George Martin “forgot about” the guitar solo. Sounds nice, and it’s cool to have the audio from the mixer synced to the video and see the other Beatle do it live.

via

I will no longer accept delivery of anything from Canada Post. I opt out. I just called to remove myself from their database. Here is the transcript of my call:

System: “For service in English, press 1.”
me: 1
System: “For residential inquiries, press 1.”
me: 1
System: “Welcome to Canada Post Customer Service. Goodbye.”

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THIS AIN’T OVER

Today was “payday” — really my business’ outstanding invoices got resolved — so “my business” — actually, they ARE for my business because I can use them on games — got some new equipment:

That’s me playing the nanoPAD2, which is a cheapo Korg pad controller*, and the X-Session Pro, which is an M-Audio DJ mixing board. I, or “we” maybe, was/were going to get an APC40, which is something similar and slathered in blinkenlights and much more costly, but the Akai factory was destroyed in the Thai tsunami and no one in Canada has been able to buy new Akai stuff since before XMas. Or so, at least, the kind hipster at Moog Audio informed me.

I used the pads to trigger all the instruments, and tweaked various parameters like snare snappiness and the frequencies of the noise floor during the drop with the mixer.

* like Araabmuzik uses

I’ve written before about Canada Post. Well, silly me, I trusted them again.

I’ve been stymied on a video project for a while and one of my friends agreed to help me finish it. I needed to send him 100 gigs of footage, so I cleared off one of my terabyte drives and packed it up. My studio is equidistant from a UPS store and a Canada Post outlet. I picked the wrong one.

I paid for insurance. I paid for guaranteed delivery. I was promised it would arrive last Thursday — and I double-checked this because I’m under time pressure. Today, Tuesday, it arrived… AT MY HOUSE IN TORONTO. They gave themselves a five day extension and then did it wrong anyway: CLUSTERFAIL.

This is a truly monstrous waste of taxpayer dollars. I would probably be even more upset if I paid taxes.

Naomi Klein claimed, in The Shock Doctrine, that the Right’s modus operandi is to wait for disasters and then use them as causi belli (forgive my probably-wrong Latin pluralization) to execute their agenda. Well, here’s a freebie: our economy is SHRINKING — there aren’t enough resources to go around — let’s stop delivering post in, say, the GTA. Just for a week.

I predict that people won’t notice, let alone care. If they do, either, just restart it.

But imagine: a whole week of not killing trees for paper-based spam, not having our identities and belongings stolen, and having packages delivered TO THEIR RECIPIENTS (I can’t stress this point enough — it’s really the whole key to “delivery”, as a concept, and I’m willing to pay extra for it)… Oh, what a magical land of joy our fair city might become.

And once that experiment is successful we could roll it out to the whole nation:

Seriously, though: I would rather Harper just keep the entire postal budget for himself. The money would do me just as much good, but he’d retire from politics. Maybe he could split it with Ford.

[UPDATE: THEY BILLED US EXTRA TO TAKE DELIVERY AT THE WRONG LOCATION.]

More new techniques: all the instruments play in their own dominant frequency range, the kick is unprocessed but I changed from the simulated 808 to the simulated 909, added snare rolls and crash cymbals, and played with some new software instruments & effects (Sound Toys).

This is structured as the lead-up to a notional first drop. I don’t like the lead, but it’s mostly there to counterpoint the bass. Snares need work. The lead pans wide, so if you’re not on headphones it’s mud.

A 909, correctly compressed, with just a touch of EQ, is the business. — The Dance Music Manual

Project Opal is underway. Team Z: go!

A new film from Bobcat. I think he’s awesome, and getting better (via Dutchman, without his endorsement):

Republican presidential heaving always gives me a similar sense of epic bleakness.

Here is a test of a bunch of different new techniques, particularly band-filtering instrument tracks. The bass is sharply attenuated above 1khz, while the piano lead has the same done, below 1khz. This carves out a sense of space in the mix and helps it gel — neither sound interferes with the other. The structure is the simplest, most straightforward I could think of at the time that would get me to 64 bars. A maj / F# min, 140 bpm.

Here is the same with heavy sim-vinyl distortion:

Thanks to Dutchman.

My book club is reading How to Wreck a Nice Beach, on the history of the vocoder. One of my compatriots DJs for CBC Radio 3, and put together this YouTube playlist of vocoder tunes:

New drum kit, new processing techniques. Still much room for improved sythesis. Thinking about just lifting samples, but there’re a million things to try first. This section would be the build-up to the first drop, and would have a 16 bar drum lead-in before it. Might have to get bigger tho, depends on the song.

The bass should be warmer, I guess. It just keeps coming out cold and evil >:)

[Update:] Here is the same arrangement, but I designed a new algorithm for generating snare timings which should be more believably human (ie, funkier):