The parameters are that it has to be less than $1400, not made by M-Audio, and sold in the AudioMidi store (because I inexplicably find myself with a boatload of store credit. No idea how that happened.) If we include stuff that actually makes sounds, we're left with the following options: Roland RD-300SX, Yammy P140, P85, S08, and KX8, CME UF80 and VX8, and the Studiologic VMK-188+.

My thinking is as follows: I don't really care about the sounds, one way or the other. For actual piano use, I'll use a sample set, and none of these are gonna have a sample set of the quality of the ones I have already. I also don't care about knobs and sliders, because I have a mouse, and if I ever get bored with that, I have a bunch of other shit that can send MIDI CC. I also know that I don't have a lot of love for StudioLogic, as they've let me down on stage before, and pretty badly. (Although for what it's worth, a Fatar keybed sure does explode nicely when you give it a swift kick from the bottom. Too bad I did it in soundcheck and not during the show. Your loss, Tulsa.)

My reasoning would suggest that of all the companies above, Yamaha are the only ones that actually make actual pianos, so they would be the ones with the know-how to make a keybed that doesn't completely suck. But considering the fact that I've been playing semi-weighted synths almost exclusively for the last 22 years (since I moved out on my own, and found that a piano was a hard thing to move on the NYC subway) I assume that any full weighted keybed is gonna be pretty hard on my hands regardless, so I suppose that last point is academic.

Thoughts? If you know anything outrageously bad or good about any of the above, now's the time to speak up.

Anyhow, our heat wave is over, and I can go in my office again without instantly breaking in to a sweat, so we'll return to our normal programming now. We have the VST versions of Kombinat pretty much done at this point, and are going to start the AU port here in a minute. If all goes well (and wishes were horses) we'll be in full beta by the end of the week.

Presets are next on the schedule for me personally, while Adam tries not to punch his iMac repeatedly. It'll be kind of tricky to do the presets for this, as it is rather input-dependent, on top of the fact that it has a semi-complicated gain structure which takes a little bit of getting used to.

I'm of the opinion that there are two kinds of computer-musicians: the kind that hunt through the presets then touch one up to suit what they're doing, and the kind that will sit and tweak for hours on end, starting from a more-or-less empty patch. Speaking strictly for myself, I'm of the former sort, and unapologetically to boot. Writing the presets for our products almost always falls to me, and I try to give a broad overview of the most useful aspects of the plugin, and also do a few little tricks that any given plug might be capable of. For more limited-use plugs, we have fewer presets, for reasons I would hope are obvious. For this one, I think I'm gonna have to lay down 8^2, and put them in useful groupings on top of that.

So, the open question for the day is how useful are presets to you? Do you find yourself just browsing through until you find one that sounds close to what you were thinking, or do you like to start from a blank slate?

That aside, the wife and I have tickets to the techno-viking masterpiece that is Carmina Burana with the OSO on Sunday. Looking forward to that. I don't know if they're doing full text or not, and I doubt they'll have the 8 timpani players the score calls for, but it should be fairly heavy duty regardless. Some 250 voices in the choir.

Obviously, the original Buchla and Serge arguments for their touchplate stuff was that the synthesizer was a new instrument, and the keyboard paradigm was inherently flawed for controlling this new instrument. Personally, I think it was a bit snobbish, as a keyboard is a perfectly good controller for a synthesizer, and lowers the barriers to entry significantly.

Of course, it bears mentioning that anyone that can actually play keyboards can probably play most any other similar instrument with reasonable competency, and for someone that can't play keyboards, it really doesn't matter. But, that said, most everyone can puzzle out keyboard parts. Controlling a synth with, say, a guitar is an exercise in futility for the most part, and the guitar is far more difficult to learn. And to save the Mad Typerz from rebutting, I've done it plenty, and I know it's stupid. So do you. The only one that didn't get the memo is Alan Holdsworth.

Anyhow, what's your favorite alternate controller? Why? Anything truly freaky out there that we may not have seen?

I like what Warp did here, since it is difficult to build brand awareness for a label in the current market, which is sort of band-name-centric. However, while I like it, I also think it may be kind of silly in the short run, since the only people that will go to BLEEP every single day for a couple weeks to get the new Autechre track-of-the-day know full well what Warp are about, and that BLEEP is the Warp store. Personally, I'll buy the album at BLEEP; I always buy an album there if it's available both there and the iTunes store. But I won't be going every day to get the new track.

I also find it interesting (as was also postulated on Synthtopia) that Autechre didn't follow the leads of Radiohead and NIN and offer a premium package. Personally, I find the premium package idea to be something of a "fan tax" (to use the words of my wife) that takes advantage of the largess of your true fans. But on the other hand, if you can make something that only they will really be happy for, and is a collector's item, and is well-made, then what's the harm?

In any event, while I'm perfectly aware that Autechre is to NIN as NIN is to Radiohead (that is to say that each is an order of magnitude smaller than the next) from my perspective they are a major artist, and can be added to the fold of people with at least a modicum of common sense.

EDIT: I thought something was fishy about this whole thing. Neither site I referenced actually included the pertinent bit from the Warp site, which is this: "These are alternate versions of tracks from both their latest album QUARISTICE, and the special edition 2CD PACKAGE OF THE ALBUM. These versions have not been made available before on any previous releases." So I take back virtually all of the above. It doesn't count until it's a real album. Sorry, guys. You're not fancy pants after all. I'll still buy the damn thing, though.

Kombinat lives. We spent the day fixing minor quibbles with the UI, and are just about done with that. All that remains is to "de-click" the knobs and add the presets, and the Windows version will be complete, and can go out for testing. I imagine this will occur tomorrow evening or Wednesday. We'll probably have the OS X VST shortly thereafter, and then the week-long battle to build the AU starts. It's still too soon to say for sure, but you will have a Kombinat in your hands by the end of May.

And, I must say, this would be an excellent tool for the recreational DJ.

Did you know that becoming a recreational DJ is America’s latest and greatest hobby? Consumers young & old are embracing the newest trend by attending scratch academies, purchasing mixers, turntables and headphones. Not only can you learn to become a DJ in your spare time, you can also make your own mixes and share your personalized creations with your friends and family. I think your readers would be interested in learning how they can begin DJing. I have provided all the information you will need below, including: products, industry terms and tips from professional DJs.

This sort of mass e-mailing, which serves no real purpose whatsoever, just goes to show how retarded the internet has become. The letter that follows is essentially a complete blog post, and provides links to purchase all the pertinent "recreational DJ" gear, already formated for Blogger so you can just copy and paste.

In my opinion (ho, ho, ho) there are three viable forms of blogging. They are the index site (like MatrixSynth) which is a clearing house for material of a particular well-defined subject, the op-ed like this site, where the audience is visiting because the author makes a spectacle of himself, and the magazine blog, like CDM (and to a lesser extent MusicThing), where each posting could easily lay in a print magazine.

All other forms of blogs seem to run the gamut from faintly annoying to out-and-out bait 'n' switch ad farms. The letter above and its attendant pre-made post are obviously designed for the latter. These "How To Get Rich On The Intardtubes" motherfuckers are, of course, perfectly welcome to their corner of the 'web, but they can seriously leave me the fuck out of it. So, Breen Halley of the Max Borges Agency, when you google yourself on your lunch break and this post comes up, it will hopefully serve to reiterate my earlier direct reply that you need to update your fucking address book, titface.

In other news, I'm gonna pick up a new 2-channel mic pre, I think, and I'm going to sell my Averil 312a. So if you're interested in purchasing same, don't be afraid to drop me a line. It'll be a week or so before I can part with it. It is the single-channel version of this, with external power supply, of course. So if you're looking for a single API-flavored channel, you could do far worse. I'm thinking $850, but I'm open to trades. Always looking for the analog, naturally.

And finally, to all commercial enterprises, be it software, t-shirts, albums, musical instruments, your mom, whatever the fuck: stop sending me press releases. This isn't a news site, and I could give a fuck if you've revved your PoleSmoker 2000 to version 2.04b. I especially don't like it when you say "I'm sure the readers of your site will be interested in our new PoleSmoker 2000!" No, you're not. In fact, you don't have the faintest idea what the readers of this site are interested in. I barely do, you presumptuous twat.

As an aside, does anybody have a copy of Rez for PS2 lying about they don't want any more? Drop me a pm or email if you do. I can, of course, easily get one off eBay, but I'd rather not use that service unless I absolutely had to, because it'd probably take three or four tries to actually get a copy, but I'd have to pay every time.

So talk amongst yourselves. What's the ideal music game?

One other point to make before we move on: that post excited not the most comments we've had in a conversation on AI, but certainly the most rapid response. There were 40 comments in that thread in the first three hours of its existence. If you read many music blogs and forums (I assume you do; I read 'em all, for the most part) you'll notice that sort of thing is unusual in the extreme. Obviously, I want to get traffic to my site, like anyone else that craves attention and manifests that craving in this particular fashion. It would thus behoove me to continue posting topics that excite responses like that one; this is easier than it sounds, because it really isn't hard to elicit the ShitCock response. All you have to do is set reason and thoughtfulness aside.

However...

The simple fact of the matter is that staying on top of a thread like that can quickly get tiring, and the whole site would rapidly turn in to something akin to the DailyKos. While I religiously read the postings on the front of that site, I hardly ever look at the comments, because it's just short pithy remarks. Putting up a thoughtful response to something and not just saying "SHITCOCK!" requires the understanding that you're not gonna get lost in the shuffle. Since I prefer that manner of discourse here, I'll try to limit that sort of thing. I think everyone would be happier.

Keeping that in mind, I'll do the polar opposite right now. This is not really an open thread. I'd like you to post a simple thought on where you see the music industry (or at least the part that is involved with manufacturing and selling music) in 10 years. Perhaps we can build a consensus that we can all hew to, in order to stop reacting to change, and start making change. I'll start:

In the year 2018, I'll submit that there are essentially no brick-n-mortar music stores other than specialty shops for vinyl and what-not. The entirety of music sales will be handled by iTunes and its mimics, including Amazon, and will take place digitally. Most music sales in that regard will be back catalogue, whatever pop music is in 2018, and R&B. The large independent record label (I'm loath to use TVT as an example, so we'll use Anti or Warp) will cease to exist, because it is financially unwieldy for an independent artist to expect to actually sell his output. All mid-sized artists (as opposed to those that play at Madison Square Garden) and lower will just put up their output essentially as they create it, for free, and their personal incomes will be realized either by touring, merch sales, or bartending. In short, the era in which a small or mid-sized artist can reasonably expect to sell records in order to make records ended on May 3rd, 2008.

Okay, your turn. Where will this business be in 2018?

In one fell swoop on Monday, Mr. Reznor pooped all that hard work right out his ass by offering the latest crop of NIN recordings for free, no strings attached. On the one hand I say more power to him; it's great that he has a revenue stream based upon mechanical royalties from previous recordings and touring that can provide him and his dependents with the means to pay the rent. God bless.

On the other hand, it tells the consumer, who really isn't all that sharp when you get down to it, that we weren't that serious when we said "hey, those plastic disks aren't where the value is; rather, it rests in what's stamped in to them." The consumer isn't that swift on the uptake, I'll grant, but he has a good eye for bullshit when he sees it.

Now, I'm perfectly aware that all this is just pissing in the wind. Music itself may not have a desire to be free, but consumers sure do want it to be free. So this is really more of a vent than a question in and of itself. But let me posit the following, and I'll leave it alone:

I've heard the demo tape that Mr. Reznor sent to Wax Trax! before he got signed to TVT. Wax Trax! passed on it. TVT heard something (which oddly went against their normal habit of not hearing anything) and sent Mr. Reznor off to England to hang out with John Fryer, Adrian Sherwood, and Keith LeBlanc, and then we get Pretty Hate Machine.

So, logically assuming that Mr. Reznor would not have his current fame without the success of Pretty Hate Machine, and logically assuming that he could not have afforded the services of the producers that worked on his first album without the financial backing of TVT, one is only left with the assumption that the free music world to which Mr. Reznor aspires precludes the creation of his catalog which supports this aspiration. I can't come to any other conclusion, frankly.

(And to those that would take issue with the preceding paragraph, I direct you to the Tackhead album "Tackhead Tape Time," wherein you will find the Adrian Sherwood/Keith LeBlanc track "Reality." Other than Gary Clail's robo-vocals, this is essentially "Down In It" instrumental, and pre-dates "Down In It" by three years. "Down In It" was, of course, the track that put NIN on the road to where they are now.)

I won't go in depth as to what each section consists of, as since you don't have the plug in front of you, you can't really follow along, but all the available types are used in some combination, as is the filter and compressor. These samples are neither displaying Kombinat's ability to work as a subtle carving tool or its ability to reduce a signal to what is, for all intents and purposes, a continual stream of ones, as far as the DAW is concerned. They are somewhat middle-of-the-road, at least as far as this plugin goes.

So mad props to audiomidi.com, and in particular the goodly Mr. Mitchell Sigman, who made me promise to send him virgins. Or raisins. One or the other, I can't recall which. In honor of their incredible gesture, I will now go spend another $1500 in their store, on something I probably don't need, but will maybe have nice lights on it.

This poll will no doubt royally fuck all the RSS readers out there, so if you just see this text and no poll, please take a moment and come to the main site and whack one of the choices.

I have a good general idea of what the Audio Damage customer base uses, but I have to admit that I make certain assumptions about the overall AI readership. I'm curious as to how the two line up. There are a shit-ton of people that read this blog that never have created an account; that's fine, of course, but if you could just come out from lurking to vote on this one poll, I'd be oh-so-happy. You don't have to log in to vote; it isn't part of posiNET.

I'm going to give TC about two more weeks, then I'm going to have a brand new PowerCore X8 for sale on the cheap. The amount of time they're taking with Vista drivers is absolutely ludicrous. I have to be honest and say that I would have given them about the same amount of time as I gave Lynx originally, which was two months after the release of Vista. This has gone far beyond an understandable hiccup, and is simply irresponsible on their part.

Vista was released on Nov. 30th, 2006, if you were curious. That was 18 months ago. It was generally stable for professional use (as long as you didn't own any M-Audio products, and why on Earth would you if you were a professional? They make plastic Chinese crap...) by March of last year. That was 13 months ago. I fail to see how a company the size of TC Electronic couldn't manage to build and beta-test a working FW driver and set of plugins in that amount of time. It simply defies logic, unless your logic wanders along these lines: "well, Vista sukz, and XP rulez, so we're not gonna bother until X number of customers complain."

I've tested the unit extensively with my iMac, and I liked the included plugins enough to exhibit a far larger measure of patience than I would normally, once I got over my initial shock that it wasn't Vista compatible. I even made a tentative list of plug-ins that I was going to purchase, once I had it running with my main music computer. I figure the unit is worth it for VSS3 alone, quite frankly. That is a hell of a reverb.

But in all honesty, I have far better things to do with $1500 than have it literally sit in a hole in my production rack depreciating. If TC hasn't released Vista drivers by two Fridays hence (5/16) I'm going to offer this unit for sale for a ludicrously cheap price, and some lucky XP or OS X user can have the benefit of my costly mistake in trusting a company to be responsible.

(Note: I posted a similar comment in the TC forums because I'm not the sort to hide behind my blog.)

Before I get off on a rant and start frothing, let me set the stage for you:

EXHIBIT A: A thoughtful post in any forum remotely related to the music industry.

EXHIBIT B: The replies to that post.

I think that's really all that needs to be pointed out. And in fairness, I only read English, and a bit of French, so I can't generalize to other written languages. For simplicity's sake, I'll limit the discussion to English, so you can assume I'm speaking only to Americans and members of the Commonwealth. With that out of the way...

Let me get this straight: you take the time to click a "reply" button, whack the smiley face icon that most fits your mood at that moment a half dozen times, possibly follow it up with "ROFLMAO" or the even more droll "+1," hit submit, and then lean back in your chair and think "yup, job well done! I sure did get my point across there!" Will I see that little chuckling emoticon animation and your "LOLOLOLOL +1!!!!!" and think to myself "boy, that Arachnid23, he sure does know from whence he speaks! What wit! What perception! I want to have dinner with this dude and plumb the depths of his knowledge about the Lexicon PCM96!"

No, I won't. I'll think you're Ruprect The Monkey Boy from "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."

It has become apparent to me that, some time in the recent past, we've collectively lost forty to fifty IQ points. Way back in the mists of time, circa 2002 or so, you could reasonably expect to see a facsimile of written English in any reply to any topic, even on USEnet. It was even reasonably acceptable to make fun of someone's grammar or spelling in a rebuttal. Now, someone that says "hey, you know there's more than one way to spell 'your'" is accused of being a grammar Nazi, and anyone making a thoughtful reply stands out like a sore thumb amid all the jumping circles.

Now, I won't deny for a second the power and usefulness of the emoticon. If I ended every paragraph in this rant with a ;-) it would imply that everything I was saying was ironic humor, or not meant to be taken seriously, and I've found that these little hints are necessary when you use real-time chat as a method of conducting business. And I'll also allow that someone may want to make a quick point of agreement without sitting down and writing a rambling piece of commentary.

My 5th grade report card, '78/'79 school year. I'm not clear on the difference between Satisfactory and Good, which would explain my "Comprehension" scores, I think.

But these little animated GIFs are not, absolutely not, a replacement for the fundamental ability to actually say, well, anything at all. They are not nouns. Neither are they verbs. They are simply punctuation, and fairly inarticulate punctuation at that. I won't state that I'm William Strunk and E. B. White Risen Again. In fact, I'll point out that I graduated (barely) high school with a 2.2 GPA, and you'll note from the image above that I was fairly consistent throughout my schooling. I frequently misspell words, my grammar is questionable for someone that writes so much, I digress so often I make Catcher In The Rye look tame, and I have a completely illogical love for the parenthetical statement (and commas) which has to be annoying to the literate reader. I'd like to think, though, that I can generally be understood. I don't aspire to be Ernest Hemmingway, and you don't have to either.

But it's English, for the love of Christ! Assuming you've made it past the 9th grade, or whatever the equivalent is in other English-speaking countries, and haven't spent your entire time in primary school crushing up 5mg tabs of methylphenidate and snorting it in the back of class through rolled up pieces of wide-ruled notebook paper, you've been given, free of charge, the basic outlines of how to construct a meaningful sentence in your mother tongue. At least make an effort. I won't make fun of your spelling (I never have) but I beg and plead with you to at least leave the chuckleheads and the "+1" at the door. Why do you agree? Why do you think it's funny? Why, oh why, are you rolling on the floor laughing your ass off? These are things I want to know.

The events of last week have got me thinking in a something-less-than-sanguine manner about the nature of the music industry again. (If you've not been in school lately, I discovered my manager of 14 years was robbing me blind, and had to take Xtreme Measures to sort things out in a hurry.) It seems to me that, in this business, there's two distinct classes.

The first class (what we'll call the Untouchables) is mostly made up of musicians, and to a lesser extent those that immediately surround them and answer only to them. These sorts include FOH and monitor engineers, recording engineers, stage techs, band LDs and the like. Essentially, people that make their living directly from the actual act of actually creating music, either live or in the studio.

The other class, the ones we'll call Brahmans for the purposes of this essay, includes virtually everyone else. These are the people that make money off of musicians and the creation of music, either live or in the studio, but have no creative output to speak of. Now, I'm no doubt going to generate a bit of guff here, but I'm going to lump producers in to this category as well. I mean, if George Martin hadn't found himself the Beatles, would he be remembered as The Man Who Brought The World Spike Milligan? Seriously? I won't deny the input that a producer has in to the creative process, as I am one myself, but the process needs to exist in the first place. Also in this category we put lawyers, managers, accountants, everyone that works at record labels, publishers, t-shirt companies, record stores, TuneCore, CD Baby, et al.

Now, there are those various people, like me, who straddle the worlds of the Untouchables and the Brahmans. I'm a musician, but I also make money off musicians, as a producer, software developer, and publisher. It's worth noting that for people like me, it's fairly obvious what side of the business to be in if you're interested in, say, paying for groceries. I make more money in a year with Audio Damage than I did in ten years of fronting a moderately successful band. And I'll note that in that band I never signed away my publishing (which is the number one way you don't get paid as a signed musician, it must be said) and retained all rights except master use of my first four records, and all rights of the next three.

Let's talk about Brahmans for a bit. These people are the sort of people that want to work in the music industry because it's cool but can't make music, for whatever reason. The guy at Guitar Center that works at the accessories counter is probably the best example of the most direct way to earn a living via the good offices of musicians, but if you broaden your field of vision, you'll see that guy is no different than the guy that owns a PA company, or the chick that proofreads the liner notes at the label, or the paralegal that does research for the entertainment attorney, or the dude that does the format conversions at TuneCore. All of these people make a living off a musician's creative output, usually at the direct expense of the musician, but sometimes in an indirect manner. (For an indirect example, you need look no further than the bartenders at your favorite venue.)

Now, many of these people are necessary, and I certainly won't be first in line to begrudge the format conversion dude at TuneCore, because he lets me spend my time playing video games (for, uhhhh... inspiration!) instead of figuring out how to submit songs to all these different services. I'm more than happy to give him his share of the twenty bucks or whatever it is I pay to TuneCore per year per album.

Nor would I say that it is easy to get by without a manager if you have even moderate success, unless you work in particular genres that don't require one. (I doubt Robert Rich has one, for instance, and he does fine, and plays theaters to nice crowds.) And a booking agent? God forbid you have to book a 3-month run for a genre band. I've done it, and let me say that I'd gladly give a large percentage of the income to someone else to make those phone calls. Routing sucks so hard, and if someone is good at it and likes to do it, then by all means, here's 15%.

And signing any contract without proper legal advice is essentially the same as saying "well, this music thing is okay, but what I really want to do is be a bartender." That's exactly what's gonna happen to you if you sign a recording contract or publishing agreement without a lawyer.

That paragraph brings me to my point, albeit in a roundabout way. When iTunes says "WOW! 65% GOES DIRECTLY TO THE ARTIST!" people tend to believe that. You and I know that's bullshit, and Harry Fox can suck my hairy (yet admittedly somewhat foxy) balls, quite frankly. More like .03%, when all is said and done. But what the public perceives as the music industry, which is all musicians, plus George Martin, plus those shady folks that go around suing everybody for downloading, fails to take in to account the 95% of the iceberg that is underwater. Even the figures released by the RIAA alternately trumpeting their yearly success or bemoaning their yearly failures don't even begin to scratch the surface of this behemoth, which includes everything from companies that rent PAs and semis (Clair Bros.) to companies that silkscreen t-shirts (Contagious Graphics) to the folks that bring the Roach Coach to shed shows, to Miller Genuine Draft, to Monster Cable, to the guys that rent CNC time to make the metal parts of Monomes.

In short, this business is fucking ginormous, and it's easy to say "well, I'm a musician, and thus this entire industry is underneath me." Bad news, dude. You're at the bottom of this particular food chain. If you make music, let it be for the love of making music, and not because you want to make a living. Sometimes you eat the bear, but usually the bear eats you.

In the near future (possibly the next couple hours) I'll put up a thoughtful post on some aspect of the music industry and we can all argue and laugh and cry and ban people and stuff. But in the interim, I'll mention that I got my LensBaby 3G lens today for my Nikon. I was wondering how the camera work in the Buchla Music Easel film that was making the rounds lately was done, and thanks to a hint from the kindly Professor Kirn in this post on CDM, we learn that a LensBaby 3G was used. Since I'm a big fan of little depth-of-field, I determined this was Exactly What I Needed, and furthermore Deductable (by virtue of posting the pictures that result in this very blog.)

So, yes, that's my MonoMachine and MachineDrum up top, and here's my oft-used Source, all arty and shit. Thanks, and I'll just add that receipt to the stack. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. (Or you can hit my Flickr page for new pictures of the synth community's most famous cat, Pablo, also done with the LensBaby, because he's patient like that.)

Back in the saddle again. What a week that was; I spent about 80% of it dealing with my fucking miserable excuse for a manager and his bullshit issues. (Obviously, he is no longer my manager, which probably could go without saying.) And the other 20% was spent sleeping, essentially. But everything is fair and square now, and I'm back to working on BigSeq 2.

So my question is thus: after pondering for a while, I was thinking that it would perhaps be interesting to have each effect engine have its own sequencer. So, instead of setting a global number of steps, you could set arbitrary steps-per-measure for each effect. In this manner, your distortion could be on the 12-step program ("hello, my name is FuzzPlus2, and I have a problem...") while your VCA was kicking 32nd notes and the filter was, just for fun, 13 steps per measure.

I'm still wondering if this would be useful, frankly. I have a feeling it would be, but it would be a lot of work to add individual sequencers rather than working off a global base. So, would it be worth the effort? I have a feeling that I know how you're gonna answer already.