The end of May

Which I've been waiting for since she, inexplicably, got handed the job of PM. I think there's one of the hundred or so hyenas hoping for the job who doesn't appear to be a twat. That, in itself, is very surprising. Corbyn continues to be that old man who desperately wants to have a conversation about radishes even though nobody else wants to talk radishes. I still haven't got my Irish passport sorted. I daren't begin to hope it won't be necessary.

It's Friday and I think I should start a new Octatrack project. Keeping the current instrument lineup though so will just copy 'Stars', delete all the samples and arrangements and start afresh. Prob won't need the modular today. New modules arrived for review and was surprised that one of them was the obvious star - not the one I expected. Actually I'd played the 1u version in Berlin but didn't figure it out then. About a minute with the manual and everything's obvious! Oh, I sent in the Pipe review at long last. Wrote it in one go, added a bit of an intro and conclusion the following day, minor edits the next. Quick for me, left in a few feeble attempts at humour that David can keep or kill as he deems fit.

I took a few pix when Tim and I wandered down to the Conti, but since I have an iPhone I can't just stick a USB cable and grab them. This is the one I emailed to myself and it evokes feelings of mystery and suspense. Ish. Can't remember what the others looked like.

Started a track with promise, new project: colours. The first is Aquamarine. With a very tiny tidy up it'll be spot on. Might even leave the wrong notes for now as they are growing on me :) And Don always manages to weave fab stuff around my wonkiness. Good reaction to it.

Sun, sun, sun!

Funny old day so far. I got accused of being homophobic by joking you could lure Nigel Evans (our MP) to support a cause using a trail of rent boys. Next thing, Nigel himself pops up in the conversation, proving my point and perhaps dismaying his 'outraged' pals. I tried to explain a few basics of cognitive bias but it was a tough Tory crowd. Still easier than the US gun nutters though. One of them did wish I were not alive amongst them though so I made my excuses and left.

It does remind you how people leap in with offence even before they fully understand what they're offended about. It's almost a race to the bottom. Hey, glad I didn't put it that way. :)

Pat is off for a few days and the sun is shining. Doubt there will be much studio time but you never know. Worked in garden and might do more of that. Ah, David talked me into a couple more reviews. Well, I mentioned them so I guess it's my fault too.

Did this https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/hoozle-mp3

Watched T2. Not bad actually, considering.

Everyone was angry almost all the time. They rushed to judgement based on almost no data, aided by a generous dollop of cognitive bias. Nobody asked for clarification, nobody really wanted a debate; they just wanted to be irrevocably outraged, often on someone else's behalf, or for some cause, or business reason.

Those who recognised what was going on tried, at first, to lighten the mood, to reason, to probe and ask a few exploratory questions. Inevitably, this led to even more outrage, led to calls for a closure of public forums, or removal of undesirables, experts and traitors from society. Altogether, and by any means. By that time, the few remaining moderate officials, pundits and Tweeters who hadn't been removed, vanished from sight.

The Divide was in full swing by then.

I've been working on a zombie novel for a while now and that is part of its intro. I've a horrible feeling that real life is way, way ahead. Kittens, anyone? Had a weird online exchange with Tory arch-twat, our MP.

Tony Sawford sent me a copy of my Mushroom Disco which I'd totally forgotten about. It has some good stuff in it, including guitar from, I think, Andy Boland. I'm 25 mins in and wondering how I forgot this one, much better than a lot of stuff I did release. Heh. Hope it features that track with the Jeff Bridges samples, been wondering where that went for a while. Used the Monowave for the bassline IIRC.

I released 'into the light' on bandcamp to quite a good reception. Knocked up the cover, which inspired the title, as it was uploading.
Went to see the Rutles - they were really good.

(Just before the Continental.)

Did I do the link? https://paulnagle.bandcamp.com/album/into-the-light
Now this, I know, I know https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/modfx1-mp3

New Case

I was slightly miffed to note my new Makenoise case is slidey fecking nuts. I really dislike them and it took way too long to install the modules I wanted, then more time when I instantly wanted to change a few. I guess it means I won't be shifting the contents around much. That buffered mult will probably become a Pico DSP though :)

Heh, that wasn't even the last tweak. I replaced Chance with the Marble Physics, much more fun as a modulation source. Oh, took out the Vermona too and put in a 4-way mixer/VCA and Wasp filter. Mad eh? Actually very happy with my reduced-choices setup. It totally works.

The MN case may be a PITA when it comes to sliding nuts but its mod bus is brilliant, exactly what I wanted.

Started a thing in F. Recorded first impression of it.

https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/teensybitstonedyoudneverguesstho

Deleted following morning cos it was shit. Sorry.


Should probably tidy up at some point.

Bank Holiday Pootles / Superbooth Reflections

I tried watercolour for the first time today - instantly gained a new appreciation of it! After my attempt, in which I made numerous discoveries, I watched a short Youtube thing and discovered some answers - about how to mix primarily. Turns out my tried and tested technique of roughly sketching that works so well with oils and moderately well with acrylics is a bit of a curse for watercolours. I discovered that you probably shouldn't start the sky until you're ready to paint it all as it changed within 5 mins and drastically within 10. My sky was terrible, even worse than my foreground bush that fails completely to be in the foreground.
Even though it was a botched effort, I quite enjoyed doing it and the next one should be better. When I look at Tim's paintings though, I realise how far I have to go. I must learn to mix colours properly!

Today (Wednesday) I mostly spent looking at birds in the garden. We have baby sparrows, blackbirds and starlings - in large numbers. Watching them bounce around, feeding, jostling, arguing, taking dust baths and generally demanding attention was an afternoon delight. Also keeping an eye out for cats. Saw a sparrowhawk fly by scouting the area.

The pre-Superbooth hype has begun. Nice to see Elektron finally added portamento to the Digitone - too late for me to try as I only read the message after powering off the studio for the day. No hurry though. Hope they addressed the clicking and incorrect envelope pickup with same notes.

Superbooth

OK, so this isn't going to be much of a report. I did play with quite a few things and some I even liked. Mostly what I took away was the need to get away from being swamped by Eurorack. Therefore I've ordered a small, portable case in which I am going to put a selection of modules and place them in the Light Studio. This may sound strange (and I might later regret it) but it's the only way I'm going to do anything useful or creative. Reduction works, for me.

As for my thoughts, well, I thought Behringer had buggered their SH-101. A year after I first played it and the LFO doesn't work correctly (this one was restarting for every note!). I didn't play anything else on that stand, couldn't get near the Odyssey to see if its sliders felt better than my Korg.

I liked the Empress Zoia modular effects pedal, really liked the Jupiter 1 synth (despite the foolish decision they made to take the envelopes from the Jupiter 4), quite liked the blue thing with the stupid protruding keyboard.. what else?  I actually liked the sound of the Moog One, but the interface didn't appeal. The Matriarch sounded fab, annoyingly. There was a very cute, flat, grey SH-101 clone for silly money.

Anyway, had a good few nights out with Colin and co. Ate a few good meals - thai, vietnamese especially, plus an expensive curry made with reconstituted chicken. It wasn't hot but I did have a very strange gut episode the following morning that took 4 shits to clear. You needed to know that, right? The new Sequentix HQ is awesome - a massive space ideal for partying as well as, presumably, working. Made the mistake of going to a club wearing a Sequentix t-shirt and got accosted by some twat who claimed he had been waiting for a Cirklon for four years. Popped half a pill and was glad as Ross, who did a full one, looked quite spaced out when we crawled off to our hotels. Took some acid that didn't work, except very, very faintly.

Got my Pipe back plus an Ether to mess with. Resisted getting any Euro to review, although Dan's amazing distortion was there. Some fab Instruo modules too, really tempting but don't want to pile any more on the 'not doing' pile. Maybe the new case and reduced options will help my focus but I saw lots of Euro performances that were fumbling and amateur and which people seemed to love. Weird how it came around from perfect laptop performances to these raw, live things. I think it's healthy actually, almost like people are starting with electronic music all over. I guess the new case would allow me to take part, should the urge arise.

I missed most of the music and was so exhausted that my sightseeing really fizzled out, especially as my first port of call (Dali museum) was closed. Some pix

Ponderment

Warning: boring drivel ahead

As I fired up the laptop this morning, I was struck by a very real sense that all the tabs on my browser take me to places of no value at all. The various forums I read and very occasionally interact with have no information of value to me. The new gear talk is pointless and ill-informed, the speculation even worse. As for news, please nooooooo! I've refined my Twitter now to a list of discussions that either bore or annoy me, an endless loop of the same point being made, the same arguments trotted out. I plan to cut that back drastically.
This feels almost like a post-addiction phase, one in which you suddenly see your own past behavior as totally without merit. I think it's possible to have a worthwhile online life, but perhaps only if you use it to learn, to educate yourself, to be inspired - and those types of activities aren't as easy to isolate as the mindless pit of social media, clickbait, cognitive bias feed.
Got an email from an old friend who, for a change, opened up to me about her troubles. I now feel bad because I'd recently dropped her an email which essentially went on about how great my retired life is.

Spent Saturday afternoon initially painting (an alien landscape of indifferent quality) then recording an ambient track after grabbing samples from the Virus, layering them and adding some MIDI overdubs.
https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/biosphere (I did another version later but this isn't it).
I now have a LOT of new material done on the minimal setup. I should maybe sort through, master a few of them, see which, if any, deserve to hit bandcamp.

Pestered Korg again, just to try and find out whether they had verified my bug report and passed it on to Japan. Got a one line answer telling me very little other than: It's golden week in Japan, the office is closed until next week. I have another bug too but it's starting to feel that they're falling on stony ground, at least if they originate with me. So much for making an instrument to be the best possible.

Today (Monday) was a very lazy day for me. I didn't go to the gym, I didn't power up the studio, I mostly read, had a pleasant walk, pottered in the garden. This type of thing could be the gist of all future blog entries, at least in this phase, so if I still have any readers today, goodbye then - have fun! I may have said this before but there's no purpose to this blog, I don't reference it myself, I simply do occasional brain dumps as typing practice when time allows, which is becoming all the time.

Tuesday I did go to the gym and I did power up the studio. See, it's no more interesting that way. Probably the day's highlight was at 5am when the blackbird woke me up so I could remove a prowling cat. The blackbirds in our garden seem to have me sussed and anyway, there are chicks hopping about and what seems to be an injured older female also struggling to fly. I think we'll go out to tea, just to give the day a bit of zing.
Made some nice drones on the Virus and Minilogue xd. I should probably shop for some Minilogue user FX to see if there are some harmonizers and spooky delays, perhaps a high pass filter would be good too. Just a pain getting them in with the crappy app - hence I haven't updated my 'pluck' oscillator yet. May try older laptop with larger screen, lower resolution and maybe more reliable drag and drop.

An excellent and completely typical Friday. Started with an Odyssey drone and ended up with 12 min live piece (my mix cocked a bit cos I need 'passthru' mode for sliders to avoid big jumps when you select the 3 sets of 8 tracks). Most splendid. Not sure it needed to break into a groove at the end though, that possibly something for ANT. It was only 30BPM and most tracks at at least half speed to give it that properly ponderous quality.

I'd post it but it's a bit long for Soundcloud.
Oh what the heck, I'll delete some stuff. The string part in this needs trimming back, cheese starts to get a bit pong and I need to look for a 'passthru' mode.

https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/forest-lube