Hook-wriggled

Ho, gentle reader! I’ve been quiet for a while, but I haven’t forgotten you. In truth, I’ve had a few frustrating weeks of music, all my deeds going amiss and that. I suppose it’s to be expected after such a great run with new equipment, but it’s still a shock when there’s inspiration that won’t be captured.

The funds-drain of my hardware binge continues, and I’m adding even more hardware bits and bobs to my setup with each paycheck, and have even gathered old hardware bits around me, too - just to pad out the stockpile.

I now have the 404, the H2, my headphones, various cables, my Kaossilator and my iPod touch crammed as tight as a knot in your stomach into their little flight case, which I may add is “super cute”. I’ve taken to carrying it around the house whenever I leave a room, giving me the peculiar air of someone constantly off to boarding school, or Hogwarts or something. Anguaji: the hobo musician.

Oh! In addition to the flight case of sampling joy, I’ve finally got myself a decent drum controller - and what a controller! The MPD26. For the uninitiated, it’s a midi drum controller with the pads of an MPC 2500 and the note repeat/swing out of the MPC range. I was hovering about buying an MPC 500 (a tad overkill when combined with the 404), but I thought it might dilute my focus too much. So the controller with MPC bits was a great compromise for my time and funds. Plus - and I don’t say this lightly - the knob action is so smooth.

Mind you, I’ve been a little frustrated with the 404 for timing these last few weeks. I kept having issues with bpm looping and getting wound up, just triggering samples and wondering if I’d chosen the right path going down the sampling route, when some beat stretching functions are so easy in pure software. But using it this week, I’ve noticed I just need to spend more time with the start and end points of loops, really switching my listening ears on. I think I was unaware of doing this in the first weeks of using the machine because it was the first flush of a new novelty - all alien, you know?

I realise there’s a lot of tech talk in this post, so apologies, melodyphiles - if you want some real music news, I’m continuing to write mostly dorian-sounding open-ended stuff without realising it, but you’ll hear this lot when it’s finished - not like my funky soundcloud scrapbook of day to day drafts.

Hm. I think that’s it for now. I’ll edit in the latest snippet of trip hop I recorded earlier this week, when I’m at the Poot. Now, I think I’ll go tidy my desks and play the “let’s make everything fit” Tetris game of the bedroom-studio musician.

BRB.