TubularCorporation

yes to all of this, which is one thing that is holding me back from going for ableton.. having said that though I did buy Renoise Redux a while ago so could probably easily use that within Ableton alongside all of the cool max4live stuff I want to get into.. hmmmmm Yeah, trackers are fantastic. The Octatrack absolutely feels like a hardware tracker to me. Drum grids can work for TR-707/727/DR-110/550 style programming but they're not my favorite. Piano roll editing for pitched stuff really doesn't work for me at all, I'd rather just do my best to play it live and record the audio. I'm all for max and max4live in theory but I've seen enough terrible local Max/MSP performances over the past couple years that it kind of killed my enthusiasm for it a bit. But it's definitely a good tool, as far as I can tell having not actually used Max/MSP in years. Midi event list editing is underrated.

It's funny I'm the opposite, I had a DR-660 through high school and college, and then used the MPC2000xl as the core of my rig from 2010 until the middle of 2016, so I'm deep into the Linn style of drum programming, just tapping stuff out unquantized on pads. x0x stuff is fun but it's really only the last year and a half or so that I've started to really focus on it and it wasn't until pretty recently that I found all the x0x style stuff I did too stiff and repetitive (although not as bad as when I sequence in a piano roll - sequencing ITB jsut doesn't work for me, although I love mixing ITB these days). Anyhow, for ITB x0x style programming probably Reason or Fruityloops, right? If you can find a copy of Rebirth it's still really good and does a really good job of emulating the x0x drum programming workflow (if not the sound, although it sounds great considering it's from the mid 1990s), but I just checked and apparently Roland decided to threaten them for infringing on their IP recently (after, what, 20 years of Rebirth being around?) so it's no longer available though legal channels as far as I know. But it's a good program, still sounded solid last time I tried it a few years back, and is a lot more drum machine like than the more deep programs are. I'm sure other people have better, more up to date recommendations, I'm not really in tune with the softsynth world, I settled on a "compose mostly OTB, mix mostly ITB hybrid approach years ago and hardly ever use softsynths anymore. As far as the Tanzmaus goes, it's not really the most typical x0x style machine, it has its own weird workflow that's pretty easy if you just approach it as its own thing but kind of confusing if you expect a classic x0x style machine. IT's kind of like a weird combination between an x0x sequencer, an Elektron sequencer and a Volca sequencer. EDIT: I forgot that the desktop version of ReBirth WAS actually released as free software for a while in the late 2000s before the iPad version came out, so I'm pretty sure it's technically not piracy to find a CD image on your favorite torrent site or whatever. CD-Rs of the free release are readily available on eBay too, if you want to go that route.

I think this or the Tanzbar Lite would be pretty ideal for dub techno. The sequencer is less immediate than something like an Elektribe, but nowhere near as complicated as the online comments and reviews would have you believe. I'm really looking forward to controlling it from its internal sequencer AND the Octatrack (with its arpeggiator and conditional trigs) at the same time, too. Won't be able to really sit down with it until Monday, but I've got the OT an a pair of headphones and the necessary cables with me, so I can at least get the two communicating and get a new default OT project template put together. EDIT: just had a half hour sit down with it and it's really fun, not particularly hard at all, and once I remembered two or three button combinations I didn't have to look at the manual or video tutorial at all the rest of the time. So far my only minor complaints are: 1 - you can't select steps in both the A and B variations of a pattern at the same time (so if you're parameter locking a bunch of steps at once you have to do it in two stages, once for A and once for B, instead of selecting all of the steps in both A and B and then plocking everything at once, you have to do it for A anf then again for B, so if you're doing it all live it's hard to make it seamless (but also not a huge deal). 2 - when you press buttons near the middle of the sequencer you can feel and see the PCB flexing just a little, so it's proably only mounted by the corners - it would be nice if it had a couple more standoffs supporting it in the middle. I've seen worse though, and I don't expect it to break, it just doesn't feel quite as solid as it could because of that. Sounds amazing, though, and really easy and fun to build and tweak beats in real time. At least as easy if not easier than the old TR-505 I used to have, but with a lot more features.

I just unboxed the Tanzmaus about 20 minutes ago. It sounds fantastic and everything works, and the build quality is better than I expected - all of the knobs feel really solid for board mount, and it has a good quality power jack and the buttons feel better and are easier to get at than it looks like in videos and photos. Can't program it until I download the manual though, because they only sent me the German one. But man, the demos online do not do justice to the sound of the two sample channels and the clap.

Yeah, I'm all about having more gear than I would use at one time (although for a while in 2013 and 14 I was using it all at once, sequenced from an MPC and recording straight to stereo, and it was a lot of fun but ended up being pretty limiting in the long run) and picking out 3 or 4 things to limit myself to for a while. Keeps things manageable but there's still a lot of opportunity for variety since I've got something like 15 synths (mostly not very impressive but still awesome 80s and 90s digital stuff) kicking around at this point.

Look at the new Focal Shape 65 as well. Yes, i saw those too. i was thinking about them maybe even the 50s cause i have deadly small room. But reviews of the neumanns are hard to beat. These focals are new so not many ppl have them and therefor no reviews yet. Ive been thinking about the new neumanns kh80 dsp. But no pro reviews for those either... Ill wait month or two. If you can find and nonported speakers in that price range, in my experience they tend to work better in small/untreated rooms. I've always had problems monitoring on ported speakers in the kind of rooms I have to mix in, either way too much bass or not nearly enough, depending on the room. Sealed monitors arent' that popular anymore, though,so I don't know if there's much out there.

Upgrading monitors last spring helped with the GAS a lot for me, actually. Suddenly everything I already have sounded much, much better and my mixes all got much, much better and it generally made me more interested in using what I already have.

That said, I'm really psyched to finally get my hands on the tanzmaus in a couple days (I had it shipped to my parents' place because I wasn't going to be home to sign for it, and I'm going to pick it up when I visit for the holiday). Thing sounds fantastic.

I've got a second new music project starting up with a few friends and I've just been playing a homemade guitar through a severely beat up RE-150 space echo I got 15 years ago, into a cheap 80s solid state combo amp I got out of someone's trash a few years back, and It's not really much of a surprise that it's one of the most satisfying things I've done with music in a few years and has pretty much eliminated any lingering GAS that getting a Tanzmaus idn't already quench (and even that wasn't GAS so much as "I have a specific project with specific gear needs that aren't filled by my current setup,and this is the best option" rather than "that is a cool piece of gear, I must have it" GASing). For me, GAS often happens when I'm not regularly playing music with other people or when I'm not on the same page as the people I'm playing with, and I had a couple years there where wasn't in a band and another year or so before that where the band I was in wasn't really working well anymore, so I dove back in to gear HARD for a while, and now I'm in a phase of working with what I have and weeding out what I don't need or need to replace with something more suitable for what I'm in to right now. EDIT: that said, I'm GASing for some kind of pegboard to hang my cables on so I won't have to dig for them in a bin like I do now.

I want a new Phalangius album!

Good editorial on the many problems of the burgeoning corporate weed industry: https://thebaffler.com/salvos/smoked-out-thunderstorm

For real, though, someone needs to make quality digital transfers of the original tape loops from that thing instead of letting in rot away in the possession of some failed startup (unless they sold it since the videos were made, in which case who knows where it is), because it's kind of an important piece of media history - almost every American sitcom of the 1960s had its laugh track done with that machine.

I was just looking for samples of vintage laugh tracks, I had no idea this thing existed:

Only an hour and a half until my paycheck clears and I can get that Tanzmaus.

The enclosure looks fantastic! How do you like it? I was right on the edge of building one but I decided a Tanzmaus will fit better with what I'm doing these days (will have the last of the money saved up for it as of midnight tonight!) but I'm still really interested in the LXR, it seems like a really good machine.

IS that an LXR on the lower right under the Decksaver?

I actually don't tend to layer samples at all (in fact as often as not I don't even use samples), what I do is I'll play in a simple snare pattern (occasionally quantized, usually not) and then play different embellishments over it on other tracks, so that I can get a bunch of variation out of a single pattern by muting and unmuting tracks on the fly, not much different from playing faders in a traditional dub mix really. That's not the way the OT is designed to work, it's more like a tracker than a traditional sequencer, but for me personally that has advantages and disadvantages, and it's definitely harder to improvise variations in a single pattern with only 8 tracks. Also having two different sequencers interacting with each other opens up a ton of possibilities, especially now tat the OT can use trig conditions to semi-generatively manipulate parameters on the drum machine, whether it's muting and unmuting individual voiced or adjusting parameters - especially in the case of the Tanzmaus, since it also has parameter locks and per-track pattern length. Ideally I'd be able to preform an entire 30-45 minute set (that's the usual length of sets around here, not really long enough for my taste but that's what we do) with only one or two patterns.

Just watched the last episode. I stand by all my criticisms but that didn't stop it from being a lot of fun, it was just more mindless fun than season 1.

It seems like a really cool synth, I've been really tempted to get one but I need something comparably small with a x0x style sequencer and more hands on controlso I'm going with the tanzmaus (a week from today I'll have the money for it). I'm using an Octatrack as the hub of my rig now instead of the MPC2kxl I was using for years and it's great but I don't want to use it for drum probramming because the track count is so limited. 8 tracks is nothing when it comes to drum programming, I'm used to using a minimum of 4 tracks for snare alone, although the new firmware mitigates that a bit since you can get a lot more variety out of a single track now. But still, I know the workflow I want and it requires a separate sequencer for drums.

Hell yeah. Great little synth. So the OT OS update w/ trig conditions just dropped a couple days after I got my ND2... there goes my weekend! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the ND2, by the way. That's one of those things I've wished I had for years but never quite enough to pay the normal used price. I was hoping the ND3 would push the price down but it hasn't really changed much, I guess they're going to be one of those things that doesn't have a cheap phase.

For me, a certain amount of controlled unpredictability acts like a partial substitute for playing with other people. So much of what makes music interesting to listen to or play is the tension between structure and chance, and with electronic music there's so much control available that things can easily just get pedantic and sterile. An element of chance can mitigate a lot of that, whether it comes from algorithms, talented collaborators, or whatever. Purely generative music usually doesn't do much for me, though.

Well, we can add the Octatrack to the list now.

Oooooh shit, I actually checked just out of curiosity a couple hours ago and there was nothing there. I was pretty much resigned to waiting until at least January for them to fix the bugs. I definitely wasn't expecting to only have to wait until after lunch. I wish I'd thought to download the previous version just in case this one messes everything up.

Same, I'm honestly more interested in little boxes and semimodular stuff than I've ever been in Eurorack. I think it hits just the right balance between music and sound design for me. Some day I would love to have some kind of pin matrix modular, that just seems like the best although I've never never been lucky enough to have my hands on one.

Ironically, the movie night ended up being completely different and was all trashy (horror movies about druids and demonic possession. More than one druid movie, believe it or not.