The Studio Log - What Did You Do In The Studio

[SuitcaseOfLizards]

Installed my Impact LX49+ to replace the LX25+.
Removed the MPD218 as redundant now, will sell it off.
Installed the Aira S-1 Editor and got it working in the studio, no more teeny tiny knob fiddlng!!!
Playing with the Sonicware Lofi-12, will replace it before the end of the year with a Roland LD-08 boutique nit. THE 90'S LIVE!
Updated Waveform, Kontakt 7, and a few libraries, fun times.
Started a new track 'Maelstrom'.
Sat through a few Fragments tutorials, love that thing!
Drank way tooooo much coffee. Hyper hyper!

[vurt]

pretty much the same disorganized but productive business as usual.
but i do want to get round to a very specific "industrial" piece.

[justin3am]

Installed my Impact LX49+ to replace the LX25+.

Hey that's great! Have fun!

[justin3am]

I don't have any other 3am performances lined up this year, so I can finally get back to working on new music and videos!
I will be doing a workshop about using piezo mics later in the year. Mostly focused on making a shaker box with easily sourced parts but I'd also like to show how to use them to generate gates from percussive sources.

[PatchAdamz]

Completed a re-release and the new CD and some film work music.
Tired from all the work, then find that the digital distributors have it mixed up with the wrong artist again.

The reason for the re-release is because I found out it was mixed up with the wrong artist for years....
Then,first day the material is re-released it turns out, that again, its attached to the wrong artist.

Fecking kafkaesque.....

[WatchTheGuitar]

The Behringer pitch shifter pedal arrived. Thought I’d bought a dud, lights wouldn’t switch on, until I found a comment that all Behringer pedals default to bypass if no lead is plugged in. Once I’d done that all was good apart from I’d made another daft assumption, there are two inputs on one side and two on the other so I’d assumed stereo ins and outs. Wrong, mono in and expression in, d’oh!

Definitely adds some nice variation to drum loops, will play with the vocal harmony stuff in a few days when I’m over the current shitty cold.

[foosnark]

Did a lot of comparison of the FM character of various modular things. Recorded them all, and then accidentally let Bitwig delete the "temporary project folders"

It was kind of a flawed comparison anyway. But it showed me that:

- Spectraphon's FM is a lot more unstable than I thought, almost as if there was pink noise modulating the FM index. Not noticeable when you actually are modulating the FM index though, and that's when FM sounds its best anyhow.

- Odessa's FM isn't as dirty as I thought, but rather, it's extremely sensitive to the quality of the modulation signal. Partly because the depth can get so extreme, but I don't think that's all there is to it -- maybe also it doesn't have much in the way of DC blocking, so a little asymmetry makes things get weird.

- Rings in FM mode has a neat "round" character to it that is unlike my other options and I'm kind of into it.

- For external "FM anything" modules, Koszalin's TZFM works a lot better than either FM Aid or using Mimeophon for phase modulation. In fact if I don't find some other uses for FM Aid (waveshaping, mangling CV, etc.) I might put it on probation.

[elxsound]

I’ve been slow moving on setting up the new laptop, spending lots of time going over why I’m installing certain things. Spread sheet created to keep track of it all. Adding notes as I watch videos on the hardware version of my hardware emulations.

I remember hating how plugins kept the same layout of hardware… but I don’t feel that way anymore. I like when they keep the look of what they they’re based on. It makes it easier to remember what each one does and how they differ.

I’m using less than half of what I’ve bought over the years, and could probably trim it down more. When I’m done, I’ll go back and clear things out from the desktop.


Just added a Furman M-8Dx. I should have done this first before buying other hardware… what a difference it makes. Now, I have to rack it up in the easiest way and be happy with it, because I’m not undoing the patchbay.

[whyterabbyt]

Sunday : Hip pain has cleared up enough that I could sit in a chair for two hours without discomfort, so decided to start building my Elmyra 2, finally. Got to the second component to solder, which fell out. Spent half an hour trying to clear the blocked solder out of the thru-hole to zero success.
Gave up, opened a beer, reset progress on Deathloop and killed pixels for the rest of the day.

[imrae]

I recommend a cheap set of "desoldering needles" for those situations. They are made of an alloy that solder doesn't stick to, so you heat them up and stick them through to clear the blockage!

[whyterabbyt]

I recommend a cheap set of "desoldering needles" for those situations. They are made of an alloy that solder doesn't stick to, so you heat them up and stick them through to clear the blockage!

cheers, will look into that.

[PatchAdamz]

Released a 35 track, "music for film and video" collection, material from the last few years.

Also, looked at some labels that were interested in hearing the new material but decided to pass.

Have to think twice about labels these days, is it worthwhile to tie up your music contractually when there are so many resources available and you already have airplay?

That question has different meaning these days...

[SuitcaseOfLizards]

Much wailing and gnashing of teeth, oh, and the occasional rending of garments. I need more t-shirt now...

Selling my 4 Korg Volcas, they're too big a PTA to work with due to my vision impairment. I had to try! Also selling off my Behringer acid bass thingie and my Sonicware Lofi-12..

..all to be replaced by a Roland Boutique JD-08 (next month) and likely a Behringer Pro-800 (November/December, maybe)! Will pick up Fabfilter in Nov/Dec timeline as well. This will give me a good hybrid studio of software and hardware to work with. Eventually may get Dawsome Novum for more weird/ambient stuff, but we'll see how things pan out in the New Year.. if the thought police don't send me on th run, anyway.

Somewhere in all this I need to implement cable management, omg, since I added a vocal mic things have been a mess.. and it'll get worse if I add my steel tongue drum to the studio!

AAAIIIEEEE

[foosnark]

Sometimes when working on a track, you add a small touch and it was exactly the right thing, unifying the entire track and bringing clarity about what else to do with it. This time it was literally a single synthesized ride cymbal strike. It comes it at just the right moment to work with the piece's tension, and processed variations of it start to fit with the timbre of a later synth part... and the entire track just flows much better. Really happy with how that turned out.

I usually prefer recording a track in one take, making the mixing process part of the performance. (I can't always do that if I'm playing bass too.) But this time around I'm having pretty good success just piecing together snippets of patches, puzzling out how they fit together, and then adding in whatever else it needs, assembling it all with "mix paste" in Sound Forge.


I was playing with Clep Diaz this morning and found that Mystic Circuits Ana really is a great partner for it -- it can change simple stairstep sequences into patterns that have other shapes, and add complexity if you patch one of Ana's other outputs back to Clep's CV to modulate the step count and size as it goes. You can also combine it with gates or another sequence to shift things around even more.

(I'd previously done this with Drezno, rearranging steps by swapping bits.)

[vurt]

weird, (well slightly) i too have been recording some parts, with a view to layering and mixing something.
not so far along yet that i know if ill be as happy with it though

so far, just a couple of bass drones, for the underlying structure. plus a half hour or so, glitches/pops and stutters recording from elmyra, to cut down in to one shots and loops.
may rinse and repeat the noise stuff using the 4ms sampler, before final cuts

then i want some "industrial noises" and some vocal samples to complete it.