Beauty

 

naviarhaiku575 – Even though afar

The haiku shared by Naviar Records this week came with a description of the poet that illustrates how deep the form is with history:

Kagami Shikō was a Japanese poet, considered one of the ten outstanding disciples (Shōmon jittetsu 蕉門十哲) of Matsuo Bashō. He was in turn the master of the famous poetess Fukuda Chiyo-ni.

It's an evocative image for me, as someone who still misses the crispness of mountain life.

This week I've been engaging in my annual pedal board patching, so I took the opportunity to record a jam across the upright bass and electric guitar using the two effects arrays on the former and looping facilities of the latter.

Joysticks evoke nostalgia

It’s satisfying how a little wiggle gives a whole lotta effect

In this case it’s distortion, delay, reverb and tremolo but I’d like one with quadraphonic panning.

These have been fun for quickly shaping noise, although it's a rambling-kinda galloping all over the settings as I find the particular corner of the x/y axis.

So joysticks are cute but in a kinda inprecise way.

Disquiet Junto 0680 Reverse Resolution

The Disquiet Junto instruction is to "finish something you started last year, likely a piece of music you left unfinished."

This week I've been looking at the annual project of building a pedal board by completing one for guitar and another for bass.

In the process of looking for a cable I found the board that I recognised from being in my videos from a year earlier.

So my initial plan was to cannibalise the remaining guts in the form of the Novation synth and record that through my guitar pedal board.

Afterwards it felt as though something was lacking in the piece and I wasn't ready to finish the Junto yet.

While I began backing-up files from the desktop I though to look in my folder from January 2024's unfinished music, which included the bread crate with the Novation Mininova and a power adapter and bass synth pedal that I'd already added to the bass board.

Last February I recorded some drum parts and this one has a bpm around 120 bpm, which sits well with the recording I made this morning that seems to be about 80 bpm.

When I added drums to the Mininova looping through my guitar pedals it sounded great, of course.

Adding drums to most things seems to do that for me.

Pedal bored

That patch around New Year’s when it is overexposed outside is when I find myself plugging and unplugging

Each year I have an ambitious project to use more musical hardware and this is the collection currently being jammed. 

Once again I’m balancing the number of items that can be powered with the finite space of an enclosure doing something it wasn’t intended to do. 

Then there’s cable management, but I am trying to not get ahead of myself.

Today has been productive and I was able to put together a bass board too.

Roger Linn on nostalgia

What’s the big deal about nostalgia? I can understand that some people value analog synthesis, though I find the many types of innovative software synthesis created in recent decades to be far more capable, versatile and interesting. But even if people value vintage analog synths, why vintage digital drum machines? I ask this because an old bit is no different than a new bit.

Men yearn

 

Clean ending

My remaining Mystery Boxes arrived

Sorry for being one of the can'ts that bought more than one and contributed to madness.

It's remarkable that Chase Bliss closed sales within four days after selling 10,000 or so of these.

Mine were orders #581 and #642 from Chase Bliss Aus, placed on 23 and 25 Nov.

I wonder if Australia has the same restrictions as the EU, which is a shame because I really wanted a Dirt Bird or Wombstone.

One Clean pedal should be enough for me, so I'll put the other for sale.

naviarhaiku574 – on New Year’s Day

The haiku shared by Naviar Records came as I was experimenting further with the electric kalimba, this time paired with Chase Bliss' Mood pedal.

Bad Gear and worse

The most recent Bad Gear video has a surprising Easter egg within the usual fast-edited memes that form a weird subliminal counterpoint

There's this screenshot showing that Youtube's copyright function was impacting on a review of a Teenage Engineering product.

Bad Gear's Florian Pilz is one of my favourite reviewers and I am impressed with the level of detail in his discussion, as well as great music and high entertainment value.

And, as something of a reviewer myself, I am disappointed to see the "fair use" provision of US copyright law being circumvented by YT's shitty complaint feature.

Unpacking the mystery of Chase Bliss

Lately I can't stop thinking about the brand of Chase Bliss Audio

It is largely due to the Mystery Box arriving this week, which was an indulgence during Black Friday.

To explain it for a non-musician audience Chase Bliss makes expensive guitar effect pedals, but I want to share why their brand is interesting.

There are so many effect pedals in the marketplace and only so many effects, which is why Chase Bliss' elegant combinations go to unlikely places.

Let me mention a few of their products to give you a sense of the flavour here.

In particular some of their pedals have a glitchy approach to looping and this adds variations as the playback repeats.

An early example is the Blooper, a looping effect that can modify the phrases in a musical way with each echo.

This is something that I ponder in my creative practises, ways of repeating a process and yet engaging a kind of spark for inspiration.

One approach is the Cut-up technique, where you add a randomisation to the material, for example.

A Youtube named David Hilowitz brought Chase Bliss to my attention when he described how the Generation Loss pedal mimics the error-prone and characters of tape-based media.

Since tape is renowned for giving excitement to transients, I bought this pedal to hear how it sounded with my drum machines.

Even though it was mimicking tape, I liked the effect and began looking further.

The pedal Lossy had just been released, which takes inspiration from the sound of dial-up modems and mp3-style bitrate compression effects.

I wondered why anyone would want their guitar to sound like 1990s' era internet, but was intrigued.

Both Generation Loss and Lossy were collaborations Chase Bliss developed with other companies, which is another interesting aspect to their brand.

In the case of Lossy, it was originally a computer-based DAW effect and it's still less common for a software to become a hardware (rather than all the software emulations of hardware, which is a massive trend since DAWs first became a thing).

It was a pedal mimicking a plug-in and, as unusual as the thing sounded, I often used the pedal and ended up buying the software too.

(The collaborative approach is interesting too, since another trend among the corporations that own the biggest music brands is to own all of the intellectual property in a product and use profit to drive their development.)

In another David Hilowitz video I saw his review for a new delay pedal by Chase Bliss, which led to my buying Habit.

(That's a pun, because I started a habit with Habit. Anyway.)

Hilowitz described their Habit effect as a "happy accident machine" in the way it reimagines a delay as a kind of collector that serves snippets back to you.

He asks if one can be made nostalgic for a thing that happened seconds earlier.

I like using Habit to create parts that I improvise over and it sometimes comes close to mimicking the fun of jam with someone, but in this case it was an earlier me.

It's a kind of collaboration with enough of a sense of surprise created with the randomisation-effect that's often under the "modify" knob.

My partner thinks the design of Habit looks like the game Operation, which it does but it also looks right at home with the rounded-corners designs of Chase Bliss manuals.

There's a definite visual sense of the nostalgia that Hilowitz has noted.

One last pedal I like is called Brothers, which is a straight-forward effect that manipulates gain for volume and distortion through two channels.

Even though it's a simple pre-amp, the two channels offer a variety of possibilities and I haven't explored the presets or MIDI capabilities yet.

The pedals I've mentioned, names like Brothers and Generation Loss, resonate with a poignancy when you learn about the Chase Bliss story.

Founder Joel Korte has said in an interview:

“The reason I started learning about electrical engineering in college was because I was interested in designing audio products. At some point that dream and passion faded and evolved into something more practical. I just wanted to get a job. In February of 2007, just a few months before graduation, my life changed forever when my brother, Chase Korte, was killed by a drunk driver. He was living and working in LA, pursuing his dream of becoming an actor. One of my brother’s guiding principles was a phrase known by philosopher Joseph Campbell: “Follow your bliss.” When I started the company, I thought “Chase Bliss” would be a good name because it incorporated my brother’s values as well as his name. After my brother died it took about a year before I could really function normally as a person, but when that happened I decided I needed to follow my own bliss and that is around the time I got a job with ZVEX.”

ZVEX, for those who don't know, is another pedal company and one that collaborated with Chase Bliss, I might add.

Another aspect is that, when you watch their videos, you can observe how much success Joel has had with speech therapy.

It's remarkable how he has overcome a stutter and kinda fascinating that his own error-prone communication is a feature of the Chase Bliss marketing while a similar effect is part of many of their effect pedals.

So now I expect you can see why the company has been on my mind, because their products are full of surprises and give me a nostalgic vibe.

In particular it's this deeper sentimental kinda tone under the bright colours that brings a richness to the experience.

The Mystery Box is an expression of so much that interests me about Chase Bliss, I think.

It's kinda like a pass-the-parcel, particularly when you watch the unboxing videos that people have been posting.

I like that Chase Bliss effects sometimes bring spontaneity through a chance-like process that reminds me of playing with someone close.

Which is why I wonder if the palpable sense of nostalgia in their products is a craving for a shared childhood, because it brings an emotional depth to their sense of fun by tempering it with other emotions.

And here I end with another quote from Joel:

“I think there’s something about the way a pedal makes you feel that can never be emulated or replicated.”

When your partner

 

Disquiet Junto 0679 Ice Age

It's a new year, and we start it just like we have every year since the very start of the Disquiet Junto, back in January 2012: "Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it."

This year I've mixed together tracks from the previous years and it was surprising the variety of styles and instruments.

Can a recording contract

naviarhaiku573 – Year’s end

This haiku shared by Naviar Records led me to revisit a process from previous years.

I sampled my daily writing practise, then quickly recorded a reading to go with a piece of music.

The words are below, since you can't really hear them:

Clear a space for truth

put demons on the table 

we all have monsters
The familiar

our lived experiences 

we never escape
Preoccupation

knowing unmentionables 

hiding maligned forms
In these descriptions

old paraphernalia 

wrestling for new life
Anchored ideas

peppered onto bathroom walls 

I read the comments
My steps unbalanced

finding a new way forward 

these steep learning curves
Personal essays

images that resonate 

using metaphors
It leaves me beaten

along branches of wisdom 

stick with what I know
Dulled by the moment

anything is possible 

love profound boredom
Title on the door

master procrastinator 

holds me to account
I don’t play tennis  

when the ball is in my court 

I’m hitting it back
The role I’ve taken

allowed to fully occupy 

where I’m meant to be
Sometimes giving up

letting loose parts of myself 

and it’s positive
I’ve backed myself in

wet paint around the corners 

I’ll spend some time here
A love of the thing

not really a career 

expert of nothing
Enjoy the journey 

it’s different for everyone
like so much guidance



interpretations vary 

so I guess words will travel
Robust narratives

explaining our lives away 

it’s not magical
Without little words

sensibly made into thoughts 

would I know myself
Finding small spaces

unused outlooks on the day 

to make a window
My opacity

hiding in the everyday 

beliefs are porous
We can save those gifts

people don't want those insights

lies are easier
We hold opinions

underestimate vastly 

how truths destroy us
That crushing feeling

to hold a sensitive heart

wishing it weren’t mine
Something in my chest
resonates with emotion
reciting your words 
It’s the easy thing

seeing only what I know 

can you really blame me?
A slippery slope
I can go down a wormhole
lose myself a while 
These are summaries
so when revisiting them
I'll find my own words 
Thinking of my poems
as conversation partners
go let them mingle 
We sometimes struggle
as our own brand of magic
fails to charm ourselves 
Sometimes I’ll look back

some will say I’m different 

but it’s just I’ve grown
Through a world of sound

the only filter I have 

my discerning ear
Scanning the dial

your radio call signal 

I’m the antenna 

It seems obvious

that lozenge rhymes with orange 

but maybe that’s me

Synthetic synthesisers

Readers will know that I'm predisposed to write about musical instruments, so I want to share a few thoughts that draw trends in consumer culture by looking at a product category that I like

In this case, synthesisers.

There are three broad ideas to identify: cloud-based products, cheap knock-offs and declining quality among established brands.

The first concerns those subscription-based services one can access online and you might be surprised that synthesisers are a thing to rent in your internet browser.

My favourite recent commentator about synthesisers is Florian Pilz and he says that cloud instruments are a bad idea, so that's good enough for me because I love buying good musical gear.

 

A benefit of having physical hardware is having something to sell when the good gear is not as good as you hoped it to be.

It's getting harder to find the good stuff among all the Bad Gear that Florian reviews among the jokes he doesn't make about Uli Behringer, whose company has been making cheap versions of classic and contemporary synthesisers and drum machines.

Behringer is notoriously litigious but has been successful in making new models of popular secondhand gear, some of which is stuff like the synths that a company like Roland rents in their cloud subscription.

For many consumers Behringer is the answer to the question why Roland aren't selling versions of the classic TR-909 and TB-303 machines.

 

Critics have quoted the weirdly translated words of Roland's CEO that the company "doesn't chase ghosts" as a way of explaining that they've moved on, but others point out that the engineers who designed analogue intruments have probably all retired.

I have Roland's "Boutique" range and also Behringer's colourful copies of these XOX-boxes that gave rise to genres like Acid and Techno, as well as all the subgenres that emerged under them.

Given how those musical styles developed beyond the scope of Roland imagining these little machines to play basslines and drums, it shouldn't be a surprise that the company hasn't been able to read the marketplace.

It's said that the 909 drum machine was discontinued before it found a role in the rave revolution.

However, what surprises me is how often I reach for the Behringer models, despite them being cheaper and sounding rougher.

So I think Behringer is providing a great service for people who want to make electronic music and who doesn't? I think it was Uwe Schmidt who described techno as modern folk music.

One of the key observations that Pilz makes in the Bad Gear episode above is that Roland probably doesn't care too much about these products.

He estimates they might be less than 10% of Roland's business, but it was Florian's comparison with Nestle that really drove home an analogy for those who aren't analogue synth lovers.

This showed Roland's synths and drum machines are about as significant to their corporate reporting as chocolate is to Nestle.

The company that makes Cadbury is clearly making a different product to the confectionery that I ate in previous decades, which goes some way to explain why I still have my TR-707 as it hasn't had a reissue or imitation yet.

In conclusion I realise the declining brands are a factor in the decision of Roland to make software imitations for the cloud and watch as other companies make the products that consumers want to buy.

It leads me to wonder what other celebrated brands are letting their legacy and IP go to waste?

The desire is strong to have those celebrated sounds in one's home studio, although perhaps it's better for musical innovation if one has to search further afield for the potency they once showed.