crunchysteve

Over at Shiny Happy Rainbows I've been hatching "plots" to "record different." I've been a semi-pro, electric bassist most of my musical life, but lately I've been bitten by the "DAWless" bug, and I'm now the proud owner of an RD-6 drum machine, a Korg Volca Bass "acid box" and an Arturia Beatstep sequencer. I also have plans to add in a Pro-800 polyphonic, analog synth for use with my venerable and rare YouRock MIDI guitar.

The thing is, recording is also a part of my creative mojo, but it also locks down a performance. Forever. DAWless EDM is performative, and that's what's attracting me to it, the breadth of tunability, but record it and it's locked down, unchinging. What I want to do is record the notes, not the performance, like an old school, 1980s sequencer did, but these, if they still work, are nasty expensive secondhand! My digital recording deck has a 96k samplerate, that should be enough to record MIDI data, right? This is what that might look like...

Not going to bore everybody explaining it but, MIDI stands for musical instrument digital interface. It's how synths and drum machines and all the toys of EDM talk to each other. It's musical notation for synthesisers, and that's what I want to record, so that I can do a live jam on the electro toys, and when I feel I have the groove right, lock in that groove, but tweak the front panels until I've got the sound right.

It's not a mix, it's a performance. It's putting a backing track down, but that backing track is different every time it's played, but the notes are the same, while the expression of those notes changes with every performance. Just like a guitarist never plays their solo quite the same way, each new time they play it. The way a band "grooves" one night and "swings" another, depending on their mood and that of the audience.

Now to pull out the parts, dust off the breadboard and make brown smoke. Occasionally, hopefully not too often with the brown smoke!

Then, hopefully, make some NOIEEEEEESE!