Snap, crackle and pop.

Bit of a manic few days here at GCHQ, after leaving the window open over night last week (in whilst it was raining of course) our faithful mackie mixer (32 line input rack mounted jobbie) developed a very noticeable amount of noise on both the outputs to the monitors and on the headphone socket.

Things got so bad over the next couple of days we had to revert to our back up smaller mackie to finish off the sample work we were in the middle of producing. Not ideal.

Limped to the end of the job (top tip here - always, always have a back up system) and stripped the mixer from the rack. After taking some advise we took the back off and gave the mixer a full 15 mins with a hair dryer to make sure there was no moisture inside. After letting it cool we tried it again and touch wood snap, crackle and pop has gone - phew!

Although we're using a temporary home for the studio at the moment (hence the curtains in the pic below ;) we thought it might be an idea to strip down everything in our 2 main racks, sell of some gear we don't really use and re-wire everything back up again. horrible job but one that needs doing every now and then, the mixer had to be reconnected in to the rack anyway so....

After a few long hours sweating and swearing, connecting and cable tying, testing and reconnecting the right way around, our 2 racks and mixer are back in business. Neater, cleaner and stripped of anything we really don't use enough.

In more gear porn related news, we've had a couple of tasty bits of gear drop into our grubby hands - more on that later this week with some pics and hopefully some samples.

strings and things

For this months Future Music sample collection (FM219) we've been all about synth strings - analogue, digital, hardware, software or a mixture of all four, it's all been fair game.

On the Analogue front this month has given us a chance to show some love to our Roland RS-09 organ/strings machine. Although not exactly a classic, (the organ side of things hardly sets the world alight sound-wise), it's still possible to coax some lush, vintage sounding strings out of this machine.

It also has a sticky key, a D, that miss-triggers when released. Rather than this being a problem we tend to treat these little quirks as part of the instruments unique personality. A quirk that shows up in some of the chord samples included in the collection.

Of course synth strings just love modulated effects, so the Moogerfooger phaser pedal got some use as well as an 80's boss rack mounted chorus unit we've had knocking about for a while.

As a bit of a bonus we've uploaded an exclusive 4 octave multi-sample (sampled at C, D#, F#, A) taken from the RS09 run through an Electroharmonix Small Clone chorus pedal to our Soundcloud page for you to download as a taster of the FM 219 samples.

Check it here

Back from over there.

Apologies for the lack of input to the blog over the last couple of weeks, we locked up GCHQ for a couple of weeks break in the sun to re-charge the ol' beat batteries.

All back and raring to go now with a few rather tasty projects in the pipeline, some we can blog about and a couple we can't...ohh the suspense, stay tuned ;)

Just a touch of self promotion

Although we're not ones to exactly force the ol' hard sell on anyone, we thought we'd let you know about a couple of projects we've had a hand in.

First up is Sunrise Sessions from Sample Magic, sequel to their successful chilled out sample library Sunset Sessions, once again sees us on rhythmic duties providing some laid back drum loops and hits.

Also from the GCHQ vaults are a couple of download packs for DMS - analogue and digital drum hits and some synth fx, each pack for around a fiver.

Last but not least don't forget about MR Hoodees Electronic Kick 1p Lucky Dip - still available directly from us at GCHQ are 500 heavy kick drum samples for £5 (inc UK P&P) all on funky vinyl-look cdr. Drop us a mail if you're interested in some low end rhythmic goodness.

Finally keep an eye on our SoundCloud page as we upload some free samples to download and abuse as regularly (and randomly) as we can. Check it here

Drum machine abuse 02

As well as the more involved effects chains we also went quite simple and really indulged our love for really cheap, bucket brigade , delays and reverbs.

The beauty of these boxes is alongside the crusty, dirty sound, once you start maxing out the feedback level they start to scream. Normally this just makes a racket (not a bad thing around here by any means) but when a percussive loop is sent through, the howling feedback starts to latch on and pulse along with the beat (normally the hi-hat patern). Of course this doesn't happen every time and you have to keep an eye (and ear) on the levels but with a bit of luck you'll get an interesting effect.

Perhaps our favourite box for this kind of abuse is the good old Realistic/Radio Shack reverb. Really more of a tight slapback delay effect than a true reverb , we own 3 of these beauty's, two we circuit bent into howling monsters, but the one above we've left untouched. Dig those faders!

To give you an idea of what we mean here's a short video of our Korg Rhythm 55 and the Realistic doing their thang.

For a few down-loadable example sounds head over to here and of course the full sample collection including loops and NI Battery/Kontakt kits will be in next months issue of Future Music magazine.

Drum machine abuse 01

As one set of samples hits the news stands another set gets made so we've been busy finishing off the samples for Future Music issue 217. And this months theme is a good 'ol dollop of drum machine abuse.

We took a few of our vintage machines and threw them through a chain of hardware effects and stompboxes. Some of the chains were quite complex -below is a pic of a Boss DR220a (bit rubbish 80's machine) being put through a Snarling Dogs overdrive, into a cheap and cheerful delay (forced into self feedback, more on that later), into a bass synth wah. The output of the synth wah is then fed through a feedback looper pedal that feeds its output back into it's input for some sonic madness. Oh and the chicken lamp is optional (although every studio should have one).

Other chains included a Korg Rhythm 55 into a radioshack reverb into the Moogerfooger low pass filter. The Envelope out votage was taken from the filter and patched into the gate-in of the Moog little phatty. The output of the little Phatty was then thrown through a Moogerfooger phaser and mixed with the Korg/lowpass signal at the mixer - phew! Basically this results in the drum machine rhythmically gating the Moog as well as its output being filtered by the Moogerfooger.

You can check out some examples of the results of all this stomp chaining (and some more free samples to download and abuse) at our soundcloud page here.

MR Hoodee’s Electronic kick 1p lucky dip

Roll up roll up

For your economic downturn-busting sampling pleasure:





500 kick samples in WAV format (16 or 24 bit) on white label vinyl CDR plundered from our percussive vaults. Sampled from a wide mixture of both analogue and digital sources, the 1p kick lucky dip is suitable for all shades of electronic music from house to hip-hop.



Go on get yourself a good kicking for just a fiver (including P&P- UK only for now).

Don't delay, email GCHQ now - groovecriminals@yahoo.co.uk