The O2 Arena

I have been to the O2 more than is healthy in the last month - actually only twice but meh... and both times were awesome. Firstly an epic display of how to blow away a stadium crowd by Muse, and secondly Placebo's biggest UK gig to date. I won't go into the pros and cons of Muse - I like them but from the people I talk to they seem to be distinctly Marmite-esque. Having said that I don't think many other bands of the decade can quite pull off what Muse can live in front of 20 000 people. I would put up some photos but we were too far back for my crap phone camera to be effective!

And on the subject of seats... despite booking Placebo a bit last minute we got some funky seats - just above the standing area and on the mid-right. But to the music - the support was mixed with Silversun Pickups putting on a fun and energetic show despite getting a bit carried away at the end of every song. The Horrors however were not as good as when I saw them at Field Day, their first two songs were barely listenable to due to some appalling vocals. After that though I thought they got much better even if popular opinion would say otherwise. Anyway Placebo rocked so all was good. From blindly white stage (white painted amps and Stefan's silver suit) to confetti filled finale they put on a good show, helped along by the nicely excessive live lineup (guitar, bass, keyboards/synths, electric violin and backing strings and that's without Brian, Stefan and Steve). Being quite a fan of the last two albums the setlist suited me fine and of course they threw in some classics. Oh and I saw one of my professors in the crowd - most random. Anyways obligatory photos if you continue scrolling...

Crunchie Boost Layouts

Here are the strip board layouts I am using for the various parts of the Crunchie Boost. It is taking shape nicely now - soon I'll get some funky waveforms to study. (See earlier posts for components).

Power supply...

Preamp (the Boost)...

Tube amp (the Crunch)...

The Noisettes at Shepherds Bush

Went to see the Noisettes at the Empire in Shepherds Bush the other week and so as always here are some photos and musings. I have to say I'm not a massive fan of their album - it's a bit too pop-ish and seems kind of flat which is a real shame since they have a lot of energy live especially Shingai Shoniwa. Her jumping round the stage whilst singing and playing bass made me exhausted just watching. And as if that wasn't enough, balancing on the drum kit and dangling from the first level balcony just about completed the show. Lots of people (i.e. the internet) seemed to think their choice of setlist was not ideal because they put Don't Upset The Rhythm too early but I disagree - there never seemed to be a lull in energy so what's the problem? Anyways add to this a guitarist who, although always slightly creepy, could play the guitar with his teeth and a drummer with an epic indie beard and starry socks, and you have what was a pretty entertaining gig. Lastly I can't not mention MPhO who were supporting and also surprisingly good. They had a certain Noisettes feel about them but with a bit of funky-pop going on. Here are the pics...

(thanks Jess for this one)

So having spent most of the day feeling crap in bed I thought I'd achieve something by posting the latest photos the the Crunchie Boost. After blowing things up and generally taking far too long to assemble what should have been a simple circuit, I now have a power supply. It uses the LT1054 and actually works! With the standard Boss power I get 9.11V and now I have -8.31V in addition. This is perfect for the preamp section and should be ok for the tube too (though not the tube heater). Therefore, next stop - getting some crunch.

Post Fail

I need to rant...

Online shopping in the past few years has become pretty awesome, in fact to the point where you could easily buy 90% of everything you need without ever having to leave the house. Websites are easier to use and payment is quick and less risky than before things such as Paypal. However, there remains the problem of delivery. Most delivery firms are, I have decided, incompetent, unhelpful and while attempting to introduce web-based or automated features are still not addressing the main problems.

I thought some companies were ok but I have had shit service from DHL and HDNL to name a couple, and everyone else thinks Royal Mail are rubbish (although I would say they are the best of a bad bunch). One of the main problems is their inability to specify a delivery time, just stating the day on which it will arrive is useless for anyone who does any kind of work. Secondly even if you can rearrange a delivery and find a day that you are willing to waste, I have had a least three occasions where I have waited in only for them to fail to turn up. This is totally unacceptable - you don't expect when paying for something for your credit card to say "oh wait sorry can't sell you that but we'll charge you anyway and maybe you can get it some other time". You then try to contact the branch at which your parcel is being held, but this is basically impossible because they only give you a phone number for the central services. Finally on deciding to go and fetch the parcel yourself you realise that the depot is miles away and nowhere near any kind of sensible public transport and even if you do get there, it has just defeated one of the points of shopping online in the first place.

Rant over. Now someone sort out a better postal service.

I'm back (with a new studio)

Well it's been a long time - mainly due to a lack of internet, the general stress of moving flat and the fact that writing endless stuff for my PhD means that writing for my blog has less appeal. One advantage of moving was that I now have room to set up my recording studio properly and even have space for a couple of new additions. Here's what it looks like...

I'm particularly pleased with my new drum controller (an Akai MPD24) above the keyboard. It's got really good touch sensitive pads and the whole thing feels solidly built which is surprising given that it is only about £150 new. Loads of knobs, sliders and transport buttons too. My other purchase was a second-hand Soundcraft Notepad mixing desk for small scale live use which I can confirm works well outside for micro-festivals but more on that later.

Ramblings of a crazed composer

I have just realised, after actually paying attention to some of the stuff on my iPod, that For Martha by the Smashing Pumpkins has almost the exact same piano part as a song I wrote about 10 years ago. This is most odd because although the song also came out at roughly this time, I doubt I would've heard it not being a fan back then. So this got me thinking how many other songs have similarities but are independently written, where do melodies come from and how do we generate ideas given what we listen to and what instruments we play.

The last point is quite interesting since I think there are things/sounds/rhythms that naturally come from particular instruments so depending on what you use to write a song, the shape of the tune you produce will change. I know there are certain riffs or ways of playing that I like doing on the guitar and I'm sure they come across in what I write. This partly explains the For Martha piano since once you have some basic chords there are some things that feel very natural to play on the keyboard... so of course you scribble them down and there we have the beginnings of a song. Another way to look at this is to see how hard it can be to transpose something to another instrument. I do enjoy a bit of Apocalyptica and knowing how to play guitar and cello I realise how much skill you need to play metal on a cello.

When coming up with an actual melody I am, in some ways, clueless! I like to think I write some catchy tunes once in a while but where they come from I don't really know. I listen to a fair bit of music and also quite a wide range of genres (to put it stereotypically everything from Bach to System Of A Down) so maybe it's all just a mash-up of everything I've heard before, but I hope not. At least when writing a tune to already composed lyrics the words themselves tend to have a melody hidden behind them just as speaking has certain rhythms and intonations. Possibly I always need some kind of lyric in my head when writing a song even if it is fairly subconscious and that, combined with the "science" of what sounds nice together, is all there is to it. Now I just need to know where poets and lyricists get their words from!

PS If you didn't see Goldie compose a classical piece of music for the Proms on the BBC then you should - it was awesomeness... and mash-up.

Field Day 2009!

Field Days attended: 2, Field Days involving large amounts of precipitation: 2. Maybe next year I'll get lucky with the weather. Anyway I saw some good stuff especially when the sun was shining. While wandering around working out where everything was we had a quick listen to King Charles which was muchly enjoyable and we probably should have stayed longer. He did a good job getting both a hot female bassist and backing vocalist! Interspersed with some chilling in the field, other highlights were Wet Paint playing some grungy indie rock, The Horrors on the main stage and Little Boots for that pop fix. I thought The Horrors were pretty awesome and they made the rain stop! However, this didn't seem to enthuse the crowd quite as much as I expected - maybe not upbeat enough. Well here are a few funky photos (at least semi-funky, I am beginning to realise the importance of not using digital zoom at a gig... or ever):

Sian Alice Group

Some fieldage

Wet Paint

A rain shelter... er I mean stage

The Horrors

Balancing act

Back to the music recording advice and an explanation of why it is sometimes necessary to have a soldering iron at a gig.

There are two ways to send an analogue signal down a cable: the standard (and common on consumer equipment) unbalanced audio and the more "professional" balanced audio. An unbalanced signal is very easy to understand. One line is the ground and the other is the so called 'hot' signal. A balanced cable requires three lines - one for ground, one for the 'hot' or '+' signal and one for an inverted, 'cold' or '-' signal. This makes more sense in the diagram below...

So, what is the point of a balanced cable? Basically for very long lengths of cable (over 20m is probably noticeable) it helps to reduce noise. The "balancing" refers to the fact that the impedances at each end of the cable are the same i.e. balanced. Any noise that is picked up along the cable should produce equal signals on both the hot and cold lines. Then a differential amplifier in your mixing desk or soundcard is used to compare the two lines and since the noise appears the same on both, it is not amplified. Another advantage of this system is that there is very little electromagnetic field around the cable as the two signals have opposite polarities and so crosstalk between different cables is minimised.

The problems come when you have a mixture of balanced and unbalanced inputs and outputs in your setup. Remember that a line needs balanced connectors at both ends for the noise cancellation discussed above so ideally you should use transformer adaptors to keep any long cables balanced. However most people find it necessary at some point to connect equipment of different types without worrying about having it balanced... and it is a real pain! Firstly there are three kinds of balanced output:

1. Impedance balanced - only the hot signal is driven and the cold signal is at ground (this works despite what I said above since noise is still removed by the differential amplifier but crosstalk is not reduced).

2. Transformer balanced - an output transformer is used to provide the opposite polarity signals with the centre 'tapped' to provide the ground.

3. Active balanced - hot and cold lines are both actively driven but with opposite polarity signals (this is what much modern equipment now consists of).

So now that that is clear (!) I have compiled a nice list of how everything should be connected (I've used both XLR type plugs and TRS jacks to demonstrate how you might need to use both, however they are of course interchangeable). Also note that often 2- or 3-conductor cable can be used. The advantage of using three is that the outer screen can be used as a shield, connected only at one end. Try to be consistent with which end you connect the shield so that they are all grounded to one point and there are no 'earth loops' which will pick up noise.


And that is why a soldering iron and multimeter can come in handy... two cables may look the same from outside but be wired up completely differently.

So... not an entirely successful day. Being the absolute idiot that I am, I managed to mistake 4.7k resistors for 47k ones. My power supply was working nicely giving me both a positive and negative output, then I noticed a few things (in this order):

1. The negative voltage was about 0.5V too large.

2. The negative supply suddenly became quite noisy.

3. There was a burning smell.

4. The negative supply was no longer negative but positive.

Conclusion: The circuit will almost certainly work if I use the correct resistors.

Future work: Get a new LT1054.

A quick note to say shiiiiiit. Don't need the LM2930 regulator in my power supply as it's already regulated. Oh well it is a nice design and can still be used minus a couple of components!

Power to the Crunchie Boost

So after much insecurity over whether my design would work I think I now have something that in theory converts a 9V unregulated supply (as provided by the standard Boss PSU) into +8V and -8.5V (see above). The LT1054 is a combined charge-pump converter and regulator to provide the negative supply and the LM2930 is just a regulator for the positive voltage. Both were found after trawling through the RS catalogue for far too long and reading far too many datasheets! The LT1054 is pretty cool though and if it works I'll be impressed - inverting a voltage with essentially some clever switching and a fat capacitor seems like it could be dodgy to me.

Well I've ordered the bits and will test it out soon, so in the meantime I'll pray to the electronics gods.

Fight Like Apes

Having recovered from exposure to excessive heat and slightly excessive alcohol consumption I am in a fit state to update my blog. Last night I went to Cargo to see Fight Like Apes... and was impressed. The first time I listened to them I thought of the Ting Tings but without the crapness. However I think that was just the one song (Jake Summers) and maybe because of the vocals. Really they are quite hard to describe musically - some kind of punky indie rock/pop but given that they have no guitars (apart from the bass) and everything is done on synths that description doesn't really work. So I'll go with their own description of "karate rock" which kind of sums up their slightly insane energy and is catchier than electro-punk-pop rock. Also they sing about everything from fish and chips to the feelings of chimps towards bats, with a slight angry edge, which is good by me.

Anyway in between being sprayed with wine from MayKay and not being hit by the big musical stick thing I took some photos. The big musical stick things are clearly visible before being used to hit the big musical board thing (you'll be pleased to know that the crowd got a go with them later in the evening). In summary - good gig. I've been in need of one.

Preamp

Eek it's been far too long since I last posted anything. Despite seeming to achieve nothing in the past few weeks it has been very busy. I generally prefer it the other way around - like this morning where I bought a ton of stuff to make cheesecake, got my hair cut and ordered a keyboard stand (from a real shop not the internet!), and I still have most of the day left to chillax.

For your entertainment here is a picture of a fully functional preamp ready to go into my Crunchie Boost pedal.

Folky folky

I seem to be overdosing a bit on folk at the moment. Went to see Pierre Bensusan last week at The Half Moon in Putney and was pretty impressed. He does some crazily skilled stuff in DADGAD tuning and somehow manages to be quite free flowing and loose in his playing style without being sloppy. Anyway I could have listened to him for hours, and he's amusing in between songs which is always a bonus! *Strong French accent* "All your politicians are leaving, I wish ours would do the same".

As if that wasn't enough I was at a barn dance on Saturday with a good local band called The Green Band, unfortunately it may have been the last time they play together. I get the impression folk bands may die out a little bit unless there are more young people into the music than I realise. I mean how many people start a folk band at uni? Rock/pop bands yes, jazz bands yes and a fair few string quartets etc. but no ukelele band. Well I need to get some rock gigs sorted before I become too obsessed with folk. In the meantime here's a picture of the man himself with his new Irish made guitar (courtesy of Markus due to the fact I was still learning how to use my new camera phone and consequently taking crap photos)...

After a long break of not using my old Minolta SLR camera I decided to get some photos of the Thames along by Chiswick and Putney. This was one freezing cold evening a few months back. However, due to my usual bad luck the batteries died half way through the film and idiot that I am I had no spares. Months later armed with batteries coming out of my ears I finished the film, got it processed, scanned, 'shopped and here are some of my favourites.





The walk I took was part of the Thames path - well worth a stroll.

Timing is everything in binary solos

Here's a quick post about syncing digital signals and digital clock sources. As I mentioned before I have my two audio interfaces linked by a coaxial s/pdif cable. This means that I can keep a digital signal path for all my recording without the loss of quality that repeated analogue-to-digital conversion might introduce. Hence the only analogue signals are from instrument to input and from output to monitors. However, digital audio is not as straightforward as it might at first seem.

Point to note 1 - digital audio is made by breaking down an analogue signal into discrete samples. The sample rate is the frequency at which this is done and the bit rate is essentially the number of binary digits that are used to encode the amplitude of the signal. Hence if your device is outputting a signal with a 44.1 kHz sample rate but your input is expecting a 48 kHz signal there's gonna be trouble!

Point to note 2 - when sending digital audio from one device to another their clocks must be in sync so that they both know where the music starts. This can be a bit of a problem but is usually solved by one device being the master and its clock being used to control all the other devices. In an s/pdif (and in fact the more "professional" AES/EBU) connection, clock signals are sent along with the audio which can make it a bit temperamental for recording. However when doing things on a budget there is not a lot of choice. One often used (and expensive) solution is an external clock source that can be linked to all your other devices and transmits the so called word clock signal separately. Even then though it is still not usually as good as the internal clock for a particular device. And so in conclusion I think it's best not to think too much about it and hope that as the need for external hardware decreases so will the need for crazy digital audio connections! In the meantime this is quite an interesting forum thread.

And if you're not sure what a binary solo is then check this out... "The Humans Are Dead" ;)

Awesome bit of folk singing in the Southbank centre this afternoon courtesy of the Cecil Sharp House Community Choir. With a nice mix of traditional English songs and those from Eastern Europe and a generous helping of sea shanty-esque fun who could possibly object? Also the Southbank centre seems to do a lot more free lunchtime concerts than I realised - I think I will investigate further...

Oh yes and this is Cecil Sharp:

Crunchie Boost Update

My new pedal is coming along quite well. I decided to assemble it on stripboard rather than try to make a PCB due to my inherent laziness but I doubt it will make a huge difference to the sound as we're working with pretty low voltages. So far I have put together the preamp section (blue on the schematic) and tested the rest of the circuit above in the lab. It is essentially the Shaka tube by Aron Nelson but using 9V and with a gain control in the tube section that I am calling the "crunch". Looking at the output on the oscilloscope there was some nice, if subtle, clipping of a sine wave input. Of course it's difficult to know what this will actually sound like but we shall see - if it is not overdrivey enough I'll have to think about altering the point at which the second half of the tube stage is biased and maybe use this as the "crunch control". Also, obviously there will be an output stage with simple tone and volume controls and the supply circuit. The latter is rather interesting as I am hoping to get +9V and -9V from the standard Boss DC power supply using a MAX1044 switched-capacitor voltage converter. I think the current is within the operating limits of the converter as long as I don't try to use it to power the tube heating elements! In the lab the tube section and the preamp section were drawing about 0.2mA each but I'd better check that more carefully. It could all go horribly wrong from this point...

(PS I'll put some more pictures/schematics/oscilloscope traces up in following weeks.)

Recording studio pics

As promised - some pretty pictures showing the simplicity that is my studio (although it usually looks more of a mess when I'm actually doing something). It's amazing how little you need to get a good recording these days, no more floor to ceiling rack of effects just a fast computer.

Thor

The new synthesiser in Reason (sorry I'm a bit obsessed with it at the moment) is ridiculous. It's going to take me the next month just to get through the million online tutorials before I even begin to understand what is essentially seems to be a combination of every synth from the Moog to the DX7.

But I will persist since Robert Moog said himself that "computers are the most important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of catgut which was a very long time ago." And computers don't involve extracting sheep intestines which is always an advantage. Hmm... remind me not to get any gut strings for my 'cello, as much as I like a bit of crazy baroque that is pushing the need for authenticity too far.

Delay... not the good kind

While wandering home and thinking about what to add to my blog I noticed a board in the tube station covered with "minor delays" signs and so I will talk about delay, well actually latency but meh.

When doing digital recording it is always important to consider latency or the time delay between a signal entering your audio interface and it leaving through your monitors. The more complex your studio and the more software effects you apply the larger this effect becomes. And it can be very annoying! You can be happily rocking along to a click track only to play it back and find the timing is out by a few tens of milliseconds. Having said that most modern audio interfaces are excellent at compensating for this and are often advertised as "zero latency". The particular problem I have is that I have two audio interfaces (see My Studio below) - an M-AUDIO Firewire 410 and a Line 6 TonePort UX2. I like to have my monitors connected to the 410 but record most of my guitar stuff through the UX2. The two methods I use are as follows (neither ideal but nothing is in a home studio):

1. Have input and output set to different audio interfaces in my sequencing software. Goodness: easy to record and route signals. Badness: Latency, lots of. Most software generally seems to prefer dealing with as few hardware devices as possible hence the problem. The latency is correctable (well in Ableton Live it is) but also variable.

2. Use my 410 for the audio input and output and feed the digital output (s/pdif) on the UX2 into the 410. Goodness: Minimal latency. Badness: Not as flexible as the first idea and also can be temperamental as you have to sync the clocks on the two interfaces. Basically my 410 has to use the clock source in the UX2 that is transmitted with the digital audio by the s/pdif cable. If this clock signal loses sync (as seems to happen whenever I turn my cooker on!) all my music suddenly becomes horribly distorted. 

Actually the other option is to keep swapping between interfaces but this requires a lot of cable changing each time I want to play something back and I can't then always monitor using the 410. Anyways I am starting to prefer the second option especially as the reliability of the s/pdif connection seems to have improved now I have the most up-to-date software and a faster computer, or maybe I'm just imagining stuff. It does however bring me to the topic of clock sources in digital recording but I want food so I'll leave it to another day.

I have returned

So, back from California and about time I updated my blog. Here's a nice San Francisco photo to begin with...


This was taken just north of the Golden Gate bridge on the way to Sausalito and if you zoom in manages to show Alcatraz, a bit of Oakland, the Bay bridge, San Francisco itself, Fort Point and the Golden Gate bridge all, rather awesomely, at once.

Anyway back to the music and I think I am going to upgrade from Reason 2.5 to 4. I've been using Reason for a long time and it is the coolest music software ever - who cares that the animated cables when you shake the window are completely pointless? The annoying thing is that I have to upgrade for ReWire to work properly on my Intel based mac (as far as I can tell Reason 3.0.5 and newer is universal binary). If you don't know, ReWire is a software re-routing tool that means you can have all your Reason instruments playing, in sync, inside whatever audio sequencer you are using. It makes recording vocals, guitars etc. with for example Reason drums or a synth ten times easier since you do not have to mix down and import all the Reason tracks to listen to the whole song. The way it normally works is straightforward - open your sequencer then open Reason. Reason will go into slave mode and pressing play in either application will play both together. Sequencer tracks can then be set up to take the signal from any of the Reason instruments or outputs. Basically very useful and just about worth the 99EUR upgrade. If only I'd got it when the exchange rate was better :(

Mmmm tubey goodness (courtesy of shanegorski)

Intro to the Crunchie Boost

I'm going to try to keep a log of the progress of my guitar effects pedal that I am slowly building (very slowly). In theory as a physicist with access to a fully equipped electronics lab it should be easy, however, finding time when I don't have actual work to do is challenging.

Anyway it is going to be a tube overdrive/boost and hence will be named the Crunchie Boost after two rather well known confectionery items. The circuit is based on the Shaka Tube but initially I wanted to run it off the standard Boss 9Vdc power supply used by many pedals. In a brain-dead moment I got it into my head that this would provide me with +9V and -9V which it won't! Hence I'm now pondering the next move - maybe using a simple voltage doubling circuit for the op-amp input stage but this can't be done for the high current tube output section. I'm not sure 9V is enough of a plate voltage for the tube so it's off to the lab for some experimenting...

My Studio

It's often useful to see how people set up their recording studios especially when first deciding what equipment you need so here is a nice picture of mine (created using Illustrator, which was fun and good for procrastination).


It is a fairly simple system but is cheap and good for a small band especially as I don't often record more than two or three tracks at once. The main audio interface is a Firewire 410 made by M-AUDIO but to be honest the Line6 TonePort is amazing and really every guitarist in the world should have one. In terms of a computer it's always good to have a fast one, hence my 8-core 2.8GHz MacPro with 2GB (not enough!) RAM. I use Ableton Live 7 for recording which is a bit random as I don't really do any live stuff with it however, it was the best in my price range when I was looking several years back and I like it so haven't changed to anything more Mac-like such as Logic. I've also got Reason for any electronic/synth/piano/strings sounds that I need and using the wonders of ReWire I can record my Reason tracks directly into Live and/or play them in sync with the Live track.

No doubt I will expand on some of the bits and pieces in my studio in the coming months and may even provide some photos.

I think summer has properly arrived.  It's 7pm and the sun is setting causing the horrible concrete block of flats across my road to actually look rather artistic!  Also people are planning bbq's, trips to the park, general outdoor stuff... it seemed like it was only a few weeks ago it was snowing.

Well on the random quotation front "Weather is a great metaphor for life - sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad, and there's nothing much you can do about it but carry an umbrella."

Tube anti-depressants

After a fairly depressing day there is nothing better than hooking up your sound system through a tube preamp, turning it up loud and listening to the results.  Admittedly it was less than £50 and made by Behringer (the Ultragain MIC200) but considering the price it can make some nice sounds.  Which actually is typical of Behringer.  Most people knock them but in my experience they are generally fairly well built and adequate for most home recording projects.

I'm off now for a weekend of band-based fun...

Compressing, limiting and downright breaking

I feel like starting with one of my favourite rants.  Everyone who does any music recording should know about the compressor/limiter, that useful bit of kit which essentially reduces the music's dynamic range thus preventing your bassist sounding like he has set off a land-mine under the e-string during a quite passage.  It works by having a threshold level below which the input to output ratio is 1:1 and above which the ratio can be set between 1:1 and infinity:1 hence producing a reduction in gain.  A limiter is a compressor with the ratio set at infinity:1 and can be used to boost the overall volume of a track.  The limiter sets all output above the threshold to a constant level and allows you to increase the gain up to the point of clipping.  However in the idiotic pursuit of louder and louder tracks many people (professional and amateur) push the gain too far and get horrible digital clipping.  In ye olde days of analogue recording a bit of clipping was fine - it just added some warm fuzziness - but digital clipping is bad, very very bad!  Do the sound engineers think we can't hear it above a distorted guitar?  Do they think we only listen to music through £5.99 headphones? Grrr!

In keeping with my old blog I'll start by saying "In the beginning there was nothing, and it exploded" (Terry Pratchett).

It begins...

So, it begins (again). Hopefully now I have a vague theme to my blog I will actually keep it up for a sensible amount of time! When I started to get into amateur music recording there was a lot of good advice around but also a lot of crap and trying to find what I wanted was not easy. Hence I will share some of the things I have learnt and am learning as the "producer/engineer" (otherwise known as the person who spends the most on music equipment) for Noctula. In addition I will throw in the random and amusing things that happen to me just so you don't get bored.