About this time last year, I promised myself: No new equipment. I did fine, even with my compulsive window shopping habits, but I started to hit some frustrating limits with the equipment I’d chosen. Most of what I own is “good and cheap”, as cheap as used 1980s professional audio equipment can be, and while I have the basics covered pretty well I felt really limited in options during mixdown and especially while recording vocals. The only compressors I had were the dbx 166xl, which is a high quality, inexpensive compressor for percussive material but it’s absolutely terrible for vocals.

I have a very intimate understanding of my equipment (heh) and once I found out about the different types of compressors I realized what I needed. I set my sights high and I considered investing in “the lower high end” equipment but I just don’t have the money for it. So, I began a search for the missing link in my home studio, at a price that wouldn’t hurt my caboose.

ART Pro VLA II. Source: http://bit.ly/annBQS

I heard about the ART Pro VLA II maybe a couple of years ago and I initially dismissed it – I have an ART MPA Gold mic preamp that I’ve never been too happy with. I was a little shocked to read raving reviews in Tape Op last November, saying that it was a really good deal for the price. I decided I’d take a second look, and I’m really glad I did.

When researching modifications and upgrades (i.e. changing stuff) I started at this GearSlutz thread, which has a series of audio clips recorded through various configurations of stock and modified parts. It was pretty informative… I really liked the sound of the Mullard tubes. I decided to go all in, and I bought the ART from Musician’s Friend and bought a pair of Mullard ecc81/12AT7 tubes from eBay. The good thing about audio equipment is that if you don’t like something and can’t return it, you can always sell it to someone else…

I got the ART and the tubes on the same day. I tried the unit with its stock tubes (Ruby Tubes 12AT7) and I actually really liked the sound – it was smooth and accurate. It didn’t sound “cheap”, which is an instant win… in my opinion it beats a lot of products in this price range in regard to overall quality and the ‘musciality’ of its output. I quickly (carefully) opened the unit and installed the Mullard tubes, and tried it again. Wow!! This is not a silver bullet… but this is a fantastic combo, and the VLA is the right product for what I want. I feel an instant response when I twist the knobs, and it sounds really, really good when I really crank up the compression and add lots of post-compression gain through the Mullard tubes. So for… $360 total? This thing is an ace.

I realized that the Pro VLA II could also be used effectively as a low pass filter – with Mullard tubes it gently burns off high frequency detail over 16k. This can be compounded or affected in other ways by adding input and output transformers, just as  the original poster in the GearSlutz thread did. The Cinemag transformers have a pretty severe HF roll-off beginning at 10k (!) (here’s the spec sheet) but it might be useful sometimes? I like the sound but I don’t want it all the time. I’m considering adding transformers and adding a toggle switch, to either use the transformers or bypass them,  but I’ll leave good enough be for now. I just wanna make music, anyway…

Hey friends,

It’s good to brush the dust off this blog and post new material. Hi!!

I discovered “Continuo’s Weblog” thanks to Google Reader. In this article there is a link to download an album called “Electronic Music From The Outside In”, released on Folkways records in 1980. The first track off the album is titled “Heavy Music For Four Crowbars”. The piece’s composer, Barton McLean, explains the technique behind the piece.

He goes through a number of concepts common to Musique Concrete production, elaborating on his use of splicing, looping, varispeed playback, filters, and modulators. This was particularly useful for me, being a fan of and creator of similar music, because I was exposed to a few concepts that I’d never considered or known of before. Specifically, his mention of using ring modulation was useful because it sent me to the Wikipedia article linked here, and I will at some point look into it further and attempt to build my own device.

Here’s the track in its entirety:

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The track is sixteen minutes long so I recommend downloading the track for yourself: Link here.

I’m still listening to the rest of the album and so far I’m really enjoying it. To download the album yourself, click here. To read the original post at Continuo’s Weblog, click here.

Some time ago, I got my hands on a copy of the Conet Project set, and since then I’ve been quite obsessed with shortwave radio, or at least the idea of getting a shortwave radio and using it as a novel, ever-changing sound source.

Specifically, I’ve been wanting to find a vacuum tube-based radio because of the interesting sounds produced while tuning between stations. It’s a familiar sound from 1950s era science fiction movies, and a similar effect can be heard beginning around 0:35 in this little recording I made back in July:

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(Direct Link)

This sound was created by sending a very high frequency, somewhere between 500 and 600kHz on my Hewlett-Packard tube oscillator, to a cassette recorder. Signals at such frequencies corrupt the recorder’s bias signal and cause interesting distortions.

Right, shortwave radio. I occasionally search eBay and Craigslist for shortwave radios but it’s difficult to find a tube radio in good condition that also has a line out, or to find a solid state radio with a line out for that matter. When I do find one I like, though, I’m usually tight on cash and put the idea off. I’ll have to remember to look when I have an extra fifty bucks.

In the meantime, I enjoy finding videos on YouTube which feature some of the more unusual sounds and signals being sent through the air. A common finding are what are called “Numbers Stations“, which transmit information – ostensibly spy information or reconnaissance findings – encoded in arbitrary alphanumeric codes and often prepended by a chime, gong, or tune. Here’s one of the better examples from YouTube:

Other than that, there’s a few other things which pique my curiosity. I really like this next video. Who knows what’s generating this sound, or how, and for what purpose, but I enjoy it simply for what it is:

Some things give me very clear ideas for future audio pieces:

Anyway. I’ll search again for radios when I have some cash to blow. I can see myself recording what I find onto cassettes and just playing them as interesting background noise around the apartment.

This loop will be featured – heavily modified – in a piece that I am currently working on.

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The new year has begun, and I’m building a library of sounds and textures for future pieces. I’m starting with what I call the ‘background layer’. Think of it as the ambience/pulse/backdrop/undercurrent: eliciting a particular mood and providing structure to the piece.

I’ve heard this instrument in many performances but I didn’t know what it was… and I’ve always been curious to learn more. This particular instrument has many names, but the name I hear most often is the Singing Bowl. It’s a hard metal bowl, either hand-hammered or machined, and it is typically used in meditation routines. I really like its sound… the attack is somewhat diminished compared to other tuned percussion instruments and it produces a very nice, sustained tone with a long decay. The harmonics and overtones are very pleasing. It’s perfect for manipulating on tape.

This particular recording was made through a very simple process. First, I found a singing bowl performance on YouTube:

I used Audio Hijack Pro to extract the audio, and edited the resulting AIFF file in Audacity.

Step 1: Edit track for length, reverse the track.
Step 2: Copy and paste audio from step 1 into a new stereo track, speed up by 33%
Step 3: Copy and paste audio form step 1 into a new stereo track, decrease speed by 33%
Step 4: Mix, render, export as mp3.

It was a fun exercise to see what’s possible with this instrument. I want to get my hands on a few of these bowls, and explore this further.