Over on Chris Randall's Analog Industries blog, he wrote up a frank and useful post on how to post your gear p*rn to YouTube. I won't take credit for inspiring the post but I did tweet a link to my video a week and CR hit me back with #2 (and ruminated out-loud about writing this). I mean, Chris has watched a shit-ton of these things so no doubt this post was in the making well before I sheepishly pushed my link live. But, man, was I guilty of trying to head off criticism by anticipating every possible negative thing someone might think while watching.
Since my video isn't so much a gear demo as me composing a song on a hardware array I've been experimenting with (big nod to the micronaut live-in-studio videos), I was trying for a bit of finesse, not just showing cool presets I built or selling something. So especially my reflexive self-deprecation was doing me no favors. It isn't that I honestly believe that my gear & performance are all that crap. First, the gear may not be rare or enviable but the setup/chain is of possible interest (plus whatever, how's it sound?). Second, the performance isn't simply the first thing I captured. Beyond deleting a lot of takes because some key element was just too far off for me to live with, I could've captured many variations on the same performance. And there would always be something that I could do 'better' no matter how practiced I was. (When the cat made his cameo I decided that was a good place to wrap.)
We musicians and 'producers', we're rarely 100% pleased with our performance or technical accomplishment. There's always that one part we nailed during rehearsal but didn't really work on stage, or I should have mixed the kick down a little and put less compression on the bass, and damn, we nailed it that time except for the ending which was really sloppy; or, my favorite, what was that setting/signal path again? But, indeed, it doesn't make any sense to point this out and moreover is actively self-defeating.
Perfectionism is dull to most everyone but the perfectionist. But even more dull is someone who needs to qualify everything with a defensive posture of 'I know it sucks.' Because we all know, dude, that you don't really think that, you just don't know how to handle criticism.
As played by one of its developers. Nothing more to add other than it looks so sexy.
via Synthtopia
MPC + DSI Evolver + MeeBlip + SQ Multi-trak + EH MemoryMan + Monotron
Liner Notes: This is it, my very first YouTube upload as well as the first video of me playing my live beat-making setup. (By 'live' I mean, it's not connected to a computer and could theoretically set it up up anywhere I could plug in. The chances of me playing out in the near future remain small.)
You might think I would use the occasion, such as it is, to put together and post something more polished. The mix is straight off the board into so a Yamaha Pocket-track —who knew that recording into a handheld digital recorder would sound so small? I'll figure out how to use my real converters for the next one. (Plus the audio/video sync being a few ms off; I'll get that sorted.) But you know what, I don't need to sweat it. I'll make another soon. This has my cat making an appearance towards the end other than just sleeping, so I'm keeping it.
Gear nerd info.
The tricked-out MPC1k is driving this. The beat mashed out from some one-shot samples cut from a loop library I bought somewhere along the line. The sustained organ bass notes are also samples, sequenced on another track. I'm not in song mode; I'm shuffling between a few sequences. The insta-IDM synth sequence is of course the DSI Evolver, clocked to the MPC. The bell/lead sound I play on the outro is not samples but a MeeBlip, with a generous helping sent to the EH Memory Man, played from a chromatic MIDI-out setup on the MPC. The SeqCir MultiTrak is a MIDI sequence also on the MPC. The Multitrack really should have gone through a preamp, even if just a crappy ART Tube or the preamps on the mixing board. Which by the way doesn't have proper send/aux, or mute solo, which is a hassle; it does have tons of inputs so there's that. Using the 'Record' outs I've kludged a aux send for delay; it'll do for now.
Oh yeah. I threw in some Monotron.
How do you know the best settings for a compressor or limiter ?
That’s a question I get asked all the time, especially in attended mastering sessions. And when I’m answering it, I almost always end up punching my fist into my hand.
Read the Post at http://productionadvice.co.uk/compression-punchbag/
Holy crap, analog distortion, analog compression, analog (MIDI) delay, and analog stutter!
And here I thought this had become vaporware.
More info at Create Digital Music
To paraphrase something I heard somewhere a long time ago, 'Car crashes sound great but you can't tap your toe to 'em.'
That's even more uninteresting than I first imaged. I don't doubt that it may have one or two tricks up its sleeve that on paper will give reviewers and gear rats something to chew on, but as others have said this is well-trod territory. But let's be honest, this shit isn't aimed at anyone here. It's produced to take up space at Mega-Lo Guitar Mart and MegaLoGuitarMart-dot-com as product bait for birthdays, cover bands and down-market teens. Right? I guess if one needed a new MIDI controller anyway, why not one that makes some fun sounds? But that's gotta be a small part of a crowded market.
I would think Avid would want to keep the M-Audio moniker alive to shield their 'Pro' market from this sort of mass-market crap that is M-Audio's bread and butter and has become more pronounced as of recently. Haven't they always been a slightly less egregious, less crappy Behringer?
Anyway, I don't want to be too much of hypocrite because there are a few M-Audio MIDI products I still use and have no complaints about really. And, I swear, I just don't care that much other than easy schadenfreude and this kind of thing is endemic to what ails the world.
I don't remember where I first heard about Gold Panda, but this is absolutely one of my favorite albums of 2010. I'm not entirely up on all genres, fads and labels of what the kids are listening to these days but I try to be aware of electronic music I might like, and this just floored me in a way a lot of 'popular'/trendy music is forgotten as soon as it's over. This is abstract while never being less than musical, and it's full of sounds that are at once organic and otherworldly. Stunning and tuneful.