Pod Line 6

Of course it was candy apple red. (I'm into b/w photography, however, so you'll need to use your imagination).

Amp modeling was a sci-fi thing at a certain point. Imagine: Run the response of popular amps and cabinets though some kind of computer analysis that enables you to recreate what it does to the sound of any guitar. No tubes, no heavy lifting! Of course it's not the real thing, but it's pretty good, and importantly predictable, and able to be reproduced easily. I first encountered it in my VS-880 digital 8 track's effects card, which could model popular amp and microphone responses and apply them to your recordings.

The pretty amazing Pod Line 6 V2 cost me $199 dollars, and it modeled really well, I thought — a great effects machine for electric guitar (or voice, for that matter). You can see from the picture the many amp models available. You could tweak those presets. And there was some kind of software librarian available, I seem to recall.

I'm not a real guitarist, I just play one in the studio, so any kind of artificial enhancement totally helped. I can't think of anything wrong with this except that I longed for a Wah pedal and to hook Line 6's add-ons to this started to make it an expensive proposition. I got rid of it and bought a Roland PW-10 Wah pedal which you can read about next.

Behringer Bcr-2000

Behringer BCR-2000

My last post really got me thinking about finding a midi controller of my own. It would really help to mix in Ableton Live, which is what I usually use. I'm on a laptop and it's been particularly a pain using the mouse pad to mix. You can't really do things in real-time. Well, maybe one thing. Mostly, you need to set up snapshots and draw curves for fades, and envelopes. It's nice to have all that control, but some actual faders, knobs and buttons would take it to a whole another level.

I came home with the Evolution UC-33 first. For $199 it had faders and buttons, all could be programmed. I was able to set it up pretty easily, but it became clear pretty quickly that when I turned it on every fader was going to be in the wrong place! You touch it and you get a sudden jump in your volume or eq value or whatever you've mapped that partucular controller to. I woke up the next day thinking that it really sucked, if only because of that.

I returned it and got the Behringer Brc-2000 instead for $139. I thought about the BCF-2000 (F for fader) at first. It's got actual motorized faders. Nice, but for 150 bucks, how good could those motors really be? It was going to break, I figured, so I went for the BCR-2000 (R for rotary).

The BCR also has a lot more controllers on it and they also show the value of the parameter mapped to each knob by lighting up a ring of LEDs. So you get the same function and feedback as the motorized faders, but no motors to worry about. The knobs are infinite, they don't top out, so they are always in the right position.

The main problem, if you can call it that, is that with so many controllers, it's hard to remember what a particular knob or button is going to do. Think about it, there are 32 knobs and 16 buttons in each scene. But the top row of 8 knobs also act as push buttons, and has 4 encoder "groups," making those 8 into 32 knobs and 32 buttons. Add those 64 assignable controllers to the other 24 knobs and you have 88 controllers per scene x 32 scenes and you get over 2800 assignable controllers available! I bet that'll be enough. Of course midi messages can be sent on any of the 16 midi channels so the amount of possible unique messages you can program is just insane. (Oh, I forgot, there are another 4 buttons on the side. I use those for transport functions). I'll lay a strip of tape down, like we do on a big mixing board, and mark it up.
A company in the UK makes markable, erasable plastic overlays for this too.

I set mine up in a rough amalgam of the channel strip in LIVE!, with solo and mute buttons, volume, pan and send knobs for each channel, up to 8. Another 8 continue in the next scene. I rarely use more tracks than that. I saved an encoder group on top to address volumes of each of the drums in LIVE!'s drum machine instrument. LIVE! learns the controllers with a little wiggle, so it's easy to set up existing projects to receive the right controllers, and I've set up a blank LIVE! template for new ones. There are free controllers left over for soft synths and real-time tweaking of filters or effects parameters. Quite fun. I haven't felt this knob-happy since I had my Pro One.

So far so good. I've been having a little trouble with some of my virtual synths that lack documentation as to which controllers each of their virtual knobs or buttons receive, but I'm experimenting and figuring some of that out. Additionally, when I got it home I discovered the BCR-2000 is also a full a midi interface for other gear. It's midi ins and outs connect with it's USB port and the computer. Good thing, because with my Mbox and this, there's no USB port left on my laptop for my keyboard controller.

As for the look (mine is the one at the top of this post, it looks more black than blue) — call it retro — the physical design lacks the modernity of Novation's Launchpad or Nocturn controllers — this looks sort of clunky, chunky 90s. That is until the house lights go out and the Christmasy red glow of the manyLEDs begins to charm you. There's even a way to make them act like a UV meter and bounce to the music. I haven't figured that out yet, but I will.

Best $139 I've spent in a long time.

Cool Control Surfaces

I'm loving the new controllers coming out that are built to integrate with Ableton Live, which I use as my main composition tool. They mimic the software program's grid and allow you to "play" a physical surface, allowing the software to reach into the actual (not virtual) world, where our hands and bodies can interact. Composers and musicians and DJs especially love Live because of its clip view. You can use it to launch entire sets of songs, all tempo matched, and intuitively mix, add additional tempo matched (or not) flourishes, integrate virtual instruments, etc. Composers can arrange and mix variations of a tune by launching individual parts at will. All on the fly. And now with these cool controllers we have tons of buttons and sliders to "play" the software with.

1 Akai's APC40 ABLETON PERFORMANCE CONTROLLER, $349
This thing is awsome, integrating a sliders, knobs the huge pad grid. Here is what they say about it:

The unusual front panel of the APC40 is packed with glowing buttons. It looks this way because it's designed to let you to take complete control of Live's unique Session View. Session View features a grid that allows you to load audio and MIDI clips into its cells. You can play and stop each of these clips in any sequence, and you can launch groups of clips together as a "scene." You can choose to have the software time-stretch and quantize all of these sounds so they flow together musically. It's an extremely simple yet wildly creative approach to manipulating sound, but until now there has been no true hardware solution that could free the user from staring deeply into their computer monitor with a mouse in their hand.

2 Novation LAUNCHPAD, $199
I like Novation's version better. It's cheaper, has a cooler minimal design, and even though it doesn't have sliders you can mix by switching modes and sliding up and down a column of the buttons. You should really check out the promotional video. Here's some of their description:

Each button has three color states so you can see at a glance what's loaded (orange), what's playing (green), and what's being recorded (red). Similarly, Live's interface tells you what section of the Session View the Launchpad is currently controlling. This two-way communication ensures that Launchpad and Ableton Live are always perfectly in sync.

Launchpad doesn't just launch clips. Switch to "mixer mode" and the same button grid offers a unique way to control Ableton Live's mixer. Volume, pans, sends, track arming, soloing and muting can all be controlled via the grid. Using buttons instead of dials, Launchpad lets you jump to different levels across 8 channels at once, useful for controlling multiple effects sends.

Again, software is finding it's way to our physical world, where we can interact in a natural, physical way.

3 This is an plain old ACCORDION
That's right, not a cool midi controller at all. So what's the point here? Just that there is really nothing new going on. Accordions have been integrating rows of buttons to trigger chords and notes in a really similar way for 200 years. It made sense then, and it still does. So why'd it take so long for the manufacturers to figure this out again? I don't know, but I'm glad they did.

But if you really want a midi accordion, you can have that too. Roland's V-Accordion goes for about $1600.

Every Second of an 5:57 Minute Song

How can our crowded minds possibly catalog store and recall every second of an ever changing 5:57 min. song? Take Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, for example. It's not a standard blues progression or something, like a hundred other songs. It's a totally unique string of fairly disjointed musical ideas. Yet somehow, an average person of a certain age, say, my age, who heard this song playing through their puberty has got every single moment of it hammered into his or her head.

I'm not talking about a musical professional, someone you expect to memorize the piano concerto they play at Carnegie Hall. I'm talking about how your average Jane and Joe (probably every single kid from my graduating class of J.H.S. 216), flat out KNOWS this song – stone cold by heart. This Muppet parody video really made me think about the magic of recorded music — and video, for that matter — the magic of recordING and how human memory works.

What is it, you hear something, see something a few times and your brain becomes a tape recorder? It sort of seems that way. I mean, that's what makes this video so funny. We remember the original video and seeing the spoof along side the remembered original in our head, is what makes it work. It's what makes it funny.

So for thirty years, I've been thinking my tape recorders (now digital) where helping me mimic and reproduce a live musical experience. They were the magical machines. Maybe what I've actually been doing is using my recorders analogously to how my brain already works. The more magical machine.

And to me, one striving to make good recording, working to produce multimedia experiences that work, that's kind of comforting. It means I know how to make the perfect recording. I just need to tap into what my brain is doing so well already.

Gear Purge

Creative space, with the emphasis on "space."

Gearchild has had just about enough, um, GEAR. It's heresy, I know. After all, I've been into this stuff since I was a kid, poking around my fathers Telefunken reel to reel in 1968. But something has happened. The gear has ceased to be fun, and the music has faded behind the clutter. True, I've been winnowing my possessions down already, and it may be only temporary. But I decided to undergo a major purge.

What it boils down to getting realistic about what I'm able to do in my life. When "stuff" becomes something I'm responsible toward rather than something that's a help to me, it's a problem. And I'm not just talking about music gear either.

PERSONAL STATISTICS I have a more than full-time job, a spouse and three children. By the time I got to my studio after work, I was usually so tired that I resented my equipment.
Like that annoying kid down the block, it kept looking at me with its blinking red, green and amber eyes and repeating "Wanna play? Why don't you play with me? Here I am." "Get out of my face!" I shouted back and proceeded to log onto ebay.

THE DRUMS Read Garbage Drum Set for the history, but when it came down to it I wasn't playing or recording these drums. I used to be a drummer back in the day, but years operating a computer mouse has left my wrists and soft tissue tender. An afternoon pounding the kit felt great, but I paid for it the next few days. And drums are too loud to not bother my housemates and my kids show no interest in playing them or using them to jam with me or their friends.

So I sold the cracked Zildjian New Beat high hats, the Sabian 20" ride cymbal, the Tama Pedal, the 1970s 16" Paiste crash cymbal, the Tama high hat stand, and the two cymbal stands. After alot of packing tape and trips to the post office, what was left was the "garbage" part of the kit, the drums themselves. They are sitting in my garage. One is a Ludwig floor tom, I think (the badge is missing). The rest are no-name junky brands that have pretty much no value on the used market.

Come and get them.

KORG MICROx I wrote about my love for my latest synth recently. It interfaced well with my computer DAWS and had heaps of sounds. But getting at it all was sort of like looking for ants with a magnifying glass from an airplane. If you are over 40, do not even attempt to read the text on the front panel of that thing. Don't get me wrong, it's a great synth. But with the time I have for it, I just was scratching the surface. When it comes down to it I can make just about any sound I want on my Mac virtual synths. So up on ebay went the MicroX.


PHONIC FIREWIRE MIXER/AUDIO INTERFACE A grossly underestimated piece of equipment. A few years ago, for $300, I got this 12 channel firewire audio interface that is also an analog mixer with great effects. But I also have an Mbox for ProTools. I've gotten into Protools because that's what I use at work for editing audio for web multimedia. When it came down to it I figured I could do everything I needed with the Mbox. So some lucky camper picked up the used firewire mixer for about $100. If you want a firewire interface/mixer, I'd check these out. Not quite a Mackie, but it does a lot of the same stuff, and it's much cheaper.


RODE NT1A Microphone
A great condenser mic. Quiet and wonderful for voice or whatever. But when it comes down to it, I can do what I need to, get a basic idea down, with my Shure Sm58. Someone picked it up for $100.


CAMERAS AND BRIEFCASES
I rounded out my purge by looking beyond my music gear to my other valuable stuff. Saddleback Leather makes these amazing bags. Thick leather and cool basic styling. They are designed to last 100 years and cost at least a few hundred bucks each. I got one a few years ago. I loved it, the way it smelled, looked and was built. But it was too heavy to carry. It was breaking my back. Picked up $400 for it on ebay, almost what I paid. Someone got a great bag.


Finally, I got rid of my Olympus E-500 digital slr camera. A great camera, yes. I take lots of pictures, and always have. A camera is almost always with me. But this camera was about 2 or 3 years old and I figured it was going to break sooner rather than later. So I sold it too. A wedding photographer in Ohio picked it up with the lens and a bunch of extras and got a great deal at that. I took the money from all this stuff and got the new SLR I'd been wanting.

My music studio now boils down to this:

• My Mac laptop
• M-Audio Prokeys Sx keyboard.
• Mbox Mini.
  
• A bunch of virtual synths, notably ImpOscar.
• My Garbage Guitar (read about it).
• $200 Fernandez strat.
• Edirol powered speakers.
  

And I'm thinking of making it even simpler. Meanwhile I have room to breath, I can just sit down and play without getting strangled in wires or demanding lcd screens.

And, importantly, I have a little more peace, which is just what I need right now.



--

Roland VS 880 Digital Multitrack

By the late 80s and through the 90s I was using my Macintosh IIci for midi composition using outboard synths and modules. But integrating live audio recording into the process was still beyond my financial means. The best I could do was sync my four track tape recorder to the midi sequencing software and record audio on tape. Full-on audio recording wasn't available until the Roland VS 880 digital multitrack arrived.

Like the Tascam TEAC 144, the original cassette Portastudio that revolutionized home recording, the VS880 was a giant technological leap for musicians. I'd purchased the 144 when it came out with faith that it could help me manifest the songs I'd only imagined in my head, and I was right. I'd experienced the revolution first-hand. The VS880 was no different. Finally 8 tracks of digital hard disk recording with automation, digital effects, editing and totally pristine audio quality were available at a reasonable price. And the VS880 shared that Portastudio feeling with its integrated mixer and all-in-oneness.

Its strengths were the sound quality and the effects board. The board was extra, but oh, so worth it! Everything from compression to chains of guitar effects where available, editable and programable. Oceans of reverb and even mic modeling. I would still recommend the VS with the effect board to anyone to use as an effects unit alone.

Weaknesses: Lack of storage space. It had a small drive and the outboard drives were proprietary and expensive. Editing was complex, as was the user interface. The faders were not only faders, but midi faders and input devices for effects and other parameters. The routing was all illustrated in the teensy display window.

None-the-less it was inspiring to use, and exciting to have swaths upon layers of super high quality vocals and guitars. After some time though, the very non-visual editing became too much of a distraction from my musical flow. I sold the thing and got a used power mac on ebay for 60 bucks, a Newer Tech G3 upgrade card and a copy of Cubase VST.

I still wish I had my VS880, however, if only to use as a mixer, effects box and musical scratch pad. Perfect for a vacation from the computer screen and a relief from mouse driven carpal tunnel syndrome.

Roland MBK-300 Midi Controller

The MKB-300 weighs a ton, on the other hand, how many 23 year old midi controllers do you have that still work perfectly?

This is the way they used to make them, solid metal all around and real wood too. Built like a tank, my MKB-300 controller has lasted over two decades and still performs flawlessly. When I got this around 1987 or so, a midi controller was still an exotic thing. I can't remember how many times I had to explain midi to my friends, musicians and non-musicians alike: "Well, it doesn't actually make any sounds on it's own, it triggers sounds in other equipment. . ."

Now days midi controllers are a dime a dozen. And they're flimsy, for the most part. But besides the build, this board was well thought out. 76 keys, semi-weighted action, and 128 memories all easily accessible, through its 8 bank buttons and 16 program change buttons. It allows two midi channels for each memory location. The two channels are set up as either programmable splits, in dual mode (2 midi channels stacked) or use the whole keyboard for a single midi channel, switchable with the second.

In addition, each of the two channels in each of the 128 memory locations had a programmable bank and program number associated with it. So when you hit a memory location, you got the channels you wanted, the split/dual or whole mode you wanted, and the program change you wanted. You were ready. If playing in a band, you could easily plan out a few sets worth of patches on a couple of outboard synths, or a multitimbral module. You could improvise as well, sending program changes at will, then conveniently snap back to your saved setups.

And no menus to navigate, a major annoyance, so for me, this early midi board hit a sweet spot in the development of midi gear. It did a lot, yet everything was on the front panel, perfect for performance. Just push a few buttons. May just one.

Ok, it had no aftertouch, but I usually turned reception of that data off in my sequencer anyway so as not to clog my midi pipeline. But it did have a bunch of midi outs, something you never see these days, and let's not forget the individual damper and soft pedals inputs for each channel, adjustable dynamics via a pot on the back and the handy-dandy transpose slider for easy key changes.

Back in the day (1984), his baby retailed way up there, somewhere between 1 and 2 grand. I have a feeling it didn't sell that well. It was overbuilt, and demand wasn't that great for midi controllers. I got it at a blowout sale for about $600 in 1988. I used it for about 10 years straight, and had it on the side, occasionally tinkling its ivories since, but less and less with the purchase of new toys that have replaced it. I hate to see it go, but I just need the space, and since it won't die, I finally decided to put it up for sale.