Digital Music Front

Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category

Lately my musical endeavors have been much like this blog, which is to say, I’ve done pretty much nothing. After my last rant regarding my craptastic monitors, I’ve felt less inclined to put much effort into producing, almost as if the effort is not really worth it until I can over come this hurdle (which is fundamentally a financial problem). Ideologically speaking  this shouldn’t really be stopping me, I was talking to the Rockstar Philosopher just the other day about the realisation that I could and should just focus on getting the music down and worrying about post when I’ve got better equipment. Practically speaking I’m not very good at this, I hate leaving something unfinished… I just sank 100 hours into playing Lost Odyssey to completion before I would even think about picking up another game.

I have however, mostly by accident, managed to start working on another track while ‘Thru the wringer’ languishes in its unmastered state. As seems to be my modus operandi I stumbled upon the beginnings of this next track while cobbling together unfinished bits and pieces from previous work. Every now and then while I’m working on something I will stumble across a bass line or a note progression that I like which isn’t really suitable for the piece I’m working on and just save it in a different file. Then one day when I’m bored I go thru all this crap aiming to clear most of it out and end up using half of it. Behold, Frankensong is born… Actually… I should use that.

I’m going to state the obvious.  If you drive a 4wd, it’s pretty likely you’re a cock.  OK, I understand some people have need for it, going off road, towing rediculous floats/vans/boats etc., but from what I can tell, most 4wd owners don’t do this (or have regular sized floats/vans/boats that can easily be towed by a normal person car).

Again, to state the bleedin’ obvious, if you drive a Porsche, there’s a pretty good chance you’re a cock.  This rule obviously doesn’t apply if you have a GT3 or something, and you take it out to a race track (or isolated country road ) for a good thrashing from time to time.  But most people don’t own these, most people own Boxsters, the poor man’s Porsche.  Seriously folks, if you’re buying at the lower level of a luxury brand, you must be aware that a big chunk of your cash is going in to a badge made prestigious by the upper levels.  This goes for the A class merc, or the ultimate CockMobile, the BMW 3 series.

Then, however, there are people who buy this:

My Penis, So Very Very Small

Nothing screams out “I’M AN INSECURE WANKER WITH A SMALL PENIS” like a GOLD PORSCHE FOUR WHEEL DRIVE. Yes, I know it’s the worlds fastest 4WD, but it’s also one of the worlds most unreliable, expensive to repair, worst handling and uncomfortable 4WD’s…  The perfect thing for a man with a small penis.  He gets his occasional rush that he lacks from being able to satisfy a partner, and in return it is constantly making him aware of it’s presence and requires constant maintenance and care.  Just like a penis.

Why would you drive one of these?  Oh yes, because it means your THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE UNIVERSE and that you don’t have to look out for things like, oh, say A PUSHBIKE COMING DOWN THE INSIDE LANE OF THE ROAD WHEN YOU PULL IN TO A DRIVEWAY.

In other news, I’m currently off work sick with a concussion.  I also have some minor abrasions and pretty bad bruising to both legs and my shoulder.  This has given me a good opportunity to catch up on some sleep, some XboX and hopefully today, some Uni work (we’ll see how I feel at midday).   At first it wasn’t too bad, but it’s been getting progressively worse as the days wear on.  The worst thing, however, was that I had to go to a doctor who wasn’t mine (couldn’t get in to see mine).  I have issues with other doctors.  It feels like cheating on your spouse.  Nervous going in to it, feeling guilty during it, and it ends up being ultimately unsatisfying because they don’t know your body.  I also had to get a refill of my valium script.  He asked what I take it for, and I said I get mild, infrequent panic attacks when I’m in large crowds or stressful situations.  His sollution?  “Don’t get the valium, even though it really works, even to the point where often the panic attack will subside just by knowing it’s in your bag, try ZOLOFT!”.  This immediately followed the conversation where the words “I’ll never go back on Zoloft, it was horrible when I was on it, and it was almost impossible to get off it; it didn’t work and it made me worse” were mentioned.  Apparently, the best sollution to a panic attack every few months is to take a drug that will leave me emotionally anethitised ALL THE FREAKING TIME.  “But it makes you not care about the little things”.  Yeah, but when the little things are things like “getting out of bed in the morning”, not caring about the little things can have major impacts on your life.

So the moral to this story?  Don’t cheat on your parnter, and if you drive a Porsche Cayenne or a BMW X5, I want to punch you in the face.

P.S:  Yes, I’m hurt, but not as hurt as that mans penis.

Tonight I got home for the first time after moving into my new place to find myself with an entire evening at home to myself. So I decided that being nearly April and me not having laid down a single beat all year, it was time to finally pull my finger out and work on some tunes. Before I could get started though I needed to tidy up my desk and plug everything in and arrange all my gear so I could work without any hassles – I’m the kind of person who hates working in a messy environment, and anyone who’s tried to get creative with a crowded or poorly laid out work space knows how much of a hinderance it can be.

So I’ve got my laptop on the desk. I plug in my external flatscreen to give me the extra screen real estate you need when you’re dealing with a million windows in a sequencer. Next the USB sound interface, then the midi controller, the external hard drive and mouse. Before I’ve even started I’ve got 5 things plugged into my computer and cables running everywhere – even the mouse which is wireless has to have a receiver plugged in. Add to that my speakers and the ADSL modem, and its a struggle to maintain any clear space on the desk, and my desk is pretty damn big.

It doesn’t stop there however, under the desk there is a rats nest of power cables. For every device on my desk, there are 2 which don’t require external power. the midi controller and sound module. Even the receiver for the mouse, which is also plugged in via USB, needs external power.

So after an hour or so of fighting with cables, I’m left wondering how much longer must we put up with this madness? Anyone who’s an electronic producer no doubt has experienced this same frustration, but these days its a problem for just about everyone. We’re constantly courted by companies trying to sell us more gadgets and more toys and now days if you can’t connect your gadget to someone else’s you’ve got no product. Our work spaces and out living rooms are being invaded by an army of electronic devices and their twisting, tangling tentacles are making the spaces behind our TV units and our desks not just a messy pain in the ass but also an electrical safety hazard. I wonder as electronics manufacturers crank out their products if they ever stop to consider just how much of a mess they are making of our lives – many will say their products are there to make life easier or improve productivity, but if you have to fuck around plugging in 5 or 6 different things into your computer before you can use it, are they really?

Perhaps the most frustrating thing of all is that there are a number of technologies out there which we could be taking advantage of right now to reduce cable clutter… but no one has quite got it right yet. Wireless mice that you have to plug in? Sorry go back to design 101 buddy. Xbox with wireless controllers? Great, but why do i still need to plug it into the TV when we have high definition TV’s with digital receivers in them? Why do any of my input devices for my still need cables when we have things like bluetooth?

C’mon Sony, C’mon Apple, Logitech, and Roland. Get with the program, Cables are so last century.

No, DJ’s worst nightmare is not rocking up to a gig where there is no coke (well, unless your name is Jason Midro). A DJ’s worst nightmare is playing a shit set at a big party to a crowd of people who’ve never heard of you before.

Last weekend I played a set at Maitreya Festival. I don’t play out that often, despite having DJ’d for 7 or 8 years, and over the past couple of years I’ve hardly even bothered to practice because there just isn’t much thrill in playing by yourself. As a DJ with little experience outside the bedroom, playing at a big 3 day festival where the head liners are old school internationals like Etnica and Pleiadians can be a little intimidating, even if its only at 8pm on the Friday night when hardly anyone is there.

So I was a little nervous as I walked over to the stage on Friday evening and discovered that the DJ who was supposed to be before me hadn’t shown up, and in his place some random was playing minimal tech at like 110bpm. Aside from the obvious question of ‘who the fuck plays minimal tech?’, this is something of a problem for someone who was planning to play full on psytrance at about 145. Its not the kind of transition you can make without clearing the dance floor. The guy who was supposed to be on before me would have been closer to my style, but this guy, this guy presented me with a problem.

So I had to replan my whole set with about 15 mins to go. I figured I would just start out with some mellow trancey shit and build it up slowly. No big drama, people would go for that right?

Well it turns out this was the least of my concerns. Upon stepping up to the decks I discovered that the mixer was faulty – only one ear of the headphone jack worked. In your bedroom you might be able to cope with this, but every time I’ve ever played out the main thing I’ve had trouble with was being unable to hear the cue track clearly in my cans over the thump from the subwoofers. Now I’ve got Sony MVDR-700’s, as head phones go, they’ve got some of the best isolation available, but when one side is out they might as well be ipod ear buds.

So I played my first track and it rapidly became apparent that I wouldn’t be able to hear anything clearly. The realisation that chances of getting the mixer replaced were slim to none and I would just have to perservere filled me with a sense of dread. By 5 tracks into the set I wanted to get the hell out of there, my mixing was shit house and as I faded each new track in i shook my head at how terrible it sounded.

For a wonder tho, something of a crowd started to gather. I guess when yours is the only stage playing people will tollerate bad mixing. It also helps when you’re playing banging full on psytrance, its hard not to dance when something like that is on. I was worried people would think it was too much for Friday night but evidently not.

Then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the power cut out during the middle of a particularly popular track. So there I stood in the dark, with no idea what to do, and no sound crew or sparky’s in sight. One came running in about a minute and soon got the ball rolling again. “Play the same track”, came the cry from the crowd, so I did, but it didnt even get half way through before the power cut out again. “I guess this is a sign I should get off the decks”, I shouted, but the call came back for me to stay.

When the power came back on I decided not to chance it a third time and played a different track. I carried on, thinking I only had to endure to the end of my 90 minute set… except when that rolled around there was still no sign of the next DJ. Again, with no one to ask for help and unable to leave the decks, Ijust kept playing. Eventually someone I knew came up and I sent them to find a replacement for me. There was no way I was going to play another 90 minute set under thses conditions.

Well that was excatly what ended up happening. By the time they found someone to replace me it was 10 minutes til the next DJ was meant to be on. So I played the extra 90 minutes. 3 hours in total, easily the longest set I’ve ever had to play at a real gig. I was knackered by the end, and convinced I’d probably played the worst set of my life.

Not according to the crowd however. The dance floor was pretty  crowded when I walked off and all the people who I spoke to said I played a kranking set….

I dunno what the moral of this story is… except that if I can get thru that nightmare, I can probably get through any gig.

I’ve got quite a musical weekend ahead of me. Tonight I’m going out to see Raja Ram play, tho oddly its just me and one other friend going. Normally I would expect the whole crew to be out for a name like Raja, but the last gig we saw him at was at a terrible venue and I think that has left people a bit sour. Its also been said that he plays the same set every time. I don’t think thats quite true, but its not far off. That said, I don’t really see what the problem is with that necessarily – when people go to see Raja play they want to hear him drop a bunch of 1200 Mics and that is usually what he does. If you went out to see Simon Posford and he played nothing but Hallucinogen you wouldn’t complain, because you likely went to see him play his own music in the first place. I don’t really see what the difference is here. Well except perhaps that the old Godfather hasn’t released anything new for a while.

Tomorrow I’m off to play not one but two sets at a birthday doof in the bush. One old skool trance set using trusty old vinyl, then a full on psy set later in the night. The amusing thing is that the girl who’s birthday it is isn’t someone I really get along with, in fact you might say that our personalities clash rather badly. You might even say that we don’t really like each other. That’ll happen when you’re forced to live with someone for a year. Anyway, the point here is that DJ’s are a great big bunch of sluts and will pretty much play for anyone as long as they get the chance to play.

Happy Birthday Sarah

So I recently returned from a trip to Goa, a trip that turned out entirely differently than I imagined it would. You, like myself, might have anticipated that a trip to Goa would entail endless beach parties and Goa trance, but this year you would have been wrong. This year, after I had only been in Goa 2 days, the government announced a complete ban on beach parties from the 27th of December to the 5th of January. Not only that, but they put a curfew on music, no tunes after 10pm (it was 8pm for a couple of days). The cops even busted up a drumming circle on the beach one night.

The justification for this was ‘terrorist threats’, but the only info available on said threats was a warning from the Israeli government, who after the ban was announced responded by saying to expect 40000 less Israeli’s in Goa over the new years period. They were right, I hardly saw any Israeli’s the whole time I was there. Despite the recent terror attacks in Mumbai, I can’t help but wonder if the ban wasn’t a political move designed to drive the hippies out, because regardless of intent that was what it did.

Now, while I did get the feeling that perhaps some of the locals were a bit fed up with the hippies, not even they could deny that without them the Goan economy would crumble. The thing that draws people to Goa as an international destination is its reputation as a party spot, the birthplace of Goa trance. If you take that reason away the place really has very little to recommend it – its just another beach, except dirtier, with no surf, and further away from everywhere than many other, nicer beaches.

I believe this new years just gone I witnessed the death of Goa, without the music and the parties the place has lost its soul. A moment’s silence then, to mark the end of an era.

So the other day I was watching Californication and I was thinking to myself, that guy leads a pretty exciting life. Sure, his family is a mess and his career is flagging, but he drives a Porsche and gets a lot of pussy. My life has never been like that, but it did used to be a lot more exciting than it is now. I’ve got a whole pile of awesome stories just waiting to be made into a book, whenever I can motivate myself to actually fucking do it. Those stories all happened a while ago, its been a long time since I did anything so awesome it deserved a story.

This website is not nearly that awesome, but if it turns out the way I want it to, it might be some day. Its a small step on the road to doing something different. Partying every weekend is great, but when the parties are all the same, it gets a little tired. The Front has been a long time coming, simmering in the back of my mind waiting until my head was so full of mediocrity that it boiled over and kicked me into gear. I’m paying for the hosting, I might as well try and make something of this glorified file repository.

So, read my words and despair, because I am here to tell it like it is, and no one ever wants to hear that.