[Nick] Sonic.
[Nick] Hey. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Sonic Talk episode eight nine six recording today on the tenth of the sixth. That makes it Juno one zero six day, which is very appropriate because today,
[Nick] our show and as every week, it's about music technology. It's about synthesizers, drum machines,
[Nick] all the stuff that goes into making music, recording music, performing music, maybe streaming, all sorts of, you know, the technology around it and associated other technologies.
[Nick] What a time to be alive. There's just so much stuff going on. It's astonishing, really. So, anyway, I do hope everybody's well out there. I wanna say thanks very much to everybody in the chat room. Always good to see you all there. I've got Wagyu McAvrey 9464.
[Nick] Tom Tommy Kirkeinian 9130.
[Nick] Gosh. That's hard to pronounce.
[Nick] Wagyu,
[Nick] of course. Thank you, Wagyu. I I already didn't say that for manning the controls, keeping the lonely ladies and and script kiddies out, and also a lot of other stuff besides. Thank you very much. Red walks,
[Nick] Floppy Winkle, of course, Bonkerama, Katie Kilobyte,
[Nick] Droigon,
[Nick] Willow Music's five,
[Nick] No Man Went four zero six nine. Gosh. Lots of lot I I find it hard to believe that No Man Went. There are 4,069
[Nick] other or 68 others, and you had to have 4,069 on there. But I guess that's just the way it goes. Anyway, lovely to see everybody. Just wanna do a bit of housekeeping. Obviously, coming up, we have in fact, if I do
[Nick] this, you'll be able to see. Yeah. We are we're giving away
[Nick] a expressive e, Osmo's 49 c e. That is astonishing. We're I'm really pleased to get that prize. You just gotta check out. You can do that via Instagram or sign up. It's just the competition. Sonicstate.com/competition
[Nick] is the place to find it. That's running till the June 26, so do June. So do check that out. Erica said Bullfrog
[Nick] and
[Nick] drums and resonant. Philbank review is up, which Matt has very kindly done. And Bodmi Airway two and Airway Sound coming up. Domino review is up. I think I posted that last week, and we'll be at Gearfest on the June 27 in London. So do
[Nick] say hi. I was talking pre show about new we're we're trying out a bit new technology, some new technology there, new phone, new recorder, just, you know, just to see how that goes so that we can we're ready for the high high
[Nick] the high what am I talking about? The high video count shows, so it'll all be ready and in place. Anyway, that's enough of that. Before I get onto our guests, I will obviously plug our Patreon because we've been posting a few of these videos up. You can get access to them early.
[Nick] I think the last one was Domino. I'm not sure what else is up there at the moment, but do do consider it. I'll be back after this.
[Nick] Yes. Indeed. So welcome.
[Nick] Welcome, everybody. We'll start with Gaz. Gaz Williams there over in Bristol where he's in his music production Garrett, where he's the mastermind of modular performances, rack records, and I'm sure many other things that are too new to mention. How are you, Gaz? Are you well? Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah. So just getting back to normal after a a mad few days. So, yeah, I went over to the Brussels Wham, the the inaugural event. This is a
[Gaz] you know, you can think of it as a small super booth that was held,
[Gaz] that was organized by Shack Matt and Beat Surfing.
[Gaz] Absolutely terrific event.
[Gaz] They've had evening events, daytime expo,
[Gaz] workshops, the like. And then Nice. An evening
[Gaz] and, like, and then an event in the evening. And
[Gaz] plenty of hands on, some absolutely mind blowing stuff there. Some of the stuff, I guess,
[Gaz] had been seen at Superbooth.
[Gaz] Things come along.
[Gaz] Got to play with Constantine's
[Gaz] croak module, which I think is super interesting. That's extended
[Gaz] technique module, which kinda derived from classical music. Bunch of faders,
[Gaz] and it can do all sorts of stuff with it.
[Gaz] Probably best to look. I think there's a sonic video on that, but I really loved that. Loads of cool stuff. I got to play more with the
[Gaz] the Econ six from Mophore. I mean, another company.
[Nick] Yeah. Does that come along a little more? Because I think it was it still it felt like it was sort of early
[Gaz] earlier in its you know, when we saw it at Superboost, it had maybe all the sounds hadn't been made, and there was some there was some more to to hear from it. How was it? Okay. Well, I thought it was really good. I mean, I love the fact you can initialize the patch from the front panel, something I wish everything did, not always do. Sometimes it's a bit obscure.
[Gaz] So pretty much, it was always going from a
[Gaz] a default stage. Vanilla. Yeah.
[Gaz] And just really like the kind of voice allocation and how you can kind of make different
[Gaz] you know, you can have a mono voice and then some poly voices. And, you know,
[Gaz] we've talked about this before a little bit, about a little bit of a return to multi timbality.
[Gaz] That's what we could But
[Gaz] I mean, really, with our Econ six, I really think it's one of the kind of instruments that you really do need to get hands on with
[Gaz] because you're dealing with physics in a way in the way that it's Yeah. Working and using the BBD resonators,
[Gaz] truly original sound, beautiful instrument. But I gotta be honest, the thing that just has just blown my socks away, blown them far away, probably heading over speak.
[Nick] See, evidence. Yeah. Hold on.
[Nick] There's a poster frame.
[Gaz] But is the Shakmat Queen's Court
[Gaz] and okay. I know it's a module, but I think as well, I think it could be you know, I think it's such a brilliant and different approach to mixing. I think it could really work very well as a standalone mixer. And I I hope that they do that at some point just because it's like a matrix mixer and you've got like a single
[Gaz] fader then, so depending on what you press. So there's a bunch of buttons. And depending on what you press or any cluster of buttons what you press, you then use this kind of fader then. That's a great idea. It's full of VCAs. You can make them
[Gaz] you've got full envelope followers of all tracks.
[Gaz] The
[Gaz] just the three auxiliary returns coming in, so you got plenty of stereo returns. And then you got this fantastic expandability where you can expand it with a couple of extra modules that give you another
[Gaz] well, each module gives you two sets of stereo ins and another auxiliary
[Gaz] return. So really expandable the award best modular, I think, award at at Superbooth. And I think A fully deserved. But as Yeah. Fully deserved. The idea is so brilliant, and I urge people to look at it even if they've got no interest in modular because I do think that conceptually,
[Gaz] this is a move forward. This, I think, is maybe one of the most significant modules that I've seen in the last few years,
[Gaz] partly because I can kind of see its use way outside of just modular. I think it's really is a bit of a, I dare say, the game changer word. But yeah. Well, that's fair enough. I think that's good to have one of those once in a while, isn't it? Yeah. And and then the last thing about that I'd like to say about the event was in the evening,
[Gaz] Francois from Shakma plays in an act called alias.
[Gaz] And this is just an astonishing experience because for me, it's redefined what a band actually is because it's a three piece band, but there's only one of those band members, which is Francois from Shakmat making music. Then the other two members, one of them is has got
[Gaz] pieces of large pieces of paper in front of him, lots and lots of
[Gaz] pastels,
[Gaz] and it's hang up, drawing lines, and there's a camera above it. And the third member is filming it and and then animating
[Gaz] what's going on in the drawing. But the thing is it's brilliant. But what's super brilliant about it is is rather than Francois on the stage and these, they're all they set up on the floor, and they're all together.
[Gaz] So that's why it feels like a band. And all of them are rocking and rocking. You know?
[Gaz] And I described the
[Nick] guy as a rock and roll pasteler because he's really giving it some with a pastel. It's very it's it's it's it's very appropriate, isn't it? Because, I mean, Brussels well, Belgium, home of Magritte, so conceptualized.
[Nick] It's all Yes. All a thing. Yeah. So yeah. Yes. Well, then we'll cut there's other things I wanna talk to you about, but I should probably introduce Steve. He's waiting patiently here. Steve here there in Brighton, fresh from a wedding, although he didn't do the reception, he tells me. I'll be I'll be
[Steve] How are you, Steve? Yeah. Yeah. I'm good. Thanks. Sober as a judge and drinking tea. That's that's how I roll these days. No. I'm good. Thanks, Nick. I'm just sort of thinking
[Steve] what could I I've I've got nothing that really competes with Gaz's activity, but what have I been looking into and discovering
[Steve] over the last time since I've been with you guys? And I've been looking into getting it into developing with Max for Live, essentially because there was some yeah. There was a certain
[Steve] problems with my live setup that I realized that I could sort by developing
[Steve] MIDI plug ins that could just reroute things in a way that I wanted to do it. But I'm a complete newcomer when it came to
[Steve] this field. So after just finding my way for a little bit, I thought
[Steve] this is gonna provoke a reaction, I know. I thought, I'm gonna take a little shortcut here, and I'm gonna try the vibe coding route.
[Steve] So I went to an unspecified platform
[Steve] to see whether that platform could actually just generate patches for Max for Live. Told it what it what to do. It was very clear that the platform understood what I meant. What I realized really quickly, Nick, and this is something that's being covered quite a lot in computing world right now, is that no matter what I put into the platform, the result that I got and then applied to Max for Live, there was always something wrong with it. And so Right. What I thought was gonna be a shortcut
[Steve] to learning how to develop in this
[Steve] in the Max for Live space
[Steve] actually, was creating more problems than it was solving. Oh, interesting. I I had to turn it around and actually learn
[Nick] know, at least start to learn MaxForLive properly in order to debug the vibe code that I generated. So Did you install just a quick question. Did you upload the documentation to the to your model of choice? Because that's always a good start because then it uses that as the source of truth as it were.
[Steve] No.
[Nick] No. I didn't do that, actually. That would probably be a No. An idea.
[Steve] Well, I I might try that. I did notice that the platform I was using changed its mind at certain points, which was a little bit disconcerting. I don't want a computer, no matter how artificially intelligent it is, to start changing its mind halfway through a project. But anyway Yeah. But but but my point is is that I found actually
[Steve] that in terms of efficiency,
[Steve] it would have been more efficient for me to learn what I was doing rather than taking the shortcut and having to Interesting. Correct what the pro what the platform was actually putting out. So a little bit of food for thought there. I think I think that's prob might be down it might be down to the fact that it doesn't have the knowledge of that because that's quite niche.
[Nick] It may know a bit about JavaScript programming. It know a bit about c programming, but it won't know the rules of Max for Live. So if there's a documentation for Max for Live, you upload that and say, this is this is what I want you to query against. Now try. Yeah. Might be worth Well, I I I think you're right, Nick. And I think actually what that demonstrates as well is so you have an ignorant operator,
[Steve] which is me. An Turn into a computer.
[Steve] That's right. So this is the classic Dunning Kruger, isn't it? Because neither me nor the LLM know what we're doing.
[Nick] That's quite funny. Oh, well. That is quite funny. Well, yeah, I mean, by the same token, I I mean, I mentioned this bit before the show. I just downloaded Claude code for the this computer,
[Nick] and I've been writing every time I wake up, and I'm like, oh, I need to do this. And then I just write something that does it. So I've got something now that will take any video that we produce, extract the audio, get a transcript,
[Nick] and give me that so that I can upload that somewhere for SEO and all of those sort of things. And and do and and that took an hour. It's yeah. And it's it runs on my machine. So there's lots of things. Anyway, don't wanna get too far into that. I mean, I know it's hard to it's hard to avoid because it's becoming more and more prevalent. I just think the distinction between
[Nick] generative and assistive is very, very important. So we'll we'll get on to that and perhaps another type. Gaz, you went to see King Crimson. I'm so jealous.
[Gaz] Well I'm so jealous. Beat. Beat. Beat. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So this is King Crimson did three albums in the early eighties, discipline, beat, and three of a perfect pair Yep. Which were of my favorite athletes.
[Gaz] Right. And I'm guessing that you're not probably so much into the seventies King Crumbs and the early King Crumbs. And Not in the slightest. Right. Right. Because this is the thing, isn't it? That those albums
[Gaz] are really super unique, aren't they? There's something still fresh and, you know,
[Gaz] all all of the four band members then were all playing, like,
[Gaz] instruments, weren't they? They both Adrian Blue and Robert Fripp were playing
[Gaz] Roland GR '3 hundreds or were they GR five hundreds, but they were playing, you know, guitar synthesizers. Tony Levin was playing the Chapman stick, and
[Gaz] Bill Bruford was playing, like, Simmons Simmons. Yeah. Like, Simmons drums. So a lot of these and and then musical ideas may be more akin to sort of Steve Reich or, you know,
[Gaz] patterns.
[Gaz] Like, they both play the same pattern, but Robert Fritz's pattern would be one beat shorter than Adrian Ballou, so then it would loop round. And so a lot of these ideas are things which should become
[Nick] things that we've explored more in more modern electronic music. Now you can get them in an eight step step sequencer for a euro, I thought. Yeah.
[Gaz] I've been I've actually been really trying to do a lot a bunch of those kind of things in my own music. But but yeah.
[Gaz] And King Crimson have sort of subsequently carried on without Adrian Berlou and then
[Gaz] bringing Jacko Jacksek into front front. And and I always felt that
[Gaz] that particular early eighties era was
[Gaz] particularly special. So I was delighted when
[Gaz] two of the original members, such as the you know, Adrian Ballou, who's an incredible musician, and my big hero, Tony Levin, on the bass,
[Gaz] together with Danny Carey from Toole and
[Gaz] Steve Vai in part in place of I know. Yeah. Robert Smith. I wanted to go. As I said, I tried to get a ticket. So good. Then forgot about it and then saw your post on social. So was it good? Oh, it was brilliant. I mean, that is such a great seat. I mean, initially, was a little bit, oh, no. I'm on the wrong side because I'm on the wrong side of the because I had a front row seat. I was on the wrong side from Tony Levin, but was directly opposite Steve Vai. And Steve Vai is just the most astonishing creative guitarist. Whether you like guitar or not, Steve Vai's
[Gaz] approach, his kind of fluid legato,
[Gaz] beautiful kind of playing. You know, initially, a lot of people think, can Steve Vai play the Robert Fripp parts? Well, you know, Steve Vai's famous sort
[Gaz] of tapping. And then
[Gaz] Robert Fripp does this absolutely insanely complex kind of picking up, down picking that's very, very hard to do. So Steve Vai just actually referred
[Gaz] back to his style of playing his own style of playing.
[Gaz] And I was curious to see how it would all sound, but it did sound brilliant. And in part, I think that was because they were using Roland JC one twenty amplifiers, both him and Baloo, which was something that they did back in those early And they were jumping in the recordings. Yeah. Clean yeah. And gives a really particular clean and
[Gaz] very detailed sound. So, yeah, it's great. And then yeah. And Steve, look. Look.
[Nick] Steve Steve I and
[Gaz] it was hot. It was still hot from sort of how many thousands of notes he just played with it. So I was just
[Nick] I was just mean, I have to say, I think I think Adrian Ballou is one of the best guitar vocal slash vocalists of our of our time. So I mean Agreed. Let's just go through it. Frank Zappa, he played for. Yep. Talking Heads.
[Gaz] Yep. King Crimson. Tom Tom. Mean, that's just King Crimson. Tom Tom Clubs. David Bowie David Bowie nicked him from from Zappa's band, and so he had to step with Bowie. So the David Bowie album stage features Baloo. But Yeah. Bowie brought him back in as the musical director for the nineteen ninety Sound of Vision tour.
[Gaz] But let's not forget just how much he features on those amazing Nine Inch Nails albums, Downward Spiral and various other ones. Oh, didn't I? Right. Yeah. I mean, it's just brilliant. Yeah. Absolutely brilliant.
[Nick] Well, I'm so I'm so jealous, and I'm glad you got to see it. So, yeah, nice to Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. Well well, let's we do let I we have to do. Let's do this. I mean, it's Juno Sony one zero six day. This is a video from
[Nick] four studios. So just the the first ones I could find.
[Nick] The classic Juno six, of course, September to 09/28. 40 years old. I've got one in my in my in my studio, but it's got bunch of those.
[Nick] And it's just those I mean, look. There's certainly no sounds, but there are some sound I mean, for me, I don't know what for the Juno, for me, it was the person that really opened my mind to it was
[Nick] William Orbit
[Nick] with fascinating rhythm, that album with those beautiful sort of bell like soft pads that just swept around in that that glorious stereo.
[Nick] Really, I used to use it much more mutedly. And and that's what that's why I got one because I just heard his
[Nick] and also the just the kind of the organ type tones and the modular he's I I mean, that's what turned me on to it. Steve, I saw you nodding
[Nick] while I mean, you you Well you had Gino one zero sixes?
[Steve] Yeah. I've got one right here. Here it is in the in
[Steve] the flesh.
[Steve] Boom.
[Steve] The plywood base.
[Steve] That's the one. That's the boy.
[Steve] There he is.
[Nick] With the wood they scratched. They still have paint wood on the inside. You can let you look in, and it's just raw plywood underneath in the the ledger.
[Steve] Yeah. Well, I mean, this is this is not my first Juno. I actually my first Juno was my
[Steve] show my first Juno was a a Juno
[Steve] six all the way back in 1985,
[Steve] which I bought as a kid. And it's it's not the same it's not the same synthesizer, but it is very, very similar. And it's it's definitely
[Steve] a kind of Juno.
[Steve] And yeah. So I I still use Junos on on pretty much everything that I do. And I was just sort of thinking to myself,
[Steve] what can I tell people? Why why would that be the case? What is it about the Juno that it's that is is so good? And I and I think it it's for me, it's got a enormous
[Steve] sweet spot, if you know what I mean. It feels like if you're sound designing with the Juno rather than with so many other synths where you're trying to avoid
[Steve] going to places that just don't really work. With the Juno, it's more like you're always refining a sound that's fundamentally
[Steve] good, if you know what I mean. And so what what I found over the years is that the the particularly the bottom end of the Juno, so if you're looking for subsounds or bass sounds, if you design something correctly or not, it will just sit in a mix. It's not gonna move. It's not going to cause you problems.
[Steve] It will just sit there and do a
[Steve] fine job.
[Steve] But the most interesting part of the of the Juno, which is something I think that you've already alluded to now,
[Steve] is in the midrange.
[Steve] Now what what I mean by this is that if
[Steve] you were to listen to the work of William Orbit, as you said, there are some tracks of his that really illustrate
[Steve] just how interesting and
[Steve] unique the Juno one zero six can sound. So for example, if you take a listen to his pieces in a modern style album, which came out originally in '96, but I think the proper release, it was in '99.
[Steve] That entire album is almost like a showcase for his skill on a one zero six. And there's there's a specific track that I would recommend people take a listen to. It's his version of Vivaldi's
[Steve] winter. I think it's winter. It's called Lin Verno. And the first one and a half minutes is just
[Steve] that kind of organ
[Steve] sound
[Steve] that the Juno can excel at just played in three different parts, and it sounds
[Steve] like nothing else. I've not found another instrument that that that can replicate that. It's just basically something that you get from the Geno six. So it's got a really lovely
[Steve] midrange to this synthesizer, which in my experience, just sits really well in any kind of mix. Just one other thing I would just mention.
[Steve] I've also got quite a lot quite a handful of different Juno one zero six and sixty emulators.
[Steve] And these days, those emulators, those plug ins, they're excellent. They've they can supply you with the Juno one zero six sound
[Steve] that that you need nine times out of 10. But I've never found a plug in that really replicates that highly resonant
[Steve] Juno one zero six filter sound that you get on those William Orbit records. It never quite get quite gets there. And this is why I'm I think I'm always gonna hang on to a a hardware analog tuner.
[Nick] It's it's almost
[Nick] vocal, isn't it? It's got this sort of weird there are just certain points where it's just like, wow. I'd I'd I've always been a lot of this. This I think it's one of my favorite pieces of work I ever did, and it was called it was a track called Burning Holes by a band called Sunna, s u n n a. And it's I can't remember what the mix is. I can't I've forgotten what is it, but it it I don't it wasn't a DNA mix, but it was it's a remix, and I'm the most proud of that. And that had the main lead line in it is is a Juno one zero six distorted into a MIDI verb two, and it sounds absolutely fantastic, I have to say, as well as many Yeah. Yeah. They are just truly amazing. I don't know, Gaz, have you have you ever owned or coveted?
[Gaz] Well, they're a bit big. I think your studio is not designed for for five octave keyboards. I mean, I've got the I've got the I've got the the UDO super six. It's just got some similarities. And I've also got a a DeepMind as well, which, again, is
[Gaz] quite similar in some in some respects and was used as a starting point. But I just think the one zero six is so pig ugly. I think it's horrible looking.
[Steve] Slow.
[Nick] Covering up his ears. I think I think you've yeah. Steve
[Nick] Steve Steve is Steve is covering his ears. Where are its ears, actually, Steve? I'd be interested to know. Yeah. Are they around the back? Oh, it's around the back, Nick. It's around the Okay.
[Nick] Enough. I
[Gaz] think in part, when I first started getting into synths, they were they
[Gaz] were kind of the prevalent synth that was around.
[Gaz] And
[Gaz] and I got really wooed by the kind of cord. Like, when the m one came out, it was around 88, and that's when I was really first getting into this kind of stuff. And the one zero six just seemed quite antiquated and sort of you know, and and what was only about three or four years old at that point in time.
[Gaz] But no. I'm I I jest, of course. It is a wonderful synthesizer.
[Gaz] I and I was I was thinking about it. I was thinking about, like, all the kind of limitations that it has, you know, with a single envelope and, you know, and just how you'd have to do
[Gaz] creative workarounds to try and do things
[Gaz] with a filter or whatever
[Gaz] to to get some some fairly
[Gaz] it's quite hard to get certain sounds off it. And I always think that it always sounds like a Juno one zero six. You know? No matter what you do, it's got a definite sonic
[Gaz] signature about it. Yeah.
[Gaz] Particularly that chorus. I mean, noisy as hell as it is. But Noisy. Really noisy. But, you know, that noise is a sort of is a is a is a quality of a sort, even though sometimes you really don't want it.
[Gaz] And especially back then if you hear that. Went on to tape.
[Gaz] Is it a rogue You can't. A ghost of a one zero six.
[Nick] No. You probably can't, but I I've got the link. I'm just gonna post it in the in the thing. Oh, of a noise?
[Nick] No. No. Of my of my mix because I'm I'm still proud of it. Oh, let's see. It's intro I don't know if I can I don't know if I can? I don't know if I can actually What year is it from, Nick?
[Nick] It's oh, gosh. It would have been
[Nick] I can't remember.
[Nick] I I actually can't remember. It must have been
[Nick] late nineties, I would guess. I'm trying to find it. Anyway, I'm sorry. I don't mean to to hijack it with my own vanity, although I am being quite
[Nick] No. Bring it on. Really I I I have and I haven't used my phrase because I've got a dead voice or maybe two dead voices in it. I don't need get it sorted out. I know. And I I've I've been offered to have it sorted out, and I just keep I keep I I say yes, and then I just haven't you know? I guess the thing is is in here, I don't often get the big synths out and put them anywhere because they're just not there's not really room for them at all times. But I think I'd you know, these synthesizers, these old Rolands, Pashid, this and, of course, the JD 800 we talked about before, they have a reputation for component failure.
[Steve] And and this is one of the reasons why I I don't think I would recommend
[Steve] to anybody who doesn't know exactly what they're doing that that they would buy a Juno one zero six today. I think, you know, the you're gonna get one, and the components aren't gonna fail, and then it's gonna sit in the in the back of your studio for years. But what I would recommend, just something that Gan said, which I thought just struck something in my head. Yeah. On the original machine, it's only got one envelope generator, which means that if you're doing, like, a a bass sound, then you'd lose a with a pluck kind of envelope generator, you you lose a lot of volume pretty much straight away.
[Steve] But the Roland Cloud version of the Juno one zero six actually has two envelope generators,
[Steve] and it opens up a whole world of of a new world of Juno sounds. And I have to admit, the the emulation is very good. It's got that era
[Nick] sound, which I'll be honest, I really like. It's not re it's not really very well, no. It is Juno. I don't I don't wanna overstate it. But if you can live with the era of sound, that extra envelope generator makes the Juno a new instrument. I think also that the release times are a bit longer as well. So I'd recommend that. Interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, there is that that happens a couple of because, I mean, you know, the the the MS 20 desktop kit. Do you remember that? When that came out, that that I still wish I had one because I think that perfected the MS 20 as a synthesizer because you had I can't remember what the yeah. Pulse width modulation, obviously, that's one thing. But there was another another issue which you could you could run it properly duophonically.
[Nick] And that way and I I just I I think I did some some jams with it. I mean, I had to build it, which was a bit of a drag, but it was I wish I'd kept that. I thought that was an amazing instrument. But so sometime anyway, happy Juno one zero six day, everybody. That was kind of really the point of it. And if you got one on and there are great emulations out there. You wouldn't would hope that the Roland Cloud would be good. It should be a noisy chorus and all. I think there are some versions that do it where you can make the chorus noisy or not. I've done Baringer did a Juno one zero six chorus as well, didn't they? Which I I don't know what that would mean. But Also, the the the Roland
[Steve] boutique
[Steve] units, they also have the the facility to switch off the noise or switch it on. Excellent. I I I never experimented with that. I I don't I'm not, you know No. Fair enough. Life's too short. Just keep keep the noise on. Absolutely. Alright. Well, I'm just gonna take a quick break. We will be back after this.
[Nick] Well, who knows what that's gonna be? It's hard to know, isn't it?
[Nick] Right. Okay. What's next? Let's have a look at oh, hold on. Let me get my my right window up.
[Nick] Yeah.
[Nick] I thought this one was pretty good, actually. This let's go here.
[Steve] Actually,
[Nick] This is by a guy called Andy Brewer who took two
[Nick] just took a track of stereo white a pink noise, I beg your pardon, I think it was,
[Nick] Phase inverted and then EQ'd one of them
[Nick] and automated the EQ. And this is mind blowing. So so he was able to I mean, and it's it makes perfect sense in a way, But the just the the diligence and the application of this. So this is where it starts. Let me fast forward to where it ended up. This is remember, this is basically two tracks of pink noise. EQ, I'm guessing across one of them because that would change the phase. I'm not sure I probably does explain. So
[Nick] actually
[Nick] putting the labels in to follow the cue points. But this is all fabulous pro cue that he did in Reaper.
[Nick] I mean, absolutely
[Nick] blooming mind blowing, I think. I really
[Nick] it really and it makes you really kinda suddenly go, oh, yeah. Because all noise is what pink noise being a full spectrum of noise
[Nick] and, you know, additive synthesis, all of those things, resynthesis, FFT, you just think it's such a stark illustration of of that, isn't it? So I thought this was absolutely fantastic.
[Gaz] Mean, in the video, I found it. Brilliant find. It is absolutely brilliant, isn't it? And I mean because I was thinking initially that there was gonna be is they were gonna kind of process tracks a bit, and it's all done in within that single instance Yeah. With multiple nodes of EQ, just automation, EQ automation. And
[Gaz] agree totally with what you're saying, Nick. It's sort of
[Gaz] just,
[Gaz] you know, a track from nothing, you know, a track from well, not from nothing, but from
[Gaz] EQ. And then you just wow. It's got me thinking. It really has. I mean, I know there's been a bunch of things. In fact, I think the latest
[Gaz] you know, the Erica since the Resonant
[Nick] Yeah. That's great. That's fantastic.
[Gaz] It does sound fantastic. And then
[Gaz] Resonant.
[Gaz] You know, this is it just takes that kind of utility utility plug in into creativity,
[Gaz] you know, wow, to the next level. And
[Gaz] and I think as well because the sound being bought born out of noise and then, you know,
[Gaz] tight bands of noise
[Gaz] gives it like a
[Gaz] a grain. It gives it a quality of sound. It's just
[Gaz] I totally urge everybody to watch this video. Absolutely. Not much. I mean, the
[Nick] the the bits where where
[Nick] what they're doing is just sort of animating
[Nick] the gain of, like, to give you the kick and the snare and all those. It's just it's like, ah, I need to it's such a clear visualization of how sound works. It's just so clever. I think he deserves some sort of award for that. I don't know whether you've Yeah. It's brilliant, isn't it, Steve, I thought? Yeah. Yeah. I agree. The amount of time that must have taken is absolutely extraordinary. And and what I was watching and listening to it earlier, I realized that he must have been sitting there with, like,
[Steve] calculator or some sort of logbook where you could where he could dial in the related harm harmonics. Because that's not I mean, if he was doing it in his own head, that would have taken even longer. So full kudos to to the chap. I did wonder, actually.
[Steve] So you've got, as you're saying, Nick, full spectrum noise going in there pink with its energy profile, which I I forgot my electrical engineering. So but I know it's got one. I'm I'm wondering that you can maybe get to different places with other
[Steve] Types of noise. Versions of noise. So white noise would be another yeah. Blue or or just whatever
[Steve] something else going into that kind of array of peaking EQs could
[Steve] could be interesting. And then it also struck me that where
[Steve] Andy had landed with this was where the EQ bands were essentially emulating
[Steve] sounds that we're already familiar with. So it was like a it it sounded a bit like a resonant pipe or a kick drum at times.
[Steve] Where would we land if
[Steve] the EQ bands were not with
[Steve] sort of like a related frequencies,
[Steve] but actually were working independently? It's like an array of sine waves that that weren't connected directly to notes. And we could end up in some very, very interesting sort of textural places. I have to say, if I was gonna do that, I think I'd probably get out one of my samplers rather than sitting there for two weeks programming the whole thing in. But then I'm lazy. Yes. I I demonstrated earlier talking about code live coding. So I think the I think the main thing was is, as you said, it was it was because I'm I I think and I don't know pro I don't know fab filter, but I know some EQs give you a keyboard layout at the top. So you can you can or an overlay where you can see where each frequency drops in terms of those probably what there may even be quantization
[Nick] for that. I'm not sure. I mean, I am guessing. But I'd imagine just mapping all those automation things
[Nick] to get the melodies and then animating the amplitude of those so that each one would have an envelope because there's there's pulsing in the base, which is just flick flicking up, but it's sort of up and then descending down for a release or a decay. Just really I mean and I suppose
[Nick] I mean, that it's just inverting the the the sonic process. But, I mean, I'd be very interested to see if there's a
[Nick] a an oscillator or a synthesizer concept that could come out of of that somewhere. Yeah. Gazz, you're looking like Dude, well, I'm also wondering if you put, like like, a drumbeat in, duplicated it, phased, flipped it,
[Gaz] and then just did some I know, obviously, you will get you get the pitches out of it being all the harmonics and the noise. But if you took, like, a drumbeat, you know, follow the same process and just kind of just automated various nodes around of it,
[Gaz] rendered that off, and then sort of then mixed it back into the original sort of drumbeat, whether you you could find some really interesting
[Nick] I don't know. It's it's got my mind thinking. I I don't I think I think actually all I mean, all you really need, and this is probably something that you could vibe code in Max for Live or design in Max for Live, is, obviously, you need a a a high resolution control. So it has to be more than one two eight. But if you have, like, 16
[Nick] bit or whatever they are
[Nick] values, maybe MIDI two point o, and you just feed a quantization table into that. So it's like, well, if you test that is eight octaves. So each point along there, these all these points will be notes, and you could just map that. A note will trigger that little spike and that spike. Those are the sort of things that'd be really relatively easy to code, I would think. Yeah. Interesting. Because you're just manipulating data to an automation data.
[Steve] Cool. There was there was one part of the video that I I don't know whether we got an explanation but for, but I'm kinda curious, which was when Andy was explaining how he did this, he said that he had an audio file that was pink noise and that he duplicated it, reversed the phase so you'd end up with silence so that
[Steve] that so that the only the only thing the only things you would hear would be the change in EQ.
[Steve] I've actually just realized I was gonna ask why did he duplicate it and phase shift it, but now I know
[Nick] because otherwise, you'd just hear the pink noise the whole time. And so I'll just I'll shut up. Sorry. Excuse me. That makes sense. But it's interesting because it would have to be a recording that you duplicate it because if you took two Yeah. Generated pink noise sources and put them out of phase, I wonder what you'd hear then. You'd hear all sorts of weird stuff because they would only occasionally be in phase and by certain amounts of degree. I wonder what that oh, I see. It does, doesn't it? It's lots to think about, isn't it? It does, doesn't it? I mean, it is a really interesting approach to two things.
[Gaz] Yeah. And I guess but, I mean, fab filter stuff is brilliant, though. So I guess it's good. It's definitely a good advert for that EQ.
[Gaz] Absolutely.
[Nick] There's a good one in Cubase called frequency, actually. I wonder if that Oh, okay. That would be a good one to use as well for Cubase. But having keyboard having keyboard I mean, I guess it's something like this you can do in Bitwig because you can have a keyboard input that would go to in in the whatever it's called, the the grid, isn't it? I'm pretty sure you could build something like this in in Bitwig
[Nick] because, you know, which is a similar sort of idea as Max for Life, but a bit further,
[Nick] you know, closer to the surface as it were. I wonder if you could you know, that's an interesting idea. Okay.
[Nick] Yeah. There's lots of possibilities you could do with that. Yeah. Think that's well worth explaining exploring.
[Nick] Okay. Let's have a look. I wondered whether to go
[Nick] in fact, he's a bit of scratching. And if and and we've got a DJ on the panel. Let's have a little bit. I was trying to find a bit in this video. This is You could not DJ what he does with these records and apply it to any other track. DJ really work with these two records. And this juggle is one of the most popular This is DJ Blakey. He's he's he's a Japanese.
[Nick] There's so many examples in this that are mind blowing. I think there's there's some chic in there earlier on. And I'm pretty sure I heard Tom's Diner somewhere, but I I couldn't find it.
[Nick] Like this guy I mean, you know, it's like the pinnacle of of
[Nick] nerdy scratching. I don't know. Steve Steve, you DJ, have you ever put your hand have you ever tried this kind of not maybe not beat juggling to this degree, but did you ever I could just picture you with a sort of
[Nick] did we do any of that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[Steve] Yeah. I mean, I I was we've all got sync buttons now. But back in the day, yeah, I was I would be doing beat matching, and there's a certain amount of the scratch technique that you have to to use in order to get To find the transcript. Match. But I yeah. Exactly. But but nothing like this guy. I mean, this guy is
[Steve] a virtuoso.
[Steve] And his techniques, he's he he did a lot of things that I recognized from other turntable lists that I've worked with back in the day, but a whole load of other things that I haven't seen before, which is just so so impressive. And it got me
[Steve] thinking
[Steve] about a couple of records that I made back in the late nineties. There was a couple of remixes that I did. And you could hear in that video
[Steve] that this guy who's the best, let's just say. But even
[Steve] as he was scratching, he was occasionally
[Steve] the timing wasn't quite right. So you know how, like, we're we're so used to
[Steve] drummers who are perfectly in time the whole time, guitarists, bassists who are just tight as you can get. There's a sort of limit to the tightness that you you can have with scratching and other techniques in term turntablism,
[Steve] which can lead can be a little bit jarring if you're not used to it. But actually, this is not a bug, so to speak. It's a feature of the style. It's what makes the
[Steve] manipulation of the record sound human and real and connects you, the listener, with the actual performer. And I remember back in the day, I'd I'd recorded a
[Steve] remix for a band called Cuba. I don't I don't know whether it ever came out. They were for a d band. I had a turntable listing, and he did a whole lot of scratching. And I thought, you know, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put all this scratching in time so it fitted with the beats that I put together.
[Steve] It sounded wrong, really wrong. It was a bit like interesting. Yeah.
[Steve] It was like if you turn auto tune up to, you know, zero milliseconds,
[Steve] you we're very familiar with the sound right now. But back in the day, just we were very concerned about removing the humanity from a vocalist. It's the same thing with this kind of turntablism
[Steve] technique. So the skill, though, is to to be able to do all this impressive stuff, keep the timing loose,
[Nick] but hold the set together. And, of course, this guy is is fan fantastic at it. So, yeah, I think I could get my vinyls out again. I think there's there's still time. There's still time, Steve. Still time. Well, he I think he's using tractor or whatever it is, but it translates. You get those time code platters, and that's how it works. But one of the things that he did, which was really interesting, is take a non swung record and turn it into swung,
[Nick] which that is sort of mind blowing. I don't know. That's kind of that's next level. I've never heard that before. That was mind blowing, isn't it?
[Gaz] Yeah. And, I mean, I like all the a lot of the b boy, you know, scene. It's about skills or skills to pay bills to quote Beastie Boys, you know, sort of this idea of just,
[Gaz] you know, like, having battles, rap battles or breakdowns battles. Or a few years back, I I there was a the 16 pad battles were I mean, I thought if they're still going on, I'm sure they are. But then this idea of just, like, mad skills,
[Gaz] I find it really, really interesting.
[Gaz] It's, you know, it's like an urban art form, but also just to try and push the boat out. There was a band in Cardiff late nineties called Optimus Prime, and there were four turntablists. And they were trying to be like each band member, and they would have you know, a guy would be playing bass lines, a guy would be doing drums, and Oh, wow. Doing. You know, and it was Labor intensive.
[Gaz] Yeah.
[Gaz] And, you know, and they were pretty good at it, really, all things considered, but it was there was a lot of want going on. But but, you know, at the same time, it was it was really interesting to see them try and do it. When they could pull it off, you know, they you're kinda watching it from the audience sort of enjoying
[Gaz] the trials of what they're doing. And then but, you know, when it when they're locking it together, it's great. You know, it's really good fun.
[Gaz] But, you know, I guess in in this era of just absolute
[Gaz] uber
[Gaz] quantized music,
[Gaz] you know, that looseness that Steve's talking about, though, does have a kind of charm. You know? And people have a
[Gaz] maybe more,
[Nick] I don't know. I think it I think it depends where you're and how you're experiencing it. I think if you're in the room with the person,
[Gaz] absolutely a 100%. If you're listening to a record or trying to dance to it, that may be less so. Because some of it Well, this is stuff I wouldn't wanna listen to. You know, watching a video is brilliant, but I wouldn't wanna listen to it, you know Yeah. Without that visual.
[Steve] I think this this is one of the reasons why I I didn't really get into it because my DJing style has always, I suppose, been about keeping people dancing for in in whatever way I can. But it struck me that this kind of turntablism is a spectator sport. It's not it's not something you're gonna dance to. It's
[Steve] it's an amazing thing to watch. It's a bit like watching a juggler in a in a in a sense. And I also think that it it requires that the audience can see what the turntablest is doing. You know? And so consequently, it it doesn't work in the really big spaces that clubs tend to be in these days. You need to be in the smaller
[Steve] rooms that I think we all grew up in, you know, where where a club will have a 100 people, and the DJ will be set up next to the bar.
[Steve] And it and there's no air conditioning. Everyone's smoking. Is that that kind of place? That's what I'm imagining. Yeah. That's But they but at least yeah. Yeah. So you can see it. And I'm just thinking, I don't know whether that's gonna come back. I don't know whether this is just the reminiscences of an old man.
[Steve] But it's perfect for on live online. Sorry. It's perfect for online. So just one camera watching this guy doing his his mad skills,
[Steve] perfectly entertainment, you know, more power to the guy.
[Nick] Yeah. I think it was it was a kind of vehicle for DJ Blakey to plug his
[Nick] scratching courses, which is fine because I I think he was a DMC mix champion.
[Nick] I actually own a DMC award
[Nick] for best remix of 1991.
[Nick] No way. Woah. A
[Nick] funny story for that. So this was Tom's Diner, which I've referred to already. So we went to the DMC club. So back then when we did that mix, people may or may not know the story. There were all sorts of rumors that it was two blokes
[Nick] in in the record company who were that was back when, you know, the a and r, particularly in the dance field, were kind of developing as personalities. You know, it was around the time of Pete Tong and all these other people. I forget the name of the guy who it was. And he didn't let shall we say, he didn't do anything to
[Nick] dispel the rumor that it wasn't him.
[Nick] So we went to this award. It was at the it was at the oh god. I can't remember. Big big big theory at the bottom of Tottenham Court Road. I forgot where it was now. I don't know it's even Grosvenor. Oh, no. No. No. No. Anyway, we went to the awards,
[Nick] and I was absurd
[Nick] terribly, terribly nervous because it's my first public outing. And my my partner, the DJ, was less so. But I remember we met Kim Mizell,
[Nick] who was astonished. And all there was a room because the these girls were doing the women were doing, like, PA, so they'd be singing later. So I saw Kim Mazel, and I saw I can't remember. There were a couple of really big
[Nick] massive soul singers, you know, of the time who were doing all the top lines for those disco records.
[Nick] And I forgot what their names were. Anyway, so we went out on stage. We got the award.
[Nick] And and my partner said, I just wanted to say, I'm not whoever it was. He's not so and so. We are who we are, and we did it. And it was felt like a bit of a right on moment. But so anyway, that was Wow. Not that interesting. But I've still got the disc, of course, as I would have.
[Nick] Anyway alright. Well, let's let's see what else. And let yeah. It's probably time for another quick break, and then we're back with another topic after this.
[Nick] And we're back. Yeah. Let's have a look. I think we have to go to this other topic now because it is just I think this was something that Steve mentioned about. This this was great. This was found on Synthtopia. Great post by James and Elizabeth. Big love to James and Elizabeth, two of my favorite people.
[Nick] Haven't seen them for ages, but I hope to once again soon. Let's play this. This was a post I found. It's a guy called Viconi demonstrating
[Nick] ambient orchestral composition just using a 40 year old Casio s a two keyboard and an iPhone running some own plug ins. How about this?
[Nick] Think he used
[Nick] there's a piano and a string sound in the Casio that kinda gave it the
[Nick] And then it's going into
[Nick] Ohm,
[Nick] iPhone running Ohm with a view audio interface like it's an okay audio interface. Then Brini's Quinter pitch machine.
[Nick] Rim de jere follows part reverb, part drone. Then the weeping wall loops up to sixty seconds that fade away stacking layers. Then finally, an even time black hole. I'm guessing is that really on the phone? It wasn't clear whether that was on the phone or perhaps elsewhere. I guess looking at it,
[Nick] I know there must be an audio output coming back, so I'm just wondering whether it was being recorded on the phone. It's just lovely. And it meant what it does is make you think, wow, all this stuff really, and this is what you can do with a phone and a cheap keyboard keyboard. And, And, you you know, know, and it just it's I think it's a really it's heartwarming
[Nick] example of what we could do, and I just thought that was fabulous.
[Nick] I mean, I could get lost in it for ages. It it's cool, isn't it?
[Nick] Black hole is on the on the a on the iPhone. Oh, it is. Nice one. Yeah. I wasn't sure whether it was or not. It wasn't clear from that. But, yeah, I mean, black hole makes anything sound epic, but that did sound pretty good, I have to say. I know it's astonishing, isn't it? I mean, well, Gaz, we used to do Sonic Touch, and we've started to cover this. I think Oum came
[Nick] out. We've done maybe something on this once before. Mean, you find I I know this isn't really your world anymore, but do you find you're still
[Gaz] reaching for that stuff? Would it make sense to have it incorporated in your, maybe, your live setup for some things, or is that sort of out of the picture? It's really interesting you're saying that because I think when we had a bunch of people over the weekend saying, bring back sonic touch, which was quite nice.
[Gaz] And somebody said that, oh, you know, that it was a huge inspiration
[Gaz] for them way back when. So that was quite sweet that
[Gaz] had some lasting impact. But
[Gaz] well, here's the thing. I mean, when we were doing that show, like,
[Gaz] those apps with hardware was actually really difficult, wasn't it? We would kind of Yeah. Jesus. Wasn't it ever? Yeah. We were doing Sonic Touch, I think, from about 2012 to about 2014 or maybe up to 2015 perhaps. But and that particular time. But nowadays, it's so much easier to integrate a phone with pieces of hardware. Example being, like, the
[Gaz] the Zoom l six. And I'm using the the Zoom l six Max, but it works perfectly with the the just the regular l six. You know? Just a single USB c connection to a relatively modern, in my case, iPhone. And then you can choose
[Gaz] you can have two sets of stereo returns
[Gaz] coming into the Zoom from from your device. So so something like AUM then, which is
[Gaz] brilliant. I do use it. No. I do. I absolutely do use it. And AUM is is my absolute go to piece of software on on on iOS.
[Gaz] It's brilliant. You can create custom chains, be it effects chains. So if you're using it with Zoom,
[Gaz] for instance, you can send stuff in there. Actually, the l six max has the
[Gaz] advantage of mix minus return then
[Gaz] because otherwise, it is the the input is just back out. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So the l six max particularly then works extremely well for this kind of thing.
[Gaz] And
[Gaz] there's a bunch of so really high quality things available now, for instance, black black hole. And I guess to swing the topic back to the the video we've just watched,
[Gaz] that
[Gaz] and, you know, like a very simple sound source going through beautiful effects.
[Gaz] In in a way, the simpler the sound source that goes in,
[Gaz] the more I think the effects can do the heavy lifting. And if you put something in that's too complex,
[Gaz] you won't get such a beautiful result. So something like a Casio is ideal for that, something with a very basic sound
[Gaz] basic sound. An filter
[Nick] on the way in
[Nick] between the Casio and the audio interface would probably make a lot of sense, I think, this situation, as you can see.
[Nick] It's interesting, isn't it? That I mean, basically, all these are you know, the the the kind of level of processor technology that we've got in our phones and in iPads and stuff. And there are so few applications that would actually make use of that in a phone or an iPad, but AUM is probably one of them. I mean, there are video editors and other things, but there aren't that many that that are utilizing all of that power because they are extremely powerful devices now with particularly with the m series chips and all of those stuff. So yeah. I don't know. I'm guessing this might appeal to you, Steve. I mean, I know you have a fondness for shoegazing, and that that I I imagine that guy, if it wasn't on the floor and he could see his feet, he'd be looking at his shoes when he was doing that.
[Steve] Yeah. I think I think he definitely is and dreamy of my bloody Valentine. He must be. The
[Steve] the the thing that I found really inspiring about this video was taking
[Steve] the the as Scott said, a very simple sound that comes out of the Casio. Think it's it's bound to be pulse waves of some kind.
[Steve] But using the effects within the iPhone as sort of part of the synthesis process
[Steve] as opposed to, I suppose, traditionally where effects have have have lived, which is to to make a cohesive sounding record and and all that kind of thing. And I was reminded of where my
[Steve] journey, I suppose, in sound design kind of began. Like, I was a big
[Steve] fan of the Cocteau Twins and specifically the guitar sounds that Robin Guthrie got. And through being a obsessive kid, reading all the interviews I I could find, was kind of amazed that his guitar first of all, he he played very gently. So there was a very simple guitar sound going in to what would be a vast array of state of the art that's of of the early eighties
[Steve] effects units and creating these amazing sounds. Now
[Steve] it it strikes me that we're we're living in a time right now where, you know, we all know about inflation, and we and there's there is the
[Steve] a whole load of increasing prices in computing components.
[Steve] But what I've noticed is that the price of guitar effects,
[Steve] not the not the not amazing things like this Strymon, by the way. This is still expensive. But if you look on the second on the used market, you can find a whole load of stuff that is essentially forgotten, and you can pick it up on eBay for $10.20 quid, £30, that kind of thing. These open up a whole world of sonic experimentation for very little money that can actually breathe new life into
[Steve] keyboards or and and similar things that we might have discarded as toys.
[Steve] And there might be a a sonic world out there that that somebody is gonna discover, and I can become as big a fan of them as I am of Robin Guthrie.
[Steve] That's what I would like to explore.
[Nick] Yeah. Well, Alessandro Cortini did a couple of albums, didn't he, which was just like an m c two zero two and a bunch of effects pedals,
[Nick] which Yeah. Are beautiful. And I'm and and I don't know what I don't know all of what he's using. I mean, I think that's ultimately led to I've forgotten the name of the the little thing he did in conjunction with Strega? Strega? Strega. That's right. That which led to that sort of workflow and that instrument being done. But, yeah, it's an interesting one. I just thought it's great. And it I mean, in a way, it's quite humbling, isn't it? When you just look at that and just go, yeah. I mean I mean, no beats. I mean but
[Nick] that could easily be added. If you particularly if you added like a
[Nick] an l six max, you could you could probably route
[Nick] double actually, no. The l no. I think the I can't remember if the make minus works on both one and two and three and four.
[Nick] Can't remember that, actually. I've forgotten. I've forgotten about the l six max. But the l yeah. L six max people in the chat are saying the l six max is a fantastic
[Nick] utility. On top tip, the l six max, if you plug because what I when I took mine away for in Spain, you if you switch if you have the MIDI output,
[Nick] you can use it as a controller. So if you say go to you're not using any EQ and you just hit, I don't know, the mid frequency,
[Nick] then all the knobs become they transmit a different MIDI CC, and they're not affecting the sound in any way if you've got no gain on any those EQs. So you've got and got eight
[Nick] actual assignable knobs with LED value rings around them, and then you can use buttons as well. So I think I I can't remember why I use buttons. I use some buttons. So I I use mute, unmute to to switch certain things on as well. And it's it's it's just one of those things that's extremely useful. I would would concur about that. Absolutely fantastic.
[Nick] Yeah. Lots of lots of love for Sonic Touch. I think Sonic Touch
[Nick] Mhmm. We discovered after a while that all these apps that were like $5.99 each didn't really result in anybody with any budget to advertise and support us financially. It's not. It's a place where it's a bit. There was absolutely no revenue model, which I know is, you know, is is a dirty word. But, you know, when you're when you're an independent like us, it's sort of quite important to be able to support and sustain what we do. It was more it was more us, I think. I like to gold rush at the time, though, wasn't it, to get those apps out? And, like, we would have a show sched you know, I would be scheduled
[Gaz] to come into Bath on a on a Friday or something to film. And then on a Thursday night, something like Waldorf Nave would be released. And we're going like, oh, Nick, we have to change what we're gonna do because it because things are just coming out. I mean, that particular period, I think it was such a rush of getting things out. Xcode, I think, was really accessible for people to develop products in.
[Gaz] So there was just an enormous amount of creativity.
[Gaz] And because the large scale multi touch interface
[Gaz] was still so new, there were just just so many different ways of doing stuff. It was really quite exciting thinking about it. I think things plateaued
[Gaz] around maybe 02/2015,
[Gaz] 2016 or whatever. You know, obviously, still stuff, really good stuff still comes out. But there was just that particular moment in time where it was really exciting to to be part of that, really, wasn't it? I think I think it's a bit it's a bit what it was, it was the confluence of modern consumer technology
[Nick] and niche interest.
[Nick] So Yeah. And the niche interest was driving
[Nick] the the penetration of that consumer device because people go, wow. You can do all these things on it. I'm never going to do any of that. I'll probably just check my email and and and, you know, and, I don't know, watch videos on it, which I don't remember if it was any good for that at the time. But so you ended up with this thing with this huge budget, marketing budget for Apple behind it, pushing all of the music technology uses to the forefront. And, you know, I I've said it before, and I think, you know, some of those early music making apps were what made the iPad and the iPhone really become very, very much
[Nick] more mainstream and grow to the size they were because people were seeing what could be done with it and, you know, that you could link it up with an artist or whatever. And I just think it was a it was an unusual time. I mean, that was the I think it was probably the first time it happened. I mean, it may have happened previously, but one of the first times that But there was there were things coming out back then, though, that were, like, you know, new ways of making music. But some of them, like, for instance, the Rolly Blocks workflow
[Gaz] was so horrific. I've never wanted to throw a piece of equipment out the window or the nose rolly blocks for just this kind of this is the way that you meant to me make music and just channeling you down this. And then that was completely in contrast to other things. Like,
[Gaz] I still maintain to this day the greatest of all was sampler, without an e, sampler, for just getting that for getting that touch interface right. And in fact, Michael Salonso, the developer of that, got headhunted and became, I think, head of user interface
[Gaz] at Apple. So clearly
[Gaz] had figured out really good uses of touch.
[Gaz] And now when we see products like maybe the MPC
[Nick] line of you know, the MPC line MPC sample is just flying. That looks really Yeah.
[Gaz] I mean, that is they've got that really well, haven't they? But I was meaning just that idea that the touch thing,
[Gaz] it soon became apparent that you that touch alone wasn't enough. You could you needed That's true. You needed some other things with it. And I think that that was one of the things where that whole I'm just, again, just reminiscing about the the Sonic Touch era that that that a lot a lot of the apps that came out,
[Gaz] it was a little bit of a slightly hollow experience utilizing
[Gaz] it. You know? That
[Nick] Very difficult to be accurate.
[Nick] Yeah. Just I I actually I say I say that that's that's not happened. But I actually am thinking about it, and this is I don't know why I didn't it wasn't completely obvious. Ultimately, that's what AI AI has used music, you know, the Suno, all of these generative things which do all these party tricks and show that you don't have to be that's very much the same trajectory, isn't it? Because I remember at the time, you don't have to know about music. You don't have to be any good. This is referring to iPad apps to to create stuff that's that's great. And we're seeing exactly the same kind of
[Nick] adoption and curve and way that's happening with the AI stuff as well. And I think it's it's interesting. And I and I remember us raging about iOS, you know, that this sort of you don't have to be any good kind of approach to software for the iPad. That was kind of quite infuriating and and much the same way as it is this time around. But but if you think about this, I mean, in many ways, this is gonna be even bigger because there are so many, many billions, if not trillions of dollars behind this technology. So it's something that could be
[Nick] beneficial, but it it actually isn't much the same. I hadn't really thought about that. I don't know. What do you think, Steve?
[Steve] Yeah.
[Steve] I I I'm I'm struggling a little bit with this stuff at the moment. Struggling
[Steve] in a sense that
[Steve] I I wear other hats other than other than in music, and I'm I am just kind of finding that
[Steve] I think the simplest way I can put it is that it's cheaper to employ humans.
[Nick] Yeah. I think that's a very good way of I think it is ultimately.
[Nick] I think you're absolutely right. I think there's gonna be an enormous I did I was talking below back the show because I was thinking that I know I could just download a model on my computer and use it very specifically, but it's it's nowhere near as good yet. And and there's no ability to get hold of the technology that will run it because it's also expensive because the data centers are eating it all. So, you know Well, yeah. It's tricky scenario.
[Steve] I'm hoping that we're living in a time where
[Steve] everyone's getting very excited and actually which with good reason, by the way. But actually, we settled down and we realized where these tools would excel and where they shouldn't be used.
[Steve] And I think and one thing that I I I mentioned just now that I really have discovered, and I'm not alone in this, is that that we've lived in a in a situation where we've been using these AI tools
[Steve] essentially for free,
[Steve] and that's not gonna continue for much longer
[Steve] because the the business models are
[Steve] unsustainable.
[Steve] It's gonna become much more expensive for everybody very quickly, and I think that's gonna be an interesting
[Steve] discussion to be having in the pub
[Nick] later. Right.
[Nick] Well, let's let's knock on the head there. Thank you so much for joining us, folks. Been absolutely great. Lovely to see all the people in the chat room. And it's it's kind of it's always nice to see. I mean, I know people do get a bit uppity. I was thinking actually, and I may do this, is starting a a spin off that is just a place where we talk about the AI and technology and in the creative world and Yeah. How people are using it and how useful it could be, examples where it could be useful if that's what you're into rather than covering everything. So I I think we might do that. And I've spoken to a few contributors, and they're like, yeah, this could be an interesting thing. So maybe that's something for the future. But, Gaz, are you streaming again anytime soon? Or I guess I don't know if you do so much.
[Gaz] Oh, it's one of those things. I really do wanna get back into it. I've just been so kinda busy with various things. I mean Yeah. You know, I just wanna thank people for the support of the quasi modal project that I'm doing and how Yes. I've gotten Excellent. And you get that even better. Oh, thank you. It's, you know, it's that thing, you know, where I've tried to
[Gaz] not hold I've been all my life, like, not wanting to release things until it's perfect, until it's ready, until it's finished. And I realize how, you know, how much you end up with nothing when you take that approach. So, you know, been trying to do opposite way with quasimodo where just exposing the workflow and putting things out that are far from
[Gaz] a completed finished thing, but just kind of just going, yep. And here's the next one. Here's the next one. Here's the next one. And and in a way, that's that's trying to challenge my own sort of,
[Gaz] you know, just this this thing that I think is I realized looking back at my own kind of career how little music I've released because I've just been wanting to sort of hold it to some Perfect. Or maybe unobtainable
[Gaz] standard.
[Gaz] So yeah. So so by that sharing process,
[Gaz] I suppose you do make yourself a little bit vulnerable because people think, oh, is that the best you could do? And it's sort of like,
[Gaz] well, I don't know. It's you know, it's it's an ongoing thing. Yeah. But Yeah. Exactly. I certainly appreciate people who But there's new video going tonight.
[Gaz] Oh, no. It's not it's not quite I didn't get it ready. Didn't get it finished. I I've just been a bit too I've got a few things going on. But soon. New Quasimodals new cosimosals. New one. Yeah. It's ready. It's it's virtually ready. I just gotta I just gotta do I I put the backgrounds.
[Gaz] You know, I've kinda created a hard for my back, really, with the backgrounds of trying to always vary up a little bit, but, you know, it's just to make it a little bit more interesting. But but, yeah, I do want had some great backgrounds in Brussels. Did you see any of the of the art deco buildings in Brussels? There's some Oh, I did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. I did I yes. Oh, why didn't I film?
[Gaz] Yeah. That would've been good. I'll tell you what I did do, though, on which is quite interesting. If anyone does, I went up one of the chimneys in
[Gaz] Battersea Power Station. There's a lift. They've installed a lift inside one of the iconic
[Gaz] towers of
[Gaz] Battersea Power Station. So, like, now Battersea Power Station is such an iconic building in London,
[Gaz] and now it's all, like, fancy shops and stuff in inside
[Gaz] it. And they've and they've installed this lift. And I think it's it's a bit expensive, as you can imagine. And then Often. And there's load of naff kind of novelty stuff as you're waiting to go in.
[Gaz] But when you take the lift and when it emerges out of the top of the chimney,
[Gaz] that's that's worth the price of entry. That's all I'm gonna say. So if you are in London and you're thinking about doing something, I'd recommend that. You know, yes, it's a it's a quite expensive, a bit overly expensive in a way, but that moment
[Gaz] of the emergence is worth every penny.
[Nick] Nice. Nice.
[Nick] And, Steve, I I actually, I was gonna ask Steve, have you been up that building in in Seville? You know, there's that huge wooden structure. It's the world's largest wooden structure, and it's just in the middle of a of a square in Brazil in Seville. And you could just go up the top and looking out of there, it's a you can see all the entire
[Nick] city. It's absolutely astonishing. No.
[Steve] I don't I I don't think I have. I haven't been back to Seville. Mushrooms, I think they call it. Oh, yes. Of course. Yes. Yes. I have.
[Steve] And it's it it sort of undulates like a sort of fungal structure. Is that am I thinking of the same thing? Yeah. I have. It's it's it's a beautiful thing. Absolutely extraordinary. Metropole parasols, I mean. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. I have. Yep. I've got some great photos as well. I was just thinking about tall structures in London, and I I I went to a party a while ago with some Russians, would you believe, in the shard at London Bridge and was totally disconcerted that you go into the bathroom,
[Steve] and it's just windows out
[Steve] with a view of the whole of London. So you're standing there, you know, doing a biological break, and then the whole of London can see you.
[Steve] But, you know, you get over it. It it didn't put me off too much. But oh, yeah. I I It's a good break.
[Steve] I don't know why I went there.
[Nick] Know? So what's next week? What's next week, Steve? You've got you've had a release. You've done yeah. What's what's going on in your world? What you Yeah. So I had my
[Steve] ongoing dance music project, which is called Polytech,
[Steve] What had a release a couple of weeks ago, which was a a tune called Jenny six. You can find this stuff on Spotify. In fact, I'd I'd love it if you did. I've got a new release coming out next week as well. And in fact, it's the the first Polytech release, which is
[Steve] vocals led. Excuse me. That is vocals led. So it's a sort of
[Steve] a first time that a song that I've written is actually I've actually written specifically for this project. So I'm really kind of excited about it, and I'm I'm doing the the finishing touches to the mixes this this evening. But it with a good wind, it will be out Friday week. So please do check it out, folks. I've I've I've also very interested in your feedback on this. It's made entirely with analog
[Steve] stuff that I have sitting around to me here, including the Juno one zero six because it's Juno one zero six day. Excellent.
[Nick] Well, guys, thank you ever so much, and thanks everybody in the chats. And thanks to everybody everywhere. Marvelous. And if you do remember, do drop us a review on one of the podcast platforms. In this time when podcasts apparently are blowing up everywhere, I'm trying to increase our reach and get a little bit of a a a bit more audience Everyone can hype work that goes. The video. Hype hype it. Hype it. Oh, is that what you do? Okay. I don't know what that is. Yeah. I think you can only can you do you can do it on the phone. So, like, you just scroll across on where the comments thing is, and then there's a hype button. And if you hype it, then I think it's you assign a number of hype points to something. Excellent. Well Feel free to
[Gaz] do it now.
[Gaz] Everybody who's listening now would be so kind to show some gratitude and hype the video and see if it makes a difference. See if it makes a difference. Yeah. Please do it, everyone. Please. Please.
[Nick] Oh, thank you. Thank you. That good good thought. Thank you very much, everybody. That was Sonic Talk episode eight nine six.
[Nick] We'll see you all next week. Cheers. Bye bye. See you later.