Studio Pics

So it has been so long since I played a house show that it didn't even occur to me they wouldn't have little PA to use.  They have a bass amp.

So I got in touch with a friend of mine I've been playing with for years (but rarely play live with) and we're going to do a sort of quiet, maybe a bit Ash Ra Tempel -like space music extravaganza instead.  He'll be playing a small mridangam, a box tambora and a Yamaha PSS540, and I'll be playing this:

Still working with the other setup for future recording and livestreaming and maybe a future show, but not for this show.

What's the orange box in the middle?

Mutable Instruments Anushri I built back in 2013.  For all intents and purposes it's an SH-101 in a box (not really, but it can get pretty close and also do some stuff the 101 can't). I'm using the SQ-1 in 16 step mode with CV/Gate A controlling the pitch and gate and CV B modulating the filter cutoff so it tracks the notes, and then using the Anushri's weird semi-generative drum machine to make really minimal percussion stuff (not even beats really, they're too sparse to register as that).  Once I get it something good going I kind of alternate between guitar and tweaking the sequence and synth, with tape delay on everything all the time.  Really minimal.

Just got a text that my  friend's new Axoloti should arrive in time for him to make some kind of a patch to run his Portasound through, too.

The Space Echo is as picky as ever but I've got it working pretty well again after about an hour of tinkering and cleaning, I just need to stop being lazy about changing the felt.  It probably wouldn't hurt to have it professionally serviced some day, too, it was a complete mess when I got it back in 2009 (no way I could have afforded it otherwise, even back then, but some local guy couldn't get sound out of it because the heads were so out of alignment and the bias was so off and the pinch roller wasn't round anymore and it had a really old loop in it, so he sold it really cheap) and it's still not exactly in the best shape, but it still sounds great.  I've been using it a LOT again for the last 6 months or so.

holy crap. apologies for the size of the pics

It looks good. Makes me think about getting a tape recorder as well. You probably use it for mastering and summing the final mixes, right?

Sick vibes but I don't know where i'd put my wobbly legs.

  On 7/27/2018 at 3:43 AM, acid1 said:

Sick vibes but I don't know where i'd put my wobbly legs.

You should be sitting in full lotus position anyway to release all the IDMs from your chakras.

Nice Akai(?) reel to reel, I had that one (or a very similar model from the same line) for about a week in the late 2000s (found at a thrift shop for $10) and it seemed really cool but it had speed issues so I traded it for some records.  It's the one with glass heads, right?  Not completely glass, but the actual surface the heads pass over is glass or quartz or something rather than metal, right?

EDIT: I meant Teac.

It was the Akai that had the glass heads, but that's a Teac in the photo.  Never had one of those, although a couple of them came and went when I worked at the record shop in the 2000s.

  On 7/26/2018 at 5:49 AM, thawkins said:

It looks good. Makes me think about getting a tape recorder as well. You probably use it for mastering and summing the final mixes, right?

Thanks. It's fantastic for that, ya. I've been trying to be as creative with it as I can as well. I'm getting some good FX out of screwing around with the machine and the tape itself. You'll notice there is no mask for the tape bay. It came like that, but it allows me to easily mess with the tape while it's recording for some cool effects. For example, physically moving the whole tape around a bit in sync with the bpm allows for controlled tape drops. Lightly placing my fingers on the motors gives a slight warble to the sample, instantly aging the sound without damaging the actual tape. Stuff like that.

  On 7/27/2018 at 3:53 AM, thawkins said:

 

  On 7/27/2018 at 3:43 AM, acid1 said:

Sick vibes but I don't know where i'd put my wobbly legs.

 

You should be sitting in full lotus position anyway to release all the IDMs from your chakras.

 

It's more room than it looks, but I do need to stretch my legs often.

  On 7/27/2018 at 4:04 AM, RSP said:

Nice Akai(?) reel to reel, I had that one (or a very similar model from the same line) for about a week in the late 2000s (found at a thrift shop for $10) and it seemed really cool but it had speed issues so I traded it for some records.  It's the one with glass heads, right?  Not completely glass, but the actual surface the heads pass over is glass or quartz or something rather than metal, right?

 

EDIT: I meant Teac.

 

It was the Akai that had the glass heads, but that's a Teac in the photo.  Never had one of those, although a couple of them came and went when I worked at the record shop in the 2000s.

The R2R is a Sony TC-630 D, actually. I haven't been able to use it just yet as I don't have a power cable for it. It was given to me by a local music store along with another Sony R2R that doesn't work, but might just need a quick repair. I have an electrician/radio technician friend who might be able to help me fix it up and find a cable for the other. He's in his 80s, so I've been reluctant to bug him about it lately.

Edit: I'll have to double check, but I'm pretty sure the heads are just metal on it.

Oh cool, I don't know if I've seen one of those before.  I worked at a used record store for most of the 2000s and shopped at a few others so I've seen quite a few reel to reels and receivers and turntables and cassette decks and 8 track players and Elcaset recorders and old tube record lathes and things come and go, and that one looks familiar but I don't recall messing with any Sony reel to reels so maybe I just saw one at a shop someplace.

I'm pretty sure it was Akai that made the one with glass heads.  I had one for about a month (under $10 at a thrift shop with a box of a dozen unopened 7" reels of Sony tape from the early 70s).  Tried to record a show on it, the tape shed like you wouldn't believe, the belts started slipping, and I ended up trading it for some records.

You know, for the longest time I was a rebel about monitor placement. Sometimes I would just monitor on my guitar amp. But once I did the equilateral triangle thing, I became so much better at mixing. Raising them to ear level improved even more.

So, I highly recommend for anyone trying to improve.

I just looked at the manual for that Sony, have you tried the echo mode yet?  have you tried using it as a stereo ping-pong echo?  Using a reel to reel with a mixer that has two aux sends as a stereo echo sounds REALLY good, and any three head machine can do it.  The built in echo mode on that one makes normal echo easier to do but if you patch it with a mixer you can get fine control of the feedback amount on each channel separately PLUS do cross feedback for stereo effects, PLUS insert other effects into the feedback loops for each channel independently.

If you don't have a mixer with two aux sends I think you should still be able to set up ping pong or something similar by sending a mono signal into the left line input, using an insert cable to patch the left output of the headphone out to the right line input, and then patching both line outs to your mixer or DAW, setting the machine to monitor from tape rather than the inputs, and putting it into record.  It wouldn't exactly be proper ping pong delay but it would probably sound cool.  You should get one echo on the left and then one echo of that echo on the right.  No feedback or cross feedback that way but putting it into echo mode while it was patched like that would probably sound good.

I think that's the same model Polytrix has.

  On 8/4/2018 at 5:38 PM, 747Music said:

I haven't been able to use it just yet as I don't have a power cable for it. It was given to me by a local music store along with another Sony R2R that doesn't work, but might just need a quick repair.

:(

Once I get it working, I definitely want to test out everything you just mentioned though.

I'm going back to all hardware because it's more fun

Gonna study the rs7000 manual front to back, there's so much to learn.

After the hassle of writing to picture with MIDI and audio latency messing up the timing of my monitoring chain all afternoon yesterday, I'm really close to going back to 100% hardware again, too (rather than using hardware for sounds and tracking them in a DAW like I've been doing for a couple years).  Everything just happens faster and comes out better that way.

Small but fun

Neat!

Yeah nice

Very nice. What's that blue knobby thing there?

  On 8/26/2018 at 9:14 PM, psn said:

Cheers. Only familiar with the grey version.

  On 8/26/2018 at 9:49 PM, user said:

 

  On 8/26/2018 at 9:14 PM, psn said:

Cheers. Only familiar with the grey version.

So I never ended up using the live rig I posted before, I was going to debut it at a house show but they didn't have a PA, just some bass amps, so I ended up going a completely different route, threw together a duo with a friend, and now I've been playing out semi-regularly that way.

I've actually been playing out with a similar setup in a different duo opposite a modular synth, but for that one I swap out the x0xb0x and Tanzmaus for the Wasp clone.  I'm also using a couple of pedals in both duos, but I switch them out depending on which duo and what kind of show it is, and I don't usually practice with them at all so they aren't in the photo.  This setup is usually an Akai Intelliphase into a Zoom PD-01 distortion, the other one is a modded Crybaby into a BYOC Green Ringer clone and a point to point Germanium Fuzz Face that was the first piece of gear I built back in the mid 2000s.  And a tuner.

With this setup, the other guy is usually playing an Axoloti, a box tanpura and a big bar chime, in the other (that has played out more so far) I'm playing opposite a eurorack player.

Next show's in three weeks, if the recording comes out well I'll actually share some music here for a change, although it's pretty far from IDM.