Another groovy night recording...

I know, I know, what a life! Tim came round in the afternoon and we tinkered until late, ended up recording a load of stuff, some of which at least is darn good - cos I'm listening to it now. Blimey. More to come too I think. Real shame that Yamaha SK20 wasn't here but at least the Mod Factor making good contribution. Gonna move the V-Synth and use the JX3P instead, V-Synth sounding good tonight, seemed to use a bit of everything.

Began my letter to the local council planning office so they can laugh and discard my objections to decimating our local nature reserve.

Moog announce the Sub Fatty with a 2 octave keyboard. Seems the Korg rumours are true and the mini MS20 is a reality. If so and the price is as quoted, well I won't give my thoughts away. Hope to review that one.

UPDATE: Bloody hell. I'm 40 mins into the Headshock stuff and still gobsmacked. No idea how we did it though...

Hmmm

Trying to get in the mood to do something worthwhile with the evening. Review to start but struggling to be motived as there's nothing new to say about this particular item.

May go and so showreel and listen to the album for the spanish label again..

This is a view looking west(ish) from Jeffrey Hill where I used to live and learned to be a weird recluse.

New EP soon from Paul and I. He's very kindly made me sound really good just by doing loads of ace stuff and top arrangement. People are bound to think at least some of the good stuff is me. Win! :)

http://soundcloud.com/paullawler/jam-sessions-vol1-preview

Groovy night recording...

... at Paul's. Yet again it's old gear we turned to for its immediacy, lack of menus, memories and multifunctionality. Couldn't get one decent sound out of the Voyager and quickly gave up trying. Old gear can be used in the dark, the new stuff less so. OK, some new stuff is great - couldn't sequence with Perfourmer though as it wasn't rigged up, nor was Minitaur.

Seems we got a few decent or half-decent tracks, which is nice considering how drunk/stoned we were. Staying up until 3am takes its toll though, on an old gentleman like me.

The SH-1, MS20, Minimoog, VCS3 and SH-101 all sounded superb. Quite liked the new Dave Smith too although there were parts of it that were less than direct. It's a great size though.

Have written liner notes for the vinyl pressing of my 1981 tracks! Wild...

Awesome!

Eventide was repaired and it works, phew! So glad. Sorted deal for SK20 and paid the guy, packed the Digitech well and posted it. Hope the SK gets here soon as Tim and I can use it for next sessions. Done some prep. Recorded some theremin stuff tonight including an actual track made up from the bits. It's growing on me too, seem to be on a roll at the moment. Reminds me of when I was a kid supposed to be revising for exams but music ideas pouring out had to be satisfied instead. OK for O Levels that approach but not owt more demanding. :)

Shit this track is quite ace. Features a simple one note sequence from SH-101 but with a really nice use of filter FM, musta been thinking about the Sonic Weekend synth with all those mods. To come this is, April, rambling. Yes, another night indulging myself. Hair shirt later, promise. :)

Glad I've moved the SH-101 onto that new stand and connected theremin to its Moogerfoogers (and plugged in pedal and using theremin CV outs!). Some interesting stuff happening and some new possibilities. Liked everything I did with the theremin tonight, first time in a long time. I'm rambling again.

Scale

This evening I put two sequences together and then imported the results into the Octatrack then recorded it into Logic so I could do a tiny bit of arrangement. More work to do I think but this is

Oi Loikes Armadillos

The Hobbit

OK, I was pleasantly surprised having expected to be bandying around the Tolkien phrase about butter being spread over too much bread. In fact almost all of the padding was beneficial and ditto for the changes introduced. It did have a little more depth than the book but, again, it worked. I'll be seeing the next two parts at home though. I'm definitely not going to pay over £8 a ticket to sit in a large cold room where you can't pause the action or turn the lights off. Seriously, I went to ask them to turn off the lights and they refused, lying "we can't turn them off". What kind of place installs lights with no switches? At least it wasn't in 3D which is impossible to watch when there are many competing ambient light sources.
Moan over. Great film but Odeon (and Vue) can bugger off in future.

Later we got pizza (delicious) and I'm hoping this evening to watch the third of the dragon tattoo films, last night's episode left us tense but ready for more. That's assuming I can banish the memories of zillions of goblins crawling over rocks from my mind! Oh, should have said, Martin Freeman was excellent as Bilbo, just as perfectly cast as Elijah Wood as Frodo.

The Eventide repair is gonna be £68+£20 delivery. Got the message while out so I may have missed out on extra charges, not great but no choice really. At least they nailed the problem and it should last now. Bad vibes to the guy who dropped it on me, quite rare to find that level of musician/arsehole combination but it does happen from time to time. I did get a bad feeling that day he came here with his list of questions and "can I try this" even though it was clear I was ill at the time. Hope he went away with the sickness diarrhoea thing too! No, I don't, not really.

You'll notice it's another day of no work from me. Tomorrow I shall endeavour to care. Now, back to scouring the net for decent telescope deals...

Did I mention Samplr rules?? Well, it does. Could actually do a gig with just that. First iPad app I've known where you could say that and do something totally spontaneous yet different each time. Must put in all my recent long Synthi tracks.

Playing pinball while Pat watches Corrie. Chilling with the ambient stuff, I think I'm onto something here. That new track not quite as good as I'd hoped but it's fixable. Thank heavens I'm starting to mulititrack.
Mod Factor will be useful for another track I have in mind. Playing pinball always reminds me of Rich. He usually beat me cos he was way better at it. One thing I remember is he never stopped flipping the flippers, totally hyper with it. The table recognises that I'm convinced, even in the software versions. Must be an unwritten rule. Rich use to flick everything non-stop in hire cars when I was driving. Every appliance he tried it. Same in hotel rooms, every TV channel, every nook and cranny, to hell with the minibar and vomit in the sink. No, that was me. And leaving all the hotel sheets and towels covered in red hair dye, setting off the fire alarm, having about 6-8 people sleeping in our room as well as us, I think we crept out in the morning, happy fucking days. I must tell his kids these stories one day, would love to see them again. Time to talk to Darryl, he'd understand. I miss the appliance flicking, nobody did it with greater panache, charm and charisma. Stoned, you can tell eh?

Preston - what a shit hole

OK, it's been a while since I ventured into the place that only a few years back became a city but it's sure gone downhill. It's now full of cash converters, cheque cashers, fast food outlets, charity shops and pound shops - I kid you not. Oh and gambling dens. Plus lots of shops and businesses that are closed and boarded up or in various death throes, shop assistants stood at the door, not looking out into the world but down into their mobile phones.
Pat and I wandered round for a while, I went to the library and got three books for my hols. Decided on a Tom Holt, Harry Harrison and Peter F Hamilton, all of which should be good. I have to read some Harry Harrison as someone compared his stuff to mine.

Deliberately took a day off thinking about library work, going to start afresh this year and explore new avenues. Not gonna let the constant insistence of making changes and revisions bother me, totally understand why Carl M got fed up and he's a way better composer than me. If nothing I do is ever gonna be right for them, why put us both through the anguish? By the time I've worked the life out of any track I hate it and that's no good. It's taking a lot of the pleasure of making music away and if I don't have that what do I have?

New Gaudi album almost ready.

Seems unlikely that I'm gonna do much tommorrow, next week being a new week and all could be better. Could be...

Odd sort of day, full of melancholy and wrote a weird little walz for no real purpose. In the evening I got quite drunk and stoned and recorded an unusual piece using Performer 2, Kaoss Pad 3, Octatrack, Prodigy and a bit of Logic arrangement. It sounds wonderful right now but we'll see what tomorrow brings. I may have agreed to play two festivals/parties, will read my messages later and see what I said.

heh!

I possibly also agreed to buy a Yamaha SK20, or swap it for something. It's heavy and limited but just up my street I think. Just have a trip to Leicester to sort. Gotta get Mod Factor shipped for repair, grrrr, send some review kit back, get organised!

Next time I'm tempted to say to Pat "I always choose the films, you choose one this time", remember that she will always, inevitably choose something utterly useless. Call it instinct, call it bad luck, call it what you will. A film starring Simon Pegg called a Fear of Everything, just in case you were wondering. Shame she didn't fancy Cockneys Vs Zombies...

A great review of BF in Amazon, many thanks!

Cool, witty and very, very trippy 6 Jan 2013

By Carmichael

The ideas presented in Bogus Focus creep up on you quietly, before exploding full-on in an insane kaleidoscope which you feel genuinely intrigued regarding how the anti-hero, "ordinary" Dai Williams, will cope with. There's plenty of twists and turns, especially regarding Dai not quite being all he appears, and this is all set to a backdrop of biting social commentary recognizable - but just different enough to make the point - from the one we live in today. Overall a really good read. It packs a great deal into its deceptively short length and certainly makes you ask a few questions about your universe, man. Think Doctor Who on acid meets Hitchhikers on weed: whadda combination!

Today's photo

This evening I expect I will, once again, achieve very little. I'll complete the iMPC review though before I get baked and maybe work on Eternity Program as I do have some ideas for it starting to hatch.

More directionless twaddle

Despite my resolution to prepare my showreel, find some addresses to send it to, get into gear, I had a pleasant noodle on the synthi. Then I added some Perfourmer overdubs, kinda angry cos my first attempt didn't record right (cocked up the mixer bus routing again!), but amazingly did it again with a very similar vibe. Also pissed off that the Eventide Mod Factor is now completely unusable. So that's gonna be more outlay. That guy asks for help again I won't be so helpful.

Looking at a few minor repairs stacking up, including Freebass resonance pot, Prodigy transformer, Synthi envelope level knob, Mod Factor, Roland Space Delay power supply (?), I think there's something else too but can't think of it.

http://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/tanelorn

Heh

Started the new year well, got another track into some kind of workable state and polished yesterday's little gem so it flows better, two more tweaks spotted last time I listened through, surprisingly productive despite nostril being blocked.

Pleased with Amazon ebook charts, was like 29,000th for a while today or some such figure. Then I sold two more and it plummeted to, like, 34,000th. Sad? You have no idea.

Heh.

Here's a picture of a tree