Speaking as a sometimes-music-journalist, I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that we were all part of a vast conspiracy. Our job can become wrapping big-name artists into a polished, glamorous narrative. There are small nods to humanizing them, of course, but the message can quickly become: this person is special and different from you, this is the person you should want to be or want to consume, and as a result you’ll buy our magazine. I’ve never believed that myself, and I do believe a lot of great music writing is something very different, but there’s always that danger looming somewhere in the background.

Of course, now it’s 2009. We’re nowadays broadcasting minute details of our lives in real time, blurring the line between celebrity and nobody. We have all become a kind of text-only cinema verité. It can be downright scary to expose yourself that way, even as a non-celebrity. But then, in the occasional high-quality corner of a service like Twitter, something extraordinary happens: the little, insignificant moments of your life can actually prove to be what you want them to be. “Live each day like it’s your last” becomes “live each day like you’ll be pleased to read about it, even 140 characters at a time.”

Combine a really gifted creative imagination with a special kind of personal insight, and Twitter tells the side of a story a music journalist can’t: the day-to-day life of making music. Imogen Heap has been unusually generous with her Tweets. Following her Twitter feed, I think you’ll find new appreciation for her as a person and an artist, and also some of the ways all of us can work through day-to-day creative challenges and juggling to actually make music. It demonstrates that a world in which artists live-broadcast what they’re doing (but in the right quantities, and with the right attitudes) could be more utopia than dystopia.

Oh yeah, and thank God there’s a musician who drinks coffee sometimes and not just tea, and who gets a little wired.

Just looking at the month of January, we get bits of familiar insights into the day-to-day creative struggle. (Tip: go for a jog.)

Busy warbling away on A Cappella song… Darted out for a jog today in the sunshine. It’s a good day here at the hideaway….back to it :)

happy with verse/chorus lyrics/vocals but this one line’s been bugging me! Wouldn’t sit right. Here, by the kettle, it’s come to me :) x

I’m really starting to panic now at how almost impossible this a cappella one will be to do live. One thing at a time Heap! Bed I must go.

Imogen proves to be every bit as much of a gear lover as some of us, proof this ground isn’t the exclusive domain of dudes generally / Trent Reznor dude:

@mark_marshall Main bits: P-Tools, logic for VST/Midi etc, avalon 737, TLM 103, Waves, PlugsoundPro, Nord R3, Ivory, Liquid channel, M+K’s

Lots of NI stuff, TC electronic Voiceworks, Ircam solo instruments, Korg Electribe MX, occasionally dust off Ensoniq TS12

@REVERE I do indeed! So many great toys to play with! I have the Buddhamachine II. Really love it. X I’d love to make one if my own. X

And it’s not all techie gear — don’t forget the musical saw.

There are bits of music to hear:

12seconds – here’s some vocals i’ve been working oooooooonnnn!!! xxx http://tiny12.tv/HQ0JD

… and the moments of frustration that usually get left out of glossy-mag interviews:

@rguidry … my targets keep flying out the window. I’m closer every day. As long as I keep doing it.. I’ll get there. That’s all I know! x

jeeeeez… went jogging…meanwhile my inbox exploded with things to deal with and I’ve got nothing albummy done today. Juggling act. x

And in it, you watch music being formed. There actually is a certain narrative to Twitter, spread out into little pieces – something that gives some hope to our fragmented modern lives.

Had a really great day! Got 3 1st mixes done today. Will go back to them in Jan for a day but for now… Done x :) 6.30am! Time 4 bed x

Worked on rhythm for Swoon/ found some nice harmonies for 2nd ch. Nipped into town with my sis to see Lost and found Orchestra. I like saws.

Just having a bow of the old saw before bed whilst waiting for disk to back-up. Sounds quite nice but a little more practice I think! x

I am so sick of the sound of my voice!! Arghhh! Noises only tomorrow. Gonna start something new. A bit fed up with all these ones… x

Can’t sleep…just thought of lyrical spark for the new song. Throwing down strands of connections with laptop in bed. A start at least…x

ok.. that took a while but I now have a killer first verse and chorus lyrics. Waaaay better! Now for 2nd verse… first another coffee bzzz

Eeyore…I think Ive found my second verse so am going to hit the Heap hay, get another early bird session tmw and sing it into pooter x

I’m not going to try to reach any deeper conclusions about the usefulness of microblogging or Twitter, because I don’t have to. The point is that, with a Web-connected community of musicians, we get to share creative process with each other, and with the musicians we love. They arrive in real-time at times that may be random to us, and there’s no differentiation between our mate, our mum, an obscure artist or a famous one.

Sure, we’re all in information overload, surrounded by distractions. And sure, 99% of the volume of Twitter is crap. But then, there’s that occasional 1% that could remind you you’re not alone. So for that, thanks, Imogen!

http://twitter.com/imogenheap

For another great Twitter feed from a regular tourmate of Imogen’s, see:
Zoe Keating @ Twitter (zoecello)

Jaymis at Create Digital Motion was admiring this video and watching the Lemur action at the beginning. It further inspires me to custom-install a touch overlay on my laptop, which isn’t terribly expensive – having touch in a live playing situation is really quite nice.

But as I watched the video and its modular synth action and Novation gear, I actually found myself thinking about something else: why aren’t more bands this tight? Most importantly, why don’t more bands simply use in-ear monitors when they’re working? Lots of bands now are adding drum machines again, working with more complex rhythms and harmonies, mixing electronic and acoustic elements. Yet you’ll often see them playing live trying to stay together with a monitor on the floor, and they not surprisingly go out of tune and out of step.

Shure makes a number of fairly affordable models with different in-ear attachments for adapting to different situations. Frankly, just about anything would work. There’s also no crime to routing a separate output with a click track. That’s something even a lot of “serious music” contemporary composers are doing these days. It’s not always the right answer, but there are now situations across genres where it makes sense.

The main thing is, set up so you can take advantage of the musicianship you’ve got. And on that note, while readers here regularly knock Nine Inch Nails – something along the lines of, “if they weren’t NIN, you wouldn’t care” – imagine if you hadn’t heard of this band. They’re an extraordinary group of musicians. Plenty of brilliant musicians labor in obscurity, but it is comforting to know that some of the light of fame is hitting people who can play amazingly well.

Now, sing along: “You will never ever ever ever / own this much gear.”

What? That’s not what they’re singing?

(Actually, the lyrics “You will never ever ever ever get to me in here” can also work nicely on the door to your music studio.)

NIN Visuals:

For once, the visual environment is actually upstaging the sound gear lust. See this video on the “stealth” LED screens, cameras, particles, and … lasers. Mmmmm, lasers.

LEDs In The Sky: MomentFactory’s “Show Environment” for Nine Inch Nails [Create Digital Motion]

Moving house is a tiresome affair at the best of times, but takes a whole new level of energy when you are basically something of a geek. When you have a room converted into a studio and most rooms in your house or apartment contain at least some element of gadgetry spilling out with a mess of chargers, documentation, manuals or interfaces then you probably don’t want to move often. Or at all. Much like learning the tooth fairy is not real (sorry) or realising that Sony has nothing but contempt for its customers (blackhat) it is an inevitability. It will happen. When it does, consider some of these tips that I have found useful in my own recent moving.

1. Keeper of boxes

Keep boxes for your studio visual monitors – such as LCD screens – and your studio audio monitors – such as reference speakers. For sake of shipping for repairs or warranty claims, and given their delicacy, it pays to keep the boxes for your studio monitor speakers in any case. This stuff is the most difficult to do without should something happen to it, so more than most other items you should consider packing down and storing these boxes where possible.

2. Plastic storage treasure

Plastic storage containers are much better then cardboard boxes for cables and electronic gear that might be affected by moisture and dust, or require some greater protection from clumsy handling. With the clip-on lids it only takes a small band of packing tape over the handles to secure, and they can be stacked for storage afterward. If they are unpacked after the move, they fit neatly enough inside each other for storage, and are always useful for shepherding gear around where sherpas are rare.

3. Pull the power

If you are like me you will have packed the bedroom, bathrooms, kitchen and lounge room well before you will even have moved one item from the studio or studio space. There are always so many projects to work on, so many great sites to read, and so much internet to download. You are addicted to being awesome. Go cold turkey. Pull the power to your computers, unplug the studio monitors, turn the modem/router off and disengage. Commit to the move and the hunger to get precious interwebz and megahurtz again will motivate you to hurry up and finish the process!

4. Mobile geek life

Any moving tips and hints document I have read lately has recommended making an overnight bag of the clothes, work items and documents you will need. The same should be said for your geek lifestyle. If you have user names and passwords you haven’t memorised, then copy those down somewhere portable and secure. Just as importantly, get yourself geeked up in a way that will keep you productive. Once you accept the downtime of moving house, you can work out what you can do instead of staring blankly at the walls. Even if that just means playing Sudoku on a Nintedo DS. A lot.

5. Have no mercy

This is a great chance to look at the box you haven’t opened in the last 4 years, yet you have lugged between houses multiple times. Have you ever used those old XLR cables? Are you EVER going to use that Behringer patch bay? Are you really going to circuit bend that Casio? Does that soldering iron even have a power supply? Take stock of this stuff and be merciless. Whilst the golden rule of music production hardware is cited as “sell nothing”, there is much to be said for clearing out clutter and freeing up your workspace and storage space.

6. Back right up

I shouldn’t even have to say this, but this is a time back your data up. Back your data up even from the back-ups and back those up. Maybe not that far, but I’m simply stressing the need to back-up. By saying “back-up” a lot. More then likely somewhere around your geek desk is a pile of CD-R’s and DVD-R’s. You probably have an external drive with data backed-up on it that has some “temporary” back-ups of stuff you mean to “file and sort later”. The time is now. The golden rule here is to consider this your ultimate deadline to have healthier filing and back-ups. Consider purchasing (if you haven’t already) a disc filing case. Consider committing to a simple but effective back up system once you have moved, which takes the pressure of the backup you need to do now. The chances of something being dropped, stolen or otherwise affected in the move are very real, and anything you can do to prepare for this will make your life easier.

7. Accept the different

This is a strange point, but one worth mentioning. Despite my adventures, I struggle to let go of my ergonomic and tweaked studio space each time I have to move. This makes less sense looking back over each move, and realizing I have had a significantly better studio experience each time, going from the “in the bedroom” setup in a share house, through to custom furniture in a converted and dedicated room. In between however, I have made makeshift studios by pushing trinkets off of cluttered tables in short lease corporate apartments, almost entirely re-arranged hotel rooms, and even selfishly dominated entire bench tables in rowdy European backpacker hostels. Beer stained optical mouse and all. Some of my band’s best tunes (and most of the worst) have germinated in some of these challenging and inspiring places.

8. Boxes beat seats

The average studio setup has a lot of gear that I call “back seat” gear. Those things with knobs and faders and LED’s that don’t lend themselves to being thrown in a box with other stuff and would better be put on the back seat of the car. This can include computer monitors, but you have hopefully kept the boxes for those. For synthesisers, mixers, effects units, grooveboxes, drum machines, VJ gear, midi controllers and similar, it quickly becomes evident that a lot of foam and more boxes than one would have anticipated are necessary. People who aren’t geeks or creative types won’t get this. They will look at the studio like a kitchen or bathroom and presume you can just throw it all in a box and be done with. These are the people you make carry the heavy boxes. The obvious point here worth repeating is to have more boxes than you think you need, and as much foam, bubble wrap or blankets as possible. A lesson learnt the hard way.

9. Warn your helpers

There is a chance that you will be utilizing the assistance of someone – or some people – who have offered, for some strange reason, to help you to move. There is a chance that they will not be from the same mindset as you. For example: Where you see a sought after vintage analogue synthesiser, they probably see a battered old keyboard. Where you see a Torrent box, they might see an amusing old Pentium III housed in a sun discolored case. Where you see an Important Thing in a Logical Temporary Space, they might see some clutter that’s getting in the way. Be kind to them and be patient. They are after all helping you.

10. Try some alternatives

If you can’t make music, play WoW, edit video, write code or design during the move, and the idea of being constrained to wherever your laptop ends up doesn’t appeal greatly, then consider the time as a holiday to test some alternatives. If you have a PSP or a DS and the appropriate OS modifications then try some homebrew applications like PSP Rhythm or Protein DS Scratch. If you have been curious about Linux or alternatives to Windows, why not try an install? If you have web access you could waste hours on ffffound or playing with online 303 emulators under the pretence of inspirational immersion. Once you feel guilty for that time wasting, you could go to the library and get out books on programming or music theory or photography, and consider a life where everything is on loan and you never have to box or move a single possession again. Consider moving in to the library itself. Plot where you might build a little fort for entertainment and, well, defense.

And then it’s time to unpack.

Among the loot: a Dave Smith PolyEvolver, serial #271, a Hartmann Neuron with BT’s patches, and a loaded Apple Mac Pro with This Binary Universe. All pretty priceless; the Neuron and PolyEvolver would be tough to replace and the Mac Pro has a whole show on it. To get them back, BT is offering a $20,000 reward or equivalent time as a producer to anyone with a name and address.

BT Theft Announcement and Proposals on MySpace

Via electronic music site Filter 27

And this would just be another painful gear theft story, except BT wants to go further:

1. Protecting gear from theft: He wants to start a simple subscription service to register and thumbprint gear, so it can be easily traced to retailers and online auction sites. (Note that New York’s Sam Ash, for instance, does just this for used gear and coordinates with the NYPD, but with online sites, tracking just got a lot harder.)
2. Giving music tech gear to the needy: He wants to collect new and user gear to give to musicians and producers who can’t afford it.

While the second one is an interesting idea, I’m not exactly sure how it would work here — and there are other, worthy organizations dedicated to this idea. But helping protect gear from theft sounds ideal. BT is looking for lawyers, musicians, and vendors to donate.

Know of similar initiatives? Or think you might be able to help with this? Let us know in comments. Know where BT’s gear is? Email gear@binaryacoustics.com

Love your audio gear so much you wish you could wear it around your neck, but a loudspeaker on your throat would a) strangle you and b) make you look like too much of a dork to attend high-society functions? Complete Technique jewelers feels you.

From sterling silver turntable cartridges plated in gold with embedded cubic zirconia to tiny silver pendants of speakers, CT manages to say both bling and audio geek at once. (Prices hover at just over US$200 to start.) Their custom pieces are when things start to get really interesting, however. Via the always-hilarious Don’t Believe the Hype Beast, we learn they’ve created a custom pendant of the Akai MPC 3000 sampler for producer Hi-Tek.

Complete Technique Custom Audio Jewelry

For a real custom job, I’d like a tiny pendant that actually functions as an audio device. In the meantime, you can part yourself with your hard-earned cash for non-functional personal adornment, if you feel so moved. (Sadly, the engagement ring does not keep with the audio theme — I was imagining two lovely young synth geeks, bound together in their eternal love of each other and the Minimoog.)

Along these same lines, don’t forget the brilliant MIDI bracelets, pictured here, by producer – Chicago music scenester – electronic musician – jeweler Liz McLean Knight, aka Quantazelle. Anyone got more resources? We could have a whole audio technology lover’s Tiffany’s.

More photos after the break, including my favorite which has nothing to do with music.

And lastly, having nothing to do with music but settling any doubts about whether Complete Technique is awesome, this … thing, also one of their designs (no description, so I have no idea what it is; maybe someone else knows):

[tags]fashion, oddities, Akai, MPC, hardware, gear, trends, design[/tags]

Film/TV composers have a particular interest here on CDM in that they tend to think creatively about style, instrumentation, and sound in their work and have to meld one technology (music) with another (film). It’s Friday night, so having resisted this long, I can no longer avoid mentioning Galactica. Composer Bear McCreary, who has scored the Battlestar Galactica TV series, has a blog going in which he talks about his music and some of the instruments featured in the show’s eclectic (and often surprisingly ethnic) sound textures:

For tonight’s episode, McCreary blogs his featured violinist, Paul Cartwright, whose electric violin is largely responsible for the signature sound of the show. CDM readers I think will especially like his bag o’ covet-worthy gear, including a tube amp and set of stompboxes any guitarist would love to have, let alone a violinist. The small tube amp is especially interesting to me, because one of the challenges of electric violin is softening out the tone, both to distinguish it from just sounding like a guitar or, at the opposite extreme, being too harsh. I love the analog approach, and there’s still plenty to be learned if you’re a computer-toting violinist (and, of course, I wouldn’t be the person I am if I didn’t point out computers can be great fun with violins, too).

Bear McCreary blog (erm, blog in a sort of mid-90s, stuck in frames sense — no RSS — but well worth reading!)

Bear McCreary is an interesting composer in general, a young, rising star in a hyper-competitive field. He’s a USC grad and Elmer Bernstein protege, obviously a fan of Philip Glass (yes, that isn’t just music that sounds like Glass on Galactica, it is actually Glass excerpts), and has scored other TV and movies, including The Alamo. Galactica is clearly his major claim to fame now, and not just because of the sci-fi fanboys; without his music setting the stone I doubt Galactica would have become the breakout hit it is. Interestingly, McCreary breaks from the usual composer stereotype by making his primary instrument the accordion.

Richard Gibbs deserves credit for scoring the original Sci Fi Channel miniseries, and I think it says something about both composers that the music of one segues perfectly into the music of the other. Gibbs has a long history of credits, arguably the coolest being The Simpsons series 1. Gibbs music is responsible for producing the initial character of the show, and his musical cues surface throughout the series (much as Alexander Courage created a series of leitmotifs for Star Trek). He managed to score the severity of the initial Cylon attack while keeping the world fantastic and not just, well, depressing, which is an accomplishment for a show that begins with mass-scale destruction and death.

The miniseries and TV soundtracks for the show aren’t available on iTunes or the various Windows Media stores so don’t look. The record label has free MP3 downloads of a lot of the main tracks (excerpts only, of course), and if you like it enough to get one or all three CDs, Amazon will hook you up. International readers can buy direct from the label.

La La Land Records Official Pages (with downloadable MP3 samples, though be prepared to want more if you’re a fan …)
Miniseries Soundtrack
Season One Soundtrack
Season Two Soundtrack

Buy the CDs from Amazon:
Battlestar Galactica Miniseries
Battlestar Galactica: Season One
Battlestar Galactica: Season 2

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the long legacy of Battlestar Galactica soundtracks. The 1978 series and pilot movie featured a score by Stu Phillips, the composer who gave us Knight Rider and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Series creator Glen Larson even contributed music and co-wrote the Galactica theme song, one of the few theme songs that may ultimately have had more notoriety than the actual show, especially when a certain Italian keyboardist came on the scene. Giorgio Moroder produced his own cover album of Galactica-inspired music, with this cover, which proves that obviously he and his cover artist were watching a very different show than the rest of us:

The art is by someone named Winston Taylor. Anyone out there who can shed light on who that is? Anyway, Moroder’s album wound up becoming a club legend, and now the original show has pretty much been eclipsed by everything else that bears its name. What have we learned? You can’t release a really awesome electronic album without a space babe like this on the cover. And if you remake old shows (ahem, Lost in Space), go for awesomeness rather than camp.

Iggy Pop is different, taking each legal item as an opportunity to add jokes — all while subtly threatening all on the tour who would deny them a properly-working gig. Smart. The whole thing is worth a read, but this being CDM, we’ll skip straight to the gear stuff.

First, I proudly present CDM’s slogan / t-shirt moniker of the week:

1 x KORG 2000 DIGITAL RACK TUNER. Digital in the sense that it works via an electronically generated number system, not digital because it only works if someone holds it together with their fingers.

And then it goes on …

3 x MARSHALL VBA BASS AMPLIFIERS Make sure they’re good ones or we’ll all end up as wormlike web-based life forms in the bass player’s online literary diahorrea. Honestly. He’s like a sort of internet Pepys or Boswell, except without the gout and the syphilis. For all I know.

And on …

We need: one(1) monitor man who speaks good English and is not afraid of death.
… in Galicia in Northern Spain, they appear to think – if they just ignore riders like this, then supply a fat, beared hippy with a digital monitor desk (doh!) who doesn’t know shit about eq-ing, and monitor wedges that would be better suited to wedging doors open, and a load of stage managers and PA geezers and promoters reps who shout a lot – that this is the same as actually providing what a band needs in order to do a gig to the best of their ability. And that if they deny that their gear is no good, it will suddenly, mysteriously, become good. I’d just like to say that the next time the Stooges get booked for their festival, I’m going to turn up with some pickled eggs, a small blue vibrator with a jelly dolphin balanced on the shaft, a set of dog-eared encyclopedias with the volumes E-G missing, and a screwdriver that’s been accidentally dropped in a toilet.

… and on and on, and I expect you’ll be reading this thing all day and laughing and not getting any work done.

Iggy Pop’s concert rider funniest in rock history? [The Smoking Gun; thanks, Jaymis!]

Feel free to add your favorite bits in comments.

Here’s an excerpt from the marketing materials: “The summing and mixing features built into the PM8 allow users to avoid unnecessary A/D & D/A conversions commonly found in digital studios and thus attain extremely detailed mixes with superb stereo imaging and punch.”

PR is actually mixing metaphors here. Summing in software has nothing to do with A/D or D/A conversions. What I think they mean is that, by connecting analog inputs directly to this mixer instead of routing through your software, you won’t have to go through additional conversions; that much is true.

The manufacturer also claims that the mixer “Achieves better stereo imaging” and “Creates exceptionally detailed mixes with clarity and punch.”

PM8 Product Page [SM Pro Audio]

I’d sure like to hear an A/B test of digital summing in music software with analog summing, with all other variables minimized as much as possible. Mostly what I hear is people arguing over this based on these issues based on hearsay or theory. Certainly, a good passive mixer will have uses in studios, for those who can afford / actually need them. But my question is, does digital summing really deserve all the flak it gets? (My mixes aside; I don’t think you need fancy equipment to hear more detail in my mixdown as I’m no engineer!)

Maybe Bob Dylan will want one?

Actually, we can divide this into “things to envy” and “things to note.”

Things to envy: 5,000-lumen projectors, a racked maxed-out dual-G5 with non-stock video cards, and a visual artist with years of experience building software for just this sort of thing.

Things to note: a lowly 2,000-lumen projector bathes Thomas Dolby in projections, the keyboards are very-affordable twin M-Audio Axioms (perfect for VJing work thanks to built-in drum pads), and the software is all built in Max/MSP/Jitter. DeKam takes advantage of a relatively new feature of Jitter, which is the ability to manipulate video on the graphics card instead of the CPU, a technique he explains on the site. Usually you would associate this with 3D work and gaming, but oddly enough by mapping video as a 3D texture, you can get far greater video performance than you would on a CPU. (In other words, live visuals doesn’t have to mean ugly 320×240 video any more.)

If you’re interested in doing the same thing, check out the Jitter tutorials. This is a feature I think you can expect in other software, too, particularly since several major VJ apps are built in Jitter. I’m also working on a simple tutorial patch that demonstrates how to do this in a little more detail than the Jitter docs provide; expect that early this summer.

More software, also advocated here on CDM before: Vidvox GRID, and Apple’s Quartz Composer.

Oh, speaking of the term “VJ,” Johnny DeKam doesn’t like it, calling it video instrumentalism or live cinema. I’m very sympathetic to that, but I don’t think either term is likely to catch on. If you want VJing to mean more than raver eye candy, why not just apply the term to a broader range of live visual art? (Though if anyone has a suggestion for a better name and how to make it catch on, be my guest. In the meantime, VJ it is.)

Anyway, forget the terms: while this rig is certainly drool-worthy, I think it’s fantastic news that a lot of these tools are fairly accessible. (Jitter is pricey, though some of you already have it, GRID is cheap, Quartz Composer is included with Mac OS X in the developer tools, and Pd and Processing are both free alternatives to Jitter.) The more people working with these tools, the broader the definition of live visual performance will become, and that’s good for everyone as this medium tries to earn new respect. And musical expression can find a new multimedia venue with live digital visuals. Hey, it worked pretty well for opera.

I expect we’ll hear more about this particular rig, as music maker M-Audio is now establishing Johnny as their first sponsored artist, much like Vidvox has done in the past. Stay tuned.

Related:

There’s a lively discussion of open-source software solutions to many of these problems, particularly doing live visual performance, on the forums.

1. Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 GHz, to be replaced with a MacBook Pro when everything gets ported to Intel
2. MUSE Receptor for still more plug-in hosting
3. Logic Pro 7.2 acts as a MIDI host (for outboard hardware synths and plug-ins), plug-in host, and (primarily) playback device for presequenced backup tracks
4. Stylus-RMX plug-in for loops, thanks to the fact that you can queue up irregular loops
5. Built-in Logic plugs, plus more: Arturia’s MiniMoog, RMIV drums, Slayer2 guitars, UltraFocus, Camelspace gating effect, T-racks mastering.
6. Rack: UPS power backup, PreSonus Firepod FireWire audio interface, MOTU MIDI interface, Nord 3 racked synth
7. Keyboard controllers: Three of them, no less: CME Pro 7 (now distributed by Yamaha), Novation ReMote SL25 (which automaps nicely to Logic), and the Virus TI Polar. The Virus is the only sound source.
8. M-Audio Trigger Finger for drums, samples, muting and unmuting tracks.
9. Vintage gear retrofitted for MIDI: Knobs on old oscilloscopes and signal generators controlling soft synth parameters? Now, that’s cool. (Wouldn’t you do something like that if you were Thomas Dolby?)

Choosing software

Two particularly interesting notes: since nearly all of the playback is through MIDI synths, Dolby has set up a custom Max/MSP patch for easy, visual selection of controller zones, routing his three controllers to a variety of soft synths visually. In yet another victory for Max, it was easier, quicker, and more flexible to do this in Max than in Logic’s Environment. (Note: if you’re on a budget, you could easily do the same thing with Max’s open source cousin, Pd, too.)

But where’s Ableton Live in all this? Dolby claims he can’t use Live because his music doesn’t fit into 4-beat bars. That’s actually not the problem he thinks it is; you can easily cue irregular beats in Live by quantizing to the beat instead of the bar, much as he describes doing in Stylus RMX. But this is also a great setup, and benefits heavily from all the built-in instruments and effects (vocoder, anyone) in Logic.

Could you do it on a budget?

In fact, thanks to Logic, this setup doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Dolby says we might want to tally up the whole cost, and I’ve done that, painstakingly researching the street prices of all this gear to determi. . . uh . . . okay, actually, I don’t want to do that. But let’s think about a bare-bones setup: get a MacBook Pro ($2000), plus Logic ($1000, though less if you’re a student), plus an audio interface (PreSonus makes one for less than $200), plus a mic (Shure SM58 Blue is about $150), plus a Remote SL keyboard (extra octaves for just $600) . . . just over US$4000 for an entire road setup. Not bad, especially given that you probably have a lot of this gear. Throw in some Shure E series in-ear monitors for $150.

Still not cheap enough? How about a reasonable PC laptop ($1000), or even a Core Duo Mac mini plus a compact LCD and rack for about the same price, plus an Edirol keyboard ($220, and I’ve got one I love right here), plus Ableton Live ($400), and Reaktor for all the synths and effects you could ever possibly want ($500). Just over $2000. You could even just play with Reaktor for your beats if you wanted. There are various other combinatorics, but most of what Thomas Dolby has is more of everything — three keyboards instead of one, extra plug-ins, an extra rig for plug-ins (the Receptor) even though he’s running backup tracks.

And, as Dolby himself notes, this is a far cry from a $120,000 Fairlight CMI in the 80s.

Just make sure you spend a little extra effort on the retro-sci fi-cool details like those shades and headphones. And notice the keyboards are up front, computers in the back? It makes a difference.

Thanks to the first post on the CDM performing board, via 3l33t_v4cuum, for the lead!

Previously: Logic-based road rigs have included rack-rig Mac minis (part I, part II), Vince Jones’ rig, and even young kids using Logic and Novation keyboards. (Watch out, Thomas; that little girl wants your gig.) And more Logic stuff, too.