TubularCorporation

Coming up with completely new ideas is the most fun part, but it can get tedious to bring them to completion. You might be able to combine some of the unfinished tracks and get some interesting results. On the other hand, a lot of the time (for me) arranging and mixing are the most fun part, and it's coming up with the one or two core parts that the arrangement/mix are built on that can be hard work.

Yeah, it's been a while. I mean, I've been recording the whole time but it's been quite a while since I felt like, for better or worse, I was able to make the sounds I wanted to make with the instruments I had on hand. Now it's about focusing on playing out regularly again. It was a lot easier when I was mostly a guitarist.

For the first time in quite a while, absolutely nothing. Other than the monitor speakers that I've got lined up but haven't actually got in my hands yet, and a box full of bare PCBs I've been picking up when I could for the last few years and am going to finally start building this summer, I've been 100% satisfied with my current setup for a while now and truly feel no desire to add anything else. Just want to make music. Sure there are things that are cool and would be fun to have, but I don't feel like I'm lacking anything or would benefit enough from having anything I don't already have to sacrifice the money and/or space to actually get it and the time to learn it. Feels great, hope it lasts.

Bought Octatrack, instructions unclear. Dick stuck in midi jack Followed advice and now I am getting stuck notes.

It's been stressing me out lately because I was asked to do a show in just about exactly a month a few days ago and agreed, but the past 4 years everything I've done solo has just been tracking stuff live into a DAW with hardly any sequencing and it's all completely unperformable, so I've got until the 13th or 14th of next month to come up with a live rig and set from scratch. Which normally wouldn't be a big deal but a friend of the guy who asked me is playing and he could potentially help line me up for a vinyl release with real distribution so it feels like there are actual stakes, rather than the usual go up and have some fun and if people like it that's a bonus" scenario I'm used to. That's kind of stressful but usually making music is one of the only times I don't feels stressed, especially if I'm performing. Playing music in front of an audience is is usually when I am the most natural and comfortable in my own skin, it's when I'm NOT doing it that I feel stressed.

That's a good point, the only times I've had to get belts I just paid the extra $5 or whatever to get a pre-selected set on eBay but I guess those probably aren't available for a lot of decks. The record store spoiled me that way, the owner had a big cardboard box full of belts in the back so we'd just try them until they fit. You probably already found this stuff if you've shopped for belts before, but in case anyone else is looking these sites all have pretty good selections: http://www.vintage-electronics.net/beltkits.aspx http://www.wjoe.com/vintageandantiques.htm http://www.studiosoundelectronics.com/cassette.htm This thread is reminding me that I should really change the belts in the two tape decks and portastudio I've got now, before they rot and get caught up in the transport or something. Good, well maintained decks just don't seem to show up in the trash much at all anymore, and even in thrift shops they're drying up. EDIT: belt measuring tutorial.

My main cassette deck is an entry level, last generation Nakamichi I got for $9 or so at a thrift shop about 10 years ago and it sounds great, one of the nicer 3 head ones is probably fantastic and worth the eBay prices if you can afford them and really like cassettes. Anyway, most of the time when they don't work it's just the belts, most of them are old enough that the belts started falling apart years ago, but it's usually something that you can probably do at home if you're mechanically inclined, and could probably get someone else to do if you aren't. I've never actually had to do it so far, but I've done some VCRs and it isn't too different. A hassle but definitely doable if you're careful.

What went wrong with the MKII? Got one that's running good so far but you're giving me the fearz One day it just lost power and wouldn't turn back on, probably the power supply failed but I knew nothing about electronics back then so once I opened it up and made sure there wasn't a blown fuse inside I couldn't' get any farther. Could have been a fluke. Anyway, I actually came in here to share a Portastudio preservation tip that I never hear mentioned: Don't leave it turned on when it doesn't ahve to be. When I was in college, one of the labs used the MKI version as mixers and headphone amps for their workstations, since cassette was well on its way out at that point (all the up to date portastudios were now using Minidisc, the format of the future!) so they were relatively cheap. Anyway, the capstan motors would consistently fail every 8 months or so and have to be replaced and it turned out the reason was that people would leave them on when they were done working, and Tascam's design kept the capstan spinning at all times when the machine was powered on, even if there was no cassette in it at all. So any time you have the power on the capstan is spinning and you're putting wear on the motor, which isn't exactly military spec part to begin with. Any time you wont' be using it for more than a few minutes, turn the power off and your motor will last longer. I have no idea how hard it would be to find an aftermarket replacement today, it might be no big deal or it might be like trying to find a motor for a Space Echo.

How's the Portastudio holding up? Back in the day I "upgraded" my Mk I to a (new) Mk II and traded the Mk I to a friend. The Mk II failed in a few years of pretty gentle use, I traded back for the Mk I, which had gotten food all over it in my friend's care, cleaned it off, and it still works great almost 20 years later.

Technically yes but in practice no because I never bothered to patch the output on either of my decks to anything, I just use the single well one to record to (for DIY releases) and the other, dual well one for dubbing and as a safety net in case the main one fails (neighbor was throwing it out in basically new condition a few years ago so I grabbed it as a backup even though I didn't really need it, since the days of high end, well maintained cassette decks being easy to find for free are mostly over and I don't think I'd ever bother to pay for one).

Programming looks like a hassle but I've found it really quick, although I'm usually using it for pretty simple sounds. I wouldn't pay anywhere near $200 but if you wait they show up at better prices. I got mine for around $60 I think (it was in the high 70s after shipping - if I said $40 earlier I was thinking of the post-shipping cost of the Alesis Wedge I got a couple years ago) on eBay last spring and it's in great shape. For $200 there are more exciting things out there. I think you can still get a Wavestation SR for around that much. What are those two smaller boxes behind your computer keyboard in that photo?

Not just sound but workflow. I've come to the opinion that hardware alone will never offer the right one for me. But it comes so close! A little gentle real-time MIDI enhancement might be just the thing. https://youtu.be/Ena3NC04JcM?t=28m53s

Shit, my Axoloti Core has been sitting on a shelf for months. I made some pretty cool sounding karplus strong type patches but for about a year I didn't have any kind of MIDI knob box or anything to control it with and now it's just sitting idle. I bet it's gotten way better, I really need to revisit it, especially since Android supports MIDI over USB now so I could make a specifically tailored TouchOSC interface for every different patch I made. what the hell. That's nuts.

This is never going to be in my budget but damn. http://www.gotharman.dk/index.htm

Oh, re: Windows 2000, the main thing (and it's been a while since I learned this so I forget the specifics) is that it accesses discs slightly differently than later versions of Windows, and a bunch of benchmark tests around the Windows 8 period showed that it outperformed every other version of Windows specifically with modern solid state drives by a moderate but not insignificant amount, which is completely surprising. Probably not worth the hassle of getting it going on a modern computer most of the time but if you were going to be streaming samples from disk on an old machine it's worth thinking about.

I haven't done it, but I've looked at mods for CV control of the joystick x/y in the K1 and K1m (the rack version has no joystick so don't bother with it) and it seems completely rudimentary, it really is just two pots attenuating two voltages. if I remember right it even uses 5v so you don't need any electronics, just cut a a couple of traces and add some switched jacks (and probably a switch for at least the X axis so you cna still use the joystick for data entry without having to unplug the CV cable every time). Anyway, the k1m is definitely my favorite cheap, unwanted synth right now, in a pinch you could do a pretty good lo-fi, minimal set of some kind with just a k1 and a sequencer. The drum sounds in it are ridiculous (not necessarily a bad thing) but some of the percussion sounds on the official ROM card library (Kawai has all of them for free download on their site as sysex files now) are pretty good. It can do a lot more than it seems like when you first start messing with it. Everyone wants the one with analog filtesr (k3?) but the raw digitalness of the k1 is what makes it so good. Never gotten to use any other Kawai stuff from this period that wasn't ROMplers (my first master keyboard was some kind of Kawaii stage piano with like 16 preset tones and nothing else, that I got for like $40 at a guitar center) but a lot of them sound really cool, and they all sound different. The k1m is definitely a simpler, less polished thing than that XD-5 (all of the waveforms are 8 bit with no filters to be found, just for starters) but it's definitely a different flavor of the same kind of sound. Plus it looks great in that plasticy, Darth Vadery way. I'm a bit evangelical about the k1m in case it wasn't obvious.

I need to get back in the habit of frequenting pawn shops for gear. TG33s are going for like $200+ on eBay apparently, certainly more than the $50 you paid for it. Not that I have cash for spending on shit I don't need right now now anyway...ugh... I seriously should've been collecting that sort of 90s shit from people over the past 20 years but I was busy playing guitar and thinking computers were the end-all, be-all of electronic music. Managed to pick up a few super cheap toy keyboards and a few small things I've still got around though. It's not expensive usually but it can be a hassle moving the shit around thinking "I haven't plugged this in for 3 years, it's a toy, why the fuck do I have it?" I missed the boat on cheap vintage guitars, I missed the boat on cheap 70s analog synths, I missed the boat n cheap 80s analog synths, but my head, my wallet and the market were all in the right place at the right time a few years back and I managed to get a pretty solid pile of late 80s and 90s digital stuff before the prices started going up, and I love it. I've actually been messing around with the lowly Boss DR-5 Dr. Rhythm Section as a performance controller recently, it's gota completely unique layout and the chord mode is a lot of fun. I always come up with stuff I'd never have come up with on a regular keyboard or piano roll when I use it. PRetty good source of extra cheesy low end ROMpler sounds, too, and has some DR550 samples in it. They're still really cheap, even on ebay they don't break $50 very often (mine was a trade, so I'm only out a $15 Synsonics drum and the cost of shipping, and you could probably find them free if you really paid attention to local classified ads or Craigslist/Gumtree/whatever). Been using the comparably cheap Kawai k1m more than most of the "better" synths I have , too. You can get some really inspiring, unique sounds out of that thing, and the bass can get huge (and very digital in the good way). It's realyl easy and quick to program, too,despite what you might hear. Having one or two really solid, workhorse classics is great but unpopular, weird sounding gear is still kind of my favorite. Never did manage to get a TG33 before the prices went up, though, that's the one that got away.

I might have to get an XP machine running again just to get Orangator back :D Speaking of which I actually dug out a knackered desktop PC that was languishing in my parents' garage; it was the first PC we got back in the day, 2001-ish. Took it up to my house, deleted absolutely everything, rinsed it, deleted everything except Reaper, Audacity and VLC media player, and packed it up with samples (classic drum machines etc plus my own homebrew samples). It's Windows XP and it actually runs like a dream, all things considered. Probably because I don't use a lot of plugins, though. But it can handle wee reverb plugins and things like that; I mainly plan on using it as a dedicated PC for mixing and EQing so for a free find it's not doing too bad a job. If it's compatible with your hardware, try putting Windows 2000 on it sometime. Best performing Windows version to this day, but it's kind of picky about hardware. Not as bad as NT4 but nowhere near as widely compatible as XP. But if it works for your setup I think you'll like it. Orangator was great, I haven't used it in years but I have fond memories. Stomper I still use pretty regularly. I've been meaning to dig out the old copy of Virtual Waves 2 I copied from someone years ago, that was a hell of a thing to play with back then. I still can't think of any other synths that let you use cellular automata as a tone source, although they're probably out there.

Scored a pretty good CZ-101 case at the Good Will for $8.50 the other day. It was made to hold a telescope so it's more solid than it looks. Sides, back and lid have sturdy plastic stiffeners inside, with two bent metal rods about as thick as pencils around the circumference for reinforcement, and the handles are mounted through pretty solid aluminum plates. Just needs some foam rubber and it'll be a perfect road case for the CZ, with just enough room to spare for the power supply and a cable or two. The visual presentation speaks for itself. Cosmo Synth indeed.

Been selling off some old pedals that don't get used enough, and turning the money around into new gear. Just got a 3trinsRGB+1c kit in the mail, going to put it together over the weekend. Hopefully in another month or two I'll have gotten the analog video noodling good enough that I'll have something to share. Main problem is capture, no matter how I do it, the colors never even come close to how good it looks on the old Amiga monitor I use for feedback, and I don't own any kind of digital camera that is good enough to do it justice if I shoot straight off of the screen.

Probably already here somewhere, but just in case

Yeah, ever since I complained about the lack of outputs on the Octatrack earlier I've been kind of wanting one, which cements my theory that when I think something is overrated I'm usually just in denial about wanting one. I hadn't looked at them in quite a while, they hadn't introduced the live looping mode in v1.2 yet last time I did. that's a big selling point for me. Fortunately it's well out of my budget right now.

Ok, that is making me seriously start considering selling some stuff an getting one of these. The lack of direct outs would be a much smaller thing in a live setting, and it seems like it would be a really god tool for adapting what I do these days into a form that I could actually play live with, not being able to play out is really starting to get to me. I wonder how much my old EHX 2880 would fetch these days.

FLOL. I forgot about that. Yeah I tend to give my patches incredibly stupid names unless they have some emotional resonance. Hard to look at a MIDI processor as anything but utilitarian :) As it should be!

Oh by the way, Sweepstakes, I almost forgot to thank you for including your top secret signature patch with that MIDI patchbay I bought from you. My productions are at least 300% more lush now. Watch out, world!