Lately I’ve been using my cellphone as my standalone for making things away from my renoise studio computer.
I’ll build and render a chord progression in chordbot, open it in Caustic, then add drums bass organ etc, then from there put into renoise to record and add anything else (guitar vocals etc)
I found that I make more interesting rhythms for my ears in caustic than I do on renoise. I seem to take more chances.
Little Game Park Tracker on PSP…it has tables which are like phrases and a command for scanning a short loop through waveforms ( play loop offset ), but apart from that its a pretty cheap and old school tracker.
Caustic on android has a module called 8-bit synth which is interesting. Its a synth that creates oscillators from byte-beat formulas…I was going to use that but I couldnt get my head around the syntax for the formulas…without knowing what the formula means I keep on getting a bunch of out of time and out of tune arps and stuff. Looks like it would be awesome if I could understand what the formulas mean and write ones with no pitch change, only timbre change.
Korg Pandora PX4 for practising guitar with headphones.
Korg minkaosspad2 just for fun…putting effects over single tracks from milkytracker.
Yamaha PSS-280 for the most cheap and lame of live jams.
+1 to some of the ideas above – I like making chord progressions in Chordbot for Android, and scratching out music in Caustic’s many nice tools.
I’m also playing a lot with DRC synth, which is cool because you can easily transfer your sounds from Android/iOS to desktop VST/standalone. About to pull the trigger on buying it.
Also, I want to put in a plug for Oval Synth, an amazing emulation of a hang drum for Android/iOS. You play a small set of “steel drum” pads with your hands, and it’s got a huge selection of sounds and effects. Endlessly inspiring. I can just press record and play, then export a wav to use in Renoise – either as samples or as a live track. Great stuff.
Been wanting to pick up a bass for years. My dad’s a bass player, so no wonder
Been enjoying a lot of your recent tracks too, for the same reason.
Thanks!
BTW, small anecdotal suggestion when selecting a bass guitar: avoid the ones that require a battery.
I really like my Ibanez GSR200, but it uses a 9-volt battery to power some built-in EQ thing.
I didn’t notice this until after I had bought it; it never occurred to me that a bass would need a battery.
Now I am wiser.
The EQ thing is nice and all, but hardly essential for my purposes (home studio recording, plugged right into the audio interface). After much use I came to hear that it pretty much always made the bass too bassy, and I have to correct it in Renoise so it sits well in the mix.
The downside is that as the battery dies the overall sound of the bass changes, and you can’t use it at all without a battery. Which seems just stupid but there it is.
Also, the battery cover uses screws.
Or, it did, until I took them out and replaced them with duct tape, because I’m just an animal.
Bought some rechargeable 9-volts and a small charger, too. I try to make sure I have a fresh battery if I’m doing any serious recording.
If I were really ambitious I think I’d open it up and see if I could require it to skip that EQ thing and any battery requirement.
I have a guitar that takes a 9V battery. It has active pickups. Active EMGs. I am pleased with the sound of them but I feel the same way about the screws. I hate it when a guitar or bass takes a battery ( which needs replacing every now and then ) and the backplate screws directly into the wood of the body of the instrument.
I’ve got synths and drum machines but I record those through an interface into Renoise or Reaper. The one thing I can take to-go for getting sounds to use is a Zoom H5 for field recordings or recording off-site synths or friends’ gear. It’s a pretty good field recorder, would recommend Zoom gear
My favorite instrument for this has been my Ms20 mini, the amount of sounds I can get out of it is great and it’s really fun to program a patch, sample it and then start again.
Also +1 for Zoom devices, I’ve had an H6 for ages I have been using for voice over work and small effects work. Also a lot of fun for just recording random sounds, makes for good tracker experimentation!
lost in electronic music, chaos, don’t find a workflow
like away from pc:
korg sq-1 + doepfer ms-404 + rakit drumsynth with cv and a gameboy lsdj/nanoloop with firestarter interface as midi slave
yamaha ry30 + shruthi 1
akai mpd218 with mode machines usb to midi interface + roland pma-5 or yamaha qy100
most of all:
peavey t-40 bass with boss dr. beat db-33 metronom or a yamaha qy22
That #octatrack is a pricey, yet very neat little machine. Good to hear someone using iT With the Mighty #renoise tracker.
Yes it’s in fact the only music machine besides the volca bass that I purchased new and also most expensive. The price has gone up when they released the MK2 model.
Here is a jam video that I recorded recently:
But during the last days I started focusing on Renoise again and wrote some code to control it with the Korg padKontrol aimed at performing/dubbing in realtime. It’s so much fun! I love Renoise.I use it under Linux.
