Archive for the ‘Music making’ Category

Music wot I made.

I realised after my post yesterday that there is none of the music that I have made up on’t net. This was after the old trevs-shed got hacked by the Albanians. A painful memory that I am sure that we are all attempting to repress. So in the spirit of opening old wounds here are some of the bits of musical travesty that I have been involved in, including my latest – “Enjoy the silence”. The two solely by me are instrumentals, but the song that I am looking at at the moment may not be. Without further delay I give you: “The men in white coats”.

Enjoy the silence (Instru-Mental mix) by The Men in white coats

West End Girls by The Men in white coats

There is a story behind the next one, that is not maybe my proudest moment, but such is life. I used to frequent a place called B3ta/talk, an odd place on the internet that has had some truly lovely and funny people on there. Oh and Master of Turnips (This is an in joke, if you don’t understand this, be glad. No really.) Anyway one of the chaps on there called Hankster once had an issue with the loud and prolific sex noises that his neighbour made. One day he was egged on to record it, and I was duty bound to stick in a piece of music. It is rubbish, it was done deliberately quickly.

Neighbours having fun by The men in white coats.

Finally, and I can hear you all breathe a sigh of relief, is Bad Poetry. This was a collaboration one evening between Mr james Hart and myself. To explain it further the people mentioned in it belong to one http://ftlfm.ifaze.net/ which is an internet radio station that both of us have been involved in, in the past. Lots more about in the past of my blog if you are interested. Pop over and say hello sometime to them, they don’t get out much bless ‘em.

Bad poetry by t&j

This is a remix of the above track, that I made.  Draw your own conclusions.

Bad poetry (MIWC remix)

You can breathe now, it is all over. For now at least.

Now you see why I stick to comedy!

Love, hugs & kisses,

trev

My studio

I have a couple of new items in my “studio”, but of a grandiose term for the corner of my bedroom but such is life. One day, one day…

Where was I? Oh yes, my stuff. Here have a pic:

My stuffSo in there you can see my music making stuff and the new additions, let’s start with what I already had.

Korg Triton LE61. I have had this a good while now and it gets use as my master keyboard and also quite a lot of sounds.  Oddly thin piano sounds though.

Novation KS Rack – This is the rack/table top version of the KS4/5 which in themselves were basically expanded K stations. I am not going into too much depth here beyond that it is a capable virtual analogue synth. So capable I bought it in preference to a Korg MS2000.

Novation Bass station rack – This is one of my new toys, I have been hankering after a proper analogue synth again for ages. I was seriously considering the DSI Mopho or Prophet 08, but at just over a hundred quid the ‘Rack was a steal. It is quite limited in some ways, only a couple of waveforms for example and also monophonic but it produces some great noises. It is quite a thin nasal noise for a machine sold as a bass unit, but I have been filling out the bass with the KS and letting the ‘Rack do the analogue movement.

There is also my Behringer mixer, and a Behringer valve preamp, M audio 2×2 midisport interface, M audio Delta 44 soundcard, Epiphone guitar and a Behringer V amp as well.

There is one more bit of kit to come, I have ordered a Behringer multi FX unit mainly for the Bass station, but that is on back order as they have sold out. Soon!

Having it all set up properly has made a big difference to me, I have just finished my first complete track in literally years, a cover of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the silence” in a more laidback style than the original. It was made for a friend of mine who wants to sing over it, in the meantime I may stick the instrumental up here sometime soon.

In other news, I have thoughts about comedy but for now I shall keep them to myself. I need to be more productive, time will tell.

Sky.

Hello, sorry not to update this before but I am a busy little bunny at the moment. New NSD, more on this later, and a new PC to build soon. Tonight is a hectic riot of backing up files from the desktop PC to my network drive. Then when I get the bits I should be building ahoy! I am also getting a valve (tube for our American readers) preamp, so my mike should soon sound sweeter. My new PC should be much quieter too.

Anyway, NSD you say?

 
icon for podpress  Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Linkies for downloading are:

http://www.trevs-shed.net/divide/NSD-08-sky-96k.mp3

http://www.trevs-shed.net/divide/NSD-08-sky-192k.mp3

Flash is finally in there, with his erstwhile companion Lestrade. More to follow I feel. I am going to start work on the next one and my own Podcast, Flux. Work on both will start when shiny PC is finished.

L8ters t8ters.

Not terribly PC is it?

So, hey, it’s err been a while. I still love you and everything but I have been terribly busy. My first month as an examiner has been hard work, but I am really enjoying it. I am sure that will stop soon enough…

My desktop PC is dead dude, I mean really dead. I started getting the odd BSoD about two months ago, and assumed at the time that it was one of the two 80gb hard drives that I had in it. It was currently set up so that one was a system and programs drive, with the other holding all of my media and files. All good, so I took out one and swapped it with a 160gb drive that I had in the network case. Re-installed Windows and… It was worse, so I took out that 80gb drive and swapped it. Reinstalled Windows again and it was the same. (I had good reasons for believing that it was the hard drive.) It would appear that it is a problem with the either the PSU/motherboard/processor/graphics card/memory/a slight problem with the user. Either way I am going to have to gut it at some point soon and rebuild it.

I was planning a rebuild and upgrade later next year anyway, it may just mean that I have to do it earlier. Pity that I can’t afford it, oh well.

This does have one side effect, we have recorded most of the next podcast, and james is currently sourcing the SFX (audio effects for you non audio geeks out there), he uses real sounds, and has an admirable attitude to it. For example in a previous NSD we needed McDonalds ambience, he went and sat on his own in Maccy D’s with a coffee and an audio recording device, make of that what you will. :D We still have one thing to record, we did record it previously, but through my own stupidity I overwrote the file. Duh, but now we cannot record it. I will see if I can fix the PC, if not I will have to write a new opening that james can do on his own.

The other knock on effect is that I will not be able to do any FTL shows for a while, the laptop that I have is nowhere up to snuff for that kind of work. No music recording either. That’s the problem when you have lots of hobbies, but when they all revolve around one thing, when it goes you lose everything. :(

In non geek stuff, things are good, as I said my job is fun (mostly), I have some great friends, my cooker works (see previous entries – I think) and I am dancing, yes I am. Right now while I am typhkfgbksrhbg…

I am also getting exciting about writing again, although I haven’t actually done any, but as they always say at Christmas, it’s the thought that counts right?

Ta ra.

Would the real Paul McCartney please stand up?

Now, we have all heard the theories that Paul dies around the time of Sergeant Pepper. There are all sorts of conspiracies about it, and there always have been. This is one of the more interesting ones. I am not saying that I agree with it, far from it in fact. It does raise some interesting points though.

Paul really is dead

Worth a look, if only for the amount of work that has been put in.

Edit: Some of the other pages of the home page get very odd, and a bit creepy. Steer clear unless morbidly curious.

Music geekery and Doctor Who.

I am not a huge Doctor Who fan, I used to watch it when I was a kid, and now I watch it with mine. So that is good. Anyway as I am sure you are aware I am a keyboard geek, so whilst showing some old Doctor Who clips on Youtube to my daughter, I found this:

Bad Poetry

Back in the mists of, well February, james and I made this.

  • With added stuff. It is not my greatest work, but its different. james wanted me to point out that the lyrics came from presets on my Novation synth that we used to play the sequenced apreggiated riff.

Pack up your troubles…

Based on the page that I made the other day, showing how we make the NSD, I made:

A page with all of our kit on it, well not really. Alright then pedants, a page with a list of all our kit on it.

Hey you!

It’s been a while, sorry. I am a busy boy, I have a new job that I should hopefully start soon, but as always with me, even that couldn’t be simple could it? More on that another time.

  • I wanted to let you know that the next podcast, “Salvage” is almost finished, james is editing it out at the moment. Flash Ramsbottom, my latest creation has once again, miraculously failed to materialise… There will be some news on this quite soon, we are thinking of making it into a podcast on it’s own, as it has outgrown the NSD already. :D
  • Last thing, I love this and I hope that you might too:
  • http://www.robopop.tv/
  • Thanks, and see you lovely people later.

Machadaynu, machadaynu…

It really is “Look around you” isn’t it?

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