catching up

music

its been a while since i posted here and much has been happening on the music and music production front.

i read a great review of bloc party's album in remix... lemme find it... here 'tis... a five star review in remix, the only one i've ever seen. here's the text in its entirety:

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

"Yes! Yes! Yes!"
How exhilarating is that, now, you get to enjoy not only post-punk legends in the flesh (thank you, Gang of Four) but also the fruits of their influence? Although the buzz surrounding Bloc Party is near-deafening, Silent Alarm validates all you've heard with enough layered, effected guitars to make you shed blissful tears and a torrent of spastic rhythms, unrelenting hi-hats and well-placed synths to have you dance yourself into hysteria. "Like Eating Glass" and "Banquet" explode with urgency while "Blue Light" and "So Here We Are" retreat with tragic beauty, leaving you positively ravished" - Erin Hutton

heh, ease up there, erin. its my pick for album of the year, but yeesh. calm the fuck down. anyway, go buy it.


new music i want to get:
death in vegas (satan's circus)
flaming lips (late night tales)
sound tribe sector nine (artifact)
gorillaz (demon days)
various artists (dub massive chapters one and two - produced by bill laswell)
beck (guero)
chemical brothers (new one)
the glimmers (dj-kicks)
daft punk (human after all)
van morrison (magic time, stfu plz)
white stripes (blue orchid)
coldplay (speed of sound)
mike doughty (haughty melodic)
esthero (wikked lil' grrls)
dj mark farina (mushroom jazz vol 5)
hell (ny muscle)
deepak sharma (boogaloo:brooklyn 3:23 pm)
various artists (mayfield: remixed)
sage francis (a healthy distrust)
the new satoshi tomiie looks interesting too and there's probabaly a dozen i forgot like the new john digweed (plastic 20). i also want to find the latest sasha bbc essential mix (more below) and the latest essential mix with all of the african stuff overlaid with wicked house beats (ben somebody?). i'll have to look on emule for those, i imagine. cripes, that's a lot of music... (in case you didn't notice, that list was more for me than anyone reading. i need that list of albums all in one place so i don't forget any!)

one last thing. get the new fischerspooner, odyssey. i mentioned it before but this time i really mean it.


music production/home studio
i've been reading a ton of magazines like remix, musictech, sound on sound, tape-op, mix, eq, digizine, electronic musician and such. after a while they all seem to be covering the same stuff but this is usually how i do things when i dive into something new. i just read all i can and soak up every scrap of info i can find. i'll link up some massive links at some point that have sparked interest and gave me some good stuff to mull over as well.

so my brother-in-law (mentioned in my poker blog a few times) was interested in getting into some home production as well. given his music pedigree and massive experience doing studio production he'll be a good guy to go to with questions and vice versa since i've been doing this home studio thing for about a year or more by now and i'm pretty "up" on what apps and tools are out there. we were messing around with ableton live on the powerbook the other night. what a massive program that is...

i should back up a bit and describe my set up and current working methodology.

my current set up for music production, at least the one i'm currently using for most of my mucking about is the following:

apple powerbook g4 (1.65ghz, 1.5gb ram, 100gb hard drive)
ableton live 4 (my daw of choice by far right now)
digidesign mbox
protools le 6.9 (waiting for the os x tiger patch)
reason 3.0
midiman oxygen 8 keyboard
behringer bfc2000 midi controller
at2020 condenser mic
old ibanez strat copy (roadster)
piece of shit acoustic guitar

i have a few other apps that i am just learning (or trying to) like logic 7 express but i am concentrating on learning ableton live just because i love the capabilities of the app. i am probably going to be using it for parts of my dj show at various points too.

i'd say that about 80% of my time for the last couple of months had been ableton live-based loop and sample recordings. i generally rewire reason in as a synth and capture whatever comes out of reason to separate samples in live and work with it that way. i can basically pipe any synth-based stuff right into live or just play over top of the mix and record. i'll also lay down quick drum beats in reason's redrum drum machine and pipe them into ableton live too. the possibilities are wide open.

i was reading in "sound on sound" about how the dust brothers use similar methods to construct their songs and the latest beck came about largely through mucking around with samples in ableton live as well, so at least i'm in good company. when you see sasha doing entire shows (see the bbc's essential mix) using ableton live, you start to see that the possibilities for this app are really expansive. i think as long as i keep creating tunes that engage me and show me i'm moving forward i won't get frustrated. in the past, i've gotten stuck trying to get a particular sound or mix and get pissed and my interest dwindles. i have no real expectations this time and just getting into the learning and gaining experience. i may burn out on it but i don't think i'll throw up my hands in frustration this time.

its cutting into my poker time though... doh!

some other interesting stuff. my brother-in-law brought a book down to the shore house called "mixerman". its a great book written by a famous but anonymous music recordist and mixer on the west coast. its a compilation of a collection of posts he made on the great website prosoundweb.com chronicling his recording sessions with an unnamed band. the book is fucking funny and is worth a read even if you're not a music geek. it hit me at the right time since i'm so into music production right now. you can actually read all of the posts without buying the book at the link above. just look for "mixerman" in the menus. its well worth the read. its long though so be prepared to read. a lot. the book was over 200 pages.


anyway, enough babble for now.