errantember

I beginning to suspect that Jimi Hendrix was a drug user.

I'm now one step closer to getting this to happen in my bedroom. This being the ability to create any number of looping music samples in real time with my voice in order to create a song. The main thing that was stopping me was a lack of understanding how an incoming MIDI signal (say, hitting the middle-C on my piano keyboard) could be converted not into one, but several keystrokes in a row. I've now figured out how to do that with MIDIStroke, a free software program expressly for that purpose. Now that I know how it's done, I just need to get the template all set up to record and control the loops in real time using the right combination of keystrokes.

So I'm working on my Kid Beyond wanna-be setup with Ableton Live. Although I'm only using the computer and a set of headphones at the moment, I'm simulating a stage setup where there will only be a MIDI device (probably a keyboard in my case instead of foot pedals) and a microphone. So far it's going pretty well, I just hit a key and it starts recording, then loops that loop until I tell it to stop, then I add more loops on top until I get dizzy.

On the way to Poly First Wednesday this week, my Inner Five-Year-Old Dictator was busily composing a song about how much better he is than everyone else, and how totally unreasonable it is for anyone to waste his time by imagining their own priorities to somehow be relevant. So far I've only gotten a few lines done, but like any project that at least part of me finds really important, it's taken on a life of it's own. The opening line is:

"I don't have time to tell you about all the things I don't have time for."

I look forward to a day when my perfectionistic self will be willing to perform it in public.

Assuming I have time.

If I go to Elysium on Sunday.
I will hear "Hey Rickey."
I want to go to Elysium
and *not* hear "Hey Rickey."
I would also like to fuck
without risk of pregnancy,
disease
or hard, complicated feelings.
and walk the in rain
without getting wet.

C'est La Vie.

I picked up an Oberheim Strummer at Goodwill for $10 some years ago, and had never actually hooked it up before now.

http://www.keyboardmuseum.org/ar/o/ober/str.html

I just dug out a power supply for it and it's pretty fucking cool! It's main purpose is to allow a performer to combine the lame appearance and lack of sex appeal of a stage keyboardist with the convincing strumming sound of someone who can actually sort-of play guitar. When you play a chord into the strummer on a MIDI keyboard, instead of playing all the notes simultaneously, it feeds them out in a strumming pattern, complete with velocity (volume) changes, etc., to make it sound like an actual strum. The trippy part is that it actually sounds pretty damn good! I haven't changed anything off the default settings, but when I hook up the MIDI output to Garage Band and choose the Steel String Guitar, it sounds quite realistic. I'm not sure if I'll ever actually use this for stage performance, but it certainly allows me to do some thing with a basic MIDI setup that I couldn't do before. I recall looking for a manual online before and having little success getting one for free, but maybe I can fiddle with the settings myself and figure some of them out. As you can see from the link above, it seems to have a lot of features I'm not seeing right now.