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.

July, July, barely a bug or a fly

 Hardly surprising with all the pesticides and gobbling up of land I suppose. Pat's started volunteering at Hedgehog Rescue and they're inundated with poorly or injured or just starving hogs. Saw a squashed one on the road on the way to the garage (MOTs due and my brakes need doing). 

It's a rainy Monday, July 1st and I'm still on Broc walking duties until further notice. This afternoon I spent some time refreshing myself on the MPC - using specifically as a backup to the Octatrack playing drums, loops, a couple of synths and also some external MIDI. I'd never done a lot with MIDI except when I first tried it and now I have it connected to the Proteus 2000, which seems a good pairing so far. Oddly enough you define a MIDI program but it doesn't associate the program change/bank select number with it, nor does it remember the channel you give the track - so not exactly sophisticated compared to, say, Cirklon. It does have lots of pre-rolled MIDI CC pages though so you can set stuff up very easily and record any automation into a pattern, all as you'd hope. Will tinker with it this week and see if it's gonna be useful. One thing I will have to learn is how to tell it to listen to just a single MIDI input track as currently it seems to record from any. I'd rather wanted to keep the Octatrack's MIDI tracks for quick sequencing of the Microfreak rather than adding that to the MpC - somethings are better on the OT, for example the ease of having your track any length and changing on the fly. Oh well, manual not a lot of immediate help so I'll read in more depth later and see what I missed. I reckon one MPC project will suffice for the whole gig as I can put in lots of stuff to fire off and interact with as I fancy. May see if I can do some instrumental and vocal loops too, more to test it out than anything else and become familiar with it. Sorta weird that each sequence can have its tracks running different instruments - potentially confusing that but will get into habit of copying. Yet to find a quick erase all after a Seq copy -seems you have to do it track by track. Will look into that as I think there is a way. Erase all except tracks nn would also be useful.

Youtube seems to have lots of waffle and chat but I think I'm going with my old long-winded way of working it out painfully by myself. Or at least that's the view now, maybe I'll change my mind after a few days knocking my head against the wall. Optimistic though after today's pottering. Was able to remember a fair amount from previously. If I get the MIDI routing sorted then that's a biggie. I see that the latest update offers better ways of handling that and using a USB hub with lots of MIDI gear, which may be worth investigating. Still fancy the MPC37 but if it doesn't come with much in the way of plugins, the Live II could be more fun - I do like the idea of its speaker and battery. 

MIDI routing was easy enough - been looking at how to do it as default so when I make a new MIDI track it defaults to MPC out rather than the rather useless 'nothing'. Anyway, will look at the USB thing at some point. Moved Octatrack around a bit and brought the HX-1 pedal back through for the Super 6. I note some users also pointed out that, although the velocity of the soup is much better scaled, it still leaves somethings to be desired. Very much as I said in my last report. I don't think I'm going to buy the keyboard update. Four hundred quid is a lot - and I'd rather put it into an MPC. Maybe even Tim's as he does want to sell and I've been using it a bit lately. It's smaller than the 37 key one I guess, just lacks some of the 'thru' features I'd find useful. 

Asked how long my set should be and it seems like time will be tight - two extra bands added to the bill by the promoter so an hour should suffice for me. Dunno if Tim will be into doing it, assuming we get slick enough between now and then. Anyway, Friday tomorrow and I plan to have the usual good time - Tim not around Saturday so I may do a livestream of the Octa/MPC thing.

Friday was good - started playing with the Q-Link encoders but haven't settled on a way I like best yet. Had a few odd instances where I had an effect going on a drum program but just could not find the fecker - just need to keep working at it. It seems to limit me to 8 plugins, which I guess is a way of protecting itself from doing too much. Still some aspects of that I need to slick up on but the integration of MIDI programs is really extending what it can do. I've now put the P2K through the OT's AB inputs so I can treat it along with the Microfreak and RD8. So three tracks are used to process audio now, one to play a static file leaving four for general fun and mayhem. Quite a good setup I think. 

Well now, Saturday was an extra studio day as Tim was off working. I did the usual - got stunk and droned - then I went online, totally forgetting to check the audio connections, trusting they'd work (of course they were shite). Later, having spent quite a while updating my MPC tunes and sequences, I switched off, having totally forgot the discipline required to save first and turn off properly. What an eejit! Will see what the state was last time I saved and hope I didn't lose too much. Gonna make myself a little message to put next to the power switch!!

Still tempted by the MPC37 - hope it will ease the thru problems and record what I play more accurately from its own keyboard. Seems the stock plugins are available to all - Solina, Mellotron, Hype, Tubesynth and Ody. There's a voucher for another (Juno or Minimoog I guess) if you buy the 37 too and it reckons projects create on a One will be compatible. I wonder if they'll announce one that isn't in hideous red though? I mean, purple or green I would have quite liked as an alternative to black but the red looks cheap and nasty. Oh well.