Bloody hell - Aurora over the house!

 Yeah, quite amazed by the colour, intensity and duration. Had a ball gawping up and snapping.

I should probably have boosted the saturation so it looked a bit more like how it really was. Anyway. 

I won an award, which doesn't happen too often these days. Makes me think I should edit this slightly as some start and ends are a bit rough. Maybe that's good though, who knows?

Yay! Setup 3 reorg still progressing, made another slight change today. Unfortunately I started recording (yet another attempt at 'zain') and within minutes Broc alerted me to a visitor - Bucky had come. pat had arranged it but forgot to write on calendar and, of course, she was with the horse. So switched off studio and gave up again. Later, took Broc a nice walk in the sun and did the grass, well not all of it - the long stuff near the conservatory is always full of frogs and I left a fair bit of that,plus the patio for them to hang out in. Frustrating day but at least got that done. Did a few refinements to the S-4 review in the light of ongoing experience. Now gonna sit a bit.

October, Synthfest and a birthday treat

 Yes, the start of October means Synthfest - and this time I actually fancied treating myself to something so looked at quite a lot of gear. Consequently I missed quite a few people I'd normally chat to - but was a good show, I think. The  SOS lunch was nice, managed to play the polybrute, Muse, Nina thing, Minifreak, Mantis and a selection of the new Korgs. Surprisingly it was one of those I went for - an Opsix complete with (non aftertouch) keyboard. I managed to spend some time towards the end seeing how easy it was to edit and was won over, especially with a discount. Mr Buggins got a Wavestate but his came without a power supply so he's yet to report on it. I'm very impressed with my purchase so far though, it does things my other gear does not - even the Digitone can't cover the ground it can. 

Saw John for birthday beers. Went home drunk and left his gift on the bus (or in the pub). He forgot to get off at the right stop and had to walk back from the point he noticed. A good afternoon was had!

It's raining. Again. 

Mac fixed - needed new BIOS battery. Cleaned internals while doing it. Phew!
Opsix hung several times. Receiving notes and CCs while its sequence running, changing patches, something about a randomised patch it also didn't like. All required power off and on. Not good.

Nice walk with Broc

An excellent day - have now programmed (or tweaked into being usable) over 40 Opsix patches. Hope the hanging isn't going to be a thing. Tomorrow is Friday. Recorded a fab thing last week...

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.

Heatwave starting... tomorrow

 It's always tomorrow, right? Today (Saturday) it's a bit grey and I've done my ankle in so not walking Broc. Give me chance to listen to the 8 pieces I spontaneously recorded yesterday. I think just hitting record and go can work pretty well - seems to have on this occasion. 

https://wilyepeyote.bandcamp.com/album/grinkle

Still life. Eighth of sweetie, perfect. Sat in sun with Tim and layed our shit. V Agreeable,

Sunday now and it's gonna be warm and lovely. I was out last night but only saw on meteor - will see how it is tonight if sky is clearer. 

We had the heatwave, was very pleasant. Monday now and it's warm, grey and thunderstormy. Don't feel like any studio time so am mostly reading Malazan 9 - be glad when I've finished 10. 

Time has passed and the gig has become more clear - I'm meant to be on almost last, which is not good. Should be first. I'll continue pressing gently for a change though - it'll be a late do by the looks of things. Oh well. I have some time by myself managing two dogs.  

Wedding done, good do, can relax now. S-4 here and I've dug in. Oh yes, Finished Malazan 10 - hope you didn't expect a review? Gig next week, not ideal having to get into Manchester at teatime. 
Someone pointed this to me... 

Steve Joliffe was a little disruptive before and during out set but presumably felt that it was fine as he was the main act of the afternoon. I really was shit then - and so thin.

Oh, if you were wondering about that heatwave... join the fecking club!

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.