New gear in the Roth Eleven Production studio!

Waaaaw, what an amazing thing this NI Maschine Mk2 is. I've just started exploring it, but I already see now that this is the device I've been waiting for since many years. I have been a user of the Native Instruments synths and sounds since many years. Actually, I try to avoid losing time with exploring other synths because you get already so much with the NI Komplete 8. But I found myself a bit stuck in an inefficient workflow, creating MIDI tracks in Cubase and assigning NI Instruments to them - it looked a bit old-fashioned to work like this. Especially for pop and electronic music.

This Maschine controller is going to allow me to create music away from my PC. In a very intuitive way, while keeping full access to all NI Komplete 8 sounds.

One of the main themes of this TEDx Conferences was 'hacking': building DIY (do it yourself) micro-labs to experiment with, well, anything – from microbiology to ‘Star Trek tricoder’ electronics to DNA sequencing to neurochemistry. The key is a very motivated community with the will to take a deep dive into the matter without having industry-grade equipment at their disposal. Some of these communities, or individuals, even find cures for rare diseases! See also http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/

As a part-time music producer, maybe I should start up a Hackerspace myself! It looks like great fun, and you meet new friends that share the same passion. Maybe a Hackerspace on New Kinds Of Music, perhaps?

An idea to start from: there was this speaker, Bruno Zamberlin.

"Bruno Zamborlin is a technologist, researcher, musician and designer. He's been working on a joint PhD in computational technologies between Paris and London, exploring new methods for gestural interaction and its applications in performing arts and the creation of new musical instruments. Bruno is interested in the topic of Interactive Machine Learning and the possibility of allowing the artist to interact with the entire supervised learning process and the creation and design of his own gesture vocabulary. The early results of this research is Mogees, which uses contact microphones to turn any touchable surface into a musical instrument. Bruno made a video illustrating Mogees that's had more then 300,000 views, furthering his mission to open up gestural vocabulary to impromptu actions and personalisation."

It sounded great!

One of the most thought-provoking presentations at the TEDx Brussels 2012 conference, to me, was the one of Andrew Keen. This author is warning against 'the cult of the social' and 'digital narcissism'.

Some of us are living so much on the internet that they are no longer living in a street in some city. The mystery regarding other human beings is gone, there is no more 'inner space' where you can be yourself and isolated from other's prying eyes. Parallels with the movie 'The Truman Show' are indeed becoming clear

Andrew Keen is calling to fight against the 'free internet', where we sacrifice our privacy and freedom for the sake of 'free'.

Now that I think of it: some of my closest friends, amongst whom my wife, are telling me this already since years!

Though-provoking, indeed

Next Monday, Nov 12th, I have the opportunity to be part of the audience of the Brussels TEDx 2012 Conference. Since we are in the creative business, this is something not to miss. More on this blogspot later.

The very reason to go to weebly for my new website was to be able to show my project portfolio including audio fragments. I have finally managed to illustrate my complete (well, almost complete) portfolio on the website. Oufff.

I'm discovering the UAD-2 plugins. Waaaww. Amazing sound. A bit expensive, though. Still, with DSP technology like this, I think there is very little need for the real hardware alternatives - those are even more expensive.

Here are the analog classics that came bundled with the hardware (together with a 500$ voucher - I still need to decide an what other plugins to buy with it):