noizZze

Today is a BIG DAY for the crimusic.info — our local Crimean Modern Music Portal. That would be two Birthday celebrations:

• 4 years of the portal itself
• 1 year of the Aestetics (”Estetika”) radio program

It’s pointless to mention that the show is going to be spectacular. Crowds of clubbers, creative folks and fellow composers — everyone is going to be there. Amazing! I’m in anticipation of long talks on hardware, MIDI, 8-bit madness and recent electronic world music trends. Hey, it’s going to be magical.

The place is almost 100 kms away from where we live, but nevertheless we are going to join our friends on the long 2-hour drive and have a great night.

Hope to see you all there!

Finally after a weak of negotiations with local customs and passing metrology we received our ColorVision Spyder2 PRO package. It’s tiny compared to what I expected. All these troubles with government institutions must have made it larger in my eyes.

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Yesterday it was a huge day for the local Crimean (Ukraine; is where I live) club community and youth. It is the day when the global Crimean club radio was brought up on the air.

Happy Birthday to “Aesthetics” Radio!

Crimean clubbing youth had several centralized portals and resources where they discuss events and collaborate, but never before did they have any common radio where DJ’s and musicians from all over peninsula and outside could exhibit their sets, compilations and compositions.

Here’s the link to the playlist with two channels (64kbit and 128kbit).

There’s the public calendar of the radio that I started to provide a more convenient and flexible way of presenting the radio program. Feel free to choose the events or subscribe to the calendar as the whole to monitor interesting events.

Here’s what is on the air today and tomorrow:

Tuesday:

• 10:00 Nick Motorin (Minsk) - “PreParty Radio Show” (multystyle)
• 11:00 Eltech (St. Petersburg) “Muhomor” (deep, tech, minimal, breaks, Guest mixes)
• 13:00 Mel.Ti (Sevastopol) – electro house breaks
• 14:00 Somov (Sevastopol) – “Короткое замыкание” (electro/electrohouse, progressive house)
• 15:00 Белов (Simferopol) - “Dark side of house” (house)
• 16:00 Rush (Sevastopol) - “Rush Hour” (progressive)
• 17:00 Pchel (Sevastopol) - “Jungle Ground” (drum&bass)
• 20:00 D-Plexer (Simferopol) - “Техносфера” (techno)
• 21:00 ZAPADLIST (Simferopol) - “Rudeboy’s time” (drum & bass)

Wednesday:

• 10:00 ОЛЕХ (Simferopol) – “Шнайдер Шоу” (chiptune, nintendocore, 8bit)
• 11:00 Frost / Mandela / Discoden / Haze (Simferopol) – “TechDance” (deep, electro house)
• 13:00 Сладкевич (Simferopol) - garage
• 14:00 Fila (Minsk) - multystyle
• 15:00 Max Hydra (Lugansk) – “Электростатика” (electrohouse, minimaltechno)
• 16:00 Matveev (Simferopol) – “Night Impulse” (multistyle)
• 20:00 VeekTOR (Simferopol) – “FreeZone Show” (electrohouse, house)
• 21:00 NaDi (St. Petersburg) - “Girls Power” (tribal/progressive/house), “Sweet Dreams” (deep house/deep progressive)
• 22:00 Gato Cavalli (Ivano-Francovsk) - “Фарш для мозгов” (drum & bass)
• 23:00 Gul4atai Open Mind (Simferopol-Kharkov) - experimental

First of all, I’m writing this when the most recent firmware version is 1.22. It is important as you may guess from version to version things change, and in case of TC, not necessarily to good.

If you are hearing drop-outs, glitches and crackles working with Konnekt 8 or Konnekt 24D on your Mac, there are several things to check and take note of:

• Try switching rate from 44.1 kHz up to 96 kHz and back to the lower number. It helps with glitches.
• Under heavy CPU load try using 48 kHz instead of 44.1 kHz. I don’t know the reason, but it helps. Theoretically the effect should be opposite, but on practice it works.
• If you hear drop-outs or glitches and your buffer setting is already at it’s maximum — 1024 buffers — drop the value to 512 or 256 buffers. It sounds insane, but it worked for me.

It seems internally the driver doesn’t work well when either 44.1 kHz or 1024 buffers are selected. Try to avoid them and see if helps.

These are pieces of advice I collected while making either my Konnekt 8 or Konnekt 24D of my friend work with Mac OS X 10.4.10. The heart of both Macs is the PowerPC processor in case it is important. I have an iBook G4, my friend — PowerBook.

Drop me a line if you find any other reason that really helped.

My suggestions for Konnekt users on PC can be found in my other post.

So you bought one of these Firewire audio-interfaces and tried them with your PC, but you can hear crackles, drop-outs (pauses) and all that unpleasant stuff. Let me show some possible reasons, and see if your setup has similar problems.

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Note: This post contains an embedded flash-video which can be not shown in the feed reader of your choice, so please get down to the site to see it.

I wrote two or three posts ago that I played at the TechnoSphere 2007 pre-party live with my new MIDI controller console and it was spectacular. Now you can see it with your own eyes.

The first part is the very beginning of the performance. Experimental beats, lots of effects, and my nerves are still not really cooled at the moment.

Next comes the extract from the middle of the set. It was a stomping percussive track with rich bass back end. In the middle of the track the pattern and the whole scheme changes radically so that after a minute or so, you forget what was before the change. I started these experiments some time ago and quickly fell in love with the two tracks rolled in one structure.

The last part of the set was put together from the tracks of some Techno-gurus I deeply respect. I broke the tracks into pieces and constructed into a 45-minute long song. Here’s one of the scenes from this segment.

I don’t make any audio recordings of my performances for two reasons: a) they aren’t professional enough, b) I don’t want people sit in the comfort of their divans and criticize. If you want to hear me, come to parties; if not — it’s completely up to you.

Hope you liked the video. I was told that someone was processing another version and it’ll probably show up on the horizon soon. If it’s true, I’ll post it here. In the mean time, let me know what you think.

This Saturday I played live for the first time! Certainly, I tried it in the past, but it wasn’t a real thing — just some simple toying with the software. This Saturday thing was different.

It wasn’t a huge rave that would be definitely over the top for the first-timer, however they put together a small yet convenient stage, added some lighting equipment and sound. There were about 200-300 people when I was performing and it’s more than enough to see how it goes and get the idea of what has to be improved and how. I liked the audience. Many of them didn’t know what “live” means and came asking the same question. It’s good when people care to ask if they don’t understand; it shows they wish to get the picture, learn something new… It was my pleasure to educate them a bit and show how it’s going to be on fingers.

Here I am in the middle of my hour and a half long set. I had huge butterflies in the stomach until the last minute, but eventually it went very well. You can see, I was playing from the HP notebook though the TC Electronic Konnekt 8 firewire audio interface (Andrew, thanks for a hint on this hardware, it’s a dream even though it has some driver problems) and controlling the setup from my custom-built 8-channel midi controller board. The sound was crisp, bright and very clean as the interface is capable of 192kHz/24bit. I didn’t use this much as the CPU in my poor old laptop was almost overloaded, but the potential of the interface is unlimited and I wish to find a way to record the stuff next time for your “offline” listening pleasure.

I would say, my compositions went great and much better than I expected. People were cheering and jumping all around me and the dancefloor. That definitely gave me an inspiration, new ideas and the willingness to go on with performing.

That was a nice start indeed! The next step I’m planning is to create more material for another, better set and climb on a slightly higher stage.

May 20, 2007 is an official birthday of the MIDI controller we were struggling over with my farther since September 2006. In fact, it was he who struggled most of the time elbowing his way through the technical obstacles. My part was only in the original design and programming of this babe. Just have a look. Isn’t it beautiful.

Let’s admit it, the front panel looks gorgeous. I was planning to use the device with Ableton Live and it drove the design almost completely. There are eight channels with five knobs, three buttons, two LEDs and a slider for each. All elements can be flexibly assigned to any controls within the application. Originally, I planned the yellow knobs for sends, red for EQ and green for panning, but as I play on I feel that the function may change sometime soon.

The top row of buttons with LEDs (right below the knobs) is mutes. The LED is shining when the channel is not muted and goes off when it is. The bottom two rows of buttons is somewhat really specific to Ableton Live. The green row arms the loop in the session view and the LED starts blinking until the loop is started. Once it is, the LED goes on. The black buttons turn the loop in the channel off.

If you were looking carefully, you could notice that there’s a ninth row with two buttons in place of a slider. This is the master row which has all similar controls. The only difference is that these two new buttons are cursor up / down in the session view of Ableton Live and select the scene, whereas the bottom-most are scene arm and disarm instead of corresponding loop arm / disarm in other channels to the left.

The right-most section with the display and keyboard was intended as a simple programmable sampler, but as I continue to play I find millions of new applications: programming the main section events, recording the turns of controls and replaying them, modifying the way knobs report their changes, changing the ranges controls work within and many more. The usage is limited only by my imagination.

Now let’s get a bit closer. You can see in the picture how carefully the front panel is crafted. There are actually two front panels one over the other. The bottom one is the part of a frame, has all the screws and strengthening the device being made of steel. The top layer hides all the details from an eye and gives a pleasant look to the thing.

The components used are very fine and were purchased from one well-known electronic components store. By the way, these very sliders are used in extremely popular Allen & Heath Xone mixers. Buttons with 1 mm dive and noticeable triggering can be pressed in any corner equally well which is crucial for the night club rushy situations. What I’m really worried a bit about are these ultra-bright LEDs. The blind me if I’m not careful enough. Just kidding.

The rear panel is really-really simple. It has a power socket and two MIDI connectors (in and out). You could notice in the first picture, there was TC Electronic Konnekt 8 sitting to the right from the console. I bought it a little while ago to have MIDI in / out slots for my console and to produce a very clear and powerful sound I certainly couldn’t get from my laptop with on-board card. Konnekt is talking to the laptop over an extremely fast Firewire interface.

The case, housing the components, is built from an ultra-light bullet-proof plastic and covered with an extremely scratch resistant spray-paint.

This is another little closeup for your viewing pleasure. The caps are easily replaceable and I’m already thinking to try some other. My fingers tend to slid off these if I turn them too fast or several at once. But anyway, these are insignificant details.

I hope you enjoyed this little walk through. Let me know what you think of the console and if you would like to have one. We are currently considering building custom consoles, so if you like this one and want to have your own (not necessarily with this design), drop me a line.

See you in the club!

Alright, it’s been a long time since I published any mixes and especially on this blog. So, today I wish to share with you my latest creation — minimal techno mix (55 min, 74Mb). It’s intelligent, it’s rich and industrial up to its very last sound. I hope you will enjoy!

Let me know what you think.

We all know how it’s bad to download illegal copies of music pirated by someone else, but we are not rich enough to get all what we want in a legal way, unfortunately. Yeah, nothing new here.

What I saw this morning was an announcement of a “Detroit Digital Vinyl” store, specializing on Detroit techno. The store works with several well-known techno labels and sell tracks in high bit rates (192 / 320 kbit) or even in raw WAV format if you need. Plus they have high bit rate prelistening, plus they offer some bonus tracks which are not available on the original vinyl, and plus, and plus… Yes, and the tracks they provide aren’t rips of the original plastic, they are original digitally mastered copies free of clicks and noises!

Amazing!

Go check out Detroit Digital Vinyl.