Computers.

A computer can be any number of appliances. Does it make a good synthesizer? Is it a good way to make music? It can be. It’s merely a tool. It can be a frustrating tool, and that’s true when it becomes part of a system. Which it invariably is. The laptop I’m typing on is an aging MacBook Pro. At the moment, I’m running Ubuntu, but it will also run Mac OS up to Mojave. (14.x) … Mojave is where I stopped (so far) updating the OS, because that’s where Apple stopped supporting 32 bit. I have some apps and hardware that break at 64 bit. … Last night, ahead of SBR, on Vintage Comp Open-VOIP, I learned of a store called something like ‘8 Bits Are All You Need.’ Not really, but close. I don’t keep the com threads, and memory (mine) is faulty towers. Anyway, what’s a bit, kid? I recall a DAC that touted ‘1 bit’ conversion. The store that was mentioned was closed. Might reopen… but also, there is a computer museum online and in reality, in Seattle WA. The museum, Living Computers, is closed for Covid at the moment. It’s founder died in 2018. And it goes on. I used to (still do) say that computer years are shorter than dog years. So I’m stuck at Mojave. But the computer I’m typing on is the heart of a music making system…

The computer hosts several relevant interfaces: audio and MIDI. MIDI is the acronym for Musical Instrument Digital Interface, and has been around since the very early ’80s. My assortment is:

• M-Audio M-Track. 1 pair of MIDI ports, 2 channels of audio in/out.
• Edirol UA-5 audio interface. (even more of an antique than the M-Track)
• Midiman (now M-Audio) Midisport 2×2. (another antique… and not at all 64 bit, so far. Driver, anyone?)
• Casio TB-1 through box. Nice. Antique, but hey… it’s basically a/b switchable and has 8 ports.
• Midi Solutions through box 1×4. Bus powered.
• Midiman (as above) Merge 2×2 (a handy gizmo)
• DOREMidi Through 6 (‘nother much more recent through box)
• And… lastly… a Midi Bud (short for buddy) build that does all sorts of stuff, like a Swiss Army knife.

The computer will also display and analyze MIDI data, and that’s important because it’s invisible and complex/tricky.

There are 16 virtual channels. I’ve never been too fond of channelizing.

But I am fond of sync. And control.

So I hit a control problem on SBR 24 last night. It was my turn. I planned to do a tiny bit of drum machine programming on air. The machine I was programming was my Yamaha RX-11. A 90’s machine with decent sampled drum sounds. At the time, drum machines had other methods of making drum-like sounds, most of them fairly nasty. Nasty can be expressive, but I was doing song demos. I went for sampled drums. I have not used the RX in awhile. I made four or five patterns and assembled a ‘song’ with nested repeats. (Songs are, in this instance, collections of patterns.) The idea was the song would be about seven minutes long so I would have a bit of structure and not lose track of duration. I wanted to sit and use the little Novation Launchkey 25 keyboard to run the whole piece. That particular keyboard’s claim to fame is that it runs Ableton Live… (software)… and allows the building up of a piece by jamming and looping on the fly. Sounds ideal, yes?

But when I hit play on the Launchkey (live, on-air), nothing happened. This was after awkwardly writing a pattern on the RX-11, and even more awkwardly adding it to the end of the ‘song.’ I was basically stuck troubleshooting, which makes terrible radio. So I dropped. I looked in on chat and noticed that my silences had been interpreted as the disasters they were, and other DJs had tried cutting in. Dropping seemed the better part of valor. I didn’t think to get back on the mic.

I did better in round 2.

But what was the problem? I think that in the long delay while I listened and commented on the Vintage Computing Open-VOIP session, the rig mentioned above went to sleep and failed to awaken on command. It wasn’t the computer that went to sleep, it was the MIDI chain. That’s a theory. I had to restart the software. That would be Ableton Live 11.x.x. What do you do when Ableton Live becomes Ableton dead?

But I got to thinking (again) how awkward my set up is for music making, and how risky computing is for live music making. There are problems that are tough to solve given the available space. Maybe I need to re-think a little harder.

Anyway… I woke up dreaming of Edison and Facebook. A Facebook poster was inquiring about ‘the invention of the phonograph.’ Did I know where it was invented? Yes. Menlo Park, where Edison had basically invented the research laboratory. Batchelor. And Kruesi. People need people. I’m dreaming of things that are relevant to my current concerns… collaboration, groups, spaces, and shared experience.

Here is the link to MP3 file of the whole battle, both rounds. You can hear my embarrassment, but you’ll have to listen to Tob first. It won’t kill you. And, in round 2, my redemption. Eventually. The recommended method to get through these files readily is to download them, load them into a piece of software that both plays the MP3 format and gives you a visual of the waveform. That way, you can see what’s speech and what’s music. Other info is at sdf, here.