Last night ALL the audio on my computer, from Ableton Live, to iTunes, to the internet, was all pitched and slowed down about a step. It was inexplicable and freaking me the hell out. After some panicked investigation, I found my MOTU 828mkii Word Clock out of sync with my external clock, and it was playing 48kHz synced to 44.1kHz.

I’m not sure how it got set that way, but I fixed it by changing the Sample Rate from 48kHz to 44 in the MOTU Audio Setup software.

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I’ve decided to take a different approach with the Chicago audio map. While I like the ideal of recording whole streets, all those recordings began sounding the same, with cars at the beginning and end of blocks, various other doppler effects, the whup-whup of walking for 3-4 minutes. So I’m sitting down and recording one still minute or so of the audio at places in which I find myself. I think it well lead to some more interesting distinctions between the recordings.

I’m kicking off this “still” set with a street festival in Roscoe Village.

View Chicago Audio Map in a larger map

I’m sure a lot of people are wondering if I’m still making music. I very much am, but it’s a slow process putting a whole album together. When I started on it, three years ago now, CD albums were still pretty much what a musician shot for. But I don’t write songs that fast. About a year into it, the whole industry seemed to change, and the concept of the CD album melted away, dissipated, unraveled. It seemed like smaller online EPs and singles were necessary to keep your music current and accessible. Not to mention that live performances seem almost essential now for generating buzz, and Bounte has never been much of a live project.

But I was left with this whole album project in mind and in process. So I kept at it, writing demos, and filing them away, took hiatuses for getting married and honeymoon, developing Beatserv and for playing with The Atomica Project, took some trips around the country. This year I became a homeowner and moved around town, and helped some friends produce their music. By this time, all the writing was done, but 11 songs still needed final vocal recording and mixing, and that all takes time as well.

Right now 2 or 3 songs are completely done, ready for consumption, and I’m deciding what to do with the whole pile of work. Do I share a couple tracks now to keep everyone interested? Do I reserve it all for a come-out-of-nowhere surprise attack? Do I release the whole thing myself? Do I shop around for record labels? Any ideas?

Not from me though. My friend Pete’s band, Number Nine, has been playing so hard that they blew up their bass amp. So he called me up and asked if they could try blowing up mine. So I said, sure, good luck! I installed a 15″ Eminence Legend speaker in my GK combo, so it’s twice as loud, twice as heavy, and there’s no way the amp can pump enough power through the speaker to blow it or overdrive and fry the electronics. There are definitely better amps out there, but this has one hell of a speaker.

I was going to invest in some acoustic treatment for my studio, but I’ll have to maintain my car instead. My studio has some odd bass rumbling, so I’ll need some bass traps, but my car had some odd rumbling in the brakes. I figure the priority is in stopping the car before stopping the bass.

Holy cow, does it ever get hot up here. My studio is basically in an attic with little circulation. I was constantly opening and closing the door and window, and putting a window fan in and out, turning the ceiling fan on and off. It became especially annoying during recording. I got tired of working in 90 degree temps all the time, so I got an AC unit to boost our central air.

This portable AC I got looks incredibly boring, but it cools the room like the breath of ancient gods. Can’t say it’s an arctic blast, but it makes the room pleasant. The best part is the remote control, so I can flick it on and off when doing a vocal take.

Beatserv has a large collection of samples taken from vintage drum machines (extracted and sent to us from Matt Walker, I think). We’ve been toying with ideas on what to do with them for a while now, and I’ve made a couple beats with them, but I finally started a project that’s fun, useful, educational, and simple at its core.

I’m creating drum kits in Ableton Live that follow the source hardware, but remain useful in a DAW. I’m not a gear slut, so I’m seriously not attached to any usability quirks the old hardware has. In full disclosure, I never have actually used any of the old hardware, so this project involves a fair amount of research on my part. At first it may seem ridiculous that I’m emulating hardware I’ve never used, but I understand the need for sound generation and usability above nostalgia. Think of it like running the hardware through a Beatserv filter. Each of the kits has useful dials for compression, reverb, EQ scale, more extensive ADSR and other settings that the original units often didn’t (Don’t worry, I’m retaining as much vintage character as I can stomach, with controls like “Snappy” and “Accent”). I’m also adding a “motion” dial to each kit, which is a chain of effects unique to each rack that adds a little extra Beatserv spice.

Part of the fun is that the whole project is currently in Ableton Live, and only uses Live effects and features. In the past, our kits have started in NI Battery and moved to Live. Those massive kits don’t quite follow the agile model that I find most useful about Live’s Drum Rack. So these new retro kits will be small and interchangable. Want a 909 kick in your DR55? Just drag and drop it. Want to switch out the whole kit on the fly? Just select a different preset.

So whether or not the kits are translatable to Battery is an unknown at this point, which could certainly affect the saleability of the set. But Live users will love them.  Also, the whole thing doesn’t necessarily follow the whole Beatserv mission of new creativity, although the added features in each kit are pretty slick. Perhaps we’ll have an addition to the Beatserv free series? Well, it’s a lot of work, so we’ll see.

Alan studying lyrics during the final vocal sessions

We recently recorded the final vocals for Alan Ruffin’s demo, or album, or whatever it is. I’ve been working to incorporate those into the 8 tracks we’ve produced.

Alan’s the kind of musician that doesn’t really care to name his songs before he’s done (presumably because all the important info is already inside the song) but he definitely has a plan for marketing and circulating his work. He has good connections with people, and by that I mean not only with key individuals, but those relationships are good quality. It’s probably because Alan is a good-natured friendly guy; it just feels pleasant to be around him. He’ll be handing out his demo at his Radio Head shows too, which have gathered a sizable following.

We’ll be finishing it up soon, but looks like he’s already created a Facebook page for the project, so you can peek ahead.

Today I downloaded The Chemical Brothers new album, Further. In these days of being able to preview entire albums before purchasing, it’s a no-brainer that I like it. But my reason for doing so is that the album is a reminder of the epic electronic music I love (not too surprising, since it’s the Chemical Brothers), but don’t often find done well. Further even has musical motifs that are exactly like some favorite old Orbital lines. The “album” aspect of Further is also intriguing, even critical. I wouldn’t say there are any smashing singles here, but taken as a whole the collection is a great piece of work.

1969 Martin 016-NY

I’m borrowing a very nice guitar that’s made for finger style and sounds stunning when played by someone with guitar skills, so I figured I should learn how to use it properly. So I took a finger picking guitar workshop this weekend at the Old Town School of Folk Music. What better place to learn how to play a folk guitar? It’s a friendly and relaxed atmosphere there. The workshop leader, Charles Kim, is a very fine teacher who seems to enjoy playing and teaching.  While I learn most things just fine on my own, it’s nice to have some foundations to build off of. At least I know how some of that jangly contrapuntal guitar music is made now. Actually, for someone like me with a more linear music sense, the finger style is a comfortable concept. And as a bass player, the finger movements are already somewhat familiar.

I don’t know that I’ll include the style in any songs, but it is a new tool in the toolbox. I’ll keep practicing the couple patterns I learned and see how it goes.