late last year i picked up a second hand copy of the playstation2 music software “MTV music generator 2″. i was surprised by a few of the quirks i discovered, most importantly it’s ability to sample with a singstar mic(!). couple this with it’s nifty little sample editor that lets you trim, reverse, filter etc. and it’s stepped up to play a significant role in the recording of my next album. so i thought i’d tell you, the intertron, all about it and it’s glorious quirkiness.
so apparently this game had a usb sampling dongle you could buy to plug in your diskman or walkman or horse or what ever we were using back then. it was basically a usb audio interface for your playstation, which is pretty cool, but you’re unlikely to have one just lying around. lucky for us, the software confuses the singstar mic dongle for the sampling kit which turns your ps2 into a sampler sequencer… and a pretty capable one. Continue reading music gerneration station
greetings and welcome to the year 2009. incase you were unaware, the year actually begins on the first of febuary. don’t worry, it’s a common mistake. i don’t think any less of you. recording’s continuing and the scaffolding of an album is well and truly in place. progress was halted briefly by a crippling heat wave and while i would of liked to have been recording i was too busy curled up on the comparitively cool bathroom floor in a sweaty heap… not really… but it was too hot to think… or even exist.
anyway, more has been happening too. i think i left off talking about the guitar hero drums and my attempts to MIDIfi them. well, my success was limited. but i did put together a little video for youtube world to explain my guitar hero rig and some of things other people are doing with these awesome little plastic axes.
it’s quite likely you don’t care but i do get asked about it and sharing is caring. more has been happening too. i’ve started on a new clip for the new album and this particular clip is being filmed from the air! with this thing!
i’ll report back as things happen. and things are happening so i’ll report back soon. i think i’ve got some gigs coming up in march so i’ll have to tell you about that… it’ll involve banjo!
farewell for now as we launch recklessly into the future,
bob.
long time no post. yes, my internet presence has been slightly neglected. apologies. but i have much to report. recording! recording! recording! after the string of gigs last october, i’ve a veritable bounty of tunes and beats and, at this point in time, i am committing them to binary. you could almost say i’m recording an album. and i even know what’s it’s going to be called… but i’m not telling. although recording at the mighty ja’sstudio conctrete looked like this…
we recorded some drum samples two floors down in a big empty concrete room. the mic leads made their way down via the window and the side of the building but unfortunately we couldn’t get a headphone send down there. solution: a coke bottle + a piece of string. communique inside bottle. bottle out the window. genius! headphones are over rated i say. i was going to make a movie of this but hit a wall when i discovered how unbelievably crap imovie is… *about an hour later*… bah! combination of after effects screwing up and imovie not letting me pick my freaking export format. laaaaame! ok. never mind. hey, here’s an mp3 of a new song! it’s me in front of my computer playing ukulele and singing the morning after the last octoberlaide gig. anyone who came to that gig (rhino room) – this is that song i forgot all the words too.
ok, so what else? well i’ve sort of officially release my ep. it’s release has been up in the air for almost a year due to a series of minor disasters and roadblocks in the shapes of people. so i’ve taken a page out of the book of punk and i’m going DIY.
speaking of DIY (a segway worthy of radio!) i’ve been knee deep in drums and DIY midi triggers thanks in part to the truly wonderful guitar hero four. this game is really teaching me to drum. it’s the future of music education – or any skills training – i tells ya. my current project is converting the wireless usb drum kit into a fully functional midi drum kit. all of that equals a wireless, usb, midi drum kit. which is pretty neat. that will be the next post. right now, i’m off to drum.
bob out.
on my recent travels around the intertron, i stumbled upon an old nes game, labyrinth – based on the 1986 masterpiece of the same name. don’t get me started on labyrinth… the fusion of bowie and henson was so obvious, it’s surprising it took them so long. but anyway, the best thing about this game is that somewhere out there, a nes programmer got to make 8-bit covers of david bowie songs. magic dance
Zeal is 27 year-old Melbournite, Robert Jarvis. He makes anticon-esque indie-pop-tronica, animated music videos about cats in space and software that enables you to do all sorts of stuff.
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