Mum's 70th, had a nice meal but poor Pat couldn't go cos work screwed up her day off. Mum on fine form, Lisa happy with her new job and Uni results, all good. Staying home with Pat Sunday morning rather than going dog walking. As it's a bank holiday I have an extra day for my review although will try to get it done tonight. Fortunately not a hard one to write.

22 Years

Wedding anniversary. Went to the beach, which was lovely. On the way back there were massive roadworks and I went up a one way street the wrong way. A police car was waiting there, idly totting up the cash like a malignant spider. Cost me £30.

Got home and that horrible cat had had our garden blackbird.

Felt lousy all day with a cold. Didn't do any work.

Thursday's the weirdest day of the week. This one sorta drifted by. Had a bit of a headache and a bunged up nose. Last Saturday still paying me back perhaps. I worked on the Monotron review and it's taking shape now, fortunately an easy one to do. Intend to do more on it tonight which will leave me with a day off tomorrow for our anniversary (22 years, howabout that?). Gonna go to the beach as long as weather not too bad.

May hear about Jasper's jump tonight, hope the boy gets one.

Discovered the RG s/ware only does major and minor keys. Happily they're keen to add a new envelope mode, positively enthusiastic after a bit of playing. Lovely, result!

Progress

Well of sorts. Trying to push the envelope and making progress in tiny increments. Offered another workaround for Omnisphere involving the sustain pedal. This sorta works when I get the coordination right but isn't entirely the same due to the effect on glide and, well, it doesn't sound instinctively "right". I may just give up. Gave them a potted version of Tony's explanation of what capacitors do.

Two tracks going nicely, once almost right, the other not so far behind. Just the final polish touches needed.

Looking like a cooler day but still pleasant. Last night finished "Sleep" bar a couple of small tweaks. That makes 6 tracks for new project so far. Talking to Predator's coder guy, very receptive to ideas and I dare to hope I may get my analogue envelope behaviour yet. Spectrasonics gone quiet though. I can only hope he has read my emails and twigged what I was on about. Maybe he's coding vigorously right now. Fingers crossed.

Dreadzone

They were excellent, quite a small venue really but a good crowd, great performance and very hot!

Danced my stupid ass off all night and then came back and we had a sesh which was all rather lovely.

Today is hot again so will get into studio this evening and do something. Monotron coming early next week, yay!

Fridays Rule!

Top day. Sunny. Spent most of day in garden drinking cider. Jonathon from USA (I suppose) didn't ring. I got a couple more Logic crashes with lots of mentions for Spectrasonics. Sent the crash logs off and suggested I may have to do a Youtube video of envelopes or maybe an oscilloscope shot of voltage output of an envelope through its various stages including during the release phase when a new long attack note starts. Spoke to Rob again about it (and praising that ace arpeggiator just used in wgo) so hopefully he'll take a look.

Started track "What's Going On?" which is gonna be ace. Alas it had crashes so I only got the start done. Audio cutting out and I suspected desk but I think it's now Omnisphere in one of its pre-crash states.

Mmmm

A good week. New tracks coming through, downloaded Tonehammer's Emotional Piano (nice) but broke Broadband limit so it took ages. Also got another Movie Dialogue download so hope to now have enough to do my project. Just need some decent beats.

Gonna be hot in next few days. Hot in that studio.

Sweet

New tracks went down well and I've got the go-ahead to do a CD of this sorta stuff. Excellent fun!

Pressing on with sequencer review, got most typed up now so just need to refine.

Lovely day so didn't do as much work as I might. Wonder what a lovely summer would bring to my workflow?

101 day

Sampled my SH-101 today, getting a bunch of percussion noises out of it.

Later I pottered about with the review, quite pleased with how it's looking now I have an angle on it, selling the simplicity. It's the only approach that makes sense because that way the instrument makes sense.

Crash!

Jeez I'm fucking sick of Logic. The latest crash was, inevitably, when I hadn't saved for a while. It's like I'm gonna have to save after every couple of edits or be at risk of wasting my time!!

Finished two new ones, well one needs some kind of theramin or ebow section, but I'm pleased with both. They are "No Magic" and "Beyond Known Space". Will see if the other library likes them and the use of samples is OK...

Aah. Got some movie dialogue stuff downloaded and used in my twee pop track. I think it works. Started another with aliens which has headed inevitably towards psy.

Must work on review tonight.

Well, whatever I did yesterday I didn't do today. Sequencer working OK. Hopefully that's it but I asked for another just in case. Only have just over a week to write everything up now so thank goodness it's not complicated.

Started a tune that might be ... OK

Started on review. Some glitches suggest possible fault in review unit. No music done today. Not much of anything else either. I've managed to type up most of my review notes anyway.

Pat's herceptin day so she'll be feeling poorly the next day or so.

Yesterday made wibbly noises with Tim. The best track was the one I failed to record thanks to forgetting to arm the tracks in iLogic. You hit record and it pretends to record but doesn't record anything, doesn't mention it at all. I really must investigate alternatives.

Well well, Pat drove back from Rivi this morning and reckons she's now fine to drive. So she's driven to work this evening too. Wotta gal!

So I should start on the sequencer review this evening, fortunately should be an easy one to write. May even check out the tune I started the other night (after the long painful extraction from the Microsampler) and see what I can do with it.

Hey ho eh?

Election non-erection

Well, nobody really won, everybody kinda lost, Brown will doubtless continue his clinging and Cameron will continue his cloying. Let's just hope we get some electoral reform out of this mess so that, in future, there is a chance that every vote counts.

AS Europa arrived today for review. I like the look of it, should be a fun afternoon.

Accountant bloke at 11, Duncan's BC8 to return, must send CAE number to Mars...

More crashes

Starting to think it's the new Omnisphere update causing my Logic crashes - the dumps seem to mention Spectrasonics an awful lot. Hey ho.

Sent off what I hope are my final four tracks today. Two were done and two I did a last polish of - the very last is a little odd but I sorta hope to sneak it through cos it's interesting.

Predator box arrived and it was a bit of a pain installing it but got there in the end. For some reason it thought I had an early version of OSX and wouldn't be convinced otherwise. Stupid thing. Anyway in the end I put the activation code into the elicenser and it seemed happy. The box was empty apart from the CD so next time I won't bother but will do it online.

**

Awesome. Last four tracks accepted. Will get edits done ASAP then it's onwards and upwards doing more.

Tempus Fugit

From 07:00 until around 16:00 my day was occupied with chores. Hey ho. Didn't get into the studio at all.

New sequencer coming for review, hopefully by the end of the week.

Really need to get those final tracks done. Could also do with the Predator box I ordered, wishing I'd gone for the online version now so I could be up and running. Logic crashes with any instances of the already expired demo. Hey ho.

Another Logic Crash...

Another day of little achievement. Down to just 4 uses of Predator demo already! Would help if Logic didn't crash. Anyway, despite its envelopes I ordered a copy. Might have been daft though as ordered from Time&Space for the nice box (probably still no manual!) and it'll be bound to take a few days, leaving me with a non-working version until then.

Didn't, in the end, take to Zebra, prefer ZebraCM. Fave of all is still Strobe for its analogue qualities but wish it had integral effects like Predator, and oscillators that can have fixed phase.

Right, best get to bed. Up for horsing in the morning. :)

May order a last set of ethnic samples to finish my last track. Or tracks, not sure about the latest persian one cos it's a bit similar in ethnicity to some of the others (and a bit strange). Just gotta find a country I've not pillaged yet. :)

Running around Saturday

Did Murphy, walked Jasper, got Dawn's parcel off to her and in the afternoon I pottered with Predator, explained the envelope thing in a bit more detail.

Thus: An envelope generator is basically a glide circuit.

The glide circuit only has two parameters - target level, and rate.
When the gate is off, the target for the glide is zero, and the rate is the release rate.
When the gate is turned on, you enter the attack phase.
In the attack phase, the glide target is maximum, and the rate is the attack rate.
When the level reaches maximum, you switch to the decay phase.
In the decay phase, the glide target is the sustain level, and the glide
rate is the decay rate.
Now, if the gate is off, and the level is falling to zero (release), a new gate on will re-enter the attack phase.

All this means is that the glide target and rate change to maximum/attack. You do not want the current output level to suddenly jump to zero, in exactly the same way that you wouldn't want glide from one note to another to instantly jump to a note it hadn't yet reached, before starting to glide toward a new note.

The gate input can only change the selection of which rate/level are set on the glide circuit. Gate should never directly influence the output level of the glide circuit.

Anyway, started a track using Predator (gonna buy it regardless of envelopes, still have synths whose envelopes do work like an analogue). The track is kinda different, just an embryo so far.

Tonight there will be telly. Tomorrow, something like today... :)