Moved the desk around to get better access to norns and grid when working with the modular. Things are definitely in a shake up as I learn how all these wires work and fumble towards getting things to work together as a cohesive system. It’s really lucky for my 3 readers that I didn’t start the modular system earlier in the year! haha
Stand installed, everything wired (as cleanly as this amount of wires can be) up and tested. Looking at this picture, sitting in this space, looking around feeling very humbled. I’ve never clicked with a setup as much as I do this. Time to spend some (a lot) of time making it sing.
One thing I have been wanting to fix for awhile is my lack of a stand for the S80. It’s currently on a couple stools and sits way lower than it should. I’ve drawn up a whole bunch of over-complicated designs but decided today just to add some legs to it. Didn’t have a lot of time today, but did manage to get supplies, cut the legs, and install the threaded inserts. Hopefully cut cross-braces and paint tomorrow, then install as soon as the paint smell goes away.
Ash and I did some major work on the basement and garage today, getting things to keep in order and things to go ready to head out. Put a large free pile out front and posted an ad to Craigslist — hope that this stuff can find a second life somewhere with someone who finds it useful. I personally feel very creative when I am organizing because I am often also visualizing the transformation of space and how that can be turned into some new function. That said, not a lot of interesting things to look at came out of it, so I challenged myself to turn the quick free pile snaps into “something.” Well, there’s “something.”
I got everything wired up according the midi diagram I posted earlier in the week. After a few hiccups (in goes to out and out goes to in) things are running pretty smoothly. There will definitely be some time getting used to it, but already things are much easier and more coherent than with the IC4+. — 1988 tech for the win.
Everything is flowers and sunshine.
As previously mentioned, I do a lot of diagramming for work and it has become “the way I think.” There are lots of problems that I can’t visualize to work out unless I draw them out. That said, this could have been 10 hand-sketches in the time it took to make this, but here we are. Need to stare at this a bit and think.
Witness my shame. Messy wires are my enemy.
I had my studio desk taken all apart this week so I could sit and work on my laptop, but my foot has been feeling better so I think I can go back to my standing desk next week. Put it all back together and wired everything up with the iconnectmidi4+, and although it works, I am second guessing myself on it a bit. I used to run overly complicated systems like this years ago and decided to get away from it in order to be more spontaneous with my instruments. This seems like it might be a step backwards. There is definitely some learning curve involved, but if I have to have a laptop open every time I want to change a routing (spontaneous!) it’s sort of a killer. If I do want to keep things connected it would be much easier to go back to my trusty DMC MX-8 and use the midi matrix in AUM to move things around. Hrmmm.
Quiet day. Did a bunch of organizing in the garage, which was way overdue. Cleaned out some space to build in shelving as a means to clear up floor space and expand my workbench. Mowed the lawn. Ash made an amazing vegan holiday dinner and then we had a fire to roast marshmallows. It had cooled down and there was a nice breeze blowing. Perfect end to the day together.
Typically we go to a large gathering of all our friends and their kids. Hopefully we can see everyone soon. I mostly feel bad for Emi — she misses running around with her friends so much.
Emi and I spent a long time sorting and re-sorting this collection of objects, making combinations of shapes and colors. This is where we both decided it was done.
She’s very particular when she gets an idea in her head of how things should be. Aren’t we all. It’s really amazing to see the connections being made inside her head. Can’t believe she’s already/only 3.
The Yamaha S80 has an incredibly deep synth engine, with 4 sliders and 5 knobs to access it through its little display. Still, once I figured out how it worked, the editing got much easier. It’s still not great. That said, it still sounds wonderful — don’t let the rompler snobs fool you!
I’ve had this thing for a long time (a wonderful gift from a friend’s family who weren’t using it and had no space) and have always enjoying it. It has sadly been living in the basement since we moved here because there’s just no room (really, it’s huge) in the office. Have really been wanting to use it with the rest of the studio so I crammed it in up here tonight. This likely means I’ll need to re-org everything AGAIN, but glad to have it back where I can use it anytime.
Did some more work on organizing my poor mess of a workbench. I have a hard time being productive in a messy environment. These storage bins give all the homeless bits and pieces a place to go instead of piles of bunches of random boxes. An open workspace is a happy workspace.
Why not turn them into a whacked-out De Stijl motion collage to celebrate?
One thing about blogging every day is that I am generating a ton of data, and with life/creativity/blogging I am often very bad at keeping things organized. Spent tonight sorting hrough all the unlabelled recordings in the h4n. I have to say that it is pretty interesting to come back to these files and have only a hazy memory of where/what/when. There’s a bunch of things in there that should get cleaned up and put to use.
Organization continues. Decided on a whim that it would be nice to hang my guitars on the wall instead of having them take up floor space. The ladies went on a playdate so I had some time for a project this afternoon, and I much prefer to make anything I can that will produce reasonable results. Had to run to the hardware store for anchors and brackets, but then it was pretty quick to design and mill the plates from HDPE. I have to admit that it makes me a bit nervous having them up there, but I used 4x 50lb drywall anchors for each so I’m pretty sure they aren’t going anywhere. (no jinx)