fnordication…

Shopping can be so goddamn frustrating sometimes.

I decided over President’s Day weekend that I wanted to take advantage of a sale at Guitar Center and pick up a new midi controller. Specifically I wanted to grab the M-Audio Trigger Finger, while I’ve been eyeing the Korg PadKontrol  for a while the price and lack of faders and knobs pushed me towards the Trigger Finger.

Anyway, so I picked up the Trigger Finger and brought it home. Went straight to the computer to try it out and was annoyed to find that the USB cable was really short and wouldn’t allow the controller to sit on the table I keep my gear on. Ok, no biggie I will just use a MIDI cable.  Even though I wasn’t using the USB I decided to install the driver just in case. Of course, the driver supplied with the controller wouldn’t install on Vista, so I had to hunt that down on the M-Audio website.  I installed the Ableton Live Lite edition that also came with the unit, but that wasn’t working. Figuring that it must also be a Vista incompatability I went to find out if there was an upgrade. Once logged into the Ableton site I find out that someone else is using the registration number that was supplied with the software. WTF? I just bought this brand new.

I fire off an email to Ableton to try and resolve this, but in the meantime I fire up a couple of my other progams like Reason (demo) and Reaper. The Trigger Finger has a factory default Reason map so that should work perfectly fine… nope. Nothing.  Ok.  So I try to get something working in Reaper. Again nothing. So finally I manually map a bunch of the midi notes into the controller that correspond with the VST I am trying out (i believe it was erraticCM) and nothing. While this is going on I am realizing that none of the factory presets are actually in the unit. And it doesn’t seem to be sending anything to my computer. So now I use the updated USB driver and nothing still. By this point I am fucking livid. Obviously Guitar Center sold me a returned unit since the registration number was used and the POS controller isn’t working at all.

Ableton was awesome and got right back to me the next day (they are in Germany) with a new registration number. When I went back to GC to return the controller they surprisingly gave me no real hassle, and also hooked me up with a nice discount on a guitar tuner I wanted.  As much as I would love to complain they did the right thing.  Of course, the new controller worked perfectly fine and came with a USB cable with just the right length I needed it to have.

Since I updated my wordpress software I figured I should post again.

The only really interesting thing going on as of late is that I recently decided to start making music again. I’ve recorded a few rough tracks that I still need to work on and tons of unfinished bits and pieces that will either go nowhere or will be cannibalized for something else down the road. At this point it is nothing more than a hobby, but it’s nice to have a creative outlet again. I was hoping to focus on my photography, but my plans and desires are too grandiose to execute. With the music I have the luxury of moving at my own pace and relying on no one other than myself, which is nice.

I don’t know what I would call what I am doing. It’s definitely got some noise elements, a bit of drone, there is some ritual. It’s experimental (yes, that was for you AR). When I originally started to think about working with synths and stuff I was thinking I would be going either straight Noise or Dark Ambient, but I found myself leaning naturally towards a hypnotic, ritualized sound. It’s still being formed, and I am sure I will end up somewhere different eventually.

So I guess I will share one of my in progress tracks: