The last week of Summer

 Well, I sorta count September as autumn, not sure everyone does. Still warm although not so much as to be unbearable - Tim and I managed a sesh yesterday (Cedric) and the results aren't bad, all in all. Today we'll visit my mum and take Izzy and Brox to see her, see how she's been getting on without her unpaid carer, my sister. I should have got in touch in the week but somehow didn't so maybe she'll be in a mood. Broc and Izzy getting on very well, although cramming me into my chair if they both insist on sitting with my (stereo farts!).

Today I will work on fleshing out the Easel conclusion. David agrees the edits were probably too much and there's word of a 'history' box from SBR, which would be good, I think. Just glad he didn't throw it out really as I'm bound to be rusty by now.

Think we getting William for 2 days next week so could be a different Friday/Saturday to usual. Will endure. 

Last minute photoshoot for the review. Tim did some great indoor shots, one of which will be used. I took this outside..

Oh, and I started revising Bogus Focus. Always meant to and somehow, after reading an Arthur C Clarke short story (about aliens grabbing art treaures before Earth is destroyed), I've gone back to it. I don't think I read that story before writing BF but maybe I did and he'll forgive me for nicking the idea. 

Recorded some stuff on thursday that had some good parts. Friday/Saturday scuppered with sprog/dog duties. Weather not looking great so dunno if they'll be going to Southport for this kite thing.

Well, I did a thing at the very end of summer then withdrew it because I can do so much better with the material, especially with a small amount of arrangement. It's now September, we went to see the new money guy and, for the first time I can remember, our fund actually went up - makes a huge difference if you aren't paying out massive amounts in fees. We shoulda done it ages ago. Oh well, live and learn. This evening we're off to Lisa's for Jack's birthday thing. Will eat first as I doubt cake will fill me up ;)

Summer heat continues

Well, it does. 
Setup 1 working sweetly at the moment. I think it has pretty much all my favourite stuff in it. 

Well, Monday was cooler so what do I know? Went to Brinscall and the waterfall was dry, except for a weak trickle. 

Listening to Morton Subotnick's The Wild Bull. Pretty wacky - sounds like one of my very stoned Friday afternoons though, just more frantic. Tuesday I had a brief mess with Wavestate but it didn't inspire so moved into other room, updated my Ableton 12, put MPC in place of S-4 (fed by Cirklon, could work, I think, tried and worked better than Octatrack). Pottered aimlessly with System 8, Wave and Opsix but wasn't really inspired or had any direction. 

Walking tomorrow and Pat off south Thursday. I was gonna go (William's birthday) but having Izzy here means I can't. I therefore plan to do some music, maybe some drones and abstract stuff as the whole sequencer business is feeling like it's getting in my way at the moment. Fed up with sequences and drum grooves, not sure why. Ennui, think I caught it off Tim. Will see if he minds me updating that MPC One to latest firmware, assuming I can find a stand-alone install. 

Good MS20 sesh Thursday. Recorded lots of chunks for arrangement tomorrow as have ideas for overdubs and whatnot. Used S4 as I used to, wished for a way to slew the pitch quantize to scale function. Made some spooky shit to which a few small additions will be groovy. New weed working nicely. BB looping like a tape recorder. 

Friday could be a good one as, unusually, I have a plan. You see, Thursday's MS20 recordings were ace and I was even thinking about things to add in arrangement later, which I will do. The first lot was especially good. 

Very happy with today's work

Hot again, revisiting old Cluster albums

 The early stuff is really great - Cluster 71 and the Konzerte CD from 72/77 - makes me want to explore something more out there and atonal myself. Seems appropriate in this hot weather somehow, or it goes very well with it. Whenever it's cool enough to go back in the studio I'm going to explore music without structure, which essentially means loopers and multitracking and weird Synthi noises and, above all, playing it. Shame nothing seems to be coming of our drone weekend.

Dave Bessell gave me a guide to a Grisey piece, which I will listen to now I'm sufficiently aware of the backstory. I guess my lack of appreciation is why I don't like modern TV talent shows in which the backstory trumps actual performance (e.g. the last series of The Piano). Still, I'll report back when I've put in more effort. 

We went to the secret waterfall today. Water levels a bit low but a nice little wood. Will return.

Someone found the other half of the 1B photo

Friday I recorded something that started well - two decent tracks I think. Name reflects it being the day Benji went back home. 

Saturday was too hot to do owt. Sunday similar. Mum on good form, at least. Hard to think of doing much in the studio when it's like this. Found my long-lost Antarctica CD anyway. Still not heard back from David, suggesting my Easel cuts did too much damage to the readability and the results weren't what he hoped for. Should take it as a sign not to do any more. Got Izzy next week and it seems it'll be hot again so sadly no long walks with the two of them, unless I go very early or in the evening, which I guess is possible.

Live at Ferret II and general shenanigans

 On Monday Pat was driving south to pick up Benji so I popped to Matt's and picked up the Prodigy. Later I listened to Matt's magnum opus and I have to say it's pretty awesome. Made me wish (briefly) for a nose-full of ket. I also did some simple multisamples for the Wavestate - using the BlackBox's autusample function driving the Model D. Resulted in some very solid samples, improved when I remembered to set them to mono rather than waste keygroup space. At some point I'll have a sampling day and get a lot of basic synth stuff to use. 

Well, we got together before the gig and Tim was seriously drained and probably ill. So we pottered around inconsequentially as I tried to get my head around the various patterns. Later, by myself I made some Octatrack stuff in case he didn't make the gig. Anyway... we played, not as good a turnout this time and somewhat more chaos than before. I realised that trying to prepare anything was foolish on my part - shoulda just brought the SH-101 and noodled along with whatever was thrown at me. ;) Have sent Tim the recording (missed first minute) and should apologise for all the bum notes I played. I think I'll retire the Minilogue XD from live work as, although it sounds good, the keyboard is piss poor to play on. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it, heh. Parts of the gig were pretty good and the last one, Doobie, was a solid ending. Looking forward to hearing the recording. Tried headphones and comparing to the room but really difficult. Contemplating doing a solo set so I'm more in control, think Tim may have been better without me there floundering around trying to work out what song we were on and how that related to my silly bit of paper. We should do two solo sets next time so I can do some flowery sequencing and ambient shit, which I sorta like even though it's hardly ideal for a pub. 

Sussed the amp scaling thing today in the Wavestate - stupidly I didn't realise you should first crank the keytrack to 100% as that's how the parameters on the next page take effect. I also think I just worked out the Mod Processors. Reading through the manual I see the missing piece - once you set up a mod processor you then have to select it as a mod source! Fairly sure this is it and I was trying it but not properly. We'll see tomorrow. 

And yes, it worked first time exactly as I wanted it to. Just shows how old and slow I'm becoming. Recorded a few things, still frustrated by that reverb blanket that means I have to compromise each layer but I'm getting by. Saturday is here and rather pleasant. Listened to Tim's mastered gig recording and it's all rather splendid, just a few mins in the middle where it felt directionless. Which ain't bad. 

Sunday, raining. I have a beta thing to write up though so will do it today.  

Monday, raining and windy. Woke feeling a little nauseous, not sure if I'm coming down with something. Must pop to John's today and drop off that synth (Matt has the other - oddly still haven't managed to get one of his spare Waves for John). It's bloody August. 

Tuesday and Wednesday I cooked, successfully, and enjoyed it. Still following easy recipe type instructions and those little pot things but better than my usual egg and chips or spagbol. Saw John on Wednesday and had our usual jolly chat and whatnot. Dropped off the second VCX as Matt has nabbed the first, without parting with any of his Waves. Oh well, I really wanted to leave one with John as I think he's gonna end up spending cash on one, which is daft if Matt has 4 of the feckers leaning against the wall. Tomorrow we were gonna walk but Tony's van has a problem and my car is in for a service. Studio time then. Will put the MS20 back in its place and maybe have the S-4 linked up in that corner too processing stuff from the Synthi, MS20 and modular. Not heard from David about the Easel review, hope it was OK and my butchering didn't break it. 

Didn't walk on Thursday as my car in for service and Tony's had a weird light on and went in too. Recorded some Wavestate driven by the MIDICake Arp. 

Friday was my usual nonsense, perhaps less stunk and droned than usual due to Hughue's 90th that evening. Sadly Daniel and Rachael didn't make it. Anyway, recorded this bit of fun, which used the S-4 back in its old wacky tape recorder role. I've resigned myself to it never moving on, being properly stable or trustworthy but still able to do things other loopers cannot. 

Saturday was a good one. Basil. Some Machinedrum, Monomachine and my general additions on 101 and Prodigy. Tim took a pic for the "Mike Metlay" challenge, for reasons I remembered when drunk. Sunday today, must take some apples for our Janet. May do some garden stuff too. 

Friday, A Guy Called Gerald, some Multisample bollocks & Crinkle Crags

 I found a great resource for multisamples someone had prepared for the Deluge - great because whoever it was has a similar taste to me in terms of what you need to sequence with. I prepared almost 2Gb of them in SampleBuilder while Pat was watching the footie - should have guessed it would handle the note B referred to as H (weird but some companies do that) so wasted my time removing them all. The biggest mistake, however, was in not bulk-converting them all to mono. I guess I've wasted almost 1Gb as the majority of these, despite being from synths like the Odyssey, ARP2600 and Minimoog, they have been recorded in stereo. Duh! Oh well, if I ever start running out of space I can always reclaim it. They're also a bit lower level than I'd use but we'll see how they sound when I import them before starting my Friday sesh. As the Wavestate doesn't really have synthesis - unless you count transitioning between different waves as synthesis - then a good stock of usable multisamples will be invaluable. 

Gig tonight at the Conti. Seems like it starts at 7 and ends just before midnight so may drain my Friday stamina. ;)

Good gig, not as packed as expected but a nice night. Pat came for us heroically but was plagued overnight with cystisis and suffered during the day. Consequently Tim and I didn't do our thing but hopefully can Monday or Tuesday. I spent more time with Wavestate and KSP. In the evening I trimmed some of those complex keygroups, deleting as many as I could and getting the RAM requirements down to less than 30Mb. Some of the worst were my percussion collections which had loads of samples, I hadn't really looked. Just shows my idea of that 4Gb gave a very false impression - one I'd have mentioned in a review if I'd been doing one. Always the way with sample-based instruments, in my experience. You always spend way too long faffing, editing, organising and generally wishing you'd got a pure synth instead. Still, I'll know in future and will make my own multisamples with far fewer chunks. 

Sunday and I think the review is pretty much done, bar that last run-through. I did drop most of the history stuff though and it's still on the high side of my expected wordcount. 

Review sent in yesterday (Tuesday), I maybe trimmed too much but made wordcount. Will see what David says. Today, Pat still got Cystitis and awaiting wee test results before antiobiotics. She's gone to see Margaret but didn't take her fucking phone so I've no idea if she's OK or not. Driving me crazy at the moment, seems determined to push herself too far. 

I had a shit afternoon with the Wavestate. What started as a simple project (convert all the multisamples to mono and save all that keygroup space). Having done so I clearly renamed some and didn't get all the samples in the right place, wasted several hours making my patches work - and they don't sound as good now, some are out of tune and I've broken about half of the Performances I made. I do wish I'd sent it back right away now and may yet ask Matt if he wants it. Failing that I'm going to leave samples alone for a while and work ith the internal waveforms as all my performances using those exclusively still work fine!

Friday I had half a gummy and did more Wavestating. Made a good patch that uses the two fairlight flute multisamples, one of which has gotten slightly out of tune since I deleted lots of keygroups. Turns out that if you have these two oscillating in two adjacent ws cells, the effect is a rather pleasuing vibrato-tremelo you'd struggle to do any other way. It may be that other features of this "transition synthesis" are also waiting to be discovered. Looking at my jul/2025 folder, I see I did one Easel track and the rest is Wavestate - 16 KSP projects with numerous Performances. Shall I chuck all this work to start again on a MultiPoly? I guess I don't know but will see if Matt still wants a second Wavestate. 

Tim and I had a good sesh on Saturday checking out the tracks he's been doing in the EMX. Some quality stuff and some with space for me to play in. We named a few to give me a starting note and all will be well, I think. We'll have a jam Tuesday afternoon mebbe too

Reading Eddie's book "An ethnic trying to get by". It's really quite excellent and very funny. I'm just over half-way through. Hope to finish it today.. My calves are still killing me after Thursday's yomp to Crinkle Crags. Tony's gonna lose me soon, I fear. 

Accidentally long walk, still bloody hot

 So no idea when Tim and I will do any prep for this gig thingummy. My Minilogue XD has been randomly powering itself off too, possibly due to the heat. Today we walked to Brockoles and back, which Tony had estimated at 6-7 miles but it was actually 12.2. No wonder my bunion is screaming at me. I don't think those trainers helped, nor did going commando on those rough cut-off jeans, old knobbage was rubbed - and not in a good way. Been a long time since it was rubbed in a good way, I feel morosely inclined to point out. Oh well. 

I fear it may be too hot for the studio tomorrow. If so I guess I'll work on the review. 

It was hot but I got in a couple of hours then did some review work. Didn't record what I did but it should be OK, I think. May even get similar tomorrow. Review flowing nicely thanks to sweetie. 

Saturday and I did some more Keystep.Wavestate messing. Making progress learning my way around and finally starting to get the modulation system, which is terrible but terribly powerful and hidden, mostly, from my eye. I am starting to assign knobs though, not at performance level given I'm using it multtimbrally although I will explore that eventually. Wavestate has RTZ envelopes, which I discovered just not trying it in mono mode. You can blur notes into each other using wavesequencing though so maybe just needs a different mindset. 

Monday again. Mum not in a great mood yesterday, hitting the morphine quite hard now too. Janet tried to get her to talk to district nurse who popped in but that cause some unpleasantness. This morning I got pretty much my first draft - and it's a bit longer than planned at 5,000 words. With luck I can whittle it down a bit during this week. I got some time in with Wavestate and managed to overwrite a useful performance - really must be more disciplined there and copy things often. I'm still learning stuff though - took ages, for example, to find the reason for some unknown reverb in a patch I'd copied from the presets. I really should set up lots of base programs and wavesequences with my own stuff in so I'm not forever stumbling around in search of things. 

Made a worthwhile discovery that you can make very different sounding waveforms by sticking a load next to each other and having very, very short transitions. More to explore there. I also realised I should have named my own stuff with some kind of easy prefix so I can find it easier. The category thing is a PITA cos it resets every time you do a search rather than remembering your last selection. Stupid. 

Tuesday and I got my first draft finally done - only 1,000 words over what I guessed it should be. Oops. Spent some time renaming my Wavestate performances and setting up a base program featuring a simple wavesequence of my own with a few transitions and mapping the speed of transition to a knob, octaves to another, main volume to the master knob for each layer. Think I did something else too but there's still more to prepare before I can just fire up and go. It will never be a spontaneous thing, I accept that. I also made a few extra FX programs, an alternate ring mod etc. Starting from my own base was slower at first but at least I know what everything does and don't have to go searching for mod routings that baffle me. It does make me wonder if the MultiPoly might have been better but I didn't really look at that in any detail as it's a bit expensive. Reading the MP manual it has far more synthesis options, still has 60 notes of polyphony and features wavesequencing of a sort that would probably be easier and faster to use. No sample RAM and still the same inability to tweak FX though so I dunno. Did notice yesterday how quickly my ears get tired of hearing samples of the WS. They can probably be mulched together and disguised better if not used as 4 separate layers though. Anyhoo, the KSP was being temperamental too, refused to record again so I powered off and on. Next time I'll see if loading a new project then reloading the current one works as I don't really like on/off solutions. Starting to think I should've taken the MPC37 route. 

May walk tomorrow, not heard. Pat and I went to Tockholes in the morning, got a lunch at the cafe there as the pub didn't start food until 12 and we were too early. I decided to withdrawm the S-4 from sale, at least for now. Was listening to some of the things I did in January and realised just the Tape recorder and granular thing still produce effects I like and would want to keep. So I'll keep it at my old version and Torso can do what they like. Maybe one day there will be an Open Source firmware. 

Friday tomorrow and a Guy Called Gerald. Should still get a decent afternoon sesh in. 

Wave-reinstated

OK, it's like this: before I started on Friday I spent a while importing some multisamples - just a part of my regular collection that goes everywhere. Then I faffed around with the new laptop (and a magnifying glass) until I'd made half a dozen effect presets of my own. Then I had a musical stoned bonding session. 

Result: I think the Wavestate is staying. It does a lot of things, interesting things, that mean four parts of it would be more than enough for what I want from it. Have now made a dozen or so performances, getting a bit deeper all the time and making progress in areas that were initially puzzling. 

Saturday today but local field day so roads closed, no music day with Tim. We had a beer and a g&t and a noodle, Jupiter sounding good. 

Worked on Easel review, well I actually just got sucked into playing with it. Again. 

I also did a bit of sampling - lots of short LPG stuff, some raspy wavefoldy stuff, some pure stuff. For the Wavestate. May as well load it with interesting noises. One downer about the way it handles samples is you have to send the whole lot every time you load any - meaning you have to keep everything you ever want in it available and accessible all the time. A bit stupid, like the blanket reverb and a few other annoyances. Still, what can you do?

At least my theoretical workaround for the Keystep bug does seem valid. Basically, if it doesn't save a Scene successfully, you should save a Chain instead of a pattern for the failing track(s) and then it will save correctly. A chain of just the one pattern you wanted will suffice. You can even go back later and save just the pattern and that seems to save properly too. The thing has all kinds of weird corruptions that happen though and I don't expect those to be ever sorted. Would I dare trust it live? I'd like to...

Review going well after a bitty start. Seem to be getting a shape I like now and it's flowing reasonably well. 

Got an offer for my S-4 - an MPC Key37 - but I think I'll either hold out for cash or keep it in the faint hope it may one day be sourced to a more competent (or less overworked) programmer. Surprised at so little interest, possibly it's due to my over-honest advert. ;)

 

Went mad, bought Wavestate, seem to be coming to end of line with Torso.

Unlike Labout,  Torso announced no rethink on their stupidity and therefore the trashing of Tape (replacing a 6 min looper with a 30 second one!) will not be rolled back or any compromise considered. I'll not decide what to do immediately but I either stick with 1.22 and miss out on macros and the envelope follower, use Beta 12 and put up with the bugs, not least the distortion that happens with overdub sometimes. In both cases probably would not trust the thing live, which is a downer. I could use version 2 and try to find a reason to do so but my heart isn't in it any more and I think the time may have come. 

In other news I bought a Korg Wavestate. It was a kind of snap decision after talking to Matt and reading the manual. The idea was to pair it with the Keystep Pro as a mini jamming and possibly live rig. The Keystep was troublesome today though, hung a few times until I discovered a rogue pattern that I deleted. That kind of thing has happened before but I don't see any more development on it. Will try the program changes with it too as hopefully I can work with weird bank select it does but can't be turned off.

Had a day setting up first performance and corresponding Keystep project Still some stuff to find - e.g. the effect parameters - but selecting presets worked for today. Have not done much with the wave sequencing but will get to it. At least performances take copies of the patches you load so shouldn't be the issue of the original WS pointing to shit that you then change. Fiddlier to get around than the gorgeously logical Opsix but I did expect that. 

https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/wavestate-1 

Making good progress with Easel review and learning the Wavestate. Seems that annoyance with the FX parameters is genuine and there's no way to see the parameters, just set offsets to whatever they are. Stupid! Otherwise I like it but it does make using FX really hard. 

Ah I see the FX can only be edited in detail from the editor - what a downer for a hardware synth. It's worse cos the editor totally sucks. I mean, it might work on a large screen but it's shit on my two Windows laptops, just won't fit properly without shrinking so I can't read any text. And the FX are right at the bottom so I'll have to find a way to drag the box without the top bar, probably windows geeks know how to do that. Anyway, I'm still struggling to edit some things. Like today I spent almost 30 mins trying to work out what one sequencer lane wouldn't go beyond step 3 even though its length was 7 steps. Gave up in the end. Next time I start something I'll choose an Init wavesequence rather than keep doing edits on whatever it was I started from. Must be something in there I can't see that's hurting. Was tempted to send it back but I still feel it has potential. Laborious though. 

Walking tomorrow. Cautley Spout. 

Friday today. Think it's crunch time for the Wavestate - if I can't find a way to edit those FX parameters I may have to reluctantly send it back. Dan from Korg has been trying to help but doesn't realise how hard it is to use the app on my laptop so will do some screen dumps with little arrowspointing to the areas off-screen where the (only) paramters I need are to be found. I would not have bought it had I known you couldn't edit everything from the hardware. Reviews should have screamed about this.