Welcome to Jim Wicked's Blaugh!
26-04-07 It Ain't Acid If Your Skin Isn't Bubbling
| I finished my little acid techno bed tray thing. Got it all MIDIed up, got all the settings tweaked to where it all plays from one button, and worked out any odd hiccups. There's still a hiccup with the Model:Samples because it defaults to not sending out clock, even though I programmed it to do otherwise. It's a small inconvenience that I'll consider as part of the bootup process. As an aside, I have to admit that writing this the old-fashioned way with mandatory HTML coding as I go is fun. There's definitely I want to do to make this section easier to read, though. I just really need to sit down and polish up on my HTML "skills". But yeah, the bed tray is cool. It's funny how it's taken me this long to get here, but this setup is exactly what I had in mind when I decided I wanted to make an acid techno workstation in the first place. It's just an IK Uno Drum, Donner B1, Donner L1, IK Uno Synth Pro X, an Elektron Model:Samples, and possibly a Model:Cycles later on. I got so sidetracked that I never got to distill this thing to its purest form of drums, 303 synth, 101 synth, sampler, and a more flexible synth for filling out the spectrum. I've got mixed feelings overall. For one thing, it's satisfying to finally be at this point, but I'm hindered by my skills and experience making acid, and the fact that whole setup feels too large for such a small space. I could program the Uno Drum, L1, and B1 just fine, but the Uno Synth Pro X feels like it's not in the greatest position, the Model:Cycles isn't comfortable to reach, and the mixer is just in an all around bad place. I'm not 100% happy with this, so I'm trying to figure out how to improve. So where do I go from here? I think getting this off of the bed tray is going to be the best option. It's not as portable as I'd meant for it to be (gear is hanging off of the edges on all four sides). A wire shelf placed on a keybaord stand would be great for it. This does start making me wonder what to do with the other gear. I had planned another setup with another B1 and L1, MPC, Hexdrums, Minifreak, Starrykeys, and D1, but that now feels insanely overkill. It's pretty much just a variation on this other setup with a couple bobs and bits added. Although, the Hexdrums feels less overkill now. It's still a $1300 drum machine, but the Uno Drum feels like it's too limited. It sounds good on its own, but I think I like the Hexdrums' flexibility more. On top of this, I'd also planned a Roland rig with a T8, S1, P6, TR8S, SH4D, and an MC-307. That would be a lot less 'authentic', but all the built in effects makes it sound great. I've just gotta use a better mixing solution than I was for all those YouTube techno videos. My point is that all three of these setups were designed to accomplish the same sort of thing, so I should really just pair it down and figure out what it is that I want and will get the most use/fun out of. The QS6.1 is due to arrive today. It's exciting, but I don't think I'm going to have time to play with it. I want to spend this evening after work with the acid bed tray seeing what it is I like or don't like and weather or not its worth the effort of building more workstations with this setup. Also, I think I'm going to go ahead and break up the E-Mu/Alesis gang. I just really think it'd be more fun to have the Orbit, Proteus FX, Pro/cussion, and ESI-4000 completely separate from the 'A-Station' as that's intended to be like my rock and roll station. Yay. JW out for now. Current Gear Lust: Gear I already have. (This is a good thing. LOL) Last media consumed: Short Circuit 2 Current musical infatuation: Cheesy early 80s pop tunes Mood: Adrift |
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| I don't know when (if ever) I'm going to get the time to tackle this website thing. Also, I need to relearn HTML code. It's been a very long time since I've needed anything more complicated than an a href link or an img src. LOL. I've been pretty bad about studio work lately. After that huge selloff, I still need to put a lot of stuff together in order to become fully operational. Also, now that the seal has been broken on selling, I'm giving a lot of stuff the side eye and wondering just how necessary a lot of it is. Do I really need three separate acid setups? I've got one nearly finished that hopefully I'll get to test out tonight. I'm honestly pretty excited. I've been on a big acid kick for about a year or two now. But yeah, the more gear I sell, the more I can buy in exchange. It will probably end up being a bad decision, but I impulsively bought an Alesis QS6.1 this weekend and a few expansion cards. I was trying to hold out for a cheap E-Mu Orbit to go with my Pro/Cussion, Proteus FX, and ESI-4000 Turbo, but I got severely sidetracked. I'm terrible with money. LOL. Still, that's gonna be fun to play around with. I like those old all-in-one multitimbral preset boxes. It's fun using them for their intended purposes. The entirety of the Myst soundtrack was done with an old E-Mu MPS+, and it's legendary. It's why I keep coming back to the Proteus FX since in reality, the FX is a beefed up version of the MPS+ without the keys. I'll probably end up selling it all off anyway so I can focus on just the modular, but it's fun to get outside of my comfort zone. The problem is that I've "out of my comfort zone" for way too long. I haven't been productive in forever. What I should do is sell off anything that's not part of the main studio's modular paradigm, but I'll just end up buying it all again. Just since I started the selloff, I've bought and sold a Model:Cycles twice (and I'm on the verge of buying another one to round out acid station #2), refunded at least six buyers so I can keep the gear I sold them before it goes out the door, and I'm seriously kicking myself for selling the E-Mu racks and the Technox. At least I had another Proteus FX that ended up being easy to fix, nobody bought the ESI-4000, the Pro/Cussion was cheap to repurchase, and even at exhorbitant prices, the Orbit isn't going to cost me more than $500. That Technox was a huge mistake, though. I'll probably never find one that cheap again. Though speaking of the E-Mu's and the Alesis, I've hypothesized a workstation. Before I realized that it's a great place to mate the E-Mu Gear, I was gonna call it the 'A-Station' because it was going to consist of just Akai, Access, and Alesis synths. Virus TI2, DM10, QS6.1, and an undecided model of MPC for the A part. Jotting down these notes, I'm thinking about switching it back to the E-Mu stuff being an independent workstation because that will be a heck of a lot of channels to manage, and I still like the idea of an E-Mu stack used as a box of presets for casual composition. It's almost time to go home, so I should wrap this up. In short, I'm excited to get involved in that little acid station today. Fingers crossed I have the gumption for it! Current Gear Lust: Elektron Model:Cycles Alesis QCards Replacement Modules for the Groovebox System (Queen of Pentacles, ASQ-10) Flame FM Kosmos Module Flame Fire Module Last media consumed: Artemis II livestreams Current musical infatuation: anything with an acid synth in it Mood: Hopeful? |
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