deepnerdblog

[deepnerdblog]

Moved the studio because I had to move apartments. Meditated on the studio layout a little bit then rebuilt it almost exactly as I had. The magic secret sauce for me is breaking up the steps - layout gear, run power cables, tidy up power cables mercilessly so they are away from midi and sound cables. Use breadbag ties everywhere. Then sound cables, then midi cables, then test them, and voila. Currently have only two items not running through a power conditioner.

The next headache is sync and drift! Or maybe sync the QSC touchmix and Cockos Reaper. Super8 looper with current settings feels too loose and laggy. Worst case scenario, I have one set of settings for doing software looping, and one set of settings for running drum machines/groove machines in sync with Reaper. A little bit of trial and error to have the whole thing running amazingly.

Other goals include studying piano improvisational stuff a little. Am unsure if the next thing is a track of just guitar and piano, or if I want fully write something with 'all the toys'. Have that drum machine itch because I have a tr606 again and a dedicated amp and pedals for it. Also on the topic of underappreciated gear and experiments- hearing a shoutout to Ensoniq DP4 and a shoutout to the Korg Triton made me really rethink things a bit. "this ole thing? yeah it's fine i guess... wait it was used in some of my favorite albums? oh fuck... fuck... yeah." Really should investigate the song/track structure and check to see if my old cludged hardware still works and can upload/download. Even the Triton drum sounds and onboard filter/fx sound so clean- even if they are 'of their era', that y2k era is kind of hip and fun. Also there is a guide at one of the linked youtube guys for how to patch in other Triton sounds. I used to tinker with a friends big wooden slightly more expensive Triton model, and some of those 'Robert Miles-esque' dreamy evolving pad and lead sounds were tasty. A embarrassment of riches. Stuff to learn. Stuff to play with.

[deepnerdblog]

Okay I said I wouldn't link a lot of stuff, but if you have a Ensoniq DP4 or a DP4+, this fucking video fucks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooE1Y9C1Qtw Also if you love 90s studio albums and maybe came of age buying CDs before the napster era, and you have 690 dollars and a home studio- reverb has some of these multifx. If you don't love 90s shit and/or you don't have stupid money for stupid stuff, and you don't have a DP4 already, disregard this entirely. Gear Acquisition Syndrome is a trap. Stop looking at strangers and strange toys and pay attention to the studio that loves you and is actually there for you.

But... if you have a DP4... this video is pure and direct. Someone made this out of pure fucking love.

Also have been reading up about Gretsch Hifiltrons. Also if you have been putting off dumping your save files from a mobile medium into your regular storage- don't put that off. Backup regularly. Back up often and eat your goddamn fiber.

[deepnerdblog]

Inspiration and more notes

Had a challenge to make a 'music sting' for a video card and it was a fun challenge. 5 -8 seconds to make a background mood for a video. Set a mood. The editor chose a iphone recording of me humming and having fun on acoustic instead of the thing I threw together quickly with layers of moody chords.

Sound and mood are the palettes of color we paint with.

Also listening to a podcast that is giving me inspiration to woodshed and refine things - Questlove interview podcast with jazz players (and other musicians). Aside from the personal connections and history of some of those musicians, just hearing some of the love of craft and the aspirations that drive them- huge inspiration. 'all musicians suck at laying back and doing less, want to hear the truth, listen to them play a ballad'. Stuff like that is a shot in the arm.

Also the new Depeche Mode release is surprisingly true to their pop synth sensibilities.

Am considering selling an instrument.

Recently a friend sang for a wedding and really shined. The reception featured a 2nd line performance at the end of the night- The Tramps (Zulu Tramps?) were fucking amazing. Pure skill at making a huge crowd drunk on sound and the feeling. Six guys playing marching style rocking a couple hundred people's face off.

[deepnerdblog]

Flow States, Process, Experiments and Creative shtuff

So like... the goal is to take cool riffs from guitar and keyboard and cool beats and make some cool shit. To write out riffs and take notes and be able to go from loops and or riffs to some really pleasing sounding shit. Looping or having a well laid out sound room with mics and a master keyboard with some form of control for all hardware is all about setting up the tools in a way that you can 'sculpt sound' or fuck around and find something groovy. It's hard to keep the stuff straight and keep the technology from getting in your way when you want to just go. A lot of synth hardware guys have their default sort of thing - they turn on power and just go. Having a lot of choices - DAWless master clocks and eurorack and just going on, four on the floor and patch the lfo into something and make a well sound designed loop. which personally has always been a bitch to turn into something more than a loop (but it's easier if you have that mixed loop broken down into discreet channels). or taking samples and stretching the sample into something that spices up lame loops into something groovy.

So what I have is reaper and a template to drive every piece of hardware from one controller. Depending on which channel is receiving midi, the CC controllers(drive most of the knobs etcetera with a instance of a JS Midimapper script for each CC). Technology shit which is all well and good, but at some point I need the sound design stage to become the song writing stage. Which needs to be fast, which is why having everything sync'ed up and two or three clicks of a button from recording ideas is handy. So the other accomplishment today was saving Templates - one for my Midi hardware, one for the Looper8 template, and one for VCVRack and it's associated channel outs. Fiddly stuff to make cool noises.

The other thing I've tinkered with is simply going back to old loops and beats - so I can grab good old jeskola buzz for throbbing bass and filters, run sound from my desktop into my current reaper setup, then go from there. Old Reason and buzz were great quick ways to get funky ideas down and then export stuff to a platform for recording and refining. The tracker workflow is fiddly but expansive.

YMMV- whichever tool gets you stuck in and nodding your head quickly is the best tool to get into the flowstate. Floops etc.

Writing this journal and alternating between philosophical overviews and technical jibber jabber is actually really useful for me. It saves me from wearing down people around me with rants 'oh hey i am frustrated with obscure hobby triviality thing number 2918' and also it helps me explore my process.

So the other interesting thing on the philosophy and 10,000 feet above process is to think about how the energy of the making stuff process affects the actual stuff being made. Like techno or house are based on evolving repetition, on mixable semi formulaic ear candy that is made through iterative editing and refinement. The loops sound good looping and sounding good and iterating while delighting the ear somewhere between the expected and unexpected. The loop and the dancefloor have a mindless sympatico. Meanwhile traditional song formats have overdubbing and harmonies that delight the ear via layers and groove, basic harmonic palette and auditory storytelling. The format and the process are intertwined, the ad libs and the back up singing and the motifs and the throwbacks to genre convention all create the pop music Vibe. From Deelite to Silk Sonic to classic funk. To abstract rhythmic chaos to the almost Pink Floyd like style of Hawtin and Namlok decades ago. Production is the process of ingredients and preparation that go into songwriting and it's a damn messy hobby but a entertaining obsession.

[deepnerdblog]

Melodyne to Midi

If you want to try to grab midi output from Melodyne on a recording (specifically the cheapest Melodyne version in Reaper) the trick is the + symbol near the top right corner of the Melodyne interface. Select ARA import into project, then notes. (Each part marked below with a red dot to make it easier to find.) This creates midi info in a new track. This is more of a 'start' for writing midi from a recording than a silver bullet, lots of grace notes and such are lost, the velocity and timing is pretty good from what I've seen.

[deepnerdblog]

Super8 routing solution

Figured it out. For those who wonder how to rout sound into and out of Super8 looper on the Reaper Daw. Create a track, add Super8 JS object (in FX for the track). Highlight Super8 in the FX section, click 'EDIT' then click 'build multichannel routing for output of selected FX'. Then you create the tracks that Go Into Super8 by creating a track, click routing, add send, and sending it to the Output Channels you created for Super8 by clicking the channels from Super8. I took screen caps for a step by step guide. Each of the 8 channels can receive different software instruments but this example is just a mic in all 8 channels.

1 Create a track, click FX box, add Super8

2 Click Edit, then click 'build multichannel routing for output of selected FX'.

3 Add a track for input to the looper- I'm using a Mic in on all 8 tracks. Add send, click the looper Track, and then select each track beside the right arrow.

4 Same menu but all 8 have been added- send goes to Super8 ->channel 1-8

5 The mic signal goes wherever each of the 8 sections of Super8 are clicked.

[deepnerdblog]

Status report

Super8 is a scripted looping system that was coded by *Justin Frankel (of 'Winamp' fame in the great Y2k before times). I'm still figuring out how to have 8 channels of mono loops. It can patch through to 2 channels, but the remaining channels just don't get audio. Have been thru three video tutorials. (video tutorials are as inevitable and unwelcome as herpes. fucking write and do some screen shots for the sake of christ or shiva. i blame todays youth or something.)

The looper 'feels' nice for the two channels it works on. I've also tried using a Ditto guitar pedal looper before (and tried to get the name brand version of same used from Guitar Center but bought a dud. Guitar Center used section of their website isn't completely awful and has good return policies.) but the looper is a bit of a trick.

Hardware or software, I really need to figure out the whole 'record the entire phrase with good rhythm then move onto the next phrase/preset' thing down. It's surprisingly tricky as much as anything because the loop duration has to be triggered off for the first phrase? Still figuring that one out.

I tried making old school beats on old software just because having the distorted 'boots and cats' to play guitar over helped my phrasing a little.

There is a tension between studying and building repertoire and exploring theory and riffing/noodling/making shit up for fun. It's satisfying when people like 'Mr Bill' references 'mudpies' as the raw experiment of design/noodling being necessary. A similar aha moment was the top comment in a 'how to learn music theory' thread where someone basically elaborated 'by learning both thru study and play, you separate the two experiences but the playfulness becomes elevated via the study, as well as the experience of applying it'. I really felt that. Similarly there are some parts of Hal Galpers Forward Motion that really hammer the whole 'if you take a stab in the dark improvisationally, then do it decisively and own it'. Again paraphrasing in a way that doesn't do the source material justice. And the more I write the more I see how disjointed these related tangents really are. I actually started this blog thinking 'oh yeah, i know how to describe this mess and these disjointed issues in a clear fashion. i can write about technical details and the process of creativity without being too abstract or too gear oriented. I have opted for the abstract instead of the gear details, but also this i clearly a rats nest of tangents.

Fun stuff.

[deepnerdblog]

Intentionality

Soo a lot of great art and the commentary on great art hinge on this word intentionality, like why the fuck did they do the thing, why is the thing they did weighty and charming to it's audience?

Similarly when a hobbyist practices a craft and they gather resources or tools to fuck with a hobby, the way they gather those resources sets the tone for how they commit to fucking with the hobby. It's a perverse part of human nature that if we can steal or borrow something we sometimes approach that thing differently than if we spent a little on it. Sometimes the 'fuck that was pricy' lends itself to a certain intentionality into the process. footnote to previous note.

The guitar or synth you spend an arm and a leg on, you may expect it to operate differently then the hand-me down instrument or the free vst, but... how much of that is an illusion? how much of the details of 'where something came from' is a distraction? how much of 'well it's a 303 so it HAS to sound this particular way is beside the point?

[deepnerdblog]

Will come back to the journal with more specific progress notes- but meanwhile just want to throw this out into the empty void- sheet music is expensive as fuck. There are no trackers utorrent clubs that distribute mass amounts of sheet music in bah sing see, (there were but i dunno, havn't been to bah sing see in a minute.)

So what is a broke jackass supposed to do? well you are supposed to have an ear for transcribing things, or use the reaper plugin/melodyne/ what have you to grab things note by note - (which is cool and totally worth attempting and blogging about).

But nah, you are broke and want sheet music? There are kindle pdfs with a dozen songs available for sale on amazon for like 15 bucks... kind of pricey. but maybe you can just read the first chapter... for free... which for sheet music isn't a chapter. its a song or two. With the exception of some things where you grab the sample and after 8 pages of foreword and introduction, that is all folks.

Also, consider creating a gmail account just for youtube- hear me out, youtube has good stuff, lectures, tutorials, play alongs, music instructional dvds posted discreetly. The trick is to use chrome, switch to a youtube user profile you use just for music, and then youtube sucks less. Make it specific? browse only in subscription mode. ALSO - I just spent 40 minutes trying to find 'Alex Weir teaches funk guitar' on YouTube and it seems to have been nuked and a website that doesn't list it is trying to monetize it. I wish to fuck I downloaded it, because it was perfect.

[deepnerdblog]

future notes

the tumult of nobody-i've-ever-heard-of on social media making music is actually deeply inspiring. the primacy of performers over recorded music just seems to call for ever better song writing and possibly better production. inspiration and flow states are interesting to write about, both the highs and lows.

other things worth noting - open media initiatives are inspiring. old music having a second life is inspiring, like hearing a rnb loving college girl hear Tom Jones on a variety act and hearing how she reacts, or how the very first major recordings of a century ago are finally becoming part of fair use. the fact that the winamp guy took his money and made Cockos Reaper the affordable/flexible DAW happen is inspiring. being close to being able to record in a lot of different ways is overwhelming because i spent so so long day dreaming about it, and it helps to embrace the suck and to both overanalyze as well as remember the sense of 'play' that makes things sound like there is some life to them.

another thing to write about is sucking. or being obsessed with common ground across genres in ways that don't work well but still inspire experiments. could write a review of the byrne book. or the galper book. or write about never finishing things (including those books!) btw- I'm never going to share music here unless its fully ready to be put into the creative commons. that is the plan anyway, write and perform and edit some beautiful shit, and then when i meet musicians i like i can say 'oh i'm not a real musician but i like to fuck around with musical ideas and write, and if you hear something good and you want to expand on the ideas and collab, this is my calling card, this is my vibe. until i have a small testament to my vibe, i am just a guy with a table full of crap beside my work desk.

[deepnerdblog]

nerd shit redux

Reaper has a looper program called Super8 that basically lets you set midi trigger pads to turn Reaper into a livelooper setup, basically a script to enable looping features. I plan on learning it because I love loops and loop based song writing. So each trigger can set a lane active, or mute a lane, or maybe set a lane to be 4 times longer, or jump to a lane that has fx for lead or drum, or what have you. I have a usb keyboard that used to let you assign midi signals but the software currently stopped working. Old Axiom keyboards had awesome customizing software so each knob could be assigned any midi variable. Be cool if it worked but now I have transport tape style buttons that give Midi instrument change sequences instead of easier to use Midi CC code or some such. Solution? Either find a way to filter those midi codes and turn them into Midi CC, or simply label actual black note keys at a specific octave for my live loop controller. I really am curious if there is a good generic control footpedal pedal that can output ctrl voltage for eurorack, midi CC, on/off, sliding pedal CC, all the bells and whistles in a convenient pedal box. I know there are good utility midi foot pedals, but when you add in voltage out and whatchamacallit, the voltage that sets the amount on pedals/multifx (similar to eurorack CV but not 1 to 1 the same). So yeah, going to tap a keyboard and set it up for looping synths, guitar, drum machines live into reaper with the Super8. *But wait there is more fiddly bits*, there is a secondary recording medium. QSC mixers can have external midi to trigger transport buttons like rewind, record, and goto time, as well as arming and disarming channels- so that with super8 can mean I can have one surface triggering recording on both devices. Also reapers super8 can't record midi if i read that correctly, so maybe i can make a setup that puts midi in the laptop but also syncs the recording/tranport buttons on both devices (which is nice to have regardless of live looping). QSC made the firmware for their entry level digital mixer do a lot of the cool shit the fancier models can do. I love the sound of a SM7b mic recording a acoustic guitar into the QSC mixer/recorder with Kush Omega series vst to give it that teeny bit of mastering. I realized a little bit ago that suddenly I can record guitar and not hate the sound, and it's been a challenge how to make that fit into synths, drum machines, and 'writing music in the box'. Thus I need to learn super8, and also having both recording systems start on one button press is pretty sweet. (ideally sync doesn't shit the bed and i don't have to use LTC/MTC timecode as a master clock or anything).

so that's an ongoing project - meanwhile I also need to learn more songs on guitar and piano and improve my sense of pitch. its coming together nicely but it behooves me to be both playful and architectural in my approach. building a framework to vibe out on, but also improving the application of playing keyboards or multitracking things without having to fuck with it in editing.

multitracking

whats been useful is multitracking without headphones, as well as having vintage headphones with a really warm ear soothing midrange tone. i believe i saw concert footage where J Mayer was wearing vintage headphones. trying different things and the options help prevent ear fatigue. i've been making forays into mixing miced guitar with amped electric guitar. At some point I'm probably going to tackle full tracks with arbitrary limits to instruments, and layer classical, acoustic, electric tracks. Even a doubletrack of the same instrument sounds nice and 'phasey' thicc, but switching up instrument timbres and layering them is just appealing and feels musical. meanwhile i've tried layering piano chords from the triton behind acoustic guitar and it also sounds 'thicc' and charming. it is also finicky as all get out as a skill.

fucking with a odd idea wearing headphones until my ears hurt this morning.

i've been trying to fuck with some crazy not quite chocolate and peanutbutter type mixing elements to loop a particularly swingy classical sample with a improvised beat. i hit an entertaining wall this morning because i was trying to shoehorn a loose recording of this piano genius into a eccentric beat along with snips of riffing on guitar with a chewy bassy guitar humbucker sound. Competing tinny and shiny piano (with a elegant recording from fifty or more years ago) versus Triton drums versus the trimmed out random guitar pulsing experiment. And I kind of liked it, but the piano had been tweaked to fight a accelerating swingy performance, and there were some neat edits, but between the goofy beat and a lot of time stretching and trimming, the whole thing is chaotic af. Will have to return to it after resting my ears. years ago i filtered a movie sound track theme and alternated the filter and the sweeping sound of the chords slowed down and then added a buzzy detuned bassline - which didn't suck, but it didn't not suck enough either. why didn't it not suck? partially because i chopped it up, made three unrelated loops out of it that didnt glue back together as a song, and also because the buzzy detuned bassline was *not in key*. So now I'm fucking with a genius spanish piano sample and in the back of my mind I'm thinking 'should i learn to play a simplified version of this on piano? or do i just run this thing through melodyne and write out the main part of the theme so i can verify how things fit note per note.

One thing that really stood out as i time stretched and trimmed these loops is that when the edits were nudged 'just so' the beat underlaying the loop really would give a 'driving feel' or nudged the other way would be backbeat style off but in a close groovy kind of way.

[deepnerdblog]

Why create

So if music is just a series of fads for young audiences why should a bored middle aged jackass obsess over it? Maybe because it's fun to make and to think about. I would happily work with anyone if I liked the creative process. I've fallen into a hermitlike existence where I tinker with music for myself, and of course real life intrudes, and there are tons of home studio nerds who build their synths and fx and software and interface and find deep satisfaction in 'what might be'. Much like the sports car they couldn't afford as younger men, we acquire things as part of the dream. My synthesizers are actually cheap and not terribly rare because I feel it's adequate for creation in their current state. The advice I'd give anyone who wants to write or create music with a home studio is as follows (most of this is stolen advice from wiser souls).

If you are the best musician in the room, you are in the wrong room. Collaborate and learn and challenge yourself if you want to level up.

Don't get Gear Acquisition Syndrome. If you have some synths/instruments and start to daydream about 'what if some new synth does something better?' fuck that, look up the gear you own on youtube and watch how geniuses use that gear as a tool. chops over tech. (sound design included over tech too).

Find a process that works for you to get musical ideas into a listenable format. Record practice sessions on a cellphone. Learn to write sheet music. Learn whatever DAW you like and dig deeply into that one DAW, whichever process gets you into a flow state, trust that process.

So of those three tips, I actually do 2 and generally don't fuck with eurorack or GAS at present because I can't afford it. My adhd day dreamer nature makes me struggle with 3, because I want to know how to have multiple flow states for different genres or moods. Still that's free advice for anyone.

[deepnerdblog]

so passe

Music is passe. It's fashion trash without substance. Young people today still fall into the rabbit hole of old music and the decades of American pop (fashion trash goodness). They say people aren't excited about music anymore after streaming has made music infinite and available on demand. And yet there are intense collections of playlists of all sorts. A recent scientific study showed musicianship as being a deeply desirable breeding trait. I keep falling hard for amazing singers, so maybe the scientists were right. Meanwhile the radio is largely owned by a soulless monopoly that promote the weird alt right conservative point of view. Old zoo crew assholes that still work in radio pretend to be Rush Limbaugh across the bible belt. and there are amazing indie/mixed format stations that stream online and on the radio. there are a couple live music showcases that follow the format of The Austin City Limits.

As far as society goes, a couple musicians have become billionaires, the space to stand out musically is deeply cluttered. A generation has learned to conform from social media and algorithms that can probably map the statistical average state of engagement and enthusiasm to a terrifying precision. In a time of dystopia, there are utopian art movements, and a cyberpunk aesthetic looms in the background.

Oh and in 2022 algorithms can write music, algorithms like melodyne or autotune can also strip melodies right out of people's musical demos so producers can steal ideas. Youtube is full of 'type beats' promotion emulating other producers style.

[deepnerdblog]

https://www.instagram.com/sunshine_jones_/

this guy above has a deeply helpful playlist on the Korg Triton.

vcvrack is a good product and also there are open source versions of it as well if you dig around on github. vcvrack has a punishing license for volunteer developers. it is kind of like the anti jeskola buzz but also its full of eurorack synthetic goodness.

jeskola buzz is a amazing tracker. may have difficulty running on Win 10 or Win 11. I keep a internetless Win7 desktop just for old audio needs.

i'm not posting anymore links unless something amazing deserves it. the above is a mix of software, creative geniuses who make a living on patreon or designing hardware or at the top a classic house musician who is too busy being a wizard to give a fuck about patreon or streaming. shoutouts also go to the music streamers of twitch that don't suck- live loopers and improv musicians - and Questlove who streamed during the covid lockdowns and interrupted his own dj mix to drop knowledge of the sort that only comes from obsessive study of studio production and obsessive study of decades and decades of music. TPain as a streamer deserves props producing on stream as did Mike Shinoda, and also a little known guitarist named Bort that is irresistibly expressive. instagram has some amazing sound design nerds. also Omri Cohen is one of those youtube/patreon wizards that deserves props. and i haven't really touched on the jazz lecturers beyond Jens Larsen, but there is a lot of amazing stuff on youtube. Hal Galper and Barry Harris lectures.

Rest In Peace and Glory, Mr Harris, who recently passed after being a indescribable beacon of musical knowledge for almost a century. to call Harris a 'keeper of the torch' or an 'ambassador for jazz heritage' is just inadequate praise.

[deepnerdblog]

Deep nerd shit

This blog is literally just a space for me to write about music. i think about music a lot. I spent a lot of early covid quarantine tinkering with my guitar chops. I've built a small home studio as cheaply as humanly possible. after dreaming of the perfect setup for decades and assembling it and realizing I kind of sucked at music production, I veered into guitars to learn how to not suck with chords. i don't suck with chords and some of the 'hey i want chunks of sound to flow the way they do in my head' actually flows from my fingers. but how do i multitrack? how do i sequence beats that appeal to a life long dance music afficionado? what is the goal? what is the inspiration? what are the tools? fuck, it gets a bit navel gazing between the love of tools and the love of raw ideas. so i'm writing to myself. like a goober.

I'm rather tempted to mark this as sexual or as violence for tf of it but nah