TALK 909 - Guitars and DAWS

[Nick] Sonic.

[Nick] Hello,

[Nick] everybody. Welcome to Sonic Talk episode nine zero nine. Obviously, the big news was

[Nick] it was the ninth of the ninth last week, and we have episode nine zero nine this week. I've got a couple of videos to play or a video to play where we can enjoy the nine zero nine ness of the nine zero nine because it's such a sort of genre specific... I'm not sure if everybody enjoys the music that is used to make the nine zero nine, but I'll leave everybody else to judge that. And the reason we're talking about that sort of thing is because this is the music technology podcast as I always forget to remember to say at the very beginning. Yes. We talk about music technology, including things like the nine zero nine drum machine, software, synthesizers, drum machines, touring, live performance,

[Nick] DAWs,

[Nick] plug ins,

[Nick] technology of all kinds that surround the world of that. And so I to say welcome everybody in the chat room. Lovely to see a fulsome chat room. Picking up a bit. Floppy Winkle, neighbor Jack. Steve Elbows, cheaper card company with the puns again. Tommy $91.30.

[Nick] I think Robath,

[Nick] Melted Cheese.

[Nick] I think Wagyu's in there somewhere

[Nick] manning the controls of the

[Nick] of the moderation, which they do so brilliantly and just some of the other back end stuff. Thanks,

[Nick] Wagyu. You're a champ as ever. And...

[Nick] Yes. So I just wanted to let you know. What do we got coming up? We got a few things coming up with Sonic Talk. Oh, let me just get my right screen up because then I can read the actual...

[Nick] What I'm looking for. Where is it? Oh, there it is. Yes. Actually, we got some videos from KnobCon coming up.

[Nick] In case you haven't seen them,

[Nick] Jim, EarMonkey Music, who sometimes hangs out in the chat, a friend of ours from LA, he went over to KnobCon.

[Nick] Got 13 videos total. I think I've published about four. They're all in the pipeline ready to go. I just wanna dump them all in one go even though our systems are designed to do that. So do check those out. We've also got...

[Nick] Paulie's done a new episode of RetroCast episode five with DJ Aphrodite,

[Nick] a very famous, I think, jungle DJ from what I remember.

[Nick] We've got... I've done the the patch flip on the Arturia Pure sub in case you're interested in that. That'll be coming out soon.

[Nick] And Matt's taking a look at the Chordcat, which is something that's been out for a little while. Just hasn't had an awful lot of interest. And don't forget, if you're a member, whether that's YouTube members or

[Nick] Patreon members, we got 30% off Cherry Audio DS 30%

[Nick] off Music HackSpace courses,

[Nick] and talkback.se

[Nick] as well. So if you're a member, head over and claim them. If you're not, maybe you'll be interested. In which case, that's perfect timing for me to plug our memberships back after this.

[Nick] Don't know. I can't get quite slick at this. I don't think I've made a mistake yet. Although having said that, that's gonna happen now, clearly. But, hopefully,

[Nick] Gaz, you'll be able to keep me on the straight and narrow because I am joined with... By Gaz Williams,

[Nick] YouTuber, bass player, touring musician.

[Nick] Well, are you a owner? Is that an Erica since... Do you own that, or are you just checking it out? I'm borrowing it. Yeah. I'm borrowing it. Yeah. I I would really like it, actually.

[Gaz] It's the Mark one Syntrix.

[Gaz] Yeah.

[Gaz] Yeah.

[Gaz] It's it's it's more like the... It's really

[Gaz] one for one more or less with the Synthi,

[Gaz] the EMS Synthi,

[Gaz] including speakers

[Gaz] and

[Gaz] spring reverb. Spring reverb? They brought Ah. Yeah. The real spring reverb. The the mark two's got, like, a kinda

[Gaz] emulated digital spring reverb, hasn't got speakers. There's a few bits and bobs differently.

[Gaz] But this one really is...

[Gaz] I I don't think it sounds the same as a synthy, but

[Gaz] it does at least give you a really good

[Nick] Is it is it is it more straightforward? Because I have to say, whenever I'm confronted by a synthy, I just kinda go, I really don't know what the hell I'm doing. Right. It's so confusing.

[Nick] Is it easier, or is it just as different?

[Gaz] I'm... I think it's more or less the same other than the the way that the matrix works. You know, you can store matrix settings and Yeah. Neat. And you can also stack. You can have multiple things go to the same destination, whereas I think on the the Synthi, it would be just, you know, one Enormously.

[Gaz] Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, part

[Gaz] of the reason for me borrowing it really was I'd always... I just love that kind of cosmic

[Gaz] space sounds that you associate with the Cynthy. A lot of the seventies

[Gaz] space rock stuff that I love so much, Gong and Hawkwind and that kind of thing. You know, it's a kind of key instrument. Descending,

[Gaz] period.

[Gaz] That kind of stuff. It's just Yeah. Just love it. You know, really psychedelic stuff that passes through your brain when you're kinda mashed. You know? It's so... It's kind of a... It's a... Yeah. It's something. So I've been really enjoying I've been enjoying getting getting to to know it, but I definitely

[Gaz] was

[Gaz] and am still a bit perplexed with it, but making a little bit of progress with it.

[Nick] Nice. Well, you you... Because you've been on the road. You've been touring. You've been gigging. Still am. And it's not just any of it. Yeah. You're gigging with Charlotte Church. And all the videos I see, you're basically

[Nick] wigging out with, like, leather trousers on really sort of performative,

[Nick] proper glam

[Nick] sort of postures. I... That's gotta be good for the soul, isn't it, doing that sort of thing? It's amazing.

[Nick] Mean, if you do it every day for, like, years, it might get a little bit jaded. But but just a, you know, a few months a year must be fantastic for the ego and the... Just of your well-being, all those things.

[Gaz] Charlotte is is incredible, and the band are just all just super quality musicians. I feel so thrilled

[Gaz] to be playing with them. I really don't feel worthy, but I'm... I I am a founder member of the Pop Dungeon, so I've kinda got

[Gaz] a right to be there. But, yeah, it's it's amazing. I do get to sort of, like, live out fantasies a little bit.

[Gaz] And I'm, like... I'm sort of representing Gen X because they're a lot younger than me, the others. So

[Gaz] I'm like, oh, yeah. Bring in proggy elements in.

[Gaz] And something really cool happened the other day.

[Gaz] I'm so so thrilled. When we're playing up in London, Jack Ojaxic, who is the, well, wonderful musician, guitarist, singer, was the last frontman of... Official frontman of King Crimson.

[Gaz] We play the song called... Well, it's like a nineties girl banger called Don't Let Go by en... On Vogue. We saw The the thing what the pop dungeon does, we mash up we mash up stuff. And in the very first ever rehearsal

[Gaz] that we ever did back in 2016, it's ten years old now, the pop dungeon,

[Gaz] I think I had a King Crimson T shirt on. I think that was the motivation.

[Gaz] But midway through the song, I just started playing twenty first century Schizoid Man. And we all like... And then Davey, the drummer, kinda cottoned on to what I was doing and played along with... And then Johnny, the guitarist, he also cottoned on and played along. And Charlotte just carried on singing through it. And now it's crazy. It shouldn't work, but it's that thing of, like, determination.

[Gaz] You just... It's amazing what you can do if you just don't

[Gaz] kind of go. Stop. Stop. What are you doing? Where's my where's my harmonic support?

[Gaz] But, anyway Well, I mean, it must be quite it must be quite hard, actually. I mean, it takes a certain skill to manage to keep going through it with... When when when all the sort of support vanishes, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, testament to Charlotte, really. She's an absolutely incredible singer. But... Yep. So we played that on on the gig on... When was it? Saturday, I think, in London, and Jacko was in the audience.

[Gaz] So

[Gaz] he had a bit of a surprise when we launched it, the twenty first Century Schizoid Man, in the most unlikely

[Gaz] place. But but, I mean, that's...

[Gaz] The pop dungeon, I think, was one of the first bands of its kind, really, to do that, really, to sort of do mashup stuff, but but as a as a kind of live band.

[Gaz] And one of the things about... Some people say, oh, it's just covers, but it...

[Gaz] Technically, yes. But it's... There's a lot of creativity and the Yeah.

[Gaz] And it's...

[Gaz] But from a musical point of view, you have to just really be on...

[Gaz] You know,

[Gaz] you've gotta be on form because there's like changes,

[Gaz] sudden changes. And you gotta just...

[Gaz] Like we do this kind of medley thing in the opening part where it's a kind of mixture of

[Gaz] war pigs, Black Sabbath into

[Gaz] cashmere,

[Gaz] zeppelin, and children of the revolution T Rex.

[Gaz] And like a late addition

[Gaz] sort of in the second verse of the

[Gaz] part of Children of the Revolution just switches instantly into Army of Me by Bjork. It's all a concept set.

[Gaz] So it's called the pop dungeon end times. But, like, you're having to go... You know, so you go in you go

[Nick] And then.

[Gaz] Yeah. Right on the right on the nail, you know, pow. And Yeah.

[Gaz] It's stuff like that. So

[Gaz] incredibly gratifying from a music from a musician. I had a lovely message from Jacko after the next day where he he was saying he loved the show and was... And, you know, I'm I'm a huge I'm a huge fan of his and of King Crimson. So that was just... Things like that are just really gratifying, you know, really, really, really There's a thing, isn't there? I mean, when you see a band that are really on form and they're so good and on their game that they're just enjoying it and playing with it. It's quite a rarity because music Yeah. Is kinda hard to play. It's hard to play well And we've got

[Nick] yeah.

[Gaz] And and the the musicians who play with is very anti backing track. You know? There is a definite growing movement. I've been part of that anti backing track thing. Now, you know, I know I've gone on about this very briefly.

[Gaz] You know, I understand in certain electronic ways and certain types of of of musical situations,

[Gaz] track kind of is unavoidable

[Gaz] unavoidable.

[Gaz] But

[Gaz] with...

[Gaz] When it's kind of there as a sort of... I don't know, as a crutch or a kinda... Or even worse to,

[Gaz] you know, switch in parts when a singer's having difficulty or just all kinds of

[Gaz] skullduggery that that the track can do.

[Nick] Well, to be honest, I think in most cases, it's more about cost because you can't afford to take a big band with you. You know? Most places, you can't do that. And that's that's a different Yeah. Thing again. So it's like, do you do? Don't cry at all? Or, you know, that It's

[Gaz] a weird one. It's a weird one. I've made a few streams about this in the past, I won't go over that. But just...

[Gaz] The thing is what we do in the pop dungeon,

[Gaz] in some cases, track would make some things quite, you know, a lot easier. I mean, there's one song where there's an arpeggiator,

[Gaz] and drummer puts some headphones on just just so he can play in time to the arpeggiator,

[Nick] and about... That's about as close as we get to anything like that. But Yeah. But that's alright. Yeah. Yeah. No. Brilliant. I I I I Yeah. Keep telling telling myself I must come and see it, but I just... I've never done it, and I really should come into a gig. I need to try and figure out. I know. Sunday Bristol's probably on this Sunday. It's done Bristol. Sunday Cardiff is probably the closest. We've been Liverpool

[Gaz] on Friday. And then and then that might be it. And... But there are... There's rumblings of some more shows next year. But I must be. It must be incredibly addictive. Must be so addictive to just sort of just...

[Nick] You know, because she's... You've you've done this a couple of times. She's done it a few times. Okay. That's it. And then Mhmm. Actually, you know Yeah. I guess it's it's very hard to give up that because it must be such a buzz.

[Gaz] It's Stuart Lee, the comedian's fault. I don't know if you know him. Brilliant brilliant British

[Gaz] stand up comedian. He's

[Gaz] he's the guy who really

[Gaz] kind of made it happen in the first place because he invited Charlotte to take part in a concert that... In this... In the Baltimore's parties festival that he was curating. And Charlotte wanted to put some put something together specifically for for Stuart, and that's how it... The pop dungeon came about.

[Gaz] Anyway, I mean, she did call time on it after the... We played at Eurovision Song Contest in 2023.

[Gaz] But Stuart asked her this,

[Gaz] I think, maybe the beginning...

[Gaz] Or the end of last year or beginning of this year

[Gaz] if

[Gaz] we would come and play at this festival that he was involved with.

[Gaz] So... Because Stuart asked

[Gaz] then... You know? So Stuart Lee is the kind of founding father of the pop dungeon. Oh, that's alright. That's alright.

[Nick] Well,

[Nick] we

[Nick] should probably get on with some some topics. I mean, there are some. I mean, we could talk for hours. I don't suppose it really matters all that much, but I suppose I like to keep some sort of loose structure. It helps me sort of figure out what the time is, you know, where I am in the world, all that kind of stuff. Let's have a look then. What did I put...

[Nick] Yeah. Oh, I've I've played the ad, haven't I? So... Yeah. This was... I thought this was kind of interesting. This is a free baritone guitar

[Nick] from

[Nick] Instruments.

[Speaker 2] And I went down a bit of a baritone guitar ramming. Hole. In this video, we're gonna have a quick look at the Velvet Guitar's fragment,

[Speaker 2] a free atmospheric It's free actually. Instrument.

[Speaker 2] So this is a single preset from the larger Velvet Guitars library and features the mellow baritone and gives you that really evocative sound that the baritone guitar is known for. Now while the feature set has been trimmed down from the full version I thought was gonna play it in for a minute. The instrument does come with a complete sample set and features sustains,

[Speaker 2] mute.

[Nick] I mean, it's quite a mellow. Was what was really interesting about this is a free one. I mean, can get it for nothing. E Instruments do some really good stuff, actually, so it's well worth checking out for that. And free is free is never bad.

[Nick] But it just got me... Comes with a US sort of sixties tremolo recreated to stay in true with the... But it's so... A baritone guitar is essentially what a fourth down. So it's got a b string below the bottom e, and it just sort of chews everything down. And people probably missed... I mean, there's... There was... There were lots of sort of surf records with baritone guitar, weren't there? I think which you've all got surf bands, so you'll know about this. But I was I was thinking, wasn't Twin Peaks? Wasn't the Android Van Lamenti?

[Nick] But it's not. It's actually not. It's a bay... It's a guitar sample. But I have to say, I'm not gonna play it because it's probably gonna get me busted. But if you look for that,

[Nick] there are some absolutely

[Nick] amazing

[Nick] acoustic baritone guitar covers where they're just playing the harmonics and the whole tune,

[Nick] and it's just mind blowing. Absolutely brilliant. So, yeah, that's... I thought that would get us riffing on Yeah. And coincidentally,

[Gaz] we do it in the pop dungeon.

[Gaz] We do it. Oh, do you? And we do and we mash it up with Laura Mavula's

[Gaz] Green Garden. So Charlotte sings Green Garden over the top of Twin Peaks. So I'm playing the... That very part. So just fantastic coincidence there. I'm playing it on a basic guitar and using a tremolo. And so, you know, playing it in the right octave,

[Gaz] playing it with a pluck drum, and using a fairly trebly kind of sound. So you kinda get kinda close to it. But, I mean, e instruments,

[Gaz] I... I've done a little bit of work for them over the last few years, and I've just been blown away by the realism of their... They've got such a

[Gaz] really brilliant attention to detail, and the instruments

[Gaz] have such a naturalistic,

[Gaz] realistic sound. So this is definite... It's an absolute

[Gaz] bargain for free, isn't it? It's brilliant.

[Nick] I think it's in contact. That's the only thing. But, you know, you will need a... I think I think you could just use

[Nick] contact free player, I imagine. Oh, yeah. I think so.

[Gaz] But...

[Gaz] Yeah. So the baritone...

[Gaz] Things...

[Gaz] So Fender

[Gaz] released a guitar in the sixties called the Fender bass six, which was actually tuned down

[Gaz] like a full octave down.

[Gaz] Right. And a lot of guitarists, I think, would then put

[Gaz] or tune into, like, baritone as well. So I'm not sure where the baritone started. I think Dan Electro might have had Dan Electro. Yeah. 1956,

[Gaz] apparently, according to my research. Ah. Ah, okay. There we go. So

[Gaz] famous

[Gaz] kind of usages.

[Gaz] I mean, this is the thing you see. Sometimes people think it's baritone when it's actually the Fender bass six.

[Gaz] The

[Gaz] guitar solo, bass solo, what... Whatever you wanna call it off, Witcher to lineman, Glenn Campbell,

[Gaz] I think is the... On the Fender bass six. But often again, people quote that one as a baritone. But

[Gaz] the baritone is a is a particularly lovely sound. I mean,

[Gaz] it's

[Gaz] especially coupled with tremolo and a little bit of spring reverb. It's just instant evoc... Evocative.

[Gaz] So this library seems to have that sort of sound covered really well.

[Gaz] And, really, it isn't a sound that's been

[Gaz] overused either. I mean, there are very key things like

[Gaz] Twin Peaks.

[Gaz] Incidentally, what made me think about that because that was a sample,

[Gaz] it was also... It reminded me similar period as Alana

[Gaz] Miles'

[Gaz] black velvet with this kind of slinky,

[Nick] fretless bass line and and, like, the shuffle beat. That was a that was a five string. That was one of the... I think that was one of the first five string bass

[Nick] sort of when it was... Because it was.

[Gaz] Was Lower than it sounds like that. No. It's it's a synth. It was a synth. That's a synth. No. And I... Yes. It is. It's it's not a real bass at all. So... Yeah. Wow. And it's a.

[Gaz] Yeah.

[Gaz] And it's got, like, you know, I think... So I mean, it's it's pretty well done. It sounds like a fretless bass being played, you know, with a... With some slides and stuff. But, nope, it's a sample or it's a... Certainly not a real bass guitar. So

[Nick] Well, I never.

[Gaz] But... Yeah. So the the thing about a baritone though is it it does have a... If you use,

[Gaz] like, really minimal bass,

[Gaz] really minimal bass of just

[Gaz] only a couple of, like, notes pinning down the lower octave, and then use baritone for filling in, it's a lovely combination then if you use the two together, very rich, very, oh, it's a beautiful, beautiful sound. But as I said, I don't think that's been overdone.

[Gaz] I mean, obviously,

[Gaz] the tuning step, you know, you can...

[Gaz] If you check it through a load of distortion,

[Gaz] you can get some real drop down sort of vibe, tuning vibes of guitar.

[Nick] I would I would I would imagine that it's

[Nick] metal.

[Nick] The people would use it in metal, you know, I would assume.

[Gaz] Yeah. I I

[Gaz] Not modern metal where you just want super low chokes.

[Gaz] I'm sure they do, but I think they tend to go elsewhere than baritones. But I'm sure they do use them. Often use a seventh string with an extra low string on there, which would give them a b.

[Gaz] But

[Gaz] actual baritone guitars... You know, we're... But I mean, if you look a lot of the time, baritone guitars do have kind of surfy style to them. They... You know, the the ones that you get... That you can buy of, you know, they've got that evocative look about them as well.

[Gaz] But...

[Gaz] Yeah. I...

[Gaz] Andy, you know, Andy plays guitar in Rumblers. He also plays in a a silent film accompanist

[Gaz] act called Minima,

[Gaz] and he plays a baritone guitar. But I think now he has that tune down.

[Gaz] It is a baritone. I think it's a Gretsch baritone, but he has tuned it even further. He's tuned it down to bass. Yeah.

[Gaz] Well, there we go. I've got I've got a bass six downstairs,

[Gaz] and I hate it. I absolutely

[Gaz] hate it. It sounds fantastic.

[Gaz] It really sounds fantastic. It looks brilliant,

[Gaz] but I hate playing it because

[Gaz] it's in the bass range.

[Gaz] But it's like a horrible guitar to play because it's really...

[Gaz] To to use it as a guitar. And to play it as a bass, oh, I hate it so much. I don't know. Just because we're... I'm I'm used to a 34 inch scale, and this is a 30 inch scale. And it just... I don't know. It's a it's a weird thing. It's It all feels wrong. It's all wrong. It's just Oh, yeah.

[Nick] Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to traumatize you there, guys. Perhaps you can have a little moment to recompose yourself while I play an ad. That's probably the perfect

[Nick] perfect antidote, I'm sure. Back after this, folks.

[Nick] Lots of people in the chat are

[Nick] talking about how they dislike certain guitars as well. I know this is music. Well, guitars are music technology. It's just an older form of music technology.

[Nick] So that's fine. We could talk about it as much as we like. I don't feel like I need to apologize, although somehow I am.

[Nick] Okay. Well, actually, maybe we'll we'll skip the Leslie for now, and we'll go to the dirty wave. This was really interesting. Chris

[Nick] Chris posted this midi era, and it's it's got... Yeah. It's got... This looks... These are the people that may... The the tracker, which is is massively popular.

[Nick] So, yeah, play.

[Nick] This is a little performance mixer, which seemed to be all the rage at the moment. It's got like a, I guess, a buffer so you could do time based effects,

[Nick] filtering,

[Nick] chopping,

[Nick] distortion, all sorts of stuff there as well.

[Nick] Three audio ins,

[Nick] two MIDI outs, in and out, USB host port, USB mains for charging and a headphone jack, and beats, and it has a built in sampler with up to twenty four seconds of stereo. And it's got those clacky keys that we've come to love. This is just a single input, so I'm not quite sure what what it's doing, but it seems to be doing a bunch of stuff. I guess it's playing back some things as well.

[Nick] Gaz, you said this this this floated your boat. I'm I'm guessing this sort of thing is is is right up your street now because, I mean, performance mixes. So I I did the NTS four recently.

[Nick] I don't know. It's

[Nick] Yeah. But it's... This looks a bit more interesting, although it's less influenced, obviously.

[Gaz] I mean, with a lot of the kind of electronic performances I'm doing, such a lot of the action I feel is in the mixing. So, you know, the more you can make mixing

[Gaz] performative,

[Gaz] and this is all about that, I think is a is a really great thing. And, of course, the crossfader

[Gaz] is is just a really lovely

[Gaz] device for all sorts of... Other than just mixing between two two

[Gaz] signals. I mean, I've got the the Octatrack here, and the and the way that you can use the crossfade

[Gaz] is is so ingenious on the on the Octatrack

[Gaz] to kinda morph between scenes and and and whatnot. You know? It's a it's a... That kind of... That performance

[Gaz] stuff you can do, I think, is brilliant. So to have a device like this, which is clearly

[Gaz] inspired by DJ mixers,

[Gaz] but is also

[Gaz] kind of more into the kind of synth side of things.

[Gaz] It looks really, really good. I mean, you know, only it's as a mixer, it's what it... What'd you say, three inputs on a USB stream or something. So I'm not quite sure how you differentiate or...

[Gaz] But interestingly,

[Gaz] because it's from

[Gaz] the dirty wave

[Gaz] people,

[Gaz] that

[Gaz] gives me a lot of

[Gaz] hope that this would be a a really good device. I mean, I did also notice, and I'm sure relevant to this now, that the m eight tracker is now available on

[Gaz] well, I know it's on iOS as well. IOS? On Android. Yeah. Yeah.

[Gaz] And if you put your phone into landscape,

[Gaz] the... Your thumbs go over the buttons, which

[Gaz] would kinda give you the feeling a little bit of of the m eight. I think the m eight's been very successful

[Gaz] because of just how rapid

[Gaz] that you can operate it, and obviously very much Sort of like gaming almost, isn't it, in a way? Gaming. Absolutely influenced by gaming. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So And similar similar lead to work that way. Yeah. And the Tracker Mini, the Polyn Tracker Mini, I think, has been a a bigger hit for Polyn than the the full size tracker

[Gaz] Because of a similar thing, it's that handheld

[Gaz] kinda game Very tiny. Yeah.

[Gaz] And and it just suits the tracker

[Gaz] workflow because, you know, you kinda move it up and down between the lines, changing the cell values and stuff. And and

[Gaz] that doesn't seem necessarily like a kind of performance thing, but it really, really is. It's it's a... It's kind of a very different way to do stuff. But...

[Gaz] So with that in mind, I was thinking, ah, okay. So this mixer has probably got that really fast fluid

[Gaz] performance

[Gaz] approach.

[Gaz] And a big screen, which is kind of interesting. Colors... Little color screen. Yeah. For for doing, like, the... Doing samples and and just sample buffer kind of stuff, it looks really good fun for.

[Nick] Yeah. I'm, yeah, I'm sort of, like, looking at that thing. Oh, can I fix? Can I I don't know how much it is? I I could... I couldn't find any pricing information about it anywhere.

[Nick] The only thing is if you've got a crossfader in a tiny little unit like that, you're gonna have to clamp it down because it's just gonna slide. If you get vigorous with it, it's gonna just gonna be moving from side to side. It's gonna be quite That's ergonomic. Really good point. That is a really good point. There's a lot of times that I've flung things across the room from being too vigorous with it. So... Yeah. Okay. I know. You've done it on air several times.

[Gaz] Yeah.

[Gaz] So... Yeah. But but the...

[Gaz] It's the thing. It's like performance

[Gaz] is...

[Gaz] Yeah. You know, you want to be able to

[Gaz] flow and to be and to be expressive.

[Gaz] So

[Gaz] I guess maybe if you're

[Gaz] pushing it down or holding it with one hand or... I'm not sure. I I... I'd have to I'd have to get my hands on this. Red

[Nick] walks in the chat room, the voice of reason, Velcro it down. Actually, with Velcro now...

[Nick] Because the old Velcro is like fluffy bit and Yeah. And and hooky bit. Well, now you get those ones which are Double lock. Hooks, and they rip Yeah. They really good. We use it on our rigs because we've got our p four necks, which don't have a mounting point. You just snap them in place. They're they're really, really effective. So... Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Fair point. Using that. Fair point. Yeah. It's easy enough solve. Okay. I stand corrected.

[Nick] Yeah. I don't know how much it is or when it's coming. I think it'll be coming here soon, so it should be sort of fairly quick, I'd imagine,

[Nick] or or happening fairly soon.

[Nick] Yeah. Do you... Have you have

[Nick] you got any performance mix stuff in your

[Nick] rig? Because, like I say, I reviewed the NTS four, built the NTS four, and it was alright. But you just go

[Nick] l six. I mean, that's just the two things that you say for the money, all that multitracking,

[Nick] all that other... All of that stuff. I mean, yeah, effects are actually a lot better than the I t s four, but the l six is impressive. Yeah.

[Gaz] But l six... And and I've got the l six max, I think, is hard to beat. I'm using that as my kind of

[Gaz] my mixer that feeds front house and my headphones and things like that. But in my...

[Gaz] I kinda call in it my quasi modal rig now. I've got I've got... Well, I've got two soon to have three performance cases.

[Gaz] In that, I've actually put the create audio

[Gaz] assembler mixer, which is

[Gaz] a really good value mixer. It can work as... It comes in a case, so it's like standalone,

[Gaz] But you can take it out of that and actually put it into a into a UDRA. Is that when a Richard Nichols designs? Yeah? Richard Nichols. Yeah. And it sounds super... It's got really good sound about it. And,

[Gaz] yeah, and I use that a lot. And I do find that live,

[Gaz] a a lot of what I do is just... Yeah. It's like kinda just like levels, bringing things and controlling levels.

[Gaz] So... Yeah. So mixing is, yeah, a huge part of things. But, yeah, the l six

[Gaz] max, I know we've talked about this before.

[Gaz] Yeah. When the l six came out,

[Gaz] it it was fabulous,

[Gaz] but it had a few shortcomings,

[Gaz] and the l six max just

[Nick] sorted all around. It's hard. I mean, I look at it, and I just go, what what do I need a big digital mixer for ever again? I mean, you know... Yeah. Okay. So it is a digital mixer, and it's not necessarily this... But I could use it for so many... The only thing I wish that they would do is

[Nick] an l six, an l an l three.

[Nick] Do you know I mean? Right. Something which is just a bit smaller because I took what what... When I went away, I took the l six Max with me, and I think I could probably do it with the... Just the p four because Right. I don't... I I mean, the multitracking is really handy because I've I've just done... When I... When I'm doing a review of plug ins,

[Nick] I just got the mic coming in on input one. I set up four inputs in OBS,

[Nick] and I have the main output going to, you know, the the the USB return of the instrument, and I just record that into OBS. It's a four channel.

[Nick] It's it's really handy, and it means I don't have to transfer because I just record, and then I've got the footage with the the stuff embedded and... Yeah. Happy days. You know? So... But it's it's to take with me because I took... When I went to France,

[Nick] I took

[Nick] the p four because

[Nick] I just thought I'm only gonna do a podcast,

[Nick] and that was absolutely fine. And it it reduced

[Nick] my footprint enormously. I I just, you know, didn't have... I took an even smaller bag, you know, and it was... I was able to do the show from Nice. You know, it's it's down to network as well. So, yeah, just kind of thinking, do I need to take an l six max even though it's a fantastic

[Nick] piece of equipment as we say? But, yeah, this this one looks interesting. Yep.

[Nick] Yes. Absolutely. Very essential. Well, the p four has mix minus as well. Well, you know Oh, the p four too. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. And so does the p four next. Maybe I should get the... Actually, I could take the p four next.

[Nick] That makes perfect sense because the p four next would give me what I need, and it would record multitrack.

[Gaz] And it's got a full channel output. I I mean, I know I've banged on about this a lot, but I use the Zoom.

[Gaz] I use the h six essential.

[Nick] I use it so much. I mean, it's like I don't like it. It's become... You don't like the h six essential? The... Oh, no. The h four. That's what I mean. Yeah. I don't like the six It's

[Gaz] just

[Gaz] it's the fact that you just don't have to set levels.

[Gaz] You just plug

[Gaz] it in, and you just don't worry about it. Different approach. I... I'm not I'm not worried to Change my life. Sort of situation. Change my life. Was it? I love it. I've made, I mean,

[Gaz] thousands and thousands of recordings now with... Well, probably, I don't know how many, you know, so many. And just being able to,

[Gaz] yeah, just not worry about

[Gaz] worry. And

[Gaz] I think that the current Zoom,

[Gaz] whatever...

[Gaz] I don't know what converters I use, whether... I I assume they might be an in house design,

[Gaz] for that... Anything that's got the 32 bit float.

[Nick] Yeah. They're better, aren't they? So there's a Just Yeah. Whenever that is, it was The h four was a a bit crappy. Yeah. Yeah. Anything with that 32 bit float is, I think, the sound quality Much lower. Is fantastic. Isn't it? Yeah.

[Gaz] Yeah. Really, really good. Really good products. I think they've really,

[Gaz] you know, I I I think they've hit a real high point now, Zoom. They've always been

[Gaz] good,

[Gaz] but I think their stuff now is just, yeah, brilliant. Big, big fan. Absolutely.

[Nick] Okay.

[Nick] Let's have another topic. What was that one? That was... Yeah. There's a few... There's these new Audient Thunderbolts. I'll just throw this one in quickly. Introducing

[Speaker 3] the Audient Horizon range, a line of flagship Thunderbolt audio interfaces

[Speaker 3] meticulously

[Speaker 3] engineered for the mission critical studio.

[Speaker 3] Horizon represents the absolute pinnacle of our engineering,

[Speaker 3] combining high performance 32 bit converter technology

[Speaker 3] with sub millisecond round trip latency

[Speaker 3] to ensure your technical foundation

[Nick] Yeah. It's a long video where it goes into... I think I've interviewed him. I I did him at the gear expo in the summer. I forget what is the the chap's name is now because I don't have his card at hand. But these look kind of interesting. You got three units, the the the the

[Nick] the... What is it? The t three, the eight p, which is 24 in 32 out, the 16, which is thirty four and thirty four, and the 32, which is fifty and fifty. And it's got a DSP mixer in it. It doesn't have... I don't think it has any kind of DSP stuff, but that round trip, that's $19,224.32

[Nick] bit, in fact, round trip of point nine nine milliseconds over Thunderbolt three. Amazing. That is mind blowing. And I mix it Mac only at the moment. I think... I don't think they've got them. I mean, they start at 2,000... You know, they're not cheap.

[Nick] The eight p $2,001.09

[Nick] $9.16 $2,001.09

[Nick] 9, and $2,007.09.

[Nick] I think I use d types,

[Nick] d sub controller

[Nick] connections. So you're gonna have to spend a bit on cabling, but the idea is, you know, you put it in your studio. You never have to worry about it again. It's an interesting one. High end, but not flashy, you know, which I think is kinda good. And and multichannel monitor control. So you can you can actually control an entire

[Nick] Atmos system or multichannel system with it as well.

[Gaz] Yeah. And, I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, how it it... Audience have

[Gaz] followed kind of Focusrite in a way with a quite similar backstory,

[Gaz] both being

[Gaz] Mhmm. Having that large format console, British mixing

[Gaz] desk kind of thing, and then

[Gaz] and then going into

[Gaz] exactly like Focusrite did into the low end of the market as well as kind of

[Gaz] having more high end stuff. And so

[Gaz] quite similar. And, obviously, Focusrite and Motu,

[Gaz] some others, and maybe Antelope. There's others

[Gaz] in this kind of category,

[Gaz] but these look really smart. I think Motu

[Gaz] seems to be the most

[Gaz] similar to what I've seen. Although maybe the Motu maybe go a little bit more on a DSP.

[Gaz] But what the Audient have done...

[Gaz] And many people I know are using Audient.

[Gaz] It's become... In the last, I don't know, maybe five to ten years, Audient have just

[Gaz] really done a great job

[Gaz] because

[Gaz] they're

[Nick] Yeah. They've told a good story, haven't they? And made and made their brand kind of become... Yeah. Yeah.

[Gaz] And and and have done really good products.

[Gaz] So like the ID two and the ID four, all that that, you know, the small kind of ranges as

[Gaz] I think have really won a lot of people over.

[Gaz] So with that in mind, you you know that these are gonna be good.

[Gaz] But it's also... I mean, it's it's one of those marketplaces

[Gaz] where you think, well, okay. That's...

[Gaz] There's no network audio on this. Is there? There's no Dante or anything? Is No. You can you you can

[Nick] daisy chain up to four.

[Nick] So if you would go four thirty... Horizon 30 twos on a Mac... On a basic MacBook or even a, you know, modern Mac... Anything with Thunderbolt three,

[Nick] you're talking 200 IO.

[Nick] It's just...

[Nick] But, obviously, it's on a Thunderbolt cable, so you could only ever be

[Nick] more... No further than about, what, two meters away from the audio interfaces.

[Nick] That's the only problem, isn't it? But... Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the downtime. I'm sure you can get extenders and stuff, but they probably cost as much as the units.

[Gaz] Makes me think this is very studio focused then as opposed to, like, RME or... Oh, RME, of course, is the other... You know,

[Gaz] that have really made,

[Gaz] you know, huge inroads into the live sector

[Gaz] over, well, many years now, I guess. But,

[Nick] yeah, I mean, difficult to know what else to say about them. I mean, because Yeah. I mean, that's what they are, ain't it? They have audio interfaces, high end audio defenses that aren't made by somebody else this time. Yeah. Absolutely. Well Yeah. We could drop that there. I got a couple of things I want to bring up in the chat. Nice to see Doctor. Synth. Manny's there. Manny Fernandez and also Technomatic. Nice to see Technomatic. Maybe he's there at work. Who knows?

[Nick] Okay. So let's have a look. Oh, this was another one. I mean, we're in the sort of getting into door world.

[Nick] Let's have a look. I'll go for this.

[Nick] I... Should I do an ad? I can't... Yes. I should probably do the ad first. Back after this first, then we'll come and do the next topic back in a sec.

[Nick] Got there in the end. Whoops.

[Speaker 3] So I I said it was all going very smoothly. Yes. So I was gonna play this one. So this is our next topic. We'll do that now. Maybe this will work, and then I can cover my embarrassment. What's up, everyone? My name's Chris Hazel, and today we're gonna take a look at Universal Audio's massive new release, Luna three point o. Now, it seems like yesterday that Luna two point o came out, and honestly, it's kind of amazing how much of a leap forward this already great dub. It introduces a very forward this powered by noises to some features that you may by producing a piece This is really intro...

[Nick] I'll

[Nick] just play... I'll just basically explain it because it's quite a long video.

[Nick] Luna Luna,

[Nick] when it first came out, they were a great they

[Nick] were a great pains to say, no. It's not a DAW. It's not a DAW. It's not a DAW. Yeah. It's obviously a DAW.

[Nick] But three point o adds quite a lot of really interesting stuff. This thing called Luna Play, which is, in my opinion, you know, we've been talking about this for ages about the use of sort of assistive AI within the DAW, and they seem to have come up... Upon

[Nick] a strategy where this may be an acceptable use. It's less about generative.

[Nick] So Luna Play, you know, you could basically just launch the software, start, plug something in, and play. You don't need to... And it goes, oh, I can... I think that sounds like a guitar you got plugged into input three. Here's a channel strip, and there's a voice into... Through. Do you want me to record? Bang. And the idea is it's essentially... It's it's a bit like this sort of... Well, we talked about it before. It'd be the sort of notion of an actually useful Microsoft paper clip for a DAW. So it just basically...

[Nick] What you're doing. Right. Okay. Don't worry. Just go. I'll I'll get you play it. It figures out what the instrument is, figures out the levels, maybe just gives you an idea of what sort of signal chain which you could use or not choose, and then you just go. And then it'll figure out. It can transcribe your lyrics. It can pick up the chords,

[Nick] and that could form the basis of your main session, which you would then build upon inside the main sort of Luna itself, which is still free. I think Luna Play is free. I mean, Luna Studio,

[Nick] obviously, you get... You've got stem separation as well. So in this instance, what it does is take... I I have this old demo where I like the drums, couldn't find the master, dropped it in there, used the drums, extracted them, and played against it. I mean, this is the sort of thing where you're just going, ah.

[Nick] Yeah. It's almost presenting it in the right way. It seems to it

[Nick] seems to actually make sense here rather than make you sort of bristle.

[Nick] I don't know. Maybe you felt differently.

[Gaz] No. I mean, I've

[Gaz] always thought that the presentation of Luna looks really nice, like a really kind of fairly straightforward

[Gaz] DAW.

[Gaz] I don't know if anyone uses it, so I've never actually tried it myself. But I have to say the thing that that really caught my eye on here was the built in stem separation, and that's largely because I've been doing a lot of that using Cubase, and Cubase has got that built into it now. I I think though there, though, it says it's powered by Moises.

[Gaz] It's very

[Gaz] good stem separation

[Gaz] algorithms.

[Gaz] And as as you mentioned there with your example, it's...

[Gaz] Having stem separation built into the DAW, it

[Gaz] just makes just perfect sense.

[Gaz] An example of something that I did recently was

[Gaz] Frank

[Gaz] of teaching machines

[Gaz] and Rocket Gold Star. He sent me some old Rocket Gold Star recordings.

[Gaz] I think one from about '98, a live, like, a live recording of, like, a desk mix. You know, desk mix is typically

[Gaz] quite horrible.

[Gaz] But using

[Gaz] the the stem splitter in Cubase, I managed to extract the different elements out, played around with them, you know, boosted up the drum, made the drum sound fat. It is a million percent

[Gaz] different, you know, the finished thing compared to what I had. It was an enormous thing. And I guess being all built into the DAW,

[Gaz] you know, you you drag your file in,

[Gaz] split it out

[Gaz] all in situ is is fantastic. So

[Gaz] for Luna to have that now built in, but especially with its kind of being the Moises one,

[Gaz] I'm not sure, but Moises may be one of the first. I mean, them and

[Gaz] RIPEX or whatever to...

[Gaz] I'm not sure. I haven't seen

[Gaz] the spec on that.

[Gaz] I wonder how many sources...

[Gaz] How many things it can actually

[Nick] Well, the the the the the the free one gives you four,

[Nick] and the paid... You know, the the paid one gives you six.

[Gaz] Right.

[Gaz] Yeah. I would like a little bit more granularity because you've got, like, in cubes, you've got, like, drums,

[Gaz] bass,

[Gaz] or, like, percussion, drums and percussion, bass, vocals, and other. And then other covers had an awful lot of stuff. I would like to see more. Here's an interesting thing, actually, for any Gentle Giant fans out there. I know Rich Hilton is a giant Gentle Giant fan.

[Gaz] A 1973

[Gaz] album called In a Glass House has recently had, like, it's more than a remaster.

[Gaz] The the masters... Like,

[Gaz] Steven Wilson has been going to a lot of the classic seventies kind of prog albums and doing new Atmos and new mixes of things. But with this particular album, the master tracks, the master tapes,

[Gaz] Sorry. The multitrack masters had been lost.

[Gaz] So this Brazilian

[Gaz] engineer,

[Gaz] Epa...

[Gaz] I can't remember his name. Sorry. But he...

[Gaz] I think he used Logic's

[Gaz] built in stem

[Gaz] splitter Okay. To take, you know, like a high quality stereo

[Gaz] master of the In a Glasshouse album,

[Gaz] and then

[Gaz] has essentially

[Gaz] remixed

[Gaz] it just using stem separation.

[Gaz] And he's done an an astonishing job. I mean, the...

[Gaz] To a b between

[Gaz] the two mixes, I did that. I actually... I I sort of captured it just so I was really interested to

[Gaz] just to have a a comparison between two songs

[Gaz] that...

[Gaz] I had

[Gaz] like a remastered version from, I don't know, maybe, like, ten, fifteen years ago, comp... And comparing them, and it's astonishing

[Gaz] how

[Gaz] different it is. And it really got me thinking about how

[Gaz] so many classic albums or...

[Gaz] Like... And and in my case, I used it on an old live

[Gaz] recording, just how you can just bring those up into the modern era. And and like with that Gentle Giant album, being able to actually make Atmos mixes, mixes, you know, all derived from just a single multitrack stereo.

[Gaz] I digress. I'm sorry. This is all, like, moving aside from the Luna. The fact that Luna has got it now built in is a big one. So does that mean then that you can download the free one and have access to a four channel stem separation for free?

[Nick] I I think so. It's what it seems to suggest. I mean, that you... Oh, That... You know? That's There's the free version, then there's the UAD Spark Studio, which is at a subscription, a $149

[Nick] a year, which actually seems... That seems

[Nick] that seems pretty reasonable. You get 70 UAD plug ins with that. 70 UAD? Counting.

[Nick] Yeah. I don't know whether that runs on hard... Whether they're native or whether that runs on hardware.

[Nick] And then there's a... Or you can buy it as a one time. That comes with thirty thirty plug ins, six ARA

[Nick] console and tape emulations,

[Nick] which I think

[Nick] I'm not quite sure what that is. But but... So, yeah, if you've got UAD hardware,

[Nick] seems like a no brainer, assuming

[Nick] assuming you want to work in that way. But I I think it seems like what they're doing, they're they're really going for that sort of class of

[Nick] it's... I mean, it's almost Californian musicians, isn't it, who just are told what to buy because they're gonna be writing songs at home. They get a UAD,

[Nick] and then, you know, they they maybe don't want to get into all of the the kind of nuts and bolts of a DAW.

[Nick] This might actually give them a way to really sort of just be really easy,

[Nick] make stuff... You know, get stuff down, get it... And get it documented because you could sort of scrabble away with a guitar and a bass or a guitar and a voice, and it'll do the lyrics, do the chords, and just sort of build you a structure, which you could then either pass on to somebody else or finish the arrangement in a more sort of... In a more measured fashion. I think that's that's kind of interesting.

[Gaz] Yeah. Yeah. It's just getting me thinking about what is available for free these days, though. I mean... And, you know, it makes sense, doesn't it? If you use the free version, you might well want to then,

[Gaz] you know, upgrade. I'm sure that that path is a successful path. But at the same time, as if the free one is...

[Nick] Let... Oh, I need to figure out how many tracks are you allowed to do on a Oh, I don't know. It doesn't say that. I didn't I didn't Yeah. I didn't get all of that. Yeah. No. That's interesting. I mean, was it seven years ago they launched for that? Because I remember they launched it at NAAM Yeah. Or just before NAAM. NAAM is a And we did it, and we literally...

[Nick] They said you cannot use the word DFW.

[Gaz] It's not Can't use the word I just remember the ludicrousness of it at the time. Ludicrous. It was crazy because it... You know, it's like, it's a DAW.

[Gaz] What is the special sauce that makes it in front of DAW?

[Nick] Maybe. Are they calling it a DAW now, did you say? Yeah. Yeah. It is. I mean... And and I think it was... Back then, it was because they were incorporated into sort of... The UAD ecosystem was It was locked in with the hardware, wasn't it? But it was in Pro Tools. Yeah. And, you know, you would be using that. And they didn't want to alienate all of those kind of partnerships,

[Nick] I suppose,

[Gaz] guess. I'm I'm wondering if a lot of Luna users are former Pro Tools users who... I I... I'd imagine that that that there's been a lot of traffic that

[Gaz] way.

[Gaz] That would be my assumption.

[Gaz] Could possibly be. It's funny, you know, talking to DAW. In fact, behind me... Oh, there's a screensaver. No. But I'm... I've got queue base running,

[Gaz] and, you know, as much as I've dabbled with other things,

[Gaz] I think you're like, no. You're sure. Still, yeah.

[Nick] I I want... To be honest, these days, I I I rarely spend any time in in in any of them. I used Logic to do the

[Nick] Mhmm.

[Nick] Now I use Logic to do stuff

[Nick] where I might need an Apple loop or something because I could just... Because if I've got some demo software or a plug in where I have to write some music, then, you know, that is a major commitment, you know, because then you get into all of that. I think the last thing I did was Yuhi, and I made that Yuhi demo out of Apple loops. And that took me long enough just to sort of make an arrangement and picking things up and doing whatever. Demo... But this time, I just used it as a sort of something to play bass sounds against, which was rather unsuccessful anyway because they were all at the same tempo. So... And wrong most of the time. But but... Hey. You know? But... So I use Reaper. I use

[Nick] Ableton, and I use Logic. It's sort of equal. Those are the three that I hover, but I... I'm not really make... I'm not doing project work anymore. I'm not really kind of involved in that sort of big, gotta get my act together sort of door work.

[Gaz] So, I mean, I... I'd recorded the rehearsals for the pop dungeon into my Zoom h

[Gaz] six

[Gaz] using the mics over the drum kit and then having four feeds of bass guitar going in,

[Gaz] and then some feeds from the mixing desk just in the rehearsal room to take the vocals in,

[Gaz] the guitar,

[Gaz] and the keyboards,

[Gaz] and also the electronic drum kit, the SPD thing, so... To come in. And then when I brought it back, unfortunately, the guitar hadn't recorded.

[Gaz] And I was making this recording for the rest of the band as a sort of a rehearsal.

[Gaz] You know, she don't have to be super tight with it,

[Gaz] but, like, you know, just a a way to practice along to.

[Gaz] Yeah.

[Gaz] So I was like, I was going to the overhead,

[Gaz] the the microphone,

[Gaz] stem splitting that,

[Gaz] removing the drums from it,

[Gaz] and then removing the vocals from it. I just try to manage to get a little bit of guitar.

[Gaz] Of course, it brought the keyboards in as well a little bit and some...

[Gaz] But actually, you know, worked worked pretty well. Sorry. That's a complete... That was just tying in with things No. No. Interesting. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[Nick] But, I mean, I suppose... But the thing is those are the sort of things, you know, people just think, you know, I would think with stem separation, what am I gonna use it for? You know, I'm not a DJ. I don't need to sort of... But, you know, you're just illustrating that those that those are really, really helpful,

[Nick] certainly in, you know, in restorative work and all of those things. Just being able to kinda go, I've got the master. I just need to get this out or get that. And it's getting better and better and better. In fact, I'm trying to remember who that company. We did a... I did an interview with with the the the the woman who was in charge of... I'm trying to remember what they were. They were really good.

[Nick] And I did an interview at NAM, and she said, oh, send me... Because it was really noisy. She said, just send me the send

[Nick] me the recording, and I'll fix it. And I... And then she said that you could do that. She said that halfway through the interview. She said, if you just send me these stems, I'll fix it for you, which point I cut to the fixed stems. And it was just like

[Nick] really good illustration of of of how that works. It was a very powerful

[Nick] powerful situation. So, yeah, you could use that sort of stuff. It's got it's got use, I suppose. That's the main thing. Oh. Because with many of these things and certainly AI in general, you know, it's like, yeah, it can do these things, but who wants it to do any of that? You know? What is it that you would be using it for? And I suppose, yep, the the the whole point about this this topic was I... It's obviously using AI or machine learning or algorithmic something, and it seems to be a useful

[Nick] pro... A useful thing for it. That was my It's it's hugely useful. And

[Gaz] I'm also,

[Gaz] you know, Frank

[Gaz] gave me this trove of old nineties stuff. He he he he found an old DAT.

[Gaz] It's still working. And then this DAT player is still working, which is one of only 30 in the world, I believe, that is still working. Yeah. I joke.

[Gaz] But he managed to capture,

[Gaz] like, about ninety minutes of stuff that I'd done in the mid in the mid nineties.

[Gaz] And, like, listening back to that stuff, some of it, I just had no memory of at all.

[Gaz] And some of it, I was just ever so glad to to have back.

[Gaz] But then

[Gaz] it was funny because I haven't done it yet because I haven't had time, but I I was listening to some of them,

[Gaz] and and and some things that were irking me from way back then,

[Gaz] hearing it again, I would not heard it thirty years.

[Gaz] It still irked me.

[Gaz] And I thought, you know what? So you are... I was right. Put that into this... I'm gonna put that into the stem splitter, and I'm gonna fix it.

[Gaz] I'm gonna fix some, you know, little Times are retroactive.

[Gaz] Some vocal tuning some vocal tuning issues from the era before, you know, autotune even existed.

[Gaz] Just sort of going back in, it just... It is just sharp. I'd get too excited when I'd sing, and I just push too much energy in and just overshoot the note and just go sharp.

[Gaz] Just wanna go back in and just tuck it back down again.

[Gaz] Just purely just to cure

[Gaz] a 30 year old irk.

[Nick] Jessica Powell from AudioShake.

[Nick] Thank you very much. All rain mode... All range mode. My memory is not what it was. So, yeah, sorry, guys. I did... I I got that, and then I realized I only had eight seconds or six seconds to to read it out before it disappears.

[Nick] Yeah. Well, again,

[Nick] useful stuff. It's useful stuff. Yeah. Okay. Let's have a look. Should we... I think as it's episode nine zero nine, I should probably just do a little bit of nine zero nining. So I found this video actually by doctor Mix. Great guy. I love I love doctor Mix. I always see him at the London City Pedal Show. Yeah. He's So I'll play this. So episode nine zero nine as it's nine zero nine. Hi. Welcome to doctor Mix. Today, I'm gonna show you some of the most famous TR nine zero nine drum patterns. I will start with inner city good life. This is a 121

[Gaz] tempo,

[Gaz] and let's play it right now.

[Nick] Yeah. Interesting.

[Nick] It sounds kind of pretty crap. There's

[Nick] a there's a bunch more in there, actually. But I was just thinking because, I mean, again, with the nine zero nine, it was all about the processing really...

[Nick] Well, as well as processing the individual out and getting that sound out. Those hi hats sounded just like...

[Nick] Just sort of so kind of... Like they were... Like, you're playing a hi hat with a massive stick, just a really coarse and sort of no... You know, they needed so much EQ to get that sort of silky sound, that sort of petty bone sound that was all all over the Madonna stuff, which... And which they're a pet. But it's interesting, isn't it? We... We've we've waxed lyrical about the eight zero eight part in the past. In fact, I think we we did a special episode with Roger Lynn, bizarrely, which didn't really make any sense, but he agreed to come on. But the nine zero nine, I mean, you know, back in the day when I was doing remixing stuff, it would be certainly the kick

[Nick] more often than not the snare, though quite modified,

[Nick] and certainly had... You know, the kick, snare, and hat, that was kind of basically...

[Nick] That was it. You know, that's... That was what you had to use. Certainly, you know, you would enhance it to a degree, but it defined

[Nick] rather embarrassingly a whole genre and a whole slew of rather

[Nick] turgid and sort of derivative

[Nick] house house music stuff that was only populated by the occasional classics such as Good Life in a City. And, you know, there were obviously some great ones, but there was an awful lot of nonsense there. And it's interesting how something become... Can become... Once it becomes a standard,

[Nick] it can become... Its its magic is eroded somehow because it's it's just omnipresent and

[Nick] over... Overused.

[Nick] But I guess, you know, I've

[Nick] never had a 909. Have you?

[Gaz] No. But I have used one, and it was always more of a 909

[Gaz] than 808 sort of guy, really.

[Gaz] I... I've always found it just really... Like, I've always found it really satisfying

[Gaz] sounding, you know, the kick. I love it. I do love it. Although,

[Gaz] I avoid them like the plague now in in terms of

[Gaz] that overuse thing. But

[Gaz] what to say about the 909?

[Gaz] There

[Nick] hasn't been It's gotta be one of... I I was... It's gotta be once one of the most sampled drum machines Oh. All time. Unquestionably.

[Nick] It's gotta be. I would imagine more than... And then more than the... More than the eight zero eight. I don't know. Maybe not. Or maybe there's probably more records with nine zero nine sounds on them than there are with eight zero eight. I don't know if that... That's that's a controversial statement.

[Gaz] Yeah. And the t r... The little t r six,

[Gaz] you know, current... Well, sort of current Roland

[Gaz] little drum box,

[Gaz] it does such a great job, in my opinion, of getting a great nine zero nine.

[Gaz] It feels like now that the sounds are just so everywhere and sampled to...

[Gaz] You know?

[Gaz] I don't know. He's kind of... He finds it hard to get excited about it, really.

[Gaz] I suppose partly

[Gaz] that's me because I'm

[Gaz] I'm really going through this anti genre thing.

[Gaz] I don't want anything... In in my electronic in my electronic sort of pursuit, it's either with Steve or Quasimodel.

[Gaz] I'm just trying to avoid anything that can be

[Gaz] identifiably

[Gaz] like

[Gaz] something.

[Gaz] Yeah.

[Nick] That's changed. People like to be able to sort of go, oh, that sounds a bit like this, and I like this. So therefore, like that. Yeah.

[Gaz] Yeah. It's true. I mean, I I was direction.

[Gaz] In the preshow, I was showing

[Nick] this drum farm, which The drum farm. Yeah.

[Gaz] You can get, like, really good nine zero ninety... Oh, my light is coming in. This happens in the show. I was gonna say that the god light just comes in.

[Gaz] What I really like it...

[Gaz] What I like about the drum farm is you can really get a... Can really bend sounds away from those

[Gaz] kind of

[Gaz] traditional sounds.

[Nick] It's really good for that. And another one that Yeah. Paulie just had a review of it. I I wanted to get my hands on one. I think it looks absolutely fine. Have you been

[Nick] have you been creating drum sounds like a like a like a madman since you got it? Yeah. I mean, that's the way it works. It automatically samples.

[Gaz] So

[Gaz] you know, you can... And it... So talking to Jason from Nobula,

[Gaz] he said really that he was imagining that a lot of people who might like this would be people who want to make drum drum libraries up. And that's, you know, and that seems quite odd to get a module to make sample libraries, but it makes a lot of sense once you start using it because, you know, you can just go

[Gaz] trigger it

[Gaz] sixteen sixteen times with little tiny differences. And With variance. Yeah. Yeah. With variance. And then you just got a little bank of 16 samples automatically.

[Nick] All it's set.

[Nick] A beautiful... Yeah.

[Gaz] And the... Oh, yeah. The... And the round robin thing. That was that was my suggestion to Jason in the early days to make... To round robin I

[Gaz] don't know how how much you... You took that on. But

[Gaz] but

[Gaz] another drum thing that I love using is the Percon's voice. And I've actually got

[Gaz] Erica...

[Gaz] I've I've borrowed an Erica Percon's, the big unit itself as well.

[Gaz] But, you know, they now do that. You can get it as an individual voice,

[Gaz] as a module, the Percon's voice.

[Gaz] And again, what's really fabulous about that is just how...

[Gaz] I don't know how much you can get that

[Gaz] away

[Gaz] from these,

[Gaz] you know, 909, 809... 808 type things and into other territories.

[Nick] That's, yeah, that's what I like about the that's what I like about the Pulse Arthur 23.

[Gaz] Oh, yeah. Another great example there. So, you know, so, I mean, obviously, we're talking... Oh, it's episode nine zero nine and

[Gaz] definitely deserves a, you know, a shout out. But, yeah, for me, I think it's almost like

[Gaz] almost the opposite now. In fact, trying to... I mean, it's hard to... Those things are...

[Gaz] Yeah. They form,

[Gaz] like, a a kind of... A thing in our minds of

[Gaz] what it should... You know, what a good electronic drum sound

[Gaz] should sound like.

[Gaz] And then I... I'd say nine zero nine kick is just I find ever so satisfying.

[Gaz] It's a it's a brilliant archetype, I I suppose. Yeah. I suppose so.

[Nick] Well, hats

[Nick] off or, you know, raise a glass to a nine zero nine. I think I think that's fair. Play. It's a it's a phenomenal thing. Yeah. Agree. It's, again, another one of those drum machines that has mistakenly become a cult classic because it was designed for something else. Something else.

[Nick] But, hey. You know?

[Nick] Yeah. We'll take that. Mean, I I'm sure Roland will... And, of course, they've they've they've they've they've milked... Not milked it, but they've they've they've finally mined it because it it wasn't... There was a a whole period of time where they were making drum machines, they just wouldn't include the sounds of their classics. And you just go, what the fuck's the matter with you? What? I know. Crazy, isn't it? Absolutely crazy. But, yeah, they they seem to have kind of moved on that now.

[Gaz] But, you know, like, the the little t r nine

[Gaz] does a great job, I think. And, of course, the, you know, Beringer's nine zero nine is also...

[Gaz] Does another good job of getting

[Gaz] Yeah. Pretty close

[Gaz] to what it... But, again, I think you were right when you said it, though. It's all about

[Gaz] processing it, isn't it? And I think a lot of those classic tracks wouldn't be classic if you could... If it was sound. Yeah.

[Nick] Exactly. The nine zero nine hat works, but in my opinion, it works really well with, I think basement jacks are the masters of it, you know, because they use the nine zero nine for some of But the they've got all of that beautiful Skippy Shaker stuff, and it's just... Oh, man. That's so groovy.

[Nick] So... And that's obviously not played in nine zero nine. It can't be because it couldn't do that sort of groove.

[Gaz] The...

[Gaz] When you mentioned shaker, though, that that drum farm has got a brilliant shaker model in it because you can kinda control...

[Gaz] The shaker comes... It... It's not just a single shake. It's the return of the shake as bounce. So Bounce. Shaker bounce. Yeah. Bounce. Yeah. And I think that's that's fabulous. And

[Gaz] it can really get that. I love a shaker. A shaker for me is just

[Gaz] the most underrated of all instruments.

[Gaz] A good shaker track is

[Nick] Well,

[Nick] I remember we we always used to name... I always used to name the shaker the shaker channel on my mixes as the two pack.

[Nick] But...

[Nick] And and and also the the the tambourine was the Oliver as well as a... In in the knowledge to Oliver Tambo.

[Nick] So... Yeah. The two pack should cure. Yeah. There we go. Yeah. Right. We should probably probably wrap things up now. I... I'm getting into getting into reminiscent territory, which is fine. Is that episode nine zero nine? Well That is nine zero nine. It was Are you one little thing I wanted to mention, and that was at the concert that I saw last week. I went over to Montreal

[Gaz] and saw Rush in concert.

[Nick] Oh, okay. With the new drum. I think What's her name? Anika With Anika Niles. Yeah.

[Gaz] Anika Niles. Yeah.

[Gaz] And

[Gaz] there's many things that you can say about this. I'll try and keep it brief. I mean, obviously,

[Gaz] Annika Niles

[Gaz] taking what is ostensibly

[Gaz] the biggest rock job on the planet, I think, and the expectation and the... You know? And and and for and for for it to be a woman as well is astonishing in in many ways and just Yeah. That's awesome. Inspiring and... It's brilliant, isn't it? It's really, really good. And I think the thing that just struck me about it watching this concert, the presentation was fantastic.

[Gaz] We're sitting in the bleachers or whatever you call it, like, quite far back, but you ate... But pretty straight on to able to watch the whole show and the the whole kind of visual presentation.

[Gaz] It it was pretty next level. I was incredibly impressed by it. Rush always

[Gaz] put a big show on there. They're they're famous for that. But I think the thing really that struck me, and I thought it was just so wonderful to see, was these guys

[Gaz] and gal.

[Gaz] Well, the joke is there's always a woman at a Rush concert. Now she's joined the band. Band.

[Gaz] Although there were plenty of women there were plenty of women there at the concert, to be fair. But it

[Gaz] was the fact... I mean, I think Gedi is 73. Alex, maybe 73, 72. So, you know, these chaps are... You know, they're getting on a little bit, and in no way were they dialing it in. They were stepping up and actually

[Gaz] pushing themselves.

[Gaz] You know, this wasn't like some sort of, like, nostalgia cashing in sort of tour. This was a band who had always pushed themselves,

[Gaz] really, you know, really pushed hard to sort of... You know, as players and as songwriters and as arrangers,

[Gaz] etcetera. You know? And the fact that they were still pushing rather than just, you know,

[Gaz] taking the easy route.

[Gaz] I... Well, I mean, one one thing that they had done is that they'd incorporated a keyboard player, Lauren Gold, who was just sort of kind of off to the side a little bit, you know, but,

[Gaz] you know, still very much

[Gaz] part of what was going on. But making

[Gaz] it a little bit easier because both Gedi and

[Gaz] Alex and also Neil when he was alive

[Gaz] would all be triggering things. And what was interesting, like, they never used

[Gaz] click... They never used playback

[Gaz] tracks,

[Gaz] but they did use samples.

[Gaz] So they'd have samples, but,

[Gaz] like, Neil would trigger a sample, and he was so well practiced with a sample. He could play perfectly in time with it without needing

[Gaz] a a click track or a backing track to do that. And

[Gaz] so I think they're still carrying on with that, but

[Gaz] having the keyboard player there has just made it a bit easier. And also,

[Gaz] Alex and Gedi would both be playing synth parts with their feet. They still did a little bit of that, which was good to see.

[Gaz] You know, they opened the show with

[Gaz] it's all this, like, dry ice and all this stuff. And there's like an outer screen that comes in front of the band that they can do projections onto,

[Gaz] and that and and that made for a really nice parallax.

[Gaz] Yeah. And then that kinda lifts up in all this kinda mystic side. And they stride out on stage,

[Gaz] and they play Xanadu, which is this classic 1977

[Gaz] prog epic.

[Gaz] Both... And both of them, Alex and Geddy, both play in the twin necks.

[Gaz] And I was thinking, those things are heavy.

[Gaz] You know?

[Gaz] And he came out and he plays Xanadu, which for a Rush fan is just such a thrill.

[Gaz] But it was just... I think the the thing I wanted to say that was just the way that they played so well. And Getty's voice, which I know for a lot of people is definitely a sticking point with Rush. But his voice was in...

[Gaz] It was brilliant. It's probably best I've ever heard him sing.

[Gaz] And I just thought... I was really inspired by them, you know, just thinking, yeah. You know, these guys are well past retirement age, and yet they're

[Gaz] they're they're pushing.

[Gaz] They're trying to do something. You know? And Annika brings a phenomenal energy in as well.

[Gaz] She's a superb drummer. And it's quite interesting because her...

[Gaz] She made a name for herself as a YouTube drummer. You know? So she landed a fantastic job with Jeff Beck, which is the path how she ended up in in Rush. Yeah. Okay. She was Jeff's last drummer before he passed away. But

[Gaz] the thing is with Annika, one of her kind of key things is is to sort of

[Gaz] play

[Gaz] really kind of counter to what

[Gaz] you might expect. There's lots of videos of of her on YouTube units, she'll play,

[Gaz] you know, offbeats and and sort of poly polymetric patterns or polyrhythmic patterns

[Gaz] and

[Gaz] and and and in in a really interesting way. So her instinct is to kind of play,

[Gaz] not to play written parts. But the thing is with Rush, more than any band ever,

[Gaz] the eardrummers

[Gaz] in the audience,

[Gaz] you know, they... They've never seen a band where the audience eardrum the drum fills.

[Nick] And, you know, and so so she's kinda trapped to a certain degree. There's some of the first You know? Because they'll be expect that... Yeah. That's funny. That is funny. And and I might have to... I'm looking out with that.

[Nick] I... I'm gonna have to wrap things up. That's not... That was my point. That was my point. You're off in full. No. No. That was my point. It's just What am I... Air drum... I'm trying. Air... Air drum... What's it? I don't know. Air drum fills.

[Nick] Airdrum Yeah. Airdrum fills. Yeah. That that... That's a good name for it. I'll show it to you. Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. Them Yeah. Brilliant. I'm glad you got to see that. I haven't been seeing GoodGeek for a while yet. Actually, I'm gonna I'm gonna try and get They are coming to the next

[Nick] year.

[Nick] I've never been out to me. That's not my... I I don't think I'd You don't have to be. Wish I'd got to Yeah.

[Nick] I think you do.

[Nick] Think you do. You're gonna go to a lot of effort. $2,200

[Nick] Exactly. Ticket or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I don't wanna... Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to everybody in the chat room. It's been a lovely show. We'll be back next week.

[Nick] I'm trying to think. Was there something I had to remember? There was something I was gonna try and remember,

[Nick] which I can't remember now, but it's got Oh, I all come. Quick quick point.

[Gaz] In Bath tomorrow, I'm coming to watch a show. Maybe you should come to it. Oh. It's Jon Andersen and the band Geeks

[Gaz] playing. Where's that? In the Forum.

[Nick] Oh, okay. Alright.

[Nick] Yeah. Which... That's that What might we eat for a drink?

[Nick] Yeah. And then I'm back off. Lovely. Liverpool

[Gaz] on

[Gaz] Friday for anyone who's that neck of the woods for Pop Dungeon and Cardiff on Sunday. I guess that. Are these all sold out? They must be sold. No. I think this aren't they? They're close to. They might... I'm not sure. There might be a few tickets left. I think it's... All the shows have been done really well so far, so I don't know. But I do imagine there might be a few tickets left. But Nice one. Alright. Well, guys, thank you so much for joining me. Yeah. It was great. Thank you. The chat room. Thanks for joining us. I'll I'll end the show now with my my button press. I think this is how I do it. See you next time. Take care, everybody. Bye. Bye.