Summer's End

OK not today but in a day or so. Actually the sun seems to have returned, which is just as well as a builder is 'speed-pointing' the whole house. It's been a messy business though as his Henry died and was unable to suck. Hughie next door is away but I know he'll be unhappy when he sees how much dust has sprayed onto his walls - will try and clean some tomorrow if we can work out how.

It'll soon be shrooming season, perhaps already. A task for weekend methinks.

Cool box of modules turned up today from Erica Synths, spent a short time getting acquainted but looking forward to much more over the coming days. I really like the box too.

Oh, the book is done. I got up at 6am the other morning to do a last quick read through as much as possible. Spotted a few last minute things, relieved to have Diana on board as she is far better at that kind of thing than I am. My contributions were minor this time but the result will be absolutely fine and probably more generally popular than the first one because of the subject matter.

Slug problem in library persists. Some trails evident on Electribe this morning. Not happy. I guess the pointing won't fix it because they're getting in somewhere, the feckers.

Good Ck update - my shortcuts now apply to Ck patterns too and Colin has finally tried and likes them. Hopefully the start of adding more of that kind of thing. New beta has a couple of useful features but Colin clearly needs a proper master keyboard.

Almost nothing happened today. I sussed out the Drum Sequencer though, progressed the beta, replaced JV-2080 battery and cleaned Hughie's wall. Fair to say it's probably not a day I'd store away in the Golden Vaults but then again the sun came out, I had a nice walk with Jasper and Pat made some lovely pasta/sausage/pesto creation for tea (which I overindulged in). The tuner arrived, which should mean I don't struggle so much to tune the modular. Still seem stupid that so many modules just have these large tuning knobs that are only good for goofy sweeps and which half the time I try never to touch.

Tomorrow is unlikely to be a traditional Friday as I reckon the pointing will take most of the day. Will work on review instead and play with Cirklon.

Some modular tips and general old man moans

Well, the work on the modular book is almost complete, just tweaking an interview this morning before my Friday afternoon indulgence. I wrote some tips at the outset, just in case they were needed, but seems they won't be. Mine are more generic than those appearing anyway so I'll paste them here for no very good reason.
I also just knocked up a sort of P3 Playlist discussion document that I should put somewhere too, since the potential of playlists seems to have passed most people by.
I bought another bandcamp download - from a guy who has got 'Michael Hoenig sequencing' nailed. Unfortunately, he forgot that Departure From The Northern Wastelands was composed, varied and had a lot more going for it than simply repeating the formula on 4 long tracks. It's rather headache-inducing but arguably as interesting as 'Early Water' ;)

Can't decide whether to make today a 'program the Blofeld' day or more explorations of Marbles and Stages.

Oh, I cancelled my Moog Grandmother. They are now saying another couple of months and since I paid up in May, thought I'd get the money back and have it sit in my account. I may eventually get one but then again I may not. Nice to see Gordon's review as being the only one so far to make a point of mentioning the filter being different. He did the usual Keith Emerson thing, of course, so I still don't know if I could do TD-type sequences with it. Enjoyed reading reviews by Simon and Rory, means I can happily slide into the background and not leave a gap. Splendid!

A pleasant day droning produced this on the Synthi, Perfourmer and Morphagene:

https://wilyepeyote.bandcamp.com/track/without-music

Modular Tips #1

Creative use of panning
Remember that panning need not be reserved for moving audio around the stereo spectrum. It can be a means of moving it smoothly between different processing options. A panning module with a CV input will allow you to use dynamics, an envelope, randomness etc. to determine the processing your signal receives - and simple ideas such as morphing between reverb or delay are only the start.

You can never have too many...
Envelopes - especially if they have a complex or voltage-controllable shape. Try triggering them randomly, sparsely or in quirky patterns to modify tone, generate sudden flurries of modulation or unexpected accelerandos of delay time.
After a while you might consider planning more complex trigger conditions for them, varying their gate lengths or nicking the Krell's technique of randomizing envelope times. Envelope-sourced pixie dust is usually less predictable than the LFO-sourced variety and can generate pleasant surprises to punctuate any manual performance or sequence.

Re-use modulation sources
One of the great temptations in a growing modular system is to use all your modulation sources most of the time. Yes, you can add movement, unpredictability and wild variation if you patch in every LFO you've got. However, this can have the same effect as filling a pallete with every colour then pretending you really wanted another variation on 'filthy brown'.
Fewer modulation sources creatively spread around (e.g. inverted, attenuated, multiplied and generally repeated) can add clarity and identity to your patches. Knowing when a patch is 'done' keeps the brown at bay and is a true sign of modular mastery.

Floating Multiples
I bought too many of these once then realised how useful it is to have lots around. Not only are they always in the right place, unlike regular multiples, but they serve as brilliant cable extenders. Having a lot of them means you can almost treat them like stackables, those ununsed holes want to be used. Helps with the previous tip.


Which leads to...

Use fewer modules but interact with them more.
It's wonderful to spend an afternoon patching up a monster drone to evolve over several ice ages without being touched and without repeating - let's keep doing that, obviously! But hands-on interaction and resistance to over-patching leads to a better rapport with your modules and a deeper grasp of their range and personality. Then, when you do turn to external modulation, you'll have a more instinctive grasp of what to expect.

Finally...
Remember: for the price of a 4-channel Eurorack mixer module with token CV control but limited functionality otherwise, consider buying a decent 12-16 track external mixer with EQ, multiple auxes and buses, maybe internal effects and, of course, large friendly sliders. One day someone will make one that's fine-tuned for Eurorack levels and connectivity.

Plus

Try things that make no sense.
Like electing Trump or voting for Brexit. Admittedly, you might be speeding up the Global Apocalypse. But maybe after all the pain something good will spontaneously happen that those cautious, boring, whining, sane people never predicted.

More Marbles and a (crap) multi-envelope module

Further Marbles exploration shows it's not ideal for melodic stuff, at least in terms of dealing with a supposedly-tuned VCO and then trying to work out what notes its scales are playing. I've been sending notes from the Keystep to its scale recorder but after that I have all the usual oscillator tuning mystery. Will have to bite the bullet and buy a guitar tuner or something. Did consider a module for it but my 3 main boxes are getting quite full now.

Went to the Modular Meets, which seemed fairly quiet and there wasn't much stuff of interest. Bought a Malekko envelope / LFO module which turns out to be software and 'rtz' so will be sending that back if there's no fix. I knew I should have waited for the Quadra to come back in stock as it really is a great module - and it works properly. Cant find any of the new Doepfer A-140-2 anywhere which also looks useful.

Fortunately I wasn't tempted to offer to play a modular gig. Thought I might have been. ;)

Got some days by myself next week. Debauchery would be nice but I don't expect any will come my way. Should get some music and novel writing done though.

Well, Malekko didn't bother to reply to my question so the thing went back and I ordered a Stages instead. Olivier confirmed that it worked properly but of course I should have just trusted him as he knows what he's doing. Getting towards the end of the P&T book and will be glad to no longer squint at this laptop - bloody iMac didn't even last the duration of the book edit. I'll try and fix it but not much urgency now as the time I really needed it coming to an end. Oh well.

No more modules for a while, OK?

Just got a new production mix from Don and I love it - has some Minimoog from Dean too, I could gush.

Stages - great module!

Text from Pat... apparently little William has 'found his dad's dart gun and shot me in the eye, point blank range.'

Polystylism and other obscure parrot jokes

Radio 3's composer of the week is Alfred Schnittke, a modern composer I'm really liking. He has this cool way of throwing in everything he can think of without any real care to make them sit comfortably together - yet they do. Really inspirational stuff - and properly varied.

Time to order a few I think.

I forgot. It's later now but I'll try and remember. I did order (and just received) a Mutable Instruments Marbles. From the very brief mess with it, without reading the manual or knowing what anything did, I'm already hooked. Just my kind of weird shit, has the kind of 'life' that modules such as the Marble Physics does. Funny that. May do a video tomorrow. Here was yesterday's

I may release an album tomorrow (or today if I like the rip I just did). Problem is that the CD format where tracks blend together doesn't work so well for individual tracks like bandcamp. Maybe I should include a high res mp3 copy of the whole thing too, I think you can.

Our Lakes weekend was lovely, although too hilly for Pat (I picked some stupid walks).

OK I put it out but I might not tell anyone ;)
https://paulnagle.bandcamp.com/album/hiding-in-plain-sight

More heatwaves and other global meltdowns

Good job I'm not of a biblical frame of mind, could easily see this as the beginning of the endtimes. That will kick off for real when BoJo becomes PM. What a crock.

Yesterday I did a drone.

Today I went to the dentist who, inevitably, decided I have to come back next week for a filling. So that's another £100 plus. I sure miss my old NHS dentist.

It's hot in the studio So hot I go nude, you know My laptop fries eggs And nads, thighs and legs But beer, blessed beer a cool friend, never fear it's on hand giving succour Ain't Brexit a fucker?

My usual Friday afternoon, deep in novel writing when Pat starts asking if I've put the car seats in. Apparently she bought some, left them in the car and I'm failing by not going out in the stupid heat and farting around with them. Having a partner with absolutely zero interest in any music or words you write can be refreshing but just sometimes, even the most basic awareness would be lovely.

I see I started this blog some time ago but my enthusiasm for it petered out.
The thing with retirement is this: things which were once deemed pointless and a little bit sad are now your meat and veg, the very essence of your being. While things that once you found so jolly well vital to life, the universe and everything are now revealed as the ephemeral nonsense they always were.

Makes you think.

Today I spent some time alternating between my love and hate of the Octatrack, and struggling with the DSI Pro 2, attempting to understand its occasional lack of tightness in its synced delays and its abject refusal to pay attention to the Tunings.syx file I keep sending it. The tunings file should not be giving me a bad temper. Well-tempered it offers, followed by a long, mysterious list of numbers, all of which cause the synth to squeak like a politician upon challenged to produce a Brexit plan. Anyway, I have discovered that the Pro2's delays do sync well enough, mostly and that my earlier idea they struggled with integer BPMs was a red herring. But it is getting lost in a way that my other delays don't - and all I can say so far is that when I stop and start the Octatrack (the clock source), things recover. The delay on the Analog Four remains fine all the time though.
I spent some time programming new sounds and, as usual, hating the envelopes with their stupid linear decay. Yes, I could spend even more time, modulating the decay times with something to try and make them behave like normal envelopes, but in the end I revert to pads, solos and general weirdness and distortion, where snappy envelopes don't need to be involved.

I was going to use the MIDI sequencer on the Octatrack a bit more. Seemed promising at first, but of course Elektron's and DSI's ideas of what constitute a Bank Select MIDI CC are entirely at odds. Both appear to use a single value, either MSB or LSB, and so having the OT set up the right sounds for the sequence is going to depend on starting manually from the right place. Ah well. It's times like this I wonder why the hell I don't just stick to Cirklon, and to which I have no suitable answer.

The dentist hurt me, in almost every way he could. He failed to criticise my shorts, which was the only blessing of my 08:25 appointment. I now have tiny brushes to poke through my teeth since I'm such an abject failure at flossing. And since that was my second abject of the day, I'm going to go and perform the 'bagging dog shit' ritual, one which has been rather challenging of late given we're in one of Jasper's crop-spraying phases. I dearly hope it's a phase.

Let's see if I can finish with a photo

Sorry, that's all I got. I'm never much inspired by the beach.

Incontinence & suchlike

A slightly odd week really. Been seeing lots of Grandmothers loose in the wild so chased my pre-order (made in May) only to be told it'll be 2 months before mine comes. A little later I see a couple of them pop up at Music Matter - so what gives? Also hearing a few worrying things about quality of power supply, all of which makes me wonder if this retiring from reviewing is such a great idea. Used to be ahead of the game, now behind it.

Wonder if this Instagram link works?

https://www.instagram.com/p/Blc-Siihf6G/

It was a test at doing a video longer than 1 min, alas didn't turn out to be as inspired as I'd want. Did a straight recording just after that worked much better.

https://soundcloud.com/smokyfrog/2018-jul20-ambientjam

I like the sound of the TT-606 anyway. Arturia have a new small analogue drum machine that sounds rather good.

Here's one of Tony's awesome pix (my tent in the foreground)

Today I'll look at some more cars. I think I've seen one I liked (it does almost 80mpg) - diesel but seems quite low emissions and only 3 years old.

Novel has reached another of those points where I need to push through the tangles. It is all coming together nicely though, tying up a lot of the loose ends I've deliberately left dangling from the very first one. Not that anyone but me will ever notice, of course.

I bought a new car today and instantly started feeling like I was letting the old one down. In other manly news, I beat a rat to death with a spade. The new car is a cool colour of dark purple and it only just fits in the garage (they let me try). Only just.

Week of wonder

I wrote that header on Monday after a fab afternoon's playing and recording (almost 18 mins of cool stuff). Will doubtless have to go see mum this week and faff with her Humax but determined to do more good shit. Am verrah stone, in novel mood.

Listening back, top hole! Drinking the posh gin and thinking a week of more good shit ahead.

Wow, got drunk last night, slept a while on the floor which has not helped my back today! Anyway, like the new stuff and first track fits perfectly on new album. I think it's done now. I swapped the fast, short, catchy tracks so they kick things off and slip into pondery aftery. It flows really well now, the best thing I've done in ages. Running order making huge difference, should possibly think of offering it to someone.

Novel today. Sorted mum's Humax again, well fingers crossed. She bought a new one cos the channels weren't filling up fast enough. Yes, that's the way she rolls. Weather slightly cooler so pleasant to work, for hours, getting drunk and writing.

Well, the replacement Humax is going back and she wants her old one. I can see this saga is gonna run and run. Today was disappointing in that (i) the TT-606 arrived but developed a fault within a couple of hours (ii) I loaded an old Octatrack project only to find it has forgotten all the samples allocated to it.
Sigh.
I did back up the OT but can I actually be arsed faffing around with it? Contemplating putting both Elektrons out of the way and leaving that table for little boxes. Will have to replace the TT-606 as several buttons have failed, how fucking annoying! So that was my day today (Thursday!). Pat back tomorrow, baby staying over again (of course) and I'll probably have to go and faff with Humax boxes cos my mum is incapable of doing any of it herself, even down to replacing one identical box with another in the same place using the same leads. I will be sighing more.

It has not been the week I'd hoped for.

Signal Sounds were brilliant to deal with, sorted out a swap with replacement on Friday and I had a lot of fun with the 606. Still tempted to get the 78 actually, that's how much I like these little things. Also helps you can transfer patterns from one machine to the other.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlNqcqugd4c/

Didn't record much with it but took the Tanzbar out, which instantly felt like the right thing to do. Had I kept the Tanzbar just for its kicks I'd have kept using them and lost the coolness of the TT kick, which isn't so huge and solid but sounds like a drum machine. Oddly though, it didn't sound as good through Tony's delay as the Model D does, so will be sticking with that setup a while longer. May archive a few pieces for simplicity - the ER-1/Biscuit/Restyler, all of which add more complex elements. Hopefully the Moog Granny will be here in a week or two.

And the novel is coming on well. Have got the two strands nicely organised now (just need to interweave the chapters) and the writing is snappier - a bit more like my old 'Neville the frog' material in its throwaway glibness.

No, I didn't take that pic but I like it all the same...