TubularCorporation

After the hassle of writing to picture with MIDI and audio latency messing up the timing of my monitoring chain all afternoon yesterday, I'm really close to going back to 100% hardware again, too (rather than using hardware for sounds and tracking them in a DAW like I've been doing for a couple years). Everything just happens faster and comes out better that way.

I was just looking at the Sonicstate preview of the Prophet X and if money were no object that seems like one of the most exciting new polysynths in a long time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75n4px-A-zY

Yikes. I paid $100 for a blue MPC2000xl with a card reader, a flawless display and brand new data slider, pads and pad sensors 9 years ago.

I scored a clutch of medium-duty polymer cases for free last week, but now I need things to put in them...

he's taking it pretty well actually https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1026508918934171648 https://twitter.com/classiclib3ral/status/1026516158172880898 Solid discussion from a left position about why it's not actually that good at all:

Another thing to be wary of with the MKII: more people are starting to report urn-in on the OLED screen. Another Elektronauts thread about it today: https://www.elektronauts.com/t/mk2-burn-in/60552 Personally I avoid OLED like the plague, it isn't nearly mature enough for me to trust its longevity. LCD has about a 40 year track record, every issue it can have is well known and almost always fixable. OLED is still a gamble.

Yeah, a lot of Ensoniques do and the MPC I have does and some Korg controllers from the 90s do but they're all large keyboards, and that's not an option even if I had space, because it has to be something I can easily carry in one hand or on my back. I was more saying it's poly AT that got me looking at alternative controllers again. Anyway, it's a long way off, I'm going to try to put aside $100 a month but even that is a stretch these days.

Or an earlier one, but the XL is the one I can vouch for, been using one since 2009 or 10. Once you geta feel for the pads they are just wonderful (you have to let your fingers bounce off of them like a tight snare, otherwise they can double trigger, but with a couple hours of practice they start to feel VERY natural. I did some drumming when I was younger, had some lessons in high school, and played in a group at MIT (I didn't go to MIT and it wasn't his band, but I played in some MIT ensembles and he taught one) run by this guy for a couple years, I was never all that great but I've got a decent feel for drums and the pads on the MPC2000xl (and the 3000 I tapped on in a shop, although it didn't have a boot disk so it was turned off) are the only pad-type things I've had my hands on that make me feel like I'm really playing an instrument.The 1000s and MPDs I've messed with didn't have it. Unfortunately MPC2000xl's aren't that cheap anymore.

I've just had a serious jones for polyphonic aftertouch but it just doesn't exist on any affordable controllers and I'm not really a keyboard player anyhow, but as a guitarist a lot of what I do involves bending different notes in a chord independently and that just isn't an option without something like polyphonic aftertouch. Channel aftertouch is kind of useful but it usually doesn't feel or sound right to me. So every year or two I get really interested in alternative controllers but most of them don't do a thing for me. The Linnstrument seems really cool, though, and would work amazingly with an Axoloti and would also transform just about any old multtimbral sound module into something pretty exotic even if it didn't respond to poly aftertouch (which just about anything made after the early 90s does, even though virtually nothing can produce it). It jsut looks like the kind of thing I'd design if I was going to design something, it immediately makes sense to me when I look at videos of it being played, even without reading the manual or anything. Plus it's one of the few that has actual DIN MIDI and can be programmed pretty thoroughly without a computer, both of which are mandatory for me. USB-only is an automatic dealbreaker. Going to take quite a while (I have exactly $100 set aside so far) but worth it. If I can get one sometime next summer I should be pretty good at playing it by around 2030. EDIT: also a 200 note range in about the same footprint as a CZ-101 with no protruding knobs you have to worry about breaking if you throw it in a backpack or something is huge.

Sell the Nord Modular and get a couple Axolotis and a nice controller. Have you tried an OT MKII yet? I haven't but some people seem to HATE the new encoders, so it might be wise to try one in person.

I've been really drooling over the Linnstrument lately. I've spent all kinds of money and time over the last decade amassing a pretty solid studio but coming from guitar and violin I've never found a controller that was even close to anything I'd consider expressive. The theremin comes close, but it's too limited for me to want to put in the years of serious practice it takes to get good at it. I've had my eyes on the development of nonstandard MIDI controllers and the Linnstrument is the first one that really got me interested. I figure if I set aside $50 or $60 a month and sell a couple things I don't use, I could pick one up second hand by this time next year if not sooner.

Retrofit any keyboard with a 3 point, 256x1500 point x/y controller ON EVERY SINGLE KEY, standalone with no computer necessary. http://touchkeys.co.uk/

New laptop withanonfuckdupkeyboard wouldbenice

I just looked at the manual for that Sony, have you tried the echo mode yet? have you tried using it as a stereo ping-pong echo? Using a reel to reel with a mixer that has two aux sends as a stereo echo sounds REALLY good, and any three head machine can do it. The built in echo mode on that one makes normal echo easier to do but if you patch it with a mixer you can get fine control of the feedback amount on each channel separately PLUS do cross feedback for stereo effects, PLUS insert other effects into the feedback loops for each channel independently. If you don't have a mixer with two aux sends I think you should still be able to set up ping pong or something similar by sending a mono signal into the left line input, using an insert cable to patch the left output of the headphone out to the right line input, and then patching both line outs to your mixer or DAW, setting the machine to monitor from tape rather than the inputs, and putting it into record. It wouldn't exactly be proper ping pong delay but it would probably sound cool. You should get one echo on the left and then one echo of that echo on the right. No feedback or cross feedback that way but putting it into echo mode while it was patched like that would probably sound good. I think that's the same model Polytrix has.

Oh cool, I don't know if I've seen one of those before. I worked at a used record store for most of the 2000s and shopped at a few others so I've seen quite a few reel to reels and receivers and turntables and cassette decks and 8 track players and Elcaset recorders and old tube record lathes and things come and go, and that one looks familiar but I don't recall messing with any Sony reel to reels so maybe I just saw one at a shop someplace. I'm pretty sure it was Akai that made the one with glass heads. I had one for about a month (under $10 at a thrift shop with a box of a dozen unopened 7" reels of Sony tape from the early 70s). Tried to record a show on it, the tape shed like you wouldn't believe, the belts started slipping, and I ended up trading it for some records.

Never, never look at the sleeve of an old record under a blacklight.

They're not "nice" exactly, but I'm a big fan of the Alesis Microlimiter and the DBX 117 as sort of "consumer grade tape in a box" effects. Both of them remind me a bit of the more beneficial effects you get if you mix down to the hi-fi/stereo audio tracks on a VHS tape, and both of them should be somewhere between $30-$80 USD depending on how long you look.

I can't be much help here because I'm usually trying to make stuff sound fucked up, but I will say the OTO BAM has nearly instant program switching (fraction of a second of dropout, no spillover unless I'm misremembering - I almost never use presets on it) and sounds great, but isn't cheap. All my other reverbs are old and low end and have pretty slow program switching, so no help there.

I desperately need one of these but only for about 3 hours so I can wind a couple old pancakes of tape onto NAB reels, so obviously not at anywhere near that price (which is actually very cheap for those things, the originals are more like $200-$300 used). At this point I think I'm going to have to try to make my own with a router and some masonite and hope it works well enough for this one job.

Nice Akai(?) reel to reel, I had that one (or a very similar model from the same line) for about a week in the late 2000s (found at a thrift shop for $10) and it seemed really cool but it had speed issues so I traded it for some records. It's the one with glass heads, right? Not completely glass, but the actual surface the heads pass over is glass or quartz or something rather than metal, right? EDIT: I meant Teac. It was the Akai that had the glass heads, but that's a Teac in the photo. Never had one of those, although a couple of them came and went when I worked at the record shop in the 2000s.

One time a whole nest full of baby birds that was up in th roof of the place my band practiced somehow came down through the ceiling and into th room, and were in there 5 days in the hottstpart of summer bfore anyon wentin to practice, so ndless to say they died and my amp and th drummer's kit got all covrd in dadbabaybird and smlled BADfor a few months but it cleared up. Crap thislaptop keyboard really is starting to di, thisis not good.

What I wouldn't give for some good quality, vinyl dust covers that weren't really expensive. Too bad I suck at sewing.

$119 now Must have just ended, I checked right before I posted it to make sure it was still on sale. I guess I lucked out, I thought it was on sale for the whole month.

The Peace are great, too. Mid 70s Zambian underground psych with members of The W.I.T.C.H.