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

rising sketch - Dsi Tetra tune

 Rising Sketch Tetr4 by longcat

being a tune i threw together today... pleasant enough... i was listening to david arnold last night on jarvis cocker's show, talking about john barry... not that this thing is anywhere near that kind of stuff but it has a rousing element to it that i like x

highs & lows

proust's on hold, because richard ford is going to be on the world service's world book club and i'm going to be there to ask him a question...

so i'm rereading the sportswriter, the book of his that's going to be discussed...



judging from the cinema ticket stub that is the bookmark, i last read this book in 2002, the film (from the ticket stub) was Ivans XTC, which i might put on my lovefilm list to see again...

the sportswriter is wonderful and it has made me laugh out loud (not lol) several times already, made me smile many times and brought me quite close to tears...

richard ford isn't wholly responsible for the almost tears, i've been quite low recently... lonely...

bubbles, the downstairs cat, meows mournfully all day when they're not in down there, i feel for her, and try and show her a little attention whilst at the same time assuring balthazara that i'm not cheating on her... i'm a one cat man... even if that one cat wakes me up in the morning by touching my face with her paw...

i'm very glad to have her, i think it's true to say she's very glad to have me...

other highs have been:

true blood season 2, which i've had for a little while, but was holding off because it's on the telly (FX), but since last friday's episode i've been hungrily devouring the whole season, and it is better without adverts, the only thing is sometimes my copy of the episode doesn't have the closing tune, which changes each episode and is generally both fantastic in and of itself, and funny, in relation to the story just told...

one episode left and i'm trying to hold it off, but i won't be able to hold off for much longer...

my piano, tuned a week or so ago and in a wonderful place, no downstairs neighbour conflict, possibly side to side neighbour issues to come but i'm not being rude about it, if someone can hear me that way...

i'm writing a synth thing that currently has piano playing on it, i've ordered a couple of niceish mic's that i intend to have setup on the piano fairly constantly, my nice condenser mic would have been recording that piano by now, but it's still in the hands of T who i used to make music with... he's dragging his heals to an extent... glad to have ordered the other ones, they'll be here in a couple of weeks or so, coming from america, i wonder if i'll have my stuff back off T by then?

all this piano playing has given me a renewed interest in my GEM piano module, that may surface at a gig some time soon...

my tetra, my space echo, both of which met my gigging keyboard last night at the spanner jazz punks rehearsal in the venue for next saturday's gig... my keyboard which is so slim the mopho fell off it many times, and last night the bari player knocked the tetra to the ground and i lost the plot a tiny bit, it's partly my fault, i haven't yet invested in the bluetack necessary for the purpose...

on the way back from the rehearsal, keyboard on my back, a drunk polish man (i think he was polish, and he was definitely drunk) told me he needed someone to make music for him, him being a rapper, he wrote his number on the brickwork by where we were standing with a bit of chalk from the ground and proceeded to sing a really long and loud tone into the wall to prove to me that he could sing... i left him there...

x

before time 1980 techyness dream eating

on friday morning i just missed a call from a student... i knew roughly what he was going to say...

sorry i'm late, or, sorry i'm not coming...

anyway, the answerphone message he left remained unlistened to until this morning...

also on friday i finally got my windows 7 computer to sync up to my HTC Hero phone...

which means that:

a - i could install the new ROM that came out for the hero (on orange) a few weeks back

& b - i could back up all my text messages that would have been deleted by this process..

they all got backed up onto my gmail... which is really odd, seeing text messages in gmail...

so anyway, it all happened, it all works, which is pleasing...

i woke up this morning and looked at my phone, and it told me i had an answerphone message from june 22nd 1980, this being the answerphone message from friday morning,

from before my phone got it's ROM changed and therefore before my phone's current conciousness came into being,

like imagining events from before i was born...

anyway, i like the fact that it chose june 22nd 1980... pleasing x

but while i'm talking about things working, i have a few positive and one negative "things working" stories to tell,

1stly the negative, the mopho is not responding to treatment, or at least, not the last bout of trying to fix it that i gave it, with the arrival of the soundcard with it's MIDI in&out i can now talk to the mopho, and i've tried a few different ways of getting it back on it's feet but it's resisting...

but in a positive way, i was able to take the sound i use in an SJP song, put it into the computer, then load up the Tetra sound editor and manually program that in so i have the exact sound now... and all the original mopho sounds i programmed are all similarly in my computer now, in code, so i can get them into the tetra slowly... and maybe someone @ DSI will tell me how to load them onto the tetra in a much easier way...

but sad for the mopho, i can't help be struck by the fact that it broke (or i found out that it was broke) on the day i ordered the tetra... to anthropomorphise my mopho a little, either it knew it's old age was coming and it just managed to hold on until i had a replacement, or it saw that i was getting the tetra and it broke itself in a fit of anger..

so, fantastic that i have the tera now, but what would i have done if i hadn't been buying the tetra when it happened?

my other (partial) success concerns the tetra and the spin doctor... the spin doctor being a purple object with 16 knobs on it that you can plug into any MIDI device and set those knobs to controlling the device, i got it from D (moog drummer D) on thursday...



i'm currently plugging it into the tetra, which is a beautiful synth, but it doesn't have that many knobs on it, you can assign 4 of the knobs to whatever you want, which is great, but i want to be able to control more than just those...

so far i've been able to set up 11 knobs on the spin doctor to control the tetra and it's lovely...

there are many, many more settings i might want to change yet, and also i need to do a bit of learning as to how to speak in NRPN MIDI messages, but it's a really nice and intuitive way of interacting with a synth and i'm really digging it...

ok one more thing, i dreamt of bass player A last night - well - this morning, and it was the end of a long day, moving things, and suddenly he came out with this amazing veggie indian food... and offered half to me - by saying "well, you're not going to get a quote on it", which seemed to me to be inviting me to eat...

and i ate, in my dream...

x

under the sea

in a couple of hours i'm going out to meet with felinity, we're seeing micmacs....

i'm feeling a bit under things today, a sore throat and a cough/sneeze thing...

i'm about to smoke a tiny bit, which won't be very pleasant but it will produce quite a nice feeling, upon which i'll sit down at my rhodes, with the MIDI keyboard on top, the rhodes going through the BlackStar valve thing, the MIDI keyboard controlling the hammond and the tetra, and everything going into the space echo...

and i'll play for an hour or so...

still not recording because i'm still waiting for delivery of a USB sound thing, it turns out the Edirol one i ordered (and paid for) was in between names, being rebranded, and i wasn't going to get it until the end of next week...

so i cancelled it and tried to get it from someone else, phoned a few people, one man told me he wouldn't be able to get an edirol for a little while and anyway, the last one he'd sold (a year ago) had blown up...

so he persuaded me that in fact i wanted an M-audio thing, newer, for £100 less...

i was persuaded, and tomorrow morning, possibly before i leave for work, i shall receive it in the post and then it will all start to slip into place...

i will also be able to start mending the mopho, or at the very least recreating the mopho sound i was using in the SJP's in the Tetra...

x

just listening to this, being another time i was playing my rhodes through a space echo, but that time, my rhodes was in full working order and it was a real 70's space echo...

this time, my rhodes is still broke, the amp part is in need of some specific love, but the upper, harp part is currently wired into my Blackstar valve overdrive pedal, which is wired into the brand new (to me) Boss Space Echo, a seemingly faithful digital reproduction of the original...

similar therefore to my hammond organ module - the Creamware B4000, a lovingly researched and recreated digital version of an analogue classic...

week 24 of the weekly improvisation (because that's what it is i'm listening to) was recorded on the 5th of December 2006,

ok, it's just finished, and now i'm listening to week 34, from the 10th of february 2007, the day that landlord E popped over to pick up his space echo after a few months of it living with me...

i'm sharing these links with you because my old computer is dead and until my brand new Edirol USP sound thing arrives i can not record anything just yet... but when i can ladies & gentlemen you will be drowning in the deluge of music i'll be making...

earlier on i felt so completely at home playing the rhodes through the space echo (with that lovely bit of valve overdrive), i tweeted with joy, and tomorrow i'll be taking both the space echo and the brand new tetra to the SJP rehearsal, we'll see what the hammond sounds like through it...

we're practising up for a big showcase type thing that will feature dancers (including dinah):



be there or be square folks x

space echo

my heart is full of music making love...

i currently have AT tuning my piano, and i also have, by my side, the Boss RE-20 Space Echo pedal which i picked up from the post office this morning...

so i've got my lovely DSI Tetra, going into the Space Echo, and it's just heaven on a stick...

my cup runneth over...

i am, if you haven't guessed already, going through an acquisitive month or two, what with the laptop, DSI Tetra, Space Echo... and indeed an Edirol USP Sound unit currently waiting to be sent off from liverpool...

it's all come from the marking that kept me underground for ages recently and also the fact that the very reputable company that i bought the tetra from mistakenly charged me too little for the beast...

so for once i find i have money, but of course it won't last long...

anyway... the space echo, i hit the Push It button on the tetra and turn the Cutoff control, giving a short burst of synthy loveliness... it goes into the space echo and repeats, i turn all sorts of dials on the space echo and the synthy loveliness turns mad and nutty and even more lovely to my electro loving ears...

all to the background sound of my KNIGHT upright piano being tuned by that lovely man...

x

Tetra

it arrived on wednesday, while A was here trying to fix my rhodes (to no avail, although he brought us closer to knowing what is wrong)...

i took it into work on thursday and played with it after teaching, with old friend D on the drums... lovely to play with him again, and lovely, if new & a bit odd to be playing with the Tetra...

it's basically 4 mopho's in 1, and in protest at being outmoded my mopho has been behaving strangely ever since i ordered the new beast...



i booted up the old computer, to speak to the mopho, and i think i can fix it... but it will take a bit of time, and of course my old computer died the very next day so i have to wait until i get some MIDI going in & out of my laptop before i can do the fix on the mopho...

once upon a time i would write bits of tunes or sounds on the mopho and dream of having just a little more control and sound possibilities and using the mopho live to give me a rhythmic pattern to play over... in particular i was frustrate by the notion of being able to set up a lovely groove on the mopho, but being unable to change to the next groove (verse => chorus) during the song...

the tetra is currently balancing in my mind between being clearly much more able to deal with that dream of performing with it, but perhaps not solving that specific problem... not that i know this, and i'm going to try and get it to work how i want it, i just have to think quite a lot about the situation and what i now have at my disposal...

loving the possibilities x

baby bird

7 days have passed since it ended with me & emivore and i'm trying to slightly ritualise this moment, kiss the memories as they pass so as not to be haunted by them...

i saw baby bird yesterday, i didn't have to work over in homerton so after CM in the morning i went over to SP of stepney and Kwo's to meet with the 2-week old...

grace, josiah & M came up as well so it was quite a big visit, grace was irrepressible and i found myself bearing the brunt of her while the grown up's talked...

the baby is wonderful and sp told me a story that i love - that perhaps one day i'll retell here, but not yet...

me & dinah are in communication again, i don't have a huge amount of space for her in my head just now but at least we're talking...

and the sons of anarchy are in my life... i got hold of the 1st season, thinking that the series currently on 5 USA was the 2nd... i was going to catch up with them and then watch them weekly...

they arrived on thursday and i've watched everything but the last episode now,

just checked though, and 1stly the 5 USA thing is this 1st series, so i've already over taken them, and it's shown on wednesday's @ 10, which is when madmen is shown over on BBC4, so that's not going to happen, it looks like i'm going to get hold of as much SOA as i can and consume it madly...

it has helped me this week, what with my small but definite heart break...

also i'm buying the thing i wanted... retail therapy which for once i can afford... but won't be able to afford anything else for a little while...

x