Music, Producer, sometimes Musician

 

A quick thing I played & recorded on a Sunday afternoon

Over the years I came to understand that there is a rather large difference in the thinking between a musician, ( I am a "Guitarist", or I am a "Keyboard Player") and someone interested in producing music, that plays instruments. 

I am very much the later. Making a piece of music, usually with various parts, to play over a stereo is the goal. A recorded, mixed and produced work is the purpose. To play again and again, or put on a video. I started recording and making recorded sound pieces before I had any instruments to learn how to play. 

The only photos I have of me growing up is a very small album with captions my mother put together a few short years ago in 2019. One picture is of me at 3 years old with the caption "I loved this guitar".   I have no memory of ever having a ukulele, but the memory of wanting to play that type of instrument stayed with me. 

Oh, I wanted to learn to play the guitar as a fairly young kid in junior High School, but my mother was "why would anyone want to waste all that time to do that?".   Instead, what they sent me too was soccer, which wasn't what I wanted to spend my weekends doing. 

I took a different path. I fell in love with records and good stereo systems to play them early on. Music, among other things, is a drug for my mood. I had upgraded my stereo system several times before I ever bought a musical instrument. 

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First guitar I bought was after I finished High School, and just before starting first year university for a BE Elec Eng. I wanted to design audio electronics. And the guitar I got was a sunburst Strat copy, as that is what Richie Blackmore played.

Musicians on the other hand, are about the craft of playing, and the instruments themselves. The majority seems to be more about performing and "playing live". The ones I know started when they were young with lessons their parents paid for.

I know a few like that. Played for decades, with large instrument collections, and have been in bands. Playing covers a big thing. Playing others songs they love., or one of the parts to them  In very recent times they may have started home recording, even recorded a few songs, but it hasn't been their life long focus. 

I saw a video piece with Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about how he much preferred a CD to a live performance. I am like that.  Have been to live shows, concerts, pubs, but I much prefer the sound quality and "my own pace" for listening to music at home. Hearing it more than once is also so important. I always preferred the studio version CD to a live performance too.  

DEEP PURPLE MADE IN JAPAN is still touted as one of the best live albums, but even there,  I prefer the studio recordings.  The MACHINE HEAD remastered Anniversary 2CD Edition in particular, with alternate takes is extra special.

I tend to think loving "live" is as much to do with being a "I like going out" (most likely an extravert, or tend to extravert) person as much as anything.  If you are introverted, staying more home is preferred.

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Great Southern Land: 1982 Original vs 2023 Cassian Remix

 

Recent Iva Davies with his ancient CMI II

The 1982 Great Southern Land has become a classic Australian track.  Iva Davies used a CMI in the making of this, a machine I was involved with myself at the time.  I never met him when I worked at Fairlight though. Just briefly in the Roland Service department before I moved to Japan the first time. 

If you don't know the original, this is it:

A few months ago YouTube decided to show me a recent Sydney Morning TV spot with Iva chatting about the track, his history and the renewed interest since the Cassian remix came out.  

A remix?? Cassian??

Conveniently YouTube has the Cassian remix:

And I must say it sounds great. Thought at the time, "I must see what he is doing with that awesome bass synth sound, drums and production".  Started doing that this morning, while waiting for a customer to get back to me about an illustration and quote.

I made this little 14 seconds that demonstrate that it looks like most of the original tracks have been high pass filtered, so that when the new bass, drum and synth parts come in, the impact is dramatic, shown with the dramatically increased low end spectral information. What a great sound. 

If you compare the original Ice House (Iva Davies band, even if he was mostly solo at the time of making this) track chorus with the remix chorus, you see the original has more low end in it, but nothing like the remix.  

Looking at what else makes the remix "more compelling" also seems to be it is a little faster.  The original track is 120BPM and the remix 124BPM, as far as I can tell using the TAP TEMPO function on my metronome.

All interesting to know.  I still need to work out what that bass sound is, and try using it in a track of my own, so this investigation isn't finished yet. It does look like he uses the Vital - Spectral Warping Wavetable Synth for his bass sounds though.  Listening to his remix on headphones on repeat, shows there are many interesting things going on.  This is another rabbit hole for me to fall into 😀 .

I was curious about REMIXING way before I saw this 2017 issue of Computer Music magazine. So curious in fact that I bought the super expensive EXPRESS DELIVERY issue, rather than wait 3 months for sea freight to deliver the normally expensive overseas magazines to far off Australia.

Till now I have only done one real remixing experiment in 2017 that I blogged about here.  But had previously blogged about the remix in the SPAWN MOVIE Soundtrack.  Specifically the Filter "Can't you trip like I do?", that I took decades to realize was a remix and nothing like the CRYSTAL METHOD original.

Cassian ??

Turns out Cassian is a Sydney DJ/ remixer/ producer, that is now American based. Looks like he knows his EDM stuff to me. 

His main tool is ABLETON LIVE. Live DJing is what he has mostly done. There are a fair few interview Q&As with him on various websites, and he doesn't seem to have any problem sharing his production techniques.  On Spotify, his popular tracks seem to all be remixes. I have more to learn about and from him.   His 2020 debut album, Laps is all Ableton LIVE, a Prophet 6 and Minimoog Model D and I need to have a listen now... On Spotify it is here.

I have a soft spot for 90s style synth based Techno and Cassian hits that spot. Maybe called EDM now, but I just see it as Techno. 

EDIT: 2024/2/9 Have investigated more and found that Cassian's DJ sets includes tracks from other artists, such as Anyma and Pryda and they are basically all in the genre Melodic Techno. There are lots of blog posts and YouTube videos about how to make that genre too.  The standard DJ thing is all a bit repetitive, but have been playing with adding some of the techniques to me own work. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Hi-Fi: NEW RECORD DAY - Open Baffle Speakers

 

I originally came across this Hi-Fi reviewing channel as he used a dummy head and was making proper binaural recordings to demonstrate loudspeakers. He did a really good job of it too.  And not just because of my own interest in Headphones and Binaural audio.

His latest videos are about room treatment, and that alone sets him apart from the majority of the BS Hi-Fi crowd. Room treatment is such a vital part of a studio setup, that it is a complete joke when ignored.  Anyone that doesn't have their listening space treated can not be taken seriously.  

I discovered his channel shortly before COVID hit the world. During the pandemic he vanished for a while, then came back with a video saying how terrible getting covid had been for him and his family, needing hospitalization.  I don't now if that video is still on his channel, but he really looked and sounded terrible, and this was shortly after "recovering".   He lives in TEXAS so I expect the prevailing influence of his church, and the ensuing social pressures meant he and family probably were not vaccinated. "Jesus is my vaccine" seemed to be the popular strategy there. Churches with people all singing was also a really good way to spread the nasty virus.  I am just assuming all that though, from my understanding of Texas (even Jesse James ex-Westcoast Choppers goes to church each Sunday now he lives there), and glad he got over it.  So different from here in Kyoto Japan where "almost everyone" was masked and vaccinated from 2020 till end-ish 2023.

Anyway, he is a fan of open baffle speakers.  Still a pretty rare configuration, don't exist at all in the pro audio world, but tend to think under the right conditions they must have advantages.  I used to watch LINKWITZ LAB before he passed away and he was a fan of them too, and had the technical chops to produce his own. The designs are still available at the website.

I have became a fan of Open Back Headphones for listening to music at home in the last 2 years. Current favorites are AKG K702, as they just give a better sound field ( in a quiet environment). 

The video above has a good demo of prototype open baffle speakers, that is well recorded, in a treated room. The music usually used to demo HiFi is rather sparse and he has done that here too, but that is okay.  

Are they better than high end ATC, GENELEC or PMC from the studio world? I don't know.

Worth a listen.  As a kid, I loved the cartoon AUTOCAT and MOTORMOUSE too, so I like the accent too I guess😀 . 

NEW RECORD DAY? Sounds like his channel originally reviewed records, and I have no idea how the name fits into what he does now, but it is a cool logo. Easy to embryoid patches with too. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Why Don't You Do That Any More?

I have a display case in "the studio". Part of one side is shown above.  Filled with things I have made, bought to use as reference when learning to sculpt with polymer clay, sculpted myself and some just made from kits.

The bottom section with the green arrow are original space vehicles and a stop frame animation robot I made from 1995 ~1998. Made from sheet plastic and various kit parts. My Youtube channel has some musical Shorts with making of pictures. 

A couple of weeks ago, my youngest son, now in his 30s, asked "why don't I make more of those?".  They are the best looking things in the display case.  I hadn't been asked that question before, but had thought about it. Basically the answer is:

I did that once, and don't feel a need to do it again. 

At the time I did them as part of my development of my Desktop Production.  I wanted cool looking original vehicles and puppets and learnt what I needed to make them.  It wasn't the models themselves that were my final goal, but short movies. In 2022 I came back and used these props, sets, vehicles and puppets, in what I call My Sci-Fi Rock Opera. 

I think something I have always done is learn something "good enough" to do what I need. I could say my electronics/ firmware career was similar.  I have no interest in electronics or firmware now in retirement, and don't feel any need to do it again! 

My Guitar playing is also similar. Don't think of myself as "a guitarist", and don't collect guitars, even if I do have 3. I can basically do what I need to do my original material, and if I want to do something I can't at the moment, I learn to.

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Trip to SYD MEAD LAB Nara Tsutaya Books 2024/1/11

 

In the last 3 months I have been to quite a few Gallery Art exhibits. Something I intend to continue with.  This week it was the free "one year of his passing"  Syd Mead Lab exhibition at Nara Tsutaya Books 2F Gallery.  What is different about this artist though, is I have been a hard core Syd Mead devotee for decades, and am not just a casual viewer.

They had put on an exhibit at the same place in 2020, that I would have liked to attend, but that was just as Covid-19 was really starting to kick in and I decided not travelling by train was the best thing to do.

So I didn't miss the opportunity this time, to see what was on offer. I was given a personnel tour by the Curator, Hiroshi Matsui that we pre-arranged. On X (twitter) he is @SydMode

I hadn't seen most of what was on display before. Things like working faxes between Syd and Sunrise on the development of the TURN A GUNDAM designs and the original 1965 CELCON ACETAL COPOLYMER book 

and 3 of the actual size original (or prints) that went into the pages in it. Very graphic and stylized design work. 

He very kindly took the book out of the locked display case and showed me the first few pages, next to the original paintings. I took photos for my own reference, but not to publish online in no "FAIR USE" Japan. Now it isn't like I don't have SYD MEADS artworks, my own collection is this:

But my kronovecta book, from the big KRONOLOG boxed set has 10 pages on this CELCON work, but the reproduced pages are very much just thumbnails, and the 23 page images are almost too small to read.

So it was great to see many life sized sketches and paintings, even if some were high quality prints. He had a lovely set of 3 A2 limited edition prints for sale, which I would have liked to have, but I don't have any wall space to frame and display them. 

He also had on display models, toys and kits of Syd Meads designs and made me realize I have a few myself. Such as the SULACO from ALIENS, A TURN Gundam figures,  and my unbuilt models like the YAMATO 2520 &  BLADERUNNER LAZER SPINNER. 

A key thing to me was the original sketch with Syd's words THE FUTURE IS TERRIFIC - I'VE BEEN THERE.  To me, there is such joy and hope in his elaborate future paintings with peoples, animals, vehicles and environments.   Inspiring!

So did a rough 2B pencil sketch the next morning: 

First time for me to take the bit over an hour trip from home in Kyoto to the bookstore. About an hour by 2 trains to Shin-Omiya Station, then a 12 minute walk to the site that is next to the Nara Convention Center.

Tsutaya is a wonderful bookstore/ Starbucks café. 

Hope to keep in touch with and meet up with Hiroshi Matsui again in the near future.  A card he gave me says SYD MEAD LAB will be at Osaka COMICON 2024 May 3~5

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology