knocks & floats (a bit techy)

so the music therapy lot turned me down - knocked me a bit it did - a few weeks back now...

& one of my classes that i teach in homerton has been low on numbers for awhile and yesterday they told me they're taking that class away from me...

so i'm losing hours...

it hurts... it will hurt financially and it hurts emotionally... but life goes on - more work will have to be found...

i've got a few things keeping me emotionally afloat at the moment... one of which is my synth world which is slightly larger than it was & more interconnected now...

i've been messing around with a modular synth called jasuto - on my phone - i have the somewhat undernourished android version... it turns out there's more money writing for apple so the android version is the poorer relation in the family but even with seemingly no attention from it's creator for a few years it's still a fine beast...

over the weekend i made a sound on it which i called "peeved child"... my ladyfriend (i forget what her nomdeplume is...?) within days of meeting the peeved child expressed a wish not to hear the peeved child again...

i love it still...

yesterday - day of receiving bad news - i found myself on the overground from canonbury to new cross gate - nipping home after work before going out again to a spanner rehearsal...

i saw, behind my bicycles rear wheel, a mains plug... which i've been meaning to check out for a while now - a sign by the plug said not for public use...

so i got my Dsi Tetra out of my bag and plugged it in - all the lights came on - i found my headphones and set about converting the peeved child into a "confused hippy"...

most of the bits that make up peeved child in jasuto on my phone are similar to bits that exist in my Tetra - 4 LFO's, a low pass filter,

the sound generation in jasuto is a sampler that i drew the waveform into & that's beyond my Tetra, but Tetra's saw/triangle wave works pretty well instead... by the time i had arrived @ new cross gate i'd completed confused hippy which i later unveiled in the spanner rehearsal and it's earned itself a place in the spanner set on saturday night...

really nice that the phone synth is influencing the gigging synth... long may it continue...

the spanners are @ the round midnight in angel on saturday night if you're a londoner & you want a fine night of free music - confused hippy included x

experiments with the future (techy)

so i've got an audition/interview for the music therapy masters a week today -

it's making me think about possible future gig setups...

because for the application i had to make some video's of myself playing - and in one video i was manipulating reverb - this was part of the performance...

it's something i've been thinking about for awhile - taking the lovely things i have @ home & putting them on stage - but this particular thing takes place inside my massive G5 mac that is way too big to be lugging around for gigs...

so a macbookpro is my preferred object of fantasy future with this... but there are no macbookpro's on my horizon & this audition is a week away...

i am making my life difficult with this as the reverb that i want is 30odd seconds long - & the longer your reverb the more processing it takes to handle (in the reverb world i'm in right now - convolution reverbs)

so this week i've been looking at whether i can use this little white PC laptop for the same thing...

to be clear - the thing i want is to be able to run audio through a particular impulse response and i want to be able to control the amount that gets sent to the reverb from my lovely purple beast...

no small ask...

i've found a free convolution reverb VST... freeverb3 -

i've tried it within cubase 5 which i've got already - rigged up the purple beast with it and that's working - but the sound that's coming out has got a few glitches...

i've tried it within ableton 7 which i've got already - didn't get as far as rigging up the purple beast because the audio is way glitchy... almost a thing of beauty in a modern music sense but not what i want...

i've tried it in something called minihost - and it's worse than cubase but not as bad as ableton... didn't rig up the purple...

it's possible there may be another stand alone VST host that can do it...

i'm considering trying a whole new operating system - ubuntu studio - but that hasn't happened yet... once it's in the software will be ardour - who knows...?

and then maybe the VST isn't the way - maybe there's a different way of doing convolution reverbs in PC's without VST?

so that's where it's @... nutty chasing of something that perhaps i don't really need... that's sometimes how it goes x

tax returning

numbers, numbers, numbers...

oh so many numbers...

a certain amount of procrastination yes...

i can't deny it... but then the tax office are having a strike tomorrow & in theory that gives us another 2 days grace...

but who wants that ? get the thing done that's what i say - even as i ponder how to connect polar in digital performer to logic via soundflower... oh... hang on - wasn't i doing my tax return?

another january almost over - another tax return being toiled over - another mound of marking being ignored for the moment...

oh the eternal wheel x

round trip on foot

Fulfilling day in amongst financial worries & emotional ups & downs...

Me & Emma are back together - after a break of a few months - a touch shaky as all such things are - less than a week in & it doesn't yet feel normal... i trust it will...

gigging tonight with the spanners in angel - the round midnight - 2 sets as ever - one 8:30ish - the other 10:30ish...

about to pack down my lovely red keyboard for the trip over to the soundcheck...

half of my brain is also on editing a video that is part of my application to Nordoff Robbins Master in Music Therapy that i'm getting ready... videos that i filmed earlier this afternoon before going out to do my dusk project...

i did it yesterday as planned but i was a few minutes late due to hungover slow walking - so now i have the choice of either today's footage or yesterdays when i get to the other end...

very old friend JF rang me to say he was going to an exhibition in Peckham - being what where i live these days...

i left here on foot (bicycle out of action for too long now - slaps own wrist) dropped a shirt off to be pressed @ the dry cleaners - went down bellenden road to see JF & his new flatmate - whose exhibition it was/is... hmmm - can i link it? Yes i can...

good stuff, documenting a housing estate in kidbrooke that's being demolished - photos of residents with a film & book...

then me & JF walked over to the NC for the dusk project - the 1st time i've had anyone with me - really nice to be with JF who's round the corner (ish) these days so will hopefully see more of him (he came to last week's gig in brixton that i didn't tell you about)...

and also really nice to be able to show him Nunhead Cemetery - it's right up his kettle of fish...

directed him roughly westward & he cycled off as i walked home - stopping by the dry cleaers to pick up the shirt...

one more tea & then i'm outward bound x