Ch ch ch changes

Four years ago, in December 2008, I completed my first recording in our new apartment on Taylor Avenue.  This track, “Nora’s Lullaby,” was part of Mike Perkowitz’s Music for the Fourth Trimester project and also written for his newborn daughter Nora.  I’m looking back on all the creative work I recorded here over the past four years, because changes are afoot.  My wife and I just bought our first home, which brings Taylor Avenue to it denouement and brings the dawn of a new space near the western shores of Lake Washington.

The first couple of years of working in this studio, I produced a collection of tracks based around the dependable Roland drum machines, my Eurorack modular synthesizer, the Sequential Prophet-VS, and the Oberheim SEM.  These were an extension of my work from the previous albums though I made the switch from Cubase to Ableton for composing.  I also upgraded from a convoluted mixing environment using two Tascam TM-D1000 mixers to one Tascam DM-3200.  Some of the tracks from this period that typify this approach are Tickertape (digital release) and Dark Lights (unreleased).

Gradually I started to move away from straight Roland boxes for drum programming.  I still like how immediate the rhythm interfaces on them are, but I also wanted to make some changes.  I wanted a more prominent kick drum without layering the 909 and 808 together, and I also wanted to go back to using sampled drums.  Also, for whatever reason the synchronization from the computer DAW to the drum machines wasn’t as solid as I wanted.  I made a few changes to program the kick drum from the DAW and to use the Emu SP-1200 and Akai MPC-1000 more but still kept some aspects of the Roland machines.  I actually unplugged and moved the TR-808 out of the way for a while to force myself to use different programming.  Some of the tracks that resulted from this approach are Tea Garden and Falling Bricks (both releases forthcoming).

In the Taylor Avenue studio I also began remixing others’ songs, which I had never really done before.  This work was rewarding, because it allowed me to focus on production and the mix rather than writing, arranging, producing, mixing, and mastering all at once.  This work began by the band Freezepop commissioning a Codebase remix of their “Lose that Boy” track, and since I enjoyed it so much I looked for other acapellas to use.  The New Zealand-based artist Zowie also commissioned a Codebase remix of her song “Bite Back.”  All told, in the Taylor Avenue studio I recorded eight remixes from Talking Heads, Florrie, Zowie, Chromeo, Robyn, Freezepop, and Dragonette.

The last original recordings I created here are to be released in 2013 on a label called Roam Recordings from San Francisco.  There are new tracks on this EP that I haven’t posted anywhere thus far.

So that sums up the Taylor Avenue work.  It feels good to go back and consider my work output from this space.  That said, I’m also looking forward to what the new space will bring.  It will take at least a month to get everything moved and set up in there.  Goodbye Taylor Avenue, hello Lake Washington!

Rosetta Revisited?

I read this morning that Bloomberg reports that Apple is debating switching processor architecture from Intel to ARM in future Macintosh computers:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/11/05/apple-mulling-transition-away-from-intel-chips-for-macs

I really hope they don’t.  You see, any time a computing platform undergoes a switch like this, vast surface areas of tools that people use all the time will stop working.  I recently wrote about unplugging an old computer of mine from the network so it will continue to work with my samplers.  Moving to ARM would mean I probably have to do that to my main machine, too.

Last time Apple did this, they supplied the Rosetta feature to ease the transition from PowerPC architecture to Intel.  That worked fine for a while, even though translation of one instruction set to another rendered those older programs a little slower.  But alas this would not last forever, as eventually Apple threw away Rosetta and old programs sadly would  no longer run on the new versions of their operating system.

I’m no vehement open-source advocate, but this is one instance where open-source shines.  If a new architecture comes along and people are enthusiastic about their old tools, some willpower and programming elbow grease can bring those old programs back to life.  But how many abandoned software tools are open-source?  Almost none.  Consumers lose.

Unplugging

I can’t remember when I first started hearing that software should be able to update itself.  Probably sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the software industry was paralyzed by security issues, packaged software, and a long upgrade cycle (usually paid).  That meant that the friction to update computer systems to respond to bugs or whatever other issues was high.  Of course, the Internet changed all that.  But is it for the better?

In some ways, sure.  I want my computer to be protected from virii and for all the programs I use regularly to continue to work with each other.  But in other ways, I think near-continuous upgrading is worse.  There’s the tedium of alerts, downloading, updating, passwords, restarts and so forth.  And there’s also the distinct possibility that some upcoming change will wreck something I already know, use, and find helpful.  As the surface area in tools, programs, and inter-operation of software  in a system increases, problems associated with updating are exacerbated.

I recently decided to pull the plug on one of the machines in my musical workflow.  Not the power plug, though – the network plug.  This machine in question is the one I wrote about using with old samplers in previous posts.  The software that interacts with old samplers hasn’t been updated in probably 10 years.  Nor will it be.  Further, there will come a day that either Windows or some other program will render some facility I rely upon dead.

What do I lose by doing this?  Nothing, really.  This computer is essentially just a front end for sample editing and transferring.  I can get audio in and out of it using its audio interface or card slots.  I can take a snapshot of its system disk state and always restore, assuming the hardware continues to work.  It’s not that hard.  If you use older systems, don’t worry about the upgrade train leaving you behind.  Unplug the network and tune out from the constant din of updates, upgrades, and headaches.

Music Behind Bars

I don’t think I’m alone in lamenting the way we used to listen to music.  I used to love flipping through CDs and records, discovering part of my collection I had forgotten about or just rooting around for something to listen to.  I realize this experience is antiquated, but to me at least there was something engaging and fun about it.

Don’t get me wrong, I also didn’t like the fact that the more music at my disposal, the more weight and bulk and physical space the music consumed.  When I DJed, of course I lugged the requisite box of vinyl around, which was heavy and unwieldy.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, of course, MP3 proliferated and the iPod changed the world.  The price we paid for newfound portability and accessibility was quality (since MP3 is lossy), and we also threw away the physical manifestation of recorded music.

For the most part, I was willing to live in this world.  I ripped a lot of my CD collection and filled up a 20GB iPod.  I started buying songs from iTunes and Amazon for $0.99.  The quality of the encoded files eventually became tolerable.  I downloaded DJ mixes from the Internet, including lots of recordings of BBC’s Essential Mix.

Something strange gradually occurred, though.  iTunes became where all my music went, and for whatever reason I started listening to music less.  As my iTunes library ballooned to over 7,000 songs, 85GB of data, and over a month of continuous music, I simply didn’t play it as much.  What’s going on?

The music listening experience that Apple and the rest of the technology world created shifted my focus from the music to the software or the device.  Now I have to manage libraries on my phone, my iPod, my computer, and I synchronize them like I do any other digital files.  The spreadsheet view of my music that is iTunes locks the music away – vast amounts of it that are impossible to visualize despite the myriad views iTunes offers.

That’s why I recently blew away everything in iTunes.  I started from zero again, and this time I’m going to try and play the physical media more.  I still buy CDs or vinyl for music I really want to have a long-lasting, deeper connection with.  Of course, iTunes isn’t going away for me.  But it’s also not going to be the center of my music consumption experience anymore.

Taking Time

I recently recorded some music with an old friend of mine.  We hadn’t recorded together in many, many years.  It was striking how easy it was to work together again after spending a few minutes catching up.  As we closed in on some ideas for our second track, an idea hit me when we were listening to the vocals.  I had an idea to segment the vocal line into independent samples and control the rhythm of them using the sequencer.  We also spent some time transforming the rhythm of another part to accentuate some subtle noise in-between two phrases of laughter.

My friend also works with another artist occasionally who is signed to a major label, and he remarked that it had been a long time since they had taken time to get an idea exactly right based on their vision.  His other working partner preferred to move quickly and not spend too much time honing details.

I think there is a dilemma facing most artists, especially when using technology to realize ideas.  Sometimes the vision of the idea is outside what preset workflows are available in the tools at hand.  The choice presented is either to slow down and try out the idea by meticulously manipulating the raw materials or to simply let it go.

This choice is not always easy to make.  I think I need to understand how much work an idea might be before I take the time to realize it.  Interrupting the train of creativity can lead to losing the inspiration that propels me in the first place, so sometimes it’s a gamble.  However, I’ve found that the times I do take the time to at least try them out doesn’t set me back too far if the ideas fail.

Thus, to me, it’s usually worth taking the extra time to slow down and temporarily sacrifice inspiration to follow through on difficult tasks.  If the tools you have don’t make the realization process easy, then you might be on to something surprising, unique, or inaccessible to others.  Try it out.

Old Samplers & Modern Computers Redux

In my previous blog post about samplers and computers, I lamented the fact that Akai’s old Ak.Sys program would no longer run for me if I upgraded to Apple OS X 10.7 “Lion.”  Well, that’s mostly true.

So since Ak.Sys is a PowerPC app and Lion finally does away with PowerPC support, there’s a problem for those of us who like to use old samplers, still.  I liked being able to transfer samples to the S5000 over USB and also to adjust parameters on it from my computer.

This is going to be a short post, so here’s what you need to do if you want to continue using your S5000 over USB with modern computers.  First, download the Ak.Sys packages for Windows from Akai.  You’ll find them on their website.  There are four: you need the latest version of Ak.Sys, the USB drivers for the S5000, S5000 support for Ak.Sys, and the S5000 “themes” for Ak.Sys.

Second, if you’re using Windows 7 64 bit, you’ll need to install “XP mode” which allows you to run a 32 bit environment as a virtual machine.  If you’re using Windows 7 32 bit, then you don’t need to do that.  If you’re using a Mac, like me, use a Virtual PC program like VirtualBox, Fusion, or Parallels to create a Windows virtual machine.  Make sure you install a 32 bit version of Windows 7, not 64 bit.

Third, once you have your OS up and running install the Ak.Sys program.  Then, unzip the S5000 USB drivers to a known place.  Turn on the S5000 and connect it over USB to your computer.  If you’re using a Mac, tell your virtual PC running Windows to connect to the S5000 over USB.  Windows will then ask you for a path to the drivers.  Find the S5000 drivers you just unzipped and point the installation process to them.

Now, install the S5000 themes for Ak.Sys on the Windows machine.  Then, install the S5000 support files for Ak.Sys.  After these steps, you should be able to run Ak.Sys from Windows and see the sampler.

At this point you can configure your computer however fits your workflow best.  I like to map a drive from Windows to my samples folder on the Mac so I can find the files I want easily.  I use VMWare Fusion, and that supports a Unity mode.  That means I can treat Ak.Sys mostly like a regular Mac program so it’s not too far away from the good old days when it ran natively on Mac.

Revisiting and Rediscovering the V-Synth

It is well documented I am a music gear nerd.  Every once in a while, I go back and dig out the manual for a piece of gear I have had for a while to get reacquainted with it and to spur new ideas for sounds and music. Last night, I cracked open the manual for the Roland V-Synth XT, which I’ve had for about 6 years now but haven’t really used that heavily.

The Roland V-Synth XT. You can't see from this picture, but the rack case has a cool pivoting case. The eight knobs provide a lot of control, and you can switch the touchscreen into a fun control surface.

I’m glad I did. I always thought the V-Synth sounded amazing, and I remember playing the keyboard version in the store when it was released. I liked how one could warp loops and samples using the touchpad, and I thought the overall sound of the machine was great. Then, Roland released the rackmount XT version which also includes a vocal modeling program as well as a D-50 model. I splurged and spent some of my signing bonus at Microsoft on the XT.

Last night I read the XT’s manual cover to cover and switched on the V-Synth to play with some of the features I read about. The effects section on this machine is amazing, with three distinct processors. There’s a multi-fx processor, a chorus/flanger, and a reverberator with flexible routing across the modules. The multi module has just about every effect you can think of plus some stacks, like phaser and delay in one program. The chorus sounds amazing and even approaches the richness of the Juno-60’s chorus.  One of the oscillator types in the voice architecture is “external in,” so one can use the V-Synth as a fancy effects processor.  Fancy in this case means up to four filters with envelopes/amplifier running into up to three powerful effects algorithms.

With a synthesizer of this complexity, it is easy to get overwhelmed with depth. But somehow Roland managed to keep it intuitive. The analog-style waveforms sound pretty good, and the VariPhrase/PCM oscillators have a great deal of depth. Some surprises to me were that the V-Synth has a built in sampler that actually seems more full featured than the dedicated samplers I have. You trade polyphony (e. g. 64 voices in the e6400/S5000) for the ability to play back sounds and change speed and/or pitch independently. There’s also this cool mode in which you set up a sample with specified temporal points and each successive key press steps to the next one – great for sampled beats.

While I was trying out some ideas on the V-Synth after reading in the manual, I stumbled upon the first limitation that made me feel a little disappointed. I was using the square wave oscillator and the LFO to modulate pulse width. Then, I wanted to route an LFO to pitch as well. I assumed there would be independent LFOs for each, but that isn’t the case. I thought there was just one LFO in the V-Synth’s voice! I reconciled this by thinking the Juno-60 which I love so much only has one LFO… but then I found that it turns out each section on the V-Synth has its own LFO. Each section also has its own ADSR envelope, key tracking, modulation… so yeah, it was way deeper than I imagined. Score!

The Roland D-50 - one of the first synthesizers I fell in love with, circa 1987

The D-50 emulation in the V-Synth is also awesome. The D-50 was one of the first synths I lusted after in the late 1980s. While I don’t have room for another 61-key keyboard in my small room, the emulation in the V-Synth sounds just like the real thing, and it even is 100% programmable just like the D-50 using the PG-1000 programmer. I left the manual for this for another day, but it’s nice to know it’s sitting right there waiting to be rediscovered.

Programmer for the Roland D-50. Lots of sliders! This programmer also works on the V-Synth's emulation of the D-50.

Also on the rediscovery pile is the manual for the Eventide H3000 D/SE. This effects processor has been a studio mainstay since the 1980s, and to me the sound even surpasses some of today’s modern processors. When I’m ready, I want to crack open MIDI control of this guy and see what ideas arise.

Removing Roadblocks

As time goes on, I find it more and more difficult to devote time to some endeavors that are important to me.  At work, there are always a thousand threads going at once.  And at home, it’s hard for me to carve out time to work on music.  I know I’m not alone in these pursuits.  Whenever I find myself on a roll, whether it’s me coding in an editor towards a goal I have or following my creative path, I loathe being interrupted.  Usually this happens because of something completely preventable, but in the moment I find that I lose all steam.  To wit, there is nothing quite like a software upgrade or bad cable to dampen my mood.  When I have an idea for a new melody or rhythm, the last thing on my mind is troubleshooting a patch bay or upgrading software.

Therefore, I spend a lot of my time planning and preparing for those ebullient moments when creativity strikes or when I find the time to concentrate on solving problems.  In the studio, everything is connected together already, and most of the signal processing routes I need are already pre-configured.  At work, I spent time gathering the reference materials, test data, and scripts I will need to execute fast and without interruption.

Inevitably, interruptions happen – software goes bad, I make a mistake, or something comes up that I just haven’t thought of before.  The best technique I know to minimize the impact of these externalities is to defer acting upon them until it is truly necessary.  If I find a problem with my recording template, for example, chances are I don’t need to remedy it immediately.  Instead, I keep a log of tasks that need to be done.  If I can work around the problem temporarily and defer solving the problem to another time, that keeps me moving forward and not distracted on the problem.  And of course the best time to come back to small tasks like that are those times in which I’m either not creative or just not in the zone.

It’s possible, though, to spend all one’s time making, tracking, and dealing with lists rather than getting anything done.  I’ve read before that the most effective people never complete their own “to-do” lists.  Instead, they know how to get the most important things done and how to defer lower priority tasks.

The fact that I’m even writing about this evinces that I’m a list-maker and that I like organizing thoughts and tasks.  I’m prone to wanting to complete a list totally, and it’s nice to be able to catch myself and know that the list isn’t what is important.  Get the important tasks done and defer the rest.

I find that if I spend my efforts clearing the road, I can make a lot of progress whenever lightning strikes.  Since those times are extremely scant and valuable, that time spent preparing makes all the difference.

Old Samplers, SCSI, and Modern Computers

Using computers with old music gear gets harder and harder over time.  I built a large sample collection over the years for my hardware samplers, both by sourcing sample CDs as well as creating my own sample collections.  I have three old hardware sampler machines that I still use today: An Akai CD3000XL, an Akai S5000, and an Emu e6400.

I tried to make the shift over to software samplers that are available now, like Kontakt or Gigasampler.  But for whatever reason, I still prefer the old way of using those hardware boxes.  Sometimes I think it’s the way they sound, and other times I think my fingers just know how to program those front panels faster than I could do the same thing on a computer with a mouse.  Perhaps I just like the tactile interface.

Whatever the reason, it’s hard for me to let go of those old samplers.  And of course, I want to efficiently get sounds into and out of them so the sample library isn’t static.  I definitely do not want to edit the waveforms themselves in the sampler; this is one place where a large screen and mouse blows away working on the hardware.

That’s where the friction begins.  Of course I’d love to be able to plug in any of these devices to my computer via USB (more on that in a minute), but the older devices like the Emu and the CD3000XL don’t have USB.  Instead, they used the SCSI bus to get sounds in and out of their memories.  And if any of you out there have used SCSI before, you know what a pain it can be.  Is the chain terminated?  What IDs are in use?  Do I have the right driver?  Can I hot-swap devices?

I spent a lot of time troubleshooting this part of my studio, how the samplers communicate with a modern computer.  I’d like to share what I learned, in case any of you out there are also gluttons for punishment: you love your old samplers, but you want to use modern computer hardware with them.  Of course, your mileage may vary, and I don’t claim to have all the answers.  However, the following worked for me.  Let’s tackle each piece on its own, shall we?  We have the rough structure of the setup, then each sampler to deal with.

THE SETUP

In my studio, my main writing and recording workspace is an Apple Macintosh computer.  I use either Cubase or Live for tracking, and these programs live on my main monitor.  On the second, smaller monitor, I usually keep a few windows open, like a spreadsheet that contains my routing cheat sheets and so forth.  When I’m using a sampler, I will also open the sampler’s host program on this second screen as well.  What this means in practice depends on the sampler I’m using.

The rack of samplers in my studio. From the top to bottom: Akai S5000, Glyph SCSI switch, E-mu e6400, CD-ROM, Jaz drive, Akai CD3000XL

Over in the racks, I have a Windows 7 computer with a SCSI card connected to an Iomega Jaz drive, a Plextor CD-ROM drive, and a Glyph 3-way SCSI switch.  The switch is, in turn, connected to each of the three samplers.  I really only need to use the computer with the CD3000XL and the e6400, and it’s nice to have a CD-ROM and Jaz drive for reading and writing programs, samples, and so forth connected to each machine.

For SCSI adapters, I recommend some variant of the Adaptec AHA-2940.  Windows 7 doesn’t officially support the 2940, but since Windows 7 and Windows Vista are close cousins as far as drivers are concerned, you can install the Windows Vista drivers, and it works.  I use the AHA-2940UW, the “ultra wide,” single-channel PCI card.

The next issue we need to address is that the samplers in question use what is known as the ASPI Layer for SCSI on top of the SCSI buss in order for host software to communicate with the samplers.  This too is no longer supported in Windows 7, but you can coax this into working as well.  After downloading, unzipping, and installing the ASPI layer, reboot and it should be up and running.

Now that the computer is up and running with a SCSI adapter, driver, and ASPI layer we are ready to get the samplers talking to host software.  Let’s begin with the Akai.

AKAI S2000 SERIES

The steps in this section pertain to the “S2000″ series of Akai samplers.  Akai made many devices that used the same logic generation, all based around the S2000 chip.  These are the S2000, S3000XL, S3200XL, CD3000XL.  These are great-sounding machines, and one can fit some option boards in them for adding effects and a second filter.  The filter card is exciting, because you get a second multimode filter for each voice!  Akai produced a piece of software for this series called MESA that allows you to transfer samplers to and from the machine and to program voices, multis, etc. from the computer.  It turns out that MESA II still runs on Windows 7, and this is what I did to get it running.

Turn on the sampler before the computer.  Make sure the sampler is running the latest version of the operating system, which is OS 2.14.  If you don’t have OS 2.14, you can find it online by searching for it.  Place this on a floppy using the appropriate tools, and put it in the sampler’s floppy drive before booting.

When the computer starts, ensure that you see the sampler listed during the SCSI card’s post screen.  For my computer, it looks like this:

Notice the Akai entry when the SCSI adapter scans the bus

If you don’t see the sampler in the list, that means that there’s no way the host software will see it, either.  Check for SCSI ID collisions, and make sure your SCSI chain is properly terminated.  Cables go bad, too, so replacing the cable is another option to try if yours isn’t working.

Once Windows boots, we need to make sure that Windows can see the sampler.  This is a layer on top of the SCSI adapter.  Open Computer Management and then open the device manager.  You should see an entry for the Akai when you expand the “Other devices” tree node.

Akai CD3000XL listed in the device manager means the CD3000XL is on the SCSI bus and the ASPI layer is working.

If you don’t see the Akai listed there but you did see it in the SCSI card screen, that means the ASPI layer isn’t installed correctly in Windows.  Try it again!

Akai's S2000-series editor called MESA II

Assuming the Akai entry is there, you’re ready to begin using whatever software you want with the sampler.  MESA is great for programming patches and transferring samples.  You might also want to use Recycle, Sound Forge, or Wavelab to transfer samples to the machine.

EMU EIV SERIES

In the 1990s, Akai and E-mu Systems had similar offerings in the sampler market.  Akai had its S2000 series, and E-mu had its EIV series, descended from the Emulator line of products that brought sampling to the masses more cheaply.  Okay, maybe not “the masses” (Ensoniq’s Mirage keyboard was probably the best example of that), but E-mu certainly broke the market open with the Emulator.

The E-mu sampler I have is the e6400, which is based on the EIV engine.  Before E-mu was bought by Creative Labs and ceased making hardware samplers, there was one more revision of the Emulator line: the Ultra series.  These had the option of adding USB communication, like Akai’s S5000 and S6000.  But since the version I have doesn’t have USB, I’m relegated to the SCSI bus again.

Getting the e6400 to work with the computer is similar to the above section for the Akai.  Make sure the device is present in the adapter card’s BIOS screen:

Emulator IV on the SCSI bus means the computer should see the e6400

Windows will attempt to install a driver for the E-mu 8 times – each time, just tell Windows not to install a driver and to leave you alone.  You should then see 8 Emulator IVs in the device manager under “Other devices.”

8 entries for the E-mu in the device manager

At this point, the computer should be able to communicate with the sampler from whatever software you want.  Of course, the software needs to support the Emulator IV series for this to work.  Recycle, Sound Forge, and Wavelab all should work.

EOS-Link, a program from E-mu that brings the front panel of an EIV sampler to a computer host

One fun piece of software I don’t use that much but surprisingly still works on Windows is called EOS Link.  This software was created by E-mu, and it provides a way to see what the device’s display reads and to program the device from your computer.  It is a literal translation of the front panel of the device, though, so it’s not as nice as Akai’s MESA.

AKAI S5000

The last sampler I bought new was the S5000, and to me this was a huge step forward.  It had a USB option card on the way, a nice big screen, many filters, and more good options for expansion.  It also uses the Microsoft FAT file system as its standard, which means that instead of messing around with custom disk formats, one can just drop files onto a regular drive and read it on the Akai.  My solution for the S5000 right now is to use Akai’s Ak.Sys program from my Macintosh over USB.  I’m running Snow Leopard, and generally this works just fine.  However, Ak.Sys is an application compiled for the now-defunkt PPC instruction set.

With the new Lion version of Mac OS X, Apple dropped support for Rosetta, which is a machine code translation layer that lets Intel Macs run PPC-compiled software.  This means it’s the end-of-line for Ak.Sys on the Mac.  However, it still runs on Windows 7, so if I ever want to upgrade the operating system on my Macintosh I’ll move the USB connection over to the Windows machine.

Ak.Sys, Akai's software for the S5000 series and newer MPCs. It supports drag and drop file transfer over USB.

The S5000 series dropped support for programmability over SCSI, so the MESA option is gone.  But that’s not so bad, after all.  Ak.Sys is better, and the front panel is actually not that bad on the S5000.  Transferring samples isn’t that bad either, since it reads and writes a commonly-spoken file format.

JUGGLING FILES

All right, so now we have all the samplers talking to computers.  How do we deal with the samplers’ files?  I use Remote Desktop from my Macintosh to connect to the PC over wireless.  When I do this, I can also map parts of my Mac’s file system to appear on the PC.  So as long as I keep the files together on my Mac, I can transfer them over to the sampler of choice pretty easily.  If I’m using big files, I might put them on a CF card from the Mac and read them on the PC.  This doesn’t happen very often, though.

NOTES ON SOFTWARE

I mentioned that you can use Wavelab, Sound Forge, and Recycle over SCSI to these samplers.  That’s true, and there are more pieces of software you can use than just those.  But unfortunately many of those pieces of software have dropped SCSI sampler support along the way.  The last version of Recycle to support SCSI transfers is version 2.0.  I don’t recall the last versions of Sound Forge and Wavelab that support SCSI transfers, so you might have to do some digging if you want to use those.

Boutique Musical Electronics

The old, beautiful ARP 2600. These are selling for many thousands of dollars currently, much more than they were around the time they were being replaced by Yamaha DX-7s

It has never been a better time to be an electronic musician, at least as far as options for composition, sound design, and collaboration are concerned.  After synthesizer manufacturers moved to digital instruments, for a short period of time the older, analog instruments plummeted in price.  Enthusiasts like to brag about finding the $50 Minimoog or a $100 ARP 2600.  I’m sure that happened for some people, but once musicians grew tired of Spartan, single-slider data entry (a la DX-7) the demand for used analog instruments brought their prices back up.

By the early 1990s, very few manufacturers were still making analog synthesizers.  So the used market for the old analogs really heated up: $1000 and above for the old Roland TR-808s and TR-909s, $1500 for the TB-303, and $2000 for Prophet-5s were not uncommon sale prices.  The problem with this equation was simple: no one was making new devices to stem the demand that had risen for the old sound.

That said, what was happening at the time was the rapid growth of digital systems.  Synthesizers and samplers based entirely on digital circuits got better and better.  So did the computer systems, too.  In the late 1990s, affordable digital systems that could not only sequence and track music but also create the musical lines proliferated.  In 1997, The Propellerheads released their classic program called ReBirth (now available for iPad, it turns out), which packaged the most coveted analog classics of the time into a single, self-contained program you could buy for a fraction of the cost of just one of the old machines.

Rebirth simulated two TB-303s, a TR-808, and a TR-909 in a computer program with faithful accuracy to the originals.

Of course, the Internet too was ascending at the same time digital music instruments were becoming more mainstream, and with the rise of the Internet so too rose the communities of musicians, collectors, collaborators, technicians, and engineers working on musical electronics.  Those communities brought people interested in what were probably fringes of musical technology together for local meetups, gear exchanges, discussions, and so forth.  This ushered in today’s golden age for electronic music.

Now, there are literally hundreds (perhaps thousands) of small manufacturers across the globe developing musical electronics and software.  Moog’s famous modular synthesizer of the 1960s has been recreated several times over today.  Standardized rack formats, power supplies, and interfaces allow anyone with an idea and a soldering iron to plug in new sound generators and modulators.

Taking orders over the Internet also makes short runs of esoteric, specialized hardware such as the Monome and the x0xb0x actually feasible.  Many of these new generation of music hackers release their source code and schematics online for free.

Software is not left behind in this revolution.  There are countless developers out there cranking out code to implement new digital signal processors, synthesizers, and sequencers that plug in to each other using common interfaces, like Apple’s Audio Units API or Steinberg’s VST.  One can build a complete studio with multitrack recording, sampling, synthesis, dynamics processing, equalization, mastering, and more using nothing more than a computer and free software.  Using Open Sound Control (OSC) and tools like OSCulator or Max/MSP, one can even connect a Wii remote or an iPhone to the studio for musical expression.

The Monome 40h is a great example of a product that would not have been feasible before the Internet. These are specialized, niche interfaces but have wide visual appeal.

Most recently, we have seen new developments for musical technology in mobile devices, like the ubiquitous iPhone or now the iPad.  Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn recorded his most recent album using only an iPad while on tour.

The number of musical instrument applications for the iOS platform alone is staggering, ranging from generative music inspired by Brian Eno to serious commercial music instruments from Moog Music and IK Multimedia.

Here at SXSWi 2011, Ge Wang of Smule demonstrated some of the invigorating applications his team developed for the iPhone and iPad.  To be honest, I was skeptical of the iPhone as an expressive musical platform.  Seeing and hearing Smule’s innovations and drive for true expressiveness in their iOS products made me a believer.

Perhaps the only drawback to all the great musical options out there is deciding just where you want to go with them.  New poly analog keyboards?  Old classics?  Piecing together a modular synth using boutique, limited modules?  Writing an album on your phone?  All options are on the table.  To me, that is a very good thing indeed.