combining social media for musicians: youlicense soundcloud & bmi together

image courtesy of WebTreats

This week I had a kind of “ah ha” moment, where no matter how semi savvy I am with a multitude of various social networks, and with the music business itself, every so often there is a use that eludes me, especially as it concerns the integration of multiple sites to create something systematic that is beneficial to me as a musician. Such was the case when I realized what youlicense could do for me.

My first exposure to it was via Twitter courtesy of @MarkMosher and @HethFen who were already avid proponents, the latter of which has written numerous articles on the subject on her blog.  I already had a songwriter publishing account with BMI, a Soundcloud page, and this blog. I have also been trying to come up with a good strategy for tying them together to sell my music digitally online, and was not coming up with anything I felt really good about. Then earlier this week, I was logging into my BMI account to register a new work, and I noticed that BMI was also promoting youlicense, and I could get a free starter account as a BMI member, so I went ahead and did it.

(more…)

acid jam from my small minicase modular build

Well, I have been talking about my return to modular synthesis, and building a modular from scratch, as a way to chronicle the journey of small beginnings, and hopefully potential grand future. I did this partially as a way to encourage others like myself, who felt like an initial purchase of a preconfigured modular system from Doepfer where a “Mini System” costs $1649 and a “Basic System with MIDI” costs $2599 of being too big a first step in an arena that often seems a little foreboding and uncertain. Since my last post on this topic, I have already outgrown the diminuitive minicase with the addition of a TipTop Z3000 VCO, & a Doepfer A-140 ADSR Envelope Generator. Now that I am regularly reading the Eurorack support forum on Muffwiggler, I am glad I am going slow, stepwise and deliberate in my purchases. The reason being, there are so many product offerings from so many different manufacturers, that to go with a preconfigured system from any single manufacturer would create too much homogeneity, and postpone my discovery of alternate offerings from other vendors that in many cases surpass those same functional units from Doepfer. Don’t get me wrong, Doepfer was my original motivation to go this direction, and they are still the most complete line of modules out there. This makes it easy initially to ignore a module maker that only makes a handful of modules, but what I am already discovering is that when a synth manufacturer only makes a few modules, they are often quite powerful or specialized to a certain subinterest in the modular world. If you are going with Eurorack modulars because you want to make Buchla type sounds, then there are modules catered to feeding that specific craving like the Make Noise QMMG and its 8 “vactrols”. I find that reading up before I buy, allows me the chance to minimize or eliminate buyer’s remorse by reading other people’s experiences and making the best choice for my needs the first time around, rather than replacing one module with another one, and having to sell the old one off used for a loss. I already wish I had forgone the A-120 VCF and had made the TipTop Z2040 my first VCF since it also contains a VCA, and as a dual function module, would have been a more efficient choice in such a tiny case. I have tweeted a lot of things to the effect that a tiny minicase system was more satisfying a small beginning than many would think, but of course when you say something like that, people want to HEAR the results, which up to this point have been zero, as far as public posts on the internet are concerned. That is precisely why I did this:

(more…)

new namm 2010 gear from doepfer roundup

Well its January 2010 so you know what that means? Its NAMM time again, so the flood of new product offerings and announcements is underway. Looks like Doepfer has several new products, some of which look quite promising. Remember of course, that none of these are shipping, and the designs of some of these modules are still in flux, and could end up being very different, if and when they do get released.

Voltage Controlled DIY Effects A-187-1

Doepfer A-187-1 Voltage Controlled DSP Module

(more…)

the journey begins: starting a modular synthesizer from scratch

A-119 Ext In, A-120 VCF, A-132 Dual VCA, & A-146 LFO in Doepfer Minicase

(more…)

full circle: my return to modular synthesis

Of late, I have been bitten by the modular synthesis bug. For those of you who don’t know what that exactly means, let me quickly explain. Most synthesizers whether analog, digital, or virtual are comprised of sound generation components called Oscillators (aka a VCO), Filters (VCF), & Amplifiers (VCA), and modulation sources like Envelope Generators (EG), & Low Frequency Oscillators (LFO). In addition to this there are Noise Generators, Sample & Hold Circuits (S&H), wave shapers and many other possible accessories too numerous to mention. The “VC” in many of those designations stands for “voltage controlled” which actually only applies to analog synthesis, so in a digital, it might be called a DCO, and in virtual synthesis since it is really just software modeling going on, they may choose VCO or DCO as the metaphor for what the oscillator is doing since it is literally neither. What gives any given synth its distinctively characteristic sound, is how many of these items, of what type, in what configuration you have.

Doepfer A-100 Modular System

throw your own renegade party with a rhino cube

Imagine for a minute that you had a portable DJ setup, a complete PA sound system with banging subwoofers, and a complete night club style lighting rig, but rather than having to tote a truck load of flight cases, racks, trusses, stands, gig bags and crates full of cables to be hooked up, it was all self contained in a tiny popup cube that was on a small trailer, could be driven and dropped off anywhere, the top popped up, and full lighting, sound and dj booth were prewired and immediately ready to go.  Well that is the vision that created the Rhino Cube.

redvoid throwing down in the Rhino Cube

minimalism

The term minimalism is commonly misunderstood, and often maligned. In its truest sense, minimalism was an art movement, a form of architecture, and then finally a form of music, specifically Classical or art music. Recently this label has also been applied to electronica as well, and many questions seem to arise from the use of this term, which probably needs some clarification.

The best way to think of minimalism in the broadest sense, is as a series of concepts or ideas. Ideas drive many things, and in creative endeavors, ideas become design principles, guides or even sometimes arbitrary rule sets used to steer the process. The Mies Van Der Rohe quote “less is more” gets thrown around, and did stem from the Bauhaus architecture and design movement so it is legitimately part of the true definition of minimalism, but it is possibly not clear enough to those who do not intuitively understand it at face value. Another way to say this is “doing the more with less”, as in create the most function from the least amount of form. I like to use the term “Occam’s Razor” which fundamentally means “economy of means” or what we could all just call plain simple.

(more…)