[Nick] Sonic.
[Nick] Hello,
[Nick] everybody. Welcome to Sonic Talk episode 895.
[Nick] I did try and find an eight nine five synth or piece of studio equipment to wax lyrical about, but I couldn't. So maybe one of my guests will be able to pitch in in a short while and let us know of that one as a possibility. I I'd just like to introduce you to Sonic Talk. Yes. That's right. Sonic Talk is a music technology podcast. We're gonna talk about all things to do with music tech, software, hardware, synthesizers, drum machines, performing, streaming,
[Nick] distribution, anything that takes our fancy, and there may be a touch of new technology. I know some of you get a bit uppity about AI, but it's becoming an ever part of our world. We'll try and keep it to a minimum now. I promise. Just to let you know, stuff that's coming up, we've got the last couple of days to enter the base station two Swifty edition, which is closing on Friday.
[Nick] So you can grab a limited edition. It's this of
[Nick] it's been designed by Ian Swifty Swift, a famous urban artist. So check that out. Episode three of Sonic Retrocast went up
[Nick] last week, I think it was, with Ravi Abbott, host of the retro hour and
[Nick] pirate radio from the nineties, apparently.
[Nick] Also, we've got five minutes with the Former's Catalyst coming up soon. That's coming shortly. And I finally finished the UDO Audio Domino review. Just waiting to put the final touches on that, stick the player on and whatnot. That will be up soon too, so stay tuned. But in the meantime,
[Nick] you can see some of these things early on
[Nick] on Sonic Talk. It is possible.
[Nick] Sonic Talk. What am I talking? I'll show our Patreon. In fact, I'll plug our Patreon now and our YouTube memberships because we post some of the stuff early for you to get access to back after this.
[Nick] Yep. And we're back. Before I introduce our guests, just wanna say hello to those of us watching lives. Much appreciated that you join us live. It really helps kind of chibby things along a bit and fill in the gaps in our memory or certainly my memory, which is quite lacking these days. I seem to have more of an Emmental style memory recall at the moment rather than a sort of solid cheese. Nice to see Tanith, Wagyu, of course, who manages the
[Nick] the moderation and other stuff behind Bonkarama,
[Nick] Cornish Waves Music,
[Nick] Shippo Card Company. Yes. Bunch of you in there. Lovely to see you. Thanks very much for joining us. It's very much appreciated. Right. Let's get on to our guests. Let's go over to the furthest underground, I feel, is possibly. I I I may maybe make an assumption. Matt Thomas from Cold War synths where he's in his bunker. We've got a new view. Have you moved your camera or have you just rearranged the synths? You look like you've got a massive collection of
[Nick] B and K and
[Nick] Yeah. View edge. Yeah. You're gonna say that again? Well,
[Matt] when I'm
[Matt] trying to be posh, it's it's a soft rolled r, bruhl, bruhl and kir. But I think Danish people are now going, no.
[Matt] So I often just go, bruhl and kajeja.
[Paulie] Just just so gonna get it out of the way that I'm not Danish. So these are Bruel and Kajaya.
[Nick] Nice. I I see the I see the is that a tone generator, or is that a filter just just by your
[Nick] right shoulder, left shoulder?
[Matt] Oh, which one? That one. Not that one, the other one. Oh, the other one. Yeah. The top sort of shorter guy, he's one of the few that actually does something other than bandpass. He is a high, a low, a band, a band reject.
[Matt] And it's got this wonderful thing where as you scan through the frequencies, the needle gets to one end and then reappears at the other and it's got lots of little chains inside it and clever little trickeries. It's just the most amazing thing from the days before straightforward, like just digital controls and, you know, interfaces. So, yeah, lovely thing. We like that one. Nice. So for those who don't know, obviously, you've got a a room full of goodies there where people can come down and record and sample and just maybe just enjoy the the the mechanics behind the front panel if that's their bag, I suppose. All of the above, and there've been an awful lot of it since I last saw you. It's I'm just literally rolling here again today. Yeah. I've just literally said goodbye to a guy from my sort of dance music pastor. Fergie used to be Radio one DJ. He's come down for two days to make a documentary about the place. I was on six music. They just just contact me on the Instagram out the blue and just said Nice. This is interesting. So I was on the Craig Charles show at an eight minute piece. We sort of put like a whole collage of sounds and me talking about it. And I'm at universities here. I've been over to Leicester. I was invited by the guys at r ten EMS. You've got a Synthi 100 that they are restoring to go and do a talk there. So I took about half this with me and then realized, what was I thinking?
[Matt] It's a struggle beginning with Slideshow.
[Matt] Slideshow would be fine. Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah.
[Nick] Do you think that's that there's there's a sort of slight
[Nick] a kind of not backlash, but sort of wave of interest in vintage technology after the whole
[Nick] which we didn't congratulate, actually,
[Nick] Look Mum No Computer, Sam Battle on his on his Eurovision
[Matt] appearance. Even though it didn't go great, we sort of knew that. I mean, The UK doesn't do great anyway, but fair play to him. Do you think but do you think there's been a sort of an upsurge of interest in that kind of thing, you know, in with capital letters since then? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I mean, it's not just I think Sam was almost a symptom of the upsurge in interest rather than necessarily I mean, it's a you know, it's a chicken and egg obviously. He's a lot of eyes on him. But I think probably probably he appealed because it speaks to something where my two older kids went through their teens as like sort of monk like hermits whose every possession was digital and then their phone they owned nothing and they wanted nothing.
[Matt] But my youngest is like get me a high five from the nineties. I want CDs. I go and look for things. And she actually came with me down to Retro Tech, this massive vintage. I was like, really? You you wanna come and see like lots of old guys that going, oh, oscillators. But but yes, straight there because I think the AI thing has triggered this. Okay. Well, we've got the virtual and the unreal and the but we'd also would like this. We'd also like this stuff. This like physical, tactile.
[Matt] Yeah. So I think Sam is is like the poster boy of the tactile, and I think that's, you know, that feeds into his success as much as Eurovision is just a sort of a cherry on it, I feel.
[Nick] Yeah. Well, I mean, a 150,000,000 people watching live is one of the most terrifying numbers I think I've ever heard in my life. So Yeah. Just to keep it together and not fall over
[Nick] is,
[Nick] you know, is a is a massive blow. Anyway, lovely to have you, Matt. Nice to see you. We'll move over closer to home. Moray is in my neck of the woods somewhere, I think across town in Bath. Moray AK Safford. Moray, of course, is a a theater sound producer, live keyboard session player, live performer, all kinds of stuff. How how have you been? How are things?
[Moray] I've been good. Thanks, Nick. Yeah. I think you've got them all in there. I sort of that seems to collect job titles along the way, collect projects along the way. But, yes, I've been working on a theater show at the moment,
[Moray] which is on at the Rondo Theatre in Bath from the seventeenth to the June 20. Get that plug in there early. But I've been doing lots of sound, lots of music for it,
[Moray] and been the last week or so been
[Moray] grappling with how you write music to
[Moray] choreography that isn't set in stone where you the music has to follow the actors unlike in dance and musical theater where the actors follow the music. So that's been a fun little problem to solve.
[Nick] I'm really interested in that because you were saying, essentially, there's a sword there's like sword fighting, and you were trying to
[Nick] coordinate your soundtrack with the sword fighting, which obviously is gonna be different. I mean, sounds in a way almost like
[Nick] you'd be using things that you would use in games like Unreal Engine, those sort of things which follow actions. Have you take did you take that sort of approach where you slice things up and then have have sequences Kind of.
[Moray] Of. It's
[Moray] the play is a sort of it's a farce. It's a comedy. It's melodramatic.
[Moray] So there's a sword fight at the the dastardly
[Moray] villain. And
[Moray] the
[Moray] director wanted it to sort of really amp up
[Moray] amp up the emotion, amp up the silliness and go for the kind of Princess Bride,
[Moray] Pirates of the Caribbean kind of swashbuckling,
[Moray] not quite sort of every sword hit has a sort of sting or something.
[Moray] But
[Moray] that that kind of that kind of feel where it's the music and sort of and the action are one and the same. So yeah, what I did, I ended up filming filming the actors doing a rehearsal and then scored it as you would sort of tightly to pick Right. It
[Moray] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then went through and sort of chopped it up and figured out, okay, I can put a loop point. I can put a loop point here and then right, there's a mark at this point that I need to hit when he sort of jumps off the chair and tries to tries to cut his head off with the chair and he jumps out of way. So that needs another sound effect.
[Moray] And then, yeah, I guess, like, with a game engine, you end up with a whole list of assets.
[Moray] And I'm sitting there just sort of triggering, right. The next one. Right. The next one. Oh, right. We're the loop point. Right. Go to the next one kind of thing. Wow. That sounds that sounds challenging. Yeah. Challenging. But, actually, it's a lot of fun because normally doing theater sound, you're just, oh, right. Somebody's somebody's picked up the telephone, need to press the button for the telephone sound effect, or here's the sound of footsteps on the gravel as somebody's about to come in. So actually having that kind of musical performance
[Moray] aspect has been quite fun.
[Nick] Yeah. That sounds very challenging. Anyway, well well done. I I I might try and get along to see it. It sounds like it. What's it called?
[Moray] It is called Bullshot Crummond.
[Nick] Yes, he's on the romantic theater. He sounds like a yeah. That sounds like a sort of one of those Victorian heroes sort of names. Yes.
[Nick] Wow. That's the sort of thing. Well, lovely to have you, Moray, as well. And we also got Paulie Bowe, who's there at Birmingham and the layer of digital antiquity.
[Nick] How are you, Paulie? You well?
[Paulie] Yes. Yeah. I'm pretty good. Thank you. I got
[Paulie] sent an Iridium MK two Oh, yeah. Recently. And I've been diving into that thing, and it's absolutely
[Paulie] mad.
[Paulie] The the highlight for me so far is the per note parameter locks.
[Paulie] So you can, you know, you can hit a key and tweak something, hit another key and tweak something else,
[Paulie] and end up
[Paulie] having something very rhythmical,
[Paulie] but you're just playing, you know, a basic melody.
[Paulie] You like, Twinkle Twinkle could end up sounding absolutely crazy.
[Nick] If you just, you know, parameters to the base station too, Aphex Twin firmware, isn't it? That was a similar thing where you just basically record parameters to a key. So yeah. And and and I think this is also inspired by Yeah. Mister Twin as well. Yeah. Definitely. Well, you know the did you know the Sin Plant? Do ever see that? The software thing like with the tree that grew from what we Yeah. Were Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the first time I saw that per note patch, per note modulation.
[Nick] Because like Apex Twin gets a lot of credit for this, but to be fair, it was actually I I think, you know, don't get me wrong. That's funny because I I remember reviewing that, and I could never figure it out. And that's but just that clear clear explanation made it much clearer. Thank you very much. Well, Paulie, that sounds like a lot of fun. I'm I'm also using lot of fun. The Catalyst four m s as well. Yeah. I've been which is, again, really really cool modular sequencer
[Paulie] where each channel can either be a gate or CV. So you can or combination, and you can patch it into itself to make it reset itself and
[Paulie] make it scan through its own CVs,
[Paulie] chaotically and stuff. So I know them. I CV'd it up to a rack of four
[Paulie] Commodore 64 SID modules called Zeta SID.
[Paulie] So I'm controlling four Commodore 64 worth of sound with a Eurorack sequence, and it sounds absolutely monstrous.
[Paulie] Look out for that next week.
[Nick] Have you got the have you got the Iridium desktop or the keyboard with you?
[Paulie] It's the desktop.
[Paulie] The m the mark two isn't out in keyboard for my Yes. Of course. Yep. Yeah. No. So yeah. Enough.
[Paulie] Yeah. Gonna be good. And I think I'll probably do do a bank of sounds
[Nick] for it as well. Know, one of what it should be good. But, yeah. There we go. Nice. Well, we've actually got a bit of news. I mean, summer is traditionally a bit of a a a kind of bereft of anything, but there is stuff to talk about. I I I suppose I should ask briefly because two of our guests haven't been on a a post Superboost show, and we're still just inside the month of Superboost.
[Nick] Did was there anything for you to Matt, or did would you well, you sound like you're quite busy so you can always cry off saying I didn't watch any of it. No. I
[Matt] caught a little bit and
[Matt] I think the one I noticed that kind of made well, it definitely led to me going, oh, that's interesting. I must check this. Was the I forget the company, but you'll know the people who are making the radiophonic
[Matt] system modular.
[Nick] Yes. That is gosh.
[Nick] Studio Yeah.
[Matt] Yeah. No. I know. I know it is, but I can't I I can't remember the name of the guys. The world has Google. World that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that caught my eye because a, it looked interesting but in no way to be negative about it. But as you can see, I'm I'm all about this stuff and so seeing it in a Euro rec form format, was like, okay.
[Matt] You know, that's So
[Matt] I mean sonically, no complaints. Looks and sounded like a great thing.
[Matt] I just felt like, ah, but it's the tactile thing thing you're not gonna get from these very compact form factors. But that's just my thing, everyone else can enjoy it completely. But what it triggered in me was going, hang on, Hans Zimmer's bought Made of Veil.
[Matt] So that got me like going, oh and he is apparently gonna put there is something going on. As a person who is regularly buying this stuff on eBay, I'm not gonna give myself any more competition so I'm gonna be vague here. But there are certain things I look out for and some of them I look out for because they were in the Radiophonic workshop. And funnily enough, those things are going off
[Matt] eBay the second they appear lately. They just vanish. So
[Matt] I'm kinda thinking there's something going on there. Yeah, there's like vague things on the next about, oh, they're gonna put some kind of radiophonic workshop back there. So Oh, that's a thought. Yeah. That would be an interesting idea. That could be happening. Nice.
[Nick] Anything else exciting happening in your world, Paulie, before we get onto a topic? I'm trying to think. Oh, no. Actually, sorry. I was gonna ask Moray. I'd I'd completely lost my my thread. Moray. Yeah. Anything that struck us, you know, maybe
[Nick] started your saving plan for your next purchase or unwise or otherwise? Yeah.
[Moray] Yeah. I mean, lots of lots of big expensive flagships
[Moray] there. But actually, the thing that's been
[Moray] living rent free in my head ever since has been the kalimba synth just because it's such a cool way of
[Moray] of interacting with a synth synth engine because I really like the Soma Lyra, which is a similar kind of touch based. It's away from the keyboard kind
[Moray] of thing. And I like the way that they've married up the sound engines
[Moray] in it and I think it sort of it suits the form factor. That's been really cool.
[Moray] And oh yeah, the other thing was the
[Moray] the c 25, the nonlinear Yeah. Nonlinear
[Moray] labs thing.
[Moray] As somebody who kind of performs,
[Moray] I thought that was really a really interesting
[Nick] approach to it and sort of designing an instrument with performance in mind with all the controllers and sort of doing swapping out the panels. Yeah. That was really cool. Really like to give one of those a go because there's lots of possibilities in there. Yeah. I think that was that sounds a problem. In fact, we had Manny Fernandez on the the the on our Superstar Hangout last weekend, and he was saying, yeah, that was that was that was something that really he was really interested to try. Something that's very interesting. Somehow, I made that that video live public, which wasn't supposed to be, but I guess everybody to see what those things are like. Now he knows what they're like. I'm just desperately racking my brain, and none of us said anything controversial.
[Nick] Anyway, I've I've taken it off. But I'll let it back to private. My bad. Sorry about that. Alright. Well, let's get on to a bit of news. This one, I I can't believe this this
[Nick] dropped my this this what what was I looking for? Able to yeah. No. This one. It's this one.
[Nick] The the KAO Sidekick. Teenage Engineering's little two channel mixer. Well, six three channel mixer if you carry USB return.
[Nick] Audio interface.
[Nick] It's got I think it's eight
[Nick] out, two in, I believe, or maybe more. The use so you could record directly your performances through it. It's got an effect per channel. It's got some interesting ideas. It's just it seems to be yet another one of those things that, you know, teenage engineering somehow managing to
[Nick] make things affordable, which is so so much unlike them. It's got a quite it's quite a disconcerting. Anyway,
[Nick] this is just a little bit of a demo there. I thought this would look really good. A £189,
[Nick] two channels, but a sort of Swiss army knife and this idea of having all this sort of performative stuff alongside it as well. I could quite easily see that sitting up there being useful for Friday fun jams if I ever get around to doing another one and and just sort of general audio interface and whatnot. It's an interesting one. And I don't know whether Paulie, have you got have you got, like me, got a sort of there's a sort of unhealthy
[Nick] desire to own two stage engineering equipment just because they make beautiful things. Most of them are way out of my reach, but this thing seems like something that's quite good. I really like the k o two as well, and people have been pairing it up with the new MPC samples quite effectively too.
[Paulie] The the designs kind of look like a parallel
[Paulie] universe where technology continued to look like it was the nineteen seventies, you know. Well, like in nineteen seventies orange kitchen color scheme kind of vibe, kind of thing they've got going on. But I must say I'm quite impressed by this mixer because
[Paulie] in this price bracket,
[Paulie] especially second hand, you can get a lot of mixer for your money for just under £200, but you can't get something this small.
[Paulie] And also, it it although
[Paulie] only only two of the channels have, trim controls and, you know, effects and stuff, you can actually put three stereo sources into it.
[Paulie] One auxiliary
[Paulie] stereo source doesn't have any control whatsoever, but that would be quite useful if you wanted to chain a number of them together or just when a phone through it or something. So I think it's it's it's very sort of pros
[Paulie] prosumer in that it uses
[Paulie] little stereo jacks which is what kind of people who aren't weirdos like us have in their houses and stuff like that. And,
[Paulie] yeah, and also it I think it will pipe out six channels
[Paulie] of USB audio.
[Paulie] Six mono channels or three stereo yeah. Yeah. Which is
[Paulie] kind of,
[Paulie] you know, you're looking at kind of I think Behringer does like one one multi channel mixer audio interface, but you're usually looking $203,100
[Paulie] quid for multichannel
[Paulie] USB recording. Most lower price stuff is just stereo. So I think they've hit some interesting features
[Paulie] with a kind of prosumer facing market, but also, you know, something that that we could use as well, you know,
[Paulie] pros could use as well because
[Paulie] And batteries Lots of instruments Portability. Portability,
[Paulie] jam in the forest, take your Volkers or what else am I looking at here? I've got Volkers, I've got a SonicWare LoFi 12 x t. All that kind of stuff would fit in that, you know, ecosystem as well. So I think it's
[Paulie] actually
[Paulie] quite a compelling
[Nick] compelling form factor with some compelling features at the price point. Yeah. No. It's Amore, I think I I put it to I put it to the the panel that the jamming in the forest concept has
[Nick] has followed the rich tradition of things I want to be able to do with my equipment. I think the first thing was probably location recorders that we all decided we needed because that's what we were going to be doing with samplers for the rest of our lives and probably haven't. I wonder if this is a sort of tapping into that whole kind of mentality. But, I mean, aside from that, it does look like it's got some utility.
[Moray] Yeah. I mean, as somebody who does have a field recorder and does regularly or semi regularly take it out into the countryside and my wife has to sit at the side of the path while I go and climb a tree to record some birds or something or sticking it in
[Moray] sticking it in caves.
[Moray] Well, mean, I got an EP out of it. It was great.
[Moray] I do feel slightly
[Moray] attacked,
[Moray] but no. It's
[Moray] I really yeah. It's it's a really cool portable thing. I I
[Moray] like the whole idea of being able to take your since out into oh, your your smaller since none of my I I do have a habit of collecting big unwieldy
[Moray] non portable synths for which my back will not thank me in a few years' time. But the whole idea of being able to make music somewhere else, and I think you you have a different relationship to
[Moray] your equipment when you're not in the studio and you're not in you can't sort of plug everything into everything else.
[Moray] And I think this gives you a lot of really interesting flexibility and sort of, oh, I can send that signal to there and that signal to there because I've been sort of rethinking
[Moray] my racks full of synths. And I think, well, I want to be able to send that synth to that FX processor and then back into that one and then into that one. So I've been looking at a lot of mixes recently,
[Moray] including actually the the new Korg one as well. I don't know if I've jumped the gun on the topics, but I
[Moray] really I really like sort of little interesting little interesting boxes that can move audio around in interesting ways.
[Moray] And as Paulie says, it does look lovely and really, really nice.
[Moray] And it fits the whole the whole look of the whole EP range.
[Moray] It sort of feels like it's sort of cash register aesthetics
[Moray] but as a complement.
[Nick] Yeah. Well, those those big those calculators that used to have paper rolls in the top of them, that's the sort of Mhmm. Oh. That's the yeah. There we go. So, Matt, I'm I'm just thinking, you know, the the the the number of the number of adapters you'd need from some of your kit into a tiny mini jack to put it into one of those things. I mean, I think the the adapter itself would probably weigh more than the mixer.
[Nick] Actually, a terrible terrible trip hazard
[Nick] or health and safety report.
[Matt] Wait. Yeah. It's it's just as you saw, the mix will be dangling off the gear rather than the gear being plugged into it which feels wrong.
[Matt] I think the the aesthetic thing everybody's mentioned, can I just say the the phrase we've all been reaching for is lovehoulton? I don't know if you know lovehoulton?
[Matt] Yes. Oh yes. Yeah. Love Houlton is basically sort of what Teenage Engineering
[Matt] worship at the altar of every morning as it sort of obviously goes to Love Houlton's Instagram and go, oh god, oh Love Houlton. So if you don't if you don't know
[Paulie] you don't know who he is,
[Matt] he's this amazing amazing custom synth guy. It didn't even make synths. He just makes
[Matt] incredible housings for a single or multiple synths. And if you watch Severance, the Apple thing, it looks like somebody who works at Lumen Industries
[Matt] opened a synth section. And so that perfect sort of Scandi seventies like slightly abandoned finish, how the Soviets got in there kind of energy. It's just this immaculate kind of like kind of like this but a little later, a little less sort of like industrial.
[Matt] Beautiful stuff. If you don't know Love Holton, go on Instagram find Love Holton. Drool drool for days.
[Matt] So so yeah, that's the main thing I take away from Teenage Engineering is that it's just a lovely looking thing.
[Matt] Paulie's actually nicked what I was gonna put forward as my thesis for the episode really which is ecosystem.
[Matt] I think that about three or four of the things we're looking at
[Matt] are ecosystem products and I think what's happening is the attention economy
[Matt] which is now sort of ruling so much of our digital lives.
[Matt] I think consciously or otherwise it's bleeding into music and music gear and so I think we're now getting products that were almost designed to keep you with that system.
[Matt] So this kind of means well like you've got your teenage engineering, your sample, you've got you know, your little synth, you've got your keyboard and now you've got the mixer. So I think a lot of choices designers and manufacturers are making now actually is around keeping you locked to this gear because this idea that as soon as somebody turns away and goes, I must use my you might sort of lose your complete constant fascination with this stuff and needing all this stuff all the time, always.
[Matt] And I think that actually applies. We're gonna see on a few other things. I believe that the That's interesting. Underlying thing that.
[Nick] I mean, it's a bit like going back to Betamax, isn't it? It's kind of like all those standards that everybody because we we all, you know, that for a whole period of time, we've all been sort of really
[Nick] not into the idea of you have to use this and that's it. We want interconnect or we have wanted interconnectivity. We wanted sort of functions that will talk nicely to other things that we might own. Whereas this is sort of that's sort of the opposite thought, but it's an interesting thought, Matt, actually. Yeah.
[Nick] Okay. Well, we can discuss that further. Right now, though, I think it's probably time for me to play a message from our friends at Cherry Audio.
[Nick] Okay. Was rather sort of improvised voice over because they only sent it to me an hour before the show.
[Nick] And I'd say, oh, I've the last ad was a May sale. A May's over now. Damn. I forgot to sort it out. That's rather foolish of me. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So, well, as the the next thing, we should get onto this because this is really big news. This is something we shot at our Superbooth a couple of weeks ago or three weeks ago and was announced yesterday. There's something you always wished Ableton Live could do. Your create process is using SDK. Order.
[Nick] Which basically allows you to create your
[Nick] own workflows, your own UI,
[Nick] your own things Maybe you just had an idea for your a right click menu. Extensions are add on tools that can make Ableton Live streaming. Now up to now, it's sort of been
[Nick] people sort of hacking the Python API and the the controller API, and it's been unofficially supported. It's not been supported. Whereas this, they're going in for, like, documented, supported.
[Nick] You could do this stuff. And it uses JavaScript as a as a choice because a lot of people will know how to use that, or perhaps a lot of people will know how to ask AI to make something in that language because it's very well documented. This is an interesting thing. I mean, I'm not really I I I'm not in in the live world, but I could imagine lots of people. Think, Stefan, you were saying Mora, you were saying that, you know, this is something that really interested you specifically. You dabble in a bit of coding presumably.
[Moray] Yeah. Yeah. I do. When I'm when I'm not making music, I'm yeah. Do a lot of coding. Very into it. But,
[Moray] yeah, the reason this is really exciting
[Moray] for me is well, it's it's a few things. So I do use live, but I'm a Reaper user primarily. And Reaper's been able you've been able to do all sorts of things in there with custom actions, custom workflows. You can write your own plugins.
[Moray] You can write your own extensions
[Moray] in it.
[Moray] And I think it's a really powerful thing for a piece of software or for a manufacturer to say, okay. We're going to we're gonna make this a feature. We're gonna make it so that actually
[Moray] you can break out of
[Moray] the workflows and the systems that we've put in place.
[Moray] And particularly with Ableton where it's got a really specific workflow, you're sort of you either get it or you don't. There's lots of people who don't get the whole clip launching thing.
[Moray] But I think being able the fact that they've gone, actually, no. We're going to let you create your own workflow within this. I think that's that's really brilliant. And I think it comes back to something that we've been
[Moray] sort of circling around so far this episode. And it's about ecosystems,
[Moray] but it's also about
[Moray] something we were saying at the beginning about
[Moray] people wanting a different relationship with technology
[Moray] and that either manifests itself as I want something with loads of big dials that I can turn or
[Moray] I want to be able to take it apart and do something different with it, which is I think something that's manifested itself in sort of
[Moray] retro computing because the barriers to entry there are really low. You can take the computer apart. You can swap bits out.
[Moray] You can you can sort of circuit bend things.
[Moray] But now you're applying that mentality to software,
[Moray] and I think that changes how people
[Moray] relate to it. They're not just
[Moray] a consumer of software. They're not just sort of saying, okay. I'm gonna I bought this software. I'm gonna use it. The manufacturer has given me some instructions on how to use it.
[Moray] Now it's a case of I'm a participant
[Moray] in
[Moray] and maybe that sounds a bit a bit pompous not being a participant in it, but you're kind of you're you're not actively changing how you use that software and you can extend it and you can make it work for you in ways rather than having to sort of say,
[Moray] I've had to compromise some part of my workflow, some part of the way I want to do things.
[Moray] I can now make this I can now make this happen.
[Moray] And part of the reason I wanted to talk about this was partly from
[Moray] last week's episode sort of talking about uses for AI. Sorry, I said it.
[Moray] But
[Moray] in something that you touched on last week with
[Moray] being really it's a really powerful tool for improving workflows.
[Moray] Because I watched a I watched a thing a few weeks ago about a film composer who's created a load of Reaper extensions that do all the boring bits of rendering your stems, but also because Reaper's had all this stuff in it for ages, it'll automatically upload the stems to the Dropbox,
[Moray] upload the shared Google Sheet with the director to say this is now rendered, here's the file name,
[Moray] Here's all the hit points in it. Here's the link to go and download it. And that's just sort of one example, a sort of really sort of quite boring example, but that's an example that's gonna have a huge impact. And I think once people realize what they can do with this, I think it's just gonna explode. And a lot of it will be people going, I wish I didn't have to rename tracks like this or something and just write a little thing that's just for them. And actually, that's brilliant because I've written hundreds of those that are useful to nobody but me. But it's it brings me joy. It means
[Moray] that my I I can concentrate on actually writing music. I can concentrate on the fun bits.
[Moray] And
[Moray] if it's and I think it opens up people's minds as well. Well, somebody it's it's why I really like sort of watching the rig rundown videos and like the ones from Superbooth. And it's like, oh, you've got that and you've got that. And you've but you've you've made it do something completely different. And it opens people's minds up to different ways of working. Mhmm. And I think that's that can only be a really good thing. That's a really good point, actually. I think that idea of sort of
[Nick] and the and the kind of the the the weird sort of dichotomy of, like, well, we're using technology that everybody is quite upset about to actually make the rest of their lives a bit more easy and and but also expand the horizons and and and make some interesting thing. I don't know, Matt. I I don't know if you're a coder or if you're a nooblet. You know? I imagine you might be a bit of a tinkerer perhaps, but I I might be getting this wrong. Do you use live? I mean, is this something that that you think, I mean Yeah. One of the things I said was delivering sample CDs or sample collections, just go write something that will just name all those things, export them, and do what I need. I don't want to have to do that manually sort of stuff.
[Matt] Yeah. Mean, these sort of labor segment I mean, there's god. There's so much to talk about from what what Morris said if I don't wanna take the entire
[Matt] entire podcast on Ableton extensions.
[Matt] So I'll try and do it in sections. Practically, yes.
[Matt] The sort of the grunt work of I've created a sample library but I don't want to sit here and top and tail it. I don't want to work out the picture of everything.
[Matt] You know you can groan about AI until the cows come home, people are going to use that functionality.
[Matt] That doesn't, you know there'll be somebody in the world who goes but that's the bit of music making where my art was naming the sample stems c one That's fine. C sharp one and that person will be sad. Most of us never felt that was where our expression was. So I think we're all agreed that apart from that one guy that we can let that job go to AI. Thank you. Thank you. That was gruesome. So from that point of view, it's fantastic.
[Matt] But again, if it really saves time, yes. But I did kind of find it interesting watching the video you had where in the demo, the first example was you could set up this thing, which probably takes a little while to set up, and then you can browse FreeSounds from inside Ableton and that absolutely is stay in our window, stay in our window because Yeah. If you count the clicks involved in
[Matt] open menu, right click, select, type in funky drumbeat and then count the clicks in, switch to browser,
[Matt] click link to free sounds, type in funky drumbeat, hit download and drag. I think you save a click or something. So that's just stay in our eco.
[Matt] So that's the practical stuff of it. The more sort of like the stuff Mario was touching on like the kind of like the where is this leading, what's the mindset, how is how is the world impacted by this stuff. These are like fixed quantities. Like these. They're fixed quantities. A brilliant cure won't turn into something else. They tend to be pretty standardized.
[Matt] But the point of AI is this and we're also acting like AI is just going to affect the creation
[Matt] process. It's not. It's going to also affect what people consider to be a finished product and I think that will be the oxymoronic phrase, a finished product. The idea that there is a totemic
[Matt] item which is the outcome of our creativity. Here is my record, it is a finished thing. We might make that but we'll also go and here is an AI trained on everything I thought and did during the months I worked on this record. And you can ask it to make infinite amounts more with my blessing. Here's what I created. Here's here's like the missing bits, the conceptual ideas, the libraries that weren't used, and then it's thought about it and made some more. And you can ask it to make more. And so we're not gonna have this like sort of fixed thing like you'll watch a film and go, I wish Ryan Reynolds wasn't in this one. And they'll go, well who do you want? Now this is at some point down the lane but this is the lane we are on and it's silly to pretend it isn't.
[Matt] And so finally, to keep jumping through all these conceptual hoops, if
[Matt] the products themselves that we create, our artist output is gonna become a fluid thing. Well then the tools we use will equally, I mean what's to stop vibe coding reaching a point in ten years where we go make me an Ableton? Not just make me a plug in, but make me an Ableton like I want. And so I think Ableton and Co are aware of this and they're trying to get us to go, okay. No. No. Ableton can be rejigged. It hasn't got to be a fixed thing. Ableton's like gonna join the future and be this mutable jelly and it could be whatever you want and you'll able to get a vibe code, corner of Ableton and it will be the place to stay here. Stay with us the way we all use, you know, a browser to access the whole world. They're like, in Ableton and then do all your mutable creativity
[Nick] from this place. And that's where I think this is about the start off. That's a very interesting point of view. Yeah. I I don't know. I I don't know whether or not because you're Paulie, I mean, the thing is is, you know, you've got lots of vintage digital stuff, which I'm guessing, you know, is hackable. You know, you might do you hack any of the software in it? I mean, is there things that you kinda go, oh, I'd like to Even to the point, it's like, wanna change the icon of this or right from there up to I added a function. Most definitely. Is a yeah. So it's Some of the, you know, some of the MIDI scrambling
[Paulie] stuff that this
[Paulie] new SDK
[Paulie] offers
[Paulie] reminds me of some of the old Amiga programs like bars and pipes, which was a crazy secret MIDI sequencer,
[Paulie] which had this kind of little scripting language where you could
[Paulie] tell it to, you know, make every third note drop whatever.
[Paulie] And it's something I hadn't really or change notes into pitch bend information or something like that. And
[Paulie] it's something that I hadn't thought about until,
[Paulie] you know, I I saw this.
[Paulie] Now every everybody knows my
[Paulie] opinion on AI at this point. I've made it very well known. I've I've always I've realized that my
[Paulie] I find meaning
[Paulie] meaning in life through friction and suffering. That is the only thing that gives my life any meaning. So I don't want things to get too easy,
[Paulie] Right. Okay. Well, that's And
[Paulie] you I I do you know, my favorite sample editor is Polyphone, which has an auto loop function.
[Paulie] And I'll concede to that when I'm making my multi samples. I will use the auto loop and auto cross fading, but I don't wanna let this slippery slope go too far because if you remove too much suffering,
[Nick] I've got nothing left. Well, okay. But I mean, think about think about this as an alternative. I mean, if there's something that's too easy, you could actually make something more difficult by creating an extension that did that. Why I buy old computers and stuff. I don't like track on, you know.
[Paulie] I do track on reaper for some modern project projects and something like that. But I had an even better idea about this SDK stuff.
[Paulie] From an accessibility
[Paulie] point of view,
[Paulie] you could you could and especially
[Paulie] and this is where we get to what I think my acceptable usage of AI is.
[Paulie] Removing barriers for the hearing and sight impaired, probably not so much hearing impaired in music, but certainly for sight impaired people,
[Paulie] you could code or potentially vibe code
[Paulie] something which
[Paulie] makes complete sense to you, makes the without the need for a screen reader software or magnifying software.
[Paulie] You could get all the bits you want of Ableton Live
[Paulie] and Ableton Live even, and just
[Paulie] have those in some kind of, you know, maybe with a braille keyboard or something like that. Some kind of UI that you can work really quickly on. And I think that would be absolute gold dust
[Paulie] because
[Paulie] a lot of times
[Nick] these accessible tools are created in collaboration with, you know, non disabled they need the API hooks, they need to be able to get in as well. So yeah. Exactly. But with something like this,
[Paulie] person themselves could define the entire user interface
[Paulie] And then That's true. I mean maybe have a series of
[Paulie] series of what's the word templates set up for
[Paulie] certain types of projects they're doing.
[Paulie] Yeah. And maybe the UI could be different depending on the type of template.
[Nick] You know? That's true. Yeah. So Well, that's something I know that's something Pretty cool. That's something that you can do in Reaper to to that degree. I think the thing to bear in mind with this is it's quite early stages. So there aren't. Yes. You know, one of the questions I asked in the interview was, okay. So you could do stuff with automation. It's like, yeah. No. We haven't opened that bit up, but I guess it's down to them how much of this they open. And I guess,
[Nick] the the more you open it up, either the the scarier it becomes or the more Yes. Amazing it becomes. And you think, alright. Let's go the whole hog. You know? But but, I mean, I I forget now. I was talking to somebody at the audio developer conference in Bristol a couple of years ago. I think it was the guy who did Juice who's now working on something else, and he's written
[Nick] the kind of core
[Nick] DSP functions of a DAW.
[Nick] So you could write all the UI, all the other things, and just tell it what, you know, what the inputs and the outputs are, all the kind of DSP, all the kind of I don't know. The the the audio handling stuff is and then and potentially the MIDI stuff, you just tell it how you want to interact with it. So it's almost like you buy
[Nick] the engine, and then you just decide what the car looks like. I mean, that's a very poor analogy, but that that those so the it feels like all of this thing is gonna end
[Nick] end up going in that direction to a degree. I don't know if that Yeah. Yeah. I if don't what I'm
[Matt] This idea of like there's just a core feature but so much else of this process. Like you know the way our physical studios look at Paulie's, look at mine, we're making music. Would you know if you weren't informed clearly that these are for the same purpose? And so there's no reason we have to have these standardized monolithic. This is Ann Ableton. It is this way. Doesn't well, no. Not really.
[Nick] Yeah. No. I think that's a very good point. Interesting stuff. Okay. Well, we we've got more. We've got more to talk about as well. So let me I know where to go next. I suppose I should probably hit the add button because that's that's something I have to do. So I'll do that now. Back after this.
[Nick] Right. Okay. Well, but we did talk about this notion of these kind of ecosystems.
[Nick] And I guess the next topic
[Nick] to cover this is the new sine vibes.
[Nick] I don't know whether whether to call it sine vibes or cine vibes. I always call it cine vibes, but I've been told it should be sine vibes. So this is the sine vibes droplet v two.
[Nick] Fits in the SDK of the Neologue XD,
[Nick] the Prologue, NTS one, NTS one mark two, NTS three, Chord Microchord two.
[Nick] Actually, the Chord Microchord two will hold, I think, it's up to 32 plug in slots. So kind of an interesting I think it's under a grand now. So you could actually run a whole bunch of these sine vibe oscillators, effects algorithms, and just load them in as you see fit. Because as we know,
[Nick] the Korg NTS SDK allows you to access all of that stuff. This is I think it's $19,
[Nick] and it does what does it do? It does multiple delay lines connected via series, proportional feedback system, just a really nice kind of DSP algorithm that you can then cross into, you know, into into your other core gear. And this sort of links in a little bit with some of the ideas that we're talking about. I mean, I guess, a way, links to the Ableton thing because, essentially, it's a hardware platform, I e, COG, that you can then just put these things into to make them do what perhaps you want. I mean, I think this is a little bit further removed because it's probably a bit more hardcore DSP coding rather than just JavaScript. You need a little bit more nash to that. And I don't know I don't know if the core SDK requires
[Nick] some form of payment. I'm not sure about that to to to get access to. I I I couldn't be clear. But this just looks like a nice, you know, one. First of all, nice effect. Right?
[Nick] Yeah. See that going nicely after your beard k?
[Matt] Yeah. I think I think people make free because I've got the n t s one got somewhere.
[Nick] Yeah. Right. It's You know, it's that big. Put it under anything. Yeah.
[Matt] Yeah because you know it's nice to have something which the NTS one obviously is a little synth but it also can be reconfigured as an effects unit. You can you know do that too. So yeah the Log SDK as Wagyu has come through is free because there are free effects to download as well.
[Matt] So as well as you know these professional things like side vibes, there's a whole bunch of people have coded up all manner of like DIY things for the
[Matt] cork, you know, ecosystem, I keep using that phrase.
[Matt] And they're awesome. If you've got any of these and you haven't actually gone and trolled the web to find all the free stuff that exists for these, do so. SignVibes, their effects, I think I bumped into them in their plug in format at some point and they're lovely. They're they're they're quite a specific
[Matt] sort of idea and sort of set of tonal things they're exploring.
[Matt] I don't think I've tried v two droplet but I think droplet original version has crossed my path. Yeah. What's to complain about if you can take something which is effectively
[Matt] one of the sort of quality plugins off your laptop,
[Matt] put it in a little cord box that you know you can get secondhand for like £60 these days or less.
[Matt] What's the what's the complaint about? It's like a reconfigurable, for me I use it more as an effects host than the synth. That's it. It's just like you know, you can spend £600 on an effects pedal or you can spend 60 and obviously there is some difference in quality but it's not huge.
[Matt] It's really quite good this stuff so yeah, $19.
[Nick] Excellent. Paulie, you did some drum log voices didn't you? I don't think this runs on the drum log according to the list so you're out of luck there. But mean, did you do that from scratch? Or did you get did yeah.
[Paulie] I I used a library called heavy HVCC
[Paulie] and
[Paulie] that allowed me to turn my pure data patches which Ah, right. Okay. It's still incredibly complex.
[Paulie] You know, for someone who who had never picked up pure data, I was like, this
[Paulie] is very blank.
[Paulie] This is where do I start, you know. I've got an input and an output, what what do I even do?
[Paulie] But it's it's so exciting this SDK stuff.
[Paulie] Yeah. I made, you know, like a hand clap because it was drum log. I made a hand clap percussion. I made like a little additive synth
[Paulie] that was almost kinda like modal ish bell synthesis
[Paulie] and
[Paulie] some weird FM stuff. So you can really go go places with it. And I think in the MicroKorg two,
[Paulie] this
[Paulie] SDK stuff gets even a bit more exciting
[Paulie] because they've got that looper, haven't they? They've got that sort of weird step looper.
[Paulie] Isn't it like sort of a looper, but you can fill the eight
[Paulie] bits of the loop with with different sounds?
[Paulie] So that's Oh, I don't know. You know. No. Yeah. Okay. Imagine if you changed your your effect or you changed your
[Paulie] you changed your patch per kind of and then run that through this kind of delay.
[Paulie] It'd be absolutely monstrous. So I'm I think I'm gonna have to get a microcog too at some point even though the SDK
[Nick] SDK lives very comfortably on the on the drum log as well. They just Yeah. You can slide the end. We can have thirty two thirty two of your own custom code slots that you can load from the that's the problem with the a lot of the other things. It's like there's like one slot and it's kind of a bit of a faff to
[Nick] Sure. Change it out or do stuff. I mean, I I think
[Nick] I think Wagyu said in the chat, actually, that's gonna pass. I would throw it up about what would be really handy is if you could save a patch which had that as part of the patch data. So you just load the whole thing including the plug in data and everything, and it just sort of fills the synth up with whatever it needs to be. That would that would be a a great additional use to that sort of thing for for sure. Interesting. I know so Moray, are you I I know you code. So I mean, have you looked into this have you got any core glog SDK stuff that you could you could Not yet. Plug things into? No. But I think like poorly, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be on online looking at microcogs too microcog tools later.
[Moray] I didn't realize you could fit 32 in there and that's suddenly my brain just gone.
[Moray] But, yeah, it's and I I love anything that's hackable.
[Moray] I love any any time you're encouraged to use
[Moray] something or take something out of
[Moray] the sort of manufacturer's expected usage because that's that's where the fun happens. That's where you
[Moray] find interesting things, and that's that's really inspirational. And yeah. I mean, this this is a lovely plug in. It sounds it sounds great. I love the fact that they've they've started moving things out of software and into hardware because, obviously, yeah, the the the plug ins, they they do sound great. But the fact that you can then interact with them in a different way in the hardware
[Moray] is
[Moray] lovely and it extends the lifetime of the hardware in a way that you
[Moray] don't
[Moray] always get with a lot of manufacturers
[Moray] mentioning no names.
[Moray] But there's there's some where you feel like, We're just gonna two year every two years, there's a new model and there's you've you've got to upgrade or not you you've got to upgrade, but you're not getting any more updates for anything. But if you've got you've got a product that's got a long shelf life and and there's an ecosystem of people making things for it, yeah, it's it's gonna last a lot longer. It's gonna be a lot more sustainable. It's gonna keep people
[Moray] finding new things to do with it. And yeah. Yeah. Really cool. And, yeah, comes back to ecosystems that we mentioned before.
[Nick] I wonder if that synth that we saw in the plastic bag or I saw at Superbooth, that
[Nick] was our biggest the the the I I posted a short Instagram video of this synth in a plastic bag. I wonder if that is maybe bringing the NTS life
[Nick] into it, and maybe it'll have a lot more capabilities for that. Because that would be an interesting thing for people to because, I mean, once you've built up a base level of there are a few people by making it, there is more documentation, so it's easier for other people to make things in it. Then by sort of pushing the hardware platform to other levels, then it starts to look a lot more interesting for
[Nick] as a more general kind of like, yeah, I'd like to buy into that. I'll get the cork stuff, but I can also get this other stuff. And a micro cork too, for instance, you know, yeah, maybe this one would be the one that sort of pushes it a bit further above the parapet, and it starts to open. I mean, it's it's funny, isn't it? Because Korg have been doing this for a little while, and it didn't really kinda click. And now from discussions here and things that are gradual realization about everybody being able to basically code their own stuff or lots of people being able to code their own stuff via Yes. Either via experience or using AI or whatever or a mate who does. These things start to make a lot more sense. So it actually shows a a surprising amount of in foresight from a company
[Nick] like like called one of the big sort of manufacturers. It's so so yeah. That could be a good altogether
[Nick] good.
[Nick] Let's have a look. I will say
[Paulie] don't if if you see one cheap, don't sleep on the the drum log because that has, I think, something like 24 slots for user since.
[Paulie] So even that is and
[Paulie] the the 1 to £300 second hand, I think, nowadays. So they're really they're really they're really really cool, but you don't get quite the polyphony. I think the MicroKorg two is
[Nick] is it eight? Or Eight. I think it's eight voices. Yeah. I think it's eight. I think drum log's only four four something, but I saw a glow I saw a glow in Murray's eye. He reached for his phone. Looked like he's back. That
[Moray] was just the edge of impulse purchase territory. Were you?
[Nick] Most of my impulse I'm purchase
[Nick] I'm impulse purchasing fly fishing equipment at the moment. I've just discovered that I have fly fishing water around the corner from me, and I can't decide whether to buy a license for it because it's a little bit more expensive than I would like. But I enjoyed your fishing video last time you did one, Nick. I I suggest you do a do like a spin off channel. You know what? I've been I've been thinking about this. Sonic Hake, I think we were gonna call that. Sonic Hake. That's right. Sonic. Yeah. Something
[Nick] like that.
[Nick] Right. Let's have a quick look at this one. This is another sort of, I guess, another ecosystem. This is on the VCV rack. This is the four m s k r module. This is from a video from CDM Lake.
[Nick] This is hold on. Let me just get that out of the way. So the KR the KR module allows you to load ROMs from various
[Nick] drum machines and just kind of trigger them at various samples. This is VCB rack, But also it works on the four m s meta module, which was probably something that made
[Nick] Paulie get quite excited by the concept of this. Have you have you downloaded this into this yet and seen whether it works? Or?
[Paulie] Alas,
[Paulie] the Not two has used it for my time. But yes, soon. Soon, my pretty.
[Paulie] Because I used the previous ones, you know, and it's kinda staggering the
[Paulie] the amount you can do. And
[Paulie] these virtual modules just kinda look so easy to to use. They've got triggers for, you know, the different samples. They've got a pitch control.
[Paulie] Wax something weird into the the pitch control, modulate things, send some triggers, and job done, really. Run it through a ring mode if you wanna be extra spicy.
[Nick] There's your I understand it because it's frack. This free, isn't it, this one?
[Paulie] It's a free I think it's free in VCV rack. Yeah. So you could just nab it and and try it.
[Paulie] Which is really cool. Like the idea It's
[Paulie] I I like the I like the idea of this rack I made
[Paulie] being really a kind of drum
[Paulie] a drum playground,
[Paulie] basically. All my sort of weirdest drum, like Percon's voice feature retro transient, and the metamodule are all all in here for when I want some chaotic percussion. So there we go. Interesting.
[Nick] I'm I'm I'm wondering whether there are any VCV rack for b and k modules. I'm sure that somebody's made them look that way. I imagine there's a lot for them. That's
[Matt] a thought. Yeah. I mean, basically, I was just thinking like I I had a I I think I'm a bit siloed in that I
[Matt] did like two years where I really was into VCV rack and I probably didn't really use much else. And then I did a year where I was really into some very early AI stuff and that was just complete like VCV off, early AI stuff. And then this has happened. So I haven't really come back and looked into VCV
[Matt] for about four years maybe.
[Matt] I mean if somebody's made some B and K.
[Matt] It's wonderful and
[Matt] I'm you know, I'm talking from memory but it was a wonderful thing to spend two years really going deep into.
[Matt] And that idea that you know, the basic premise why don't we put all these ROMs in a kind of you know, nicely labeled up module that knows it's got kicks in the air here etcetera so you can always run through 74,000 different kicks from the classic drum machines and modulate those selections. Obviously, why would you not wanna use that?
[Matt] Is it the core of everybody's music making? You'll find out. It's free and that's the thing with VCV basically. It's free. It's really awesome. If you don't need to handle things as I do currently,
[Matt] then I just think try try that. It's probably really great.
[Nick] Yeah. That sounds kind of interesting. I mean, I suppose the thing with the
[Nick] VCV rack also is
[Nick] you could you buy modules from the other people make make modules to buy as well. I can't remember how many there are. There are literally thousands of them. It's an astonishing Yeah. Things. And it really I mean, and this is the sort of thing that, you know, you're getting to the point where I don't know whether it's pop whether there are bridges between I've built this little system. Now I want to put it into a piece of hardware I could take out. Sort of VCV rack player would seem like a pretty smart thing to do
[Nick] in a sort of future hardware tie up. I don't know if that's something that's even even out there as a thing. I don't know, Moray. Are you a kind of fan of just
[Nick] endless drum voices? It seems like drums at the moment,
[Nick] much like wavetable synthesis for a very long time was the sort of every synth was a wavetable synth. It seems like now we're getting into drum voices a lot more. That seems to be a more prominent thing.
[Moray] Yeah. It was like we were just saying saying about about the drum log earlier.
[Moray] But, yeah, it's there's a lot of
[Moray] drum
[Moray] drum well, yes. Drum drum let's call them drum synthesizers.
[Moray] There's there's a lot out at the moment, and I like that this one is
[Moray] so simple and you just drop it straight into VCP rack and
[Moray] you know what you're gonna get out of it, I think. But the opportunities just to mess around
[Moray] in that form factor and in just a neat little module,
[Moray] I think that's going to be
[Moray] so much fun. Just yeah. I'm a former VCV rack addict. I have to sort of take it off my laptop because otherwise I'll just find myself, oh, I could plug that into that and that into that and then sort of three hours have disappeared.
[Moray] But it's interesting you you talked about
[Moray] doing a hardware module because I know there are people have been playing with the core engine of VCV Rack. I mean, Cardinal comes to mind as the sort of
[Moray] open source equivalent or the open source sort of host of it.
[Moray] But like Paulie, you were saying about converting pure data into
[Moray] drum log. I would be really interested
[Moray] to know how it works under the hood. And
[Moray] yeah. I'm
[Moray] sure there's options for
[Moray] converting
[Moray] the underlying sort of DSP,
[Moray] the underlying logic, maybe not with the full suite of of all of everybody's plugins. But,
[Moray] yeah, I I would be I'd be really interested to sort of talk to somebody who sort of really knows about DSP programming and and get really get into the weeds of what could be possible because, I think it's a really it would be a really fun idea to be able to sort of build something in the computer and then, right. I'm gonna take it out of the computer, put it in a box, and now I can interact with it differently. I I'm not tied to the to the mouse pad, and I've got that restriction. And yeah. I guess that's the metamodule is kind of the the starting point for that in two degrees. Yeah. I mean, that's the that's
[Nick] the
[Nick] that's the most recent incarnation of that kind of approach. And I guess it's it's just a question of will to try. It
[Paulie] will run VCV patches.
[Paulie] If you make a patch on your computer and then whack it on an SD card or on a mistake or there's a WiFi option,
[Paulie] it will run them but not every module on VCV rack has been ported
[Paulie] to But this
[Paulie] thousands have.
[Paulie] So you've got enough you've got enough to play with, all the fundamental ones and things like that. Absolute thousands have.
[Paulie] So it's kind of Do a it's kind of a you weird sort of I like it because it's a weird sort of world between
[Paulie] hardware and software where dreams come true.
[Moray] Well, it's kind of it's it's like it's like a sort of little portal, a little extension to your to your rack. There's sort of in this module, you open it up and then there's another nested rack within it. Sort of yeah.
[Moray] Everyone everyone do your weird hand gestures. But, it's sort of yeah.
[Nick] Little other world. It's it's lovely. Thank you so much. I I think we're probably gonna wrap things up now just because I'm
[Nick] getting hot in here. It's starting to warm up. I think the sun's been on the roof for a little bit longer, and it's it's warmed up. It's been lovely to see. Matt, what's next for you? Have you got clients in all week? Are you I guess it's cool in the bunker. Does it reach critical heat? Does it does it heat No. It it never does. We we've tested that in the last couple of weeks, I was like, a couple of nights, I was thinking that I might just go and sleep in the bunker. Because if
[Matt] you leave it like sharp, it just doesn't really climb much above 10 degrees in here.
[Matt] It has no aircon heating and stuff so yeah. If you just leave it be, it's always cool because you know, it's like feet of concrete.
[Matt] So yeah.
[Matt] This week is mainly just catching my breath because I've literally worked all through the weekend with this, let's say, Fergie was here filming this documentary about the place and what I used to do and how I ended up doing this because he knows me from dance music days. So it's like, what what is how has this happened? You know, that's when I saw you. We were we were When's that at?
[Matt] I don't know. He's basically kinda gone out and he's just he's very much a kinda build it and they will come guy. So they keep they made a documentary about Tony DeVitt, who was his kinda mentor. And that ended up making it all the way to Amazon Prime, but he doesn't make these things thinking, well, that's the only target. It might literally appear on his reels, know. It's just start making the things. So he's left me. He's on his way over to Paris to see, I think, Arna Rubatini. He's got, like, people like DJ Marquis lined up to see over in
[Matt] Brazil at some point. And he's just hitting lots of different people and gonna start banking these interviews. And it's just like once I got Anthony Bourdain kind of like and instead of food, it's music. So we did that. Right. So, yeah, I'm taking a breather, and then at the weekend, I've got a sound design thing in Manchester. I'm taking the VCS just as people get their hands on one and go, really? Oh, does it work like that?
[Nick] Interesting. Well, that sounds like a lot of fun. I hope to I hope you have a great weekend. And, Moray, are you attending the theater? Are you I guess you have to perform the soundtrack as well now you've Yeah. Spent all this time putting it together.
[Moray] I will be. I'm not looking forward to being in a tiny confined space in the roof of the theatre that's probably about six foot by six foot by six foot in June. Been in that very good time. I'm not looking forward to that, but
[Moray] I'm very much looking forward to the show. And I've got some I'm planning some more CEPHID live shows for later in the year. So that's sort of that's taking up the rest of my time thinking logistics and dates and Fantastic.
[Moray] Yeah. Hopefully hopefully some more some more gigs in churches because I like I like doing big sounds in big spaces and big light shows and things. So fingers crossed that that comes off as well.
[Nick] That sounds great. Sephid.world
[Nick] for all your sephid needs.
[Nick] But thank you very much for joining us. And, Paulie, I guess, back into,
[Nick] well, Iridium world
[Nick] and Yes. And other other things besides.
[Paulie] I've got to, in the next week or so, edit RetroCast episode four,
[Paulie] where I talk to Robert Henker, aka Mono Lake,
[Paulie] about many many cool things including
[Paulie] using four or five Commodore PET computers live, you know, which is Yes. Which, you know, I use I use sort of 1985
[Paulie] computers live and and people think I'm crazy. He's using like late seventies computers live and I think he's crazy. So there
[Paulie] there'll be there's always someone crazier than you in in your daring technological
[Paulie] feats basically. But, yeah, that's that's it was a really good chat. He was a lovely guy and I'll edit that and put that out for next month. Yes, I'll film this film this Iridium MK two review and there will probably be some kind of homage to Aphex Twin in there in one of the demos.
[Paulie] Because I have to because there's an Aphex Twin mode, you know. So Yeah. Of course. That seems fair.
[Nick] Well, thank you very much, folks. Lovely to see you all. That was Sonic Talk 08/1995,
[Nick] and we will see you next time. I'll just press the button to end it all. See you later. Thanks for watching. Bye bye now.
[Matt] Bye.