MeeBlip ProjectMonday 23 January 2012

Have just ordered a MeeBlip micro kit with the intention of building it into an old 2 octave Evolution MK125 MIDI controller I have lying around. I'm hoping there will be enough room in the case for me to mount some knobs and switches on the top panel for the MeeBlip and still keep all of the functionality of the controller intact.

For those who haven't heard of the MeeBlip before, it's an Open Source, 2 oscillator virtual synth with resonant filter. The micro kit is one you build yourself (fire up the soldering iron) and you can choose to add your own knobs and switches or just program via MIDI CC's. As the MK125 allows you to map the mod wheel to any MIDI CC, it will make an excellent companion to the MeeBlip.

I'll likely have the MIDI internally hardwired between controller and the MeeBlip, but with a bypass switch so that I can sequence it from Ableton without doubling notes (Sort of like a rudementary 'Local Off' function.)

Both devices can run off of 9V batteries too, so I'll wire them up to work off of the same supply (The MK125 runs off 6 x AA batteries, so should have a fairly decent battery life).

The parts should arrive within the next couple of weeks :)

Gear History (Part 2)Sunday 11 December 2011

We pick up around 1999 when Steinberg had released Cubase VST 3.7 featuring a new technology called 'VST'. At first, it didn't seem that significant to me. My machine at the time (probably a Pentium II) didn't really have enough power to take advantage of the soft synths, and whilst the effects were useful, being a Sony Acid user as well I was forced to use Direct X effects, mainly the excellent 'Ohm Force' plugins.

The first soft synth I remember actually buying though was the Muon Tau Pro Bassline synth, in around 2000 or 2001 and this promptly featured in just about every track I did over the next 6 months. I've of course bought a multitude of softsynths since then, my all-time favourite being the Native Instruments FM8. But I'll leave talk of soft synths for another day.

I was still buying the odd bit of hardware too, starting with an impulsive purchase of a Yamaha DJX-IIb in 2000 which was being sold in Curry's for £50! It was a bit of a pain to program, as the MIDI implementation was, shall we say, weird but you could actually load your own patterns into it, if you a had a suitable MIDI sequencer to write them on. Unfortunately, the only one which seemed to work was Cakewalk, so I ended up teaching myself how to use that one weekend then wrote a tutorial about it on a newly launched website I put together imaginatively called 'DJX Zone'. It's still floating about somewhere on the internet I believe - here's the wonderful logo I designed for the website ;)

I eventually sold the DJX to Cosmo (lot's of my old equipment has gone to him over the years) and purchased a Novation K-Station instead, which I still own. The K-Station was a far better virtual analogue synth than the Darkstar and also an excellent MIDI controller in it's own right. Nowadays, it gets the occasional work-out as a controller for the Novation V-Station softsynth (bit of irony there) or as a vocoder which is just about the only thing they didn't port across to the V-Station. And it's built like a tank!!!

In late 2002 I purchased an Alesis AirSynth, but the least said about that the better. I could not get it to make anything close to resembling a tune, but Cosmo gladly took it off my hands and typically managed to tame it pretty much straight away! A much better buy was the Alesis Bitrman, probably my favourite bit of equipment ever. This audio destruction device can make anything sound fantastic. I still don't think it's been bettered even today.

2003 saw the addition of an Akai MFC42 analog filter to my arsenal. Quite a noisy beast, but capable of self oscillation too as well as having onboard LFO. Still have that in my rack and very much looking forward to running my newly acquired Doepfer Dark Energy through it.

In December 2003 (according to my blog) I purchased a pair of Korg Electribes, the EA-1 Synth and ER-1 Drum Machine. These were cracking little units that made some lovely industrial sounding percussive noises. In fact, I'd actually say the EA-1 was the more varied of the two for percussion even though it was positioned as a sort of TB303 bass synth. It featured in the metallic intro to the Queen Mary / Mary Pastorius remix I did in 2007.

In 2004 my son Joshua was born and this represented something of a turning point for me. Partly due to a lack of time, but also relocating my studio to the spare room, I decided to downsize a bit and sold off a fair bit of equipment including the electribes. I did buy an ER-1 back again some months later as well as a Korg ES-1 - the sampling version of the Electribe. Great though these were, they really just ended up looking 'pretty' on a shelf and hardly got switched on, such was the computing power I had at my disposal. So I promptly sold them again.

By 2006, my second son James had been born and I didn't even have the spare room anymore. This saw me make the move to a fully laptop based setup, eventually augmented with Novation's XioSynth which was a handy combination of MIDI controller, soundcard and virtual synth in a small package. Pretty much the only hardware I still used at that time was the Alesis Bitrman, but routing audio out of the DAW and back in again was a bit of a pain, so even that got sidelined somewhat.

Time for a cuppa :)

Until next time,

SK

Gear History (Part 1)Saturday 26 November 2011

I was talking to a fellow noise maker this evening, when I came to the realisation that over the years, I've been through an awful lot of different music equipment. So much so, that it was difficult to remember it all, but here goes...

Like many of my peers, my first 'synth' in the early 80's was the Casio VL-Tone VL-1, which doubled as a handy calculator (very practical!).

Then in around 1985, I bought the Cheetah 'SpecDrum', a drum machine add-on for the ZX Spectrum which was in effect, a sample playback unit with sequencing handled by the Spectrum. Quite ahead of it's time if you think of how dominant computer based music production has become.



I then borrowed numerous PSS / Casiotone style keyboards from school before getting my own Yamaha SHS10 'Keytar' in around 1988. The thing I remember most about the SHS10 is that it had a great wood bass preset, but that was about it.

Next, I bought a tatty Transcendent 2000 which was in pretty bad shape to be honest, but I recall seeing Bernard Sumner playing one with Joy Division on TV many years earlier, so I had to have it. Most of the keys didn't work although the external filter did and I had much fun running samples through it from my Atari ST, which was running TCB tracker if I recall. I stupidly lent this to some friends of friends who promptly upped and left to go to college, taking the Trancendent with them!



I was also using an Akai S950 and Alesis HR16 at college with an Atari ST running Pro-12. I think I have a tape somewhere up in my loft with some of my first remixes which I did using this equipment, one of which was a mix of Front 242's Headhunter - would love to find that again! This was also when I met Cosmo, with whom I later formed Clear Air Turbulence.

Deciding the SHS10 was too small to be a serious MIDI controller, I purchased a Roland EP3 Digital Piano through my Mum's Freemans catalogue (those were the days). It had a great sounding Piano / Strings combination, but no touch sensitivity, not that I realised that at the time. I also picked up a used Korg KPR77 drum machine for the princely sum of £30, but sadly the onboard sequencer didn't work at all, so it was only good for sampling the sounds into the Atari - wish I'd known about circuit bending then, I could have got some interesting noises out of it.



A Yamaha PSR410 came next, again through my Mum's Freemans catalogue - a pretty mediocre General Midi keyboard by all accounts, but at least it had a pitch bend knob and the much needed touch sensitivity. I also purchased my first piece of serious equipment since the Trancendent 2000, namely an Akai S2000 sampler. I absolutely loved the Akai and could lose myself for hours, sequencing beats up with the Atari running Cubase.

Around this time, I also got into portable music making, purchasing one of the early Yamaha walkstations, the QY10. This was a great little unit and accompanyed me on the journey up to work for a number of years as well as featuring on some collaborations I did with a Croydon based band called 'Blind'. I stupidly traded this in for an Alesis MMT-8 hardware sequencer, just because I had read Orbital had one and I thought it might be good for some live improvisation (it wasn't).

Moving to Shepherds Bush in the mid 90's, I discovered the wonderful 'X-Electrical' store in Hammersmith which had a fantastic array of used musical equipment and I bought all sorts of things over the 5 years I lived up there. Off the top of my head I can recall a Roland D2 Groovebox (great sounds, but horrible user interface), Kawai K1m (lovely pads on that - I still have it in the loft too), JHS analog echo chamber (which I still use today), Behringer Virtualizer & Modulizer effects racks, Yamaha QY8 (not as good as the QY10) and a Yamaha SU10 pocket sampler (which is also up in the loft - might have to try circuit bending that). I also had the good fortune to find a disgarded EDP Wasp Deluxe that a neighbour was throwing out. The synth itself was pretty weak and buzzy, but the external filter was great and you could come up with some fantastic sounds using the keyboard to control the filter cut-off - hours of fun with that!

It's also around this time that I made the move to a PC, initially running Cubase to sequence the Akai and Kawai K1m before moving to Sonic Foundry Acid, rewired into Cubase VST. That pretty much made the Akai redundant and started my move to all things virtual. I did buy a Digidesign MBox too and dabbled with Pro Tools for a while, but it didn't really suit the way I write music. The MBox was my soundcard for a number of years though.

At a music show in around 1998 or 1999, I picked up an Alesis NanoSynth, a surprisingly versatile MIDI module with 512 presets in it and 64 voice polyphony. Again, this was another decent 'Pads' machine and it also had a fairly convincing acid bass emulation that worked well in a mix. The drums by and large were pretty rock and pop orientated although there were some electronic kits which had nice percussion, but virtually unusable kick drum samples as I recall.

The last piece of equipment I can recall purchasing from this period was the Redsound Darkstar synth. An 8 voice multitimbral, polyphonic virtual analogue synth with a cool joystick, but I found it somewhat underwhelming - always sounded a bit too polite to my ears so I didn't keep it for long.

Anyway, time for bed now. I'll pick-up from here in my next blog!

Cheers

SK

New ScarKord remixWednesday 09 November 2011

Me again - twice in one week!

Anyway, I decided to have a quick look on the AcidPlanet website to see if there were any interesting remix competitions and noticed they had one for 'Lords of Acid' that finishes in 2 days! As this kind of short deadline remixing has worked well for me in the past, I thought I'd give it a go...

Drowing in Ecstasy (ScarKord Remix)

For my remix, I decided to bring the industrial elements to the fore as well as severely vocoding the main vocal so that it's more like an additional synth texture. The un-treated vocals are mixed back in for the choruses though and I've even managed to fit a circular saw sample in there too, although it's somewhat hidden in the mix.

Anyway, please check it out on AcidPlanet and feel free to leave some feedback too if you have a chance :)

Cheers, SK

Tweet

New collab with CATTuesday 08 November 2011

Here's a video for my most recent collaboration with Cosmo for Clear Air Turbulence. I'm responsible (if that's the right word) for the arcade machine noises and beats :)

The only other news of note is that I've finally taken the plunge and bought a Native Instruments Maschine and I absolutely love it! It's made beat making so much more enjoyable and the way that it interacts with the iphone version (iMaschine) is great.

Here's the first beat I made with iMaschine, which ultimately lead to me buying a 'real' Maschine.

iMaschine beat 1 by ScarKord

Tweet

Modified TR505Sunday 02 October 2011

Finished modifying my Roland TR505 drum machine, with more than a little help from the excellent burnkit2600.com.

Modifications include:-

• Individual volume/distortion control of the 8 voices (There are 16 sounds on the TR505, but many of them share a voice). With the knobs in the 12 oclock position, the volume is normal. Far left mutes the voice and far right gives a nice, bitcrushed distortion.


• Global distortion - Distorts all voices at once, but sounds different to the individual distortions.


• Pitch shifter - Pitches all the voices up by two or three octaves. Nice bleepy sounds with this mod.


• 2 x glitch switches - There are hundreds of glitches possible on this machine, but as I wanted to try and contain everything in the original case as far as possible, for now I've only done two of the more musical sounding ones I found. The first gives a nice, almost ring mod like effect and the other is a comb filtery bitcrush thing


• 4 x blue LED's - Haven't actually wired these up yet, but they will pulse in time with the sequencer - No musical value whatsover, but I like blue LEDS :)

All in all, a pretty successful nights circuit bending.

Tweet

Update on Ariel Aparicio collaborationSaturday 01 October 2011

Got this message from Ariel via twitter...

@ScarKord sorry I neglected our project... Been way too busy.. Perhaps in the near future.. Cheers.

Never say never :)

Tweet

Quick updateTuesday 20 September 2011

Hi All,

Just a quick update now that the summer hols are well and truely over. I'm just finalising track selection and completing mixing for the 'Woodland EP' which should finally be released in November.

Have also purchased another old Drum Machine (Roland TR505) on ebay which will be getting circuit bent in the not to distant future.

Cheers

SK

Tweet

Studio photosTuesday 12 July 2011

Hi all,

Just wanted to show you a quick photo of my new studio. Loving my new colour-matched KRK speakers :)

More photos on my Facebook Page

All the best,

SK

Tweet

New EP previewTuesday 12 April 2011

I've just uploaded a new track 'Casiotonik' to Soundcloud from my forthcoming 'Woodland EP'.

Casiotonik by ScarKord

This track features sounds programmed on my Casio HT-700 synthesizer, a lovely little digital synth from the late 80's which I recently added to my collection and which influenced the track name.

Tweet