July 2011
1 post
April 2011
1 post
Studio : Reboot
Last night was my last public lecture for the next six months, possibly longer. I’ve decided to reduce this activity to zero because I really do have to knuckle down and get on with some music.
Truthfully, the lack of activity in the studio has been causing much frustration, perhaps more so in the last month than at any other time than in, say, the last ten years, and certainly not since...
January 2011
7 posts
January Update
I really should have filled this in before now as the experience was worthy of documentation.The session at Radio Newcastle went pear-shaped very quickly and it was only through luck on my part and professionalism on their part that we got through the experience relatively intact.
I was on-air to promote the forthcoming SynthFest event, which is all about synthesisers and DIY music. I decided to...
Radio Newcastle, 1120am GMT
Appearing on Radio Newcastle today at around 1120 am GMT to promote SynthFest and Maker Faire.
Taking some kit along too. :)
Politics and Politicians
I’m no good at politics. Never have been. From a politician’s point of view, I suffer from one fatal character flaw. Call me naive, but I honestly and earnestly believe the best of people as opposed to expecting the worst.
In recent days, I’ve witnessed the workings of two Cabals, independent of each other and yet both behave in exactly the same way.
The thing about Cabals is...
TV
This morning’s partial eclipse of the sun, visible over most of Europe, coincided with the BBC’s StarGazing Live event. I’ve been doing odds and sods for BBC Radio Newcastle for about a year - usually talking about events in the sky or trying to plug our late, much lamented astronomical society, Luna - and the idea of an event on Sunderland Sea Front came up at the back end of...
What? No T-Bass?
Bad news when you can’t find a decent image of your album out there on the net, even on the bloody pirate sites. What happened to all those reviews of The Fabulous Neutrinos? Wasn’t it “… probably the finest commercial electronic music album of all time”?
Dismayed.
How long does it take for a piece of work to become irrelevant?
The Death of Music
New Year’s Eve and we’re driving to the super market. The roads are surprisingly clear and the snow and ice that’s been part of our lives for the last month has finally given way to an amorphous grey sludge that sticks to the underside of the car, huge chunks bouncing around inside the wheel arches and off the brake pipes. It’s not something that I enjoy. Not at all.
To...
STEM Ambassador
I spent this morning working out my lecture schedule and project list for the first part of 2011. I was fairly determined that I would spend more time working on music this year but, already, the lecture schedule is looking stupid. I’ve already started to back out of certain commitments.
In December 2010, I signed up to the government’s STEM Ambassador Programme. STEM stands for...
December 2010
2 posts
Christmas / New Year / Nose Job
Forty one years ago, when I was eight ears old, I got into a fight. I started calling some older (and bigger) boys a bunch of names, and they didn’t like that. One of their number got the jump on me and, smack, I took one right in the kisser. A big fat fist the size of a cantaloupe right in the face. My friends, who had, until then, stood at my back, ran and left me to fend for myself....
Content / Updates / Reboot
Since this blog is essentially about my work with SkinMechanix, Ion and T-Bass, and those bands have fans with ages ranging from at least eight to eighty, I’ve decided to remove all of the adult images from these pages to avoid the risk of upsetting anyone.
Cheers
David
November 2010
15 posts
Watchcasiotone401:
Arpeggiator(Cubase)-ASM-2+ASR-Analog2.0 Demo
cool…
Busy, busy, busy
A massively busy week with family visits, lecture commitments and a whole lot more.
With all of the usual stuff, I’ve now been tasked with organising SynthFest 2011, which will take place March 12-13 2011 in Newcastle upon Tyne.
On Thursday of last week, I gave a lecture at a local nature reserve. The weather outside was absolutely atrocious and yet we had something close to a full...
Tangerine Dream : Love on a Real Train Remix →
Very, very enjoyable remix of one of my favourite TD tracks, “Love on a Real Train”.
Exhausted
A short meeting with Ian Simmons of Centre For Life in Newcastle today.
I’m now part of the Maker Faire organising group and will be looking after those elements of the Maker Faire involving electronics and electronic music.
Previous Maker Faire’s have featured a few electro-musicians but they’ve been few and far between. This year’s event will have a strong electro-music...
Video Streaming
After a couple of early tests, we produced our first streamed concert last night.
We played three pieces in all, The Infection of Time, Call from the Wild Side and Wow, for a total of around fifteen minutes. Even though we did little or no promotion, we ended up with five viewers.
The experience was almost entirely positive though one or two folk don’t like this new direction. Here is the...
Virtual Studio Technology
Right from the start of this adventure, some thirty odd years ago, I’ve been a fan of computer-based music. Indeed, I would find it difficult, if not impossible, to do much of my work without a computer. Why? Because, for a long, long time, I lacked the basic, essential keyboard skills required to play even the simplest of melodies. And I saw no urgent need to acquire them either.
These...
Breaking the habit
I’m hoping that I’ve broken one of my most annoying habits, the tendency not to go into the studio for lengthy periods following a gig or a public performance of some kind.
This pattern began with our first ever live appearance, at the EMMA IV festival, in Derby in 1997. Once home, the gear was moved up to the studio but it was something like six weeks before I connected the whole rig...
October 2010
5 posts
The Status Quo
Ion just played another very successful gig for the Awakenings group (http://awakenings-em.co.uk) and we seem to have come away from the experience feeling fairly positive and relaxed. This is something of a contrast to last year’s event, which could not be described as successful.
What went wrong? What went right?
Last year, I made a number of mistakes that resulted in some bad thinking...
September 2010
1 post
