wire to the ear

My friend was showing me some neat synthesizer ties on Etsy. For those who don’t know Etsy is a great site where people sell their hand made goods. I decided to search further on the site and see if there were any handmade electronics for sale and I found Scribbles. This hand made synthesizer has a most unique feature: a built in chalkboard!

The synth is based on Ray Wilson’s Sound Lab Mini-Synth design which you can find at www.musicfromouterspace.com

The oscillators are tuned to 1V/octave, so it will track with other 1V/octave keyboards. There are inverting level shifteres on the ramp oscillators, and a sawtooth wave output on each. There is an additional square wave output on VCO 2. One of its special features is the pre-amp on the main output- you can listen to Scribbles on your headphones.

With the Sample & Hold, you can play melodies that sound like a sequence and is especially fun to play with the LFO’s triangle wave as its input source. With a square wave, the result is more calculated and more random sounding, depending on the pulse width and sample rate. The Attack-Release envelope generator has an internal loop option, which makes it repeat and play like an LFO too. If you switch the loop switch down, the envelope generator repeats on the Sample & Hold. The blue arcade button on the corner is a manual trigger button for the envelope generator. Adding to the main output’s pre-amp, there is another pre-amp on the audio input, which turns up the volume but can also make distortion. And to add to this mix of making a variety in tones, there is another pre-amp circuit after the filter, but before the VCA. - www.healthclub-music.com/scribbles.htm

The Scribbles was listed on Etsy for $380 USD. I believe it sold since I saw it last night because I can’t find the listing again. Luckily I remembered the website mentioned in the listing so you listen to some MP3 samples: healthclub-music.com If your in the spending mood you can see if they are making more for sale. Oh by the way while you are there check out their Swing Step Sequencer: niiice.

What would you write on the Scribbles chalkboard? Patch ideas? Lyrics? Inspiring quotes? The grocery list?

Over at the Ableton forums Kent Williams has posted a link to a nice set of Roland TR-727 samples he recorded using four different methods. I own a TR-707 and love it’s sound and design. It’s quite a lot of fun flicking the little mixer’s channels up and down.

The TR-727 is, of course, the ‘Latin’ version of the TR-707 — same hardware, but Latin percussion samples instead of a trap set.

Many sample sets have been made of the TR-727, starting with the ‘Music Machines’ set at Hyperreal.org, which is nearly 10 years old, and 16-bit only. see http://machines.hyperreal.org/manufacturers/Roland/TR-727/

I was inspired to do this set by the guys at Goldbaby — http://www.goldbaby.co.nz — who have done some obsessively loving sampling jobs on many old drum boxes, through a wide variety of gear.

I don’t have as snazzy a studio as GoldBaby but I think I’ve done pretty well with what I’ve got. - Kent Williams

His recording method is included in the readme.txt file that accompaniments the sample pack. To download click here: 727_Samples.zip

By now we all have a bunch of old spare controllers lying around so why not hack the hell out of the them? Luckily Brooklyn native Moldover has posted this video showing us exactly how to do it. You need controller (duh), a screwdriver, some plastic, rubber, scissors, glue and a permanent marker. The marker is optional because it’s only to make things, “look cool”.

The hilarious thing is all he does is pull out some keys, glue rubber on the rest of them, draw on the case and assign controllers to stuff. I have to say this is completely stupid and awesome all at the same time!

Related post: To perform live with controllers: Controllerism

I’m showing up to my next DJ gig with this. 100% awesome!

via Music Thing on Twitter

I’ve been recording music since 1989 and each year since I’ve saved my songs, stems and album covers on Cassettes, DATs, Zip Disks, CDs, DVDs, assorted hard drives and even in the cloud. Today with each new important music social network or online music retailer that arrives I have to upload my entire catalog again. The past few times I’ve done this by digging into all the old CDs repeatedly. Today I put an end to that madness. I purchased a portable bus powered USB 2.0 drive that is the new grand central station of all the music I ever created (and all the music on my record label). Each release is in its own folder containing the song in all formats, artwork and remix files. When it’s time to upload to Trackitdown I have 320kpbs MP3s using the Lame encoder ready. Beatport? No problem Wavs are at hand. Oh yeah, I also keep 30 second previews saved too.

This is a novel idea but I feel good that I finally got around to it. I think this massive futz was just in the nick of time as my old Tascam DA-30 DAT machine was making squeaking sounds. The next step is to use SuperDuper! and regularly clone the new baby. It’s true that someone could steal my entire music catalog all in one swoop but those interested are already doing that online (har har). I put a .txt document on the drive titled Contact_Me.txt. I hope if the drive ever does get lost, stolen and found a nice person will be kind enough to reach me. I’m considering also encrypting the drive. I’ve heard Leo Laporte on the TWIT podcast mention software to just that. What was it called again? As long as it’s not too tricky or kill the performance of the drive why not.

So what exactly did I get? I’m in Berlin so I walked down to Alexanderplatz to Mediamarkt and grabbed a Western Digital “My Passport” 160GB bus powered USB 2.0 drive. I know Firewire would be a bit faster but I am purely just using the drive for file storage and I have more USB ports than Firewire ones available. This drive was only 67€, anything with Firewire was over 150€. Check out the photos of this thing: click here I know its geeky to look at hard drive photos but this thing is uber nice. It’s white, tiny and has a white LED power light that also blinks when the drive is in action. To top it off it came with a short white USB cable.

Comicon was last week so I got inspired to make some strips for Wire to the Ear. I hope you find them somewhat entertaining. Feel free to share and repost them. I used the excellent Comic Life Magiq from Plasq. You can download the high resolution PDF of all four strips by: clicking here

Or view the next three after the jump…
Read “Four synthesizer comics from Wire to the Ear.”

The next release on my record label is by French DJ and producer Stamba. I am remixing one of the songs called Deviation. All the tracks on the release are what you would call darkwave, ebm, techno. Don’t you love all these sub-genres? Take a listen:

I recreated his original song in Ableton Live, keeping his vocals but using all my own sounds. Some of the gear and plug-ins used include a Jomox Mbase-01, Vermona DRM1 MKIII, Audiorealism Bassline, Korg Legacy, PSP Nitro, Fabfilter Volcano 2, assorted TC Powercore dynamics and Sugar Bytes Effectrix.

We have released the remix samples under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License. If you want to grab the samples for your own fun head to the discography page for this release at Things to Come Records:
thingstocome.com/discog/TTC-017

The full release will be available on August 4, 2008.

When I was starting college I worked at The Gap in Greenwich, Connecticut. For those who don’t know The Gap is a nation (world) wide clothing store and Greenwich is one of the richest towns in the United States. The president of the entire company lived in Greenwich and would come into our store. He would show up without any warning which meant our store had to be spotless at all times. My manager would actually make me take sticky tape, get on my hands and knees and use it to pull lint and dirt out of the carpet in the dressing rooms! I also spent countless hours cleaning the glass, steel racks and folding giant walls of jeans.

I guess the intense retail store boot camp has stuck with me because I like to keep my studio ultra clean. I’m on a permanent war with those dust bunnies that collect near electric wires. For the floors, windows and furniture I use the usual chemical infused products with stupid names. However, for the equipment and screens I only use warm water and a soft cloth. This seems to be the conventional wisdom for what’s best. I used to buy canned air but I realized it’s not worth the price. I don’t smoke so I can make my own dam wind.

One product I love is Goo Gone which nicely gets rid of any sticker residue. Hmm what else? Oh yeah if some jerk tags your mailbox or metal door with a Sharpie nail polish remover gets it right off!

What do you use? Do you have any tips?

photo credits: CraftyGoat and kerim

Have you ever bought a piece of gear or software you really didn’t need? Of course you did. Did you ever feel bad after you bought it? Did you ever feel bad before you even hit the buy now button? You knew you didn’t need it but you still went ahead. I’m guilty as charged and I know you are too.

As musicians we should be the most frugal group no? After all ASCAP isn’t much of a union in the way the Screen Actors Guild is right? We are left to fend for ourselves. No 401k plans, medical insurance or even social security. We have do put it all away by ourselves.

“My arms do things oblivious to my wishes and my orders. Buy. Buy. Buy more now!” - Soft Cell, Persuasion.

Large companies feed us adverts pandering to our wish to make great songs. However, it’s almost never the gear that’s going to make that happen. Piano lessons maybe but a new audio interface or filter plug-in… no. If you want to see gear lust in extreme effect look to the forums at Gearslutz. Threads go on miles long with people chatting about stuff they can never afford. I swear I feel dirty reading about which $1200 pre-amp sounds the best (Great River by the way!).

In truth it feels great to give in and be dirty; to purchase something I don’t really need. To open the cardboard box, remove the shiny inner plastic bags and smell new plastic and silicone. You can almost see drool in my Vermona DRM1 unboxing video. Should I be hard on myself? As an American I was raised to be a consumer. Is it my fault I have these feelings?

I’ve done well in the music business but the price of life has increased by a third in just the past 48 months. No one is paying me a third more. It’s time to put down the credit card right? Yet if I had the new Oscitron my new song could be a hit and then…

photo credit: Keegan Jones

Here’s an obvious but useful tip that will work in any DAW. What if have an external hardware device that does not allow Program Change control? How will you remember what preset you were using for a specific song? Easy: Name the clip or channel the patch number.

I’ve been using this method with my new Jomox Mbase 01. As you see above the clip is named r31. One thrilling things about the Mbase 01 is how the massive kicks really pump any sidechains. Lately I will have more than just one channel being sidechained. When this is the case you can’t freeze or render the kick without after re-sidechaining everything to the new rendered kick. This is why I just keep the Jomox “live”.