Ho ho fecking ho

 Yeah, christmas day, Pat hasn't got up yet but it looks like a nice morning. Slept well so hopefully moving into a cycle of untroubled nights as the year ends. Ordered some transparent knobs for the SQ-1 and shouldn't be too long before my Wave arrives. New Year resolution is to sell or swap a lot of the gear that's taking up lots of room but could be replaced by small things or just not needed. I know it's a faff but needs must. Also have to get the Synthi fixed and take Tim's droning Jupiter and CR8000, maybe my 101 too to get those knobs sorted. If only the Behringer sequencer was better I could think of replacing it with one of their new things as the MIDI would be handy, especially as Cirklon CVIO an ongoing pain. I wonder if a B-Jupiter and B-CS80 will arrive next year and if they'll be more tempting than the rather dull UB-XA? 

Anyway, seems I'm not getting my free days so no long musical seshes and epic music created this time around. Oh well. 

It's that time of year when I tend to feel morose. Sholdn't be surprised that this year is no exception.

Anyway, ended 2024 with a freebie unreleased thing and the MR performancebundled together. 
Here's hoping 2025 will, somehow, not be shit.

Doc and dog duties. Oh and MR 57 happened ;)

 Into the second week of Pat's chest infection, and this morning I waited at doctor's to get her an appointment. She's now got some strong antibiotics and hopefully we'll see an improvement soon. Meanwhile I'm still dog walking and other stuff like a goddamn hero. I hope to find time to do something for this livestream at the weekend as the material I had doesn't sound good to me now. The S-4 still behaving itself, phew, so will get the review completed, although possibly not this week. Actually it's all done bar a couple of hashes (my way of indicating something needs double-checking, testing, verifying whatever) but I'd like to polish it a bit since I haven't done owt for a while. 

I suspect I won't be walking again this week but actually fine with that. Time is just leaking away, like blood down an abbatoir grating. I'm tired from not sleeping, so if the coughing subsides that'll be nice. 

Trying to get nice, clean audio through my camera and OBS. Trying different bitrates and now the highest seems to work ... so hopefully will be OK for Saturday as I'd rather do it live than record in advance. 

The last one is the highest bitrate but can I really hear a difference? And is that the answer? I dunno.
These are unlisted at the moment, may keep it that way as I haven't listened to whether there's anything musically interesting, probably not too coherent. 

Anyway, the Morphic Resonance gig went OK - Synthi was misbehaving though and I should have dropped it really. Otherwise some bum notes and think the monitoring was less good/familiar than normal due to faffing with camera levels. Audio sounded much better from those who didn't do it live, at least those whose DRM1 may have been boosted too much. Listening to my recording, sounds nice enough though so all good. 

The Udo ribbon arrived Saturday morning so I used it - but it's actually quite hard to control. It will do one octave of pitch shift provided you get your finger at the very far extreme to the other -seems that's how it's calibrated. It will also continue pitch raising if you do lots of short movements - so basically I'm gonna have to practise with it. I did manage a kind of vibrato that sounded like a dying bee, so that's something...

Friday then more

Yeah man, know what I'm sayin?? I ordered an Udo ribbon while moderately stoned but only moderately because I think it will be a good thing, better than shelling out more for the PAT keyboard and it still guessing velocities. Anyway. I should be able to totally ignore that bloody awful bender.  

Uploaded several albums. Probably too many. Today, being Saturday, Tim and I made noises - Synthi and Opsix primarily, sounded good to me at the time. Definitely reckon the Jupiter has a fault and I'll need to butter up Tony to take a look. I also think there could be a dicky knob on the Synthi. Might be nice to have the remainder of the originals replaced. What else? Yesterday it was windy, everyone panicking, well everyone prone to that kind of thing. Meant to ring Harvey but forgot, will do on Monday though as it has definitely been too long. This week's been sorta busy (doing very little) but pleasant. We didn't walk cos it was raining and I'm perfectly happy with that. Went to the pub with Tim instead, all good.

Setup 3 is my current favourite. I could easily see myself putting the piano into it if it could squeeze in somewhere. I guess there are clever stands for cramming stuff these days. The Opsix still delighting me - Tim got some great sounds from it on Saturday, almost like oscillator sync at times. I still think FM has lots more to give. 

Sunday now, mum had been a bit ill and thankfully Lisa took her to the doc's and insisted she did something, now on antibiotics and rallying. No sure what next week has in store, other than the visit of Benji. Looking forward to December being over, as I often am. Apparently there's another PRS soon but this one is rarely a good one for me so I don't expect much. Maybe the Behringer Wave will appear in time for some ho ho ho. Edit: no it won't, according to Andertons. January 15th apparently - may cancel before then, we'll see.

Another Thursday came and went, Pat still struggling with her cold and I took Broc a decent walk, tired myself out a bit but earned a few hours in the studio. Good sesh to hopefully prepare for tomorrow. Found best way to make loops of any length on the S4 - using specific (named in Ck) notes on ch16, working a treat at last. Don't think there's anything left to work out, plus I got a much better explanation of how Density works so I can sit and get the review polished off now. Actually it pretty much is already but I wanted to really nail that looping part, as much for myself as anyone else. 

https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/ck-kalticia-77

Will try and do make something cool out of it to play on the livestream thing a week on Saturday.