Hmmmmm

It was recently Hoodee's birthday, an event that didn't put the old man in the best of moods.

To celebrate we all went off on a shopping jolly around the wilds of the Soho record shops for whatever caught our eye (mostly odd covers, soundtracks and some grimy funk as it happens). We also keep a sharp eye out in the bargin bins for anything we've had a hand in, finding something would be rather cool in a strange kinda way.

Anyway that's all well and good but perhaps the most surprising thing was how the shopping spree has triggered off our hunger for wanting to make records again. With most of our time spent making loops and samples (which isn't the most lucrative living to be honest) we really lost the urge to make music for ourselves, sad but true.

Whether this new found desire to make some music will last or what form it will take, who knows? Might be interesting finding out though.....

Stomps!

Whatcha!
We're currently busy finishing off our latest commission for FM.
This month it's focusing on sound manipulation/processing and we've gone guitar stomp box crazy.

Being quite avid collectors of the guitar pedal (despite being very poor plank-spankers ourselves), we've a few on hand to shove some synths and drum machines through. The sharp eyed amongst you might notice a few bent/modded stomps nestled away in out pic - just for that extra sprinkling of chaos.

Only problem we've got at the moment is not falling over all the patch leads strewn as far as the eye can see, well all around our feet at least.

Bye bye GCHQ v1.0

Part of the reason the Xmas period last year was so busy (and not to say stressful) was due to having to move studio. Never a particularly fun experience at the best of times, when it also goes hand-in-hand with moving house it's a bit of a bugger.

We have a lot of great memories from GCHQ (v1.0) , some fantastic sessions, literally thousands of samples produced, not to mention the odd released tune or two.

Of course change comes to us all and stripping out the old gear allowed for a good long look at how we work and some major re-arranging in our new temporary home.

A couple of new rack units, patchbays, lots of cables and a frankly huge 80's A-frame stand for the synths, later............

Welcome to GCHQ v1.1

It's only a temp home for us poor sampling souls until the all new GCHQ v2 is built (hopefully this year, but who knows).

Still, we've settled in and have been knuckling down to some hard(ish) graft and have already become quite comfortable.

we've even got a window - ahh natural light at last....

New York New York

As we mentioned below, Mr Hoodee was lucky enough to bag a trip to New York last November. Despite having only a couple of days notice before flying out, completing on a new house whilst away and the small matter of 15 music students, he had a great time.

As it was his first time to NYC it really did live up to its reputation as a city that never sleeps (nor did Hoodee for nearly a week due to not being able to adjust to the time difference).

Great place to visit, eat out and shop of course (there seem to be many more pairs of trainers knocking about the studio these days) but Hoodee thought it was a bit too full on to live there

Ahh he's just a quiet country-boy at heart.

Photos

Due to those nice chaps at Future Music still asking for our (well Hoodees - serves him right for being in charge) ugly mug in the magazine every other month - you would have thought it would hurt sales, you really would, we have to pile on the old slap and lippy and get dressed once in a while.

These shoots which we really don't look forward to being shy (okay, ugly) souls, are made bearable by our old friend Richard 'Eckie' Ecclestone being behind the camera.

A cracking snapper (and a not bad singer-songerwriter either), Eckie has developed a perfect mixture of threats, abuse, foul language and occasional 'glamour-style' praise to coax Mr Hoodee out of the shadows and into the (flash)light.

Anyway, we really liked this one !-)

We're still here!

Happy New Year!

Oh crap, was it really way back in October when we last posted?
We have an excuse, no really.....errr...dog eat our blog?

Okay, bad jokes aside the last few months have seen some pretty drastic chances here at GCHQ: moving house (and studio!!), a surprise trip to NYC not to mention being snowed under with sample work. Oh we've got hold of some fab gear as well !-)

Anyway now we've kinda recovered from Xmas/new year and the new house, we'll be back on track updating the blog much more regularly.

Honest.

Bend and glitch and bend and glitch

We're fond off a bit of circuit bending here at GCHQ, we're no experts but we like to dabble a bit every now and then.





This little beauty is a bent Casio SA-1 that we've just finished for our mate Robbie at Cyclick Samples. We've done quite a few SA-1's and they're a great little keyboard to bend. From the left hand side the bends are:

Voltage drop pot
Synth tone switch
2x body contact fuzz poles
Rhythm glitch button
Deep crash button


The fuzz poles are just long bolts that create a different amount of distortion depending on how hard you hold them. Because the shafts of the bolts have a larger surface area than the heads (which I'd normally use) it creates a much wider range of fuzz/distortion/bit crusher effects.

This SA-1 also reacts much better to the crash and glitch buttons than any others we've bent in the past - a few presses and it'll spew forth glitched loops or just plain noise. Lovely, if you like that sort of thing.

You can find some detailed instructions and tips on bending an SA-1 on the forum of http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/ an excellent UK based bending site. We've had a few bits and bobs off of Paul the guy behind the site in the past. Great stuff!