daemonElectricity

Sampler Wars continues: Ableton vs Octatrack

2017-07-03T17:40:35Z

Given that Elektron’s announcement of the Octatrack Mk II and the fact that I’ve been looking extra hard at my Octatrack in the corner collecting dust for the past few weeks as I gather, organize, convert, and create one-shots and loops from random recordings and found sounds, and since I’ve been equally hell bent on simplifying my workflow, maybe ditching some gear and deciding when things are too redundant, I decided to revisit this expensive object of much disdain and affection.

This is the natural state and sad state of affairs most of the time. My Octatrack lies bored on top of my tape deck waiting for the day when I'll realize it's greatness or set it free.

The Backstory

I’ve had my Octatrack since 2013. It was one of the big acquisitions I made when I decided to go deep on “found sound” and sample manipulation. It coincided with me buying my first turntable since I was probably in junior high, when I got a GE once-piece component system for Christmas, which also had a set of dual cassette decks. I used that a lot back in the Columbia House collection and radio dub days to make all kinds of crazy random mix tapes and overdubs from stuff I recorded on my brother’s Talkboy and tricks I figured out with the dual cassette deck and signal bleed in the switches that could be positioned halfway between two sound sources. I did a lot of goofy things with sound on that thing by manipulating playback speed and tape bleed and deck to deck editing . The Octatrack was gonna be a new friend with new ideas on sampling along side about 20 years of new appreciation for experimental sound and sample manipulation and with live performance angles to boot. This was all without touching a dirty filthy computer and it wasn’t going to have the compromises that simplicity brings with the OP-1.

I second guessed this purchase over a year BEFORE I bought it. The demos are impressive. MrDataline’s jazz controller hands had won me over. However, right away, my biggest fear was that it was Ableton in a box, and I should’ve held fast on that thought. Four years later, I’m still concerned about this and I haven’t used it much. So again, in my summer of sampling theme that I’ve only just now conceded to calling it, I’m revisiting the Octatrack.

My biggest problem with the Octatrack: Elektron Madness

I want to preface what is probably going to be another user-error bitch-fest that I adore Elektron gear, including the Octatrack, with all it’s flaws. I am even accustomed to their weird workflow and I use the A4 and AR a little more, but most often with an external sequencer. The Octatrack took some of the worst parts of that flow in a few other directions deeper, because of the nature of the 4-part beast and it’s relation to banks and scenes, that I do not think are very clear to the user and are a HUGE reason the learning curve is so steep. IMHO, these are these are the biggest mistakes they have made as a company and while they are very forgivable, they do come at the user’s expense and set them up for a lot of fairly frustrating misunderstandings because things do not work like magic. That said, I do not think you can buy a better hardware sampler at that price and you’d have to spend about $1200-1500 to get something in hardware that can do all the things the Octatrack can do in the first place. On top of that, the Octatrack is reliable, well built, and if not for the fact that I am haunted by wasting money on redundant gear, I would never second guess this purchase. The problem is that I do feel like I’m deliberately putting myself at a disadvantage that can be called “creative limitation” in one instance and masochistic in another.

Elektron adheres to and defies convention almost arbitrarily it seems. As mentioned before, my primary beef is with Elektron’s notion of Kits being thrown out for Parts which still is not a label that makes a ton of sense because it encapsulates so much more, and then banks to parts, Slots in relation to the project and the rest of your preset or sample library is just bonkers confusing if you’re not aware of how Elektron does things, but I guess it’s not the biggest problem. It also doesn’t help that they used the same terminology as Ableton in context to “Sets” and “Projects” and basically flipped them. They took terminology used in a similar product, that would be immediately easy for someone who understood said product, and made it non-intuitive by inverting the meaning. Also, when I make a beat on the Tempest or Elektribe, all the sound settings are tied to and saved in that pattern. This is not the case in the Elektron methodology on ANY of their synths. With Elektron, each patch or preset is what we in the programming industry refer to as a “reference pointer.” It is not the patch itself. It points to the patch which itself can be used on multiple patterns and the only way to save your changes to these patches is to modify the kit that is assigned to your pattern, but if you modify the kit, you modify every instance in which that kit was used. I got a fucking migraine just typing that. The bottom line is that your sound settings are not unique to your pattern and this is stupid all over and not intuitive. Elektron, update all your firmware and cut this shit out. Seriously, the hatred I have for this one aspect of what Elektron does sends me into a bad place.

These confusing fuckers.

Non-intuitive naming and grouping is only worse on the Octatrack and it’s the singular thing that hangs people up every time when learning the Octatrack. Even Octatrack users a few months in have to refresh themselves on the relationship between banks, patterns, parts, and scenes. Elektron goes one level of non-intuitiveness further and starts referring to “Kits” which is the terminology on the Analog 4 and Analog RYTM as “Parts.” Yeah, like the sets/projects mixup, I don’t think “parts” translates well in what they’re intended to be, because when I think “part” I don’t think "The entire collection of settings for 8 tracks and the accompanying scenes, which master effects settings… that sounds closer to a whole than a part, or perhaps a “kit.” Kits are essentially what these parts are …except that you’re limited to 4 per bank, so at least the exclusivity issue is a little less likely to create havoc outside of that particular bank, but this still only gets more confusing. Then there’s “scenes.” One of the coolest things Elektron does on all three of the black boxes is give the user to create meta-controls which give them a lot of power over the evolution of multiple sounds over time, which is great for a live performance. Scenes are basically snapshots of select controls across all 8 tracks that you can morph between. And then there’s “Flex” vs “Static” tracks. Try to guess what that means. Now, if I’d said “RAM Player” vs “CF Player” or “StoragePlayer” or chosen words that indicated WHERE the samples were coming from rather than “flex” and “static” which you can easily convince yourself works both ways. It’s the mental equivalent of a USB port that you have to plug in 3 times to figure out which side is up. Not intuitive.

Where is the overlap

Everywhere. Let’s start by making this simple and throwing out the effects section, save for the cross-fader control discussion. What can you do with effects outside of that, in context to Octatrack? You can record parameter locks. This is not particularly unique the Octatrack. You can definitely do this with finer granularity in Ableton. With Push 2, you can even do it with knob twisting satisfaction and with higher resolution knobs, if you already have the Mark I Octatrack. Loading up a bunch of samples.

It's ridiculously easy to record into any of the 8 recording buffers that operate independent of whatever is currently playing on that track, which is really nice for fire and forget recording, as long as you don't forget to save the good recordings first. It's also immediately easy to sync that recording up to whatever is playing already.

Sampling

This is where the Octatrack shines. If what you’re looking for is an easy way to record and layer loops without a computer, I don’t know if you can really do better. It is absolutely the most easy to use hardware sampler I’ve used and it has a decent editor. The Elektron workflow rears it’s head again when discussing how recording buffers work because it’s a little confusing, but suffice to say that you have 8 stereo recorders that do not have to have anything to do with what’s going on in your current part/pattern/etc. unless they’re assigned to playback the recording buffer, which is also probably the most unique thing the Octatrack does. The Octatrack is such an expert sampler, that it can have synchronized record and playback triggers in ways that I have not seen anywhere else. It’s kind of even hard to describe, but the easiest way I can put it is that you can record to the buffer on one beat and play back on another. This can be great for creating glitchy real time beat chopping effects. As a hardware sampler, the Octatrack is aces.

Sample Editing

Sample editing is one of those things I’ve long since decided I’d rather do on the PC and I think 90% or more of the time, most Octatrack users probably do as well, and not because Octatrack has a frustrating sample editor. It is actually pretty good and as close to a PC sample editor as you’re likely to find in such a tiny display window. Slicing is pretty easy.

The sequencer

Ableton wins hands down, but mainly because I need a mouse and more hotkeys for my deep sequencing sessions and I also prefer a proper arrangement timeline to bounce things between shorter and longer ideas and back again. Octatrack has a song mode and a pattern mode. Song mode is probably as powerful as any other groovebox and the pattern sequencer is absolutely fine and fairly intuitive., but if I’m forced to pick a favorite, I pick Ableton because I can finish ides and tracks in Ableton quickly and not feel like my workflow is hampered by the input device.

The browser

Again, Ableton is going to stomp in this category. Any shell and search functionality I have in a standard OS is going to destroy the OT for finding things quickly and I can also browse individual sounds much faster on the Push 2. If filling up slots is the game, Ableton wins. If organizing and renaming is the game Mac and Windows win.

Automation

You’re likely not going to run into the upper limit on p-locks, but they are limited to 16 per bar, but you can adjust them with microtiming p-locks to make trigs and p-locks have a looser, less gridlike feel. Ableton can do all these things and without the 16 step limit, if you just record or place raw MIDI data. I also would’ve rather had more control over the slope between p-locks since they’re only limited to 16 per bar. All automation is done in patterns on Octatrack. You can now, thankfully, record automation in the session view in Ableton 9.

Looping/Time-Stretching

Looping is near-automatic because Octatrack automatically beatmatches any sample it loads and time-stretches it. You just need to put your trigger where you’d like it and set the pattern length for your track. The ease of importing, time-stretching and playing a loop in time with the rest of the mix is something that Octatrack and Ableton have in common, but they are both in a separate league from the competition and I have yet to see stretching in hardware as good as the OT. The time-stretching can also be applied to chromatically played samples so that the playback time is consistent at each pitch, for a full 2 octaves. There are also preferences for time-stretching that are not 1:1 with Ableton, but close enough.

Sample Playback Tracks

Octatrack and Ableton are in their own league for flexibility here. The time stretching and synchronization of loops is pretty easy, to the point of being automatic most of the time. When you break down the voicing of the Octatrack, which is what you’ll be using to create your tracks, it’s really simple. There are playback speed and pitch controls, re-trigger controls, slot and slice and sample start controls. Beyond that, there is a typical VCA style mixing control with envelope and pan controls as well. There is an LFO section with 3 LFOs and 3 destinations as well as an LFO designer that will allow you to create custom LFOs which can be assigned as the shape for any of the LFOs in a current… wow… in total Elektron fashion, I’m so confused that I don’t know if this is limited to bank, part, or pattern. It doesn’t matter much in this case. Just know that there are custom LFO shapes. The Octatrack definitely keeps up nicely with Simpler here.

Also, and often less talked about is that this is a great loop mixer. You don’t really need to use the trigs to sync your loops up and have a lot of fun with your existing catalog of loops in place of patterns. While you can benefit from dropping a trig where you want your loop to start, if you pick it back up, it will not restart the loop in the middle, just because it’s a 1 bar sequence and a 4 bar loop. The need for trigs seems almost implicit in the design, but you can just hold down a track and hit play with no triggers and your loops will keep right on looping until you hold down that track and hit stop or stop the entire sequence. You really could use this as a DJ rig, although I have yet to hear of anyone doing this directly in place of an entire DJ setup, but it does seem quite doable without being limited, really, unless you need a cross-fader curve knob. It really can be an 8 deck DJ machine. The ease of loading samples in and out doesn’t leave you learning for a DJ controller and a laptop really, but I would definitely put all my tracks into the static slots before hand so that there wasn’t much fumbling around when I wanted to pull something into a deck. Folder navigation on this thing is NOT particularly fun.

Effects

Ableton is going to mop the floor with the Octatrack on variety and quality of effects. It’s just a fact. It’s a little unfair to compare the two in this regard, but because the functionality is so close, it’s worth considering what you’re leaving behind when you ditch the computer. If you have been at it a while, you probably have a metric shit-ton of VSTs. There’s a good chance that you have Guitar Rig which has better delays, reverbs, distortions, filters, etc. How precious are your delays and reverbs? I still have an old analog RE-301 Chorus Echo because much as I really like and trust the one in Guitar Rig, I still think the decay of real tape feedback over time is something different. I am fairly picky about my effects. While I’ll use the Octatrack effects and they do provide a nice bit of variety to make the kit itself complete and definitely a capable all-in-one sample production powerhouse and performer, they are a compromise. Oh yeah, and it would’ve been nice to see more variety in the filter modeling department.

The differences

Go on and touch me. I glide so smoothly.

The Crossfader

The crossfader is what immediately get’s most people’s attention from the demo videos, and with good merit. Because of the amount of control you can put into each preset or “scene” you can really drastically change the sound of even one pattern by swiping to one side, swapping the preset on the other, swiping back, rinse and repeat, or, you can simply hold down the scene button and swap presets in real time which is also nice from a performance standpoint. However, as far as I’m aware, there’s no way to send “program change” or something to switch scenes, so I don’t think you could sequence it. This does not detract from the fact that you have a highly customization 1 dimensional Kaoss Pad type interface with 8 separate tracks to control. Depending on how you plan your sequences, this can definitely make the beat repeat feature shine, but it’s all about spacing out your triggers so that the retriggers happen at interesting points, rather than just quarter notes like Traktor’s effects or other beat repeat effects can do.

Cost

Octatrack is $1349 brand spanking new and has been out long enough to have a fairly thriving market full of conflicted owners like me and buyers who were previous conflicted owners like me, deciding to pick it up again. This is why I’ve held off on parting ways with mine. Seriously, if you read any forum posts about people thinking along these same lines of comparison, you will find people questioning whether the Octatrack has a place in their studio. That said, the regrets seem to go both ways before and after purchasing, but I suppose that’s a good thing. There are plenty of people who love the Octatrack, even after they’ve parted ways with it. This means a new user might be able to score one much cheaper, especially if they are satisfied with the Mark I which is not very different at all from the Mark II, and might be dipping into territory that is normally occupied by much less capable hardware at the same price for new gear The question of if you need an Octatrack when you have a PC and Ableton is still a valid one, because it’s not trivially inexpensive by any stretch of the imagination, but if you have neither, the Octatrack looks mighty attractive, especially if you travel sans-laptop.

Form factor

Despite the tiny interface, even relative to the Push 2 (which the Octatrack is less than half, probably a third of the size) it does what it does very well within those confines. I think some of these workflow decisions were arbitrary, but Elektron still deserves credit for developing a workflow that is _very_ fast for hardware that has lots of shift functions and pages of parameters. Yet somehow this never feels like as big of a compromise as it does on other devices.

Ruggedness, Redundancy and Reliability

The Octatrack is built like a tank. It’s battle tested. It’s as reliable as you’re likely to find a piece of gear for playing out. They are also fairly easy to find in probably any major city and you can definitely order one and have it shipped overnight, if you’re on the road in a pinch. As long as you have a backup of your CF card, you’ll be in business as soon as the UPS guy shows up. You COULD get away with this if you’re diligent about your backups on your performance PC, but that backup better include your last OS state as well. If you’re re-installing anything, you just lost completely to the Octatrack. At any rate, it’s going to take considerably longer to restore from Time Machine than just popping in a restored CF card.

Live performance

I’ve jammed with the Octatrack but you definitely need to do your pre-prep beforehand. This is not something that is fun to make beats on with your buddies unless you have all your flex slots loaded up before hand and your beats pre-sliced, but that’s true to an extent anywhere that you start with no presets. It’s not usually fun to do sound design or audition samples on the spot. The Octatrack seems to be built equally well for performance and making beats, and if you’re playing out, especially if you’re traveling, it’s nice to rely on a small, replaceable, rugged, reliable piece of gear over a fairly reliable but still somewhat more fickle PC. That is not to say that I have never seen the Octatrack lock up. However, if that happens, you’re talking about a 30 second power cycle until you’re back up right where you left off.

Also, live performance is the one place where parts show promise. It would be extremely convenient for extending your palette in a live situation to simply and quickly just swap out all the samples and keep the trigs. That’s exactly what parts do. However, there is the small matter of p-locks and mapping to just any old knob in the same slot as the previous effect knob that was automated with the p-lock. Also, from a live performance standpoint, p-locks are complete overrides of the knob position when you’re manipulating a parameter directly, but relative if you use the crossfader. I think once you turn off recording, it should be relative to the knob position no matter what, which would add more live tweaking flexibility and you could be more subtle with your p-locks rather than spanning the entire range of values, and then simply offsetting them. I’d also like to see attenu-verter functionality added to how p-lock offsets are treated, but that might be too much complexity.

Conclusion

First let me say that if you are intimidated by DAWs, you will be no less intimidated by the Octatrack. It’s easily just as hard to learn as Ableton and feels more obfuscated and without the benefit of tooltips. Also, it’s my fault that I have any redundancy among my own gear. While I have tons of complaints about the OT, nothing is perfect, and there are zero show stoppers in getting the job done on the OT. None. That said, I think I’m finally at the point of saying that yes, short of retriggers and the crossfader meta control, you can literally do everything in Ableton that you can do on the Octatrack and IMHO it doesn’t really lend itself to a more creative workflow. If you really know the Octatrack, you could probably maybe keep up with someone who only had 3 months in on Ableton as far as speed of getting things done, but if you don’t know by now, I’ll tell you, that doesn’t mean you’re going to produce more music. It just means you can produce music faster. I definitely think because of the hi-score keyboard, lack of mouse and keyboard for sample editing, small screen, limitation of only 16 steps and no easy time scale to extend that beyond 1 bar without paging through bars, Ableton with a Push 2 is superior in just about every way,

But…

It costs a lot more money to do Ableton right. You’re looking at buying a decent PC or Mac, and to be fair to the Octatrack on portability, let’s make it a laptop. That’s going to be $800-3,000, and you get what you pay for on this one. You want to be closer to the middle for sure, if you’re not just playing a few tracks with a few effects. Then there’s the Push 2, which is currently going for $800 without any discount or tax. You COULD get by with internal audio, but likely you’ll want at least a $200-300 audio interface. Now you’re looking at $2600 for a modest portable PC that does quite a bit more than the Octatrack. It’s also heavier as well as more expensive, harder to transport, more room in your precious carry-on space, and probably not as rugged and reliable. I would also point out that after spending all this, you still have no paid plugins or even a full version of Ableton, but it will probably still keep up with the Octatrack. If you want to upgrade to Ableton Live Suite, which I recommend, because you get a wealth of other features, then you’re looking at another $649. As you can see, things get really expensive in PC world. Of course this is so much more than what the Octatrack does or was intended to compete with, it still does in the minds of gearheads like me that have nebulous ideas of how we’re going to use gear when we get it and then find the reality is that the magic was in you all along.

daemonElectricity and Adventures in Facebook Marketing (Turn back now.)

2017-06-30T20:52:32Z

I hate marketing. I hate doing just about anything that is required to make money, self promote and get paid, but obviously I need and like having money and I like having exposure to satisfy my deep desire for validation. What a conundrum. This is literally my first foray into any kind of paid internet marketing. It was slapdash, lackadaisical, and half-cocked, but I had a few things in mind I wanted to accomplish. I wanted more followers on the facebook page, I wanted some bandcamp sales (would gladly have settled for more streams which result in $0 for me but at least I know people are checking out mah stuff.)

This is my experience trying to promote Daemon Electricity on facebook. As you will see my results were mixed, to say the least. Given my limited experience in online advertising, I expected that. Specifically, I expected it in the effectiveness and results department, not so much the billing department.

While I will preface this by saying that in the end I was not charged more than what I was willing to gamble, so to speak, I am very puzzled by facebook’s billing practices and I don’t think “transparent” is the first word that comes to mind. I will get more into that later.

So what was I marketing?

I promoted a few YouTube videos of recent modular performances I did in the bedroom studio, and given that I just released a huge chunk of my back catalog via DistroKid and BandCamp, I ran ads mentioning the availability of 002 and other releases, as well as a bundle deal on the whole catalog. (That offer still stands, if anyone is interested!) Basically, this was my idea of showing content rather than trying to force some branding bullshit on someone. Hopefully they dig my stuff and maybe buy it or stream it or subscribe to the YouTube channel or mailing list, or whatever. My slide down the slippery slope to the hard sale isn’t complete but my slippery slide into alliteration is, therefore I abhor absolute all aspects of aggressive advertising.

All these campaigns landed on YouTube and BandCamp. I wanted users to feel safe. I wanted organic support. Again, the only aim for this campaign was subscribers on YouTube, followers for my Facebook scree, sign-ups, streams, purchases, whatever from BandCamp. an any secondary benefit I got for mentioning that this is all on Spotify, Google, Amazon, etc.

What experiments did I try?

On the first two days, there was fairly good amount of tweaking of the audience based on what country/city/etc. as well as interests. I started off with very little targeting, but I didn’t blow much, if any money on these campaigns before I dialed this in a little bit. My first change was to target my top 25 countries from SoundCloud. You can only target 25 countries on Facebook, so this was a good starting point.

I immediately got a large response of post likes from primarily Brazil and India. Of course because of the response from predominantly these countries, I began to think I hit click farm turf and cleared out all the countries and went back and realized I could dial in the interests a little better by naming bands and artists I think that are within the ballpark of what my stuff sounds like. (you know… Spyro Gira, Yanni, Celine Dion) For the modular specific YouTube video, I targeted people interested in modular synthesizers. After talking to a friend of mine who has some experience in online marketing, I decided that targeting my top 25 cities in SoundCloud would be a better idea.

Short analysis: It didn’t really work well.

To be honest, I kind of expected this, but the reasons weren’t necessarily 100% in line with expectation. The stories of fake followers are nothing new, and had I seen the recent stories of Facebook overcharging advertisers, I probably would’ve decided now is not the time to put $120 on blue. The important takeaway from the short answer is that this did not substantially net me anything valuable but there MIGHT be a way to make it work to your benefit, once expectation matches reality. Let’s readjust those expectations!

I sold absolutely nothing on BandCamp or any other distribution outlet. Seriously. This was the biggest bummer of the whole experiment. Nearly 6,000 people were presented with paid posts that went to BandCamp. There was probably a cumulative boost of maybe 40 streams, and no purchases. No purchases have been seen on DistroKid either. I may have netted literally a handful of Spotify listeners and I haven’t seen any streaming service specific numbers outside of Spotify, but the cumulative streaming numbers on DistroKid are actually lower than what Spotify reports on it’s artist page. YouTube? I saw 2 subscribers over that weekend. They easily could’ve came and likely did come from organic posts elsewhere that cost me nothing. In fact, literally every time I’ve posted something as a user and not as an advertiser, I’ve gotten way more mileage with a much smaller audience. That was probably my biggest take-away. If I took no further action, I might’ve gotten an additional 5 likes for the actual facebook page which was also linked in the post.

Long analysis: If you understand how their billing and targeting works, maybe there are ways to gain traction, but you will probably feel a little used and maybe dirty.

Facebook abounds with advertising red flags. Many have been written about and covered by major publications. IMHO, something about online advertising has always smacked of get rich quick schemes, but at the same time some people’s strategies seem practical enough to actually work, and Facebook IS the cheapest entry-point for most people and there are also plenty of facebook specific success stories. I don’t doubt that there are plenty of genuine ones, however, I think there are not enough cautionary tales like mine to expose some of the angles that will really get you spending more than you should be, especially if they’re charging 100% of your budget and possibly not delivering as much as they could for that budget.

Obviously I made the initial noob mistakes of not targeting specifically enough and targeting cheap audiences that have high engagement but might have little long term value. (For whatever reason, certain countries have a much cheaper impression rate and you will get a lot more eyeballs for a lot less money, as well as a lot of “likes” but it’s debatable whether those people will stay with you or are really interested in what you’re doing.)

Making out of shit-lemonade out of shit-lemons, bobandy.

Now what. I just paid a decent amount of money. (At the time that my campaigns expired, I thought I’d only spent roughly half of what was ultimately billed.) I got a decent amount post likes and almost nothing else. So what can we do with this? Obviously we can bug the shit out of people and that is exactly what Facebook wants us to do, sort of. This is what you see when you click the link to see who liked your post.

Clearly they provide this interface for you to invite people that like your posts. That's what the heading at the top says! Aaah, but there's neither an interface to mass-invite everyone who liked a post nor did they have the foresight to consider this when they decided to throttle the number of people you can invite. So basically, I spent a few minutes each day looking at this screen.

Now, I spent a while rationalizing this decision because I do not typically like to get invites to like pages… typically. That said, as a user, if there is someone I’m going to like almost on principle, it’s going to be an independent artist or band and honestly, if I ever liked a post on someone’s page and GENUINELY liked it, I wouldn’t be the least bit upset to get an invite to like the page. I’ve talked about the ins and outs of how facebook works for too long. I need to go puke. I’ll be right back. OK. I’m good.

So I did the deed and slowly, over the course of several days invited these people and I even got what I think was a fairly positive response. I don’t know how many of these people are genuinely interested, but I’ll go with it. It’s all I’m getting out of this anyway and again, we’re taking about ~75 people total from this campaign that reached nearly 10,000 people.

Summary

This is the entirety of my online marketing efforts. Note the total spent all ends in nice round numbers and how they all reached the maximum spend. This is important to remember. I'm going to be complaining about this later.

Spending $120 netted me roughly 7,927 impressions, and 1083 post engagements. While I do not have much experience in online marketing, I have worked around people enough to know how the gauge success, and if I legitimately thought my goal posts for conversion didn’t matter, a better than 12% post engagement is not terrible. That said, I paid a WIDELY varying price for each one of these engagements and as I keep hinting, I paid even more than I initially thought I was paying considering that the entire balance of my budget on each campaign was billed.

About that billing…

The fact is, I bid $120 on multiple campaigns and in the end, that’s exactly what they charged. However, given the nature of how these advertisements work, I’m less than impressed with how my funds were allocated and given that their own invoicing shows discrepancies on how much was spent on ads vs how much I was charged, I think in some cases this is a little more than just misleading. If you look at that first screenshot, you can see that they consistently charge 100% of what you bid. So for starters, that was not very clear.

Make no mistake, that budget is exactly what you'll end up paying. This is not a maximum amount you'll spend. This is exactly how much you'll spend. This text is not part of the screenshot. Imagine the clarity that it would provide if it was!

And then there’s the mystery of the billing cycles and labeling. For starters, my first bill came when I hit the threshold of $25. This was absolutely no surprise. Then a second when I hit $50, which I didn’t change. So the threshold automatically goes from $25 to 50 or I fat fingered something because I’m absolutely not even planning on spending the kind of money that I would want that threshold to be any higher. Fine, that one also made sense. Then a third bill for $5 at the end of the month. At this point, I think I’m about roughly $80 of my $120 into my budget, which makes sense when I look at these reports, which do not utilize the full budgets.

But then I got this invoice for another one of those “end of the month” settle-up type deals. The most suspicious thing about this invoice is how ridiculously overpriced the impressions seem to be compared to the previous 3 invoices. I paid $24.11 in once instance for 501 impressions on the end of the month statement and $3.66 for 133 on another for the same ad. Granted the audiences COULD have changed, but I think the fact that they’re misleading and not more transparent about the cost per impression and their billing practices is a little frustrating and off-putting.

Also, while my understanding of this process is vague and probably that’s by design, it’s not without some basis. As I understand it, I have a budget. I’m bidding for eyeballs. If it’s within my budget range, I can outbid others for eyeballs. However, I would not expect that budget to go up and down TOO much over time. Also, this all happens via computer, in a vacuum with probably no oversight. My cost per impression is also based on facebook’s own estimates which are not show here, but let’s just say they’re probably more optimistic than they should be. On one of my big $30 ads, it estimated a reach as high as 13,000 based on my budget, which was almost more than double what I got across this entire campaign. So basically I spent $120 and got no sales, MAYBE a few streams/YouTube views, no sales, few unsolicited likes, and about 6 dozen dirty solicited likes.

Lost Track and "Just Push Play" Mentality

2017-06-27T19:56:56Z

It seems I’ve been playing the role of historian and librarian more than music maker in the past few months. I won’t say it hasn’t taken it’s toll but the best part is going through old recordings and finding out you like something a little more than you initially remember liking something.

Halloween Mix-004

The invisible wall every bedroom producer must face.

The struggles of taking a bunch of baked-in tracks and performing them with Traktor and somehow calling that a live show, are real. Seriously, it’s really hard to take a bunch of tracks that I’ve literally agonized for months over; trying to find layers to add, layers to remove, tweaking the mix, deciding what is too busy, and then reopen all those old wounds just for the sake of changing it up every time I play out, without the benefit of an entire band to share the responsibilities of overthinking the details of each part of a track or procurring, familiarizing their selves with, loading in/out, and otherwise owning the entire responsibility for just an individual part of a track.

“They’re just pushing play!” he said, as he continued to push play.

I followed the Deadmau5 “Don’t just push play” discussion closely. Honestly, until now, it is probably the singular reason, if not the biggest reason I’ve avoided playing out. Not because I put Deadmau5 on any kind of pedestal, but because I think it’s a real dissonance between respecting musicianship, the unspoken contract to put on a good show for your audience, and at the same time respecting that it takes a completely different set of skills and tools that most people unfamiliar with the process can’t even conceptualize to produce electronic music within the scope of infinite possibilities between hardware and software sound sources and instruments. Anyone can buy a set of Volcas and make some pretty kick ass beats, but after about 30 minutes, you’ll realize that those Volcas alone can either define you or can just be one swatch on a quilt of other sounds.

If you listen to my tracks, that'll be the end of it, but if you say that's not real music, I'll find you, and I'll make you listen to me play Wonderwall on my mandolin at least 3-4 times or until I can't fight the urge to play Battle of Evermore any longer. Don't make me post my mando cover of Right Where It Belongs as proof. In fact, that's what I'm going to do right now, hang on...

I went that second route, not that there’s anything at all wrong with the first. Choosing to master a single instrument and suck out every ounce of uniqueness and show it to people who think there’s nothing new you can do with that instrument are probably the most important contrarians in all of music, but I prefer to chase a collection of “sweet spot” instruments that have a familiar range of sounds I can start to build a vocabulary for and where it might be forcing a Volca to do something it really can’t do, the Analog 4 or Tempest might do that sound with ease.

Even if I had an infinite budget for complete duplication of all my gear, roadies, etc. I would still be beholden to a very limited attention span and range of focus. Musicians are at their best when they’re focusing only on ONE sound. This is why there are monitor mixes at live shows, because most creative things happen in very confined contexts. The bass player might be trying to serve the context of the song, but he’s not concerned with that decay envelope not killing off the stabs on the keyboard part fast enough. In addition to tonality, there are a number of other cues, on top of trying to match the dynamics of the rest of the band, etc. This is stuff that’s easy for one person to be aware of for one sound. As soon as you start adding spinning plates into the mix, something is going to suffer or be compromised.

I’m sure there’s a better way, but I’m not gonna find it today.

I do not WANT to just push play, but ultimately, and in my opinion more importantly, I also do not want to let the live show have any affect at all on what I decide to do in the vacuum of my recording/arranging process because that is a much safer place for both myself and my audience to enjoy my risk taking. For now, this is the only way people are going to at least hear the music I’ve picked for playing out in a context I thought it would be well suited for. My lack of confidence is not in the music I’ve produced, it’s in the levelness of expectations between what someone does with dozens of instruments at various points in time, in different mindsets, bringing that all together in a way that sounds as organic as possible, even if it is baked in. The burden of paying for those baked in tracks not giving me the range of improvisation I would like is not a debt need to pay down in one lump sum on show number 2. So pushing play it is… for now.

I say for now, because even for this upcoming show, I’m still trying to find other angles to create a more visual appeal or at least the sense that I’m not bored while playing back music I’m very excited for people to be hearing. I’m still trying to find the right instrument or set of samples that I feel I can properly jam out on while my tracks play in the background. I’m trying to meet the old fashioned expectations of what a live show is, with the reality of how the sausage gets made. While just pushing play seems counter-intuitive, expecting something new to adhere to the conventions of something old is the kind of thinking that demonized sampling and synthesizers in the first place, but rest assured this is squarely where MY personal frustrations with the lack of improv opportunities as a musician, reside.

The different types and mindsets of sampling.

2017-06-20T18:57:40Z

Continuing with the main production point of interest for me right now, I wanted to dissect what different types of samples I use and what other music producers are likely to collect and encounter in sample packs. Sure, on the surface, it should be ultimately a question of “Is this a one-shot or is this a loop?” and “How am I going to organize and use these?” which are probably the broader questions someone 2 months or 10 years into production is always asking themselves when sifting through the things they’ve grabbed and maybe stuffed in a folder to be sorted later, but the more I use samples, I realize there is a wide range of sample types and depending on how your taxonomy is set up, there is also probably a lot of overlap between them. I thought I’d just establish my version of that taxonomy first, starting with the most obvious:

Fundamental types of samples

One-Shot - This is something that’s meant to be fired off rhythmically to some extent, even if it’s a quarter note out of a 4 bar loop chop, at the point that it’s stored by itself, apart from it’s loop context, it becomes a one-shot. Sometimes you can reuse certain one-shots from loops in multiple places where the beat itself isn’t so versatile. Sometimes these are multi-layered and meant to be used in more advanced samplers that will swap or crossfade samples based on velocity, but this is something I don’t do very often and I find to be a much less popular use-case these days outside of more elaborate layered sample banks like the ones in Kontakt. You won’t find a lot of bedroom producers leveraging velocity layers, but maybe that’s an area of sampling looking to be blown wide open, but I digress.

Another thing to consider, on the topic of less used, but useful techniques is the idea of recording multiple hit variations. This is not something supported in Maschine and probably not Drum Rack (I honestly don’t know) but programs like Battery can use this to great effect to randomly trigger one sample in a pool of samples to avoid repetitive hits, BUT the catch 22 is that sometimes the random hits are even more obvious than the same hit repeating. YMMV.

Loop - This is an isolated instrument or an entire mix that can be played in a seamless and/or aesthetically pleasing loop. Typically they range between 1-4 bars for simplicity, but I think anything more than 16 is really pushing it.

Stems/Bones/Multitracks - These are one lane of an entire track. Sometimes they’re a print of a buss or sometimes they’re just a single instrument and it’s effects. IMHO, they should ideally be of exactly the same length for ease of recreation of the mix in a DAW. These are also the key to a good dynamic remix because you can use as much or as little of the original track as you like, as long as the busses aren’t too greedy.

Mixdowns - Whether it’s mastered or not, this is a stereo or mono mixdown of multiple tracks, usually a complete track with all the components of the mix applied or specifically limited to certain sounds for a specific use.

Characteristics

Dry/Unprocessed - These samples are right off the mic, right out of the instrument, and in my opinion, in the case of synths, do not have anything more than the VCO VCF VCA and modulation. (No delay, chorus, reverb, distortion, etc.) In the case of guitars, this would be the recording right off the preamp. Especially in the case of pure sounds like acoustic instruments, vocals, electric guitars, and synths without effects, this is the most flexible starting point that is most true to the original characteristics. We can go a number of different places from here and if it’s a good recording, we will have a richer range of frequencies and dynamics with which to mix.

Wet/Processed Samples - These samples have both the characteristic of the source sound generator as well as any number of effects like distortion, beat repeat, bitcrushing, chorus, flange, delay, etc. and possibly VCA type envelope applied. Sometimes these can be just as flexible and robust as dry/unprocessed samples, but they rarely sound ideally representative of familiar sounds and instruments. There is usually less room to play when dealing with wet samples, but that becomes less true when dealing with short one-shots which do not have as much weight in setting the tone for the rest of the mix because they usually don’t demand as much listener attention. You can get hi-hat and snare substitute sounds from anywhere as long as the tails are short, because these sounds usually come from a smaller frequency range to begin with.

Short Decay - These are probably the most forgiving when it comes to collecting a particular type of sample without regard for where they come from or if you’ll ever use them, as if they were so many useless pogs (I’m that old) because these type of samples can be used to layer at any volume, to add texture and variation to an existing loop or beat, which allows you to really have a lot of nuance and not compete so much with the mix or demand more attention than necessary to add to the sense of variation. Then just EQ that one track to fit in the mix. They also use less sample memory when dealing with hardware samplers. Sometimes a subtle hi-hat type line that’s barely audible, in the right audible frequency range is good for getting more subtle mechanical industrial/textures into a beat, which has definitely become more of a multi-genre technique in the past 10 years or so as more people borrow these types of sounds from industrial music. Also, you can easily turn the right short decay sample into a long decay sample with the right reverb or delay.

Long Decay - Either these are long unbroken tones, sounds with long envelopes that ultimately control either the VCF and/or VCA, or a long ringing sound like a bell, piano or guitar string, or cymbal. Ideally because these are expensive in hardware samplers, they would be at least rich with overtone info and have some changes over time that are more complex than your standard reverb or delay, but sometimes you just can’t get THAT reverb or delay.

EQ range - I have never taken to flat-out organizing my sounds by their dominant EQ range, but I wish there was a way to do this in some kind of meta browser. Most of what makes samples play nice is how little they compete with each other. Again with the raw samples, the most naturally complementary samples will usually produce the most dynamic and rich mixes,and the key to understanding that is thinking about where the sample sits in your mix without applying any EQ.

Mindsets

Sampling a single instrument

One of the best sources of clean samples, legality-wise and fidelity-wise, is a single pure untainted sound source. This could be anything from an acoustic instrument like a drum or guitar or a single laboratory oscillator from the 60s, or a module or patch on your modular system of choice. These are a great place to establish an arsenal of unique samples that you can use at any time and unless you make it available as a sample pack, you will be the only person with those particular hits or loops from that instrument. Sometimes a singular hit on an analog drum machine has a special something that 999 hits in 1000 won’t have. This is why sometimes samples work for a groove where the actual sound source won’t work because it can’t reliably capture the best parts of a sound consistently. Just as every time you strike a drum it usually sounds a little different each time, the same is usually true of more charismatic electronic instruments. Obviously the infinite list of possibilities of instruments, mics, preamps, effects, and any combination of the lot is too broad for this post.

Casual sampling

My general loafing and lollygagging PC is my studio rig. This section might require more discipline at a later date if I start binge watching on my actual TV, but because all audio is routed through my digital mixer chain, I can and often do easily back up and sample any cool phrase or sound from any YouTube TV show, or movie I’m currently consuming. These are often those “The System Is Down” type clips that Strong Bad was talking about many years ago.

Crate digging

Sampling from old $1 records is one of the best ways to add real lo-fi charm to your productions. Every record has a different journey, acquires different signs of aging and they all sound unique as a result. Crate digging has it’s roots in hiphop, but you can pull samples from a variety of records, musical and non-musical, for a number of uses. Sometimes it’s fun just to run them through a filter and then into long-tail effects like delays and reverbs to create a less identifiable wash of sound that still has a certain well aged organic charm which is great for soundscapes and beds.

Ableton Push 2 vs Native Instruments Maschine Studio

2017-06-18T23:12:55Z

Thou shalt put no sampler above me.... NO ME!

This is probably in the realm of great rivalries like Hatfields and McCoys, OU and Texas, Yankees and Red Sox, etc. I’ve been using Maschine since immediately after it’s launch in 2009 and I’ve been using Live even longer, going back to about the beginning of 2007. Both are revered for their workflow and ability to be a way to quickly jot down musical ideas and both are capable of being used in a live performance capacity, but does one really win out? I can save you some reading if you want my absolute answer, and that answer is “not really.”

As with Maschine, I was an early adopter when Maschine Studio hit the stores. It had some serious encoder knob issues, that for me, basically sidelined the Studio for an entire year and a couple of RMAs to fix a software problem, which have since been resolved. However, around the time my issues with Studio were resolved, the Push 2 came out. I wanted a Push, but never committed. When the I couldn’t resist the guitar familiarity of the 4ths tuned pads, the much more spacious step sequencer, 64 slices with which to chop up loops, the excellent integration for what is still my primary DAW, and overall, a really well made controller that brings Ableton much more in line with Maschine as a groovebox anymore, I made the plunge. There was a short time when I thought I’d never use Maschine Studio again and that I should just sell it. Well, not so fast.

Not that I’ve ever had an easy time just being rid of something when I thought it wasn’t a fit for me, and the only two times I have, I have just replaced that same gear later on, and in the case of the Kaoss Pad 3, I now own two because there are times when you just need stereo effects to go on something that’s just too dry, like the Tempest, but I digress. I have a hard time getting rid of gear. In the midst of my sample organization and inventory this month, I decided to revisit this issue and decide if it’s worth keeping a controller that, even discounted off retail, is still not chump change. Here are my lists of pros and cons for both.

In this corner, Native Instruments “The Killer” Maschine 2 and Maschine Studio

Pros

If you have a Maschine Studio, you probably don’t need an S-Control.
Sequencer workflow still feels faster for 1-4 bar loops.
Tagging system makes finding and organizing samples a lot easier-ish. If you have redundant samples to keep kits together, this won’t matter and it’s certainly just as easy, if not easier, to navigate local folders without importing in to some kind of database, in Ableton AND you have 64 pads to load sounds into. Nonetheless, if you want to tag groups of files as you import them, you will have a better way to search for the right sample through the search bar… and you better back up your database or you’ll lose all that tagging info between installs.
Automatically adds imported samples into collections based on folder structure.
Lots of factory kits and patterns. This is handy when you just want an inspiring click track to fit the mood. Yes, I’m a proponent of rolling your own kits to have your own sound, but sometimes you just need a beat to get things moving.
Drumsynth. I don’t have a ton of software analog drum machines, but this one is by far the best and I would say even makes my Analog RYTM jealous because “maybe software analog drum synths shouldn’t sound that good, eh”
A good amount of factory sounds and patterns.
Bigger pads are better for fingerdrumming. While Push 2 is no slouch, I definitely find my level of confidence to hit the right pad and mentally settle in on 16 pads is much better with Maschine. I feel more confident moving around these 4x4 pads, whereas, I have to be more mindful of where I place my fingers while finger drumming on Push 2 and I definitely notice that there is a difference between my finger drumming technique than my melodic playing on the Push 2.

Cons

Limited sequencer. Everything is pattern based. Absolutely not good for tracking in MIDI or audio longer than 4 bars.
Frustrating sample editor. I prefer to commit to recording something to disk, know where it lives, and then decide if it gets to stay there after the fact. Maschine likes to capture samples in one location, which is terrible for organization and it means you have to do a lot more manual cleanup or exporting of your kits, rather than just starting a new project, and letting your recordings accumulate in that project.
Native Instruments support has not been the absolute worst, but it’s not great. If you have a tricky problem that requires some critical thinking, you’re probably not going to get any more help from NI than you’ll get online. I say this based entirely on the rigmarole I went through trying to resolve my jumpy encoder issue, which was well documented by the early adopters. Rather than try to dive into what might be causing it, which was firmware, apparently, they were content to waste everyone’s time by replacing hardware which never actually resolved the issue for me, even for a little while.

In this corner, Ableton “We’ll Do It” Live and Push 2

Pros

A real sequencer. I can track MIDI or audio, I can loop them, arrange them, and otherwise use Ableton the same way anyone would use any major DAW on the market, in addition to using it as a groovebox.
Much better top-down view of a project, including routing, automation, patterns, etc. Ableton makes better use of the real estate.
Much better controller for playing melodic parts, especially if you’re a guitarist or bassist. You will appreciate the 4ths tuned scale with the harmonic scales lighted to help you learn and know which notes are safely in key. Very expressive for a pad based controller – moreso than I even expected. The aftertouch really works, which is a shame because Ableton doesn’t even support recording aftertouch!
While finger drumming isn’t as great, 100% volume/no velocity modulation chopping across an 8 bar loop spread across 64 pads with a shared choke group, for that Madlib/J Dilla style beat chopping sesh will allow you to get lost for 10-20 minutes and not run out of interesting variations on the same sample. It’s also much easier to warp, slice, and export to a drum rack with a better degree of control than it is in Maschine which is fully capable of chopping beats. Also, it’s much easier to move loop markers around a longer track that maybe you recorded in without trying to nail the perfect loop in one pass, and now you have a lot of variations on a loop that you can choose simply by moving the loop markers. You definitely can’t do this in Maschine as easy.
Slightly better UI and visibility with the on screen controls.

Cons

Slightly less mature sequencing “outside the box” groovebox features than Maschine
Smaller pads are not as great for finger drumming.
Potentially just as many sounds. No tagging system. Ableton Suite comes with several instruments and presets, but there is no way to narrow down those presets by sound characteristics quite the same way there is in Maschine/Komplete (Kore 2, RIP. They done you wrong.)
Still can’t simply copy a pattern onto the timeline and keep the automation. Seriously, Ableton. Fix this shit.
No bread and butter analog drum sound generators. There are some Max for Live patches, but I do not know why Ableton doesn’t have a solid 808/909 stand-in. Maschine didn’t really have such a satisfying solution to this problem until Maschine 2, but now I find it to be a great alternative to my Elektron Analog RYTM when I only have my laptop.

A truce… for now.

I don’t think it’s likely that I’ll be getting rid of either for now. I still have a number of legacy Maschine kits, and while I don’t see myself using them that much in the near future, I still use Maschine more often for assembling kits from stray samples than Ableton and it’s pretty easy to collect all of the samples in context to a kit without expanding that to include the entire project. This is also a great way of narrowing down the finalists for samples I want to load onto my hardware, which is great because I can have a large sample library without concern for sample memory until much later when I’ve narrowed down my choices.

RIP Bat-Man; a word on utility belts.

2017-06-13T01:54:07Z

I’m thinking of a number of music production related updates and have written down quite a bit of stuff in my notes in the past couple of weeks. One of the things that became ever-presently appreciable as I was doing a bunch of sample librarian and multitrack archival work this weekend, in the wake of the passing of the Bat-Man; the need for a good utility belt, and by utility belt, I guess I’m stretching that analogy to really mean a folder full of utilities for processing samples, renaming files, editing hardware presets, creating visualizations, etc.

Basically, there are certain programs that might even come with installers, might even be more updated, etc. but the simple act of having ANY version of these programs on hand and never having to re-install them or hunt them down on the internet between OS installs (if you do those on any kind of regular basis) is extremely nice when you know what you want to do, know that you only use a utility every once in a while, and don’t want to go through the rigmarole of re-downloading and re-installing. There is already enough of that with a standard OS re-install and it is nice just to have certain things at the ready. You can always upgrade when these programs get useful features or bugfixes, or no longer works with your OS or your gear.

Holy Winamp Bat-Man!

There are a number of random programs here. I don’t trust that they’re always going to be online and always available. They do exactly what they need to do. I could be compelled to update them, but for the most part, there’s no real reason to think twice about these programs unless they just stop working. Oh, and this folder is completely portable and runs from this directory without changing a single registry entry or ini file. You’d be surprised how many programs can be moved from their current install location and ran from basically anywhere. No matter how dirty that sounds, it’s going to be super useful when you can’t find that random internet oddity like PaulStretch or that one Electribe project editor you like and especially if you didn’t save the installer files either.

On a slightly separate topic, but could also be something you keep in your utilities folder, you should definitely consider keeping the latest known good version of your most critical software and drivers. Companies like Camel Audio, the makers of Alchemy get bought and no longer offer downloads for the things you purchased, or companies like Echo, who were an audio interface standard when PC audio interfaces started going pro on a budget, but are now out of the business and no longer offer driver downloads, which is also a problem I have to deal with.

There are also a number of programs like AudioMove, and RazorLAME I use for converting batches of files from any sample rate and bit depth, to any sample rate and bit depth or compressing them in one of my two primary compressed file formats; FLAC and MP3.

Second Live Show, Building Furniture for Electronic Contraptions and Sampling From A Dimension of Sight And Sound

2017-06-10T05:43:26Z

The second post is the real welcome post.

My boat still sails by the mercy of employment opportunities (or lack thereof) and desire for creative fulfillment, I’ve been full-tilt on establishing Daemon Electricity on the interwebs, I spend too many minutes throwing words down a rabbit hole of political anger and frustration elsewhere, and there’s no better way to engage an audience than with a blog, right?

Well, I’ve started, and killed many a blog through inactivity but I think I can see my way of recognizing that the vitality of this site is both a reprieve from the ownership of Facebook and other social media sites and tantamount to engaging an audience who might at some point in the future want to buy my shit or come to a show, there’s probably no better place to throw some of those words. If you’re gonna engage in futility, might as well do it for fun and profit on your own fuckin’ website! (Especially when making with the web technology is supposed to be what wins the bread when there’s bread to be won.)

10 years in production. Second live show ever.

I’m not sure exactly how or how often playing out is going to be a part of my future activities, except that I would like to play out at least as frequent as once every few months. If it is a mostly positive experience, I can’t see how it would be anything but beneficial to do it more, but obviously the accessibility to booking, commitment, and energy drain are a big factor in taking on shows and while I’m trying to use these shows as a creative catalyst that I can always have new material ready for, I am very prone to taking the path of least resistance, which is why all of this has taken so long in the first place. That said, now that I have a back catalog, and more confidence as a producer (who probably should learn to delegate mastering duties, but I digress) with a pretty clear vision for what I want my sound to be based upon, which was what really mattered to me in the past 10 years as ambitions expanded to things like having actual releases and spending actual money to buy actual gear and devote more and more time and energy into music creation.

Also, the reason I’m making music, handling my social media and publishing all myself is the same reason I’m not running around making low budget horror movies. I can do all of the first few things as a true one-man wolfpack and only let myself down in the process. I might be spread thin, but I’ll just make it up by letting important shit fall through the cracks. It’ll be OK.

I also have a satchel.

Building Gear Fer Muh Gear

A natural progression for someone with too much going on and not enough getting done, legally blind, and accident prone, is woodworking with legitimately dangerous power tools with only the guidance of YouTube’s Mathias Wandel.

My intention isn’t to get into fine woodworking or encroach on Nick Offerman’s turf. He’d probably find most of my efforts pretty shameful and misguided. Quite the opposite. My intentions are purely utilitarian to reign in my gear and make it easier to access and to make sure every type of thing I own has a place to be that isn’t on random tables, chairs, banister landing, or floor. Here is a mock-up for my sick Volca device rack.

Prototype of my sick new rack for my Volcas.

You’re now entering a dimension of both sight, sound, and hopefully fair use.

Sampling other people’s content has been something I’ve been both fascinated with and extremely cautious about. Pretty much any kind of music that utilizes third party samples as a part of their flavor is likely going to be right in my wheelhouse. I’m staunchly a proponent of the tasteful use of samples and at least in the 90s, sampling was probably one of the most modern of post-modern types of anything to wear the label “post-modern.” It wasn’t possible before the technology finally became slightly affordable and I don’t think any kind of collage-based art form has truly created something so new from something so old as hip-hop did all through the MPC and SP-1200 era.

I’m probably going to bring up Madlib a lot, but I can’t stress enough how I deep my appreciation for both his sense of sound selection, humor, flow, and work ethic influence me, even if I don’t personally churn out blunted beats on a daily basis. I always want to incorporate what he does as well as other industrial and hip hop producers have done with samples for the past 30 years of sampling into my work. The only reason my stuff isn’t littered with more bad beat chops is out of pure restraint. Also Specter Signals and Gonzo Gizmos is definitely throwing a stake in the ground to follow the rapid release of more thematic selections from the catalog as they become available, even if they’re not such grandiose arrangements from start to finish, much like his Beat Konducta and Medicine Show releases provided a way to release something good even if it was fairly rapid fire and unprocessed in the way most tracks get agonized over before a release. (There’s definitely a different timeline for something that I would call an album and for something I think is good, that other people might like but probably is too indulgent to put on a properly sequenced album.)

With that backstory out of the way, in 2017 I find myself buying dollar records, horror movie compilations, and watching a lot of weird YouTube videos. Might as well sample the things you are into at the moment, right? Now that I’m getting back to being more music production and performance minded and less release and web presence minded, I’m trying to create a palette of pre-selected audio sample swatches that can be used for kits, loops, …whatever later. I’ve definitely enjoyed cherry-picking some choice dialogues and monologues and old TV action audio cues to create more atmospheric drama to go into my various samplers. There is a little taste of this on the opening track of 002, but I’ve kept that kind of thing to a minimum. I imagine there will be some remixes in the near future. If nothing else, the spoken word bits will be good fun at jams and live gigs.

I mean the premise of this episode was that she couldn't appreciate her beauty without the context of "normal" human beings, but what are the odds that some hideously deformed creature of one species is going to be the image of beauty to another species on another planet. Then add in the odds for evolution creating creatures with what looks like bad Hollywood facial prosthetics. These things always work better if you don't look that deep but I always do.

Welcome to the daemonElectricity Official Website!

2017-05-19T17:18:20Z

Welcome!

Daemon Electricity is my personal music project for the past 10 years. I have developed a pretty extensive collection of recordings and arrangements in that time. I haven’t really pushed too hard to promote, sell or play in front of live audiences so much in the past but all good things must come to an end.

As far as releases go, I’m proud to announce the release of 6 selections including 2 1/2 full albums of material I’ve put together and feel pretty good about. I also have 3 additional releases that didn’t really fit the same criteria for those releases but that I still feel really strongly about in their own right. I didn’t put out any crap, I swear!* I think I make music that’s more intended for headphones and herbal therapy time in one mindset and more energetic music that would be more suitable for a bigger sound system and less sloth-like pulse rates in another. As a result, I try to keep things from slowing down to creepy movie soundtrack levels for too long on what I would consider a major flagship release.

The Wicked Album Mix and Unwicked

In the case of the Wicked Album and Unwicked, it’s really more of a chronology and difference in ideas for how to arrange some music. When I first started having grand visions of what it would be like to produce an album, I wanted to make The Wall or Dark Side of the Moon just like everyone else, with all it’s transitions and even grandiose dramatic piano (Yeah, that’s a release unto itself. Stay tuned.) and would never just collect a set of the best tracks I had from a group of arrangements and just commit to those and make them play together. I wanted a bunch of recurring themes and basically a rock opera or hint at some continuity like The Downward Spiral does at the very least, I guess. Well, that never happened exactly, but I eventually learned how to settle for the best-ofs and make them play together for the first time on The Wicked Album Mix which was kind of a compromise because it does have some seamless transitions, but I don’t know how you can really have a rock opera without lyrics.

The problem then becomes that while The Wicked Album incorporates some of the best arrangements I did in the “FL” era of arranging, as well as some good arrangements I did from around the same time as The Wicked Album, I never really did a release for the “FL-###” era of tracks, and there are some pretty good ones on there, I think. Also, because The Wicked Album is a bit of a remix, it’s not the full length, fully arranged version of FL-002 or whatever that intro track is. (Seriously, I forget what track is what more than you’d know. Maybe I should commit to more creative track names.)

002

If the previous era of “FL” tracks (indicating FL Studio projects) were mostly defined by software synths then the next phase would probably be defined by utilizing and recording from outboard gear and sequencers and arranging in Ableton. This album represents the eschewing of proper retirement savings for an orchestra of beautiful black and silver boxes and hardware and wires to hook them all up.

Also, along the way, I felt the urge to smash myself on the rocks of pasty white boys trying to pay homage to the hiphop I grew up with and the dusty vinyl beats I continue to grow and get nostalgic with, from guys like DJ Shadow, RJD2, MF DOOM, J Dilla, and Madlib. I love triphop and when it comes to actual work ethic and demeanor, there’s really no one I admire more as a producer than Madlib. There’s no one I’ve learned more about low-fidelity charm from than Madlib. There’s probably no one that has inspired me to clear technical obstacles and get down to business more than Madlib. Dude makes beats and digs for records all day or he’ll make an album in a day and not sample a single thing. Also, nothing Madlib does is a big production. He’s famous for making beats in the hotel room in Brazil with a boombox, a crappy portable turntable, and an SP-303.

I don’t think I wallpapered the room on this album with dirty vinyl the way Madlib does on his tracks, but I did get very much into crate digging and dollar records (and if I ever get a bigger place, I will probably be just as unrestrained about carrying out 40-50 dollar records on a trip, but I don’t wanna move that shit out of a rental) and I felt it was beginning to represent itself on this release. As an aside, Peant Butter Wolf is still the only person I’ve ever presented with a demo CD.

Specter Signals Series

This will be an ongoing series of mixes designed to transition smoothly between some of my more beat driven remixes into more sparse soundscapes. Think of them as movie soundtracks in search of a movie.

Gonzo Gizmos Series

I like clanky and subtle ambient beats that sometimes lack melodic content. I have a nice pile of modular gear and it’s great for making bloops and bleeps. I understand this is a little on the self-gratifying side but I’m fairly certain I’m not alone in liking this kind of music. Think of this as more of my “Ambient Works” series. OK, that’s a little self-gratifying in it’s own right.