Have you ever wanted a Ramp ringtone?
Aug 25, 2009 Uncategorized
This may be incredibly dorky, but just for fun today, I set up my phone with a Ramp ringtone. 
I used the beginning of A Measured Proposition, which has bingy notes that will serve to catch your attention but is quite innocuous and sounds, well, more like a ringtone than most of my other tracks.
If your phone can use mp3 files, you can download the (128kbit, monophonic, 29 second) file for use with your phone, free of charge, here. It fades in and out more quickly than the original, so that you don’t miss your call, and has been reduced in quality as noted above and locally normalized to work a bit better.
On my Windows Mobile 6 phone (a Motorola Q9c), all I had to do was download that file, then move it from My Documents to Application Data > Sounds, and then it turned up in my list of ringtones (as “Mpropringtone”). I have no idea how you do it on other phones.
I’ll be pretty delighted if I ever hear someone’s phone ring with that file when I’m out and about around the city.
An appeal for feedback
Aug 15, 2009 tracks
I often compose by alternately either tossing down ideas, or refining them, as totally separate processes. This track was an “idea” back in 2007, and sort of sat in that state for the past two years. Then a few months ago I decided to refine it a bit. Back in June, I did a test bounce, so I assume some of you have heard this before. Over the last day, I’ve been poking at it a bit more. I added one new track, but otherwise, it seems to be in that state where anything you had is too much, and yet it feels like it needs something, to me. I don’t feel like it’s quite *there*. I thought about some spoken word samples, but I’m not sure. One thing that’s happened to some bits that never got past this state is that they eventually got broken up and more than one track came out of the resulting pieces.
I’m wondering if you could give this a listen, though, and let me know what you think. I mean, it’s also often the case that you’re too close to something to really judge, or that a piece feels like it’s missing something when it’s actually done, simply because it didn’t go in quite the direction you expected. So maybe you can lend me your ears and thoughts on it.
(It doesn’t have a title right now. If you like it and can think of one, let me know.)
Learning Curves
Aug 13, 2009 Gear
I’ve been ridiculously busy lately, but I took some time out tonight to play with the modular, just exploring, trying to come up with neat and useful sounds.
It’s kind of slow going so far, and I’m having a hard time not feeling discouraged. I dug out a few issues of Keyboard Magazine that explore how to get sounds X or Y, typically using a two-oscillator virtual analog. I follow along with those too see what results I can get and bomb horribly. I also try experimenting myself, and given enough time I usually get some interestingly weird bleeps and bloops, but little of musical utility so far.
I know that the system *can* be beautiful. I see all these videos of people doing amazing things with theirs. I know I just need to take the time to learn it, and everyone put in their dues at some point.
I guess I’m just so used to the mode of buying a new synth and getting a whole pile of inspiring and useful presets right off the bat that give you an idea of the sorts of things your new purchase can do and keep you happy and exploring while you gradually learn the ropes. Having the learn the ropes from the ground up is harder going.
I’m hoping I’ll have more time to work through this in the fall, and that the system will also be more complete by then. And I hope I can rise to the occasion. So far I don’t really fault the modular so much as myself for not having more dedication and tenacity.
Soon it’ll be time for sleep, and hopefully with tomorrow will come renewed spirit.
Maybe there are some upsides to the analog beast
Aug 7, 2009 Gear
In follow-up to my post of last night about my frustrations working on some patches with the analog modular, things seem to have been fixed, and easily. I didn’t get any replies, either from the discussion mailing list or from the synthesizers.com support e-mail address, which is a little disappointing. However, I popped the defective module out and discovered the problem: The sustain and decay leads had been swapped, leading to each other’s jacks. Since the leads aren’t soldered on to the PCB — they’re easy-to-work-with jacks, it was the work of a few seconds this afternoon to swap them back to the correct positions, and everything was hunky dory (at least as far as the envelope generators were concerned).
I’ll give it this much: It’s not trivial to do that kind of simple repair on compiled software!
Analog Synths: Fun all around
Aug 6, 2009 Gear
Okay, so as you all know by now, I’ve delved in to the world of real analog synthesizers via an analog modular system. The system so far consists of: Power, MIDI, Multiples Module, two oscillators, two envelope generators, one filter, two amplifiers. Not much yet, but functional (and expensive as hell).
Okay, so I had this brilliant idea a couple of days ago: Keyboard Magazine, to which I subscribe, has all these columns about how to get this or that classic synth sound. Almost every single one of them begins, “First, get out your trusty virtual analog.” I’d always read them for ideas, but I never bothered following them. Sure, I could have built a VA in Reaktor. Or I could have dealt with the irritation of using the various subtractive synths that ship with Logic Pro, all of which have user interfaces that irritate the hell out of me. But I never really felt like doing that, and my most common go-to synth plug-ins are samplers or FM synths, which rarely appear in those columns.
But a couple of days ago, it occurred to me: Hey, now I have an ACTUAL analog synth! I could follow along in that, to get practice patching and some ideas and so on.
So I picked up the first issue that I had to hand — August 2009 (the current issue). Flip to page 42, and there’s a discussion on how to get the sound in Seal’s popular song (which I’ve always liked), “Crazy.” It uses a noise gate driven by another synth fed in to the sidechain to pulse it, but I can still generate the source tone on the modular and slap the noise gate on that, right?
Okay, so I sit down, magazine in hand. The first few steps, no problem. La la la, away we go. This is fun!
Then, “Modulate the filter cutoff with a slow triangle or sine LFO.” Oh… um, I’ve already used both of my oscillators. No other LFO handy. Also, I’ve used the modulation input already to set up keyboard tracking, discussed in an earlier step. So I’d need some sort of addition module, and another oscillator. Well, hell. Okay, skip that, the filter will have to be unmodulated.
Okay, here we go, all patched up. Then I get to the part where they tell me to play E5, G5, Asus4 and A5 on repeat, each held for one bar.
Oh wait, my modular doesn’t do chords.
Well, I’m after the sound ideas, not re-creating “Crazy,” right? So I just put in the root notes for now and send it across.
It’s really quiet. Really, really quiet. Ohhh, I’ve got the output of the filter (I wanted to filter at the last stage) jacked in to the computer, but nothing at all jacked in to the filter at all.
But wait. Then why can I hear *anything*? I guess it’s bleed from the amp. I’ll have to move it further away. (And then what? What do I put next to the filter that it won’t get bleed from?)
Okay. Fire it up again. Wait, I’m getting this weird spike rather than smooth held notes. Do I have one of the EGs set up to spike at the note-on? I thought I’d set them both to totally sustained envelopes (but used them in case I wanted to change that later).
Well, it turns out that I had. One of my EGs appears to be busted, as far as I can tell. The one I bought used sustains each note as expected, but the brand new one just blips the note. Maybe I’ve got it set up wrong, who knows — fire off a message to the mailing list asking if there’s a likely PEBKAC issue here, and turn it off, more than a little frustrated.
I’m sure this bodes well for fantastic workflow in the future. While I firmly believe that this is just part of the adjustment period, I also feel that in some sense it’s no wonder a lot of the people on the list say that they love playing with their modular so much that they never get around to writing any actual songs!
Oh well, another adventure tomorrow, I suppose.