RAVE RAVE, TECHNO TECHNO!

Heh, I haven't done much with the techno in the last few days. Last thing was Monday night, where I finished sampling all the ER-1 patterns into Ableton Live, saved them out as .WAV loops, and loaded them into the MPC. Downside: I figured out *after* mapping about 70 sequences that I actually was triggering the samples once per bar, when the samples are actually four bars long. Sheesh, gotta do all the sequencing over again, can't have a crash cymbal triggering every bar... :)

Instead, this week, I've been working on building these things:
http://www.ladyada.net/make/spokepov

I ordered a bunch of the kits for me and my friends, they're made by the same girl who made the x0xb0x kits, so they're great quality. I've built two for my magnificent steed, and hopefully they'll be up and running soon. I'm having a problem now with the dongle, I can't seem to load an image into the spokepov...

Last night's struggle was to sample the basslines of the songs that are going to make it into my 2006 liveset (Channel58 [at least for a while, I'm getting sick of it], Rocker [needs an overhaul], Less Slow, Landstander, and One Night In East Van). Seems like an easy enough task... play the bassline, record into the computer, export as a loop.

*Man*! What a remarkable pain in the ass. After spending three frustrating hours trying to get the gear sync'd up with live, it turns out the magic formula is:

- Live must be the master MIDI clock. Syncing Live to an external clock means baaad jitter.
- The MOTU must be set to a buffer of 96 samples at 48khz/24bit, and Live must be set to -4ms timing correction for audio.
- Live must have *only* one MIDI interface connected, and must be set to -28.50ms MIDI timing correction.
- SPDIF must be disabled, and the MOTU must use it's internal clocking.

SHEESH! Well, with that out of the way, I've now sampled all those basslines, and have almost finished cleaning up the unused programs in the sampler, taking it from over 60 megs of samples down to 20.5 megs.

More tonight. Soon the rig will be ready to actually start writing music on. :)

Well, I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel...

I ripped everything out of the studio two nights ago, put it all out in the hallway and reassembled it bit-by-big. I'm now down from 14 mixer channels to 9, which works well with the eight line inputs on the MOTU 828mkII... I'm using seven of the eight line inputs, digital output of the MPC mains over SP/DIF for an eighth channel, and one of the two mic preamps for my vocal stuff. That leaves me another line input and another mic input for later growth.

The mixer part is also coming together quickly; last night finally figured out why Plogue Bidule was taking my EQ changes on MIDI channel 2, FX changes on MIDI channel 16 and mixer changes on MIDI channel 1 and applying all of them to the mixer... turns out there's a checkbox that says "assume channel 1" on the MIDI-input bidule. :)

Well, I guess it's time to go public with what I've been up to in the studio lately. I've been trying some experiments, and they're proving to be viable.

I know, I know, it's so unlike me - but I think it's finally time to put a laptop in the live rig.

My reasoning isn't lazyness, it's more enthusiasm for stuff that I simply can't do with the current live rig. For instance, I really want to play with mixing a live set on a quadraphonic soundsystem - but with my old Mackie mixer, there's simply no good way to do it. I mean, yeah, I could use the aux busses to mix four outputs, but I couldn't make an LFO run a synth noise around the room, or turn a single knob and have the whole mix turn 90 degrees, making it sound like the whole room just moved... plus, I've been doing more the last year or two with having more control over the whole signal at once, instead of just individual sounds.

GI Jody said something to me at a show once that really rung true. I don't remember what led up to the statement, but he basically gestured at the synths and drum machines and said "That's not your guitar." He pointed to the soundsystem and said "That's your guitar. All the synths and shit, those are just the pick."

So yeah. The synths are staying the same, but anything that doesn't get used in live shows is pretty much getting faded. I'm replacing my mixer flightcase (with mixer, Electrix effects, compression, sonic maximizer, etc, etc) with a ThinkPad running Plogue Bidule, my MOTU 828mkII rackmount soundcard, and a new Behringer BFR2000 MIDI controller with motorized faders. So far, the experiments are going well.

Anyway - it's a huge step backwards in terms of "completeness" of the rig, and it'll require a *lot* of work and testing before I can stand in front of an audience again. I figure it'll be about February before I can play live next, so I'll try to keep on top of documenting the progress here.