Forgery League

I thought I’d peek at my server statistics for Forgery League, and see how people found their way to the site. One person apparently Googled “mbox high pitched buzz”, so I figure it’s a good time to mention:

I figured out what was causing the quiet whining noise on the Mbox’s monitor outputs. It was happening every time there was audio, which gave the impression that it was the data stream coming in through its own USB port. However, it turns out it was actually the video output. I’d attached a monitor to my PowerBook (an “Aluminum” series G4 with DVI video connection), and when I disconnected it, away went the screech.

Strange: the signal to the Mbox is digital, so you’d think it wouldn’t be susceptible to interference. Does the monitor signal introduce so much noise that it can travel down a USB cable and get picked up by the analog circuitry in the Mbox?

Sadly, this means having to use Logic on one small laptop screen some of the time, but I’m certainly glad I don’t have to get another outboard audio interface.

I haven’t yet tested whether it only appears on the monitor outs, or whether it gets recorded too, and whether it helps to use a different/better USB cable. I’ll do some more playing around when I get a chance. Stay tuned.

Seen recently:

When we moved into this place a couple months back, the idea was that by now we’d have the music studio all set up and be in the midst of recording our next CD. But just before we made the move, I discovered that my Windows machine had been doused with cat wee, right through the back grille, and its hard drive controller was getting flaky in a scary sort of way. So I commandeered my SO’s old PowerBook G4, and got me a copy of Logic Express (a belated birthday present). It’s taking a while to get everything back in gear - not for nothing does Ronan Chris Murphy write that “Home Studios are Killing Music”.

It’s a complicated piece of machinery, is Logic, so as a way of getting my bearings while also getting a few creative ya-yas out, I’ve decided to start up the Song-a-Day project again. One track every day, or at least a few a week. Length doesn’t matter, but they usually average about a minute and a half. Sound quality isn’t as important as the ideas in the piece, and most important is learning from the experience.

So here’s the first: 2006_1009_Scales.mp3 (1.2 megs)

Still very much getting the hang of the way Logic handles regions and quantization and such. At some point I’ll read a manual.

I was excited (read “squealed like a girl”) to discover that alternative tunings are available just by picking them out of a menu - I’ve wanted to do pieces using just intonation (or some other non-even tempered scale) for a long time. There are literally dozens of them included, and you can define your own as well. Right on! So this one’s in a 7-limit JI, since I’ve always loved those rich, flat-flat sevenths. Other than that, there’s nothing so remarkable about this one, except maybe that I used a pair of scissors for percussion somewhere in there. Synths are the subtractive and FM ones bundled with Logic.

The studio is indeed going to rock, but it’s going to take longer than I’d anticipated. My computer, the 4-year-old Windows XP box on which we recorded the Stars for Searchlights EP, started to act flaky a few weeks ago: it stopped recognizing the DVD drive and the big recording drive, then found them again… and now it’s completely lost ‘em. Something wrong with the motherboard’s built-in drive controllers.

This may have something to do with the cat wee liberally spritzed through the inside of the machine near the back ventilation grille. Thank you ever so much, Cobweb. (To be fair, he’s been in distress lately - he’s got bad gums and slowly lost one of his canine teeth during the week following the move. For a while he had a sort of walrus-tusk that he wouldn’t let anyone touch.)

I’m not about to buy a new computer, though - good monitors are taking priority over that. The new studio machine will most likely be my SO’s old PowerBook G4, with my old drives moved to FireWire enclosures, and an MBox for sound I/O. And when I get a new machine, I don’t think I’m going to go the Windows route again.

So the fancy new quiet case I just got for the Windows box will most likely go to J. (If you’re setting up a studio and prefer Windows, or you just can’t stand screeching fans and rattling hard drives, check out Antec cases - my other roommate’s got the same model, the Sonata II, and I’m quite impressed. Thoughtfully designed and easy to install, too.)

Meanwhile, the house is still a bit chaotic, but we’re starting to settle in. The weirdest part is having three floors plus basement. The studio, on the top floor, is going to have to be kind of self-sufficient, since it’s separated from the kitchen by two slippery, narrow staircases.

I’m hoping that at some point I’ll be able to go up there and actually make some music…

Bookmarked in case I ever get a little MIDI controller here: midiStroke, which will convert MIDI messages to keypresses in OS X. With a bit of work, it could be used to add some real, physical controls to Photoshop: twiddle a knob to adjust the flow on the Airbrush tool, that sort of thing. Pity there aren’t keystrokes for adjusting the current paint colour…

Also, I happened to stumble on a listing for a synth called the Dave Smith Instruments Evolver. Just reading about it makes me want to weep with joy. It really does sound like my dream synth: all sorts of modulation possibilities, external input (which can trigger or modulate in different ways), all sorts of feedback paths… And the editing software they offer lives up to the name ‘Evolver’ too, with genetic patch generation - you can generate new sounds a little like you were breeding plants.

All of which adds up to ‘lots of weird noises’ and ‘percussion processor’.

Of course, there are many other things I ought to be doing with my money: monitor speakers, a new mixer, MIDI controller, food, rent, etc. But: oooooh.

It’s not even that expensive.

*pines*