Noisetheorem

Boy, it has been a while, has’nt it.

Where have I been? Well, mainly I have been inundated with actual work-work instead of music-work. Second I have been working on this:

http://www.shorttoground.com

Behold, my band’s new website! Lovingly designed by my designer (and wife) http://www.blueaeonstudio.com.

Also, we have our first EP ready to go. We are just waiting for the digital wheels to turn for it to show up in iTunes, Amazon and CD Baby. You can bet we will let you know when that happens!

I just found the blackberry app for wordpress, and wanted to test it out. This is it. Test. Test. Test.

It has been a while since I posted, so I thought  brief update was in order. 

Work on the EP is going well.  I seem to have hit my stride in a lot of ways creatively.  I have finally found a program that has a workflow that I enjoy enough to keep it interesting and get good results without mucking around so much (Reaper).  On the hardware side, the Axe-FX continues to impress me as a sound design monster.  I have been running all sorts of things through it just to see what comes out the other side, usually with very impressive results. 

On the downside, my Presonus FireStudio 2626 bit the dust on Saturday.  I am in contact with their support and it looks like it will be going back to the factory for repair.  Not good, but I guess I have no choice. 

I also just picked up a Kurzweil Mangler FX box.  Ive wanted one for the longest time, and I had that rare instance of enough cash in the eBay account + the first one to see it and click ‘Buy It Now’.  Its not here yet, as I only pushed the button 7 minutes ago, but Ill give a report when it arrives.  I am building up a rather nice FX rig, actually.  Between the Ensoniq DP/4, Fractal Axe-FX, and Kurzweil Mangler, I am going to consider myself sorted on that level.

And, of course, there are some other changes in the works.  I am getting tired of carying the Blofeld and M3 to gigs, so I am thinking about getting a board, probably a Roland Fantom X6, to be my dedicated stage board.  It has a good synth engine (used to have one) and a lot of sample space.  I figure I could adapt my current live setups to it fairly easy, even considering I would be going from two keyboards to one.  To pay for it, I am planning to let go of my Sequentix P3.  Its a great sequencer, but I just dont get a long with it the way I did the Schrittmacher and the Cirklon is coming soon.  I’d like to sell this one before that one comes in and knocks the used prices of P3s down to far. 

Speaking of the Blofeld, I am also considering selling that off and just getting the Largo plugin.  I don’t really *use* the sample features that much, and writing is almost all taking place in the computer these days.  Hardware is becoming something I either start a track with, or bring in later, but its not the end all be all that it once was.  For my live setups, its still going to be king though.  I am just not ready to take a laptop on stage (yeah, I am weird that way).

I did a quick improve with my Axe-Fx and my PolyEvolver keyboard.  This is much more of an experiment than a track, and its mostly about creating an ambient background over which something else should probably happen.  Enjoy…or not. 

For a long time, I was never really concerned with outboard FX.  For the most part, I got what I needed either inside the synths themselves, or by using the tools inside my DAW or audio editor package.  I was never very concerned about signal path in general – while I had very nice keyboards, my mixer and speakers were always the last thing to get the proper treatment. 

That all changed recently when I got to borrow a *lot* of outboard gear from a friend, in particularly a nice mixer and a nice pair of monitor speakers (at least, nicer than the ones I have).  The clarity and definition the the sound took on was inspiring.  Having a lot of good processors, particularly some nice preamps and compressors, really changed my perspective on signal path.  I don’t think I am going to be come a signal path snob at any point, however, I am more conscious of it (much to my credit card issuers glee).

Now that all that gear has gone home, and I am back on my cheap Yamaha mixer and KRK8s (which are not really that bad – you just have to be much more careful about your gain staging) I was really starting to miss having *anything* in the processing department.  I decided that it was time to stop pursuing synths, and start going after my signal chain.

After a few facebook posts on the topic, my friend Matt Picone suggested I take a look at the Fractal Audio Axe-Fx.  I at first thought this an odd suggestion, as the Axe-Fx, as its name implies, is geared towards guitarists.  Matt definitely knows his stuff, however, and takes his signal processing VERY seriously.  If he said I should look at the Axe-Fx, then I should.  His description of it as an ‘eventide mixed with a fireworks crossed with a lexicon’ also had me intrigued.  So went and downloaded the manual.

Initially, the cost of the Axe-Fx put me off.  After reading the manual, however, I was wondering why it didn’t cost significantly more!  If the manual was accurate, then this box really could do things that nothing else I have seen could without spending 4 times as much easily. 

To make a long story short, I got one.  I went for the Ultra model, as it definitely has enough ‘more’ to justify the price.  The unit is ordered directly from the factory through their website.  I ordered it Tuesday, and it arrived Thursday.  Nice.

Ill go into more technical details and post audio clips over the weekend.  So far, I have done little but hook up my PolyEvolver keyboard to it and play through some presets.  All i can say is *WOW* – any patch I run through it, even just a bare saw wave, comes out sounding better.  Just within the first 50 or so presets, there was just about everything I could hope to find.  It does a great job of turning my synth into a guitar.   My wife actually thought I *was* playing guitar and asked when I learned to play like that.  Fortunately, that not all it does.  I also spent a good 10 minutes improvising an ambient piece that I should have recorded.  The effect rounded out the bass of the PEK nicely, and added this high ethereal sheen that must have been generated with delay and band pass filters (guessing…I didn’t look into that yet).

I already have a feeling the Axe-Fx is going to change my approach to making music.  Ill post some audio demos this weekend, and possibly even a video of it in operation.

I have been way over my head in work lately, so my posts have been sparse. I *started* to do a wrap up for the AHMW synth meet a few weeks back, but between work, my son’s surgery, my dog’s surgery and just everything else, I havnt gotten around to posting it.

In the mean time, I have also rearranged the studio and gotten a few nice things in. One thing I got was an old Ensoniq DP/4 FX processor. Back when they were current (and cost what I made in two months) I wanted one badly. Now I one used super cheep this last week, and I really dont regret it. The box looks pretty beat up, but the FX are really nice. Its not going to beat out your Fractal Audio or Eventide boxes of today, but its got a great sound anyway. I will, of course, post some examples of it in use shortly. Currently, I am too exhausted to hit the record button. Perhaps tomorrow.

Just wanted to let all 4 or 5 of you know that I will be going to AHMW this weekend and bringing a truck load of gear.  I will certainly blog the trip here and post regular updates and pics to my twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/noisetheorem). 

Our current travel plan has us leaving ‘early’ on Saturday (early has yet to be defined) and staying overnight at the Ramada Inn nearby.  As to the gear we are planning to bring, it will all depend on what I can squeeze into my Jeep and still fit a passenger and myself. 

Ill post some pics of the rig and any audio snips I collect here and on soundcloud (http://www.soundcloud.com/noisetheorem).

This was a traumatic afternoon, and I am taking a break away from posting about music because I have to sort this out.

This afternoon, my wife’s mother came over to watch the Trentster for a few hours so my wife and I could get a little time out of the house and catch dinner and a movie.  We do this every now and again, and its nice to get out of the house. 

The movie we saw was the appropriately light ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ which was much more entertaining than I expected.  If your a child of the 80’s, you will probably enjoy this movie.

After the movie we went to dinner at a local Italian restaurant , which is becoming my wife’s favorite place.  We got there right when they started serving dinner, so the place was pretty empty (we like it that way) with just a few people here and there. 

We had just gotten our salads when a commotion started across the room.  A panic stricken woman was yelling in Spanish as her 2~3 year old daughter was choking.  Apparently, she had taken about 5 pieces of hard candy and shoved them into her mouth. 

What followed was a pretty gristly scene.  The manager called 911 while the staff kind of just stood there.  The father, trying his best, was attempting to do the Heimlich on the little girl, but in his panic was doing it all wrong.  He was pumping her stomach, which was only making her throw up.  She was making gagging noises, vomiting a bit.  It was heart wrenching.

In my mind I started to feel angry.  I don’t know if it was the sounds of the mother screeching or my wife sitting across from me and the look of horror I saw in her eyes, but something in me took over.  My mind started racing.  I didn’t want my wife to see this little girl die because some asshole didn’t know how to do the Heimlich properly.  Plus, whenever I see *anyone* doing *anything* wrong, I feel compelled to step in (welcome or not). 

There are a million ways what happened next could have ended badly.  I don’t know why it didn’t, and honestly, if I had thought about it at the time, I probably wouldn’t have done what I did. 

I got up from the table, walked over and assessed the scene.  The girl was throwing up from the stomach pumping, the father was on autopilot pumping away…everyone else was just standing there.  I could hear the girl get a gasp every once in a while.   I walked up to the father, reached for the girl and said ‘may i’ (or something like that…my memory is a blur at this point.

I put the girl into the position you would to do the Heimlich properly with my hand on her chest and bent her forward a bit (I wanted to get gravity on my side).  Then, with two of my fingers on my left hand, I reached in and did a ‘sweep’ to clear the airway.  I could feel the candy in the bottom of her throat, and it was actually pretty easy to just pluck it right out.  I think I said ‘I got it’ and handed the child back to her father.  She started SCREAMING, which told me she was getting air in her lungs and (obviously) back out again. 

I went to the washroom to clean myself up (you don’t want the details) and when I came out, the Paramedics had arrived.  The mother was clutching the daughter in a death grip.  I told the Paramedics how I had cleared her air way and that I think I got it all out.  I went back to my seat and finished my dinner. 

That’s when I kind of started to freak out. 

I don’t honestly know how I remembered what to do.  In High school, they gave us a CPR class, but I did very poorly in it (ironically because I always forgot to check the airway).  I don’t know why I didn’t think about all the ways it could have ended badly.  What if I *didn’t* help, but made i worse?  What if that little girl died in my arms?  I don’t know if I could have lived with myself if that had happened. I don’t really want to think about it.

The family left shortly after the paramedics arrived.  They didn’t come over to thank me or anything, and I never even got the little girls name. I am not really surprised, as they were all very freaked out –the mother, almost the point of being catatonic and the father, I think, was embarrassed that he didn’t know what to do.  I am just really glad I was there and that the girl was ultimately ok. 

So…now we are home again, and I am feeling a bit traumatized.  I really cant imagine something like that happening to my 9 month old.  I like to think that if that ever happened, and I didn’t know what to do someone else would step in an help. 

I don’t know how to end this post, because I am really only beginning to think through the experience and to processes it.  I also want to make it clear I am not posting this because I think I am some kind of hero and deserve some kind of pat on the back.  I am just kind of freaked out.  I don’t actually *know* that I saved that girls life – the father may have gotten lucky, or the paramedics arrived in time – but its a heavy moment to consider what I may have done today (butterfly wings and all that shit).  I think I am going to go lose myself in some EQ and music for a while and then try to sleep.

Ok, yeah…I have a problem.  I move my gear around constantly.  Deal with it.

With the return of a lot of the borrowed gear looming in the not too distant future, and with my focus on writing in both NoiseTheorem and Short To Ground, I decided that the rig needed a little clean up.

My goals with the move were this:

1. Get the Speck Xtramix out of the rig and ready for return to its owner
2. Move the PEK, M3 and Blofeld back to where I can use them in the writing process
3. Get everything I use hooked together in a way that does not set the PC as command/control
4. Connect everything to patch bays in a way that makes sense

A lot of this, as you can imagine,  is easier said than done. 

Taking the Xtramix out of the setup was a bit painful, as it means going back to the Yamaha MG mixer, and that is quite a step down from the Speck.  Unfortunately, with my current cash flow position, I don’t see myself getting an Xtramix of my own or a Toft Audio system any time soon.  This, as well as my lack of outboard FX, will have to be addressed eventually.

For the physical placement of the gear, I used the standard ‘U’ arrangement:

You can see in the photo, the MPC, EMX and some odds and ends on a makeshift table top under the PEK.  This lets the PEK be kind of a master keyboard for the MPC.   The P3 and Virus are just to the right of that, also controllable from the PEK (the Z8, and MIDI router are under the P3). All the way on the left is the STG live rig with the Blofeld and M3.

While I am connecting all of my MIDI through my Edirol UM880, I am not actually connecting the UM880 to the PC.  Why?  I don’t know.   I just decided this could work.  I don’t want to be dependent on the PC for MIDI routing in ANY way.  This achieves that.  I can pretty much route my MIDI at will, and anything can sync or control anything else.  I have one set of MIDI in and out going to the PC, basically for sync purposes.  That is so totally perverse, that you just have to love it (in a MIDI geek kind of way).

As far as audio, I have 3 patch bays connecting the gear to the mixer: one for Synths, one for the MG16, and one for my audio interface.  I have every input on every synth hooked up, so I can use any that have inputs as processors.  This will be quite nice, yes. 

Now that it is all setup, I look forward to writing some tunes on this setup.   But not tonight.  All this moving tired me out.

Well, its good to know Waldorf has so much time to take up new projects. 

Its a little insulting that after we all bought their hardware instruments, unfinished and incomplete with bugs they turn their attention to new software instruments while promised updates aren’t provided.

Ive been kinda on the side of Waldorf for a long time.  Thats over now. 

I am not buying any of their software instruments until the Blofeld update surfaces.  I am going to encourage others to join in my boycott as well.  In fact, I am going to make a point of bringing it up now and again, and steering people to companies like Native Instruments or Clavia who actually keep promises and release regular bug fixes and updates.

I want to emphasize, that its not because I am really experiencing a lot of bugs that I am doing this.  Its because Waldorf has said an update is coming time and time again.  At NAMM they announced an update to Largo.  Now at Messe, it becomes clear they arent working on it at all!  They are working on another product with the PPG.

So Waldorf, you lost me.  I will no longer be a supporting customer, nor will I be recommending Waldorf instruments to others.