acidbasement

Nicholas Brendon (Xander from Buffy) died today too. Dammit.

Happy birthday, youngster.

Thanks friends, and happy birthday Carl and Peter! I capped off an incredibly busy week with a metal concert in a tiny bar in Winnipeg. Reflected on the passage of time and teared up a bit when my kid made friends in the moshpit and headbanged in sync with arms around his buddies' shoulders.

Happy birthday Ken!

Happy birthday Todd!

I had some fun composing this yesterday. Not sure if I'm going to publish it as is, or put in a few more hours work to fix some things that are still bugging me about it.

A practice session for a gig I've got coming up in 5 days. I drove it a bit too hard and it gets muddy at times, but you get the point.

No idea how to do art properly but I'm having fun with my Breville Barista Express.

That thing looks and sounds so cool. Great jam

Cool, I'll check out your Jamuary stuff this afternoon @cutestory! I've been doing lots of jamming but haven't posted anything yet. How do you like the Soma Terra? I love the idea of it.

Oh no, that is really shitty! Sorry you're dealing with that Dusty

Anyone enjoying new gear? I've been starting to jam techno type stuff with the Elektron boxes sequencing, and it's pretty great. And with the Digitone Keys controlling the Moog Matriarch, I've got 7 octaves of keyboard. Currently have it going through my Zoom multi-pedal for shimmer reverb, and it's sounding so good. I recently got the Drumbrute Impact, which I'm sequencing with the Digitakt. Pretty fun. I really need to practice more with this setup. I want to get some more effects, but I'm also trying not to shop much anymore, because that becomes its own hobby and distracts from creation.

This whole situation is so incredibly sad and terrible. I don't feel qualified to offer commentary, besides hating the death and suffering on all sides. I do think that bombing the shit out of Gaza, besides being a humanitarian disaster, will prove to be a very effective recruitment drive for Hamas. What should Israel do instead? I have no fucking clue. But I don't think this is it. For my own mental health, I've tried to limit my intake of the chaos of social media, and daily news. Not to say I'm ignoring the situation, just that I can't deal with it all at once. I've been listening to this podcast, Our Man in the Middle East, which takes a long-term regional view from a BBC Middle East correspondent at the end of his career. It was published in 2017 I think, and IMO it does a good job of showing how difficult peace in the Middle East is. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rmkcd/episodes/player?page=3

Hope you had a great one Al!

I haven't released anything in way too long but thank you! I'm working on something that I like right now, and I hope I can crank it out soon, but time is difficult to find. The Deluge sequencer is a piano roll, which works really well for my brain. I definitely don't use every capability it has though - I don't think many people do. I want to learn the Elektron way because I know it's better for spontaneous performance, so I'm not going to sell the Digitakt anytime soon unless it's to trade up to an Octatrack.

I'm having a hard time with figuring out where the Digitakt fits in my setup, honestly. I got it on a trade for an MPC. I love how it sounds, but the Elektron sequencer isn't coming easy to me, especially since the Deluge is perfect for composing the music that I do. It's tough to convince myself to put in the hours of practice that I need to. I also seem to have a lot more fun with synthesis than sampling. The Deluge doesn't sound as good as the Elektron gear though, so I'm generally programming all my beats and melodies into Deluge, and having it control all the other gear, which I then either tweak as the sequences play, or play live on the keyboards. I love the Digitone Keys - the 4-part multitimbrality, individual outputs, audio input, and chorus/delay/reverb - it's great. The keyboard feels nice too, and has aftertouch. I'm getting the OLED upgrade for the Deluge next month, which should be neat.

My first batch of cinnamon buns was a failure to adapt a bad recipe. This is my second, and it's delicious.

Oh, and I've been slowly making stuff like this:

This is what my living room looks like when Eleanor leaves home for 9 weeks to work. I got the K&M Omega 3-tier keyboard stand and it has improved my quality of life a lot. It's rock solid, very adjustable, and it stops me from buying more synths because I can't fit anything else on it. 😂 There's not much that a person can't do with this combination of synths and samplers. The Matriarch is a beast and I love it. I was able to get it last year after my cover band had a string of lucrative gigs.

I built a wheelie desk for my synths etc. Should I paint it synthwave pink/blue/yellow or leave it raw? It's not supposed to look nice.

Is anyone going to check out this tour? I have a mighty need but I'm not sure if a trip south is in the cards for me.

Neat! I've heard of them of course, but they've never been on my radar. I didn't catch them on 70K.