Pre

I’ve bene pretty busy these last weeks - I’ve tried to keep posting at least photographic evidence of my adventures. I’ve been recording guitar bits, mixing down Album A (so soon to be released that I get a tight clutch every time I think about it), lusting after samplers, receiving samplers, still lusting after samplers after acquisition of same as time prevents tinkering… I guess the day job counts, too, of course - at least 7 hours a day I develop the web. All of it. It’s a heady task.

I’m currently preparing for a live set on Saturday - just a small private bash (thank god) at which I’ll be trying to play my tracks in an interesting fashion for @Synoiz’s BD. There’s so many ways to play live in Ableton that it’s completely overwhelming. I started prep at the weekend, though the ep mixing took a day longer than expected and my schedule jiggered up. I’m still just starting the prep now - my god, what a task - and have only the faintest idea what I’m doing now, or on Saturday night. 

To get technical for a moment, I’ve been oogling over Nosaj Thing and Baths performances for a good while now, and joining the community in trying to fathom out just how they set up their performances. Take NT: He’s clearly playing the tracks, stems and clips in a semi-live fashion, though I suspect a lot may have a lot of follow-on actions, and using live fx, but he doesn’t seem to use a lot of channels doing it, and can run pretty smoothly off one midi controller. 

I often “play” tracks via clips when I’m recording a song - so the arrangement is like an extra instrument - and I’d be comfortable doing this entirely (it’s sort of how I imagined doing it anyhow) but I’ve ran into some structure problems: 

1) if I slice allll the song stems into usable mini clips, and drop them into one big project for the whole set, how do I condense the channels to - like - 8 For each song? Some of these are pretty big arrangements. 

2) if I play the songs individually, there’s a gap while I load the new project file. It also sort of complicates things a bit, doesn’t it?

3) BUT if it’s one big set, how do I assign so many live effects for each individual song? 

I’m trying to suppress a kind of panicky feeling about the whole thing, but actually, it’s coming together in my head not too bad - following @clementshawes godly advice on all things midi and routing, and also doing the most obscene amount of digging online for inspiration, tips and advice. 

Still, I think it’s kind of exciting. In a dizzying way. I’ll report more the closer it gets.

— Beth x

Valley

Valley by anguaji

I really couldn’t remember if I’d posted this or not, so here it is - it was the very very first thing I made with the 404. It’s a dobro! And some noises I recorded.

Clouds | anguaji

Source: Soundcloud

This is my first attempt at throwing a bunch of samples together into some sort of order on the sampler and then recording it like a song, so don’t judge it too harshly.

OMG recording is a pain. I mean, so many takes. What is it with “recording” that you mess up nearly every time as soon as the red light’s on? Freaky stuff.

Anyway. I suppose this is all good for the nerves.

I’m still getting to grips with what I can do with the 404 and the effects processing and whatnot -the filtered “lead” melody is something I wanted to work into a track since my first week with the machine, so I felt I should put it somewhere. It feels really natural to be working in this format again -in audio and recording, I mean. It forces you to be obsessive and passionate and all that. By obsessive, I mean “this is take 30” obsessive.

It’s a shorty as I only structured a track around it thinking three minutes of someone tweaking a filter knob might not be exciting listening.

I spent a day at the aquarium yesterday with dear friend @notlikeparis and this is the shenanigans we got up to. The track is a demo in progress, “In A Chaotic Space” which you can find either somewhere in this blog or on my Soundcloud page - it’s unfinished, but fit the video very nicely.

#korginator #noodle - Wet Tuesday | anguaji

Today started out adorably sunny. Now it smells of rain. Go figure.

…so I dusted off the Kaossilator.