Zen and the Art of Teamaking
Hello world,
I’m blogging to you from my ‘office’ (below) where I’m performing the riveting task of bouncing about 2 hours of MIDI piano data into the audio so preferred by humans. Which means sitting here listening to the stuff I played today on the piano, again…. zzzzzzz. So that’s why the keyboard is on it’s side. The sofa looks terrible doesn’t it? I made that in the summer… it’s actually an amazing thing, but not very photogenic. I might showcase it next time I blog. hah.
(click for large)
We recorded a ‘real’ version of Maniac today, spurred on by all your overwhelming comments on the scrappy version. It’s good, I think. Also been experimenting with sample triggering and looping ‘live’ recently and, rather than parting with large sums of money for midi pedals, I thought I’d make some:
It’s basically just a set of 6 switches from an old amp, and I did some jigging around and hooked them up to a cheap game controller which sends signals to the mac. These are turned into MIDI by a program I found called junXion (using a free version at the moment) and so can control pretty much anything I want in reason/abletonLive/etc.
Also made this little MIDI switcher out of one of Tom’s old stomp boxes from last tour… that whole set up died on its arse, so I binned the insides and made this instead.
It’s for a track called hanging from a thread (doubt this will stick) and it’s just so I can leave one sound hanging (ha) and switch to piano. Should be cool, I’m looking forward to trying it live :s
While I’m in geeky mode I just want to tell the world (or whoever’s listening) that I jailbroke my iPhone after a year of deliberation, and it’s amazing. Well… no, it’s still a phone. But it’s definitely how the iPhone should have been. Got a video recorder, can change the background… oh, wait I could do that on my Ericsson 5 years ago. No kidding, I love Macs and Macbooks, and the Apple OS, but I’ve been stupendously disappointed with the iPhone (until now).
While I’m at it… iPad? I really like the look of it, it could be amazing. If it had a camera. Usb ports. A custom designed GUI rather than just a big gappy iPhone one. And if it could handle multiple applications (wtf). One day I’m sure this will be the computer we’re used to (can already imagine touch screen editing in protools – mm) but this is such a long way off the mark, from a company who blatantly have the means to implement it right away, that it’s a bit of a joke.
There’s some other stuff in that first picture I’d like to draw your attention to… Firstly, that notebook on the right. It says: Happy Birthday Gizem. I’m not in the habit of doing stuff like that but apparently we sold approximately 1 album in Turkey so I assumed this MUST have been the person who bought it. Cheers, happy birthday. Another is that brown case to the right of the piano… that was robbed out of an old house near where I live that had a digger in the garden and a notice of demolition on the door. We broke in and somewhat guiltily took anything worth having (three of those cases! and some other treasures, including the photo of the sailor on my piano) and lo and behold I drove past it the following day and it was flattened. Levelled to the ground, garden and all. Quite sad really, but I’m glad we rescued what we did.
That’s about it really. God I’ve written too much. Just one more thing before I sign off, about tea. I’ve just finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (Robert M. Pirsig) and it talks a lot about how to get things done, and keeping spirits up… but doesn’t mention anything about tea. I reckon a hot cup of tea when your working is a glorious thing. Essential. Mine’s white, no sugar. Thanks.
Chris
disclaimer: I don’t recommend that you jailbreak your phone, it could damage it and void your warranty. Instructions for how to do it can be found all over the web, don’t ask me.