the watmm GAS thread

  On 4/22/2018 at 5:37 AM, messiaen said:

im done. im moving to portugal in 2019, i need to save up 750 a month until then as a goal so that i can live in portugal without a job for 6-9 months comfortably. i asked my local synth dealer to politely ban me until at least 2019. ive got 2 modern elektrons, 1800 worth of analogue rack compressors + preamps, a £9000 modular, £1500 of eventide effect pedals, a £1600 yamaha digital piano, and a super nice set of genelecs. there is absolutely no equipment i still need to make any variation of electronic music already in existence.  

 

i need to quit my synth addiction like i have quit cigarettes, and am working on alcohol aswell. getting self banned from rubadub helps, but ive also left every synth group on facebook. 

godspeed.

  On 4/18/2018 at 2:25 AM, Polymershapes said:

Oh god I miss this app. It was like a love letter to the TX81Z. Need a Windows machine to run this; won't be the same in Wine.

  On 4/22/2018 at 5:37 AM, messiaen said:

im done. im moving to portugal in 2019, i need to save up 750 a month until then as a goal so that i can live in portugal without a job for 6-9 months comfortably.

why are you coming here? vacations? future job? drop me a line when you arrive.

That mystery Yamaha is in a car on its way across town right now. Finally! Hopefully it will be more exciting than a DX27.

The guy who's getting rid of it used to play out with it in the 80s or early 90s and is a Kraftwerk fan, so I'm pretty confident it won't be a shitty auto-accompaniment type thing.

EDIT: it's a DX27.  A really, really beat up DX27.  There's rust all over it, the chassis has a big dent around the screen so it's kind of tilted to the side, the pitch and mod wheels are sort of mashed so that they drag against the front plate, and it generally looks destroyed.  But I'll be damned if every single thing on it doesn't work perfectly, even the battery is still good. The volume fader isn't even scratchy, even though it looks like that end of it was under a drippy pipe for years. Weirdly enough, half the buttons have X marks in pencil above them that I assumed were indicating which ones were broken but they all work fine, so maybe he marked his favorite patches or something.

I'll have to give it a good cleaning and bend back the bent parts of the chassis and replace the battery but it sounds great.

Not exactly an exciting synth but I'll definitely hang on to it.

The picture really doesn't do justice to how trashed this thing is.

DX keyboards are indestructible.

EDIT: these old things are such a pleasure to work on, hardly anything new is built to be serviced so easily.  Two hours and I've already completely striped it, washed all the buttons, bent all the damaged metal parts back in to shape, cleaned and lubricated all the controls, fit it with a battery clip and a new battery, and Dremeled all the rust off.  Even took apart the plastic end pieces and washed them, all I have to do is let them dry, put it back together, and clean between the keys and it'll be functionally almost like new.  Still beat up on the outside, but fantastic shape inside.

It took me almost that long just to put a new key into a 2000s Korg a couple years ago.

  On 4/22/2018 at 1:00 PM, THIS IS MICHAEL JACKSON said:

 

  On 4/22/2018 at 5:37 AM, messiaen said:

im done. im moving to portugal in 2019, i need to save up 750 a month until then as a goal so that i can live in portugal without a job for 6-9 months comfortably.

why are you coming here? vacations? future job? drop me a line when you arrive.

 

just a really nice long, healthy vacation. gonna practice the piano, cycle for hours a day, just soak up another country and sober up for a while. got some friends already living out there aswell. im not completely sure where i am actually moving to yet, but i was planning on just paying 6 months rent in advance for a flat and then taking it from there. 

that's a really good idea.. I've been getting increasingly frustrated with my job lately and the idea of just saving up a bunch of money and quitting for 6 months (then returning as a freelancer if I can't get work elsewhere) is rather appealing.

I pulled the trigger on the LZX Vidiot. Doesn't ship til June, though 

That thing looks very cool, and is reminding me I rally need to finish building my 3trinsRGB+1c soon.  Had all the resistors populated and soldered and then moved and haven't really been building much sine then until recently.

Part of the issue is that I have to decide if I want to build it stock or break the little pin patch thing to a bunch of banana jacks. 

Had to uninstall the Reverb app from my phone.  GAS strikes again.

Right before I did, I picked up a cheap 2nd hand Boss OC-3 super octave!

Self-imposed ban until at least my birthday (end of july) now fully in effect.

I'm fully back on board the "if I want it I have to build it" wagon.

Good luck in rehab everyone!

I also decided not to GAS for anything bigger than a couple of cable adapters for the time being, as I just spent some time listening to old works in progress and there's seriously nothing physical missing from anything, I just have to buckle up and make things work with the gear that I have.

image_of_confident_baby.jpg

Yeah, I'm at the point where I can combine any two or three things from my setup and get interesting results..

Still got a healthy (lol) GAS list though:

OT mk2 for no reason other than it being a quality upgrade from my aging mk1

OP-Z

Introductory Eurorack setup of Clouds, Maths, Morphagene and maybe an Ornament & Crime to go with my 0-coast (longterm goal)

and now that fkn Medusa

But like I said, none of this is "urgent" so I'm happy combining various bits of my setup for the time being. Also I just scored a BCR2000 for $40 (slight aesthetic damage and missing the power switch but other than that works perfectly) so I'm gonna spend a while building some super generative Nord Modular patch in order to hopefully get away with playing full live sets from it it (and maybe my Midiverb III or Virtualizer Pro for some lushness)..

  On 5/4/2018 at 7:28 AM, modey said:

Still got a healthy (lol) GAS list though:

OT mk2 for no reason other than it being a quality upgrade from my aging mk1

OP-Z

Introductory Eurorack setup of Clouds, Maths, Morphagene and maybe an Ornament & Crime to go with my 0-coast (longterm goal)

and now that fkn Medusa

That list is basically:

Want to buy some acid

Also some weed

Oh and I liked those pills the doc once gave me for a headache so I guess I'll try out this meth thing.

My GAS news is that I just wrote like 5 lines of code to my Live remote script and now I've got per track EQs (or whatever first 4 params of the first device of the track) automapped to my Livid Code. It turned out to be easier than I thought.

lol yeah pretty much. GAS for me has become less about what I "need" and more about what looks cool or will get me views on youtube.

also still want a midi fighter twister despite just getting the bcr..

  On 5/4/2018 at 9:26 AM, modey said:

lol yeah pretty much. GAS for me has become less about what I "need" and more about what looks cool or will get me views on youtube.

 

also still want a midi fighter twister despite just getting the bcr..

I would gas for the twister as well if I had not got the Livid Code.

But reading the rest of your post... I’m sorry but it seems you have sold out. :)

haha yeah kinda. It'd be more selling out if I actually made money from it.

But I have fun doing it so who cares :D

You seem enviably productive so I think you’re doing nothing wrong really. After all it’s only human to have GAS. :)

https://youtu.be/LOYsIKtDBt0

Haven’t looked up any info on this Moogfest exclusive but that video is rrreeeeaaallllllllllllllyyyyy quite interesting.

Where do you guys buy the time generators to play around with all these toys? All you guys semi-unemployed or what?

I was feeling some GAS for some basic LZX video synthesis modules but the fact that I asked their support a couple of basic questions that I would need to have answered before I could actually buy anything from them (because the answers would determine what modules I would need and what sort of rack I'd need to build) and they didn't even acknowledge that I'd contacted them, much less give me any response (it's been 2 weeks now, they're definitely not going to reply) turned me off of it - there's being a small company that has limited resources for support and then there's just not giving a shit about developing any kind of dialogue with a potential customer at all, and the latter is not a good sign.  Especially since LZX isn't THAT small an operation.

Which is for the best, the last thing I need is to get in to something like that with how tight my income is these days.

  On 5/22/2018 at 6:08 PM, Djeroek said:

All you guys semi-unemployed or what?

I can't speak for anyone else but in my case yes, I'm not getting full time work all year round these days, since my last audio job laid everyone off.  I have seasonal editing work and that lets me spend a few  hundred dollars on parts or a new used instrument a couple times a year, and the rest of the time I have a lot of free time and spend most of it on this stuff instead of going out and socializing like a normal person.

Back when I was working 40-60 hours a week I was also playing in at least one band at any given time and that made it a lot easier to balance music with other stuff, because bands are a lot easier and less time consuming than working solo, plus you don't have to balance social life with music so much because practicing, playing shows and hanging out with your friends/going out and meeting new people are all part of the same thing, there's no conflict there like there is when you need to hole up in a dungeon to work on music.  But I got sick of lugging equipment around all the time and I never managed to find a drummer who I liked as a person AND who had good musical taste AND who was competent, so that got frustrating too.  So I quit playing in bands back in 2013, hoarded a bunch of cheap synths, and then we all got laid off and suddenly my second job was my main job so I didn't have the money to go out and do stuff as much but I had time and synthesizers.  I got a bunch of extra freelance work in the winter of 2016/17 and used a chunk of that money to get some good monitor speakers and an octatrack, but other than that it's been pretty much laying low, spending as little as possible in general, and building or trading for equipment if I want it.

My workload is about 15-30 hours per week on site and 5-10 from home most of the time, but sometimes that will be broken up in to weird chunks where I'll be working 6 or 7 days a week for a while but only a few hours scattered throughout any given day, and that can make it hard to sit down and really work on anything.

no time, no life, no sleep = no music :( 

  On 5/22/2018 at 6:08 PM, Djeroek said:

Where do you guys buy the time generators to play around with all these toys? All you guys semi-unemployed or what?

Similarly to RSP’s situation, I work about 7 to 8 months of the year with some work coming in here and there during the Spring and Summer. I make less money than I did 2 years ago, but fortunately it still covers everything. Barely. I’ve taken the opportunity to work on music and educating myself.

As a blessing/curse, I can’t afford much in gear, so I’ve concentrated on getting the most out of I can out of what I have. I had a bit of money saved up and considered getting a RYTM, but something came up financially. It’s a little disappointing, but I’m kinda glad to have to dig deeper with my modest setup.

I'm still kicking myself for not getting an Akai S-1000 back in 2015 when I was thinking about it.  I was seeing them in good shape for around $250 regularly and I had the money that summer. 

I just got this season's editing check this afternoon, took to eBay and the only s-1000 on there now is over $900.

Nope.

  On 5/23/2018 at 12:16 AM, Stickfigger said:

 

  On 5/22/2018 at 6:08 PM, Djeroek said:

Where do you guys buy the time generators to play around with all these toys? All you guys semi-unemployed or what?

Between 8 and 1130pm weekdays

 

Same, I also have a band where I play the drums but other than that I actually have no social life. This is Japan so it's OK.