Happy 2019 and all that…
Hey everyone!
Actually… is anyone still there?? I do hope so!
Yes, here I am again, with my almost annual “Sorry I haven’t been around much” type post, with promises of new stuff and all kinds of plans. Well, yeah… it’s that but I am going to do my level best to make good on it all because, well… I feel I have to, for my own sanity more than anything. The clock is ticking. That clock has become ever louder in the last couple of years, losing friends, peers and family to sudden and/or tragic illnesses. So I am acutely aware that if I don’t make the effort, I won’t achieve the things that will give me the satisfaction that I honestly feel we all deserve to feel in life.
Ok. So, that’s the “spiritual” pledge type shit out of the way 😉
“What have you been up to..?”
…I hear you say!
Well, as far as the day job goes, the job that pays the bills, keeps a roof over my family’s head, clothes on their back and food in their bellies, it’s pretty much business as usual. For anyone that doesn’t know, I’m an Instructional Designer and Trainer for a global tech firm that specialises in secure identity solutions. Chances are, if you use a card or smart device to open a door, pay for something or access online digital services, you’ve used our tech. If you’ve ever used an ePassport gate, you’ve used our tech. Got a Green Card. We made that. And I teach people how to use it, sell it and maintain it, mostly through the medium of eLearning and video.
Out with the old…
Anyway, that’s all going well, but it does take up a lot of my time, and come the evening or the weekend, I try and juggle the family, hobbies and other non-work things, before getting back down to it the next day. Now, I understand that a ton of people do all of that, maybe more, and are still more productive and prolific than I am. I get that. It’s not a contest. But I am desperate to change that. In fact, I had a chat will a wildly talented friend of mine who is a gifted artist and she balances her creative output with her bill-paying day job very well, but right now, unless I can guarantee that I can replicate my current income with a split of artistic endeavours and a part-time job, it isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
So I do what I can. Over the years I have forged friendships and relationships with people in the industry. Developers, manufacturers and artists. Some big, some giant, some very small indeed. All of whom I cherish and will be eternally grateful for. These people send me things, whether I ask for them or they offer, and I am very privileged in this regard. So I do my utmost to deliver something back, in the form of a review or by telling lots of people about it, or by testing it, or some other way of support. Sometimes, I get distracted or delayed. But I always try to pay back this faith and generosity in any way I can. However, when things get busy, or I get overloaded, be it mentally or physically, these relationships don’t get the nurturing they ought to, particularly from my side, and for that I can only apologise. I won’t mention names, but some have simply stopped “calling”, and I can hardly blame them.
…and in with the new.
But when some things go quiet, others become loud. Last year, simply through a connection I have with a guy who lives local to me and has other friends in the business, I was hired to work with the wonderful people at IK Multimedia, and you may or may not have encountered me doing my thing, demonstrating and talking a lot about their absolutely brilliant UNO monosynth. I know! Who’d ha’ thunk it!? Me! Demonstrating analog hardware!! But I had an absolute blast and I very much hope to be doing more for them as the trade show season kicks off in Europe. Watch this space.
You will have seen my reviews of sample libraries and plugins by the likes of AcousticSamples, UVI, Arturia and more, and I really want to do more of this. In the last six months, I’ve acquired a substantial amount of “gear”, such as a lot of IK Multimedia’s range, including their massive Total Studio Max suite of plug ins. I am dying to go through all of that with you. Propellerhead have launched a bunch of stuff for Reason, as well as making significant additions to Reason itself, which needs looking at. UVI are making huge leaps forward, and Arturia have a new soft synth, called Pigments, that is causing a bit of a stir.
Rage HARD!
But I get the feeling that 2019 might be a lot more about hardware, which makes a pleasant change! 20 years ago, I was ALL about hardware. Those tables got properly turned and now, it seems that, as with most things in life, things are coming back full circle. And heading the vanguard of this resurgence in cool, affordable music hardware is Behringer! Boy, I never thought I’d be saying THAT! But these guys and girls are setting the scene alight with their incredibly affordable, brilliantly creative and highly ear-catching tools. This past week alone, they have launched or announced, previewed or demoed, at least 7 new instruments. The Odyssey, RD-808, RD-909, VC340, Crave, Pro-1, UB-Xa and…. drum roll…. the MS-101!
Why did I give the MS-101 a drum roll? Well, I have an affinity to the original SH-101 by Roland, upon which the MS-101 is based. It’s one that dates back almost 40 years and when I first saw the MS-101, casually slung over someone’s shoulder in a “leaked” picture of Behringer’s Facebook page, I was, just a little, excited. I will explain more in a separate post, but my friends at Music Tribe here in the U.K. were incredibly kind enough to furnish me with an MS-101 to review! Now, I don’t know how long I will have it before they ask for it back, but I have some ambitious plans to show you what it can do and how it compares to the original! But I can tell you this without any shadow of a doubt… I will be buying one of these for sure. And hopefully, I will be fortunate enough to get hold of some of their other gear in the coming months, so that I can deliver to you some unbiased, informative and fun reviews and tests. I’ve even cleared my workbench for this very purpose! And so excited was I to get this, that I even did a live Facebook stream when I unboxed it that didn’t quite go according to plan, but here it is for your general amusement…
Suffice to say that I have been having a LOT of fun with this thing and will be sharing my thoughts and adventures with it in the coming weeks!
Fairlight
I imagine the reason a lot of you are here is because of my work with Fairlight’s. It seems that many people find me simply because they Google Fairlight and my site is returned somewhere in the list, albeit probably lower down in recent months.
Well, I’m still involved, although things have definitely quietened down over the last year or so. I currently have one and a half Series III’s in rack-mount form here. The PSU blew on one of them, so I was sent a replacement half which enabled me to put it on show at the Synthesized event in Cambridge last year. The Series IIx is still here and at least now features an SD card drive so I can boot it and play around with some of the functionality, but it is still lacking a full set of voice cards and, more importantly, the monitor, light pen and alpha keyboard. My Fairlight guv’nor has recently brought to my attention a lovely piece of custom kit that allows a USB keyboard and mouse to be connected, so that might alleviate usability issues, but I would dearly love to marry it all up with original hardware at some point. We’re also in the midst of negotiating the acquisition of one very illustrious and unique system, but that is proving to be a very long and drawn out process. More news as we get it.
Coming soon, to a blog near you…
So, watch this space. That’s about all I can say. I truly hope to deliver some great stuff to you and I desperately appreciate your continued patronage. And if I may be so bold, please, if you want to help me, and think I deserve it, share the heck out of anything I do. That’s the way things work these days. It’s all about shares, likes, subscribers, influencers and followers. The more you share the stuff I do, the more views I get, the better my web stats are and the more likely it is that companies send me stuff to show you! I genuinely couldn’t do a lot of this without your support, so thank you for everything so far and keep up the great work! 😉
Thanks for your time and arrivederci!
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