*Place lots of expletives here*
Sep. 6th, 2003 01:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spacebugI came home from the desert with lots of inspiration and creative energy. I really wanted to do something with it. So, after a frustrating wrestle with my SCSI chain last night and no music made, I decided I wanted a bath. That's when I discovered that our apartment does not have a complimentary bath plug. A small thing, to be sure, but enough to make me flip out in my state of real world re-entry...
I was feeling a lot better today, when I got everything to work. Everything! It was the first time in probably damn near a year that I've had everything in my audio rig home, plugged in, and functional at once. I loaded samples and they played back fine and I looped them with the sequencer and I manipulated them with my MIDI fader box and it worked on the first try and I was very excited and ready to spend my afternoon working on getting a solo live set up and running. This has been a goal of mine for well over a year.
And then my sampler died. Again. The one that just came back after its guts were shipped cross country to be repaired. The one that took several months to recieve less than an hour labor from its oh so benevolent makers. The one that, nary a week before that, had its effects processor fixed for a pretty chunk of money. That one. The one that I should hide in a closet lest I kick it down the stairs in a frustrated rage. That one. The only one I have, that I spent *all* of my money on in college. The broken one that makes me feel like the universe does not want me to be an electronic musician at all.
I was feeling a lot better today, when I got everything to work. Everything! It was the first time in probably damn near a year that I've had everything in my audio rig home, plugged in, and functional at once. I loaded samples and they played back fine and I looped them with the sequencer and I manipulated them with my MIDI fader box and it worked on the first try and I was very excited and ready to spend my afternoon working on getting a solo live set up and running. This has been a goal of mine for well over a year.
And then my sampler died. Again. The one that just came back after its guts were shipped cross country to be repaired. The one that took several months to recieve less than an hour labor from its oh so benevolent makers. The one that, nary a week before that, had its effects processor fixed for a pretty chunk of money. That one. The one that I should hide in a closet lest I kick it down the stairs in a frustrated rage. That one. The only one I have, that I spent *all* of my money on in college. The broken one that makes me feel like the universe does not want me to be an electronic musician at all.
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no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 05:14 pm (UTC)If I sell it: I'm thinking of getting an 808, 'cause they're getting cheaper and I want to get more live-loop-oriented stuff going; the K's sequencer isn't really built for that and it hiccups whenever it loops. Also thinking of getting a controller + rack module or a simpler rack sampler instead of one ubersynth that thinks it can do everything. Or maybe, heaven forbid, I'll join the ranks of the laptop musician. (Or maybe I should fuck all this shit that plugs in and play the fucking bohdran. Now that I've gone and become a hippiefestie firedancer it might make more sense. :P)
For now, I'm just gonna work under the assumption that my rig is me, Sigfried, a phrase sampler, an FX box, and the Game Boy. I can still do some cool stuff, I just don't have stored samples or anything that sounds like a real piano or a real drum or a real string. And it's tough to work on the score. Bleh.
no subject
Date: 2003-09-06 06:45 pm (UTC)I can understand the frustration though certainly. The Kurzweil bothered me enough that I'm no longer using it as my main board. I'm gonna leave it hooked up when I get my new studio room and use it once in awhile, since I like some of the things it does, and mine works fine through the digital out -- just the analog one is hosed.
I've been using my Ensoniq Halo as a bread-and-butter board. Its not super-awesome, but its a fairly stable workstation-like synth. No sequencer though. I posted a review of it on Harmony Central.
Some of the recent Emu and Akai sampler/workstations are s'posed to be very happy.
Laptops are expensive. They are a great deal more fragile than y'r average sampler, and pr'y just expensive to repair. I know some people use them successfully, but I just don't trust that computer hardware is going to work reliably. Ya know?
Once you calm down enough to look at the thing, I think you should try the taking out the battery and draining the P-RAM thing. If its still freaking out a half an hour later when you put in the new battery, take it back for your warranty repair and then don't touch it again til you demonstrate it for some sucker with cash to burn.
That's my spiritual advice. Have a nice day. =%>
no subject
Date: 2003-09-08 06:43 am (UTC)