Where the F@!* Have You Been!
Well, it has been quite a while since I posted here. The short of it is that between kidney stones and going through 4 procedures to address them, I haven’t been feeling very musical. I also had taken the studio apart for a reorganization right before it happened. Add that to some of the usual winter depression and, well, you know how that goes…
The good news is that I am back on my feet and the studio is back together. A lot has changed in the studio, my having added quite a bit of gear (too much, to be honest). This necessitated a change in both layout and workflow concepts. The gear I added is all top notch stuff, and I am excited to get working with it.
New Gear:
- ASM Hydrasynth Deluxe
- Arturia Poly Brute
- Arturia Beat Step Pro
- Arturia Drum Brute Impact
- JoMoX Airbase 999
- Erica Synths LXR-02 Drum Machine
- E-MU ESI-4000 Turbo (not yet installed)
- E-MU Morpheus (in need of repair)
- Roland Fantom XR (yes, another one)
- Akai MPC Live II Retro
- Roland Boutique JX-08
- Various eurorack modules.
If that seems like a lot of stuff, it is. Getting to know each piece has been a bit of work for some of the more complicated items (PolyBrute, Hydrasynth) while others just seem to work without fuss (Fantom, Morpheus). I’ll have a lot more to say about this stuff soon as I go through and learn all of it.
The layout of the studio had to completely change to accommodate it all, particularly the keyboards. I spent a good amount of time reorganizing my storage and getting something better and more space conscious in the studio. Gone are the Ikea tables everywhere, replaced by proper stands and racks. I organized the gear around an “Island” approach where the areas of the studio work together, but are also self contained units of functionality.
As for future plans, I have been moving into a creative workflow that is less about song writing and more about just collecting assets around a theme and then I’ll worry about giving them structures later. This is similar to how I started way back when. The idea is that I would create a bank of samples and synthesizer parts and collect them in my sampler (then an E-MU E64, now an Akai Force or MPC Live II). I’d then use what ever sequencer I was using (Then one of my Yamaha SY-85, Kurzweil K2000, or eventually Logic; Now it would be done in the Akai Force or MPC Live II directly). The workflow now will end with collecting all the audio in Bit Wig.
I don’t know if I’m working on an album just yet. I may just do a series of one off performances like I did in the past and post them to YouTube/SoundCloud/etc. I’m kind of getting tired of the album as a concept. Maybe I’m finally just catching up with the rest of our culture on that.