Apparently Pat and Broc heading south for Easter so that'll be a time to relax, chill, make music and just generally not be at fault for anything. Think Colin and Tony coming shortly after that so plenty to look forward to in April. Meanwhile, weather supposed to get cooler again but hopefully we'll get a walk, cool or not. Mick's gonna be here Friday so will see if a meet-up is possible, although that's also the new swimming slot so not straightforward. Broc introduced to Lisa's pooches today and they all got on well.
I did a bit of garden tidying and despaired to see neighbour's - a lifeless perfect square of close-cropped grass surrounded by thoroughly-purged soil. The only actual plant is a massive Hydrangea with a border of slug pellets - this is the guy who leans over into our garden to trim our trees sometimes. What can ya do? I tried to explain that poisoned creatures like slugs get eaten by birds and frogs but he looked faintly maniacal so I gave up.
Yesterday (Monday) was nice and Tim and I sat in the sun drinking beer. He brought one of his MPCs so I could get my head round it - could be a replacement for the OT perhaps.
MPC Day 1 Tuesday
Made a basic kit, tried some of the included instruments, must remember to hit 'play from start' or the BB doesn't fire up (its regular Play must equate to 'continue'). Sequence length rules over all - it resets any track running, no apparent way to get around it other than make sequence very long, like 9999 bars or something. A sequence is roughly equivalent to a Cirklon Scene, with the difference that if you remain in the Scene, patterns loop at their natural lengths rather than being reset. Had some issues with mute automation being recorded but impossible for me to find/remove. Did find some automation and deleted but it was Solo not Mute. MIDI sequencing works fine, not madly keen on touch screen and the key edit process but hopefully will adapt. The FX I tried were really good, must explore processing input channels and sampling tomorrow. Have also still to try loops and chopping stuff, all of which is where it should shine over the OT. Well, and being a proper polyphonic sampler too. Selecting different sequences is pretty good and clear but song mode a bit naff - I guess everyone is (still) waiting for the Force's arranger to be implemented. Audio tracks seem to use RAM (2Gb) but not tried yet. Might even be enough RAM for some BB projects although limited to 8 audio tracks. Will import some BB loops and see how it goes.
MPC Day 2 Wednesday
Waiting in for pickup of modules sent to me in error. Have read MPC manual, or the sections I'll be covering today anyway. Today is all about getting as many of my samples in as possible and seeing what instruments to connect in order to get meaningful sampling implemented. DFAM and Microfreak for a start. Got started and made good progress with some things - auto sampling a synth, making basic samples and loops, chopping over pads - all good. Still some basic stumbling blocks such as trying to automate a filter cutoff not working, despite following instructions as far as I can tell. Found a Youtube video showing it and seems I was doing it right so will puzzle over that and quiz poor Tim next time I see him. It doesn't remember the monitoring status either, which is a bit sucky if you wanted to leave synths connected all the time for sampling but also general playing and processing via FX. Factory content seems mostly useless so I'll load up my SD card when it arrives with my usual things sucked from OT.
Update: returned later and the cutoff automation worked fine - not sure what it might have been, perhaps a bug? Put a bunch of my samples on the card and there's enough to play with, I think.
Thursday, looks like I'm on pooch watch all day. Doubt I'm going to make much progress on the MPC, which is quite frustrating. Made the mistake of pulling a face when my day taken away and it opened up all kinds of underlying grief upset, leaving me feeling pretty low. At least it's bright and sunny (contrary to forecast) so sitting around with Broc and listening to music will be my fate. Depressing to learn that I make Pat unhappy by pretty much everything I do.
Reading the MPC manual today and watching vids. Pooch sleeping at the moment. Headache subsiding.
Was meant to be doing Helvellyn Friday but Tony did his back. Did MPC instead and got into clips and more trips.
Saturday Tim came and did fab things on MPC, I learnt more stuff and the track we made (Huxter) was proper blissed out. Not sure the MIDI clock out is terribly good, first time I've heard warbles from new 505, previously synced to the OT.
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