Martin Gumucio

We are at the norberg festival and these are our neighbours. Great times all around.

Here are some more pics:

My dear mother is looking after the kids today so I get to have an evening all to myself! I went to the studio to play with the new live setup. Its has been an evening of learning the various quirks of the shaltwerk sequencer as well as how to control the very peculiar micron. It would be so much easier to just im with software but thats not what this project is about. Besides its art, so its expected I should suffer for it.

Todays session ended with the sequencer choking on the work I made and I lost all of it. Much was learned and I had a great time so all is not lost. So what exactly am I working on? Im not telling!

Christmas is early for me as a Daft Punk fan, they just released the official soundtrack to the new Tron movie. Since this blog is all about pointing out obvious things here’s why it’s going to be great.

• Daft Punk makes all the music.
• Jeff Bridges did the lead in the first Tron movie 1982, and in this movie he picks up the same character.

It’s a standing joke among my music friends how football trainer Sven-Göran Erikssons ”Svennis” responded Adagio when he was asked what classical musical piece he enjoyed.  Also we were appalled by the box-sets you can find at malls  ”Classical Masterpieces”, with no mention on the box what Masters or what Pieces were involved.  Well boys and girls, I’m proud to announce we have reached a new low. In tuesdays review of the Tron Legacy Official Soundtrack in UNT the reviewer let’s it be known that its sounds like a mix of Daft Punk and the Lord of the Rings. After listening to the album I can only deduce that the only thing the two have in common is the use of a symphonic orchestra. Congrats UNT!

And finally, in the video above you heard the Daft Punk sound as we know and love it, but it seems its also time for something new. Hit play on the video below and be surprised!

Some months ago I picked up an Alesis Micron to prepare for an upcoming live gig. I first fell in love with the looks and the features closed the deal. Also they come at a bargain price now, i got mine for really cheap. It is a successor of the Alesis ION and while its a super-portable version, without the IONs hands-on knobs, it adds a very cool argpeggio and sequencer part, as well as built-in effects.

Much to my dismay it only took two weeks before it got in trouble. An 1/4″ audio-cable lost the tip of its connector inside one of the audio-out jacks. Horror! It has never happened to me before, but i learned my lesson: Don’t use cheap cables and adapters! Not only was one of the outputs unuseable, but the piece of metal stuck inside also distorted the sound coming out from the headphone jack. Disaster.

This weekend I finally took the time to open the Micron up to see how the plug was constructed internally, just to check if this was something i could take care of myself.

The construction is very rugged and tour-ready, its built like a tank with recessed keys and everything. It turns out that the same goes for field servicing. Opening it up is a very straightforward affair:

How to safely open the Alesis Micron:

• Unscrew the caps for the audio-jacks on the rear of the unit.
• Flip the unit over
• Loosen the screws around the perimeter of the unit, leave the recessed screws near the center alone, they keep the keyboard in place.
• Flip the unit over again and place the unit with the front towards you, carefully, you can now lift away the entire cover of the synth by first easing it away from the audio-jacks in the rear and the keyboard edge at the front. The bottom-plate that you just unscrewed will stay in place thanks to the weight of the keyboard that is attached to it.
• Lift the lid CAREFULLY as there is a ribbon connector that you need to unplug to avoid damaging its short cable. Its in the top-right corner and powers the lcd-screen.
• Thats all. Easy!

I was surprised at the old-school design with one chip per voice, seen in one of the images below. The plug turned out to be easy to open by the way, and my Micron is back in action, below you can see it in the hands of my trusty assistant Simon.

Last month I had the fortune to be a part of a fun remix project, the approach was quite unique. The task was to make a version of a song from Rasmus Nygårds album Back to Square One – However the only information given where the chords of the song and the lyrics, the rest was up to the individual performer to create. So here is the result, my track is the first one. I used the “perseid” nickname to promote my little production company. (http://perseid.se). Rasmus Nygårds original album can be checked out here: http://www.kufrec.com/webshop.html

The album is available for free under Creative Commons license, so load up that mp3 player and enjoy!