Live Takes Vol. One methods

I suppose I'm an antique by holding the opinion that everyone making electronic music (that has the means to) should try going 'gear only' at least once. When I sat down to record Live Takes, I had a simple rule: no computer until conversion to mp3. I relied on onboard sequencers, crafty MIDI daisy chaining, loads of mixers and a dusty Tascam cassette four-track.

Note that 'gear only' didn't mean 'analog only' in this case. The EP isn't entirely analog. The pads, stabs and a few basslines were provided by the Virus TI running in multi-mode, a heaven send to anyone trying to maximize voices while minimizing gear in a live PA environment. I needed something powerful to drive the TI and almost broke my rule by using a netbook running seq24, but ultimately I found the MIDI machines on the machinedrum up to the task.

The rest of the lineup included two x0xb0xes, one heavily modified with Brian Castro's take on the Devilfish, an mc-202, tr-707, tr-808 clone, tr-909 and some eurorack modules. The one I can't live without is my Metasonix r51 vca/distortion...if you listen carefully throughout the EP you'll notice some subtle 'blow out' of the acid here and there. That would be the handy work of the r51.

The volume sliders on the tr-707 are a novelty that I wish would be taken more seriously by gear designers. Cutting and slamming parts in and out of the mix is so immediate with them, but doing the same with the knobs on the 808 and 909 proved to be too difficult. Cuts were never fast enough. Levels were never quite right. Instead, with the 808 I was able to use sequencer muting of parts, and I relied on a line mixer for the 909 with kill switches for quick transitions.

Things I loved about this experience: the immediacy of editing and playing parts is unparalelled. The brain gets a huge workout: instead of seeing your beats and melodies up on a screen, you must maintain an in-memory index of which button combinations will lead to what you wish to hear. Your creativity gets challenged as you struggle to programs little fills and make the right tweaks to keep everything interesting.

Things I didn't love about this experience: running out of room for gear on my coffee table. It was sad coming away from the EP without MIDI clips and .wav stubs to be used by others for remixes.


I still ponder over one thing: I swear this EP is the cleanest sounding mixing I've ever done, but this was without the use of any compression or EQ outside of the bass and treble knobs on the Tascam. I have an experiment cooked up to test whether music coming entirely from my computer can sound as crisp and real....stay tuned as I'll detail it all right here.