
due to not moving enough units, even the high-end joints, probably
because people have a) never heard of it and b) get instant sticker shock. In fact, the only place you can get it here now is Bristol Farms, which is strictly for the "money no object" set. It's $7 a pint and the most complex, near-hallucinatory chocolate ice cream experience it's possible to have without the addition of actual hallucinogens.
I know the picture shows vanilla, but trust me, it's all about their chocolate varieties. Given the current economic climate, they're probably not long for this world, so track some down before it's too late.

Lately

This is a good record.
It took a lot of work.
Worth it though- Go get it.
















This is a good television show.
Been contributing a few overdubs on various instruments for the composer, Anton Sanko, a longtime friend. I think his scoring on this show is fantastic and has real musical substance, unlike much of what one hears on TV.

Merry Xmas to me

1976, Hughes Aircraft module inside, NOS.
Yeah.