Degraded Silicon (and some thoughts)

~ Kumie

I have a new piece of music to share. But first, I want to follow up on my last post from way back in October 2018. I had complained about being frustrated with too many choices in making music with software. I thought going mobile would help with that. It did a little bit.

But, the better plan was to go hardware. The knobs, limited functionality (compared to having all the things in front of you with software), and easy access (power on and play), make music making much simpler for a dabbler like me.

I was never big on music hardware. Not because I didn’t like it. Rather, I couldn’t afford it during college and law school. So, I made music on a computer (with a few hardware exceptions here and there).

Over, the past few years, though, a number of affordable and fun to use products came out. So, I started buying things (I’m slowly filling in the Music Gear tab above).

This piece is a mixture of one of the few pieces of hardware that I bought years ago, the first generation Korg Electribe S, combined with a fancy effects pedal I recently bought, the Empress ZOIA.

Enjoy!

Too Many Choices

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There is a certain kind of rut that I get into when trying to make music on a desktop/laptop. It comes from having too many options in my music-making software.

My two primary programs are Ableton Live 9 (gotta upgrade to 10 still) and Reason 10. Within each program are tons of plugins, software synths, samplers, options for routing. And within each of those are the presets.

For example, If I want to make a drum beat using Kong (drum module in Reason), it loads the default kit. Most of the time I don’t want to use it. What happens next is I spend ten minutes finding a preset I like. Then another ten or so minutes tweaking the preset. It’s not particularly complicated. But, it takes time. This is time I could actually be making a new beat. Multiply this by any number of software instruments I want to use and I end up spending a significant portion of my already-limited music making time hunting for sounds.

The easy(ish) answer is that I should take a day to go through the presets of the modules that I use most and segregate, or otherwise highlight, the patches I like best. I can then use those as my starting point for new tracks. But, I suck at planning my music-making time and only think to do this after I am in the middle of a preset-hunting expedition.

This is where less-robust apps on iOS have an advantage. They don’t necessarily have a ton of sounds. Their interfaces are stripped down. I can open them up and start making a loop. If I don’t like the default patch or samples, there aren’t a ton for me to scroll through. Usually there is something I am happy enough with to get going.

Less choice is good sometimes.

Beat in Reason

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I have been trying to spend more time making loops lately. A quick beat in Figure or Korg Gadget on my phone can be a replacement for mindless flipping on Instagram. I am still debating what method is best for sharing. Soundcloud is pretty straightforward and lets me control the CC license. But, Allihoopa is in some ways more integrated into the apps I use.

Here is something I made in Reason and then pushed to Allihoopa. Let’s see how nicely it embeds.

https://allihoopa.com/s/BeRUTQXK?embed

And, it looks like the WordPress auto-embed feature breaks Allihoopa’s embed. I guess click on the link above to hear the beat.

I also made this other song and put it in Soundcloud. Does it embed properly?

OK. That decides what service I will be using to share my sounds…

GarageBand and the Beat Sequencer

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GarageBand hasn’t always been my jam, so to speak. I started my music-production fiddling with a cracked copy of Cool Edit Pro (manually slicing wave files) in college, moving on to actually buying Logic (before Apple bought them), Reason, and eventually Ableton Live.

GarageBand felt like kiddie stuff compared to those programs. Not that I am an all-pro music producer. I don’t know more than I do know in all those programs. But, when there is something that I want to do in one of those program, I can almost always do it. (Except for destructive waveform editing in Ableton. I hate not being able to do that).

But, recently I have been enamored with GarageBand for iOS. Specifically, I am in love the the beat sequencer. Most DAW’s have a form of piano roll grid for entering notes. Some are easier to use than others. GarageBand’s is my new favorite. It is easy to read, doesn’t require much zooming around, and is perfect for touch screens.

Here is a bit I was fiddling with the other day:

At a glance, I can read my beat with no scrolling around or squinting. The interface also has a couple cool features that I haven’t seen in my other programs. First, the velocity and note repeat buttons at the bottom make those particular edits a lot easier and faster to implement. Second, each drum can have its own loop length. In the above example, the bottom row (a rim click) is only three 16th notes long. That cycle repeats independently of the rest of the hits which are a full measure long.

Will I ever write a full song on GarageBand on iOS? In the past I would have said no. But, little features like this make me reconsider that thought.

Robot Factory

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Come take a short tour of our robot factory. Only the highest quality robots, building the highest quality robots for building the highest quality robots.

Sometimes things break. Somethings people break. But always, the work goes on.

Ableton Live Non-Song

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What makes a “non-song?” In this instance, it is the lack of overall structure. Here, I am, somewhat randomly, adding and subtracting loops that I recorded.

Most of the sounds come from samples of my 8-string guitar. The techno bass is the Novation Bass Station plugin. The drums are from the Ableton Live sample set.

I enjoy putting tracks like this together. They are pieces of something else. Maybe a story. Maybe a video. Maybe something that just sits there while you are doing other things.

Let me know what you think.

Augmented Reality and My Kids

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I know what I need–Augmented Reality (AR) glasses for tending to my newborn triplets in the middle of the night. Think about it. It’s 2 a.m., one of the babies starts crying. They all start crying. I wake up, bleary-eyed, confused. I put on my AR glasses and say “baby lights on.” In my field of vision, it looks like I have turned all the lights in the house on full blast. I walk downstairs, get their bottles ready, change them, feed them, put them to bed. I never turn on the lights as far as they are concerned. But, I see everything, get enough light to wake up, and when I am done, take off the glasses and pass right back out until the next feeding time in what feels like 20 minutes.

Of course, there are technical problems here. Headset AR is too bulky right now–I am not going to strap on a HoloLens and stumble around the house. I also don’t want to horrify my children as I am leaning over their cribs with a giant mask on; I may as well wear a pair of night vision goggles. I need something that wears like a pair of glasses.

Aside from the bulk, the type of simulated lighting that I want is not generally available yet. What would it take to scan the room, use the available light to map it, and then re-render everything as if it was bathed in bright light? If it isn’t possible now, thought, it will be. Heck, the technology will eventually be able to bath the room in starlight, or make the room look like it is on the surface of another planet. If I am going to tend to my kids in a fog, maybe it can be the fog of Venus’s atmosphere.

I’m ready. But, by the time this is all available, I think the kids will be past nighttime diaper changes.

The Law of Digital Sexual Assault

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In short, there really isn’t a clear framework for punishing remote sexual assault. But, this is an issue that will become more real over time.

We are slowly approaching a world in which people can be intimate without being physically close to one another. The internet allows us to have sex with people situated on the opposite side of the world. To bridge that distance, we use web-connected devices like masturbation sleeves and vibrators.

What would the legal implications be if, say, skilled and malicious hackers were able to hijack one of these devices? On one hand, they will have gained control of an object that is used to penetrate, and therefore are potentially responsible for it. On the other, the device’s owner is likely to have overall control of the hardware and, we assume, consents to its use.

For now, getting an internet-connected sex toy is a bit risky, and not in the sexy kind of way.

Read the rest over at Engadget

Drone Delivery

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I like drones.

They are great for making beautiful video. Unfortunately, they are also great for filming naked people in their backyards.

That fear is probably why they get shot down.

Drone racing is also a thing now. I don’t say that flippantly. I’d love to go watch one.

Companies like Amazon also think that drones should deliver our packages. I don’t like that idea–I am 90% sure that packages will fall from the sky and land on my head and kill me. There is no way around it. The drone will hit a bird, get hit by a bullet (or baseball, or frisbee, or squirrel). They will fall, either from failure or sabotage.

And now, Chinese retailer JD.com is working on a drone that can carry up to 2000 lbs. That takes things from death by head injury to death by Looney Tunes-style squishing. No thanks.

via Recode