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It’s the end of the year as we know it

January 3, 2012 – 21:21

I don’t know what your new years eve celebrations usually entail, but for me and my friends the tradition is for us to leave the city and the mad parties and clubs and horde of drunk bogans behind and spend 5 days or so cooped up together in some kind of beach house or lake side property. This year we went back to the same place as last year – a dilapidated school camp on the edge of a lake. Last year it was hot and in the midst of a swarm of bugs – not amazingly pleasant but swimming in the lake made it all much more bearable. This year there were far less bugs thankfully but the lake had blue-green algae in it so there was no swimming and the temperature got progressively hotter the more days we were there. By the day we left it was supposed to hit 40 degrees. The place also didnt seem to have been cleaned since the last time we were there and various things were broken, in some cases they were still broken from last year. The place has been for sale for about 3 years tho so I guess it’s understandable the owners didnt want to spend any money on it, especially now that its actually been sold (new owners take over mid jan apparently).

Despite all its problems, it did offer us a few very important things – a big property all to ourselves with not many neighbours, which is important when you’re bringing a 3.8k PA system with you to blast tunes for the whole time you are there. My housemate also bought his laser (that he built himself no less) and a bunch of lights with him to, so it all looked and sounded pretty sweet on new years eve – sweet enough to attract a few people from the other side of the lake who paddled across on a boat to see what was going on.

One of the highlights of the new years eve tradition for us is that everyone gets to pick one up beat and one down beat song and we string them all together into 2 big long play lists which get played at night and the next morning. It’s always interesting to listen to other people’s picks and exciting to hear yours and talk about it with your friends. Good way to get exposed to music you don’t normally listen to.

I spent a bit of time over the few days we were there re-mastering a couple of my older tracks, trying to get everything mixed to the same level ready for release as some kind of album… when I finish a couple more tracks at least. Hopefully that will be this year, I feel like I am ready to put more energy into my music this year…. we’ll see how that pans out in time.

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Events Hardware

Where did the last month go?

December 21, 2011 – 05:23

so much for my roll of frequent updates, it’s been almost a month since I last posted. A lot has happened – the annual Wadaiko Rindo concert for one. This was my fourth, and previous experience told me they never go as well as you would like, no matter how well rehearsed you are. Unfortunately we were not well rehearsed at all, one of my classes had only played it’s piece the whole way through maybe half a dozen times, so predictably we screwed it up. More specifically, I screwed it up. On the first day at least, got the order mixed up and everyone else who was using me for cues got confused. Luckily my talented girlfriend managed to get us back on track, but even before that it was a pretty incoherent mess. During the matinee performance the following day we did much better, but instead I had an epic fail moment in my other class’s piece, knocking my bachi (drum stick) out of my hand about 2 hits into my long-ish solo. People say I recovered well, but afterwards I thought I could have done better – or perhaps even not dropped the bachi, but hey, maybe my expectations are just too high…

I also finally got around to reinstalling logic last night. I decided to go with version 9 in the end but I will be sticking with the 32 bit mode. I also picked up a brand new Allen and Heath Xone 22 mixer, to replace my years old cheap-piece-of-shit Behringer DJX700. The 700 was a good buy at the time I guess, $350 or so for a mixer which is basically a knock off Pioneer DJM600. I paid about the same for the Xone22, but I managed to get the last unit in the store at DJ City who are having a pretty massive sale right now. I thought about picking up a pair of DB Tech Opera 402s as well, but it was $1500 I couldn’t really justify. Hopefully the new toy will encourage me to practice more, at least when i move into my own place next year and have the space to leave my stuff set up.

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software

When an upgrade isn’t an upgrade

November 29, 2011 – 03:21

Well I got my mail back. All it took was pre-installed Lion VM and a copy of VMWare fusion. Both courtesy of BitTorrent, because if I have to go thru this much effort to get access to my old email, then software companies deserve to be stolen from. You heard me. Don’t give me that look VMWare, blame Steve Jobs for making any of this necessary in the first place.

Anyway since going back to a clean install of Snow leopard my macbook feels almost brand new. Well, not really, but it has that fresh install feeling that’s a lot like the New Car Smell. Everything is uncluttered and unbloated, and I just can’t wait to dirty it up with all my applications again. Actually it’s already somewhat sullied, I didnt waste much time in reconstructing my old user experience – Chrome, VLC, Transmission, Adium, etc etc. What is missing however are my ‘pro’ apps, more specifically all my music shit. I don’t really have an immediate need for it, but I want to have my tools around if by some miracle inspiration of some kind does strike me. I’m not entirely eager to give up that fresh install feeling just yet though, so I’m reluctant to just install everything I had before the wipe – a lot of it i never used.

When I first started producing I loved Reason, but now I’ve pretty much given up on it as production tool – it’s a nicely contained toolbox and great for getting started but its a walled garden approach to music creation that I found too limiting eventually. The synths are pretty great – Thor was ridiculously powerful and ReDrum is still my favorite soft drum machine, but not being able to use 3rd party plugins is basically a deal breaker, and using ReWire to get access to the Reason instruments in another DAW always seemed like a pain in the ass and an unnecessary drain on system resources.

Logic is my DAW of choice. I never liked Ableton Live (or Simpleton as i prefer to call it. Disabledon if I’m feeling less PC). Live users complain Logic is too complex, but I always found it pretty intuitive and as a DAW its flexibility and power is unmatched. By contrast, I hated the Live interface after about 3 minutes of use, the best it could come up with was essentially just good idea that was really poorly implemented. Still tho, I know people who swear by it, so maybe it’s just a matter of what you came to first.

The question on my mind now is what version of Logic to go back to. The gadget nerd in me obviously wants to run the latest and greatest version, currently 9.1.5, and since version 8 was released in 2007, it’s arguably well past time for an upgrade. On the other hand, my laptop is also a 2007 model so Logic 8 was pretty much written to run on my machine. It ran pretty much flawlessly for years and most of my work has been done using version 8. Upgrading to 9 was when I started having problems with stability and plugin compatibility, so after this whole re-installation mess, I am wondering if I should just accept that with the age of my laptop taken into question, I am better off sticking with old tech from the same era.

I’ve also considered that upgrading the software without upgrading the system underneath is really only half an upgrade. The usual separation of hardware and software in the computer world makes it easy for us to think of them as 2 distinct components, but a musician really needs to think of it more in terms of a digital hardware synthesizer, where the software and hardware are inexorably tied to one another. When I was first posting about the version dilemma I didn’t really want to downgrade to 8 after going to 9, but really after using 9 for a brief period I’ve come to the conclusion that there are not really any tangible benefits in moving to 9 but a there are a number of fairly compelling reasons not to. Essentially I would gain the ability to run in 64 bit mode at the expense of being able to use most of my old plugins and less stability in general. My laptop only had 4GB of RAM anyway so 64 bit doesn’t really offer any advantages over 32 bit. When it comes down to it, Logic 9 was designed for computers that are much newer than mine.

But perhaps the most telling factor to consider is that if there was much difference to the user experience and the features available between versions 8 and 9, I didn’t really notice – which either mean’s there really is nothing to be gained…. or I am just too much of a n00b to be capable of getting the full potential out of it

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Rants software

The don’t make em like they used to…

November 23, 2011 – 00:16

Macs. You love them or you hate them. Up until recently I had been firmly in the love them camp – my trust Macbook pro has barely missed a step in the 4+ years since I bought it. I recently got into a facebook argument with a friend on the merits of Macs vs Windows PCs, but really it is not much of an argument at all. His position was basically that even tho there are a myriad of problems with Windows machines – such as viruses & malware, driver bugs and incompatibilities, general protection faults, blue screens of death, the constant and endless stream of patches and security updates required, and the fact that you have to re-install every 6 months since performance has inexplicably deteriorated to the point where the machine is essentially unusable – that because there are lots of tools available to help you deal with these problems that they werent that big a deal and that made windows better. Of course that doesn’t really wash against a platform which has none of those problems to begin with. Say what you want about Macs and OS X – it provides a slick, well integrated and low maintenance user experience. The slogan ‘it just works’ is well deserved.

Or it used to be anyway. In recent years the online buzz from Mac owners is the quality has been slipping. Hardware problems have started to become almost common place, software bugs and gotchas have started to rear their ugly heads. Arguably, since Macs have become essentially just PCs in shiny Apple cases, they have started to develop all the same problems. If you compare the specs of the latest Macbook Pro to a Sony Vaio or a Dell XPS you wont find much to differentiate them except the branding and the chassis. I’d also argue that Apple’s new focus on the iPhone and IOS has taken the best developers and testers away from OSX and so now we are seeing the results in a product that has not been engineered to the same degree as it used to be.

The long and short of it is that Macs break now when they never used to, and with this development a new problem arises – that Macs are a pain in the ass to fix. For all the problems of the PC world, almost any dork off the street could pull one apart and put it back together, and any geek worth his salt can repair a faulty system. When it comes to fixing a Mac tho, its not so simple. Even tho the hardware is now essentially the same, the guts of what is going on under the hood is still hidden from the users, usually giving you no more clues than a flashing folder symbol or the dreaded Sad Mac Face. Determining what the problem is requires essentially requires a trip to the Apple store – go ahead and take a look at any article on the Apple knowledge base for know issues, most of them end with ‘please contact your closest Apple store for assistance’. When the screen in my macbook pro died a few months back, I had to make an appointment to see a ‘Genius’ before I could get my machine looked at. The ‘Genius’ had some ipod looking gizmo which diagnosed the problem I suspected straight away, then they carted it out back and told me to come back in 2 weeks. 2 Weeks! That’s a long time to go without your computer, especially when you are used to being able to fix a hardware problem in a few hours on a Saturday afternoon.

If you read my posts from a few months back you will know I upgraded from Snow Leopard to Lion recently, and mostly regretted it. Last week I decided enough was enough – I wanted my laptop to sleep when I closed the lid and I wanted the bluetooth to work when it woke up again. So I decided I would go back to Snow Leopard. I wanted to do a fresh install anyway since I had been having a few glitches before I upgraded, but it turns out that was the only option anyway, OSX will not let you do an in-place downgrade. Unfortunately even a clean install was a pain in the ass, I spent probably 3 hours trying to get the install DVD to boot with no luck, using both the internal superdrive – which it seems is cactus, and an external USB drive. In the end I had to download a new dmg file using bittorrent then restore it to a usb stick and boot off the usb stick to get the OS to install. It was a lot of fucking around, and once I did get it up and running I discovered that Apple changed the mailbox format in Lion and I just restore my old mailbox in snow leopard, I need to export it in lion and then re-import it…. So now I’m trying to find a Lion VMware image just to get my mail back

Still… now that is over, hopefully I wont need to be doing any of that shit again for another 4 years….

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Rants

Taiko Rant

November 16, 2011 – 04:40

As I’ve alluded to previously, lately my musical exploits have been much more of the analogue variety rather than digital. As the end of the year approaches, the annual concert for my taiko school, Wadaiko Rindo draws near and the focus of each lesson shifts from learning a piece to perfecting it for the concert. What this translates to in practical terms is that instead of everyone learning all the different parts, everyone in the class gets assigned a specific part to play and that is that. In some classes its absolutely necessary, especially at the beginners end of the scale, where people have not yet mastered the ability to memorise an entire piece in multiple parts. Some people need to be able to focus on learning one part without having to worry about exactly how everyone else’s bit goes.

In the more advanced classes however, this should be less of a problem, at least in theory. The truth of it is that at the upper end of the scale you have a much wider mixture of skill levels, from people who have just become good enough to advance from the intermediate classes, to people who have been playing for 10 years+. Practice doesn’t always make perfect though, as with anything there are those who naturally possess the skills and talents required to be truly good at it, and those that do not. With taiko, as you can imagine, a strong sense of rhythm and timing is vital, as well as the ability to memorise the order of a piece, or continuity as i like to frame it – being able to string it all together. On the physical side you need good coordination, the ability to keep a steady beat, good left-right separation, and fast hands. Of all these skills fast hands is the area where I struggle most, while rhythm, timing and memory are the areas I am strongest. I’m also a pretty fast learner.

So, I was pretty disappointed last week when, after training for 6 months at the direction of our sensei to learn the (difficult) lead part for our piece, that part was given to the older, more experienced player who had learnt it before. That might seem fair enough, and perhaps my problem is I am just not Japanese enough to accept that that’s the way things go, but age and experience don’t necessarily translate into the best person for the job. In this case, the older more experienced player is in his 60s at least, and despite his experience lacks the sense of rhythm, timing and continuity to lead the piece well. In the last practice he stumbled over every transition, and the one before that our sensei actually said to him “you can’t count” when he was soloing. On top of that, due to most of the class not being regular turning up to practice, the whole piece lacks cohesion and it needs a strong lead to hold it together. When we played it last week I could tell quite clearly the pieces suffered from a lack of one.

Perhaps I shouldn’t take it personally, but its hard not to when your hard work and natural strengths are over looked in a situation where those qualities are absolutely necessary, in favour of someone who lacks all of them, based purely on an antiquated ideal or cultural bias. It’s even harder when the part I did get given is basically the worst part in the piece, I come on for a about a minute in the middle then I go off again. It almost feels as if I am being punished for something. Perhaps I am that proud student from the old martial arts parable that must be humbled by his master. I guess if I am, then just like in the parable all it did was make me more angry.

Maybe I should try learn something from that.

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Events

Reach for the lasers!

November 7, 2011 – 09:17

Going for the double play this time, stealing both the header and the content of this post from other people’s well made work. I think that classifies me as a Pro Blogger(tm) now.

So, Fractal Films have another Samsara clip up on Youtube, this time showcasing the lasers from the party, which were totally bad ass. As usual the video doesn’t really do it justice – but unlike the snapshot video this one has raw footage with the actual music from the party, including a few tracks from my psy set between about 2:45 – 3:45.

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Misc

New look – just like the old look.

November 7, 2011 – 04:47

I’ve been playing around with different theme’s for the site but haven’t been able to find one I like. I was trying to find something music related but they all look tacky or cheesy or just poorly made. I looked for generic subject themes, but they were all plain and uninteresting. So for the moment I am sticking with this rather unattractive shade of poo-brown. When I’ve got more time I will see if I can find one with a reasonable layout that I can just sub in a header image of my choice…. who knows when that will be tho…

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Events

Samsara Snapshot

November 4, 2011 – 02:10

Quick off the mark, DMF Crew’s resident film crew Fractal Films have already put together a quick snapshot video of the party – complete with a few candid shots of me in the middle of my old skool trance set in the morning. Check it out

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DJing Events

SamsarAwesome

November 2, 2011 – 10:32

Samsara was an unbelievable success. Despite the weather being a little wetter than we would have liked the party still went off with barely a thing going wrong or a thing to complain about. The turn out was reasonable considering the weather, and lets face it, in Victoria if you’re going to hold an outdoor party you can pretty much count on it raining at some point. My guess is somewhere around 80 – 100 punters over the course of the weekend, plus the 30 or so crew. Not bad for our first effort, and we can be sure that after this year, next year’s turn out will be much better.

Every piece of feed back I got from anyone was positive. Most often commented on was the lighting and lasers. Pictures dont do it justice but here is the stage area at night… (disclaimer – all these photos shamelessly stolen from various people’s facebook albums of the party)

The guy we got to do the lighting was amazing. For someone we had just hired at random he really went to great lengths to make sure the whole site looked great. Shameless plug: Warren @ Aurora Stagelights. We will definitely be using him again next year.

The lasers were pretty phenomenal also, courtesy of our resident laser wizard Stu Clayon, who decided that his own laser wasn’t enough and hired another one out of his own pocket :

I have never seen a stage or visual display look so good at a free party, or plenty of parties I’ve paid to go to for that matter. The feedback from the punters was generally the same – they were all super impressed with the production quality. Even we were impressed with it. Before the party I had hoped that people would be amazed at how much effort had gone into the event for such a small intimate gathering – I was not disappointed and our efforts paid off.

The music was killer – well except for the last 2 acts. I don’t know how minimal techno ended up on the set list but I will be having stern words with the people responsible for the line up. I am not putting on parties to have to put up with music I hate, I don’t care what ‘people’ expect. It’s possible to have day time music that doesn’t sound like someone shaking a cutlery drawer. The 4 hours of pounding dark psy while I was trying to get in a snooze before my morning set didn’t agree with me either, but that’s what I get for being old and busted I guess.

But I digress – MOST of the music was awesome. Really enjoyed Visual Noize‘s set – tho when they showed up I couldn’t help wonder who these two guys were that looked like they more belonged on chapel street than in the bush. Really nice guys tho and I am looking forward to their album coming out now. Our ‘mystery’ international DJ – Chromatone played for almost an hour longer than he was scheduled to at no extra cost and was absolutely smashing it. My first set was directly after his and I came back twice before he was ready to finish, and even then it was only because he remembered he had to go to another gig. That was a shame because his wife said they would have loved to stay and party. Next time!

My set went better than I expected. As you might have read in my last post, I was a little terrified about following the main act. It was hard to gauge the crowd while I was playing – couldn’t really see out of the dome because the lights were all shining in my face, but the reports I got afterward were all really positive and I don’t think the dance floor emptied when Chromatone finished which was probably the best indication. I ended up playing more than my hour too so that the set times would still fall on the hour, but when I ran past my planned track list I just played a bunch of cheese that I knew everyone would like. Call me cheap, but I don’t care. I’d rather play music that people like than try to be original

My old skool trance set (played on real old skool vinyl ) in the morning was also a winner, perhaps moreso – despite my mixing being pretty atrocious for the first few tracks. If I’m going to break out the vinyl I really need to commit myself to practice more, unlike CDJing its not the kind of thing you can just pick up after months/years of your kit sitting in the corner of the garage under a pile of boxes. One more thing I don’t have time for sadly…

So in the afterglow, I find myself feeling more motivated to practice my DJing, keep my music collection up to date and even get back into producing my own tracks – all with the knowledge that I still have no time to do any of that and that unless I make some changes to my lifestyle, that situation isn’t going to change anytime soon.

…

By the time the last set was finished on Sunday night, most people had left. The rain had been very light but unrelenting all day and the ground was finally turning into a mud pit. My feet were killing me after standing up for nearly 3 days. The mood was high however, the crew who were left all pretty stoked with how well we had done. I for one am fucking proud to have been a part of it and even more so in the knowledge that it couldn’t have happened without so many people contributing and working together so cohesively. We are already talking about the next one and everyone has ideas on how to improve it. If you missed this year’s Samsara, you would be a fool to miss the next.

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DJing Rants

Old DJs, new tracks.

October 19, 2011 – 08:06

Ever since I started DJing, I don’t think I’ve ever planned a set, whether I was DJing the back yard at an after party or opening the main room at 3D. The possible exception to this is the few times I ever bothered to record a demo, but I’ve long since grown out for that. Self promotion is for posers, so I tell myself. If I’m going to make a name for myself it is from people seeing me at smaller gigs and offering me bigger gigs. Or becoming mates with the organiser and trading a spot on the set list for a few days of back breaking, soul crushing labour. That may explain why I never get any gigs. However, it does perhaps shed some light on what the real issue here is – I just don’t care. I’m too lazy to record demos, and I’m too lazy to plan sets. I’m also too lazy to practice, but thankfully after almost 10 years since I bought my first vinyl, practice is not something I really need to do that often anymore. At least not since i switched to CDJs from vinyl.

Track selection has never really been a problem for me. I pick whatever track I feel like starting with, then just flick thru my CD collection until I see something that i think follows well. The spontaneity is part of the ‘creative genius’, as much as such a term can be applied to what is essentially being a human jukebox. Planning a set not only seemed like a waste of time, it seemed like doing so would take the art out of being a DJ – Now that all the skill of mixing has been replaced with BPM counters and computers, being able to pick good tracks on the fly is about the only difference between being a good DJ or just another poser who just wants to be a DJ because its ‘cool’. I guess it’s something I’ve always taken for granted because I never had to put much thought into it. I play killer sets. I know this because when I play someone is always there afterward to tell me the music was awesome. I can tell you one thing from experience (so could Raja Ram probably…) people will forgive all kinds of shit house mixing if the tunes are good

With Samsara less than 2 weeks away tho, I find I have been thinking about what I’m going to play almost daily. Why? Am I losing my confidence in my old age? In a way perhaps that’s it. I DJ so infrequently these days that the possibility I might have lost the knack for it does cross my mind. I never practice anymore, mostly for a lack of time for it, but thankfully the few times I’ve played lately that hasn’t been a problem. Seems like once you train your ear in, its somewhat like riding a bike. Plus DJing with CDs requires a lot less listening than vinyl. There are a few side affects tho which do affect me – I hardly ever get new music, and when I do I dont know it well enough to be able to judge as well how well any two tracks will mix together. That’s a problem when you’re making things up as you go. It’s pretty easy to find yourself suddenly in trouble trying to mix 2 tracks together that just do not go, and wishing that you had picked some other track while you make a complete dogs breakfast of the mix….

So here I am, with at least a pretty good idea of what I’m going to play, if not what order in, or any idea how well it will work. That lack of knowledge is not lost on me and I find myself wondering if I can find the time to give it a run thru to see how it works.

But maybe I’m just feeling the pressure of playing the set after the headlining international act.

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