Blue Monday revealed!

It might not be a bad idea to have a seperate area for all of us tech-heads here to discuss and debate just why and how they got that bass drum sample on that particular song and why the Emulator II was so unreliable live they had to regularly hit it on the leg with a hammer to get it to load!

You see my point? Browsing a certain music-tech mag's site, I found this which casts more light on the various alchemies around the time of the GR live gigs and, in particular, how they got BM back on its feet live.

No sequencers used live anymore! Check out the final para for true vindication of certain imbibers at the Audley the other week and other places!

i read this article posted on this board before. it's really really good.

and yes - i totally agree there should be a technical subforum so we can chat about sequencers, keys, reason, logic, cubase, live 5.0, etc. and guitars, basses and melodicas too.

please nic?

Eric Wang wrote: i read this article posted on this board before. it's really really good.

and yes - i totally agree there should be a technical subforum so we can chat about sequencers, keys, reason, logic, cubase, live 5.0, etc. and guitars, basses and melodicas too.

please nic?

Excellent idea! All that tech. talk bores the tits off me... sorry to sound like a Luddite!

Techie forum get's my vote. Craigy, we'll leave you and the other guitarists/drummers/singers banging the rocks together in digital republic. :D

If we talk spotty into it tho, we'll need the Hooky's Bass FAQ (which I'll glady help with) pinned along with a thread called. "no, you will NOT find a voyetra8 on Ebay, the Morrises own them all"

there's more live on this tour than GR BTW, I've been taking a long look at Phil's recent rig, LOTS of it is wired for full data and sound.

BTW, I recently asserted that the Monomachine was plugged up for data and power and sound at either glasto or Hude. It wasn't Hyde, it only had a power lead, musta been glasto. And it's not a hire-in stunt keyboard or anythin, cos it's got ID tape all over it's outputs. Maybe IT and not the moron-o-scope was the real reason EGG died at Hyde?

Shit, I KNEW Steve and Gillian had all the Voyetras...probably stored in their kids' rooms and used as playtime coffee tables or similar.

My vote for techie dept as well.

Buy a copy of this lads.

Oh, sorry, forgot to mention, its a piss take about these guys who don't realise this show is just a show and think the important thing is the methods of communication and the engines that drive the space ship......anyway these aliens also have studied the show and.....unbelieveably geeky........saved by some kid who hasn't got a life who had studied the blueprints to an engine that never existed....communicated with other geeks via the internet....crashed into the hall where everyone was dressed as aliens, but they weren't. Everyone lived happily ever after.

Just buy and watch, it's great.

Yes galaxy quest is very funny, especially to a deprogrammed ex-trekker like me (seen an episode about a sick dog and woke up). But we're hardly obsessive fan-geeks. this stuff IS real it's how you REALLY make music, it's how NO do it and it's how I do it, and Re:Order and Digital and all those guys. Music, contrary to the beliefe of Dj's does not grow on trees on large black circles, people make it. Just as a guitarist has to know what the parts of the guitar are in order to annoy me with it, a non-neaderthal needs to know what a VCO or VCF is or what the hell SMPTE stands for.

New order made me what I am. the have sown the wind, now you poor fookers reap the whirlwid.

Top article.

But lads this is INTERESTING even if i don't UNDERSTAND it all.Keep it here and let us decide to read it or not.If you have a seperate FORUM again we may overlook it! WIRED FOR SOUND Cliff Rocket

If it's that much hassle just to reproduce blue monday live , no wonder they haven't 'dusted off' older songs!

Mind you, it's not like they have to do it themselves.

Slippery slope Mick! It's not far from "fuck, that's a nice noise, I wonder how they did that", to "I'm TELLING you the difference in the filters on the SH09 and the SH101 is DICKWHACKINGLY obvious!!!", and having nore cables than friends (not a comment on my life either!!, I have plenty of friend, but many many more cables).

BTW....Has anyone else noticed that 1/4" jack leads vanish when stored? Initially, Rich and I figured out they would descend to a lower dimension and reappear, wrapped and shiny back in the place we bought em from.

Shortly afterwards we found that our MIDI leads had been breeding, 6 of them had become 16!

we were just thinking about raising them en masse as a business, "Steve 'n' Riches free range MIDI leads", and pondering if a dog was needed for herding or whether one hammered member of the SNSS (next time we name a band, we gotta think what the abrieviations look like), on a quad would do.

Then the truth hit us......

The Jacks were not vanishing, they were TRANSFORMING in to MIDI leads.

From Hundreds, no really hundreds, all we have now is loads of midi leads.

blunt laser wrote: If it's that much hassle just to reproduce blue monday live , no wonder they haven't 'dusted off' older songs!

Mind you, it's not like they have to do it themselves.

See that's the thing....it's not, it's just that the record company want it all to sound more "PRO" and like the record ( yawn, if I want to hear a record, I put a record on, if I want to hear a gig....aw whats the point).

What should really happen, and would happen in any band that could be arsed and didn't have all sorts of idiotic baggage, is....

Switch on some machines make one go, dumba dumba dumba Make sure it can also go dumbaba dumbaba dumbaba Find a drum machine that loads samples (would take 3 seconds) Load some dmx samples ( they can have mine) Program the beat but beat with sequenced bassline add the meep meep meep noise for the start. Drop a choir sample in

Everything else is already hand played. Except the Vocoder, which sounds fucking moronic when it sings something different to the voice it's meant to be encoding (sometimes it;s a different fucking line!). You want a vocoder, plug one in FFS!

Sorted, ten minutes

Honestly even a DJ could get BM sequenced in a day. the ONLY part of it that is not imeadiately obvious is the fast voyetra arpreggiator running[1] in the background, but since A. it can't be heard, B. was never in any live versions until the new one and C. they WROTE it so it aint hard for them to know what it's doing.

[1] the barely pitched ( cos it's SO staccato), fast, ticking part that dovetails into the bassline.

"Even a DJ"

*walks off in huff*

Steve Campbell wrote: Slippery slope Mick! It's not far from "fuck, that's a nice noise, I wonder how they did that", to "I'm TELLING you the difference in the filters on the SH09 and the SH101 is DICKWHACKINGLY obvious!!!", and having nore cables than friends (not a comment on my life either!!, I have plenty of friend, but many many more cables).

BTW....Has anyone else noticed that 1/4" jack leads vanish when stored? Initially, Rich and I figured out they would descend to a lower dimension and reappear, wrapped and shiny back in the place we bought em from.

Shortly afterwards we found that our MIDI leads had been breeding, 6 of them had become 16!

we were just thinking about raising them en masse as a business, "Steve 'n' Riches free range MIDI leads", and pondering if a dog was needed for herding or whether one hammered member of the SNSS (next time we name a band, we gotta think what the abrieviations look like), on a quad would do.

Then the truth hit us......

The Jacks were not vanishing, they were TRANSFORMING in to MIDI leads.

From Hundreds, no really hundreds, all we have now is loads of midi leads.

Technology mode-switching is well known, all my spare RAM has become kettle leads, and an entire pallet of 3Com network cards turned itself into a box of Microsoft serial mice on me....

It's deeply bizarre and something that "techno-muggles" refuse to believe. Mate of mine used to put broken network cards in a big box. Not only did they breed, but 9 out of 10 worked when he trailed them out (usually for some dipshit mate who'd come to his lan party without a nic).

I think it's something that the likes of sight and sound or soundonsound (the BEST way to learn about machines is just to buy or download SoS and read it, it's terrifying at first, but once you learn SOME terms, it gets easier and easier), should cover in depth.

I've seen some wierd crap in my time..... My Casio CZ3000[1] once had a bottle of iron brew knocked into it, off it went. I couldn't get to the power connector at the wall end cos it was under the rest of the gear, and was too scared to go near the metal case, so I just left it. 3 days later there was a click, and it had come back on, and there was no evidence of any damage.

I have a Roland E 20. I nver use it, but I was re-recording 2 old songs, that I just COULDN'T find alternative sounds for on my newer gear. I got it out, and remembered with horror that it's screen was mad, and printed in something that looked like japanese, and that my songs needed the use of 2 MIDI parts that were switched off by default and could only be turned on with the screen. I growled, and tapped the screen agressively. It sprang into clear english, JUST long enough to set the 2 channels to ON and then went back to gibberish, after which NO anmount of violence would get it back on.

A mate of mine was videoing a gaelic footie match for the Beeb, and they had a dead camera. Some old boy Beeb chap says...."I see your problem, you're using coloured cables. Never use colured cables for long run video", everyone laughed, and the cable was replaced, with another coloured one....still fooked. FOUR cables were tried (the camera testing fine on it's own systems and local monitor), no joy. The fifth cable that was tried (mainly to shut up the Beeb guy who was by now getting on people's nerves), was black. A perfect picture appeared.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

[1] 97% of you are now thinking, dinky plinky kiddies keyboard, and the rest, who've met a CZ are making jealous noises hehehehehe.

Honestly even a DJ could get BM sequenced in a day.

Hmm...well, the gated Prophet took some time to get right (at least for me). And you know, not all DJs are musically talented at the level of actually getting the right notes in there...I know a lot of DJs who's like that. Might seem strange to some of us, but that is how it is.

BTW....Has anyone else noticed that 1/4" jack leads vanish when stored?

Ooh, yes...but I'm finally fixing that now (they will be permanently HAMMERED into my patchbays and hidden below the floor). I guess next time they disappear ('cos they will, won't they?) they will take the bays with them.

97% of you are now thinking, dinky plinky kiddies keyboard, and the rest, who've met a CZ are making jealous noises hehehehehe.

Eeh...not really making the noises, mate...sorry! I had the 5000 (linear 1-track seq onboard if I remember correctly...) and I really don't miss it at all. No, can't think of any of my other synths that come close to that piece of plastic in terms of sound. But hey, run it through a vintage compressor, some distpedal, analog chorus and the space echo and it will surely work great in a mix...the source is not as important nowadays as it was in my opinion (my latest track was just the Hypersonic VSTi run through good outboard). ;)

Steve Campbell wrote: (usually for some dipshit mate who'd come to his lan party without a nic).

Bring your own rope? :D

Steve Campbell wrote: (usually for some dipshit mate who'd come to his lan party without a nic).

Bring your own rope? :D