Bleak reading though it makes,

I feel obliged to periodically mention - or link to - this.

It's been a while.

And if you're not a music-fiend you're probably going to be sore disappointed now. Because I have been up to my elbows in the magic stuff. To be precise, I have been applying a pet tornado of wheedling, coathangers, caffeine, cable, software, hardware and Potter to get some recording of my own stuff done. I had thought that with a spanky Mac and a Toneport I was well set. This was before I discovered that none of the software I was using would play nicely with its peers. You get what you pay for, and I am using freeware and the stuff that came on the box when I bought it. I resolved to use this in preference to a "proper" solution, because it doesn't really work. And Tiggers quite like that these days. A real muso-creature would get plugins and so forth sorted so that his or her sequencer synced up nicely to the recording software via clever drivers and luscious plugins and patches. I like wire. Long wire. Long cheap wire.

Then again, the real deal might not run the whole lot simultaneously on three platforms - a Mac, an XP box and Ubuntu on something else under the bed and hook it all up via wired ethernet. My house is tiny though, and all the stuff I'm clicking with and on is motley in its OS allegiances. So we have what we have. Drum loops made with Hydrogen on a Mac butchered in Audacity on a PC, and then fed out to a cheap desk with a reverb before diving back on themselves in the Garageband metaverse. Whether the results are usable is still up in the air, but it means I get to think of seventies Jamaica while I twiddle real knobs. And that's good. Inter-software communication has proven so fraught that it's actually easier to send stuff out to a desk and then back again. All this, and servicing my mid-sized collection of mid-range guitars and basses, has kept me from writing stuff on the web. It has no doubt been sorely missed ;-)

Will it ever stop raining? I've got enough rain noises recorded to make a water album by now. And scarcely any decent thunder. Robbed, I tell you. So I hole up at home, and to give you some idea how insular I have been I have seen no flooding, and I learn about MIDI controllers and advanced setup for basses and valve amp mods and EQ and recording and Macs. And I have a little stuff done. I shall seek someone to tell me when I've got far enough out there, but only once I am positive I've gone a bit far.

More soon, but I have an echo calling.

Well, the summer continues to disappoint.

I mean, I just stuck my head out of the window by my desk - taking good care to open it first, having learned - and it's damp and chilly. As in autumnal chilly. Desperate state of affairs. I'm really not sure I've got enough on the books to do to justify staying here at the moment. I really should be somewhere warm and, er, cool. But I lack the spirit right now, unfortunately, and also the small gizmo which I intend to use for ambient recording for my own purposes. I don't want to do anything of note right now without capturing it binaurally (or ambiently in stereo at least). Environmental sound is the lacking element in what I am attempting to cook up.

Bringing me neatly to the issue of recording (again). At the moment I am using a real hodge-podge of tools and methods - I'll spare you the precise details - to get around the fact that GarageBand is ideal for my loops and rhythm tracks, but a crappy editor, and any number of other things will do the stuff GB does not. I am going to have to either shell out for some serious multi-track software like Logic or whatever, in which all things will hopefully be possible, or I will... Never mind. It's all too complicated at the moment. No wonder I still do most things for clients on the little Zoom 8-track and only transfer to a computer for mastering and cd burning. I can see myself ending up with a load of outboard and a decent desk at the end of it all. It's still the best way in many respects.

Anyways, my other creative endeavours are rather stymied by the poor weather.
The last three times I've been out on the bike with my "proper" camera gear (still lacking a decent tripod, which I need to sort) it has been so inclement that I have not hazarded getting out the camera. So I have become wet myself, while getting no pics. Frustrating, as I don't always feel like these expeditions even when the sun is out. I think a return to using the Olympus compact I've had for a couple of years, which is weatherproof, may result. But then it is a pretty limited camera for the shots I like to take.

One day I'll learn that if everything you do is achieved with simple affordable tools it is fairly pointless to own much better stuff. At home. In cupboards.

Which reminds me that I need to see if my Music Man bass has come back from the primo set-up chap yet. Very little point in having something like that if you do all your gigs - which has been a fair few of late - on your spare, rather less costly, instrument. Then again, I got out my cheap old Dean the other day, the one with bits of credit card holding the tuners together and holes in it where I've experimented with the electrics, and thought "this is the ticket"! And that was nearly two grand ago in terms of bass acquisition. And watching Live Earth the other day, some of which had merit and most of which I found a drag, I caught myself watching The Police with an unusual few real ales down me and had an epiphany along the lines of "an old Precision and a pile of Ampegs". Then again, if I want a lift to gigs I have to use the Ashdown that fits in the boot of the band Escort diesel. I find it hard to see why anyone not constrained by the necessity to Escortize their gear would use Ashdowns really, but they are terribly popular. Odd. Maybe I need a better one.

Or a pile of Ampegs.

Cowley Road Carnival was a gas, even though I spent it shackled to The Music Box as a result of playing for a fair while with The Gees (a blast indeed) as well as with the Talc Daemons (my usual efforts).

And that's it for now. Really wanting to get on with some more music, really wanting more sun. Maybe this is all healthy enough.