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Douglad Adams synth setup
 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-12 21:37 [#02507524]
Points: 31007 Status: Lurker



i had no idea


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:47 [#02507539]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



simultaneously sad and hilarious that this reads exactly
like the history of anyone else into this stuff. i'll use my
own for the sake of example: i was a rather ham-fisted
keyboard player and being able to play back things on the
computer immediately made a huge difference. i hated
notation, though, and so i switched from performer to
cakewalk to fruity loops but when i tried to load up the
piano roll in cakewalk the software would crash, it was
really irritating


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:49 [#02507540]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



last i left software music, i wanted so much to have
ableton's "performance" view carefully extracted and glued
into cubase so i could have the whambam that ableton does
with non-linear editing usable by someone not on cocaine.


 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 00:52 [#02507541]
Points: 31007 Status: Lurker



yeah your right,

whats great also is that infocom call him on the phone mid
interview


 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 00:53 [#02507542]
Points: 31007 Status: Lurker



is albeton anygood, it looks like something that people who
are interested in music would use but without going the full
hog


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:55 [#02507543]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



...and, yes, i did try using ReWire for that, but the
program crashes if you try to use that part of it. that's
the kind of program it is at the moment, but i don't want to
do them down, because i know that it's in a fever of
re-writing, and they keep on sending out newer and newer
versions to the IRC XDCC bots in #musicwarez


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:58 [#02507544]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



imagine a hyperactive, nerdy teenage kid who spends his
lunch break in guitar center discovering it was possible to
download synths off the internet. it was so cruel to me that
the Access Virus was available as a plugin, but it was TDM
and hardware-only.... i think there's also a Propet VS
TDM.... dicks


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 00:59 [#02507545]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



so, sorry, i'm not sure what you mean by "but without going
the full hog"


 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 01:00 [#02507546]
Points: 31007 Status: Lurker | Followup to EpicMegatrax: #02507545



sorry yeah what i mean is it looks user friendly, too user
friendly sort of


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 01:01 [#02507547]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



if you'll compromise and hear of a terrifying machine that
consumes hogs by the truckload, however, i'm your man


 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 01:04 [#02507548]
Points: 31007 Status: Lurker



idiom


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 01:05 [#02507549]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



ableton live is aptly named. it's not called ableton edit.
it's good for live midi routing, audio mashing/stretching,
loop munging. it's what you want on the other end of your
8x8 grid of square buttons as you do your daedaelest on
cocaine. that's the view in ableton with all the tracks
going vertical.

press tab, and you go over to the "arrangement view." this
is pretty much designed so you can chop up stuff and drag it
around live, on stage, also on cocaine.

anyways, the "performance view" is great fun to riff around
with. once you get to know it, it's a faster way of doing
many things. faster than any other bit of software i have...
then, though, i want to take a live jam that's vaguely what
i want and carefully edit down the mess into what i actually
want. the "arrangement view" is not designed for this.
cubase is. the two pieces of 'ware should talk, but don't.
the program crashes if i try to use that part of it

is it what you want? i dunno. torrent it and find out. or
maybe bitwig studio. anyone tried that? does it program
crash?


 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-13 01:06 [#02507550]
Points: 31007 Status: Lurker



ah yeah, this is what i thought it was for, tanks for
description


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 02:40 [#02507562]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



whenever i type up something like that it loads the nuances
into my mind and the nuances generate nuances. peter
molyneux as a funcional concept generator... just, you know,
remember to get out before it expands to the whole stack and
your thread segfaults.

point being: this is one of those fractal patterns. the
journey and roadblocks "douglad adams" describes are just
uncannily similar to my own story. probably similar to the
story of anyone who's into synths 'n seqs. adams was doing
this stuff ten years before me, and it feels like fill in
the blank. the problems, his solutions. one software has
this, the other has that... they should work together,
but...

it gets even crazier. i started on digital performer, which
is what adams landed on... and then i switched to cakewalk,
but left that because i hated staff notation; preferred
piano roll....

it gives me this sense that i could sit down and explicitly
chart all of it out and find out where one is apt to get
stuck in a loop of technical goulash and lose sight of the
music, so to speak.

it is very reminiscent of that thing where you wind up
fiddling with the same two-bar loop for four hours straight.


vibert said, in some interview, he's seen aphex get stuck in
that same loop himself. it's one of those things that's
simply human nature -- we all have moments when we get so
lasered in on what we're doing that we lose perspective.

chris vrenna said he has approximately 37 different kinds of
distortion and he avoids fussing over the nuances because
it'd drive him insane and he'd never get the real work
done... the overabundance of options makes it easy to get
lost.

so, yes, there's a really deep and satisfying moment of,
"huh... i could probably flowchart this all out and debug
it..." and i love the sound of my fingers typing; my
pleasure to reply


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 02:45 [#02507563]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



so, yes: dear douglad adams. younger, backwards in time.
less dead. you should ditch digital performer for cakewalk,
because it will do the things you want without program
crashing.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-13 02:46 [#02507564]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



only after i post the above does it dawn on me that
"cakewalk" is also a carnival game that involves walking in
a loop. to music. rad.


 

offline steve mcqueen from caerdydd (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-14 20:23 [#02507599]
Points: 6514 Status: Lurker



how the fuck is notation related to anything
pretty certain stepsequencers were the reason for all that
mental music we all listen to!!


 

offline steve mcqueen from caerdydd (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-14 20:23 [#02507600]
Points: 6514 Status: Lurker



Wkd link cheers Hyperflake


 

offline steve mcqueen from caerdydd (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-14 20:32 [#02507601]
Points: 6514 Status: Lurker



dear younger Douglad, don't get on that fuckin treadmill


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-15 03:04 [#02507615]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular | Followup to steve mcqueen: #02507599



douglad adams stated that he felt most comfortable
sequencing with classical notation -- staff notation.

i stated that i found "staff notation" suffocating and the
"piano roll" style was what i wanted.

completely opposite preferences, yes? then this: i dumped
cakewalk as a sequencer because it was geared towards "staff
notation."

then the familiar grind: digital performer? cakewalk? pro
tools? renoise? cubase? all of them have slightly different
angles. different features and problems. anyone getting into
electronic music production has to wade through this mess of
options and get it wrong a few times before it starts to go
alright.

i read this archived article and said to myself: douglas
adams wants cakewalk! too bad i can't tell him!

that's a bit amusing, right? but, what interests me more is
how everyone in electronic music has to crawl through this
mess. one guy wants piano roll, the other wants staff
notation. then one sequencer is supposed to do both, but
crashes when you do one 'em...

then i ask you -- steve mcqueen -- what if we were to
sit down and chart it all out? could we perhaps work out a
way to get all newcomers through that minefield faster? even
if you have little success with that, working through that
decision field will land you on some deep revelations about
production 'n' process, right?

or maybe you still don't get it. perhaps it'd make more
sense if i said it like, "everyone who learns to sing has
certain problems eventually, no matter who they are, so
let's write them down and try to see what it says about the
architecture of learning to sing."


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-15 03:33 [#02507616]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



writing that was enough to get me thinking: piano roll,
staff notation, step sequencer, tracker... are these all
getting at the same thing, even?

i used trackers exclusively for a stage, and i've barely
used them since. they are fantastic for the same reason
venetian snares is a fantastic name. drag your
fingers down a stucco wall and connect the larger bumps with
drum noises in your mind. this is the sort of thing i'll do
when i'm bored, and sometimes it'd give me a good idea for a
"sequence." just, like, yeah, that's a good drum thing,
let's go do that... though weird, i figure that makes sense
enough.

what's strange is that i have a lot more trouble doing that
horizontally. my brain most easily maps the bumps to the
samples when i drag straight downwards. i can do any
direction, really, but i have to take a moment to orient
myself.

it reminds me very much of every time i've contorted and
twisted to reach into some equipment rack, or hung upside
down by my knees to adjust something i can't reach any other
way.

i have to take a moment to visualize what i want to do. is
that still counter-clockwise when i'm hanging upside-down
into a server rack? does this question even make sense? i'd
have to visualize it to tell you...

trackers are vertical. up to down. they are for rhythm.
piano rolls are horizontal. left to right. they are for
melody and harmony..... perhaps. i'm just letting it
free-run into deep goulash.

is a sequencer that only accepts staff notation still a
sequencer? is a tracker a sequencer? what is a
sequencer? it's poorly defined. some people want a staff,
some people want a step seq, and a word like sequencer is
the eris in your apple, wasting all your time, as you say:
well, digital performer should do staff notation, but
the program crashes when you use that bit...


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-15 03:45 [#02507617]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



out on the porch, smoking a zigguraut, still chewing on
this. if you're j. average caveman, out of control, sliding
down a muddy slope, grabbing for something to stop the
slide... well, yes, the brain has probably evolved to deal
with rhythmic pulses rather quickly, in this context. then,
horizontal? feeling your way along a cliff face in the dark.
knowing it by touch, unable to see, poking your way along
according to a memorized progression...

i have no idea if i'm on to something with that or not. it's
item one of a zillion this line of questioning could have me
into. it's a good thread to tug at, pretty much.


 

offline EpicMegatrax from Greatest Hits on 2016-11-15 04:26 [#02507619]
Points: 25264 Status: Regular



why? why care?

adams spent a presumably significant quanity of time wading
through all this muck just to get to the music he wanted to
write. if he hadn't had to spend so much time on that,
perhaps we'd have gotten two or three albums out of him we
didn't. the guy who wrote hitchikers guide... yeah, two or
three albums that could have been from him, deleted from
reality. because we didn't have our shit together. now he's
dead. and this situation is actively repeating itself over
and over, over the whole planet. until it gets fixed.

as a software engineer, i take this sort of mess pretty
personally, because i feel i'm at least somewhat in a
position to do something about it. until it explodes in
O(n), anyways... "wow, this is a bit of a big topic. how
much can i do myself? how much am i obligated to do? what's
realistic?"

when i get lost in the math of a question i didn't have on
my agenda, i turn the "leechblock" plugin back on and quit
xltronic until i do the things i am supposed to do. because
i can't debug the obnoxiously shitty architecture of
electronic music metaphors if the bills are unpaid and the
dog needs walkies


 

offline Hyperflake from Wirral (United Kingdom) on 2016-11-15 15:19 [#02507626]
Points: 31007 Status: Lurker | Followup to steve mcqueen: #02507600



Cheers Glad you found it interesting!


 


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