Half gone, Summer still nervously waiting... somewhere

 Yeah, it's been a disappointing Summer so far. A couple of warm days and lots of fucking rain. Still awaiting the first piece of review gear - the S-4 failed to arrive by the end of June as promised and the Easel is rumoured to be this week. I accepted a testing gig from B, although still awaiting the NDA. Gig prep going well - jamming with Tim been rather good too, the MPC adding a nice extra dimension. Apparently if it's master clock you can save without it stopping, Need to test this but I recall the last time I tried the clock output wasn't that great and I do need stability for the BB. 

oh, it hung on me too....

Thursday, didn't hear from Tony so had a nice studio sesh. Worked on the track "Dark Retch" and started assigning the Q-Link encoders for the whole project. I've not done a lot yet- put all MPC drums into one sub and all the instruments into another. I can now apply mass filtering and delay FX to the drums and turn the instruments up or down relative to it. What's really missing is a filter like the BlackBox that goes low pass to the left and high pass to the right. How useful would that be? I may not use the RD-8 into input D, tried a few other synths but seems like overkill. Could be another track, maybe a second static track with some long ambient mush or drumskel on it, haven't decided yet. Having some trouble with MIDI notes interfering with MPC instruments, like cutting off loops - though I'd sorted all that. Also the 'in' status doesn't work as expected for a track - should just take incoming MIDI data and not play that recorded in a track. Always stuff to baffle...

MPC v3 announced - proper mixer, arrange mode, disk streaming and a nice ,fast ui. Yay. Won't try before gig so will keep working regular way. Live II now optimum due to battery, speakers and internal SSD bay. Worked on some tunes, think either take Tim or be totally solo - would be too complex trying to fit in violin as already I'm quiet dense. 

Sweetie Saturday, listened to some good headshock - baygum, ae, chatto, damn can't remember them all.Hopefully Tim will. 

A week has passed, August is here, still haven't done enough for this gig but am starting to take notes of the good tracks and indifferent ones. Been baffled with my program changes which seem to work differently between plugins and MIDI. Seems if I change the patch for the Odyssey synth it makes that change to all sequences, which is clearly wrong. May be some menu stuff to do, the one with the pencil, so I can have a different program with an existing plugin, at least that's what I'll try next. Can't see why it's so obtuse though. Starting to think it's a better MIDI sequencer than it is a sequencer for its own plugins. 

Oh yeah, Tim and I went into Preston for an EMOM night, which had been cancelled without saying and even Claire thought it was on, although she hadn't gone. Long and short of it, doubt I'll bother going again. Oh yeah 2, Thursday was nice sweeties day, Pat went south and was a 5 hour drive back - to find me drooling on the carpet. Oh well, way it goes sometimes.