Yule be alright

Seems I may have been drunk last night. I reach this conclusion because I didn't finish my glass of wine, which very rarely happens. Had an excellent curry, which is greeting me again this morning. I watched most of the things I'd recorded (season finale of the Strain, Rick & Morty, Vic & Bob) but drew the line at Lord of the Elves which, even stoned though I was, was utter garbage but not in any kind of funny way. There were two people in it who (I think) had acted before. The rest of the cast were clearly just hobos.

How come when I eat liqueur chocolates I always leave cherry to the last? Seems counter-intuitive. Trying to limit myself to a box a day but it's 09:20 and I've eaten most of the current one.

Yesterday's recording is sounding very good indeed. I'm 22 mins in and contemplating another coffee. Today I will work out a tune for my new thing, probably. If not will record anyway, can always add a melody later if one occurs to me. Where's Picko when you need him?

Yeah, I was taking photos like that yesterday, convinced I was doing the Lord's Work. I'm going to drink less today.

Amazingly I missed a Friday, thinking it was Saturday. Now it's an actual Saturday and I'm at a loss. That track has been mixed and remixed but still isn't perfect. Too many elements - which always happens when I sync up the whole studio. I don't often go back and do things again but I probably should with this as there are a few decent ideas that float up from the stew, like interesting potatoes or amusingly-shaped carrots.

Since I didn't drink much yesterday, seems fair for me to contemplate a beer or two today. I should clean the mould out of the conservatory but can wait. Seems I'm waiting for something but not sure what. There really is no excuse for delaying starting writing the new novel. However.

Oh, my interview thing came out reasonably well - not as long as the others, which is probably in its favour. I fleshed out my answers somewhat on my facebook page.

I may offer some kind of summary of the year very soon. Then again, it might be too depressing.

This was a shit blog entry.

Ho Ho Fecking Ho

Well, I had a weird encounter with a random fat serving lass at Aldi who demanded to know whether I was ready? I looked at her and informed her I didn't do that kind of thing, to be met with a stare of pure hatred. I realise now that to communicate with the herd I'll have to make some changes and learn some of the preset sentences that people spurt out without even needing to look up from their phones. Had I gone with "I'm smashing it" I would have gone unnoticed.
As it happens, this fits well with my novel and Herbal Jeff's advice to the rest of the gang on blending in with the Other Side.

Anyway, Pat's off to watch the wee man open prezzies, leaving me free for a lengthy studio sesh. I have bought beer. I expect she'll be home 26th or 27th, should probably find out.

In other news, I'm actually really happy with that 35 min track I did the other day. Tossing the Electribe Sampler into my small P3 setup worked a treat - more stuff to do in that area. I should probably not have consigned it to the oblivion that is my Wily E Peyote bandcamp site.

Right, should wash my armpits as they're going to get a bit swampy I expect. Have bought tinned chilli, pizza and stir fry so, apart from the dog's needs, should not need to leave the house!

Seasonal bad taste humour:
Ram Dass was a spiritual leader and guru, NOT a brand of butt plug.

Excellent day. Recorded lots of stuff and lookin forward to playing back. Sketched more for the 'very pleasant' track, still need some kind of melody.

Good ideas

Well, ish. I thought that instead of debating with idiots, reading shit that makes me despair or just wasting time, I'd start posting some positive stuff about gear I've kept and what I like in particular. I have limited myself to one negative for each thing, just so it's not entirely misleading. There are things with lots of flaws that annoy me but which I keep for various reasons. It's worth talking about those I'd say. Recorded a thing today, the 20th, which is basically the whole afternoon jam. I cocked up one recording of the electribe - what a great addition that is with the P3/JX-03/MonoCircuit/Digitone end of things. Putting Juno through Biscuit (until I fix or replace Mod Factor PSU) and using Virus again. To good effect today. Well, I think.

I will listen tomorrow and either leave in place or wipe.
https://wilyepeyote.bandcamp.com/track/it-all-went

Roedelius gig

Awesome!!
On request, I wrote a little review on skiddle
https://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Oldham/The-Golden-Lion/ROEDELIUS-ClusterHarmonia/13658225/reviews.html

This was just the kind of high I needed because the following day was Idiocracy Day (the election).
Friday the 13th is going to be dark and full of dark, unhappy music.

And so it was. I now feel totally dislocated. 

I'm not going to talk about the election, still too raw and still processing. But my rights as an EU citizen have been thrown under the bus, along with the rights of anyone else whose face no longer fits in the UK. By coincidence, just watching the episode of The Strain in which the rise of the Nazi party is depicted.
I've done more weird droney stuff since and suspect the trend will continue a while yet. Perhaps a droney Christmas album is afoot?
Bought a little JX-03 module from Tim - actually sounds better than the Novation Mono Circuit and, although the knobs are tiny, it has a far better, more direct UI. May see if I can swap the Circuit for a second one. Shame those sliders on the others are so small as tiny Jupiter would be cool too. Since I got another pretty good PRS payout, I may buy something else - perhaps the Reface YC, which has always appealed. Tiny, tiny, tiny! Did I mention I put a deposit on the Osmose? I may still be interested in the Hydrasynth, will have to see how it handles, but the Osmose seemed to have the superior sound engine and physicality.

I resisted the offer of a JD-XA for £700, which is quite mature of me. So far have kept the OP-1 too and maybe all I need for that is the RK-005 to let me deal with it as regular MIDI. Or a cheaper option,  I guess, since I've barely researched any. (This not reviewing stuff is starting to affect me - how quickly you lose touch with the whole market).

Right, it's Monday and I should do something. Aiming to get Cirklon manual mostly up to date by end of week.

Synthi Joy

The new trapezoid inversion and S&H work a treat - recorded a 15 min piece today that I think is brilliant. Just a straight jam, nothing fancy, pure Synthi but that's all you need! Sent it to Martin as he was after something for his label but haven't heard back - maybe too radiophonic for what he had in mind. Added a couple of 'ambient mush loop' type things he could pick instead.

This was just before, not quite as together but heading in the right direction.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5pxshmh0mW/

Oh, and on Thursday I fired up the studio to do an exclusive track for Phantom Circuit, the chap who helped me out processing the Path to sound better. It turned out rather well, I think - started with general noodles on the Mono Circuit / TT-78 but half-way through, in response to a Synthi wail, everything broke down into a deep, full drone type piece. At over 20 mins it feels natural, smooth and a perfect example of a studio jam. Everything I do right now seems to work, so I really should do more.

However, I have finally made a start updating the Cirklon manual - which inevitably means there are things I need to remember. And because some features are tied to my unit's serial number, must also be careful not to mention features that aren't widely available. Actually, it looks like Colin added my personal shortcut for save/lose (a la P3) to the wider community, so that's good. Would be even better if it was mentioned in public ;)
I've got the ability to do screen dumps too now, which Colin can smooth so they look as good as the others. Busy, busy!

Ah, he must mean sharpen, since mine look too smooth and fuzzy. Darn. Playing with the Polyrhythm option and realising it's a marvel for piano type material. Got a bit lost with a pair of 1 bar P3 patterns with accumulators and random direction changes - sure sounds wild to me! Anyway, back to updating manual soon but want to sort graphics. At least I play with Cirklon again, which I haven't deeply for quite a while. Seduced by the simplicity of Elektron and the speed and playfun factor of the P3 setup, especially now the P3 feeds the MonoCircuit. But Cirklon has all that real-time stuff to enjoy, the reich function and I really must try that 'Prh' example someone posted. Must also try that 'sort Korg Win10 driver tosh' video and see if I can get mine going. Relying on old laptop to backup Microsampler and Minilogue xd is not good.

Had a lovely Saturday. Music (cocked up recording but can do again), chilling with films and g&t, lovely. Sunday equally good, almost hit the political iceberg with my mum but we both steered away.

Knobs 'pimped' / Mono Circuit arrived

Yep!

The Novation Mono Circuit is an odd thing. On the one hand it's a decent-enough cut-down Bass Station II, really lacking a second envelope but the modulation sequencer is an interesting alternative mod source. It has lots of flavours of distortion and these are added lovingly to many of the factory patches. I'll replace all those as I go. The problem with doing so is you need to start from a new pattern which doesn't have parameter recordings or step-captures (whatever the parlance - I've only skimmed the manual, which is a bit crap I'm afraid and has a few errors and contradictions I've noticed already).
You can store a patch for each pattern - but it's a pointer to a location that may, later, bear no relation to its sound at the point when you made the pattern. There is no way to see which patches have been used in patterns across the various sessions, so I can foresee overwriting stuff another session uses.

Management of sound development is therefore a challenge - but with some fun aspects. For example, if I make all the envelope times very long in one pattern, they will remain long in the next pattern UNLESS I explicitly write shorter envelope times into that next pattern. With no visibility of such parameter overrides, the sound you play back in each pattern with depends not only on the original selection but on which patterns have already played.
Having each part of the overall pattern loop and chain independently is great too. Old hat for sequencers like the P3 of course but light years beyond what Elektron sequencers can do - the Circuit also supports different directions. Just wish I could specify how many times each pattern should repeat.

Many of the things I would like to be able to write into a pattern, I can't (e.g. triggering) and some things are session wide when they'd be better pattern-wide, but hey, can't have everything (you'd have nowhere to put it). Manual claims you can't automate switches but I seem to have done it with oscillator octaves and more. Oops - no, I accidentally recorded some 'patch flips'. Another downer - seems too easy to 'fill' the modulation range of any parameter and you're forever backing off existing values so your new modulation makes any impact. I think the resolution may be inadequate for the job to hand. Oh well.

The most Stupidity Points earned so far are from the default state of  'save disabled'. The getting started manual supposedly points this out (I didn't even notice that manual until I'd downloaded the full manual and I still can't see where now I've found it). The full manual points this out, then smugly informs you that to be enable save requires a power-on button combi. WTF! A few cryptic coloured page to reality translations required but getting there. It does irritate that you can't write button presses (e.g. for octaves on the oscillators or filter types or LFO waveforms) into a pattern. Seems totally crap compared to Elektron stuff - I'd have moaned about it had I reviewed this.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B5dOZPtBNDr/

Did I mention that P3 Playlists still beat the 4x4 matrix of chained patterns? Yes, I'm repeating myself. Anyway, with a playlist I can loop the individual patterns in any order and have repeats and transposes, all from an easy interface. Still, using chains in different ways has its own charm.

Lastly, colour isn't as well-used as I'd expected. Things you'd want visible really aren't (like the contents of steps, whether patterns include parameter data etc.).
Oh and there are some oddities in terms of setting the root and scale - if you set the root after recording it transposes, which is rather annoying. Transpose should be a separate decision. You're setting the root, which will affect the notes you tap in. I do agree changing the scale should act on recorded notes though and that's the only respect where the root should count. Makes for much more interesting key modulations IMHO.

Off to get my Synthi back tomorrow :)

Last week of autumn

Well, it gets difficult to think of new headings for each entry.
Today I went to visit mum, having missed her for a couple of weeks. She's pretty perky and active, which is good for this time of year. Later, I didn't set the gear back up but did listen through the gig. Was surprisingly polished, or at least error-free and competent-sounding. Maybe I should have had a light and melodic thing in there rather than two Berlin type sequences, but it works as a whole. There's some annoying drop-out on the left channel of the recording though; I ended up copying parts from the other channel in Wavelab. Probably not good enough to release but then again it doesn't really add anything new/fresh to my catalogue anyway. (Stuck quietly on Wily E Peyote's bandcamp so I don't lose it).

Tried a few alternate knobs on the Minilogue xd - the Mutable mid-size ones fit and turn well enough but my favourites are the creamy ones Vermona use. Will see if Tony has a selection I can try, he probably does. Not entirely sure the Minilogue is an ideal live synth after all though - something more direct and simpler might still suit me better. The SH-101 really does piss all over it and it isn't a huge amount bigger.

Still wading through the Orville but it's not really holding my attention. I think it should either add some humour or some sci-fi; right now it doesn't seem to quite know what it wants to be.

Tuesday.
I did a nice drone today with the Pro 2 and Minimoog. Just playing back and it sounds fab - big and lush and faintly spooky. Inspired by gong dude from Sunday, no doubt, although I resisted using the two notes he was using thus maintaining my absolute originality.

Ordered a load of knobs, in three different sizes. I notice there are red and blue versions on some of my modules, which might be a cool swap-around too.

Thursday.
Just reading about an 'analog synthesizer' that's been updated to version 2.0 of its firmware. Funny old world. Oh, I weakened yesterday, fell for all the Black Friday stuff for the first time. I ordered a half-price Novation Mono Circuit, which is most of a Bass Station 2 but with the addition of a pretty coloured grid sequencer and the dropping of the too-short keyboard. Seems like a fun thing to play with, but we'll see. No confirmation from them that they got my order though.

Took Jasper down as far as the river yesterday - first time in ages. He was proper lively* too, tail up and leading all the way. Absolutely brilliant to see, given he's 18 and a half. I add the half these days because I feel he's earned it.

* I originally wrote 'perky' then remembered I'd described my mother that way earlier.

I note the signs that used to say 'Preston Junction Nature Reserve' aren't there any more. All that will be left will be a narrow strip of silver birch sandwiched between two cat-infested, rubbish-over-the-fence-dumping, tree-hacking housing estates.

Friday now. Mono Circuit arriving this afternoon but too late to be absorbed into my drunken/stoned festivities. New knobs may come today, we'll see. Anyway, I did a thing yesterday which was initially just a quick 'P3 meets Digitone' sesh but since I'd powered up the Mac, I recorded two ambient pieces (mostly Juno 6 and Lyra through FX and looper) afterwards. The ambient stuff was great, at least it sounds that way to me now in the cold light of day. I can hear changes I want to make in the P3 patterns - a few notes tweaked from the bass will totally transform it.

I think I may be down this end of the studio again today.
Mind you I really should fit that 'Pico RND' module I bought to fill the MN case, then, by the time it arrived, realised I didn't need it. How many times do I need to tell myself: buy no more modules! I already have more than I need. Thinking now that the MN case would be best as an ambient noise and weirdness generator, plus FX processor for other stuff. Sequencing, if I'm gonna bother doing it, is more fun with regular-sized instruments where I'm not terrified of grabbing that large coarse tuning knob (actually did this in gig but fortunately it was the Plaits and I had marked '0' in felt tip so could get back).

Right, time for another coffee, or perhaps another shit. Decisions, decisions...