zeronyne

I think this aligns with my constant mantra that IF music survives, it may open up opportunities for an increase of the razor thin layer of musicians who are not superstars but can make a living. If club and bar-sized venues become normalized as the main way to consume music performance along with streaming, it may trigger a small, practical renaissance of performance. And with today's tools, a highly curated audio AND visual performance in a controlled venue could become a genre in iteself.

Any of you who keep up with various genres represented at Coachella probably had an interesting pair of weekends. Lots of minor controversy, including Blur scolding their audience for being so dead. But two controversies deserve a little bit of discussion here because one is gear-related and one is performance related. First off is Grimes. If you don't know who Grimes is in a musical context, then this post probably isn't for you. I didn't watch her whole set, but there was a notable issue with it. Parts of her set were playing back at an insane tempo, and it was clear she didn't know how to defeat the incorrect beat mapping on her decks. I think she even called it out. This one I blame solely on her crew/manager. I mean, of course she should know how to use the gear she is piloting, but you cannot tell me that her manager set her up at Coachella without any technical assistance. I'd expect this at a club date where she just rolls in with her laptop, but come on, this is a destination venue. On the "up" side, at least we know that Grimes isn't "lipsyncing" to a single track mix. Which brings us to the second relevant controversy. Le Sserafim is a KPop girl group from the same company as BTS and New Jeans (I only mention it because non-Asians are more familiar with those two), and riding on the inertia from past iconic performances by BlackPink and 2NE1, they were expected to create quite a stir. And they did. The first weekend, they chose to primarily use live vocals (you need to understand that not singing live is common and accepted in modern KPop for a variety of reasons, the first being the technicality of the choreography and the highly invasive production of the studio versions of the songs). They definitely sounded like a high school talent show compared to their recorded versions, including their live versions on Korean broadcasts. I think they simply got over their skis in terms of what they thought they were capable of. But the Internet response was jaw-dropping even in today's climate. The 17 year old was invited to end her life for "ruining" coachella, and the oldest member, who is a veteran of the industry (having successfully debuted in 4 different groups) was just ROASTED on social media. Again, I'm going to have to put the "blame" on their creative director or production manager for choosing this venue to completely change their show and how they go about presenting it. It's like making it to the Superbowl and then deciding to reinvent all of the plays. There were some odd choices, especially from a production company that is used to handling performances of one of the biggest groups in the world (BTS), crossing all kinds of cultural and political boundaries. Their second performance was fine. It showed they know how to adjust...very Agile, in consulting terms. Music is in such a transitional state right now...I wonder how it's all going to pan out.

Yeah, I've done a lot to hide cables like you did. I just thought Gibraltar or some other stand company would have made hollow tubes with access holes or channels or something by now. There has got to be SOMETHING.

I have two Macs and one Windows machine, but I'm not hoping for the Windows integration. And I agree that the management of licenses is the big issue. I just am used to my work machines sharing plug ins across Adobe machines, and of course, there is the Microsoft stuff. Just thought I would ask.

I think the only limit here (they'd probably love to do it) is the built in polyphony limitation with their current technology in the boutiques. It's fine for a Jx or Juno knock clone, but piano probably needs at least 16.

I've had my Triton Pro X since it came out at NAMM, so 25 years at point. But my all-time most useful keyboard was the Juno 106...not for its analog goodness or low end thump, but because it was the only keyboard I owned at the time. I played a TON of garage/party gigs doing 80s songs (which at the time were just "current songs") with just the Juno and MAYBE some sort of piano I managed to borrow. 6 notes of polyphony seemed to do the job. Sometimes, constraints are the fuel for creativity.

Are they time-aligned or at least easy enough to stitch together?

I'm at an age where I do not want to spend any more time than necessary on the care and feeding of my studio gear. One of the biggest pains is keeping my two main computers in sync with updates and samples. I was looking at my system for video and graphic assets...I have a NAS drive that I use to transfer files among machines and as an additional backup for my most crucial work. I already house my raw samples and zipped projects there, but is there some sort of enterprise-level VST or AU sharing mechanism? I would love to have all of my Native Instruments and Arturia instruments in one repository to be used across machines. How do larger production houses to it? Real world examples rather than theory, thank you!

The little synth in the update is a funny addition. Haven't dug into it yet, but glad it's there.

I am always a fan of assistive technologies to play out solo. But... This idea and use case seems just ripe for a band, if only to have more people in costume and for more foils for your inter-song patter.

Everything I'm reading about it seems hyperbolic, but who knows? I'm even nervous about taking my other kid back to Purdue even though it's nowhere near the primary eclipse path.

A tremendous new update for this very unique device. Link to article about the update. I bought this on a lark a year ago, and I didn't connect with it at all...I just didn't get it. But after the previous update a few months ago, it suddenly sprung to life, so to speak. Now they've added live looping, sync of unquantized samples and loops that are of disparate lengths, integration with the Koala app, and many more. Roland and Yamaha were the first to create lines of products that had progressively less features and less friendly UX (D50 vs D5, DX7 vs DX9, etc). It's been refreshing in modern times to see continuing meaningful support for products that are well into their livecycles. I was always skeptical of general purpose CPUs for music hardware, but that's obviously dated thinking, and it has clearly been a good strategy in this case.

The new one in the MPC OS is basic but very very usable. They did not overengineer it with esoteric features or a complex UX.

One of my kids is in Bloomington, IN for school, and you cannot find a hotel room anywhere nearby, and municipalities are declaring states of emergency due to the predicted congestions. It would be hilarious if it was heavily overcast that day. I think they even canceled classes.

Ugh, I own a large portion of their offerings, although I admittedly have not used them in a while. I wonder if this is a canary for the rest of the industry.

I much prefer this over the John Mayer original (for those not into KPop, the vocalist is Rose from Blackpink. The other girl next to her is in a group with her brother called Akmu). John Mayer sent her a pink PRS after seeing this, but I really think he should have sent it to this anonymous guitarist who just crushed this song.

Nursers, my friend, a technical question. What is your signal chain and routing for recording calls (however you are getting them) concurrently with your in-house audio?

Could someone please explain the outcome of the VCV/Cardinal controversy? Is Cardinal still a thing despite VCV remaining free? Sorry, I should Google, but maybe someone has a quick synopsis.

I often ask myself these types of questions in two situations now that I'm older and in a comfortable state. And it's not just for electromechanical keyboards. Why would I buy a fiddly boutique tube amp and analog pedals, when, for my ears and purposes, modeling records better? And like everyone is saying, for a serviceable (at best) keyboardist, what would be the use case for a real Rhodes, a real B3, and an acoustic piano? I get sad seeing vibey instruments under a moving blanket in a live room in a big studio (not that I frequent them anymore), but they are not practical to take live for someone who gigs once every two years. But just like an acoustic guitar, there is just something visceral about some wood, metal, plastic, and electricity put together to make sounds, not a simulation of that sound. And again, I love bleeding edge tech, but when you are jamming with live musicians, it does feel a bit different because the volume and tone can't quite be controlled as granularly as sample-plyabeck or modeling. I think that is what would push me to purchase a real Rhodes-shaped instrument. A real tone wheel organ is another can of worms, and I cannot fathom moving a piano...maybe when I move to the last house I will occupy, I'll get a nice baby grand.

Just south of Chicago...weather has sucked, with BRIEF respites, since February.

The Amy Humphrey way! Nice! I bought another half-dozen fuzzes to try. Maybe I'll record some samples, but there are plenty of great pedal review channels out there.

I love the IDEA of wheels and ribbons, and I have many of each. But the Korg joystick is the one I "grew up" with, so it's the one I'm most comfortable with. The Roland's I've owned (mostly in the 90s and 00s) had the great bender, but the mod trigger (pushing up) wasn't nuanced enough for my uses. I do like the Expressiv-E posted on the previous page, which is why I'd love a Polybrute...that's the Arturia keyboard with the Expressive-E built in, correct?

Just like ChatGPT and Dall-E, there is an effective and ineffective way to use services like Suno (I'm trying to be careful about terms like good/bad or right/wrong). When ChatGPT 3.5 appeared, I was very clear with my kids (who were in high school)...they should use it as frequently as Google, but they need to understand that everything that comes out of ChatGPT should be treated as a STARTING point for their paper or project. And sure enough, my daughters used ChatGPT in their last years of high school with great success despite a blanket ban on that and Grammarly in the school districts. Hundreds of kids got caught because...well, you can imagine. Uncanny valley, etc. Dall-E and the late Stable Diffusion presented a different problem for me and the company I work for, but after a few years, it became clear that I can easily see what is and isn't a completely unadulterated image produced solely from a prompt. I bet you can too, even with no artistic skills. That will eventually change (think of the evolution of piano samples), but for now, in our reports and other deliverables, it's clear which directors tried to save money by not commissioning a designer for images. What GenAI does really well for image production is ASSIST or ENABLE a designer to do their best work, like how Adobe has implemented AI. Then there is Suno. Before we talk about that, let's look at the state of electronic music right now. My Akai MPC One+, a pretty fully featured hardware DAW for under $800 new, has my Splice account built into it. When I need a drum loop, I just buy it from Splice and it's in the MPC. Also, Akai just released Stems, a plug in that can separate drums, bass, and vocals from a stereo file. And that's just in the limited and closed Akai OS. Ableton Live has an extensible programming language, and of course, plug ins have been made that do just about anything you imagine, not just emulating instruments. A few months ago, Google had released a beta of Bard, which could vaguely plunk out a classical piece or maybe a disjointed song that sounded like a vintage 78 played on a record player with wonky voltage. Fast forward to today, and I ask Suno to generate a pop song that sings about independence and romance, and in 90 seconds, it pops out two versions of a bed along with a set of lyrics that, while not exactly Sting or even Desmond Child, are instantly recognizable as song lyrics. And they are not good lyrics, but these are early days. Still, you'd think people would learn from other shortcuts in their lives, from autocorrect to autofocus, that using devices as a FIRST DRAFT is the most effective way to use this technology. It's not ready to replace a good composer yet, but it can free up a bunch of brainpower to enable that good composer to be great, especially when music composition is your job and not just your passion. In my observation and opinion.

Even the $10,000 Roland and Roland/DW kits look like someone threw up a bunch of cables on them. Until low-latency wireless becomes a practical solution someday for electronic pads, have you seen any boutique company making hardware specifically designed to hide cables? There's got to be SOMEONE doing it...it's such a ubiquitous eyesore. I have a fairly large acoustic kit augmented by an Alesis multipage and a few pads and triggers. What do you do to mitigate all the mic and trigger cables? And if your answer is "who cares? It's all about the sound", I can appreciate that, but it's irrelevant to this particular question. Thanks.

Just from cursory searching it seems like there are roughly one billion different fuzz pedals out there, and about 250 million of those work great on bass. I'm looking for my ultimate bass fuzz. I want it to have an UPPER octave and be crunchy rather than warm. I've owned a variety of Muffs and their variants. Believe it or not, I prefer the Behringer FZ300 over most others. Anyone have a favorite?