THRAKosaurus - Stuff for Uhbiks

xh3rv · Post by **xh3rv** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 1:59 am

Excited to post this: THRAKosaurus - stuff for Uhbiks

THRAKosaurus is:

* A change of scenery for the Uhbiks. New stuff for all of them. Over 500 in total.

* Inspired by seeing some King Crimson alumni live. That's why I've creatively repurposed (read: stolen) the name of their album THRAK. There's no attempt to recreate or emulate any sounds, but rather I'm trying to capture a sense of using and misusing sonic effects for musical results.

* In fact the only emulations are a couple attempts to nail the sound of the midget in the Black Lodge at the end of Twin Peaks (not very successful, but interesting) and Bruce Lee's arms in Fists of Fury (a bit conceptual ...)

* Several series of several kinds of experiments and explorations that worked well. None of the ones that didn't.

* Highly browsable, like a thesaurus for a virtual Uhbik rack.

* Only for new age ambient soundscapes and murderously heavy metal. Nothing else.

* "What?" ( musician/producer BT )

* In a pinch, tools for escaping pirates with two eye-patches.

---

As of right now, I'd say it's in a final draft state. I figure the presets themselves are finished, tweaked, revised, re-done etc. as far as I need them to be - this process was planned, not rushed, and has gone through several iterations. However we all have different approaches and since this project is now for you, I'm absolutely open to changing some things and would love to hear feedback anyway. ([e] You could also read this paragraph as "I'm sure I screwed something up"

)

In any case I plan on updating the download in a week or so with some textual stuff - more documentation if needed, blog-like observations (read: incoherent rants) on getting the most out of Uhbiks and effects in general. Also a paypal 'donation' link -$5 - $10 seems sensible if anyone feels like the sounds are worthy, not extortion - solely because I don't get enough voices in DIVA

Really the driving motivations are - it's been a good challenge, have learned a lot and I like the sounds so it's been fun to piece together, and if it helps you get somewhere that's what makes the world turn (well, after all the astrophysics are factored out).

risome · Post by **risome** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 2:55 am

Thank you awesome effort well done will check em out later when back in the studio

3ee · Post by **3ee** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 6:53 am

OMG.. don't really know what goes where (oh yeah, there a txt file

) ... this looks like a massive collection of presets!

As much as I really like playing around with effects in general.. might be cool to use a preset of two once in a while... Thanks!

xh3rv · Post by **xh3rv** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:23 pm

3ee wrote: As much as I really like playing around with effects in general.. might be cool to use a preset of two once in a while... Thanks!

I did some melt-testing on your Winter set on the last round of tweaking patches. Some were too cool

I'm hoping the organization is helpful for finding the right sort of effect and then of getting a sense on how it lands on a scale of effect depth, the presets are generally numbered from mild to overboard or some other measure of extremes. I feel like that might be nice even or especially for playing around with things. Bit of an experiment!

risome wrote:will check em out later when back in the studio

Hope they sound good! I've been meaning to post the following about how everyone is right when they say, "use your ears" ...

(a story about trusting my ears)

Several weeks ago I thought I found a bug in the Uhbiks. I was goofing with Uhbik-S in mono - it sounds interestingly different, but I never figured out why. When I listened closely I heard some stereo spread - it was quite a bit louder on the right. I tested mono with other Uhbiks and started getting the same impression, but it seemed stronger in S ...

My first instinct was to grab a rack of analyzers I have handy in Ableton. I checked frequencies, frequencies in stereo, waveforms in stereo, did all combinations of phase tricks and M/S, chains of S trying to invert the effect, all the analysis browsing again with chains, and then again with parallel instances of S in L/R. Nothing seemed to reveal the source of what was going on, so then I went on KvR and downloaded I'm pretty sure every free analytic tool in the database. Still - nothing. No clue.

At this point there's real anxiety - there's obviously something going on with S, I had already started the "OMG Urs - alarming bug" post but figured if I could just figure out exactly what's going on technically, wouldn't that be helpful? And I couldn't really describe the bug. It just sounded, a bit brighter and more intense on the right. I'm feeling the same frustration here as I got when taking an assembly language programming class a while ago - you know there's something you just don't quite grasp yet, and when you get it things will be much easier, but it's elusive and you just have to go back and blow some hours double-checking everything again.

So, it was still much later in the day when I realized my left monitor was crapping out.

That's the kind of realization that makes you step back and take a breath. Upon doing so, I noticed something odd. I take care to set up a carefully arranged, symmetric layout of things at my desk - mirrored laptop + additional monitor; keyboard and mouse; monitors placed with measuring tape; MIDI keyboard right in the center of everything, with a chair at a good ergonomic height for playing. But at that moment - everything but the monitors, I'm certain over the course of months, had shifted to the left a foot or so.

(Happy ending - working with much better monitors now (Prodipe Ribbon 8, was an absolute steal), and am optimistic it'll improve my stuff.)

mellotronaut · Post by **mellotronaut** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 12:31 pm

stuff for UHBIKs? more than welcome!

thank you very much!

arbee · Post by **arbee** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 5:29 am

just saw this but I'm at the job

but this looks awesome !! will download tonight !! and will donate as soon as possible. I use a shit load of uhbiks and new stuff for uhbik is ALWAYS welcome.

groundhum · Post by **groundhum** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 7:46 am

xh3rv wrote:So, it was still much later in the day when I realized my left monitor was crapping out.

Never underestimate the reach and power of corollaries to Allen Strange's axiom from the olden times:

The availability of a patchcord is inversely proportionate to its need.

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 8:09 am

BABBLE! GURGLE! BROOHAHA!

I'll check these tonight. I'm a fan of the Uhbiks and a fan of Track (well most KC) A lot of what I've learned about effects was from Belew himself during the production of Home Of The Brave. I was lucky to land an job working for Roma Baron who was Laurie Anderson's producer back then. Laurie was very nice, but not the type to take it upon herself to b.s. about her gear. Adrian, on the other hand, only needed a slight opening and he'd be ecstatic someone wanted to chat about his rig. Not on a pompous way, in a very innocent, "Look at the cool stuff and look what I figured out!" Like an excited kid. He was super nice. Anyway, I learned a lot but more importantly how important it is to just experiment and futz about and not pay too much attention to anything like "rules." I hope I can hear this philosophy come though in your bank. Thanks!

aMUSEd · Post by **aMUSEd** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 9:29 am

Thanks for these. Where is the donation link?

xh3rv · Post by **xh3rv** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 12:06 pm

zerocrossing wrote:
Adrian, on the other hand, only needed a slight opening and he'd be ecstatic someone wanted to chat about his rig. Not on a pompous way, in a very innocent, "Look at the cool stuff and look what I figured out!" Like an excited kid. He was super nice. Anyway, I learned a lot but more importantly how important it is to just experiment and futz about and not pay too much attention to anything like "rules."

Thanks for this - that's exactly how he was on stage, I think the only thing he said other than thanking the other musicians and the crowd was 'check out this looping stuff I did with Metropole Orkest'.

Mind if I quote this in some documentation I'm writing up? It's a much better way of saying something I would probably fail to say in 10 pages of rant. That's the final bit of this project for me. A healthy reminder to read the manual and not to settle with presets as they are - some technical points on what can go right or wrong with some knob twisting - and something that says have fun, go off the map. When that's done I'll feel like putting up a PayPal link is legit

I'd say presets can't really capture that philosophy but the Uhbiks definitely do, and maybe presets can nudge a bit. I had a dirt cheap and completely awful digital FX unit in teenage years ... As with most things that are fun at that age, it led to trouble with the police - apparently someone heard us screwing with vocals through the octave-down effect and reported demonic possession. Which the police investigated. So I'm pretty sure I could've gotten several years in maximum security if the Uhbiks were there.

Urs · Post by **Urs** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 12:20 pm

Three or four more days of insane work for Musikmesse, then hopefully time to check them out!

Thrak is one my fav KC albums!

xh3rv · Post by **xh3rv** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 1:28 am

Urs wrote:Three or four more days of insane work for Musikmesse

Hope that goes well! Guessing DIVA is straightforward in a way that plays really well to a crowd.

mcnoone · Post by **mcnoone** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 5:54 am

Thanks a lot for sharing these.

emtear · Post by **emtear** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 7:57 am

Thank You for sharing!

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Wed Mar 07, 2012 8:01 am

xh3rv wrote:
zerocrossing wrote:
Adrian, on the other hand, only needed a slight opening and he'd be ecstatic someone wanted to chat about his rig. Not on a pompous way, in a very innocent, "Look at the cool stuff and look what I figured out!" Like an excited kid. He was super nice. Anyway, I learned a lot but more importantly how important it is to just experiment and futz about and not pay too much attention to anything like "rules."
Thanks for this - that's exactly how he was on stage, I think the only thing he said other than thanking the other musicians and the crowd was 'check out this looping stuff I did with Metropole Orkest'.

Mind if I quote this in some documentation I'm writing up? It's a much better way of saying something I would probably fail to say in 10 pages of rant. That's the final bit of this project for me. A healthy reminder to read the manual and not to settle with presets as they are - some technical points on what can go right or wrong with some knob twisting - and something that says have fun, go off the map. When that's done I'll feel like putting up a PayPal link is legit

I'd say presets can't really capture that philosophy but the Uhbiks definitely do, and maybe presets can nudge a bit. I had a dirt cheap and completely awful digital FX unit in teenage years ... As with most things that are fun at that age, it led to trouble with the police - apparently someone heard us screwing with vocals through the octave-down effect and reported demonic possession. Which the police investigated. So I'm pretty sure I could've gotten several years in maximum security if the Uhbiks were there.

Sure, quote away! Not sure where it would go, but that's fine.

That effect processor wasn't an ART SGX2000 was it? Boy did I have fun abusing one of those in my day. I remember spending a ton of time coming up with a feedback/pitch bending patch that gave me these huge ambient beds. I thought "this is totally new!" Like a month later I heard Fripp using it on a new King Crimson album.

What do they say about great minds again?