the watmm GAS thread

[TubularCorporation]

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.

[Bubba69]

 

Also what do you guys use to make your hardware setups sound fucking nice and lush and loud and not fucked up. I don't use computers anymore so I can't use plugins.

 

I have a behringer compressor/limiter thingy and a RNC compressor. Just wondering if I should  throw a stereo graphic EQ in there? maybe an exciter? something to add subtle saturation? I want to experiment with some things.

Yeah, basically experiment. I use all sorts of ways/things to get the sound how I want before going into the box or to tape.

Nice old mixers

Valve Pres

Tape

Analog Heat

Few compressors

Outboard FX

Analog delays

Synth Ext inputs

Samplers

using the room (different speakers, Amps, mics, objects to capture differently)

 

I have the RNC too, great little box and does a good job on the master too.

 

 

Good ideas!

 

Using the room is an amazing concept! I ideally want to run a setup where I have a set of speakers in another room hooked up to one of my aux sends on my mixer with a set of microphones. So I can get some real room verb going on. I love that sound. Got the idea from noisia, also suspect it's used on analord quite a bit as well as the tuss, i think it's also used by jon hopkins sometimes.

[Guest]

How is the gas holding up in the current heatwave for my fellow Europeans? 38 degrees celcius today in the studio and I usually use closed headphones, fuck that. Someone recommend me a good airconditioning rack unit plskbyethnx.

[Guest Chesney]

This weather has made my studio really bad. Put measures in place to handle next time. I bought a dehumidifier for one reason but it has a fan and air purifier. It works really well but it's not an air con unit so does not push out really cold air.

Also invested in a Dyson fan/air purifier because it's really quiet. This is wicked! Also really expensive but bought it through work so I could justify it.

[Leon Sumbitches]

My studio's the attic room of my flat and it's one of those freezing-in-the-winter and sweltering-in-the-summer jobs. It's fucking roasting at the moment, actually had to buy a fan, something I never thought I'd have to do in Ireland. Today's the first day in a long while when the temperature's actually dropped and we're back to familiar pishy rain. Don't know how you guys hack the heat in the states.

 

I have a few bits of kit for sale in a Gear Box thread that might be of interest to heads here by the way; Kawai XS-1, Boss DS330 and Korg DDD5 (sorry mods if this is spammy and/or frowned upon but I thought it might be of legit interest to people ITT and wanted to whack things up here before putting them on eBay for the general hordes).

[b born droid]

This weather has made my studio really bad. Put measures in place to handle next time. I bought a dehumidifier for one reason but it has a fan and air purifier. It works really well but it's not an air con unit so does not push out really cold air.

Also invested in a Dyson fan/air purifier because it's really quiet. This is wicked! Also really expensive but bought it through work so I could justify it.

 

I live on the ground floor so whilst cool, I also suffer from ungodly amount of damp even in the 35 degree summer.  I bought a dehumidifier over the winter.  If I don't use it for a few days, even during the summer when it's not rained for 6 weeks, my hygrometer is up towards 70/75.  I put it on when I go off to work, and come back and it's around 50.  Admittedly it also means it's fairly hot due to it being a dehumidifier but you can really tell the difference and I'm hoping my gear appreciates it.

[thawkins]

 

This weather has made my studio really bad. Put measures in place to handle next time. I bought a dehumidifier for one reason but it has a fan and air purifier. It works really well but it's not an air con unit so does not push out really cold air.

Also invested in a Dyson fan/air purifier because it's really quiet. This is wicked! Also really expensive but bought it through work so I could justify it.

 

I live on the ground floor so whilst cool, I also suffer from ungodly amount of damp even in the 35 degree summer.  I bought a dehumidifier over the winter.  If I don't use it for a few days, even during the summer when it's not rained for 6 weeks, my hygrometer is up towards 70/75.  I put it on when I go off to work, and come back and it's around 50.  Admittedly it also means it's fairly hot due to it being a dehumidifier but you can really tell the difference and I'm hoping my gear appreciates it.

 

 

Can't have vintage gear without a bit of mold on it! :)

 

This is our dark future in man made climate change.

[TubularCorporation]

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

[Bubba69]

I just stumbled upon this video today.... now I want an RMX 500

 

[TubularCorporation]

New laptop withanonfuckdupkeyboard wouldbenice

[TubularCorporation]

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/

Edited August 5, 2018 by RSP

[modey]

wow that's an interesting idea!

[TubularCorporation]

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.

[modey]

Yeah the Linnstrument looks lush, I'd love to have a play on one. 

 

I'm in a bit of an anti-GAS mood at the moment. I've been looking at my studio and thinking it's way too cluttered to be considered a nice comfortable workspace. My current thoughts are to get rid of:

JV1080: somewhat impulse purchase; I can easily replace it with software romplers

0-coast: sounds great but cbf hardware modular

Monomachine: again, sounds great but I just don't have time; it should go to someone who will use it properly

OT mk1: it's getting old so might just sell it cheap and disclose the minor issues, which are easily fixed

 

and replace all of those with an OT mk2. Maybe one day sell the Nord Modular as well, as much as I love it, with the aim of getting back into pd and possibly getting a Max subscription. I dunno. I'll think about it for a while, but there are definitely things I should get rid of.

[TubularCorporation]

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.

[modey]

Yeah the Axoloti route is another one I've thought about. I do quite like the sound of the Nord's oscillators/filters/effects though; that's probably the one thing I'll miss about it. That said, I'll keep my original Nord Lead forever, so will always have that Nord sound at hand. Maybe I'll just replace the Modular with a Micro, as most of my patches are all self-contained anyway and don't use polyphony.

 

I have the Digitone so am familiar with the new sensitive encoders. They're a pain, but I'll either get used to them or Elektron will address it (I assume they will at some point).

 

I wouldn't be against just getting another (new) OT mk1; I can tell things are starting to show signs of failure in my current one so would rather just replace it than try to fix it up. It's got a bit of cosmetic wear as well so it'd be nice to have a shiny new one :P

[sweepstakes]

My gearlust took a weird turn. I bought a mini KP 2s on impulse, I guess because I like the idea of being able to apply effects to a PO while I'm recording on it and not having any more devices than those two. Turns out it's great, at least for my purposes. The effects are not top shelf, but they're way better than the first mini KP, and many are quite useable. It can even do sound-on-sound tracking so I can record a drone, detune it and layer more over top of it, etc. Also it has a mediocre built-in mic that combined with the looper is a nice trick. So I've been jamming on that quite a bit with pretty much every handheld noisemaker I own (and I have quite a few) and it's a hoot. 

 

Maybe I'll cull through these for Octatrack fodder, but right now I'm  just having a good time making a beautiful mess. It feels right. I had been in a rut, and I guess I needed to go back to the cheap tiny junk for a bit. LGPT in particular is blowing my mind, what an underappreciated tool.

 

I also ordered nanoloop 2. I really want nanoloop mono (not that I didn't want 2) but it's out of stock. nanoloop should also be great with the chords and LFOs and stuff.

Edited August 6, 2018 by sweepstakes

[modey]

Yeah, sometimes I feel like I should just embrace the stupid amount of creativity I have with nanoloop2 and stick with that. I've used it much more than any of my hardware, at least for finished music.

[Guest Chesney]

It's nice to slim down and focus Modey buy but don't go too far, sticking with a couple of peices will be great for a few tracks but when something starts developing wrong and the piece you have can't manage to convey your idea you'll soon GAS again. You are always stoked when you mention the nord so keep that at least.

 

I have some stuff I need to sell, gonna compile and whack on ebay but these things are no loss.

Also been caught by random GAS past couple of days and grabbed two eventide pedals to make the set ha.

[Guest]

Yeah, sometimes I feel like I should just embrace the stupid amount of creativity I have with nanoloop2 and stick with that. I've used it much more than any of my hardware, at least for finished music.

 

Nanoloop on the iPhone is fun. Sometimes when I'm waiting for someone in the car and they're late, I'll start tracking though the stereo system.

 

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/nanoloop/id322700286?mt=8

[modey]

Yeah, the mobile version is great, but I'm more inspired by the GBA version. I find it much quicker to get ideas down using buttons than the touch interface. Also, the pattern storage is a lot better for live use imo.

[thawkins]

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/

 

This seems pretty sweet - the biggest snag (aside from the price, holy fucc 866 pounds for the diy version on my keyboard!) seems to be how to actually map all this stuff to the VSTs or sound modules, but on the other hand I guess this will be taken care of by the software.

 

On the subject of being expressive with an instrument though... I totally get why it is easy to express with a guitar or any tactile instrument, because all that stuff is sort of "built in" in your fingers and bones and there is no clunky digital interface in the way that quantizes everything into 127 values. After all that's why I spent a bunch of time getting myself a more tactile master keyboard and somehow actually managed to shoehorn the huge thing into my ikea shelf setup so it is actually more roomier than it used to be. As a drummer I would also really like some sort of thing to hit in a more tactile way to make the samples come alive somehow.

 

On the other hand, a part of me says that the expressiveness is also somewhat learnable if all you're doing is turning knobs somewhere, it's just that you have to find the correct knob, but you can absolutely get somewhere close with that, especially if you're playing a melody or something with the other hand. After all you use 2 hands with the guitar (and a foot if you're working the expression pedal).

[TubularCorporation]

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.

Edited August 7, 2018 by RSP

[TubularCorporation]

 As a drummer I would also really like some sort of thing to hit in a more tactile way to make the samples come alive somehow.

 

 

 

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.

Edited August 7, 2018 by RSP

[thawkins]

I have a MPK Mini that I assumed (for some weird reason) would have the same kind of pads as the actual good MPC-s, but that's probably a huge misconception. Besides it has only 8 pads which is not enough really.