Saturday, January 26, 2013

Vacation 2013

As I am feeling the winters chill I am packing up some gear for a long overdue vacation. You might see a flurry of blogs from me as I have a lot of drafts that never made it to being published. I also hope to connect with a friend on what will hopefully be a collaboration at the next Electro Music Festival.

As NAMM news rolls in I will publish a blog of my impressions. At the moment I see only a few bright lights but we shall see. I am having my own personal NAMM by reintroducing myself to my own gear especially going deeper with foogers. This may lead to building a full blown modular but not one of these generalized ones but a specialized audio processor. I am going to start an initial experiment using Live's effects chaining. As of late my Moog Guitar explorations have opened my spectral ears again. What I want to do is side chain by Moog Guitar to my Voyager. The goal being to create these massive organic swells using the Moog Guitar's unique envelope as the breathe (sort of speak). The first block of an effects chain would be a crossover similar to the first part of a vocoder and then chaining different effects to each channel. The idea being to get effects to function as one and to be more responsive to the spectral dynamics of Moog Guitar and other instruments. At some point my MP 201, CP 251 and Voyager expander will come into play and as I said, even a modular in the future.

I also want to continue to use not only Moog Guitar but other sampled and perhaps real instruments in the future including a gong. Again, the idea being to channel the frequency spectrum to different effects,

I also want to work on a set of Alchemy and Absynth patches based on processed Moog Guitar.

So anyway, I hope I can at least move a few of these projects forward a bit over vacation.

More to cone...

Friday, January 25, 2013

NAMM 2013 - Eventide H9

Ok, I just looked at what I could find on the Eventide H9. I love Eventide products but given I have a few of their products it would make no sense for me to get an H9.

On the plus side, I love the idea that you can edit parameters on the IPad. I just wish they would right an app for their other boxes. However, it seems they are doing this because they have miniaturized the box now with a micro LED and XYZ buttons and a big knob. I guess some like this style and it is a further development of the X and Y knobs on their other boxes. I understand why they did this but at least with the other boxes when you move a knob the LED indicates the parameter being changed. So, unless you want to be driven crazy by the tinisized form you have to have an IPad?

They also combine select algorithms from the other boxes with an option to buy more. Nice marketing. You know that people will end up spending more on algorithms than if they bought all the current boxes. Well, I can't really say that without seeing The price but that is my guess.

What I would have liked is a rack mount unit with all the algorithms from the current boxes, large display, 3 hot knobs, added algorithms from their rack mount effects, MIDI, USB and IPad access and multi pedal plugs. CV control would really have been a plus.

So, I know many are going to love the H9 and in terms of sound the Eventide algorithms are great but I just don't see this one as a real innovation, just smart marketing.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

Whats Old Is New Again

Over several weeks I have been using Tom Hughes' "Analogue Guide to Vintage Effects" as a coffee table book. It's out of print but if you are able to procure a copy I highly recommend it. What's fascinating to me is the market for effects from companies that have long since closed their doors. Some effects fetch prices in the 100s! The truth is I don't have any and I don't plan on buying ant in the future. Well, that may not be totally true. I would buy a spring reverb but more for experimental reasons than nostalgia. I have stomp boxes and rack mount effects and some emulate vintage but I have an interest in nostalgia more from a historical perspective.

So why did some effects do so well and others fail. I have three reasons in order of importance:

1. The circuit construction

2. Good Marketing

3. Features

Most effects sound good because of the circuit design but things get dicey because there are often many versions of the same effect and sometimes under different names. It's really why some effects may be hard to duplicate unless you totally simulate a circuit and that may be difficult and CPU intensive.

Some popularity is pure hype and marketing as well. Sometimes it might have to do with a big name store carrying an effect or perhaps a popular artist might like it and everyone thinks if they get that effect they can sound like their musical heroes.

Old school stomp boxes also tended not to be feature rich although an exception may be Mu Tron for example.

A few special cases are also worthy of mentioning: Spring and Plate reverb, tube distortion/overdrive and tape delay. For various reasons emulating any of these is not a simple task. In my opinion most synth effects that have any of these effects do a lousy job. If you have a killer synth it's probably munching on CPU and a good emulation crushes many CPUs. Companies making synths also want to concentrate on the synth so effects are after thoughts. Distortion, especially the soft clipping of tubes, is hard to emulate. I don't have vintage tubes but I do have an EH "Tube EQ" with dual 12AX7s.

In my opinion here us where dedicated boxes like the Strymon "El Capistan" tape delay also shine as do some rack mount devices.

A final special case - reverb. In my opinion the most important effects are:

1. EQ

2. Compression

3. Reverb

Ok, in the end these are really mastering/Mixing tools rather than effects but to be, perhaps with the exception of delay, the rest are window dressing. A bit of ear candy but non essential.

So, that's my take on effects old and new. Hope you enjoyed it.

Whats Old Is New Again

Over several weeks I have been using Tom Hughes' "Analogue Guide to Vintage Effects" as a coffee table book. It's out of print but if you are able to procure a copy I highly recommend it. What's fascinating to me is the market for effects from companies that have long since closed their doors. Some effects fetch prices in the 100s! The truth is I don't have any and I don't plan on buying ant in the future. Well, that may not be totally true. I would buy a spring reverb but more for experimental reasons than nostalgia. I have stomp boxes and rack mount effects and some emulate vintage but I have an interest in nostalgia more from a historical perspective.

So why did some effects do so well and others fail. I have three reasons in order of importance:

1. The circuit construction

2. Good Marketing

3. Features

Most effects sound good because of the circuit design but things get dicey because there are often many versions of the same effect and sometimes under different names. It's really why some effects may be hard to duplicate unless you totally simulate a circuit and that may be difficult and CPU intensive.

Some popularity is pure hype and marketing as well. Sometimes it might have to do with a big name store carrying an effect or perhaps a popular artist might like it and everyone thinks if they get that effect they can sound like their musical heroes.

Old school stomp boxes also tended not to be feature rich although an exception may be Mu Tron for example.

A few special cases are also worthy of mentioning: Spring and Plate reverb, tube distortion/overdrive and tape delay. For various reasons emulating any of these is not a simple task. In my opinion most synth effects that have any of these effects do a lousy job. If you have a killer synth it's probably munching on CPU and a good emulation crushes many CPUs. Companies making synths also want to concentrate on the synth so effects are after thoughts. Distortion, especially the soft clipping of tubes, is hard to emulate. I don't have vintage tubes but I do have an EH "Tube EQ" with dual 12AX7s.

In my opinion here us where dedicated boxes like the Strymon "El Capistan" tape delay also shine as do some rack mount devices.

A final special case - reverb. In my opinion the most important effects are:

1. EQ

2. Compression

3. Reverb

Ok, in the end these are really mastering/Mixing tools rather than effects but to be, perhaps with the exception of delay, the rest are window dressing. A bit of ear candy but non essential.

So, that's my take on effects old and new. Hope you enjoyed it.

Monday, January 14, 2013

John Cage and the Culture of Noise

I have to admit that being an electronic and experimental artist has allowed me a lot of creative freedom to explore a lot of musical territory. I recently read an article which more or less praised John Cage as the primary musical revolutionary to open the doors of creativity. To be honest, I am not a big John Cage fan. I see him more as a kind of musical politician rather than an artist. Did he open a lot of doors? Perhaps but he was one of many in an Avant Garde revolution.

I also don't believe in throwing out the baby with the bath water. As music to write this blog to I am listening to Bach's "Well Tempered Clavier". The beauty of Bach's music is in it's precision as notes are fashioned in a very restrictive musical construct and yet, at least in the case of the greats like Bach, transcending it. In his own time he was probably not as popular as his sons whose music is now only a footnote to the looming presence of their father's music today. Time favored complexity over popularity.

In Bach's time, it was easy to discuss technique. Music was all written out so that innovations could be discussed and used by others. Today, music is pretty much free form and electronic music has left it's classical roots in many ways i believe to its demise. In this bold new world ushered in by John Cage it is imitation that has become the limitation. Music becomes narrowly defined by a certain beat or type of sound. Dubstep and chiptune music is an example. Music defined by technology or even 8bit chips. These are self imposed limitations much like serialism before the Avant Garde and electronic revolutions began to sculpt the musical landscape.

As I have been working with Moog Guitar I find myself like Cage with no net under me and no map to chart my course but unlike Cage I do think about the musicality of what I do. On keyboards I have frequently drawn on jazz and classical in using modes and altered scales. As a Catholic I am inspired by Messiaen who was one of the first to write for an early electronic instrument the Ondes Martenot. And in sound design I find artists such as Karlheintz Stockhausen whose picture graces the top row of the Beatles Sergeant Peppers not John Cage far more inspiring than John Cage.

I do believe that sound is not just sound as Cage would tell us. It does not stand boldly on it's own but as artists we shape it and organize it. Electronic Music is "organized sound" as Edgar Varese called it. I have noticed that some artists are critical of talking about technique. They believe that it's just the doing that is important but I disagree as I do with Cage. If electronic music is to advance we should discuss technique. Perhaps we need to do more that mimic sounds and rather, advance and discuss the use of more sophisticated techniques. Anyway, that my two cents on Cagian musicality. It is my hope that we may look to others not to limit our art but perhaps to leave a few breadcrumbs for others to follow.