First look at the This is Noise NM2 I bought this little Bluetooth MIDI controller on a whim when an ad showed up on my Instagram feed. It really is tiny. It uses little soft tactile switches that are non-clicky. I ordered some of these same switches for my own projects but never got around to actually using them. I…

Live workflow on the Akai Force I’m doing an obligatory post on working through issues with the Akai Force. As you know my approach for grooveboxes centers around building up tracks from scratch live without stopping the transport. This makes some older grooveboxes choke because you have to stop the transport every time you add a track load a sound.…

DAW-less dreams I’m going through my hardware collection and I’m thinking about what caused me to buy a particular piece of gear. I recently bought the Ableton Move, which I think prompted all of this thinkery on my part. I was on a kick with MIDI sequencers for a while. I think it started when I found an MMT-8 for…

Octatrack forgetfulness I was watching this video on Youtube and remembered that I have an Octatrack sitting here that I don’t use enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqdczUpXy4c He’s using the Polybrute 12 along with an Octatrack to make a beat. I dug my Octatrack out and hooked it up. I had some random project loaded up that I forgot all about, that’s always…

Evaluating Blockhead DAW I have been following and supporting this project on Patreon for a little while now. I just downloaded v0.42.2 and I’m playing around with it. I think it’s been half a year since I looked at this last. https://www.patreon.com/c/colugomusic/posts I followed the development on Youtube here Vj3wRS0sM&list=PLH9iPQ3SdYDKcFBd52FGC3rbSwRuPyHGn">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVj3wRS0sM&list=PLH9iPQ3SdYDKcFBd52FGC3rbSwRuPyHGn I think this is the overview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5fWPBOdrY8 Something about this…

Performance mixers I’ve been doing live PA electronic music sets for a while now. It seems like I pull together a pretty random collection of gear every time. One thing that you always need is a mixer though. Requirements vary. Sometimes I need a mic input, sometimes phantom power. Sometimes a bunch of mono inputs from synths. Sometimes effects. Sometimes…

Revisiting favorite VSTs I’m digging back through my archive of old stuff and looking to see what I used to use in my tracks. One thing I found was Audiodamage Axon drum VST. This is a peculiar plugin. I used the original version I think. Or maybe version 2. Looks like there is a new version 3 out now. I’m…

Reaktor 6 I’m getting back into Reaktor again and I realized I forgot how great the Factory Library synths are. There are some super weird soundscape patches too that are new. Reaktor is one of the best ways to do granular synthesis that I know of. There are some pretty leftfield drum beatbox kind of patches too. I also realized…

More Live coding stuff I’m checking out Mumux which I found via toplap. https://unlessgames.gitlab.io/mumux/mixer.html There is a live demo which looks super cool. Also via TopLap which I need to spend some more time on: https://forum.toplap.org/t/mumux-livecoding-vj-tool/2400

More Pure Data There is a plugin called Camomile that I have been meaning to try out. What better time than now? https://forum.puredata.info/topic/9884/camomile-an-audio-plugin-that-loads-pure-data-patches The zip distribution contains .vst3 plugins so I just dragged them into my VST3 folder. So it didn’t work for me in Ableton. In FL Studio only the FX plugin was scanned but doesn’t seem to work…