Rainy September

 Finally starting review of the S-4 as MIDI Sync has arrived, boosting its credibility as a 4-track tape recorder and looper.

Some stills from Oojami's video

OK back from Berlin. PITA running for train and missing it - ended up on coach from Manchester getting home at 3 am. Great time, Colin was a star and Berlin warm, sunny and perfect to explore. Fave place was the Holzmarkt - weed on the air, sunshine on the river, beer and good company. Spared a night at the Berghain as we got stoned and forgot. Colin has grown some big muscles and his new apartment is awesome. He also gave me the wooden endcheeks I've been longing for...

I guess I now start the S-4 review, prepare the video for that festival thing and rearrange the studio for Cirklon's non-rack form. 

Live in Manchester... oh no, I have to drive there!

 Yeah, not looking forward to going into Manchester centre at teatime on Thursday..

Here's a still from a gig from 1984 - nice to see those old Roland mixers

Day of the gig and I'm pacing the house. Having broken things down yesterday I'm at a loose end, should do a few things like finish emails or do my online book-in for Berlin but not in the mood - should have gone out with Pat/Broc this morning but thought I had things to do. Turns out I don't. Playing through the recording I did on Tuesday reveals a few gaps - will probably out the Reface direct into the mixer so I can always play something in those moments - routing it through the Octatrack is cool but depends on the scene settings as I change patches. OK, I could tweak it in the mixer but the simplest answer has to be the best, especially as no time to test it. I expect some nerves, which I will attribute to (i) it being a while since I did this (ii) not really liking playing totally solo (iii) having so much prepared material and not as much scope as usual for taking it different places. Oh well, hopefully it won't be too much of a disaster. ;)

Would rather get back to playing with S-4. Seems I have plenty of time for review as the new firmware is still not ready - and it really will need that. 

Gig went well - which is nice. I had to trim down from 1 hour to 45 mins but managed fine by dropping the three weakest tracks. I played the absolute minimum and let the prepared tracks, loops and beats do their thing. In future, I should trim down from 6 things to 4, MPC, OT, &Synth(JD-XA?) and Zoom. Disappointingly the Zoom hung when doing a master recording and wouldn't even respond to power off button. So I put the audio files into Wavelab and did a quick mix - should do a decent master maybe, or see if the latest Logic auto mastering does a good job on it. Anyway, sis and her mate seemed to enjoy it and Tim helped out on stage with carrying and cables. Hoping to persuade him to take part in some future thing. 

Now back to learning the MPC more fully and testing that S-4 some more. Shame there are no small synths for playing that are also properly multitimbral - the JD is still unbeaten but a bit large (and lacks a MIDI thru).

Tim took some pix - nice and blue.