NAMM Oddities

Mr. Barry Wood's the Other Room treats us once again to the best of the odd.
This is the only thing I personally wait for during NAMM season.
Go get you newest NAMM Oddities!

Minimoog is a beautiful thing

For anyone who bought their Minimoog back when they didn't cost a whole lot and weren't worth sending to "someone" to be fixed it is either a bad memory or an ongoing love affair.

I bought mine for about $300 from Hirsch Gardner at Daddy's Junky Music (MAIL ORDER!) around 1990. If I remember correctly he was selling it for a friend, he was told something about how it had had some sort of Tom Oberheim upgrade, whatever that might have been has been lost in my memory banks.

The unit sounded great from the get go. The keys a bit squirrelly and the tuning took a moment. I think a previous owner had been a rock star or maybe even a working musician but it hadn't been used in a while.

Over the years I have never done anything but play, clean and every blue moon or so calibrate and surprisingly it seems to get better with age.

I'm sure this instrument could use a professional overhaul and in doing so we might find out what weird mods by previous owners. This being my Minimoog and the only one I have ever owned, I probably wouldn't be able to spot some differences.

I had this on my mind today because the pitch wheel had been bonkers for a while and I finally cleaned it up and now it can do what it's supposed to. It is a great instrument and despite what limitations it may have, it belongs solely in the same class as the few real classics that have maintained their thaang since time began.

Over & out...

when shit isn't bad enough

Articles like this one in Rolling Stone Magazine, who have always been known to be really "with it" speculate about the so called volume wars.

These "wars" that producers and labels are supposedly in to fight for our attention are causing mastering engineers to squeeze out much of the sonic detail and frequency content by over using compression. This "battle" that is raging is apparently due to the fact that so many people are downloading their music as MP3 files and the file format has a limited bandwidth.

O.K. so we're all clear on this concept that is being put out there just as we are all clear that the MP3 is the devils tool, blah blah blah.

So what I don't understand is why the fuck anyone would even care when the standard for compact discs hasn't improved since they introduced it in 1982 (yep nineteen eighty two) -check wikipedia and see what they say.

16 bit is shit, it wasn't good sounding when it came out and the only reason people aren't complaining now is that their fucking ears have been scared from listening to music in this crumpled up tin woodsman kind of way.

-Generations of mutants can't tell that they aren't hearing most of what they paid for and should be hearing.

So next time some duche bag brings up your stolen MP3s or how loud the new TJ Blowyouz disk is, you just tell em that you are waiting for a higher bit rate before you commit to dancing.

studios?

I will pretty much use any excuse to record with my band. Since we don't leave anywhere near each other it is only an occasion that can bring us together. My upcoming 40th birthday is just such a thing.

Once I got a sense that my somewhat unwilling comrades were willing to indulge my artistic fantasies once again, I began to look into studios.

With the proliferation of cheap studio gear filling people's homes and the real studios needing work I was pretty convinced the minimal requirements that I have to cut the basic tracks would be easy to meet and I would have a number of studios to choose from.
-Hell no!

Amazingly concepts like live drums, isolation and decent mixer are just old fashioned. I was picturing bringing in a portable set up, using their space, drums and montoring -nope.

O.K. Now bare with me for a moment.

All I want to do is record three people. One playing bass, one playing guitar, one playing drums (small kit -two mics). So if my math is correct that would be four tracks plus a fifth as a guide vocal.

I would like to record straight to PT (Mac) with a safety two track mix going to DAT or something and maybe have everything bussed to 8 Track half inch (as if that was even an option)

Somebody send me a sign.

Death to the 8500

After over 10 years I finally stopped trying to justify keeping my 90's PowerMac 8500 which I bought when Cycling 74 released MSP. It was the first application I needed a PowerMac for. David Zicarrelli actually went to the trouble of helping me choose a computer from the newish used models. -That should tell you how small and how supportive the Max world was at that time.

Despite being one of the worst designs Apple had ever come up with in terms of the ease or lack there of with which one could open up the computer and update parts, it was a sturdy and great computer.

Tonight I wrestled out the hard drives, the Sonnet card which I had used to run the machine as a G3, the USB card and of course the Audiomedia III (which I never felt sounded as good as the II). After that stuff was sort of dusted off and bagged I brought the carcass down to the basement.

I have to kind of wonder whether Mac users tend to have not developed past the anal phase. I don't know whether anyone has looked at computer user profiles to see which one is more likely to use a computer long past it's prime but I bet it's the same one who save gross unmentionables in jars.

BTW I have updated a few times over the years, I just kept finding extra uses for the 8500.

Next I plan on PIMPING MY EMAC.

Modularus Uber Alles

It's easy to get sucked into the world of the modular synthesizer. I find that unlike the music one makes with many other electric and electronic instruments, one has a very active duel role as listener and creator.

I sometimes drift to sleep having thoughts of wires and dream systems that are often seemingly as close as being just behind the next paycheck...

"I wonder how many Blacet Dark Star Chaos modules is necessary to achieve a full patchable arcade of overkill." I actually think this kind of thing.

Blacet has been a long standing provider of interesting and good sounding modules. Some like the afore mentioned DSC have become discontinued and coveted. Others still in production are compared quite favorably to more expensive competitors.

Cynthia Webster has her well acclaimed Zero Oscillator and Peter Grenader has his PlanB model 15 many of us are still waiting for the new oscillator from Livewire looks really cool. I think 2 of each would probably do the trick.

A lot of people seem to think that designer Mike Brown is underestimating how long it will take to get it into the market.

The same prediction seems to be made about every designer with the exception of Dieter Doepfer he is known to deliver pretty regularly.

On the other end of the spectrum Wiard flies it's freak flag and I love getting weird with them. I do feel that I'm about a hand full of additional modules away from maximum basics.

It's hard not to get dragged in to the bigger is better fantasy. In fact it's almost pointless to avoid it. Modular is mean to be big and complex.

Max 5, AES and upward.

I'm going to the AES convention this year, under disguise of course. It's funny to go since I have in many ways stopped being on the same page as most manufacturers and it's been a headache since the late 90's to see what kind of crap the big boys roll out.

Don't get me wrong. I love to get schwag and talk gibberish to my fellow audio people but fuck if shit hasn't gone in the wrong direction for quite a while.

For what it's worth I couldn't have picked a better year to take a fist full of Advil and go. My dear friend Alan is going to be at the Tascam booth showing off his Gigasampler chops and of David Zicarelli's has just announced Max 5 which is an important release for Cycling74 and Max/MSP users.

I remember talking to David on the eve of the MSP release and getting personal computer advice because this release was the reason that I moved from a 68 machine to a PPC Mac. I would have dragged that change out for God knows how long otherwise if it hadn't been for Max/MSP

I suspect the release of Max 5 will probably be the reason that I need to finally buy a new computer. Hell, I already have the wii controller ready to go.

Maybe AES will not suck so bad. Maybe it will convince me that I really need a Tenori On.

So much porn

Trying to write about The Wiard is not easy without falling into dumb lines which sound more like porno then descriptions of a musical instrument.

I will have to state first that the excellent designs warrant the exclusivity of it's price tag, which isn't bad when you count out each modules function. I know people who won't buy boutique audio products because they'd rather spend money on vintage stuff that isn't as good either in sound or in construction.

Up and running I was able to get a wide range of moving sounds that creep along and change timing in ways that I haven't been able to pull off on other gear. The only short coming I could come up with was that two of the modules were much older and didn't include the in/out arrows that are on everything else.

After several mind boggling patches that were complex and sounded great I pulled the patch chords and experimented with the modules in more traditional ways. each one out performed in it's expected purpose's and excelled in unexpected ways.

The Wiard isn't for everyone, if you want an organ or a piano move along. This instrument is probably a great choice for people who want to carve out their own sound and are looking for something that can take them to space.

wii are now ready to continue

Not that I'm a laptop performer by any means but I am a Max/MSP user and that makes me curious about stuff like the wii remote. Ideally, I would be using it in a situation where my laptop was handling certain functions and was more or less off to the side. But fuck I just love alternative controllers anyway.

no studio

It's been about 5 months since I packed up my gear. Longer since I stopped operations.

Having a private or public studio space is something I miss. Although I continue to create music I keep feeling like I'm in a holding pattern in this part of my life.

I think about getting an office or sharing studio space with either a band or someone in the business who I know and trust.

This time away has made me rethink some issues in workspace design and even recording format.

I've been pushed into this weird space of just being a musician and less of a technician (except when people call for advice). I like just being the artist, whether that is a clearly defined job or not, it's still much more of who I am am and how I function then anything else.

I hope I make some changes soon.