Dark Thoughts

Today I learned that one of the greats of the synthesizer industry passed away of brain cancer. Bob Moog's contribution to the electronic music industry can not be understated. The humble Minimoog is still a cult classic today, more than 30 years after it's release. When people compare filters available in today's synthesizer's they invariably compared to the filter's available in that little beast. Without the contributions of Bob Moog the music being produced today simply wouldn't be possible. Techno would never have happened and sythesizer's would still be making rude beeps without those characteristic filter slide's.

Rest in peace, Bob. I never met you personally, and have only had the priveledge of getting my hands on an MG1 and a Mini a few times, but you will be remembered.

My weekly weigh in has seen me back up to 100.5 kg's, though my week saw me as low as 99.5 kg's. The scales are those dodgy digital types, and Jodie has complained about them on occasion, so I will soon be investing in a new set with one of those analog dials. Exercise is becoming part of our routine now, which is good, and we are up to 1 hour 10 minutes per session now, which we feel is good. Jodie is going to see a nutritionist next week as part of a holistic treatment for something completely unrelated, but I'm working with her, and we are both keeping the eating and exercise diary.

I've just finished the LD 120 Roborapper Remix of Disconnected, by Perth hip hop band, The Freakz of the Nature. I amped the tempo up a bit and tranced it down and even managed to find a robo-rapper for them :P The plan is to put together a remix compilation of different Freakz tracks at some stage.

I'm ready to get back into making some of my own tunes now. I've got the studio running pretty smoothly now, with a new Firewire card and a Steinberg Midex8 MIDI interface. The Midex8 is definately a stepdown from the 8PortSE, and I'm having some very wierd latency issues with the new hardware, which definately shouldn't be there. These are causing me to line up audio the same as we used to on samplers (gawd I'm glad I've still got some old skool skills). Not a major drama, but a bit of a pain that does interrupt my workflow a little. Steinberg are gearing up to release a new update to Cubase which should solve some of the problems, and Yamaha are apparently working on a new driver which should improve the latency issue.

I'm still getting the occasional Wordclock error, but it's almost like mLAN is syncing to the wrong part of the wordclock message. It's pretty good for most of the time, but it will loose a sample every now and then. I can hear this when there are some phasing issues between two different parts of the same sound file. I'm sure it will get fixed eventually, but it is frustrating at the moment.

I'm waiting on my tax return at the moment, and may well buy a new piece of gear that I've been lusting after for a few years. That being a SPL Mk2T. It will give a professional polish, a coating of fairy dust, to all of my recordings, in a way that only expensive high quality gear can.

Anyway, all else is well. I'm continuing the work on the house and am trying to get a little more done every week.

Jodie did a fantastic drawing this weekend of a Kimberly landscape that I simply love. I'm going to get it framed and put it up in my office. I really, really like it, even though it's not quite finished. Jodie's not 100% happy with it, but at least she hasn't torn this one in half, which is the unfortunate fate of many of her drawings that she considers below standard.

Anyway, I've got to get back to work...