Too much of anything is never enough

I can't seem to stop listening to Love Etc. It's one of those songs that doesn't impress on first listening, but slowly grows until it becomes lodged in your head. I really can't stop playing it.

The only trouble with this situation is that by the time their new album comes out, I run the risk of being tired of the track. When Home and Dry was released some years ago, I played a promo copy of the single none stop for weeks proclaiming it their best in years. Once the travesty that was Release came out the track was tainted by the rest of the rubbish on the album and consequently I don't like the track much. The same happened with Before and its parent disc Bilingual and other albums too.

I sincerely hope Yes is going to be as good as I anticipate and that Love Etc hasn't brought about false hope of a superb album of electronic music by master songwriters.

Pet Shop Boys: Love Etc.

Any new Pet Shop Boys release gets top priority in my house, so finding their new single "Love Etc." became my obsession in the last few days.

Happily I found it and you can preview it here.

Great title but I'm not quite convinced of this tracks merits yet. Not very catchy and the vocal is buried in the muddy mix. Some nice synth riffs from Mr Lowe as usual. Still I hope it does well.

Music on web pages... STOP IT!

Ok its time for another rant. Whilst browsing the net recently I have encountered an annoying practice which I thought had all but died out: web pages that play music. Whether it be a MIDI file or an embedded mp3 there is nothing more annoying to me than a web page that insists you listen to music.

Music is so important to me that I am always listening to it. If I’m driving my car, I’m listening to music. If I’m cooking a meal, I’m listening to music. If I’m taking a bath, I’m listening to music. If I’m browsing the internet, I’m listening to music. So when a web page starts playing music I close it immediately. Even if the page is one that I am interested in, I close it instantly as a matter of principle. Consequently, I have no idea of what artists like Simian Mobile Disco or Mike Oldfield are up to as their respective ‘official’ web pages insist on playing their music as soon as you open them.

Many such pages allow you to turn off the music but by the time you find the tiny flash application to stop it the damage has been done. Music really should be off by default on web pages and the practice outlawed by some code of conduct. Ok finished now.

Louder is not better

Whilst listening to a CD compilation of my own creation the other day I became conscious of the varying signal to noise ration of the various sources I had used. Some tracks were light and filled with subtle bass tones whilst others were harsh, loud and caused the speakers in my car to vibrate annoyingly.

It seemed I had forgotten to master the CD with any sort of ‘normalization’ in the way I normally do. What struck me was the fact that all of the harsh and ‘loud’ tracks were from recent CD’s and the warmer and dynamic tracks were from CD’s created in the 80’s or 90’s.

My recent laments over the inadequacies of remastered CD’s also serve to highlight the decreasing quality of the product record companies present to us. Whilst the majority of people may well be satisfied with the ‘louder is better’ philosophy, I am not.


So I am now re-assessing the majority of the high bit rate files on my hard drive with a view to restoring original recordings in favour of their ‘louder is better’ remastered versions.

In researching this topic I found this very interesting article.

The democratisation of music creation

Whilst reading an interview with the group Blancmange (circa 1984) one statement by Stephen Luscombe struck me as being highly prophetic.

The article in question comes from an early music technology magazine and centres on the groups use of the then revolutionary UMI 2B sequencer. The UMI was a MIDI interface that allowed a BBC ‘B’ computer to act as a 16-track sequencer. This does not sound exciting now, but back in 1984, the only alternative was to use systems such as the Fairlight CMI or the NED Synclavier. When you consider the BBC ‘B’ cost around £399 and a Fairlight £25,000, you can see why the UMI caused such a stir. Vince Clarke owned a Fairlight back in 1984 but quickly saw sense and switched to the UMI and Casio CZ-101 synthesizers; he never looked back.

“It’s an interesting concept, and a very levelling one, to think that over the next few years both amateurs, would be pop stars, and actual recording artists might be using exactly the same type of set ups to create music, and that the days of wistfully wondering whether the only difference between yourself and your idols is a massive recording budget are numbered.”

As well as being one of the longest sentences I have ever read, this quote is a very accurate summary of exactly what would happen over the next ten years. Yet this statement is more problematic for me than it might seem at first glance. I did indeed spend a great deal of time listening back to my compositions in the late 80’s thinking: “If only I had a Fairlight CMI I could be the next Jarre”. The problem was obviously the equipment I used and if I had the money, I could be a recoding artist.

However, in the same article Stephen Luscombe hits the nail on the head when he says, “It’s the democratisation of music really, which is good. But even with computers it’s still the same thing of ‘shit in, shit out’. At the end of the day it’s what you put in to the thing that counts.”

The incredible democratisation of music technology which has occurred over the last 20 years is taken for granted by new comers but is still a thing of wonder to those of us who remember dreaming of DX7’s and Fairlights. Yet the flip side of cheap professional quality recording equipment is the realisation that you can’t accomplish the same results as your idols. When music technology was prohibitively expensive, we could still convince ourselves that our talent was only restricted by the fact that we had no money. Now I know differently.

Yet on reflection I’d still rather have my bedroom filled with DX7’s, D50’s, microphones and a super computer and produce crap music than to simply dream of something that I might never experience. You never know I might still write that number 1 album.

The Triton: Part 2

If you were unlucky enough to read of my recent purchase of a Korg Triton rack, you will know that the instrument and I did not ‘hit it off’. However, after a couple of weeks tinkering and some expensive ROM expansion the Triton is beginning to make itself quite useful. 

I purchased the ‘Pianos/Classic Keyboards’ and ‘Dance Extreme’ ROM boards soon after the machine arrived and I must say they are quite good. I would even go as far as saying they are more varied and useful than their Roland SRX or JV counterparts. Once the board is installed in the machine, you need to load the parameters for the 128 associated programs into the Triton’s memory from a floppy disk. Once I located the data, it loaded quite quickly and painlessly. Thankfully, the machine does hold this data in memory and there is no need to load it each time you boot the machine up (I wrongly thought it was necessary to load the data every time you turned the machine on). 

The programs themselves are proving to be quite useful with a good selection of drum kits in addition to the usual collection of electric pianos and basses. Having mentioned electric piano patches, can anyone tell me why ROMpler synthesizer manufacturers insist on including literally hundreds of preset electric piano patches? I rarely use a Wurlitzer, Rhodes or DX piano sounds so why would I need hundreds of each. I cannot think of anyone else who would either. 

In summary, the Triton is now becoming quite useful and will be staying for the near future. However, I cannot recommend it to anyone. When it comes to ROMpler synthesizers; the more recent the better.

The death and resurrection of a JP-8080

Many years ago, a very wise man taught me one of the basic facts of life. He taught me this so that I did not have to find it out for myself. This is because you really do not want to mix liquids and mains voltage electricity. Until today, I had avoided creating this deadly mixture of elements quite successfully. The fact that I did mix these two elements today is made even more upsetting when you consider that it happened in my studio.

Today had been a day of much frustration trying to get my Triton Rack to install the programs for the ROM expansions chips I acquired from eBay (more on this at a later date!). I then had to create patch scripts for Cubase and the whole situation was driving me to distraction. Typing is not as much fun as ‘playing with my organ’.

Thus when it was time to take a welcome break I naturally reached out to take the cup of coffee (precariously balanced on the edge of the desk) with me. What happened next is the stuff of nightmares and it really did happen in slow motion. I stood transfixed as the warm coffee fell from the cup and into the internal workings of my much beloved Roland JP-8080 synthesizer below it. The liquid did not so much land on the synth but a kind of envelopment took place. As the LCD screen began to blink, I recognised the signs of an imminent death. Oh dear God……

Stupidly I then dived for the machine, unplugging it and throwing it onto the floor in one swift and ill-calculated motion. Tipping the synth sent a large amount of still warm coffee pouring from its ventilation grill and through the sliders on the front panel. Having assumed the worst, I finished cleaning up and began to investigate the cost of a new JP-8080. Gulp.

Having waited an hour I plucked up the courage to plug the synth into the mains and watched with horror as the LCD turned blank (but at least I was not electrocuted). Some time later, my 2 year old niece pressed the ‘preview’ button accidentally and the synth began to emit some decidedly unhealthy noises (she loved it of course). It was at this moment that I realised I had also damaged one or two of the controller knobs by throwing the unit onto the floor. As a last attempt at breathing some life into the machine, I stuffed it into the airing cupboard and hoped it might dry out and miraculously work again.

Do you know what? Do you know what? She breathes again! Ok so some of the buttons are a bit sticky due to java residue and the volume knob is a little ‘wobbly’ but it emits the sounds it is supposed to! A miracle.

So I can confirm that the JP-8080 is built like a tank and can survive envelopment by a cup of coffee. However, I do still believe that liquids and mains voltage electricity should not be mixed. I also believe that liquids should NEVER be taken into a room packed with expensive electrical equipment; let that be a lesson to us all.