Every other cretin is doing a "2009 list" so I might as well too. I think I have every album here that I wanted to mention, and if not, I have a special award for that one too: The "Oops I forgot to mention this one" award :) [No Shpongle as I haven't heard the new album yet]
The "Most Likely to Mutate Your DNA or Melt Your Brain" Award
Artist:Broken Note Album:Terminal Static Released: October 15, 2009 Rough Genre: Dubstep, DnB Notes: I rarely use the term "sick" for anything other than explaining a bowel infection, but this is some massive awesome epic sick shit right here!
The "Most Inspirational Album" Award
Artist: Tim Exile Album: Listening Tree Released: March 16, 2009 Rough Genre: Electronica / Breakcore Notes: This album literally opened my mind to avenues of acoustics never dreamed before. Alone it stands, but Exiles entire catalog of work has become a musical touchstone.
The "Most Listened To Album" Award
Artist: Return To Forever Album: Returns Released: March 17, 2009 Rough Genre: Fusion Jazz Notes: Beautiful production and musicianship from all involved meant this one got spun a lot. This is how they were meant to sound! Corea on a Moog synth is still unsurpassed.
The "It's a Good Album, but I Seldom Listen to It" Award
Artist: The Duckworth Lewis Method Album: The Duckworth Lewis Method Released: July 06, 2009 Rough Genre: Baroque Pop Prog Notes: I honestly like this album a lot but I just haven't found myself listening to it all that much. It's the same issue I have with The Divine Comedy. Pity. Maybe more in 2010.
The "Meh... The Album Has Its Moments" Award
Artist: The Prodigy Album: Invaders Must Die Released: February 23, 2009 Rough Genre: Breakbeat, Rave Notes: Well it's definitely got a lot of stuff in it. It's like a big mash up of styles from all the previous albums, but it just doesn't have much soul to it. Bonus point for retro rave stylings.
The "Most Mediocre Album, but I still Listened to It" Award
Artist: Röyksopp Album: Junior Released: March 23, 2009 Rough Genre: Electronica Notes: I found this album annoying at times, annoying vocals with annoying lyrics. Compared to their earlier stuff it was awful, but I kept listening to it. Interesting, that.
The "Most Disappointing Album" Award
Artist: MUSE Album: The Resistance Released: September 14, 2009 Rough Genre: Pretentious Emo Awful Puke Music Notes: So bad it's in danger of validating everything bad said against MUSE in the past. Hopefully the old (non-emo) MUSE will be back for the next album.
Tascam DP004 - 4 Track portable audio recorder: This is going to really broaden my musical horizons. I plan to travel around Ireland recording the sounds of flushes from public toilets, which I will use to accent my musical compositions.
Behringer DR400- Digital Reverb/Delay effects pedal: Technically I didn't "need" this but it's a much handier way of getting reverb and delay effects rather than routing through my Novation A Station. Still wondering if I should have gotten the Analogue Delay pedal though :-\
Sparks - Hello Young Lovers: I downloaded this on a whim one night a while back, it has become one of the most inspirational albums for me of recent times. "Dick Around" is a modern day Bohemian Rhapsody.
Hada To Hada- Pike: This is one of John Creedon's top ten albums of all time, and I can see why. It's been out of print from a few years but I managed to source a new copy. I was listening to Creedon's show one night and he played "Ed Winter" from the album, an absolutely haunting tune with catchy vocals and irrepressible lyrics. I then found the amazing title track up on youtube later that same night and since then I've been hunting down a copy of the album.
I got other scrappy bits too but I'm not putting up pictures of socks :)
As promised, a little late perhaps (blame soundcloud for failing!) but here none the less. This Christmas tune is sure to be as big a hit as "Do They Know It's HIV". It has all you'd expect at Christmas! cheese! crap! Countdown inspired intro and outro! Native American shamanic chanting...
"Merry Christmas to all, and to all suck my balls! Young lad, here's a shilling, get me the finest piece of ass from the nearest brothel" <-- original banned ending of Dickens's "Ass Christmas Carol".
A photo and a little tune. I literally bounced this down into a wav file to my mobile phones memory card, and then I was out the door for Christmas. So what you're getting here is pure speed composing! ^_^ As always, the disclaimer goes: I may tidy it up later if I'm bored. It came out a bit dark but I guess that's the recession for you. I will post a super duper happy cheesy tune tomorrow, that I put together on Christmas day last year. Includes Native American Shamanic chanting... cos you know, I'm traditional like that :)
Happy Christmas Eve to those crazy people in Sweden, and a safe and happy night to all!
A couple of Saturdays ago, myself and a friend did a raid the Smyths toy store, off the Kinsale roundabout. He wanted lego to make mobile phone holders, and I wanted to find some failed action figures that they were desperately trying to sell off cheap.
So he got his bucket of [fake] Lego bricks (I think they were called "Nashikonika Fun Blocks" or something) and I spotted these wonderful Star Trek figures. Now, even though I hated the 2009 Star Trek film (The Nokia placement alone was enough to put Gene Roddenberry spinning in his grave at warp 9), I still couldn't resist the price tag. I managed to snag three figures in still in their packaging for €5!!! Sure, how could I not buy them at that price.
So we got home and he started building some monstrosity out of the "fun blocks" to cradle his phone and I began to unwrap the figures. We got talking about Myth Busters and how I reminded him of Jamie Hyneman (only with more hair on my head and less hair on my face I guess!). Then we started discussing Kari Byron from the show. We (or at least, I) thought that yes while she was indeed lovely, the whole "assistants" thing on the show was kinda crap (well didn't I tell you in the headline that this was a Super Mega Nerdy Saturday!)
So anyway, back to Star Trek figures. I couldn't believe it when I opened up the Sulu figure: it sported a rubber tunic! Such luxury, and all for only a fiver! As you can see from the picture of the Kirk figure above, the models also sport very fetching 6-packs (if thats what puts the dilithium into your warp drive). So with much haste, I opened the Cadet Uhura packing to see if she too sported a rubber outfit. And oh yes she did, not only a rubber tunic but a rubber skirt too, no less!
Oh no, it looks as if Uhura's skirt has fallen down around her ankles, how did that happen!?
Well that was one of my Saturdays recently anyway. Best €5 Saturday fun I had in ages, and I didn't even have to boil by cock in acid afterwards.
I've been meaning to do a post on "dnb step", as I found myself getting quite into it there for a while. If you haven't heard of it (it's big in East Europe) check out a random youtube vid. I guess this probably isn't the best way to introduce the discipline, but it is "dancing" and it (the original footage at least) is funny :)
Fair play to the man dancing, he had broken his back sometime before this apparently.
I dusted off my old Amiga 500+ during the week. Actually, I took it out from under the bed where it's been sitting for years. At one point in its life, for about 30 minutes, it had been sitting on a skip when we were moving house in the late 90's. Yeah, at the time it seemed like clutter to be bringing with me, but sexy clutter, like gold underpants!
So anyway, there I was going through my bag of cover disks (I was always more of a cover-disk game-demo man, than full games. I experienced more stuff that way). I came across a disk with protracker on it, a popular music tracker for the Amiga. I remembered fumbling around with it years ago, not really knowing what I was doing, but last week, with a few years of music creating under my belt... [I still didn't have a clue :-p ] I at least knew what was happening and why it was happening. It was awesome to see and understand the notion of four mono-track limited MOD files to create all those wonderful game tunes from years ago.
I later switched off my Amiga once again, once I had my fill of games and demo's and I decided to lash out a bit of "Amiga music" of my own (in Reason). To Be honest, I just wanted to mess around with the limitations music programmers found themselves back then i.e. 4 tracks, two panned left and two panned right, 8bit 22khz short samples etc. So this has no real musical merit, and I think I went OTT on the bit crushing of the sounds, but it was fun to mess about with. A bit of pseudo-DnB near the end too! Oh and yes, in the great tradition of MOD music, the tune is designed to loop.
The image is a photograph I took of the Amiga's "Guru Meditation" screen. This is basically like the Amiga's version of Windows BSOD. I got this a lot last week, with all those dusty coverdisks :)
Listen carefully to what Mr. Gogarty said in an interview with Marian Finucane on Radio 1, on Saturday 12th December. Ignore the "internet coming into laptops" nonsense at the start. He can be heard blaming Ireland's current economic problems on "political predecessors". Here's the thing though, these predecessors he's taking about, are still in power, along with he and his Green party in the ruling coalition.
The most shocking thing about the whole "Paul Gogarty Thing" is not what he said, but how little people were there in the Dail to hear what he said, in person.
An odd thing happened tonight at the supermarket. I was picking apples out of the display and they were all very cold to the touch. Around the fifth apple that I touched I found... a warm one. Like, body temperature warm. It was... disturbing. I put it down and picked up the apple beside it. Cold. Picked up the apple on the other side. Cold. I finished filling my bag and found no more warm apples.
I hadn't been there very long and wasn't paying very close attention, but I didn't see anyone carrying around a single apple and then laying it back in the bin. And this apple was warm like a large man had been carrying it for some time cupped in both hands. Is that what happened? I don't think we'll ever know. I'm pretty freaked out about it.
I loved this blog post, it's not the first time a blog post of Andiscandis's has made my skin crawl like a David Cronenberg movie, there was also the Soy Milk.
What's the point anymore... where's my sword so I can just fall on it already.... oh that's right, they banned swords... to prevent assaults, involving... knives.
I'll say one thing about Apple, they do promote technology very well. Not necessarily the newest technology, but they do allow previous technological advancement to be digested by the masses. People ignorent of whats out there already suddenly become aware of opportunities available to them.
No innovation, but they do get things out there into the mass public. Take the iPhone for example. It doesn't do much more than another smartphone could do for years but people have now suddenly realised they can browse the web on their phone because of it. Even on this blog I've noticed a significant rise in visitors using a iPhone to view posts. The same happened with MP3 players when the iPod came out. The problem is, that ignorance comes back to bite in the form of "Oh Apple are brilliant; Apple invented everything; I can't wait for the latest Apple release" People wait for Apple to rehash a product that may already be available to them simply because they have closed their minds and have allowed themselves to become Apple Zombies.
I have always argued that Apple are worse than Microsoft when it comes to arrogance towards the public. It's a simple fact that they are propriety than MS. Propriety isn't always a bad thing of course, but it smacks of such hypocrisy when Apple fanbois are foaming at the mouth shouting about "Microdollar! Microdollar! Microdollar!". Microsoft have a weakening financial domination of the market, but have always struggled to gain dominance with regards to respect. People presume Microsoft products are shit from the get-go. This is not true of Apple. If a Microsoft product blows up, it's a case of "Oh Microsoft is shit"; if an Apple product blows up, "Oh I must have done something wrong".
As Apple machines become more popular in the work place and in the home, prepare for more errors due to all kinds of unforeseen conflicts and conditions being encountered, and prepare for more viruses... What? You thought there weren't any viruses for Macs because they are super secure, and not because there were too few in the wild compared to Windows machines, for the virus coders to waste their time on? Time to lay off the Apple flavored cool-aid for a while....
...and oh god, if I hear one more person actually apologising for not switching from PC to Apple I think I'll crack up! "gosh folks huk huk I'm still using my crappy PC, sorry!!!... I promise to upgrade to Apple soon! OMG look at this, I attempted to delete my Windows system folder and I got an error... oh I hate the Windoze!!"
Anyway I'm rambling... In essence yes, Apple spreads the techno, but limits peoples minds at the same time...
So there I was, doing a little Christmas shopping, browsing through the toys section of Amazon.co.uk when I suddenly spy No. 44, "Beaver Cuts Magnetic Drawing." Now I'm not one for censorship and I'm sure the kiddies would love it (or perhaps they'd prefer the alternative version: "Dicky Doos Magnetic Drawing") but this still is a fail by Amazon.
Granule-8, a real-time granular processor for Reason 3.0 and above (although the idea will work for reason 2.0 too). Yes I know it's a silly name but the original title "granular fever" was much more silly, and Granule-8 fits more into the naming scheme of reason. So basically, what this combinator patch does is provide real time granulation of of any sound source.
I have been using this technique for granular effects for over a year. I've planned this post for most of that time. I had hoped to do a really special write up and include a more impressive video demonstration. Time keeps moving though so I'm just going to publish what I have so far. Those who are interested will hopefully appreciate what's going on...
Where I got the idea
Regular readers will most likely know that I am a fan of Tim Exile and music of his ilk. I really like what he managed to get out of his NI Reaktor setup. I watched videos on youtube of people creating granular effects on a single sample in Reason, and while they sounded good, I found them a bit limited for my use. I figured because Reason didn't have a real-time sampler, you could never create anything similar. Then I read about how the reverse reverb algorithm in Reasons RV7000 reverb unit actually pre-buffers the sound source being fed into it and then calculates the reverse reverb effect based on that, as opposed to just adding some pseudo reverb. Thats when I started wondering if you could use this buffer for time stretching.
How it works:
If you read the above paragraph or watched the video, you probably have it all figured out by now. Basically, you pipe whatever sound you want granulated through a RV7000, set to output a completely wet signal. You switch the algorithm type to "Reverse". Dial the "Rev. Wet/Dry" to 0. Make sure the "Tempo Sync" is set to off. Now, as you playback the sound source you can "scrub" the "length" dial to the right and hear the effect. You need to time it right to get the desired effect. Do it too fast and the sound will start playing in reverse. You can hear me manually scrubbing the delay time in this piece of music (which uses an early version of the combinator patch, and has the entire mix fed into it). Reason Time Test by Gamma Goblin
In the Granule-8 combinator, I have automated the pace of scrubbing by using the lfo from a Malstrom synth unit which is fed into the CV input for rotary 2 of the Granule-8 Combinator itself. Using Rotary 2 on the combinator will introduce skewed effects.
The beat-grid effect is based on the same overall idea but the "Tempo-sync" is turned on, on the RV7000 unit. CV changes come from patterns drawn in the Matrix pattern sequencer. These can be drawn and altered on the fly.
How to use the Granule-8 combinator patch
The knobs and buttons are all fairly easy to figure out, but developing a desirable result with them is a bit more difficult. There are a certain amount of recognisable DJ/vinyl techniques that I've managed to approximate with the unit already (such as spin-down etc.) and a wide selection of sounds that are a bit crap... it's still a work in progress! :)
The rotaries from left to right: Time Shift This controls the amount/speed of the granulated signal. Granule Mod This rotary is tied to the lfo from the Malstrom controlling the pace, so altering this will introduce "pleasant" distortions to the effect. Mangler Patterns This simply selects the patterns within the Matrix unit. Mangle Mod like the granule mod rotary, altering this will alter the beat grid effect as the Curve CV from the Matrix Unit is fed directly into it.
The buttons from left to right: Granulate! Just switches on the granular effect. Due to the way this is set up, it does not retain memory of that last position of the Time Shift knob (something I wish it did!) Pitch Shift Simply adds a pitch shift effect to to the granulation, giving the impression of slowing down. Manglate! Invokes the beat pattern effect Routing A - B Selects whether the granulation comes before or after the manglation!
Problems & Improvements
There are problems with this, hence why I added in the notion of it being a "beta" release. Ideally one interested in this effect would probably build up their own combinator patch based on their own preferences, ideas and improvements.
The one I'm providing has three RV7000 reverb units, which do add to the CPU overhead of any song. Three are needed to allow for the "beat grid" effect to be applied either before or after the granulation. I also have a version which only uses two reverb units, with a convoluted crossover setup but I could never get rid of some odd stereo phasing whenever I flipped between circuits. Perhaps it was just a misplaced cable that I kept missing.
The sound of the effect isn't always that smooth, as there is sometimes nasty clipping present as you change settings in the RV7000 units. Adding some deliberate distortion usually fixes this.
Download and try it out for yourself. If you manage to do anything decent with it or improve the setup I want to hear from you! :) Try out the combinator with the excellent Reason Combinator patches by Kurt Kurasaki (Peff) for even better results!
Bonus Song! A short remix of Röyksopp's "Vision One" tune which was the first thing I put through an early version of this Combinator patch. You can hear some of the phasing I mentioned earlier because this one only uses two RV7000 units. I added a simple drum loop over the top to keep everything in time just in case things got crazy. I've done a few other takes of this with improved timing but this first version is short and sweet and hopefully won't incur copyright problems :) Things get "interesting" from about 43 seconds in.
Oh one last thing, in case you hadn't realised, using the RV700's Reverse Reverb algorithm in this manner allows you to utilise its EQ and Gate (albeit with a 10ms delay). The EQ is kinda redundant with the other modules available in Reason but the audio Gate can be very useful.
First, it was Thierry Henry who came under scrutiny when he handled the ball during the France V. Ireland game... now Tiger Woods seems to have scored more birdies than... well, than Tiger Woods really. So will Roger Federer end up in the papers next, for all the wrong reasons?
Awful selection of celebrity impersonators found at an airport recently. From left to right: Louis Walsh, Gerry Adams, Dale Winton, Ginger Spice. Louis Walsh is pretty bad, but Gerry Adams looks nothing like the real one.
Traveling on the M8, towards Cork, on Saturday morning last yielded a beautiful views of the Knockmealdown Mountains. Snow capped with thick fog at the base, they really looked lovely. This country does have it's moments...
And what a great title too! "Ass Goblins of Auschwitz". I can't help but wonder if reading it would live up to expectations though. And what about these other great titles...
