Live electronica: inSpiral

Oh I know, it’s been ages right?

Here’s a little jam to see us through these times of austerity (in posts that is). It’s the first jam featuring the mighty Sequentix Cirklon on sequencing duties. I was a big fan of the P3, Cirklon’s predecessor and the transition between them has been easy. I’ll save the details for another post suffice to say that the Cirklon exceeded my expectations. Happy chap me!

Featuring:

Sequentix Cirklon
Elektron Octatrack
Dave Smith Tempest
Moog Little Phatty
Dave Smith Evolver
Kurzweil PC3
Eurorack Modular
Akai S5000 with Boxed Ear Mighty M5 samples
Eventide Space
Eventide TimeFactor

Live electronica: White Globe

Another in my series of live studio jams. The idea being to capture the raw groove of a song in realtime. All these songs will be further edited, overdubbed and generally mangled to form either an EP or an album, but I thought it would be interesting to post the initial song sketch as it happened.

This is also the first video to feature the Dave Smith Tempest drum machine, not in a huge capacity, but the real analogue drums really add something.

Dave Smith Tempest: Drums (through 1176 compressor)
Korg ER-1: Drums
Moog Little Phatty: Epic bass!
DSI Evolver: Melody 1
Suzuki SX-500: Melody 2
Eurorack Modular: Bleepy melody
Eventide Space: Reverb
Eventide TimeFactor: Delay
Kurzweil Mangler: Distortion

All recorded via the Soundtracs Topaz to Presonus Studio One. Some minor tweaks and a couple of edits after recording.

Live electronica: rozz3r – Waiting for a Storm

Another live jam from the lab.

Korg ER-1: Drums (through 1176 compressor)
Moog Little Phatty: Bass
Suzuki SX-500: Melody 1
Yamaha TG-33: Melody 2
DSI Evolver: Melody 3
Eurorack Modular: Crazy blip sequences
Eventide Space: Reverb
Eventide TimeFactor: Delay
Kurzweil Mangler: Big dubby falling delay

All recorded via the Soundtracs Topaz to Presonus Studio One. Some minor tweaks and a couple of edits after recording.

I still haven’t found a better camera angle.

Live electronica: rozz3r – Bonfire Calm

Getting away from the Mac/PC to make music is a joy. In the last year or so I’ve been making gear purchases with the goal of writing electronic music ‘live’, with the computer doing nothing except acting as a glorified tape recorder. The whole rig is based around a Sequentix P3 sequencer which provides a gloriously stable midi clock as well as midi sequences. The nice thing about the P3 is it can do generative sequencing in quite a controlled manner, which suits my repetitive yet evolving music style.

My various synths and effect boxes are hooked up to a Soundtracs Topaz 24 track mixer, which allows me to do dub-style ‘playing the mixer’, riding faders and jamming with effects sends, feedback loops etc. The cast list is pretty much this:

- Sequentix P3
- Suzuki SX-500 (poly analog)
- Kurzweil PC3
- Moog Little Phatty
- Dave Smith Evolver
- Eurorack Modular
- Korg ER-1
- Kurzweil Mangler
- Eventide TimeFactor
- Eventide Space
- hand built dual 1176 compressor clone
- Golden Age Pre-73 Mic pre-amp

The video is really my first attempt at using all this together and performing a song live. It uses pretty much everything on the list above except the Kurzweil PC3 and the Evolver. The modular is doing the melody, the ER1 is on drums (going through the Pre-73 and the 1176 to give it some balls), the SX500 is doing chords and the Moog I play live. The Eventide Space is doing all the reverb work. I used Presonus’s Studio One 2 to record everything to separate audio tracks and then did some basic mix tweaking. No additional effects were used. I’m new to Studio One and I’m impressed so far, I haven’t had to look at the manual once, which means they got it right. It also feels solid and hasn’t crashed once.

This experiment was proof of concept really, I have a Dave Smith Tempest on the way which will make drum performances a lot more fun and dynamic. I also need to use Parts on the Sequentix more in order to make more structured changes in the song progression. A better camera angle might not go amiss either.

Expect more live jams soon :)

Album review – Enter Calico (Clear Notice Recordings)

I don’t usually do album reviews here, but I’m going to make an exception. Enter Calico, by new net label Clear Notice Recordings is a great compilation of unsigned electronica artists. That maybe nothing new in itself, but the label’s inception has been interesting and I’ve watched it unfold online for the last few months.

Clear Notice came about almost entirely through Twitter. Kieron James, the man behind Clear Notice, organized the whole release online. Not only are the artists discovered through Twitter, but the album mastering and artwork were done by Twitter contacts and, just for added value, Keiron organized a video for each song on the album (through Twitter again!). Check this stunning example for Tricil’s track “The Emancipation” by Burning Head.

The music itself is all important of course and it is a great album. There are some exceptional tunes here. David McSherry’s “U?+”, alka’s “sOMn ambulance”, tricil’s “The Emancipation”, rktic’s “nordic walking” and Tapage’s “Wounds” were all highlights for me and could easily be mistaken for songs by artists such as Chemical Brothers, Plaid, Orbital or Aphex Twin.

So if you want to support music and artists at grass roots, grab a copy of Enter Calico. It’s £7.99 from Bandcamp and should be available on iTunes within a few days. I recommend.

Sony Vegas and VMware Fusion

As my hunt for a good screencasting solution continues, I’ve become painfully aware that to edit video on a Mac you basically HAVE to buy Final Cut, in some form or other. Now I’ve always been Sony Vegas man. Vegas is perfect for editing together multiple sources that are different resolutions, a video screen capture from here, a jpg from there, a video imported from your mobile phone. Read more…