TubularCorporation

Weird, my very first band in high school had a drummer who started playing trombone in a polka band in middle school and then switched to hi-hat, snare and metal buckets when we started our new band. Is there some kind of trombone -> drums pipeline? Our second bass player was also a recovering trombonist. I got free private drum lessons from Ron Savage in 11th and maybe 12th grade, and private tabla lessons in the summer of 2001 before my money ran out (Jerry Leake wasn't cheap, I basically went throgh half the money I'd made from doing the sound design for a terrible indie movie on weekly lessons from him, and then when winter hit the dry air cracked one of the drums and I didn't have the money to replace it or keep taking lesons so I quit) but I'm not a drummer. Ron was one of the nicest guys I've met, and super in to Star Trek back then which was always funny.

Real talk though, isn't everything?

Not exactly a new release, since it was recorded in 2013 and I compiled it into an EP back in February without bothering to actually tell anybody, but I just relistened to some of this and I really like it (even though I accidentally stole a title from EBN, who I love but hadn't listened to or thought about since high school back then). https://lagooncity.bandcamp.com/album/the-nostalgia-ep

Yeah, a DRM and a Filterbank (or better yet a dual filterbank) are two of the things I've always wanted but will never actually buy unless I win the lottery I don't play or something. So nice, but I've made three $1000+ gear purchases and 5 or 6 upper-three-figure ones in the past decade and that's about as much as I really need to spend on gear in my life probably.

Yeah, the arm's a different thing, I was talking about the turntable. A lot fewer people are making arms high end arms themselves. Turntables are pretty straightforward, though, I looked into it a lot at one point and it's definitely something that can be done with VERY good results for a few hundred dollars if you keep the design minimalist. Talking about belt drive here, of course. DIY direct drive would be REALLY hard, REALLY expensive and take a lot of specialized skill and experience. No real purpose, especially since the consensus seems to be that for listening (as opposed to DJing), an above average belt drive drive will always outperform a top of the line direct drive because the motor is mechanically isolated from the platter (and the plinth, if you design it that way). Obviously I don't have first hand experience since I've never built one, but from what I understand the important thing is having a lot of mass in the platter so that the momentum dampens any flutter from the belt slipping, and having a really good bearing (which, like I said, costs $10-$20 to make at home with basic tools). The biggest expense would be getting the platter turned since you'd need a pretty serious lathe to do something that big, but it's still pretty basic and since my hypothetical is somebody who was going to pay $2000+ for something new off-the-shelf it would be well within the budget to hire it out. That's good to know about SL1200s, last time I checked a used MKII was in the $1500-$2500 range but that was probably back in the period where they were out of production. Anyway, the type of people who buy expensive turntables seem to mostly consider Technics stuff not very good, built for durability rather than sound quality (they're wrong IMO). I've never spent more than $70 on a turntable myself, but some day I'll need to and a 1200 wouldn't be that big a step down from what I have now so I could see putting $600-ish into one if it was absolutely necessary. If we're talkign aesthetics, though, expensive turntables can be really nice. One of my biggest regrets is that I could have bought a complete, well maintained Transcriptors Skeleton with all the original glass back in 2004 (that one from Clockwork Orange that looks like it belongs on the set of a giallo from 1975) for $75 (it was marked $100 at work, and I got a 25% discount) and I didn't do it because it needed some routine servicing and I didn't want to end up spending another $100-$150 to get it back to factory spec. They may not be the best turntable in the world but theyre one of the best LOOKING as far as I'm concerned, and most of them are in the UK so I'll never have another chance like that. I've never seen another one in person. (this one's missing the lid but there aren't many decent photos of them complete) The point is, a $60,000 turntable is stupid. A $600 is going to be pretty nice, and a $1600 turntable is getting up to where you'd better have an acoustically perfect room, world class speakers, a very good stylus and everything perfectly calibrated to even stand a chance of hearing much difference from the $600 one.

When my old, $70 Technics SP-15 eventually dies this is the route I'm going. Even if you're like me and don't have any experience or tools to machine the metal parts, getting them custom milled would be a whole hell of a lot cheaper than even a good DJ turntable, and the rest is pretty common stuff (you can make an absolutely world class bearing out of a <$10 Jeep pushrod with basic hand tools, for example) The arm could just come off of the Technics. I could see spending a couple thousand dollars on a good turntable if you had the income for it and werent' interested in DIY, but much more than that you're better off using the money to buy some tools and GIT GUD.

The irony is the DIY turntable community have been handbuilding stuff that's probably much better for a lot less for DECADES.

So when I go on Letterman?

Definitely. If it really delivers, I could actually see myself selling off some old rack gear and Eurorack stuff I built during the pandemic, and then racking it up in a homemade case with a few utility modules and a spring reverb and making it the hub for all of my audio processing.

Maybe next year I can get a Behringer Fredo for $150.

OK this looks really useful. Too expensive for me, but if I could I would. EDIT: also I wish it was bigger, those knobs are too small and close together for my taste, but not as bad as most Eurorack stuff. That Space Echo he has in the background is a good example of the size and spacing the controls on a performance-oriented piece of gear should have, IMO.

So for anyone who was interested in this, apparently it's almost impossible to source authentic, working OPL-3 chips now because the guy who designed this bought essentially all the known existing stock of them recently. I'm sure there are some around, but it's not going to be super easy to get one like it was a year or two ago.

I haven't started it yet but I picked up Hatoful Boyfriend (the meme pigeon dating sim from a few years ago) for a couple bucks from the Steam summer sale. Should be at least funny enough to justify $2.

Which one is jenkem?

NGL I love this kind of pannin and wish people would do it more. The weird, early stereo mixes from 1966-68 are full of this kind of stuff and they're some of the most interesting mixes out there, even when the music is forgettable. Entire drum kit hard left, bass hard right, yes please.

I'm going to invoke my 5th amendment rights here.

It's a good sample! This was all recorded in 2014 and early 2015.

I just imagine what it probably sounds like and save myself a few bucks.

Yeah, this is extra true if it hasn't been updated since the MKII came out, because the first firmware update with the MKII added a lot of really good stuff. I can't imagine going back to not having pattern length per track.

Also, if you use a Mac don't keep the Octatrack's USB port connected to it when you aren't actually transferring stuff to and from the card - it will crash unpredictably and generally be unreliable. Works fine connected to Windows machines (and Linux as far as I know) though, it's jsut MacOS that causes problems. And don't feed it after midnight.

Don't even think about using external clock with it. If you want to play from a record buffer and record to it at the same time, you need to nudge the play trig so that it's at least one tick behind the record trig, otherwiseit will be unreliable or not work at all You can make an internal feedback loop (or a global effect send) by setting cue as the source for a thru or flex machine. Read this, even if you're familiar with their later instruments.

I got mine new for a few dollars in a bargain bin in '98 or '99 so it must be a leftover of the original CD version. I don't know if there was ever conclusive evidence either way on whether Richard is the Richard. Allmusic credits TV actor Richard Hatch as the composer of the track "Rich Is Gay." Realistically it's probably jsut a Cassetteboy project, but there've been rumors as long as I've known about it (that's WHY I know about it, I think).

No idea, all I own is I Farted and the Manor Boys CD, and I think I might have an old CD of Surfing on Sine Waves someplace.