So Long, 2014...
From the original Analog Industries archive. Some links and images from that era no longer resolve.
Happy New Year, AI-ers! 2014 was, like most recent years, pretty awesome for me personally and Audio Damage as a company. I don’t believe in luck (or, well, magic of any sort) but if I did, I’d think I had some.
What’s coming in 2015? On the AD front, some new hardware, and some updates to classic AD plug-ins. We’ll also be making our first appearance at NAMM as a company with a physical presence. On the personal front, a new Sister Machine Gun record in March, and I’m beginning the phase of my life where speaking engagements at universities seem to be a thing I do, also in March at UCSB. During the next 12 months, I am going to attempt to do a Cool Thing Every Month here on AI (t-shirt, sample pack, whatever), as well as a monthly installment of the 10 Questions video blog on YouTube.
In short, it’s going to be busy. What awsomeness happened to you in 2014? (Or, well, didn’t, I guess?) What amazing thing do you have planned for 2015? TELL ME, FOR THE LOVE OF ZOG!
17 comments
Well I *was* gonna say that I finally released an EP on a record label... but delays happened, so that's a 2015 thing. (Delays on my part, not theirs.)
Wow, and here I'd been thinking that you spent the bulk of 2014 bleeding your blood as a source of moisture to try to put out several fires at once.
2014 was good for me in that I found another sort-of product to build into old Altoids tins, and on the same project finally got around to having a PCB manufactured. But it's not for you guys, unless "you guys" include theatrical wireless mic wranglers.
Thanks for doing what you do and carving out a little corner of the internet for us weirdos. Also, for Sequencer 1.
New vinyl LP out sometime in Jan/Feb 2015 for me. Self-release on my own label as always.
2015 also sees me trying to figure out how to umbilical the performance oriented modules of my modular so that I can have them more at hand. Hoping to keep it to a retrofit and not a complete blow-up of my existing set up.
Speaking of blowing up, in 2015 I'm committed to finding ways of exploding my current WERKFLEAUX to get outside of The Comfort Zone™.
Onward and upward.
2014 was a transitional year....
...after 10 years of professionally composing/performing/releasing/etc as Mad EP, I've unofficially 'retired'. I'm keeping my monthly radio show, but for the most part I am returning to my classical roots... focusing on my cello teaching and my new classical management/booking company I am about to launch. I'll never say never - there are a few projects I started that I never finished that I'll put out sometime.. and of course, I am always open to ideas for film scoring and composing for contemporary dance ensembles...
..but yeah. In the meantime - many many thanks to Audio Damage for giving me the tools I needed to create the sounds I had in my head for those 10 years.
I quit my job in late 2013 to become a freelancer as a plug-in developer, and it's working pretty well now. I hope I will be able to release my first commercial products very soon. The company for whom I work may release what I have done very soon in 2015 too.
Really excited to see what is going to happen this year.
Happy New Year, my AI brethren.
For me, I have, surprisingly renewed vigor in making music, releasing it, and eventually (maybe) performing it. Apparently my mid-life crisis is going to be giving music production one last whirl, purely for shits and giggles. After the last few years in the doldrums, spinning my wheels, getting fuck-all done. I'm going to dump as much music as I possibly can. In what form remains to be seen.
I'm going to keep wearing suits whenever I go out. Dress for the job you want! (i.e. late-80s 3rd-tier rock musician.)
I'm chuffed about the SMG, but seeing as it's pushed off your Big Beat revival I'm giving it the hairy eyeball. (O, it's coming, CR. The Big Beat revival is still coming. Fucking movie samples and all.) But if a dude wanted to check out SMG beyond the positron release and the MK soundtrack, what's the best method? Your CD stack card at any Newbury Comics I visit has been empty since I bought 6.0 at one store.
Plus Beauty Pill is releasing new music this year. So, already 2015 better than last year.
Biggest professional thing in 2014 was deciding, in December(damn it), "sod it - I'm going to do these in C++", where "these" = all those kontakt library/instruments I've been building for the last 5 years. I know there will be problems but the sheer relief resulting from the prospect of not having a set of technical problems/limitations *introduced by the tool set* in 2015 makes me soooo happy...
Biggest thing for me was finally releasing my album, CONSTRUCT. I'd been working on it for over 5 years. It's a beast of a concept album, clocking in at over an hour and a half. It was my Moby Dick. Now, I've been selling off and rotating out gear for new sounds to start my new 'thing' in 2015. First thing I scored was this pretty all white Minimoog Voyager XL - which is my first step getting my feet wet in the modular world. That's pretty exciting to me...
If any of you are interested, go check out the fruits of my labor: https://slowearth.bandcamp.com/album/construct
...and I'm totally looking forward to SMG 2015!
Happy New Years, fellow noise makers!
First, thanks to CR and Adam for all their hard work in 2014. While I don't use a modular setup, I love that this new product line exists.
I pushed two releases out this year (one had been sitting on the shelf for over a year, SMH): https://disconnector.bandcamp.com/
Both of those are also up on all the other streaming/shop services via DistroKid. I'm kicking the tires on that service - so far, everything was posted and released quickly and accurately. The sales reporting is incredibly laggy, so we'll see.
For 2015, I'm moving to a more hardware-based setup for music making. Three DIY pieces will be at the heart of my setup - the Shruthi-1, Audiothingies P6, and the Sonic Potions LXR drum machine. I'll still be using Live for MIDI and FX processing, and there may be video of all this at some point.
Lastly, thanks to all the other AI members that share links and such to their work. It's great to hear the range of work from other readers.
In 2014, I did some soundtrack work on a couple of short films for my nephew, who is in film school. Since they use Albuquerque Studios of Breaking Bad fame for showing films, I saw his images and heard my music in a super awesome movie theater environment. That was surreal.
Living in New Mexico means opportunities for photographing some ghost towns, and I had a blast doing that a few times over the course of 2014.
In 2015, I'd like to put some new gear acquisitions to use and make at least an EP or two, and maybe do more with soundtracks, and perhaps experiment with field recordings that I've piled up. I spent a lot of 2014 learning more about synthesis and production, and it will be fun to put that knowledge to use in 2015, and to continue learning.
As for Awesomeness that happened, here I ramble:
In 2014 finally, finally the Zaquencer happened. I've had two BCR2000s for about ten years now, but no one to my knowledge until 2014 had managed to turn it from generic MIDI controller into standalone MIDI step sequencer.
I've literally waited ten years for this to finally happen, so I am pretty stoked.
It's got up to 32 steps, 4 tracks, two MIDI outputs, swing, 192 patterns and more (like two CC lanes per track). I am not affiliated with zaqaudio in any way, so sorry if this sounds like a stupid product endorsement, but it isn't - have I mentioned, yet, that I am pretty stoked or that it has built-in scales? Oh, and lest I forget it even plays Chords.
I swear it's full of Techno, too.
2015 will bring lots of learning, as that never ends fortunately. Then there's gonna be some music of my own that I will feel comfortable enough to share with other people. And I will investigate bandcamp some more to see if it might suit me. For getting CR, SIGHUP and other AI members' music it seems like a cool place.
If this comment violates any blog rules, please feel free to point it out or tar and feather me. I am so hyper about this little MIDI sequencer, which just happened to turn up out of nowhere that I can't remember if mentioning specific products is allowed on analogindustries.
And 2015 might have the ad BASIC synth in store for me as I couldn't get around to acquiring it in 2014.
Happy new year. I have a new Russian Corvette release planned on a label compilation and I've also been been thinking about starting up a label this year. Would like to do it to release my own stuff, but mostly to do some compilations with other artists I've come across that I think people need to hear. It will probably just be digital, but would like to do vinyl if possible. We'll see how it goes.
Do you plan to do a follow-up to Unsuspected Sounds at some point? And may I ask how it's sold so far, would be interesting to know.
So what's happening with the tape/musique concrete studio idea you talked about last year? Is that part of your 2015 plans?
@krylenko: I have acquired one of the three Otari MTR-10/12 machines I'll need for the tape studio, courtesy of Jeff Laity and TASCAM (thanks, guys!) Funny story: it is from the radio station control room set of the TV series "Frasier." Aside from being a prop, they actually used it as the playback source for the fake radio shows that play in the background in many scenes. So it came with several tapes of complete radio shows, complete with fake news and ads (some of which are totally hilarious.)
Anyhow, someone from Fender (the corporate offices of which are here in Phoenix) is donating a console and at least one of the eight vintage HP tube tone generators required.
So the vintage studio is coming in to being, slowly but surely. It needs a physical home at some point, but that's actually a relatively trivial matter in the scheme of things. I expect that by this time next year, electronic musicians interested in doing a track or EP in the Old Ways will be welcome to come and use the facility.
@soren: I actually ultimately lost money on the Unsuspected Sounds project. It wasn't a lot of money, and it happened at a time I was fairly flush, so it wasn't painful or anything, but it's not something I can make a habit of, being a relatively not-rich sort of guy.
I don't mind in the slightest. It was something that was worth doing. But I don't think I'll be doing it again.
-CR
Cool, glad to hear it. I have family in AZ so it'd be simple to check it out when it's up and running.
Hadn't thought about it for a while, but I just saw the Deutsches Museum's very cool electronic music instrument room, which features the Siemens electronic music studio from back in the day. Tape decks, tube generators, racks of filters, and patchbays everywhere, plus a very cool vocoder and some other interesting stuff only described in German. It was glorious.
@CR: What's the story on the old dilapidated meter?
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