An interesting article in the British newspaper the Daily Mail says a study showed that listening to happy music, like John Denver, can improve one's health by increasing blood flow, while unhappy, or aggressive music like heavy metal may have a detrimental effect because it tends to cause blood vessels to contract in the same way they do when a person is under stress. I'm not sure what's worse... dying early of a heart attack from listening to cool music, or living a long life full of John Denver music. What kind of sick choice is that?
Saturday, November 15, 2008
In that case, I think I'll choose an early death...
An interesting article in the British newspaper the Daily Mail says a study showed that listening to happy music, like John Denver, can improve one's health by increasing blood flow, while unhappy, or aggressive music like heavy metal may have a detrimental effect because it tends to cause blood vessels to contract in the same way they do when a person is under stress. I'm not sure what's worse... dying early of a heart attack from listening to cool music, or living a long life full of John Denver music. What kind of sick choice is that?
Friday, November 14, 2008
Señor Coconut Interview
Via guilty76am on YouTube. Interview with Uwe Schmidt of Señor Coconut (also Atom™, Lassigue Bendthaus, Lisa Carbon, Flanger, and about 8 million other projects...)
Cheap CD-R's on Ebay
Here's something practical for once instead of crazy gear. You can never have too many blank CD's... Check it out...
Thursday, November 13, 2008
New Massive Video Tutorial & Free Patches
Via a story posted on CreateDigitalMusic:Peter Dines presents yet another helpful video tutorial on Native Instruments awesome Massive softsynth, this one detailing feedback, routing, and modulation. He also includes the patches he uses in the tutorial as free downloads. Massive has slowly but surely become one of my favorite softsynths, but it wasn't until I really started programming it myself that I realized how awesome it truly is. It goes to show that with any synth, the presets usually only hint at the true power a synth has. To get the most out of them, you really need to roll up your sleeves and "get up in them guts".
Bands Faking It...
Scratch what I said about not having any posts for the next couple of days. I didn't realize I could schedule posts for future dates... very handy! Anyway, as mentioned in the last post, my band is playing a show tonight in Los Angeles. As an electronic band, it's obviously not possible for us to play every single note live, but I've got a drummer and a keyboard player who I think add a lot to the show. Sure, sometimes we screw up, or sometimes I get sick and my voice sounds like crap, but that's part of the appeal of actually playing live - that risk that something might go wrong. Sure, it can jangle your nerves a bit, but I think it translates in to a special kind of energy that is lacking if you don't. Not all bands see it this way, though, and I've lost count of how many bands I've seen play where everything is canned. With that in mind, I give you this short-lived blog consisting of YouTube clips of techno acts being caught in the act of doing their best Marcel Marceau impressions...
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
No Posts for a Couple Days...
Just a note to let everyone know there most likely won’t be any posts for the next couple of days while my band heads to Los Angeles to play a show. If you happen to be in the area, by all means come on down! Tickets are available at the door. Here’s the scoop:
Assemblage 23 w/ Broken Fabiola & Retractor Los Angeles, California November 13th, 2008 Klub Terminal @ Leonardo's 831 S. La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, CA Admission is $15. 18+ to get in. Doors are at 8PM
UPDATE: Actually, there will still be posts in the next couple of days. I didn't realize you could schedule posts ahead of time.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
New Monosynth from Analog Solutions
Analog Solutions has released the Leipzig-K a brand new all analog monosynth keyboard. This looks great, and the price is not bad either considering what some 30 year old monosynths are still going for. Here are the details from the Leipzig page:
"KEY FEATURES OF LEIPZIG-k
Pure analogue voice circuitry
Fat Moog style filter
Velocity sensitive keyboard
CV/Gate outputs, so can be used as a 1V/octave CV controller keyboard for your modular system
CV/Gate inputs to voice circuit so can be controlled by an analogue sequencer or similar
All jack sockets are 6.35mm (1/4" 'big' jacks)
Mod Wheel
Pitch Bend Wheel
Performance section (mod wheel control of LFO2 - i.e. vibrato/wahwah)
Pure vintage style inspired design
Lots of blue LEDs!
2 VCOs with Glide/Portamento and Sub-VCOs.
Plenty of modulation routing possibilities.
Extra tone controls and circuits for more sound variety e.g. LFO, CrossMod.
Rugged steel construction
'vintage' wood design.
Spun aluminium topped knobs
LCD for MIDI set-up editing
MIDI In for software sequencer control of CV/Gate
MIDI Thru
MIDI Out: pitchbend, mod wheel, velocity and note data is transmitted. Local on/off feature
The Leipzig-k keyboard design brief was simple; design a keyboard in the true spirit of vintage keyboard monosynths. There's plenty of rack analogues and digital modelling keyboard synths around, but very few new true analogue keyboards. We aimed to design a keyboard monosynth that looked like it has been beemed back from the past. True, it has an LCD to edit the MIDI functions, but why make life hard! Thick wooden end panels and top panel wood and aluminium spun knob-caps add to the effect. Details such as this don't come cheap, but the added cost of the hardware to get the right hardware was not omitted or the design compromised. I wanted to design a synth that truly looked the part and had all those classic vintage synth details, and no expensive or time has been spared to bring that. The quality of design, workmanship and detailing is all of top quality. The case is rugged 1.2mm steel, thick wood sides, powder coated metal, silk-screened legend, aluminium apped knobs and more.
So Leipzig looks the part, but it sounds good too. Pure analogue throughout. Discrete transistor, resistor, capacitor design. The only ICs are as you would expect; op-amps and transconductance amps. Of course there is digital circuits; the MIDI circuits, but I think you can forgive us for that! It's somehow comforting to know that if you open up this synth you will see thousands of discrete components and not just some giany DSP chip! If oyu had the knowledge (and were prepared to lose your warranty) then you could open up the synth and circuit-bend it as you wish, disect your way into the sound or CV path.
The Leipzig-k is more than just a Leipzig rack with a keyboard. An extra LFO/VCA has been added. The depth of the LFO is controlled via the Mod Wheel. A headphone output has been added. CV/CV2/Gate inputs and outputs making this an ideal analogue synth controller keyboard."
Monday, November 10, 2008
Rare Oberheim DPX1 'Universal' Sample Player on Ebay
I totally forgot they even made this. The Oberheim DPX1 was a sample player that allowed you to load sample disks in a multiple formats including E-mu Emulator 2, Sequential Prophet 2000, 2002, 2002+, Ensoniq Mirage, and Akai S900. It had a whopping 1 meg of sample memory, and you can't edit the sounds you load into it, but if you come across some ancient sample disks in a dusty corner of the attic, this machine will probably play it.
Check it out...
The Tour Bible
When my band tours Europe, we hire a tour booker and manager, mainly due to the language barrier that can sometimes be an issue. But when we tour the United States, we book and manage our own tours. This is obviously a lot of work, but it saves money, and at the end of the day, if something goes wrong, we know it was due to our own screw-ups and not someone else's.
A large part of what makes for a successful tour is organization. The more information you have at your fingertips, the less likely it is you'll find yourself in a stressful situation. To this end, every time my band tours, we bring along what we call our 'tour bible'. This is simply a huge 3-ring binder containing all the info relevant to the tour. I can't stress enough how helpful this is. What info yours contains is up to you, but here is how we set up ours... (The binder is divided up by each city, using dividers to keep everything organized.)
• Copies of each of the contracts. You do have contracts, right?
• A master phone list with the names and phone numbers of each promoter and venue. Other helpful phone numbers include any rental companies you used for vehicles or trailers, friends in each city, your insurance company, your merchandising or record companies, and AAA's number if you have it (well worth it!)
• Mapquest directions from hotel to hotel (most hotels offer booklets with listings for all their branches in each state so you can find one ahead of time), and from the hotel to the venue. It's a good idea to have either a dedicated GPS navigator or one on your cell phone, as sometimes online directions are inaccurate, or you might encounter construction that makes the suggested online route impossible, but having Mapquest directions is a helpful backup if you are in areas where there is no cell reception. (And where this is might surprise you. Downtown NYC can be a nightmare given all the tall buildings...)
• We usually don't bother making reservations for our hotel rooms (we prefer to book our own instead of having the promoter do it), but in large cities, it is always a good idea to make reservations, so in these cases, printouts of our reservation confirmations are included.
• A merch sheet for each city with sections for each merch item (with the price listed next to each). This way the merch person can simply make a mark in the appropriate section each time an item sells. This makes it easy to double check that the merch sold matches the amount of cash onhand, and if you use a program like QuickBooks (highly recommended), you can easily keep track of inventory, so you will know at an instant how much of each item is onhand, and when you might need to reorder.
• On a related note, we print out tons of price labels to display on the merch itself. Travel takes its toll on stuff like this, so having back-ups is important.
• If you have band members or crew members who need to fly in to or out of the starting/ending location of the tour, it's not a bad idea to have copies of their reservations.
What you include in your own tour bible is up to you, but the more info it contains, the easier life will be on tour. Even if something seems excessive, include it anyway. You'll never regret having too much info, but having too little can really put a damper on things. One final note... the name 'tour bible' is no coincidence. Treat it as if it was sacred. Make sure it is in a safe place at all times, and always confirm you have it with you. It's not a bad idea to have all the info in the tour bible backed up on an FTP server so you can retrieve it if you lose the real deal, but this should be a last resort only.
Oberheim Xpander on Ebay
I bought one of these years ago. Truly an amazing synth with incredible depth. It's a beast, too. I've lost count of the number of people walking into my studio whose first reaction is, "What the hell is THAT?!"
Check it out...
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