papa's got a brand new cab

My uncle Steve just finished building be a traditional lower (slant) cabinet for my Moog.
It's already been loaded with some CP panels, mostly blanks and soon I will begin populating it from modules I have stored away and from my other cabinets.

Ultimately, when I actually pull everything together the system will be in the IIIC/55 range with a bunch of bells and whistles. Both oscillator banks are there and accounted for and it will indeed be really modular, aside from the filter switching.

I don't have the energy tonight to start taking apart everything so I will sit back, rest on my laurels and stare gratified in to this cabinet as I drink Guinness.

A dream come true and several years of non stop searching for loose modules as well as pestering Mike Bucki for custom stuff, etc. I'm still missing a few minor things like extra VCAs and a second mixer but I have leads and am already beginning to real stuff in.

Ode to Ultimate Support

Over many years I have loved, hated and relied on Ultimate Support modular stands and "Thinker Toys". Because I have been so deeply invested in various custom stands, bags of tubing and boxes of connectors that I don't recall buyingt I somehow missed it when the company discontinued the line. Still a little bit of me died when I heard.

When my friend LH finally had decided enough was enough and the two things leaving his work space were Ultimate Support and milk crates I ended up with the former. In fact, truth be told he still occasionally finds more nests of parts and delivers them to me.

As I continuously try and find some sort of peace and balance in not having a real studio of my own I am always looking to find a way to streamline and improve work flow, one thing usually comes to mind Ultimate Support. Alas I now know that if I need a specific sized tube or an extra whatever I have to just wing it.

I have already bought a bunch of 3/16th hex keys so I have ample supply of those BUT I still haven't found a hardware store substitute for the tubing. Dear reader, hip me to that please.

In the mean time I will as LH to look behind the sofa, check under the family gazebo and look out in his storage for another supply of the gift that keeps on giving.

Help STEIM

http://www.steim.org/steim/funding_in_danger/

Where's the Sound Lens?

Toshio Iwai has been a very busy guy.

A few years back Nintendo released the psychedelic game for DS Electroplankton to a confused universe. It's an inteactive piece of art mixed with a game and a musical instrument much in the same style of his marvel the Tenori-On which has finally started selling in limited editions worldwide.

The "game" has no winning or losing, just like real life and it suggests a interesting possibility of creating art that functions and is interactive to the point of being a virtually passive element in the process. Meanwhile the new and more expensive Tenori-On takes a similar role but in the form of a MIDI step sequencer with an amazingly elegant interface. Both seem to be the toys of the future but specifically for the musically inclined.

I have been inspired enough to wonder and indeed hope that the project called the Sound Lens will also appear in the form of a usuable tool and work of art.

Thank you Toshio Iwai for seeing the space in between the lines of instrument and entertainment, tool and toy.

Max 5

Somehow as I was here fucking around trying to get an old G4 iMac to be usable as something Cycling 74 released Max 5.

I had vowed that I would buy a new Mac when this came out. Of course my research had been so frustrating since Apple refuses to have a mid range desktop machine.

Anyway, Cycling's release is a big deal and it marks a similar change as MSP's original release.

Good going guys! Don't worry about all of the mess in my house over computer corpses.

Time marks failure

The other day out of some masochistic impulse I put on a album I did in 2000 and much to my shock the disk began to skip. I checked for scratches and dirt but the disk was clean.

I put on someone else's work and no errors appeared. I replaced it with one from my label from 2001 and that one also skipped. I began to panic and quickly grabbed one from 2006 and it played fine, the same went for one from 1998.

With two disks, isolated. I sort of wondered whether the machine I was playing them in had become picky. Although not a technical nor logical explanation it does happen.

Let's step back for a moment. Since 1998 almost all music on my label has been sold online and in person as a packaged & burned CD-R. Although there have been a few releases where traditional manufacturing was done due to a slightly larger demand, the general rule is that my audience is small and technology finally got to a point where I didn't need to store slow moving product.

In that time I have never received complaints of quality nor failure, although when I first started to do product as a made to order thing more then a few folks thought I was nuts.

Did I miss something?

This has to be a prank.

I was under the impression that the music industry was in the process of a significant change and for the most part everyone kind of knew there was much less money being spent in all directions.

I also thought that we all are now in agreement that there has always been too much bloat and we had to cut all that out in order for creative professionals to get paid.

Did something change or are these folks operating in a totally different universe where bands actually have more holes for corporate predictors to fuck em?

Stuff and more stuff

It's amazing how stuff breeds other stuff for people like me.

A few years ago I stepped away from buying stompboxes to concentrate on building my modular Moog, of course I have to continue feeding my other modulars as well. I can see my Wiard and Frac doubling and my Euro continuning to bloom as the Moog reaches something like a cross between a III and a 55.

Meanwhile I am still looking for the right P-bass and there is always a few more mics that I must have in order to be ready to record period accurate stuff.

It's a sickness like any other addiction and what's worse is I can justify it as long as there is an album at the end of the year.

The Egg is dead long live the Egg

The Egg has been the nickname for my eMac, which I used for light work and interweb stuff.

I was tired of the space it took up and the monitor jumping and I decided to pull it's hard drive and plant it in my Mirror Door G4. I have to say the implant worked great, I now have two bootable internal drives (which probably isn't the best idea) and everything is in one nice safe place.

It's a reminder of how easy the Macs are to use, fuck around with and survive.

I wonder when I'll be posting that this whole thing was a horrible idea.

The Egg Will Die

The clock has begun to tick. Soon I shall crack open The Egg.
I will harvest it's innards and toss away it's empty shell.