MMV

A rather beautiful demonstration of MMV... makes me want it:

The Next Album: Whom

I just sent my new album to the folks at Kahvi for release. The administrator's comment was "very nice release indeed".

The covert art (to the left) was drawn by me--charcoal and conté, 18x24 (originally).

I'm not sure when it will be released... within the next six months, certainly; hopefully sooner. Definitely not in the next few weeks, though.

This was an album I really needed to get out of my system. As I've said in other posts, this is a "finding myself" album.

Now that it's done with, I'm looking toward my next project (I already have an idea for a "concept album"). In preparation, I've spent a few hours this week "porting" some of my favorite patches from a synth I used to use (Albino) to my new synths (Virus, Predator, Atmosphere, impOSCar). Far and away, the Virus sounds the best (not to mention, it's the only synth that can match Albino's complexity). Of course, each synth has its own character, so more often than not I would tweak the patches a bit to take advantage of those traits. As a result, I ended up with much larger patch-banks in all m'synths. : )

But, like the album, now I know I can put Albino to bed. Rest in peace, my old friend.

New Controller

Okay, you have to see through the dippy "I play at hockey games" style of the musican and the AWFUL "I'm running a Casio keyboard" sound, here... but it's kind of like house-hunting: you have to recognize the potential of the structure and ignore the details of the current owner.

I want one:




Update: it's $1,700. Maybe not. : )

Dream Studio

Watching the movie about Omnisphere triggered my long-dormant gear lust. Seeing Persing move from Moog Modular to Juno to Prophet to Jupiter to Virus (or whatever the order was) left a sizable drool stain on my shirt.

As a result, I decided to spend some quality time with Atmosphere this weekend. This was interesting for two reasons.

First, as I suspected, it suggested that there are several synths that have a sound I am drawn to. Of course the Virus comes up a lot. But, to my surprise, a lot of the pad and synth patches I liked are Roland synths. ...Like, a whole lot. As a result, I am vaguely considering a Roland JP-8080 and a SuperJX Rack. (In addition to that new Virus TI, cough cough.) On the other hand: I really like the Atmosphere patches that use them, so why would I need the actual synth?

Second, it surprised me how much more I liked the single patches, rather than the stacks. Less clutter, more clarity, purer sounds. ...I suspect I will be turning off Dual Mode with Atmosphere most of the time, in the future.

...Tangential to all of this Atmosphere-inspired gear-thought, I have also been reviewing 808/909 emulators. Sure, sure, go ahead and laugh. ...But I have noticed that, in using Stylus RMX, I am missing some of the "straight up" analog drum sounds that I have come to rely on in the past. ...I don't shove them in the listener's face (yet, bwa-hahaha), but they are an integral parts of my music! I miss them. So I'm in the market for a VA drum machine plugin. I'm looking at Waldorf Attack, d16 Group stuff, and one other package that had a name stupid enough that I've forgotten it.

All of this gear-lust has me worried about cluttering my studio. I like the idea of being elegant an minimal in my setup. Thus, I've reconsidered both Albino and Surge. Great synths, sure, but I have Predator, I love it, and it can cover most of that ground: I will make better use of it.

I'm also just not using impOSCar anymore, and have decided to sell it, when I have a chance to get around to it. Moving on, as it were.

Virus Quips

I love my Virus. So much, in fact, that I am contemplating buying a Snow. (Perhaps even the real deal, heavens portend!) I do have a few gripes with the PowerCore implementation, but they probably have as much to do with my host (Ableton Live) as with the synth itself.

One such gripe is the lack of being able to use it to route effects. ...This is a huge bummer, since the effects on the Virus are awesome. It's supposed to route effects, but for whatever reason, when I do what the manual says, I end up getting nasty crackling, as if latency is all screwed up and bouncing around.

Another gripe is the lack of patch-switching. I'm probably being stupid about this, but there doesn't seem to be any external control of patch selection, and thus, when I'm working on a track, I get four uses of the Virus (one per DSP), and that's it for the whole song. I would love to be able to switch patches mid-song, so that the limit becomes four uses at a time, rather than per song.

Lastly, the PowerCore itself seems to screw up my Mac (Dual G5), forcing me to disable sleep mode. If my Mac ever sleeps, it will ALWAYS crash (100% of the time, no exceptions) on recovery. ...and this only started happening once I put the PowerCore in.

If you know anything about these issues, please reply. I'd appreciate it. : )

Obligatory Gear Post

I use Ableton Live. It's the most immediate studio. It gets me writing music right away. I find that the best songs I've written are tracks I wrote in one sitting, so speed is important. That said, I'm running v6... they update yearly, and I don't have the money to keep up with them.


My favorite synth at the moment is actually Rob Papen's Predator. It's not the best-sounding, and it's not the most capable, but--again--it's something that I can quickly get excellent results from. You'll hear a lot of his instrument in my new music (perhaps 1/3 of it). Very tweakable.

My best synth (notice there's a difference) is the Virus Powercore.

It's a Virus. Do I really have to say anything else?

I also make ubiquitous use of Spectrasonics' Stylus RMX and Atmosphere. Both are excellent samplers... but that's really all they are: there's not much I can tweak. ...but they both sound incredible, so I use them a lot.

Lastly, I have GForce impOscar. ...A little synth with a lot of personality. I don't use it as much as I would like: he doesn't seem to play nice with the other boys. There's a lot of him in Black Mesa Winds, but not much in the upcoming album.

On the shopping list? PoiZone, Albino, and Surge. I like having as minimal a studio as possible, so I really don't want to over-do it... so I will probably sell impOscar and pick up PoiZone. The latter also has a lot of personality, though it's something of a one-trick pony (well, two-waveform, anyway), but I love the sound. Albino is something I used before my stuff was stolen, and--dammit--I want it back. Great, versatile synth with a smooth sound. Surge is more versitile, and I'm missing a nice digital edge in my music. I love the wave-shaping abilities of it. (Rather, I miss the wave-shaping abilities of Z3ta+, and Surge comes closest to it.)

I write my music on a simple, old Dual-G5 PPC Mac, running OS X Tiger. Yes, I kind of miss the PC for writing music (more plugins available)... but it wasn't worth dealing with Vista. I also wish my machine had a little more beef. But I'm a po' boy, and can't afford big steel.

For effects, I only use freebies, and I use them sparringly. Favourites include Ambience, Analog Delay, Blockfish, CamelCrusher, MDSP Compressor, MonstaChorus, SupaPhasor, and Multi Delay. If I can get away with using built-in effects (delay and what-not), I will.