Contemplations of Adventures in obsolescence: SN5R and Sound Editor

So I have this old synthesizer from.. guess the late 90s or something… early 2000s.. the Korg SN5R… This is a digital synthesizer…. and it just sorta hangs around mostly.. I’m in this funky situation where I’ll often push my computer a bit too hard, I suppose you’d say, and I sometimes think “why not pull the SN5R out for then?” Well ok.. accept it sounds kinda bad… as a synthesizer… or I mean.. mostly bad?

It’s PCM… so basically they recorded samples… using old technology… as the basis for there sound synthesis.. where they had no space for anything.. and so had to optomize the living crap out of anything to make anything happen.. especially compared to modern tools… of our day.. but… in a certain strange way I find that I like it’s digital sound?

Well it came with a patch editor.. software.. which I was somehow never able to use… so just out of shits and giggles I decided to do a search for an editor… for it… I figured who knows.. maybe someone has something working for it?

What I found is this Sound Quest software… and then I find out that not only do they want you to freaking hand money over for it… but if you’re on a Mac you gotta spend like.. around $500 to get your hands on a copy? Which is odd considering you can get a sorta $50 copy for the PC…. for $50 I’d consider it.. I mean I’d need to get some kinda virtualization going…

The trouble with these old sound modules is there like.. not worth it.. when it comes to programming sounds.. I mean.. its a pain to try and do… so you kinda.. need the software if you’re going to do anything with it that involves creating sounds…

It’s hard to know what Sound Quest supports… I mean.. how it could be worth shelling out that much money for it.. you can kinda see it if… there’s like old tools you want to use… or have used.. and you sorta need it for that.. and there’s not a big enough group of people interested in it for anyone to find it worth it to keep the software up to date (which is not insignificant on the Mac platform where with every new OS a certain amount of software will stop working if not updated)… but still… $500?

I have to confess that the idea that you could have a hands on control programming experience with an iPad, if I had money for an iPad.. is a compelling thing… but.. this is an obsolete synthesizer… obsolete technology… and…. to my mind… if you were to buy software to create the sounds it creates… that software wouldn’t really be worth more then $50… I’m sure you could sell an NS5R for more then $50 but… the idea of going out and spending $500.. and for $500 you could get… well really good stuff… in order to make this silly old thing to work?

I mean seriously.. I’d be using it just to be slightly crazy.. not because… anyone in there right mind would use it really?

Err…

Ok.. so lets argue it has a few sounds I like.. that there’s a certain digital sound that has a strange nostalgia value.. and then on top of that..  you can have 16 different instrument sounds going on at once out of it.. and ok workflow sucks.. and you don’t have a good idea if sound design with it will have a decent workflow even with the software… and even if it does it has a total of 2 mono channels, or one stereo if you prefer.. coming out of it? So if you want to save the bad sound via the magic that is processing.. you probably not going to be able to really do it?

Early 08-09: Story of Street rave / old school clubbing.

Err, if I haven’t explained this properly.. I’ve been making music with computers forever and I’m looking into the problem of how to make a living from it.. and a part of it I think means sorta researching everything to do with the various cultures of electronic dance music / electronic music / whatever…

A part of what I get a kick out of watching these old videos… is that I’m in no way a part of this world.. I’m a metal head… and… very often these kinds of docs are really more designed to be consumed by the choir.. by people whom are already fans of the music… and I find myself doing this funny kind of deconstruction of the communication to sorta deal with the propiganda layers if you will….

I don’t think it’s as big a thing with kids today, though I don’t know enough kids today to really know.. but when I was a kid growing up.. so much of what music you listened to had to do with identity.. that in part it’s about you saying to the world who you are.. and in fact, I think in a developmental sorta way, its about you trying to figure out who you are…

Clearly, for me, at my age.. music doesn’t really entirely serve kind of the same purpose…  so often I’m going out and trying to appreciate different kinds of music that are maybe music, like say in the case of dance music.. stuff I thought was just shit.. and like the worst imaginable thing.. like all that was wrong with the world.. when I was a kid…

Although techno and rave culture did always seem kinda cool too me… but at least big popular dance music was just like.. yuck.

Keys to Success: EDM

I thought this was a really cool little talk from Canadian Music Week

I guess I’m interested in this because I’m an electronic music artist.. and it’s great to kinda see “oh, so this is kinda what the business looks like.” In truth I don’t even understand the culture.. I’m old I suppose.. but I make music with computers and what not.. and I’ve been doing this forever.. .and I’m sorta doing research trying to figure out what the hell my career prospects might look like… and I’m trying to figure out “how the hell would I ever fit into that?”

What’s sorta interesting to me… is I’ve been feeling like I need to learn to do EDM, kinda sorta.. but it’s never totally felt right to me.. and I’m sorta wondering how the hell I’d do it.. but the message that EDM is some kind of a bad word.. for somebody… sorta and that sorta suggests to me that.. what the culture is really all about.. is sorta much closer to where I’m coming from.. then I sorta really realize.

Entering the Sonictalk intro theme music contest

Once upon a time I had this funny notion that this blost would be like a journal of.. me.. an artist who did musical stuff.. sorta talking about it… and whatever might strike my fancy.. .but that doesn’t seem like what’s happened… but err.. here is some work I did.

Sonictalk.. my personal favorite music production type podcat… did the contest to create intro theme music… and I created my entry….  that I’d sorta like to share with you. I’m not sure it’s all that great an entry.. and I’m up against like.. upwards of 100 other folks.. whom are no doubt infinately more talented then I am.. but what the hell… err and you mgiht dig it?

Err but basically they have this opening motion graphics thing… and I created a little intro audio for it.. and I need a demo real anyway… and yeah.. so that’s the basics of it.

Getting Back on the Grid

My living arangement situation has been one of flux.. and one of the larger fluxes has been room mates who really like to have a thing we in the modern world call “TV.”

I wouldn’t say I’m a marxist.. though I might make cracks about “opimum of the masses” and speak in Drug Store Cowboy like terms about “TV Babbies” and.. this whole larger sorta critique of… blah bla blah.. but at the end of the day I’m poor and don’t really give a crap about having cable enough to spend money on it.

Long and short of the story is someone always wants to spend money on Cable..  and finally we looked into how much I was paying for internet through Comcast who.. is offically dead to me… I should add.

I have a Payee.. and this is a story of me somehow not being able to handle my own money? Yeah, always been insulted by the assertion…  and never felt like it.. worked.. and I’ve been feeling screwed by my payee to a degree where I wonder if I shouldn’t be sueing them… they are so unbelievably horrible.

Well it turns out I was paying $80 a month for internet… Like.. it would have been nice if the payee had informed me of this.. maybe this was unacceptable or maybe there was something else that could be done or this that and the other thing.. but they are essentially useless…  and I won’t go into the story of how to get rid of them or all of this only to say this was discovered and now we are getting rid of the Comcast.

Well I don’t know what the deal is with Verison… but they suggested there was some kind of wifi system via which all the cable boxes.. for TV… worked via wireless… so there was no need to use cables….. drilling holes around the house. The installation guy told us this wasn’t so and all of sudden it looked like instillation was going to costs untold hudreds of dollars… and it was kinda fucked up.. .but ended up not being a big deal…

I could see how it would be possible.. I mean there’s a PS3 in the other end of the house for the internet.. and an HD stream does stream realtime over wifi… I’m not sure how many streams you’d have the bandwidth to do.. but it does seem like an entirely superior system if you ask me… to do the wifi..  and I know the wifi network in the house is an older kind of wifi then the current standard….

Anyway….

I’ve had some internet troubles for a long long time… It would seem lightening destoryed my internet connection on my main desktop… relegating me to a laptop….  and the laptops power… was growing iffy.

1. The Mac Book’s power cable.. is sketchy…  doesn’t consitently feed power into the laptop
2. The internal battery is sometimes sketchy.. where it’s as if it vanishes.

These two problems can spell no working laptop.. and I was down to trying to use an android device, and how the fuck do you type with that…  to get online… and to communicate…

Between this and the loss of my dad.. and maybe other forces…  and factors… I withdrew… from social sites and whatever…  but now… maybe I’ll be back because now it all work as it should…

Still.. there’s this kind of overwhelming sense of what I need to do to create a live worth living, sorta deal.. which includes getting a career going.. making money… getting a car on the road… and blah blah blah….

Basically… errr well….

Let me Explain my Conception of the Modern Job Search

There is what I like to call “The old school job search thang.” This includes… creating a resume, elevator pitch.. getting good at cover letters.. and if you’re a creative.. there’s the portfolio…

And yeah.. that’s all groovy and everything…

But today I think you have to think of your self as a product, a brand even.. and there’s the problem of telling the story of your brand.. and products.. and services… which means creating contentent.. images, video, copywriting… maybe you start a podcast, a blog, a whatever.. leverage social networking sites.. and blah blha blah blah…

BASICALLY… we can split this madness into a few different categories

1. Hanging Out
2. Content Creation

Woody Allen famously said that something like 80 % of success was showing up… I sorta like the phrase “hanging out” and on social networking sites.. the main thing is to consitently be hanging out… in the scene.. and maybe give it at least an hour or so a day… spread across whatever scoial networking sites you’re using.

Well.. it certainly helps to be online.. to do that…  and so that’s sorta the big deal with getting internet working today.

Err but lets talk content creation anyway…

Feed the Beast, right? Like.. if you’re somewhat smart about this stuff you probably have “a content calander” by which you manage content creation and publishing… inside of a larger content strategy… and how do you sorta ensure that you’re regularly creating enough content? I mean especially when the time spent creating content could be spent doing something else..  so how do we get the right balance of activities.. of time and energy invested, and all the rest of it?

At the moment, or I should say this week, my job has been to storyboard out a motion graphics intro that I’ll be using on a series of video’s I’ll be producing…

I’m billing myself as… “A Strategic Transmedia Storyteller of the INTP Polymath variety”…  which is a bit of madness really.. and the video’s are sorta to make sense of what the hell it is I just said…  Err, maybe I should give you some sense of it?

There’s a lot of ways I could talk about it but I’m not an artist that works in one particular medium but more one who works in many… and there is both the art and the design… there’s fine art and commercial applications.. for all this stuff.. and I think there’s a unique value proposition for me to make.. about this… and in light of the sorta modern world of marketing and communications…. for sorta understanding… stuff.

Err, it’s a long story, and I shouldn’t even bother to try and tell it here…