Summer and stuff

Wotcha.

Been a couple of weeks since we last checked in so time for a quick update.

Summers hols have now begun (even the sun has put in a brief appearance) which leaves us with the annual juggle of looking after our kids and trying to bang beats out all day. This normally leaves us with 6 weeks of guilt for working long hours in the studio and imposing children on Granny, when we feel we should take the whole 6 weeks off and do bike rides, picnics, tree houses and other self-imposed famous five-type activities. On the flip side working from home (well MR Hoodees) does mean we see more of our kids day to day than most full time working parents, but the summer holiday guilt still stings a bit, but gotta earn a dollar I guess.

On the work front we're putting together a chilled out beats download pack for our friends at Sample Magic, and have just finished rincing our (and any available mates) sizable digital drum machine collection for another drum hits pack for DMS.

The monthly work also carrys on, so we've commissions to start on for both FM and CM, which we'll blog about (with vids) if we get time - got to fit a couple of weeks away with the family in Aug as well!

The issue of Future Music containing the circuit bent sample collection should be hitting the stores very soon and features another fab pic by our good mate Eckie, something like the one below...




Kinda sums up the normal audio nuttiness of working around here rather well. With the added bonus of having to gaffer-tape Eckie to the ceiling to take the shot.

He's still up there somewhere...

Bent Beats

Another month, another set of samples.

This month for Future Music we've been happily abusing drum machines and children's toys all in the name of art. Yep it's circuitbending time again! For anyone not in the know, circuitbending is the term given to modifying electronic toys or machines to basically short circuit the sound chips so they let out streams of glitches, squawks and other strange noises.

Now we're a little parcel to a session of circuit bending here at GCHQ so have a few modded bits and pieces laying about, including our bent TR 505. Anyone not on personal terms with the 505 (and even if you are) might find this description taken from http://www.circuitbenders.co.uk/ amusing.

"The Roland TR-505, a classic piece of kit! This Drum Machine is an essential feature of many studios throughout the whole world. Wherever there is a studio door that needs to be wedged open the 505 finds its true purpose as a door stop and does the job with a simple elegance which we can all admire. Never has a piece of music kit been so vastly overrated".

A bit harsh perhaps, but it is true that the humble 505 isn't exactly the most inspiring drum machine Roland ever built. Anyway we own a couple so sacrificed one upon Mr Hoodees alter of solder and screwdrivers. What we added was a 16 way mini-jack patchbay that mucks with the sound in all sorts of odd ways. And by the magic of the interwebnet here's a little vid!

Although enthusiastic dabblers we're also not too proud to call in the experts sometimes, and had our new mate Shane at Minority-Zero add one of his shiny Destruction Matrix patchbay's to our old Yamaha DD6 drum machine. Using RCA leads to patch some crazy burps, squeals and screams out of this down at heel preset drum bank is a joy to behold, with the added bonus of it looking great as well. The whole 'making it look nice' part of bending really passes us by, due to lack of skill and Patience to be honest.

And what a beauty she is, we're well pleased and will hopefully post a video of her in action when we get a min. If you do a search on Ebay for minority-zero you might see some of Shanes other fab creations - highly recommended.

GCHQ out

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

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.....

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

The Godfather

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