Spring is springing

 Yeah, well, it is. 

Kitchen should finally be done this week. Solar panels will be next. Was gonna play EMOM but no slots apparently so my idea of taking a bag with the Reface CS and S4 and making shit up will have to be sometime else. Was looking fwd to Tim's acid noodles though. Gonna go anyway. Seems like April is pretty much done with. 

Seems AKai have fixed the Running Status / Active Sensing bug I reported - will try it tomorrow and hope!

Friday was a good one. Started a track on the MPC to test the fixes in 3.8 - can finally use my System 8 keyboard with it. Must try the JD-XA as that was my first choice back when the MPC arrived. Recorded a piece on the Osmose too as I was itching to play it after so long. Made toast in the kitchen for the first time (Saturday). 

It's Bank Holiday weekend so the weather has turned a bit grey. I can cope with that. Pat off to Llandudno tomorrow for the day so another early morning taking her to pickup.

The Great Kitchen Hack!

 Starts... with ripping out the old one. We'll be coping somehow but no music making for me except on MPC I guess.

Well, taking it out was quick enough but nowt will happen now until Wednesday when electrician comes then nothing again until next week. Kitchen arrives thursday or friday so maybe he'll come and do a bit but doesn't sound like he's in a rush. Floor can't go down first now because of pipes or something. Personally I'd get it done and just only do up to pipes as that's all still gonna be covered up. Took Margaret to Blackpool this morning for her CT scan so hopefully will learn what they can do (it anything). Put MPC back upstairs. Seems I'll be able to use studio after all, at least until next week. 

A pleasant tuesday in pub with Tim. Talked some good shit, made some good plans. 

Did some work in kitchen, Pat doing some painting, me filling holes. Broc ran through the paint tray twice, which was far from ideal (!). Delivery of kitchen tomorrow morning. Hope to have time over weekend to fill remaining holes, file the filler flat and generally do what I can before the kitchen install starts on Monday. Hopefully by this time next week things will be almost normal again.

Friday I recorded some ideas for Oojami - a song he'd been working on. I fired up the Minimoog and it sounded great. Unfortunately the mixer confused me in my stoned state and I got one channel of stereo rather than a mono input on the MPC. Using it worked fairly well though although I need to learn to record in various parts rather than always from the start. Trying new stuff stoned probably unwise. Then recorded a couple of my tracks in progress, making sound improvements by compressing master output and making more intelligent use of buses and Q-Link knobs to keep control. Will update my default/template song soon when all the ideas come together. 

Did this

And back to...

 After Scotland, back to life with a bump. Sister's broken foot means she can't walk Izzy or do any of the stuff on mum's house that should already have done imho. Lisa currently can't do owt cos of her boob update and, of course, it's finally dawned on the pair of them we need to move mum's house or it'll start costing us...  anyway, getting an estate agent to look and we'll go with whichever offers the best cut and impression. Then we'll have to clear it all out. Have to go sort Les's computer too and Pat's ankle is not getting better. She's finally realised it needs a professional eye but, of course, you have to play the 8 o'clock shuffle at the doc's - and there's only one slot per week, this one already all used up. And so it goes. I'll need to walk the dog so she can rest a bit.

Well, that was my brain dump to bring March to a close. Well, another day to go but one I doubt I'll get any studio time. Did a little Cirklon checking today for the new gfx and it's looking good. However, what I really want is to play the Osmose again and play the Cric again and see how my V-Synth fits into setup 1 as I put it there and haven't powered up setup 1 in ages.

Tuesday, walked Broc, fixed Les's computer, tried the latest Cirklon firmware and its fab chord mode - sent a list of chords to add but not the inversions, which could be a second aux. Tomorrow it's estate agent day, gutters and Izzy. Seems the money is "on the way" but I bet it will be after financial year end, the feckers. I dearly hope I get a lovely Friday.

Oh and it seems my ME80P issue was a dying input as I switched them and all seems OK today. 

Got estate agent round and valued mum's house, now to get agreement amongst fam who to go with. Money came through from investments anyway. Hoping for a day in studio tomorrow.

Thursday, recorded good stuff esp last mix. Noticed mic still on as usual (!) Solace, a name generated by Cirklon. Minimal use of new chords but some. 

Well, it's Friday (Good) and the last of the investment money came through. Fam now wanting as much as poss for house rather than get a quick sale so going against advice of est agent and asking the valuation of another. Quite why we didn't use that other is unknown. Anyway, just updated my SP-404-II and, of course, Roland still haven't done that one useful thing - remove the pointless BPM that keeps leaping back onto the display, which could otherwise tell you something useful. After yesterday's productive Cirklon sesh I wanna hear the MPC song I started in Scotland and see if I can do owt with it. Soon the house will be in turmoil as the kitchen is ripped out so the studio may be out of bounds or at least not a refuge I can go to freely.

A nice bank holiday weekend just ended. Only a week before kitchen ripout begins and life gets paused a bit. Shame as yesterday I had a good sesh with setup 1, V-Synth sounding great and fitting in nicely there. Struck me that the old setup 4 has now spawned setup 5 based around the MPC. It could take the JD-XA in it and be an Octatrack/JD corner quite easily. Today (Tuesday) I expect to hear from estate agent and may just enjoy a day basking in the unexpected sunshine. Need to book train for Berlin. 

Had that old nagging idea of getting a Buchla Easel, which happens now and again. Would be more sensible to get the Command Station (correct vactrol needs verification) I suppose to save space but it's the whole instrument thing again. Main issue might be that Buchla don't seem to have modules in stock, say they just make them now and again, which doesn't bode well. I should restrain myself, at least until after Berlin. 

Wednesday took docs & key into estate agent, walked Izzy, didn't see Jan to put my idea to her. Probably a no-starter anyway. Another lovely sunny day. 

Some MPC work Thursday & Friday, nothing earth-shattering but good practice and made one long arrangement for possible further work. Next week it'll be mostly MPC as we're starting the big kitchen replacement. Saturday we cleared the garage, mostly and Jan/Lisa started on mum's bedroom. May not go to Longridge tomorrow as we need to totally clear the kitchen. 

Oh yeah, the MPC still crashes and gives bugger all useful information when it does. 

Nice view from my walk with Izzy...

Bonnie Scootland

 Yeah, drive didn't feel so bad this time. Must be getting used to it. Monday, Tony dropped his camera into loch. At this stage seems he got lucky and it's still working, although he was two others with him. I'm now getting better shots with phone than camera. 

Nice on Thursday as we found a cool wood with a stream and reflections and so I made a movie, at half and twice speed, later discovering the amazing artifacts of freezing frames. Anyway, lots of good pix today and maybe film to set to music later. 

Friday possibly best day of all. Some lovely pix anyway. Tony's camera is buggered though.

Just the long drive home now..

Getting ready for Scotland (or not)

Yeah, I'm not really a 'ready' kinda person. I should check out the car though to make sure it's up to the trip. 

Anyway. I think I consolidated my Arranger knowledge today by sussing locators and the use of Q-Links in that page. Really speeds up getting around and also the copy/paste thing works far better now I have the navigation sorted properly. There seem to be little jumps if I create a loop between markers then activate it but perhaps that's just more practise needed. This does give me an easy way to set up areas of a song I can use and I'm surprised I didn't notice the pad display during Locator setup which really helps in navigation generally. Also discovered some preset keygroup instruments, didn't think there were any. Gives me some new sounds to play with anyway reducing the need to make a load of my own from the connected synths. So all good, really.

Not looking forward to drive to Scotland, you can probably tell. Will look at the tyes, oil etc. beforehand, make some chilli, may miss my Friday sesh. Probably taking the MPC along. Was gonna get a case but may wait and see if better options appear.  Haha, the old P3/camera case fits.

Version 3.7.1 of the MPC firmware dropped today. Sadly it doesn't sort any of my issues although does acknowledge one partly (running status - doesn't mention active sensing). I also noticed some odd pauses using legato mode switching between audio clips today. Will check that next session. Also still struggling with import of long audio chunks and truncation. Lots of faffing about with audio editor and the audio edit button on the main page, both of which have their own end value. I don't really know if I'm going to do much of the long audio streaming given it's a zillion times easier on the Octatrack. And there's something flat about the audio playback of these files too - seems to me the OT sounded better. 

Found a use for my bandcamp paypal payments - plugins for the MPC. Accordingly I just bought Ether, a posher, zanier reverb than any it has. No instruments I want, sadly, as they all sound a bit ordinary, plus I'm waiting to see if they fix the Minimoog as a test of their committment to do good shit. 

Note to self, don't bother buying plugins from Thomann. It's a very long-winded process compared to Pluginboutique. Now almost an hour later and I'm waiting for a second email, this time from "plugivery" whoever that is... eventually came almost 2 hours after expected. It's a good plugin though, phew. 

Went to High Cup today. Incredible landscape.