Monday 30 June 2008

More hard sell

As any regular visitors to this blog will have guessed, we've a bit of an analogue drum machine fetish here at GCHQ.

To spread the love of these great machine a little we've teamed up with the guys at DMS to produce a download pack chokked full of totally analogue single drum and percussion hits from our collection of vintage and modern drum machines and synths.

400 sample in WAV format (16 Bit 44.1) for the bargin price of £5.49

Machines used include

Jo Mox airbase 99 (rack mounted 909 clone)
Elektron machine drum
Moog Little phatty synth
Boss DR110
SoundMaster SR88
Amdek Percussion Synth
Doobie Rhythm Master
Electro Harmonix Rhythm-12
Selmer Auto Rhythm
Korg KR55
Korg KR77
Acetone Rhythm Ace
Boss Dr55
Roloand Cr8000
Roland CR78

Head this way if you're interested.

GCHQ out

Thursday 26 June 2008

To sell or not to sell

Hello again.

Two posts in one day, unheard of!

As you can probably guess there's not much work going on at GCHQ today, due to MR Hoodees daughter being ill and currently mooching around in her PJ's not looking half as under the weather as she did earlier....hmmmm.

Anyway, it's a good time to put some more thoughts (okay, ramblings) down about recent goings on here at the lab. Due to having a Moog to pay for, we've been sifting through the gear list and letting go of a few bits and bobs (physically having to prise them from Mr Hoodee's tearful grasp normally).

We've tried to be honest about gear we don't use/have upgraded from, but still find actually getting rid of stuff a bit of a shock to the system. Like most people who chance a hand at making music we've had a fair few bits of kit pass through our greedy grasp but nothing much from way back that we REALLY regret letting go of...Well except for a Novation bass station and our huge early hiphop record collection, but it was a long time ago (10 years maybe!) and we needed the money. A painful memory not helped by the fact we were done over on both by some skillful shop owners in the west end - the 'good' old days before Ebay.

What made the cut this time was our Emu Mo'phatt module, A-station synth and Sherman Filterbank. The first two are solid (if not particularly exciting) bits of kit that served us well but never really got hammered usage-wise. As for the Sherman, it was a V1 filterbank and a great bit of gear but one we never really got along with (it says more about us than the unit to be honest). Non-muso's may laugh, but some bits of gear you 'bond' with (okay, that's actually making me giggle in it's arty-farty pomposity, but there you go) and others you just never get on with and tend to leave standing around (looking cool) until circumstance forces you let 'em go.

Of course this new found 'ifwehaven'tuseditsellthebloodythingwe'renotexactlyrollingincash' attitude hasn't stopped us from wading through Ebay in search of goodies, oh no....

Shelves...how very rock and roll

Wotcha.
Well thanks to some fine media scare-mongering and the general slowdown around buying/selling houses it looks like our temp home (GCHQ v2.1) is going to be a touch more permanent than we were expecting. Not the end of the world as it's a pretty good space to work in, although as always a bit more room would be nice - of course not filling it with vintage drum machines and huge synths might help.




Anyway, in keeping with our mad, rock and roll, muso lives we've been putting together B&Q metal shelves to try and cut down on some of our gear-clutter. as some of you may have guessed typical manly activities like DIY aren't exactly our strong-point, so some time later and much swearing......


We have an orderly collection of stomp boxes, drum machines and synths. Ahh the sense of achievement is quite intoxicating, we might even go and cut the grass next.....

Tuesday 24 June 2008

FM video footage (pardon the pun)

Thought I'd put up the link to some old Future Music video of us (well Mr Hoodees foot) mucking about with some stomp boxes and a Stylophone and a BugBrand audio weevil (the insane yellow box).

Check it on my myspace page here

Wednesday 18 June 2008

The Godfather

Check the Godfather of soul ripping it up with his bad self (and band) here

Monday 16 June 2008

Moog baby Yeahhh!

Okay, we're pretty one dimensional when it comes to our interests, so when we decided that a prezzie was in order as a plain and simple bribe after a hard couple of months work it was going to be something for the studio.

We kinda had our eye on a Moog of some sort and when this little beauty popped up for sale locally we just had to have it.




It's a Moog Little Phatty (Bob Moog tribute edition), in fact it's a ltd edition one with DVD and poster - number 1054 of 1200.


Yes we've always wanted a Moog

Yes we love it

Yes we've been like kids in a sweet shop (or mobile phone shop nowadays)

Yes it's sounds sooo fat and warm

And yes we're worth it !-)

.....Well kinda

Saturday 14 June 2008

Tired ramblings

A bit of a gap since our last post so lets get up to date.

Been a very busy couple of months here at GCHQ and we've been pretty much working 24/7 on several sample commissions. Now we've finished (for the time being at least) the results of the work load have hit us firmly around the head and we've been good for nothing for the last couple of days.

It's an odd feeling to have pretty much forced over 3000 sample loops out in the last 60 or so days without any real time off. It does make us wonder (and worry) where it all comes from and if one day all this forced creativity that is required on a daily basis will dry up - lets bloody hope not.

Don't get us wrong we're not complaining, we love our job and know it doesn't involve and hard physical labour or monotonous day after day office/factory slog (although we have done our share of these jobs in the past like most musos trying to earn a living), but it does get worrying when turning the studio on makes you feel physically sick - time for a break i guess.

I think like anyone who is lucky enough to do a job they love (and have chosen), we can get a bit blinded by the daily workload to the fact that we're actually really fortunate to be able to do what we do - work from home, see our kids grow up first hand rather than being away at an office all day, no direct bosses or company politics to deal with, no uniforms or bulling supervisors...the list goes on.

Of course this isn't to say we sit about all day doing nowt, we work bloody hard for what is at the end of the day a pretty modest wage, we'd certainly be better off financially being plumbers or electricians.

But this is what we do and to be honest the only thing we've really found we're any good at which isn't a bad situation to be in at all.

P.s for anyone passing by expecting the usual audio gear-porn, service will be resumed very soon with something a bit special.

GCHQ out.