the watmm GAS thread

[thawkins]

 

I woke up today to an e-mail saying JUCE (the guys who make Roli blocks and the seaboard) are offering a free development kit of two blocks to anyone who will buy a subscription or something. I did some math and the cheapest subscription seems to be $420 so I am not really sure if this is a good deal or not. I have seen the blocks for sale in a shop for around $100 a piece which is kind of a nice price if the software stuff they have also makes it easy to make your own custom stuff.

 

The dev kit is 2 physical blocks and some software https://roli.com/products/blocks/developer-kit-a

 

This is probably more your thing if you are already interested in making music apps and I guess it's a publicity trick to get people to buy their hardware platform. Not sure if there are any amazing applications to the things yet.

 

 

Yeah, I got the email too. Didn't really seem the great to me, but I am getting into development here and there. Kind of on the fence about it. JUCE uses C/C++ so it's applicable knowledge to anything else low level.

 

 

I have messed around with the JUCE developer kit a bit trying to make babby's first android application, and the process was pretty painless. However take that with a grain of salt because I have some professional experience with C++ so I (hopefully) know some basic stuff. I still view C/C++ as one of the most difficult languages to write something in, both because there are so many ways to shoot yourself in the foot and also because I often spend a lot of time trying to get some extremely basic stuff working, things that you achieve with a couple of clicks or 1-2 lines of code in other languages. This probably says more about me than the language, though. :)

 

I am not really on the fence when it comes to this deal as I already feel I have enough non-musical side projects as it is (got to finish up that sequencer vst), however my new job does have me writing C++, and the Camomile pure-data-to-vst-thing is also JUCE and could use some tweaks. I definitely don't have any more room for any control surface hardware, my studio desk can't even fit a laptop anymore (which is a good thing that forces me to mess with the hardware more while the laptop is more like a recording device where I can micromanage tweaks and arrangements later).

[YangYing]

 

jeez I got my erebus which I love.. but this thing does so much for probs less money, unbelievable

 

edit: I guess id rather get a nyx instead if I where to buy another synth

Edited April 5, 2018 by MIXL2

[TubularCorporation]

I just got an email this morning: assuming our schedules this weekend overlap right, the guy who offered me the mystery Yamaha FM keyboard that could be anything from DX-5 (what thought it might be) to DX-27 (what I suspect it actually is) says he dug it out of the garage and will drive it over finally.

 

Unfortunately, my friend who had the line on the Korg Poly-something for free or near-free never managed to get it, but depending on the model this could be a good find, too. Fingers crossed for it really being a DX-5.

[auxien]

 

jeez I got my erebus which I love.. but this thing does so much for probs less money, unbelievable

 

edit: I guess id rather get a nyx instead if I where to buy another synth

Whoa. Sounds way better here than anything else I've heard demoed (haven't been paying much attention for a few weeks though). Seems a little messy/trashy/wild, but in mostly good (perhaps great) ways. The snappy percussive stuff, ridiculously expressive moments shown off here left and right, all sounds so good. Delay is dirty as fuck. People are gonna make some great shit with this. Also, some terrible shit. :) Still ugly as sin, but at that price who cares. Whiny bitches like me could afford to get an overlay.

[Polymershapes]

i'm really into this mackie 1504 mixer i picked up. best distortion pedal ever.

hooked up the tx81z after years of disuse and the battery is dying, all my old user patches are corrupted. most just give high pitched squeals and don't respond to midi, but others are gloriously crushed digital things that make the best drum sounds with just a barest sequencing, just note-on at different octaves, can usually get a whole kits worth from one patch. broken fm drums through the mackie = my new sound

[TubularCorporation]

I've got to say, after looking at it for 20 minutes while I watched that Sonic State video, I kind of get the Neutron's design.  It's still ugly, but I noticed that the different ugly patterns actually do a pretty good job of providing quick visual cues about how the different controls relate to each other (especially that awful linear halftone pattern around the patchbay) and the blue-n-red, as bad as it looks under regular light, would actually be pretty easy to see under all kinds of stage lighting conditions that can make panel markings hard to read normally.  Those two colors are going to contrast reasonably well under just about any color of light, including UV.

 

So it's still ugly but I've come to appreciate that they actually had a method to the ugliness.

 

 

i'm really into this mackie 1504 mixer i picked up. best distortion pedal ever.

hooked up the tx81z after years of disuse and the battery is dying, all my old user patches are corrupted. most just give high pitched squeals and don't respond to midi, but others are gloriously crushed digital things that make the best drum sounds with just a barest sequencing, just note-on at different octaves, can usually get a whole kits worth from one patch. broken fm drums through the mackie = my new sound

 

 

I found a 90s Mackie 1202 in the trash a while back and yeah, it sounds really good when you drive it.  Or it did for the two years it worked right, but then the master buss failed at a show last month and we had to use the monitor out, and it hasn't worked since.

 

Anyhow, it's easily my second favorite cheap character mixer after the original, grey Tascam 424 portastudios (which are quite possibly the best bass distortion I've ever used, but don't seem to be cheap anymore unfortunately).

 

That description of the corrupted TX81z patches sounds like what happes when you take the batteries out of a CZ101, and also makes me wonder why I never thought of databending patch data for old digital hardware, and have never heard of anyone else trying it.  I doubt most things will be like the CZ (that has something like 200 additional unique waveforms available if you send it "incorrect" SYSEX commands) but I bet a lot of them would do interesting stuff.

Edited April 7, 2018 by RSP

[modey]

^ yep, the Nord Lead is the same, I've probably posted this video before but here are some ridiculous patches from when I used a data card from a Quadrasynth in it:

 

 

It seems there are some "invalid" patch settings as well, like octaves below or above the usual limit, which I find super interesting.. I wonder how many parameters can be set to previously inaccessible values via databending.

[TubularCorporation]

That Nord video has me thinking about pulling the Redsound Elevata out of the closet and seeing what I can make it do.

 

I have a feeling doing this via SYSEX would really ned a PD patch or something similar that would mangle the values in the sysex messages but leave them readable so the patch transfer would be less likely to fail.

Edited April 8, 2018 by RSP

[Leon Sumbitches]

+1 for bass through the Portastudio pres, have never tried the grey one but the 424 MkII sounds great as well, to my ears. Bass straight in, levels quite high, sounds old-school and thoroughly CHUBBED

[flacid]

bought some modules. I now know why they call it eurocrack. 

[Guest Chesney]

Grabbed an SK1 and VSS200, going on a crunchy lofi sampling spree asap.

[TubularCorporation]

+1 for bass through the Portastudio pres, have never tried the grey one but the 424 MkII sounds great as well, to my ears. Bass straight in, levels quite high, sounds old-school and thoroughly CHUBBED

 

MKII is about the same. I'm pretty sure you used to be able to get a Portastudio card for the Colour 500 series module.

 

EDIT: still available.

Edited April 9, 2018 by RSP

[thawkins]

I finished the first working version of that Arturia inspired sequencer. I am hoping to integrate the thing better into my future sets so that I have some step-sequencing available when I want it, but at the same time it's not conceptually married to being a drum machine.

[auxien]

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3208

 

 

I feel like the Focal Shape 40 was the most balanced out of the four. If I were to use the PreSonus R65, I'd probably have to change my approach a bit. But the Shape 40 would work for any kind of music.

 

Some pros demo some affordable nearfield monitors and discuss various things related to them, including production and playing live. Could be of interest to some here.

[auxien]

 

https://www.tcelectronic.com/Categories/Tcelectronic/Computer-Audio/Desktop-Controllers/TC2290-DT/p/P0D3X

 

Saw this sexy little thing and got serious lust for it, despite knowing it'd be a bit a dumb investment (doubt I'd ever seriously consider buying it tbh)....but just look at it. I want that little baby box on my desk all the time, pretty red numbers...the buttons go clicky clacky...

 

btw it's a 'hybrid' machine...it's just a fucking plugin and the physical box is just a dedicated controller. I'm sure it's plenty quality, TC Electronics has of course been making great quality gear for years (this is modeled after something from '84) but there's nothing this plugin can do that I can't already accomplish in Ableton I'm quite sure, either natively or through some customization and effect chains. It's all about that box, really. Want.

[Leon Sumbitches]

I like those clickity clackity buttons; very Roland MC-4

[Polymershapes]

i'm really into this mackie 1504 mixer i picked up. best distortion pedal ever.

 

 

* cr-1604

 

I have a tascam 424, but the mkii version, going to be using them together. 

 

i ripped the sysex of those corrupted tx81z patches. the preset banks seem to work correctly but the user bank, bank I, has all the titles corrupted and most of the tones are unusable. not sure what i had in there to begin with though, as it's been almost a decade since i last used it. 

 

 

 

found this quote on gearslutz: 

 

 

 

 

 

Whenever i edit a sound and store it in the "I" bank over the course of a day or two, the sound degrades/dissolves into corruption. The title of the saved sound for example "BADBREATH" is eventually corrupted into 'garbage symbols' like this - "<$$< <2<$". The saved sound itself totally whittles away until all that remains is a sort of electric hum with blips; nothing like the original saved sound.

 

Its a great synth so I'm really put out by this

sounds like a special feature to me...

Edited April 18, 2018 by Polymershapes

[auxien]

That does sound like a wonderfully fun special feature :) would love to hear if it degrades steadily no matter what, if re-accessing it effects this, etc. Maybe make two or three copies of the same sounds and see if they degrade in certain ways or not?

[thawkins]

 

i'm really into this mackie 1504 mixer i picked up. best distortion pedal ever.

 

 

* cr-1604

 

 

I had a CR-1604, really loved it although I only got to use it when recording our band. Both the build quality and the number of features was so nice.

 

In other news, been getting the GAS for Max4Live and Max recently. Pure Data is nice but it does not play well integrating with Live, especially because I am only interested in messing with MIDI (for now), and while Live has it's own MIDI effects, it is a real bitch to make your own and even if you do, Live treats them as Audio effects which messes everything up.

 

When is the next M4L discount coming again? :)

[modey]

Yeah I really should have jumped on the Live Suite discount at the end of last year. That said though, Max4live would have possibly made my G1 Nord Modular a bit redundant.. I acknowledge that I'll probably end up going back to software someday but I want to hold on to hardware for as long as possible :P

[TubularCorporation]

Last year I traded my old Realistic MG-1 to a friend for a Roland RS-09.

 

Then he sold it and used the money to get a Mother 32.

 

Then I moved in to the apartment above his and we started jamming together and he dove deep into Eurorack and is building a lot of modules now and pulled the Mother 32 out of his rack.

 

And I'm probably going to buy it off him in a few weeks because I miss having the Moog ladder filter from the MG-1.

 

[thawkins]

Yeah I really should have jumped on the Live Suite discount at the end of last year. That said though, Max4live would have possibly made my G1 Nord Modular a bit redundant.. I acknowledge that I'll probably end up going back to software someday but I want to hold on to hardware for as long as possible :P

 

I had my regular aversion to buying software combined with "hey I am a programmer I bet I could do it without Max" and "want to get this Live stuff sorted so I could focus on learning my hardware". Here I am though a year later, stuff is still bugging me and I would rather music around instead of trying to find solutions.

 

Last year I traded my old Realistic MG-1 to a friend for a Roland RS-09.

 

Then he sold it and used the money to get a Mother 32.

 

Then I moved in to the apartment above his and we started jamming together and he dove deep into Eurorack and is building a lot of modules now and pulled the Mother 32 out of his rack.

 

And I'm probably going to buy it off him in a few weeks because I miss having the Moog ladder filter from the MG-1.

 

 

Life is to be lived, rules are made to be broken, better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, the flame that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast!

[modey]

Speaking of nord modular.. I played around with a super noisy generative patch I made, mangling and melting it with the octatrack. Crazy stuff.

 

Warning: long video. Feel free to skip through.

[TubularCorporation]

The Mother32 is just what I needed e-mail, solidly built, very Moog-y sou ding, extremely easy to use without being too basic. I definitely wouldn't pay full price for one in 2018, but for the same price as that new Behringer I'm very happy, it does a lot less but does it really well.

Edited April 20, 2018 by RSP

[pcock]

im done. im moving to portugal in 2019, i need to save up 750 a month until then as a goal so that i can live in portugal without a job for 6-9 months comfortably. i asked my local synth dealer to politely ban me until at least 2019. ive got 2 modern elektrons, 1800 worth of analogue rack compressors + preamps, a £9000 modular, £1500 of eventide effect pedals, a £1600 yamaha digital piano, and a super nice set of genelecs. there is absolutely no equipment i still need to make any variation of electronic music already in existence.  

 

i need to quit my synth addiction like i have quit cigarettes, and am working on alcohol aswell. getting self banned from rubadub helps, but ive also left every synth group on facebook. 

Edited April 22, 2018 by messiaen