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!

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.

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

It’s fun to play isn’t it?

We took a stop by the studio with the little kids, since we were playing in a nearby park anyway and it started to rain. Turned out Aron is now big enough to really enjoy being around instruments. I heard about that they have been playing musical games at kindgarten, that now became obvious as he immediately claimed the guitar on the wall as his own.

The resulting beautiful music was recorded, mixed and mastered on the trusty Zoom R16. Aron ends the set full of confidence with “That was a good song! It’s fun to play isn’t it?”

Simon was a good sport and enjoyed chewing cables and tormenting various percussion instruments while me and Aron were jamming.

AronSpelar by Perseid

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Today was quite busy: after work we spent 1 1/2 hours standing in line for the vaccine. After completing that mission and surviving Arons multiple calculated revenges “sticka DIG i armen! Stick!” it was time for a 4 hour session in the studio. I heard the Korg Trinity being played today for the first time in a good while, and to my great joy D fell in love with the Moog as well. Oh and in between that I dodged down to the city to pick up a new fast Sata drive for the studio. Turns out it saved the day!

I’m still a bit unhappy about the mess the studio is in, and i’m fresh out of ideas on how to fix it up.. Maybe Simon and Thomas can come and show it some designer love?

I’m also currently working on producing the sounds for the upcoming musical City of Angels that will be running in Reginateatern in December. Come and check it out, it is going to be great!

Now everyone is sleeping but me, and Im too worked up to sleep. Maybe worth a shot tho. tomorrow is soon here…

Once a month a bunch of misfits try to do a song each and upload it so the other misfits can hear. It’s a nice way to keep in touch with your music stuff and actually record something, anything. And not just let the things gather dust while you are busy doing everything else.

Here is my abortive entry for this month:

http://midiwarez.net/rcc/?section=id&value=1328

These pictures speak for themselves, so just a few brief notes:

• Pictures were taken of us from some Dutch magasine. I would love to get a link to that.
• Ukulele is a fun instrument.
• Never tell a drunk stranger that you run a music studio.