My apologies. I didn't get to do half the things I had planned for this rotation...about halfway through the month life kinda got in the way, but hey...that's how it goes sometimes. Didn't get to update the regular Gravity Halo site much this month either.

Regardless, I still plan to do those synth tutorials for the DX7II, the JX-8P, microKorg and the pss-460, so subscribe to my youtube channel if you'd like to see those. I'll be knocking them out sometime in the near future. I'll also be doing a streaming preview of a live set soon as well, so stay tuned to the GH site and I'll post it up there.

March's rotation intro will be coming soon.

Cheers!

I've been working on a live set for a little while now that I may preview on the blog at some point this month, but I wanted to ask other producers out there - how do you perform live? What programs do you use? How much of it is actually live? Do you bring any gear with you?

When I first decided to start introducing more hardware to my setup, one of the main problems I encountered was the lack of resources online that really showed you how each synth worked, what the interface was like and what it sounded like.  There are lots of places that list specs and give subjective reviews, a few places that will cycle through some presets and call it a demo, but nobody was really demonstrating what it was like to really work with a specific synth.  So here's my attempt at demonstrating what it's like to program patches on the Roland JX-3P.

I think this is a great polysynth for getting simple, raw sounds with lots of subtlety and character.  It's not the most feature-laden poly out there...in comparison to some it's downright remedial in that respect, but within its limitations there are a lot of possibilities and to be honest, it's pretty hard to make a bad sound with this baby.  The filter on this thing is really nice - just moving it a fraction begins to change the sound in very interesting ways.  While the resonance isn't as pronounced as some might like, you can pretty easily open the machine up and retune the filter to pump a bit more juice out of it, which I may end up doing some day to push it into self-oscillation territory, but for now I'm happy with its output.

If you're interested in hearing a little more of the 3p's sound, I ran this simple sequence through a bit of delay and very subtly nudged the filter cutoff up every few bars.  You can really get a feel for how much the sound is changed by these minor tweaks, especially if you listen on headphones.

In production, as with many other things in life, there are two distinct mindsets you can inhabit in terms of building your setup - there are some out there that covet the most tricked out gear with all the bells and whistles, the "top of the line" stuff and then there are those that maybe could never afford to go that route and instead focus on making the best out of what they can get their hands on. This is what I like to call the "ghetto mentality". Its the same mindset that drives people to put spinning rims on their minivan instead of feeling like they have to go out and break the bank buying a new BMW or Lexus. Or to spend months and months putting coats of candy paint on an old Chevy that guzzles gas like it was free. Yea, it may not be the best car, it might not have navigation or even power steering, but it's my car and I'm going to make it the sickest fucking piece of shit anyone's ever seen.

That's always been my outlook when it comes to making music. I've never had a ton of money to buy the top of the line versions of anything, but at the same time that has never really been an issue for me. I have to be confident in my abilities to make something sound cool regardless of whether it actually is cool or not. If I need some inanimate object to deliver the quality in my work then in my mind I fucking suck - I'm just not being creative enough.

So when I finally decided to start investing in some hardware for my setup I went in with my broke-ass ghetto mentality and instead of buying what everybody else was rocking, I looked for the cheap shit - the stuff other people thought was sub-par or second rate. Not simply because I could get it for bargain prices, which certainly was a big part of it, but also because there's something standoff-ish about my nature that makes me want to prove conventional wisdom wrong. Apart from the MicroKorg, which I bought off a friend for $250 - none of my synths cost more than $150. The JX-3P I picked up for $103, the 8P for $140 and the DX7II I got for $125.

The thing about all these synths is that somebody somewhere has some shit to talk about how they're not as good as some other synth out there. The 3P isn't as warm as the Junos, the 8p isn't as fat as a Jupiter or the DX7II doesn't sound as good as the orignal DX7, blah blah blah. But let me tell you, there's a guy on YouTube who does a lot of cool synth demos that put it best - he's showing you not what a synthesizer can do, but what a man can do with a synthesizer. Especially dealing with vintage gear, it's important to remember that every instrument has it's own special qualities and unique attributes and while it may not suit every purpose, if you can discover those strengths and play towards them then you have yourself an awesome piece of gear, whether people consider it the best or not.

So if you're thinking about adding some hardware to your setup, keep in mind that it's not always about having the best stuff, but more about having something that you are going to be able to exploit for your own benefit. Find a piece of gear that you think sounds promising and then spend a good amount of time learning its ins and outs.  Sometimes limitations are better than complete freedom in terms of creativity and sometimes all a neglected machine needs is a little bit of coaxing to be able to shine.  

I had to do about 15 fucking takes of this video because my dog kept having a fit at almost the exact same point every time, but I finally managed to put her in her doggy crate for awhile and get through this little tour of my home studio.  This is pretty much just a tour of the hardware end of my setup.  I do use a lot of software, vsts and direct-x plugins and whatnot, but I didn't really get into that here.  Perhaps in another post.




If you'd like to read a few more details about my gear, I've written some stuff on my website that you can check out, but I'll also be doing some tutorials of the DX7II, JX-3P and the JX-8P over the course of my rotation to give people a better idea what each synth is like programming-wise and sound-wise. 

Well, it was bound to happen...the artist we originally had scheduled for February needed some more time and is being pushed back a few months. Luckily, I was planning on doing a Rotation myself at some point anyway, so I will be filling in and helming Rotation #2.

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Producing for many years as Cats On Earth, Dr. Science and Nova Satori (among many other aliases) I decided to delve into my latest project - moto-SLAVE - in late 2009. At that point in time it’d been 4 years since my last Cats On Earth album ("La Fin Triste" for binkcrsh) and I was having a hard time trying to figure out where to go from there. After that break in producing trying to pick up where I’d left off felt really forced, so I decided I wanted to start from scratch and go back to the days when I didn’t really know what the fuck I was doing, just experimenting and having fun. My interests had been steadily moving away from IDM-ish stuff and more towards the vintage sounds of electro-funk, glam-rock, acid and that period in the late 70s-early 80s when disco was evolving into house music with artists like Larry Levan, Patrick Cowley and of course the Italo and hi-NRG stuff.

So I started working with a stripped down setup of old-school drum machines and vintage synthesizers, taking a lo-fi approach and making tunes that evoked the types of things I was most interested in. Influenced by cyberpunk, anime, John Carpenter movies (and soundtracks), retro-futurism and the storytelling elements of 70s-era glam and prog rock, the moto-SLAVE sound started to define itself with fuzzy electronics, urban field recordings, drum machines, acid squelches, ambient pads and digital blips, all doused in reverbs, delays and tube saturation.

During 2010 I released my first album as moto-SLAVE called “Midnight Mass” and then a follow up EP titled “Colors” and am currently toiling away at another EP as we speak, which I hope to detail a bit throughout my rotation.

But moto-SLAVE isn't just a musical endeavor - all the sounds I produce, the lyrics, artwork and atmosphere of the tracks are supplemental to a larger creative world I’ve been crafting that is further detailed in an ongoing near-future sci-fi story, also called "Midnight Mass". Recurring themes of urban decay, exploitation, drug abuse, political and corporate corruption, radicalist hacking, technological escapism and fetishism flow through both the music and the writing, coming together to create what I hope is a multi-faceted portrait of a city divided by class, idealism and apathy. I probably wont delve too much into the writing/story aspect of the project here, but if you’re interested you can read the first 4 chapters on the Midnight Mass Blog, which I update and add to with each subsequent release.

Over the course of February I’ll be touring you all through my little ghetto fabulous studio Super Dimension, showing you how I work, doing a few tutorials of my gear, previewing my new live set and whatever else happens to come to my mind at the time, so stay tuned and feel free to drop me a line in the comments section if you have any questions.