Waving, Wavering and Wibbling

 Yes, I continue to explore the Wave, conscious that if I did want to return it I have another week or two at most. I think it is probably sensible to keep it if I can just sort the hanging notes. I may even put it back on the Digitone setup and play what I need from it into the 505 rather than sequence it in Cirklon - trouble is it isn't a "tweak and play" synth, and those are the ones I tend to cherish. (Thinking back to things like the Xpander where it really wasn't practical to use due to the way I work.) 

It does sound nice though and the only sensible replacement would be a Waldorf M, which could be like using dynamite to crack a nut. The main question is: do I really want a PPG clone? It's really not a versatile synth at all, far less than I imagined and the sample playback and addition of ring mod and sync don't make a huge difference. So, another grand to do ethereal, ghostly, waily noises or keep this or ditch entirely and go bigger - Iridium maybe? Seems very silly. Maybe sending it back and using my Blofeld for wavetable stuff... 

I think the Wave is a great second keyboard but not an ideal main, if that makes sense. During testing, the really long envelopes made it harder to know if notes were hanging until I waited a bit but maybe B will be responsive and offer some enhanced envelope modes and take a look at the hangs. Not sure it is Running Status related as I had some in the alternate firmware Colin did without it. 

Wednesday, Pat's birthday and I think I will decide today, tomorrow the latest. I've programmed a ton of sounds on it so let's try and find them and see if they're worth keeping a synth for...

Solved the problem - and I really should have thought of this sooner given my experiences with the Grind. I set it to MIDI channel 1 and all the note off events began being correctly received. Reported and told it will be sorted, once the Chinese New Year ends. Phew. Means I will keep it after all. 

Thursday, icy start but sunny. Have let Walter out to wander round the garden again - he seemed to enjoy it yesterday although it's clear he's never going to fly. Will need to find a good solution for him, not sure any rescue place will take pigeons though. Pat may be away tomorrow and saturday, which will give me some space to play and noodle.

And so I did. Friday was a long recording session and Saturday I took all January's recordings and laid them out in Wavelab, then trimmed down to six chunks of pieces that merge and seque into each other in what I hope is a satisfying way. Had a quick whizz through and made some notes, will make a few adjustments and whittle it down. Another indulgent double album and that's just the first month of the year. What marvels will follow?

Gosh, it's February!!

The Blue & The Green

 May or may not get the Wave next week. Decided not to part with the System 8 and withdrew from sale. 

Monday, the BPG arrived. I have made some notes but I won't add them here...in case I do like it enough to write a review. Haven't taken the screen covering off yet ;) Can report that it sounds good

Tuesday I recorded some sounds

https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/wave-hello

I like it, despite making quite a list of issues and recommendations. Tony, I think, will return his. He's very demanding. Tomorrow we get new broadband and I have to wait in to direct. Hoping they won't bugger it up. Dunno if we're walking but I want to do more PPG. It sounds nice in recordings, I think.

Friday is here. Good week really. Didn't walk yesterday due to weather so had more time to explore Wave. Have now loaded some of my samples and this morning I even designed my first wavetable - 64 waves drawn, created, fiddled with and generally bearing little or no relation to their neighbour. I'm sure creating good wavetables is an artform but it's fun (and easy) to try - better tools available now than when I had my first Microwave. Also discovered a hanging note problem that may be related to the Wave's handling of Running Status - Colin doing me a Cirklon firmware today that turns it off to test. Oddly enough, some of the hanging notes produced good results that I recorded and may use. 

NAMM show announced the expected Jupiter and Prophets plus a surprise - a BX1 - the DX1 with CS80 filters. Blimey! Did not expect that and probably cheaper than my OpSix, or maybe just a bit more. But with a 5 octave poly AT keyboard, like, wow!

Good day. Dunno if what I recorded will survive tomorrow. I like the Wave. 

https://wilyepeyote.bandcamp.com/album/enzari

Well now

 Today I played the piano a bit. It was nice. I've really got worse at it though, can barely play my own tunes these days - and they aren't hard. 

Tim found this cool old pic he took. 

Tuesday was a cool aimless sort of day, felt like lots of time to relax as I didn't have Broc to walk this morning. Noodled on the Opsix and made this very cool ocean sound by sampling it on the S-4 then playing it back with tons of modulators and randomly missed notes, turning the reverb mix to full so it was just a swooshing now and again. Recorded a loop that sounds grand to me. Tried to make a mediational repeating pulse but couldn't get it quite right. I think it might be something I have to sit and play for an hour rather than have a machine set the timing. 
Yesterday's painting is looking more and more interesting - the quick dry via the dehumidifier worked even better than I hoped it would, gave me some lovely patterns. Some of the dried-out watery dots have lost some of their distinction though but I can paint those back in - the parts that were supposed to be ephemeral look great. Will let it stew a while now before I tackle the next layer. Mixing oils and acrylics a good idea, who knew?

Don't think that does it justice as you need to zoom in to the good bits. 

Wednesday night after a chilled day. Walking with Tony tomorrow and then it's Friday again. Time is zipping by and I have this urge to do some nice relaxing, meditational drones. 

Thought for the day. You don't need complicated phrases if you have someone who can break your heart with a single note. Friday did some things that I hope to give to Rick and John 

This basically

https://wilyepeyote.bandcamp.com/album/quonlage

Happy New Year!

 Will it be? We shall see. Wandered down to the river, like many others, to gawp at the water filling the fields.

Yesterday's release of Through Morphic Fields may contain the single best hour of spontaneous noodles I've made to date. I initially rejected it and deleted the video from Youtube because the crackles and loss of signal in the middle made me angry - but I've done whatever restoration I could and I'm actually really chuffed with the results. I added the latest livestream too because it sorta fit and was in the same Sheldrake-themed space. Made available free as my winding up of 2024 before embarking on something musically different, but similar (inevitably).

Ordered Vodaphone broadband - cheeky Virgin charging me a disconnection fee despite the contract ending at month end. Not sure if I should have ordered the wifi booster - Tim reckoned it was way better than Virgin already but never mentioned if he had the booster to make it so. Should've asked I guess. Will need to sort out email for myseld and Pat and maybe I can add booster later if necessary. Sent in my S-4 review, hope I'm not too rusty.

Friday now, new SQ1 knobs arrived from Thonk - very thin and the black dot is small but visible.We'll see how they handle. Indeed, going to get started very soon. 

This basically

Monday and I spent another day just playing after a disappointingly rusty session yesterday in which my fingers just weren't into it at all. Today was better and the Osmose seemed to tolerate my fumblings and open up for me. Started to think that the Wave might fit into setup 1 somehow, since setup 3 is hanging together nicely, well apart from the irregular velocity output of the Super 6. I was getting a bit better with the ribbon the other day too (Saturday), still a way to go but at least some intervals seem easier to find than they did. Drama next door though and I fear we may have new neighbours in 2025. Pat stepped in, as usual, to help but it cost her the morning and then the afternoon was spent trying to sort out Margaret's move with the council and housing association. And there was me doing my usual shit. Must ring mum tomorrow and see how she's getting on. 

Ho ho fecking ho

 Yeah, christmas day, Pat hasn't got up yet but it looks like a nice morning. Slept well so hopefully moving into a cycle of untroubled nights as the year ends. Ordered some transparent knobs for the SQ-1 and shouldn't be too long before my Wave arrives. New Year resolution is to sell or swap a lot of the gear that's taking up lots of room but could be replaced by small things or just not needed. I know it's a faff but needs must. Also have to get the Synthi fixed and take Tim's droning Jupiter and CR8000, maybe my 101 too to get those knobs sorted. If only the Behringer sequencer was better I could think of replacing it with one of their new things as the MIDI would be handy, especially as Cirklon CVIO an ongoing pain. I wonder if a B-Jupiter and B-CS80 will arrive next year and if they'll be more tempting than the rather dull UB-XA? 

Anyway, seems I'm not getting my free days so no long musical seshes and epic music created this time around. Oh well. 

It's that time of year when I tend to feel morose. Sholdn't be surprised that this year is no exception.

Anyway, ended 2024 with a freebie unreleased thing and the MR performancebundled together. 
Here's hoping 2025 will, somehow, not be shit.

Doc and dog duties. Oh and MR 57 happened ;)

 Into the second week of Pat's chest infection, and this morning I waited at doctor's to get her an appointment. She's now got some strong antibiotics and hopefully we'll see an improvement soon. Meanwhile I'm still dog walking and other stuff like a goddamn hero. I hope to find time to do something for this livestream at the weekend as the material I had doesn't sound good to me now. The S-4 still behaving itself, phew, so will get the review completed, although possibly not this week. Actually it's all done bar a couple of hashes (my way of indicating something needs double-checking, testing, verifying whatever) but I'd like to polish it a bit since I haven't done owt for a while. 

I suspect I won't be walking again this week but actually fine with that. Time is just leaking away, like blood down an abbatoir grating. I'm tired from not sleeping, so if the coughing subsides that'll be nice. 

Trying to get nice, clean audio through my camera and OBS. Trying different bitrates and now the highest seems to work ... so hopefully will be OK for Saturday as I'd rather do it live than record in advance. 

The last one is the highest bitrate but can I really hear a difference? And is that the answer? I dunno.
These are unlisted at the moment, may keep it that way as I haven't listened to whether there's anything musically interesting, probably not too coherent. 

Anyway, the Morphic Resonance gig went OK - Synthi was misbehaving though and I should have dropped it really. Otherwise some bum notes and think the monitoring was less good/familiar than normal due to faffing with camera levels. Audio sounded much better from those who didn't do it live, at least those whose DRM1 may have been boosted too much. Listening to my recording, sounds nice enough though so all good. 

The Udo ribbon arrived Saturday morning so I used it - but it's actually quite hard to control. It will do one octave of pitch shift provided you get your finger at the very far extreme to the other -seems that's how it's calibrated. It will also continue pitch raising if you do lots of short movements - so basically I'm gonna have to practise with it. I did manage a kind of vibrato that sounded like a dying bee, so that's something...

Friday then more

Yeah man, know what I'm sayin?? I ordered an Udo ribbon while moderately stoned but only moderately because I think it will be a good thing, better than shelling out more for the PAT keyboard and it still guessing velocities. Anyway. I should be able to totally ignore that bloody awful bender.  

Uploaded several albums. Probably too many. Today, being Saturday, Tim and I made noises - Synthi and Opsix primarily, sounded good to me at the time. Definitely reckon the Jupiter has a fault and I'll need to butter up Tony to take a look. I also think there could be a dicky knob on the Synthi. Might be nice to have the remainder of the originals replaced. What else? Yesterday it was windy, everyone panicking, well everyone prone to that kind of thing. Meant to ring Harvey but forgot, will do on Monday though as it has definitely been too long. This week's been sorta busy (doing very little) but pleasant. We didn't walk cos it was raining and I'm perfectly happy with that. Went to the pub with Tim instead, all good.

Setup 3 is my current favourite. I could easily see myself putting the piano into it if it could squeeze in somewhere. I guess there are clever stands for cramming stuff these days. The Opsix still delighting me - Tim got some great sounds from it on Saturday, almost like oscillator sync at times. I still think FM has lots more to give. 

Sunday now, mum had been a bit ill and thankfully Lisa took her to the doc's and insisted she did something, now on antibiotics and rallying. No sure what next week has in store, other than the visit of Benji. Looking forward to December being over, as I often am. Apparently there's another PRS soon but this one is rarely a good one for me so I don't expect much. Maybe the Behringer Wave will appear in time for some ho ho ho. Edit: no it won't, according to Andertons. January 15th apparently - may cancel before then, we'll see.

Another Thursday came and went, Pat still struggling with her cold and I took Broc a decent walk, tired myself out a bit but earned a few hours in the studio. Good sesh to hopefully prepare for tomorrow. Found best way to make loops of any length on the S4 - using specific (named in Ck) notes on ch16, working a treat at last. Don't think there's anything left to work out, plus I got a much better explanation of how Density works so I can sit and get the review polished off now. Actually it pretty much is already but I wanted to really nail that looping part, as much for myself as anyone else. 

https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/ck-kalticia-77

Will try and do make something cool out of it to play on the livestream thing a week on Saturday.