Updates and some gloom

 The gloomy part is that Caspian is no longer safe to ride or even walk - Pat hurt her back yesterday when he slipped on the yard. Poor thing's co-ordination is gone and I think the vet's coming on Monday to put him down. Will be a major change in lifestyle for Pat and pretty heartbreaking all round. I went to say goodbye to him this morning. 

It being Friday I am going to start thinking about my ambient set - moved the SH-101 into setup 1 and drafted in Plaits as an extra oscillator. Seemed worth doing as I was already using the little modular case to provide delay - the DLD module - and of course Steppy is in there to split up clock signals. Other things to be bolted on as necessary - Touche is a nice tactile control to tweak delay times and some Plaits parameters, for example. 

Some updates to do today - alternate Plaits firmware removes that stupid coarse tuning and gives quantized octaves, glad to see that exists without me asking for it. It makes the module far, far more useful and safe to gig with and the SH-101 provides CV input to drive it. Then I need to try the new GR-1 firmware, which doesn't immediately seem to have things I need but I haven't read all the details yet - may try using the Digitone as audio  interface for it as that seems potentially very useful, especially given I have the 101/Plaits/looper signals going through it. If I get time I'll put on the new 0.30 firmware for the Super 6, although this seems primarily there to fix issues with the desktop. I was amazed to see it released with no mention of its existence on the beta list, unless there's a higher level to it that I'm not privy to. 

Next week I'm off to see Dave Sherwood and swap a few things I'm not using for a few things he isn't. The JX-03 and Microsampler are going and the Virus B and Microfreak are incoming - the latter most interesting due to its wacky oscillators (some of which are sourced in Plaits). It's small and giggable and even though it has a 2 octave keyboard, could be handy. I'm going to try and take the absolute minimum to this Plau thing - several synths, several loopers, the GR-1 and the BB. 

Recorded a fun thing yesterday (OK not yet given it the Sober Saturday listen) and today might do another or work on novel, which I've been neglecting. 

A couple of shots of me gazing enigmatically into the distance

Monday now and the deed is done. Very sad and has left me not feeling like doing much. 

Found some music from the guy I'll be supporting at the Plau - really good stuff, reminds me in parts of a more lively Carl Matthews or a less lively rozz3r. 

Now then, it's Wednesday and I got back from Dave's yesterday having done the swap. Haven't touched the Virus yet but have spent a few hours with the Microfreak. First impressions are that it could have been a really excellent thing with a few more quid spent on it - everything is so tiny and I was getting eyestrain trying to work with the screen, which unfortunately you do need quite a lot. The connections feel a bit flimsy and I've had a few power cycles due to slack power supply connection. It doesn't seem to have a way of quickly initialising a patch, despite the manual's claim you can press the encoder three times to do that. I think I'm going to leave the patches in and tweak them as I go, rather than try and big reprogramming campaign - don't wanna go blind! 
After saying all that, it does sound quite nice and all the different oscillator types are fairly flexible-sounding. The filter's pretty decent too, although it doesn't sound anything like an Oberheim, at least not the SEM. Think someone said it was meant to so I guess I'll have to dig further. Sequencer seems easy enough on a basic level and offers more depth when I get round to reading that part of the manual.The keyboard is awful. Don't think it'll be useful for gigs after all - just too small and enigmatic. While programming a few patches in the conservatory I discovered some dull brown text that needs strong daylight to reveal, revealing the functions of some of the buttons. I guess I'll learn what they are by the icons soon enough. 

Pat meant to be heading south on Friday for a few days - could be called off by wee man's covid scare so fingers crossed there. Not sure if walking tomorrow or not, awaiting word. RC-505 mk2 incoming for review, yay! It's all go. Should replace the one in my OT setup so no more fuckups forgetting to send OT output to Cue during record. We'll see. The old one can slip into the Digitone setup. 

Busy busy!