NO STEP

I absolutely don’t do anything remotely like the guy in this picture.

Last week I did gig at an unusual venue - not a club, not a bar with live music, but a coding school / co-working space where I happen to teach. It was interesting to see that certain things we take for granted as electronic musicians and/or producers still haven’t filtered down to the mainstream. Note that I don’t mean the insiders’ mainstream but the real mainstream. Things work like this for them: 

If you’re a guy who lugs your setup in a backpack, plays without a band and doesn’t sing, you’re automatically a DJ. It doesn’t matter if you only play your own music. It doesn’t make a difference if you put up a performance with visuals, weird outfits or whatever. No argument will convince people otherwise.

Yes, electronic music has been out there since before the 60s and in pop music at large since at least the 80s, but we’re still "different”. The “you’re a DJ” thing is very hard to kill. It’s even funnier to me since I’ve never played with turntables or CDJs in my life. You’ve read that right: not even once!

The above picture also bears no resemblance to what I do.

I’m honestly not even sure I should bother. Maybe the best option is to simply say "yeah, I’m a DJ” and not care about making elaborate sets with my own tracks where I can change things on the fly. In those situations I should probably just fire up Traktor and mix my stuff with other stuff and leave the real live sets for places where people are actually open to see a live electronic act.

This thing is pretty awesome (and it’s free until March 10 - go get it!). The best feature is making a sad frog face on the filter tab.

I’ve been meaning to use the Roland SPD-SX I bought a while ago in my shows, so I'm fiddling around and figuring out what it can do. I’m thinking about using it both stand-alone and in conjunction with Ableton Live and/or some iPad apps.

It’s a very nice piece of hardware, but the software... well, just look at this.

It’s a half-assed attempt at skeuomorphism that runs slower than Java on a 486. To top it off, it only allows transferring wav/aiff files from the computer, which you can also do by using a USB drive - the easy part. The hard part is editing parameters using cascading menus on the unit’s tiny LCD, which of course you can’t do using this app.

Now, the way this works is very simple: once you plug the SPD-SX to a computer via USB it becomes a simple USB storage device. Wave Manager works by changing files directly on the unit - very straightforward, but not very smart. If you copy the contents of the SPD-SX to a USB drive, Wave Manager can’t tell the difference.

Ok, so what? Well, you’d think there would be a good reason for Roland to keep Wave Manager limited to audio transfer instead of making it a full-fledged editor. But I’m a geek with no life, so of course I decided to look into the other files present in the unit:

Well, well, well, would you look at that. It’s all XML! Some of it is well structured and fairly easy to read, while some other parts (specifically the sample list) are an over-engineered mess with lists of numbers pointing to lists of files. Either way, it’s very clear Roland could (and should!) put out a better tool to edit those parameters. At the very least they should publish a file format reference for someone to come up with a better editor.

I’ve been here for years, and I’ll be all over way more ;-) 

As it often happens when the year ends and snow covers the ground making life miserable, I’ve decided to reorganize my studio. Out with the Maschine controller which I barely use, back with the MicroKORG with which I continuously fall in and out of love. Also note my newfangled Ikea-hacked desk! I’m so proud of it!

The SPD-SX will get more of a workout this year (particularly on live shows), and I’ve been combining Ableton Push with the KMI Softstep 2 for new live sets.

I know nobody cares about albums anymore, but I’m working on a new one. I know you don’t care, but I do. More news on this soon.

Tonight I went to a party where:

Torontonians danced. That’s a rare sight (seriously).

The DJ played Halcyon and It’s a Fine Day and people knew what was up!

Even the bouncer was having fun.

There were glow sticks!

It’s complicated for me to talk about the attacks in Paris. I was raised in a city where hundreds of deaths on a single night isn’t all that uncommon, and there are no terrorists there. In fact, there was a very grim police shootout in Rio the same night of the Paris attacks. Dozens of people were killed, but it won’t make first page news. Why? Because it happens at least once every single week.

The same thing happens in middle eastern cities in general, including Beirut. Violence is constant, so only the absolute worst is newsworthy.

Constant violence changes how cities look, and that resulted in a huge (positive!) cultural shock when I moved to Toronto. I noticed how houses and buildings don’t have walls surrounding their grounds, while in Rio and São Paulo it’s common to see iron bars (here’s where I used to live in São Paulo) and even electrified barbed wire sometimes. The picture below is from a very nice neighbourhood, by the way.

My point is that violence easily becomes banal. It’s easy to forget about it and take it for granted when it happens often. This doesn’t make it less worse in any way, but the reactions are very different. That’s why it feels more shocking to talk about violence in Paris than in Beirut (or Rio), even though people are being shot either way.

Reasons differ, but the root of all problems is similar: some people have it better than others. People who don’t have it good resent this. People who have it good use violence to maintain their comfortable status, either actively or by proxy (police, armies and so on). Lack of resources and education does the rest, building rage over time. Religion compounds it, preaching this life doesn’t really count: blow yourself up and you’ll have X virgins, or be seated right beside Jesus himself, or whatever. Oh, and by the way, everyone who disagrees with you is fair game - blow them up for extra heavenly schwag!

So the only way to fix this is making sure everyone has a life that’s good enough. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just not painful. When your basic needs are taken care of, it’s possible appreciate life and have enough time to think about what it means to be human. This makes it harder for death-cult religions (i.e. almost all of them) to latch on. 

It’s an achievable goal if governments stop spending trillions in pointless wars. It’s easier if countries stop heavily enforcing their borders. What can we do to achieve this? You can pressure your representatives if you live in a decent enough place. You can open your doors to people in danger, like they did in Paris. You can sponsor refugees, if you have enough money. At the very least, spread the message. Change takes time, so we need to be persistent.