Going Sick For The Smut Machine

What a title eh? “Going Sick for the Smut Machine”, now this song needs some explanation :) Like the rest of my tunes its meant to be taken with a pinch of salt, and a dash of imagined better production. The title refers to a laptop purchase I helped a friend with.

My friend is one of those burley rugby types, you know, the type whos natural interest in technology goes as far as “ball goes up; ball goes down”. For years he protested that computers were the devils work. Well to be fair, he kept tinkering away and finally felt happy enough that the idea of investing in a laptop was for him. So I was there to do the choosing, I was doing Computer Science after all “sure I know everything”. I picked out a medium spec Dell Inspiron for him. If you have a problem with Dells, tough diddy! At least with Dell they’ll look after you if something goes wrong. He was going to buy one of Jimmy O’ Briens PC shop specials, and while Jimmy might be a lovely man, and probably live a long and prosperous life, I doubt his shop, and therefore, warranty would.

During all this time we affectionately referred to his prospective new laptop as “The Smut Machine” because we joked that the only reason he wanted it was for looking at pornography. Anyway, the big day came when Santa Claus in the white van delivered the smut viewer. Due to his work, my friends living address is prone to change so for convenience, we had it delivered to his family home. So excited by the news of the new arrival that he just couldn’t wait. He phoned up work and pulled a sickie, just so he could drive home straight away. That day gave rise to the term “Going Sick for the Smut Machine”, and it inspired this song.

It started off life as just a sleezy base line and quickly morphed into some kind of space jizz jam. Theres no real melody over the top, but perhaps more suitably; just a load of keyboard wank! :) I kind of went a bit crazy with the ethnic drumming too, I had just discovered that Combinator patch in Reason the day before.

Going Sick for the Smut Machine.mp3

I had great fun making the image for the song and I do wish I kept track of where I steal the images used for all my montages but I don’t, so there!

A Parting Tune

The Eve of St. Agnes by Harry Clarke

I'm going away for a few days so this might be my last post for a little while. I whipped up a little musical ditty this morning, no idea what its all about but I was thinking botanical. Harry Clarke came to mind too. Harry Clarke is my favorite Irish artist, by the way. He specialised in illustration and stained glass. I couldn't find a nice floral design that resized well, so I just picked the stained glass example located in the Crawford here in Cork. Its suitably dark anyway.

Get the tune here

Night on the Town

Just back from the Savoy niteclub. DJ StevieG was there again, and all I can say is he was shite! He couldn't mix cement! And what a dire selection of music; Guns N Roses!? What the fuck are you thinking mate!? If I wanted to hear that kind of cack I'd go upstairs to the live band... mind you that is usually just noise anyway.

The rest of the night was filled with mediocre chart crap; he actually played that Shakira "Look at my big fat fucking hips that don't lie bitch!" song twice! To be fair though, he's better than the rest of the Cork crap we have to put up with. Doesn't anywhere in cork play organic trance!? You know, I'm not expecting rave material here but something other than The Black Eyed Peas please! A bit of live trance would be nice.

I can't stick dj's who are nothing more than humanoid playlists. Damn, I want COSM over here! This is what a "live" dj is meant to be. Look at the vid. Now by default, I hate all remixes of Queen songs, I just think they sound awful, but this version of "Another One Bites the Dust" (2 minutes in) is the shiz! Check it out just after 4 minutes where it breaks out from the "fun to smoke marijuana" chorus... delicious!



In other news, the usual shenanigans went on. I was a bit more out going though as I drastically cut down my alcohol intake. Alcohol, far from the advertised social communication tool, is indeed an ego-promoting antisocial chemical. It diminishes outward awareness which in moderate quantities can reduce paranoia, but in larger measures it continues this diminishing process until you are no more than a “walking” zombie. Which is fine if that’s your game, but quoting Ulysses is harder when youre sloshed; actually I might be wrong on this one, it probably is easier when youre sloshed :) Anyway, I’ve strayed off topic, and the topic right now is sleep.

Novation Remote Zero SL by Alan Partridge

Is this a mocumentary!? It starts off like an episode of "People Like Us", with the interviewer "oohing" and "yeahing" with fain interest, and quickly moves onto Alan Partridge. The guy behind the camera has to be Steve Coogan, he has the Partridge voice off perfectly!

I was in hysterics when he starts talking about his Behringer BCF's and asks the Novation guy, "Does that bank switch?". The poor guy does his best avaid the question by going on about the new Auto-Mapping protocol. And then he asks are the faders automated, ... Seriously, this is like the script for the episode of I'm Alan Partridge where Alan is going to buy his new house.

"What, it takes batteries!?". The timing is perfect...





You'll either get it or you won't; maybe I'm just being racist :)

ebay & Novation Remote 25

It's typical really isn't it; you finally decide on what you want to buy and they stop selling them. I was pondering on what new keyboard to buy for weeks now. Initially I thought a Micro Korg would be just the job, being portable and plenty of flash. Theres a few things that put me off it though, the small keys and the overall build quality seemed a bit crap. Plus they are very common, every pretentious bollocks has one (now admittidly I'm a fairly pretentious bollocks at times too, but I like to be original about it :) So there I was looking for something else to take my fancy. I had always thought about just getting a small midi controller for my A Station (and perhaps doing a bit of woodwork to combine the two into one unit) but I liked the idea of having another synth engine too.

Along comes the Novation Xiosynth! Not as flashy as the korg but blew the korg away feature wise. And It was a usb midi controller to boot! The only problem is, its a Novation and they all tend to sound the same so I'd either have to sell my A Station or pretend I liked the idea of 6 oscillators going at once, multitembral sounds would be nice though. Well that lost out to what I eventually now want: The Novation Remote 25 midi controller keyboard! It made far more sense for me to have something like a fancy controller as I'm mainly a Reason/software person. They aren't made anymore though, instead replaced by the better, but frankly, ugly Remote SL25. Sure it's got auto mapping but with a price tag to match. No, I was happy picking up a second hand Remote 25 from ebay, which there were millions for sale!

Of course, this was before I decided to buy one. They now cannot be found anywhere. I did make a bid on one, that eventually went for GB£147. Too rich for me, "I'll wait for the next one". I'm still waiting. What annoys me is the fact that the first one I saw there only a few weeks earlier went for just GB£78. Two others then went for around GB£100. Why oh why was the one that I bid on so bloody popular!? Nevermind, I'm sure more will pop up eventually... *waits*

If you want to sell me yours, e-mail me. I'll start with an offer of GB£100.

Shaman of the Toilet Bowel

This is an old recording I made with a demo version of Reason 2.0. It must be nearly 5 years old now. The demo version didnt allow you to save or output a wav file, plus it was limited to 15 minutes use or something like that, so you had to work fast. I knocked this up to simulate the sound of someone retching in a toilet of a nightclub, utilising one of the subtractors "talking" patches.

In case youre wondering; yes it was a a negative slant on the whole night culture thing. I've changed my views a wee bit sense then :) This is what I originally wrote about it all those years ago:

So in honour of pleading to "God" over a bowel in a seedy nightclubs toilet while the euphoric music pumps through the walls, I’ve created “Shaman of the toilet bowel”. I think it really captures that retching rapture people spout when they’ve had one glass too many.

I guess it still represents this though, just my general attitude has changed. All I had of it was a crappy little wma file, which had all the production values of a east european porno. I did a fair amount of compression and upped the lower end to give it a bit more of a bite. You have to love that loose bass line lol

The Shamen

Exams Over?

My final year CS exams finished the day before yesterday. I said I'd post something about them so here it is. My last one was a real nasty exam on security, although to be fair, I have witnessed worse. I think I got an hours sleep before it, an improvement over the virtuality reality exam 2 days before where I just kept going all night. I just put up the post about Bob Moog a few hours before heading out to the exam center actually. I can safely say that that was the most studenty thing I've done. I advice all students to do it at least once. I guess it proves that I've lost my obsessive compulsion for the way to prepare for an exam anyway.

You know the way when you have a few days off and you decide to be a rebel and stay up all night and well into the next day just because you can? Well its exhilarating to do that with an exam the next day! Seriously buzzing was I, the caffiene tablets helped of course. Rather than be sensible, go home and sleep after the exam, I went into the city looking at watches. I was still buzzing, what did you expect me to do!

A week earlier I was dreading my first exam. Really annoyed over having to do exams in general, I'd rather be outside busting stones for a living; but during that first exam, something amazing happened. I got a sudden feeling of warm familiarity! It was astounding! The hatered was washed away, was washed away by a profound love of exams! The sun was shining, the room was quiet, I was surrounded by lovelies (technical term for savage young wans), I've been here a million times before... yes at that point I realised for sure; I realised that I want to be a student forever!

The less you know, the better!

Cork Weather

17°C
Scattered Clouds
Wind: SW at 12 km/h
Humidity: 100% <------------ aka Irish Summers!

I'm coughing up water here!

Bob Moog: 1934 ~ 2005

I guess everywhere will be doing a "Bob Moog" post today. I was going to do something really flashy but I don't have the time. So instead I'll put up a video. I choose this video because its got a rough biographical feel to it with a dollop of Moog modular synth explanation. It does turn into a bit of an add for Arturia near the end, but it finishes up with a nice Bob Moog memorandum. It was the Arturia/Keith Emerson bits that swung it for me though :)

Mahavishnu Orchestra - Aspan

... and a sexy Synclavier player!

The Love Bug

When I thought of a title for this post a profound speculation happened upon my brain. Isn't it strange that they should choose "Herbie" as the name of the VW beetle in the film "The Love Bug", I mean change the 'b' and add an 's' and you have the real love bug, herpies! And herpies is very close to the word "Hippies", the "free loving" people, which is where the term "love bug" came from, so the circle is complete. I feel a thesis coming on; or that could be just my AIDS flaring up again.

I read a news report about the rise of STD's in young people in Ireland. Nothing new there, its just this one mentions the Leaving Cert (for the English peoples, its our A Level system).

"There has been a dramatic increase in the number of Leaving Cert students contracting sexually-transmitted diseases while on post-exam holidays, according to experts."

I was going to post about the Leaving Cert earlier this week, along the lines of:

Do the kiddies still go on about how many honors they got? "I got four honors in ma leavin cert boy!". "I got!", it sounds like an affliction: "I've got genital warts, boy!".

"A leading hospital consultant says peer pressure and excessive drinking are two of the main factors for the alarming rise in STIs.
"

I never knew there was peer pressure to get an STD today, what funny games these youngins are playing. Alcohol is indeed the cause but it can also be the cure; give yourself a good swabbing session with some methylated spirits after you finish up the jiggery pokery, and make sure you get in all the vital areas; all the nooks and crannies, where the funk will infect and grow and bloom.


Whatever your poison, make sure you keep some methylated spirits in the minibar

One word sums it all up, RABID, Random Ass Banging Is Diseaseful (unisexual term), theres no two ways about it. I'm afraid the time of fishing on the bank is over, you want to go fishing now, put on your rubber waders and join the party! Don't worry about it too much though, even taking a swim now can give you a fatal infection.

Is Image Important to Music?

Does Keith Emerson seem more impressive with his Moog...



... than with a laptop running a soft synth?

Does he fail to impress eitherway!? :)

Keith Emerson photo via Alimar's Concert Photos. (without permission)

Volcano Smoke Rings

More pictures here: Link

via

Driving Again

I used to love making driving movies... well for about 2 weeks anyway. I had made my own camcorder mount for the dash of my car and tear off down the highways and byways of Ireland, hoping to catch an accident or two :D Seriously though it would have been nice to catch some bad driving or something. I used to drive everywhere, places I never knew existed, and someplaces I wish didnt exist! Well anyway, the only video I have left of the period is a video cd I made with a 10 minute clip with Jethro Tull's Budapest as the backing track. Budapest, I still can't believe Ian Anderson said it was one of the most complex songs he wrote... its about about looking at some wan's knickers for christ sake! Don't get me started on the album, his voice is shot and he insisted on turning Jethro Tull into a pale Dire Straits tribute act. Still though, I do like listening to it so there must be something to it. It's very good driving music, hence why its used in the video. The err... slow motion "special effects" on the video are only there to smooth out the gain noise and wobbles the camera made as I drove down the lovely Irish "motorways". Google has made it a bit too blurry now though >:(

If 10 minutes is too long for you, heres a 20 second version with some Jean Luc Ponty music, an extract from "In the Fast Lane". Yeah a cliche, I know! :)

Sorry

I wont say much about this one, except that all the tracks are played live and I just wish I used a click track to begin with. I do find it annoying how I build a song up based on a rough initial track. I liked where this song was going so I started to program it into Reason, then I got bored.

I equate recording songs like this to building a wall. It's like someone comes along, puts a few rows of blocks down and then says to themselves "Sure this is a lovely wall; I'll build it proper now" and then proceds to morter the blocks in place and try to lay its foundation down underneat it. You just can't do things that way, its a bottom up approach, no point polishing a turd! With a fresh start this could be a tight little tune.

Sorry

High Speed Photography

Yay for colours! Using soundwaves from a loud speaker to move the goo.

Link

via

Tantra - Portuguese Prog Prodigies

It is with great pleasure that I introduce you to the wonderful Portuguese prog group, Tantra!



Take a listen while I guide you through one of their tracks, 'Crazy Rock n' Roll'. It starts with some dramatic descending synth bits but before breaking out into a drummy bit (technical term). You may have noticed the weird guy with the big head, I think he's the singer. And certainly this is some fine singing! Never have I heard such a wonderful impersonation of a constipated Bruce Springsteen! Not even Roger Taylors Springsteen impression, in his epic "Man on Fire", comes close! And just listen to those lyrics! For the life of me I'm sure he's singing "sit on all those faces!" before finishing up the phrase with something called a "bhuahles!". Surely this is a forgotten classic!

When youre done with that one, try this one for size.



This one is catchy; like gonorrhea. Humanoid Flesh, I must get me some of that! This is the title track from the album and without a doubt its the summit of it's brilliance! To be honest, I do like it. It starts off a bit like Spandau Ballet I think, or the start of the theme tune to Bergerac. No I do like it alright, in that kind of 'don't admit it though' manner. I was singing Humanoid Flesh all through my exam today.

Anyway, this was all just a way to advertise a great blog I came across, which gives small reviews about the 'not so famous' prog albums and bands from the past. He includes rapidshare links to the albums as well so we can all enjoy the musical goodness of these forgotten treasures from the past. There's also a good list of links to similar blogs there too, so you can use it as your gateway to tunes.

Visit: Jonnhy Roberts Blog

The Tantra post is here.

Battlefield 2

The only way to do battle!

Xiosynth by GRONDO 2001

I was thinking about buying one of these. Finally someone put up some personal information about them, and a video too! :) I wish I used my last two fingers more often when playing, like Mr. 2001 does in the video. Sure, I can thrill with my middle and ring finger, but can't we all! :) Ha! Even he messes up the lfo dept in the video, but he covers himself well!

Check out his blog: SHEPITOLOGY

Personal Adds

Just a random topic to write about, not sure why I thought of it today. Whats the deal with every single personal add looking the same? Here’s a tip, if you want to get noticed, stand out from the crowd! I don't need to be Erik Von Markovik to tell you that one. Every one of them mentions how sociable and outgoing they are. Well not sociable enough obviously, you still had to place this add… maybe youre a social whore and everyone simple must know you; a sociaholic if you will! And not one ugly person! The worst youll get is an average looking stocky built person thing. There’s never a mention of being an “ugly fucker, built like a flesh mountain!” or “I’ve got a fierce growth out of me nose; it would frighten a horse!”. Oh and everyones a sporting athletic type too. They love hiking and walking and trips to the woods etc. Maybe that’s why they never meet anyone; theyre too busy being in the middle of nowhere!

Now all the points above actually diminish the chances of the add being replied to. They frighten off readers. People read personal adds looking for someone like them, you know, real people! They don’t want to hear about good looking thin and tanned athletic demigods, who happen to feel a bit lonely but will make do with the mere mortals. It will just intimidate them. You’re much better off saying that you’re a bit on the minger and hefty side even if you are fairly good looking; you’ll get a wider selection of people.

Nothing puts me more off an add than that absolutely wonderful abbreviation: GSOH! For the uninitiated, that stands for Good Sense Of Humor, and absolutely every personal add has it! I think its become a standard now, its thrown in for free with every add placed. So, either the person advertising has a GSOH or the person they are looking for must have GSOH. Come on, everyone has a good sense of humor of some sort, maybe they are looking for the USOH(the ultimate sense of humor) or something similar. What exactly is a good sense of humor anyway? One mans joke is another mans insult. If these people are so fantastically funny, why not show it off by being a bit witty in their adds, instead of the drab and dreary run of the mill adds that can only be differentiated by the PO BOX number. A bit of honesty wouldn’t go astray either.

Here’s the kind of add I’d place:

25 yo male, Cork. Fat bastard going bald. Very anti-social, hates humans! I have plenty of GSOH, I have so much GSOH it’s coming out of me arse! That’s when I’m not being a pernickety cantankerous old bollocks just because I have to put my trousers on to go to the supermarket. Likes: ballet, music, art, MDMA. Dislikes: Work, the letter k, personal adds. Is looking for: a female, with a big arse, but no fat bitches please. Nobody with a GSOH need apply. I have a penis.

Kinsale Road Fly-Over

Google finally now allow you to upload video and see it go live immediately; they must have been feeling the sting from youtube. Anyway to celebrate the new found freedom with google video I uploaded this classic, yep everybody "loves" road videos, especially when youve got Patricia Leavitt singing a Robert Fripp tune a capella as a soundtrack. Yes sir indeed, this one is for aquired tastes only!

The reason the video exists is because I was so excited when this fly over opened I had to record my first trip over it. That sums up the state of roads in Ireland; we get a fly-over over a shitty roundabout and its like the aliens have landed. When's that bloody Fermoy bypass going to open? Fuck that, when is the Cork/Dublin motorway going to open!? Probably never, becuase there's no "need" for it.... ah sure yeah, and how many more dead on the bokity roads this weekend?

Studying the Notes

Exams are coming up soon so im busy studying. I've used a text to speech program to convert my notes to mp3 files so I can study while I wash the dishes, or in this case, messing around with music.

I was listening to the notes and decided I wanted to spice things up a bit. I just hit the record button snd see what resulted. Unfortunately, I forgot to bypass the eq insert on the master out so, while it sounded ok to me, the actual recording was getting over done and as a result theres some nasty dropoff in the level of the vocals due to the limiters kicking in. Plus the snythetic voice does a lot of clicking. Ah well, its only for fun anyway.

It's starts off well, gets a bit lost, then goes a bit psy/goa like. And with the end, I just turned everything to 11.

Song here

Oh and if anyone has a problem downloading this file could they let me know in a comment thanks; I've heard mixed feedback about the reliability of where I host these files.

Peter Callesen

Peter Callesen

Via Michael

Recursion

A failed experiment

Well it would appear that you can't do this with IE7 or the latest version of Firefox, but older versions around the 1.0 mark should show it up quite well.

Vinyl Record Generator

I was going to use this picture for another one of my "amazing" demo tracks, one titled "Sorry". It might still surface but not at the moment.

You too can make your own 45 record, right here. I never understood why I like these automatic picture generating web sites, it's not like I can't photoshop similiar pictures. It's probably just the novelty factor.

via WFMU

The Time Fountain

A rather interesting way to "control" time. I was going to build one of these until I read the steps involved, I'm happy enough just watching the video instead :)

Link to owners page.

Via MAKE:blog

Got a match?

This video has it all! Keytars, hawaiian shirts, random scat dancing outside LLoyds Bank, Scientology... this is the definition of cool! And the tune isnt so bad either ;) actually the sound is very good for a youtube video.

Frets ono Fire

I came across this on the MAKE: blog. Its one of those games like the ones you see videos of Japanese people whacking buttons all over the place on a musical arcade machine.

You get a backing track played upon commencing the game, which you have to solo over the top. There aint no style points here going for musical merit, this is purely a reaction game... well to be fair you can get into the swing of things.

What caught my initial attention is the drawing of the guy playing a qwerty keyboard, it reminded me of the chip cheeep cheeperoony thing that I saw a while back (who's software version is great fun!) I can't find the link now, thats the problem with choosing a silly name for something but theres a seperate post on Music Thing somewhere I think. Anyway its a guitar your playing, you have a button for each string and the return acts as a pick. So like a real guitar you hold down the strings with one hand and strum with the other (return key). If youre bored you can make your own level, import a backing track and solo track which you assign triggers to in the game.

Why is this post so long? I was just putting up a link. Anyway, the tutorial is useless, and unfunny but dont let that put you off. I'm not the biggest fan of guitars but I figure it would strenghten your left hand for keyboards. My left hand doesnt need strenghtening with this however, theres something much better which is much more fun.... don't be so crude! I mean playing bass lines of course.... yep nothing like playing the old one string bass.

*** I know exactly why this post is so bloody long, its because of that damn report I'm writing. I have to explain everything in it so it's affecting everything else I write... Here's some advice kiddies, don't ever goto university, its a waste of four years... get a trade instead ***

Muse - Knights of Cydonia

... the head off Christian Bale

lol and just as I was about to publish this post I came across this piece of 3 hour old news.

Christian Bale is close to finalising a deal to star opposite Russell Crowe in the western remake '3:10 to Yuma'.


The Hollywood Reporter says that the film will be directed by 'Walk the Line' director James Mangold and is a remake of the 1957 western starring Glenn Ford and Dan Evans.


The film tells the story of a captured outlaw and the rancher who is trying to take him to a train station so he can appear in court.


Crowe will play the outlaw with Bale playing the rancher.


The movie is scheduled to shoot in the autumn.

Jellyfish

I was listening to Scooter and I decided I wanted to do some happy hardcore but I got bored and went off in a tangent. Its rather tame, I think I came up with a new genre, Harmless Hardcore, as in "god bless him, its harmless". I do have a German MC in it though, well of sorts. I dont have a clue what a mastering on this is like, just turn it up loud!

Jellyfish

Read all about Helmut Von Schmella here.