Segue » Lemur

The Monome Has Landed

segbot — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:14:54 +0000

A few packages hit the desk today, including the Mackie 1202 VLZ3 which replaces the rather heavier and larger console mixer which has been the staple for Segue and the odd Silent Shadow gig over the last year or so. Most excitedly, the Monome 40h kit has arrived. Unfortunately I don’t have time to assemble it this weekend, as I fly out to Hong Kong on Saturday and will be busy eating noodles, buying robots and getting custom Kung-Fu suits made simply because, well, that’s what you do in Hong Kong. I think. But I’m very excited about coming back to put this together for the gig at Bar Soma. Check more photos of the new Monome kit out on the Segue FlickR page.

I’m quite excited to explore the world of Monome for the contradictory reason that there isn’t anything entirely special about it. Which is rather what the makers think as well. The magic happens simply by enabling a certain set of possible interactions with music. I’m a programming geek, so I have a lot of ideas for the Monome and I can’t wait to explore the fantastic patches that the user community has developed. Most people reading this, if you made it past the subtle More tag above, probably still have no idea what it does.

In short, the Monome is simply a box with buttons. It is driven by software on a computer and enjoys a similar sense of programmability as the Jazz Mutant Lemur, which I gave back in recent months. Yes, gave it back, and yes, I wasn’t pleased with it in the end. The concept is sound, but the programming interface wasn’t as fluid as it could have been, with the absolute deal-breaker of an unresolved issue that saw the Lemur simply dropping out a few times an hour. Which means a few times a set my primary control interface would stop working. Unacceptable to say the least, and that’s without considering the sticker price of this thing in Australia. Having said that, it was a joy to use it to write the Segue remix of Guise (which I’ve rambled on about previously), and I’m grateful to Ellaways Music for sending it to me for so long.

As for the Monome, the common uses are with software like Max/MSP and Ableton, where it can serve as a simple drum machine interface, as a clip and sample trigger, as a performance interface or simply as a means to sit in the dark and stare at flashing lights.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For me, I anticipate this operating as an interface to trigger clips and music events, as a sequencer (such as the drum machine example able, so I can construct sequences live on the spot) and as a nice tool for some warped sample mangling. Or, to be honest, as something to stare at flashing away in the dark if I get bored during soundcheck…

Not an update. Sort of.

segbot — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:23:39 +0000

This is not, really, an update. I’ve been getting into the routine of at least a weekly update of something tangible, but this week falls a bit short. All but one of the remixes for “Coming Around” have come in, the original mix is nicely acidic and tribal, and there is just a final mixdown left. The new studio is totally set up and I’ve got just a few tweaks left on some articles for Create Digital Music on the topic of Arturia Origin multi-samples and sound banks, plus a final check on my Ableton template for the JazzMutant Lemur. Add to that a pile of music technology to review for Time Off, thanks to Rockinghorse (a Stanton SCS.3d), Lightsounds (an American Audio Radius), and as ever the formidable Musiclab (Korg Microkorg XL, Akai XR20, TC Electronics Konnekt 6). Now I’ve just got to get “Coming Around” out the door, before getting through a number of great collaborations with Vitreous, another Segue single to be announced, and a couple of fun remixes. So, there’s nothing really cool or interesting coming out of Segue land at the moment, but hopefully you can appreciate how great it feels to be doing interesting things inside of Segue world. A world of, finally, neat and tidy cables, and well sorted files. For now.

Segue get disco with Vitreous remix

segbot — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:45:28 +0000

Here is one that I completely forgot about. Despite working on a bunch of tracks with Vitreous, who is based in Amsterdam but formerly of the excellent act My Ninja Lover here in Australia, I had totally skipped the memory of telling Dektek Records that I was up for a remix of his latest release. Even more embarrassingly, I had been cheering on Kris-Ko as he worked through his own very awesome remix of the same track. With a couple days before deadline, the label asked how I was going on the mix. With a “good! Yeah! Absolutely!”, I took it as a chance to break my usual slow habits and use it as an excuse to try out some new gear. Here’s the result, as a preview on Soundcloud. The actual release date is 23rd of June 2009 for Beatport, and everywhere else two weeks later.

The “Segue Does Disco” Dub:

Vitreous – Guise (Segue Does Disco Dub) by segwist

The Original Mix:

Guise by Vitreous

The new gear I mentioned testing out was basically a Jazzmutant Lemur and a pair of Beyerdynamic DT770 headphones. The Lemur I talk enough about elsewhere, and the headphones replace an infamous set of Pioneer HDJ1000’s that I posted about earlier. This remix was quite fun, as I simply grabbed all the source files, threw them in Ableton and flagged the bits I thought sounded usable. Those bits I threw in a number of Ableton Drum Racks, which I have mapped out on the Lemur in a custom template I’ve built to act a little like an MPC. Think “modular sampler”. The fun part of using Drum Racks like a sampler is taking a melody, such as the original record of Chris playing his bass, and dropping it into a few slots. From there I just use the Start and End points to isolate unique notes, which I can then jam on the Lemur in real-time.

This let me flip the bass and melody grooves by replaying single notes, and the rest fell into place. Other fun stuff included some cameo vocals from guests around the studio that was as complex as pointing an SM58 at them, and digging through some old disco records for some cheesy fills. As I had a day to do it, I found myself second guessing the new headphones and the “sound” of my new studio space, being the first mixdown I’ve done here, so I went for a drive at midnight around the inner city Brisbane suburb I live in. Which is often patrolled by Police. Leading to me imagining them pulling me over and asking “excuse me son, why are you doing laps of these streets at midnight?”.

“Checkin’ the mix man. Just checking the mix”. I hope you check the remixes and original of Guise out when it drops in a few weeks!