Category: Music

Music is a huge part of my life so it’s almost certain that this category will have a lot of stuff in it.

A cassette magazine from a long time ago

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SFX Cassette

When this first came out I can remember buying it. It was such an exciting idea. A magazine that you could listen to! It was a revelation. I didn’t buy many of them. It wasn’t cheap, or at least I didn’t really have the money back then. But I’m pretty sure I bought a few of them.

Sadly, as they were on tape, I eventually recorded over them, and they’ve been lost along the way. So one day I had a look for them on eBay, and of course, there were quite a few available. After a while I’ve got hold of one of the ones I wanted.

So far I haven’t played this, I’m half expecting it to jam up the mechanism, and perhaps I won’t actually even try. We’ll see.

No more littleBits

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this

Last year I decided that I wasn’t doing anything interesting with my collection of littleBits components and modules, so I finally gave them up and sold them. I hope that they’ve all gone to good homes.

They were fun, and very useful at times. I did enjoy them, but I think I had got to a point where I’d stopped doing anything creative with them.

Delia Derbyshire

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Electronic Sound and Delia Derbyshire

This is the latest edition of Electronic Sound magazine. It comes with a copy of her version of the Doctor Who theme, presented on some very nice looking yellow vinyl. I’m not sure why it’s yellow, but it is.

Now I’ve played it. It’s pretty good. Great to hear that track again. Such a milestone in electronic music history. Such a hugely creative endeavor. Just so impressive.

I haven’t read the magazine as yet, but when I do I might post a few thoughts on their take on Delia. I’m not committing to it right now. We’ll see.

The The at 40

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In some ways I just can’t believe that The The have been around for 40 years. It’s strange, it’s bizarre, but it’s true.

Their music has been an important part of my life for a long time. Perhaps not 40 years, but probably for most of that. The most important album from my perspective being ‘Soul Mining’. I still listen to parts of that quite regularly.

I’m looking forward to new stuff from The The and hopefully some re-releases as well.

Mute Synth 4.0

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I’ve been a fan of the Mute Synth from Dirty Electronics since the very first one. I’ve got 3 now, Mute Synth 1, Mute Synth 2.0, and now the 4.0. It’s certainly the most complex of the Mute range, and, after a very brief play I think it has some very interesting possibilities.

I’m also interested to see how it can work with Mute Synth 2.0. Hopefully I’ll get to experiment with that in the not too distant future.

KDJ-One

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I backed this device on Kickstarter a long time ago, I mean a really long time ago. It was really late, and, to be honest, I’d wondered if it would ever arrive, but it did, and here it is.

But it’s here, and it works. It is actually better sounding than I expected it be. The keys are actually velocity sensitive and the touch screen is huge. I’m still getting to grips with it, and I think that’ll probably take me some time.

In some ways it reminds me of an updated Yamaha QY type device, which is, in my opinion quite a good thing. The other really interesting thing about the KDJ-One is that it has a whole bunch of apps that go with it. There’s a macOS app, an iOS app, and an Android app too. So far I haven’t found a way to get everything working together, but that’s on my personal roadmap.

Goodbye Allihoopa

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https://videopress.com/v/VFOmPVdi?preloadContent=metadata

It’s a great shame that Allihoopa has now gone dark. It was a great service. I made some good use of it, but not as much as I would’ve liked. I guess that’s a bit of a reminder for me. That is just the way it goes of course.

So I thought I’d grab all of my content from the site before it went down. I rendered all of my tracks to video, and then I added them to a 1 second video mash up. So here’s one minute and 20 seconds of tracks I uploaded to Allihoopa.

A bit more about using Kastle synths live

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I thought I’d post a little more about the set up for the gig I played at Cafe Oto earlier in the week. I thought it might be useful or interesting to see the devices I used.

Originally, when Robyn asked me to do this, I thought I would use these plus an Olegtron 4060 (MK I). In the end the Olegtron was too complex and difficult to change patches with any speed.

So ended up with the 2 Kastle synths, a 1.0 and a 1.5. Actually the mix of the two is really good and works very well. Patching across the two devices makes for some very interesting possibilities.

What I’ve realised is that I really need a simpler way to load patches. Not physically of course, but a way to record patches. I thought that taking pictures would help, and it did, but it wasn’t the easiest way to recreate a patch. My next thoughts were to write down the patched information. That was my solution for the Cafe Oto gig, and it worked ok. But only ok.

So now I think I’m going to have to create my own patch sheets for the Kastle 1.0/1.5, and, when I do, I will post some templates here.

Robyn’s Rocket at Cafe Oto

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On Wednesday I had the rare privilege of playing live at Cafe Oto with the amazingly talented Robyn. She is a gifted trumpet player and had a whole night of acts at Cafe Oto. I’ve been there many times and seen some amazing artists, so to play there myself was incredible.

It was a really great night too. Robyn was, of course, amazing. My small part was to bring some improvised electronics in the form of a couple of Bastl Instruments Kastle synths. To be precise a 1.0 and a new 1.5 Kastle. These little synths are amazing and incredibly versatile. There’s so much you can do with them.

Hopefully I’ll be able to get some of the footage and sound from the gig. When I do, I’ll be sharing that.