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That's pretty much the state it's in now. But it took three years to get to this point.
The trick is making it modular so it's relatively easy to troubleshoot.
Also, figuring out the best way to troubleshoot. Like... using midi apps to see where breaks in a chain are. Running all the audio to the hub, then you figure out where shit is getting stuck.
Shit like that.
Then of course there are those times where you just filter all the sound away like a dumbass and spend an hour trying to figure out why you can't hear anything.
I thought I knew quite a bit about electronic music. I thought I knew quite a bit about integrating hardware and software environments. This post makes me realize I am just the artistic equivalent of someone who thinks they are a painter but is just randomly wiping poo on a wall.
Deep respect @Ego_Likeness
You happy and make a living making art? Nice work.
I was wondering about that aspect of a full life.
Married and she supports the artistic mission too?
I don't envy many people here but that's sounds great to me.
Kids?
I mean, sure, workflow is everything.
I'm just starting out with electronic music production and my thing right now is to try to reproduce the sound in my head with as few steps as possible. That breaks down to how I use a sequencer. Less, being more, is what I am trying to flow because I started off just buying buying buying buying and I could see that might be a way forward but it felt a bit like a defence mechanism. Defence against my lack of knowledge, buying stuff felt like a way forward, or a way to see if I could go forward with X.
I get that The Beast works for you though.
Why don’t you just use one i-device with Drambo & AUM instead?
Just kidding. You’re rig looks awesome.
You, sir, are a scientific artist and an artistic scientist. Thanks for sharing something so well thought out and felt. Just one thing... generalizing about this forum is often incorrect. You, yourself, are an example of that.
Oh, that's not true.
So, I have a stupid large catalog of releases, something like 50 full lengths over the last 20 years.
And other than maybe a dozen which were recorded with The Beast, everything else was written and recorded
on my laptop sitting on the futon, then taken into my studio, which for years was just a set of monitors, assorted sound cards, a reeeeeally expensive mic, some line six pods, my guitars and a few keyboards.
It's never about the gear.
It's about what you do with it.
To continue your metaphore...
My "day job" if you will, or rather my "not on tour" job is fine art. I do book covers, illustrations for magazines, but mostly I just paint what I feel like, and hope that it sells.
I use oil paint.
But, I could use my hands, and a bunch of shit on a wall, and whatever I was "painting" would probably be better
than another person without the same skill set.
And you probably know more than you think.
The only really esoteric shit happens in Ableton. Everything else comes down to what you do with two signal types.
Midi or audio.
If there is a specialized skillset involved, it comes down to having done so much proper studio production that I have a
solid understanding of how to mix on the fly to keep too many frequencies from stepping on each other.
It took a VERY long time.
We lived below the poverty line for many years, and have only been barely above it for the last 8-10.
The thing is, this is All we know how to do. I've been showing in galleries since I was 16, Donna, my wife went to school for piano and opera from the age of five. When I say we've spent our entire life learning to do what we do, I literally mean that.
It's the only thing that's ever made sense.
The plus side is that we both understood early on that in order to do what we wanted to do we had to be willing to sacrifice our own comfort. Which we did for years. We both had part time jobs off and on when needed, but we have no non art skills.
And with our bands touring 2-4 months out of the year, finding jobs that will be cool with that is an issue.
Occasionally we would find something, but as the fanbase for the bands grew, and my connections in the publishing industry developed, I was able to keep money coming in when we weren't on tour.
Donna has health issues, so she can't work beyond her writing, and her "Garbage Witch" clothing brand.
https://www.amazon.com/Donna-Lynch/e/B002N58A1G?ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
So I've learned to bring in money selling art directly to our fanbase, plus prints, limited edition products like shirts etc.
https://egolikeness.bigcartel.com/
I do a ton of live broadcasts with the beast, and people make donations during those also.
Lately I've been doing some film scoring.
Basically I take any work I can as long as I can fit it around my schedule.
As I said above, shes a published author, and by author I mean, two time Stoker poetry nominee.
When we met we pretty much started working together right away.
She has an amazing voice, and writes intelligent insightful lyrics.
So that helped us get our foot in the door. I've been in the music industry for... damn thirty years (I'm pushing 50).
And knew how to work the system.
We've never been huge, we've never had a hit, even in our own scene.
But we have a solid fanbase that has followed us from album to album and project to project.
Kids?
No.
We talked about it, but we came to the conclusion that we are both too selfish to have kids.
We have a hairless cat that is the center of our life.
We built our life in order to do what we do.
No kids.
We live in the middle of nowhere Maryland to keep costs down.
We tour in a minivan, which is super efficient.
We don't have a "band" as such, I write everything for all the projects, and she does all the vocals for Ego Likeness.
Our live bands are hired guns. Some of which we have worked with for 10+ years, but they get paid show to show.
Beyond that, our deals with both the record labels we are on, and our book publisher is that we own everything, and they
lease the product from us for a defined period of time, then the rights revert back to us.
The product being defined by "these songs in this order with this artwork." Meaning that if another label comes along
and says "Hey, can we put X song out on a compilation?" We can say yes without having to worry about pissing off the label.
Also, going back to the kids thing. Both of us have pretty serious mental illnesses. We are highly medicated and have worked our asses off to be healthy, but even if we wanted them, D would have to go off her meds for at least a year if not longer, and that would be very very very bad.
TL;DR: Yes.
Oh, see above ^.
90% of what I release is written and recorded on my laptop on the futon.
The Beast was built specifically to do what it does.
You are absolutely correct. Less is more when it comes to proper audio production.
There are very few things about the beast that are "proper."
I guess its one of those "once you know the rules you can break em," sorts of things.
I LOVE aum!
I need to spend some time with Drambo. I keep meaning to do it, but with everything that's happening now I'm focusing on writing new material for the projects as opposed to learning more new tools.
That said, my last QueenNeon record was written almost entirely on my ipad pro using Groovebox in our van on tour.
When we got home, I dumped the tracks into my studio machine and finished it up there.
I'm just explaining my experience. There are always exceptions that prove the rule.
It's not just this forum though. I mean, every time you get people who are creative in one place, they will usually break into two groups. A majority who focus on gear and tricks, and stats as a way of playing along but without actually doing much creatively, and a minority who actually do the thing, and just look at all of the above as tools (the gear and tricks, maybe also the people).
Unfortunately that majority can occasionally feel threatened when the minority talks about completed work as opposed to "The idea of doing the thing." Which seems to more often be the focus.
Due to the social isolation thing, I've been doing live broadcasts with my industrial project Stoneburner from our garage.
Unfortunately my drummer is isolated about 15 miles from me, so she can't join me. But I've done my best to keep the show as interesting as possible.
The stage show is basically the same, picture a tiny absolutely insane female drummer going nuts on a standup kit off to my left.
Sounds quite familiar to me 😉
@Ego_Likeness, thanks for clarifying. I am a member of that minority (205 completed tracks in two years includes thirteen albums and two Symphony like pieces). The division is very clear, indeed. However, I have never found anyone here to be threatened by what I do. The worst that happens is I am ignored, which is fine.
I understand that this is primarily a tech site and it is thru the graciousness of @Michael and most forum members that a wider sense of being part of a musical community is acceptable here. That includes a well defined policy for having very controversial discussions in a civil manner. I don’t have much involvement with social media other than here, but I have heard of considerable communication difficulties out there
(In the really virtual world).
I certainly can appreciate your broader social media experience, but as it pertains to this forum (and specifically to the positive feedback on your rig and music) I just have not had the same vibe. Exceptionalism may be gone from the US, but it seems surprisingly, and modestly, well here. Just my opinion, of course. I wish you continued success in your endeavor,
@Ego_Likeness Trying to be the minority here. Took a chance in singing, meeting and talking with my favorite artists, programming, while focusing on school and work.
Your setup is amazing. I doubt I’ll make an analog version to that level of complexity (seeing as I’m interested in digital technology), but I am working on a project that will take a lot of time for me to finish. Seeing your masterpiece just fills me with joy.
Also, as corny as this sounds, you give me hope that I’ll find someone who’ll understand my perspective.
Any advice from a skilled inventor to an amateur? Like, organization skills, or wisdom about how to manage your finances while focusing on your dreams? I’m finding myself occupied by so many things I’d like to do but feel I don’t have enough time or I’m taking on more than I can handle.
@Ego_Likeness
That studio of yours is like the Batcave 🦇 man
\
Humm..
Yeah, start simple.
First figure out what you want the overall thing to do.
I had a very specific idea what this needed to do when I went into it.
Then demo it out.
I built proof of concept ideas in Ableton first.
Then I figured out how I wanted to interact with it.
I had this idea that I wanted to be able to grab a sound on the fly, like a ball, and fuck with it then toss it back into the flow of the music. Which I accomplished by using different types of loopers.
I spent a bunch of time building custom lemur environments to control everything. Nothing fancy, just figuring out what the best way to control ableton from something other than the main machine. I found Lemur is more flexible than hardware controllers for this, because I can make a controller on the fly in the middle of a set if I need something specific.
This one is obvious but I'll say it anyway. Know how your gear works. Know what it does, and what it can't do.
Learn to troubleshoot signal paths. Specifically the midi ones, since you can't just plug a pair of headphones in and check it.
I built and tore the whole thing apart for months. Putting it together, trying something, ripping it all back apart.
Plan on that.
It helps learning everything.
While you're doing that focus on the ergonomics of the whole thing.
As I mentioned above, I have kaoss pads that some of the synths are plugged into on the opposite side, of the main control center. So I can work them with both hands and switch from device to device without my arms getting twisted up.
Learn your physical controls.
The heart of it, the few things I interact with all the time are the two ipads running chordion, the one for ableton running lemur, and the Roland MX 1 performance mixer.
Directly above are the little submixers that feed a couple channels on the MX1. To the left are the kaoss pads and the ipads, and to the right are all the hardware synths. Directly above the MX1 is my patchbay (80ish? points) so literally all I have to do to reroute X thing through Y to Z is unplug a couple of 1/8th inch cables.
More than anything, with this, or any other piece of kit.
And I cannot stress this enough.
READ THE MANUAL.
Not just to understand how it works, but to learn it's specific vocabulary.
So that when something goes wrong, you have the vocabulary to ask google how to fix it.
Also, when you get some weird esoteric idea, 99% of the time, someones already thought of it, and one of those glorious bastards has solved it. Either with some cool boutique piece of gear, or they have written Max for Live plugins.
Or in the case of IOS, Mozaic, and lemur environments. Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but even when it doesn't you can learn just by trying to fix it.
All that said.
I'm not doing anything particularly crazy on the micro level.
It's all just moving electricity from A to B.
And you probably know 99% of it already, because that part is super easy.
The one thing I have that brings it all together is my own vision and due to the way I have built my life, the available time and (Mostly) understanding wife "You said you weren't going to buy any more gear."
"I'm not."
"You said that last time...and the time before that....and..."
Of course, I make all the money, so I have a hard time feeling toooo bad about the whole thing.
So, on one side, is the beast, to the left of that is my mixing desk with the monitors etc.
Directly opposite the beast is a fullsized four person gauntlet cabinet (working, no less) from the 80s.
Which is surrounded by shelves full of tour shit, band merch and other pieces of kit, I'm not using.
Recently I had a VR rig fall in my lap. And I have had the horrific realization that I now have...
A man cave.
And I hate myself just a little bit.
Brilliant, another I’m one using your shot as wallpaper. Inspiring. I’d been worrying about building a “live rig” and running on the assumption that it had to be very mobile.
Reality is I’ve only recently moved into a situation where jamming outside the house with other people is a thing and it took half of our first rehearsal session to set up the iPad running Samplr and the Tr8 with my motu interface and old Allen n Heath 2 channel DJ mixer, quite stressful first go and then musician types stared asking mental questions like, can you get something going in a KEY we can jam along too, had I been relaxed, probably something I could have managed.
HOWEVER I’ve already got a host of equipment including a 5 year old windows laptop and an inherited 2013 iMac in my attic and I’d started to get that I could create a live vibe in the house. Even had a professor dude up in my attic, jamming saxophone. Was sometimes conscious that my set up is more semi organised chaos than ocd but recent events which have brought live streams from peoples homes have shown me set up ain’t that unusual and with a bit of refinement(and a few more cables) I can have my own Beast.
(Happy daze for me as having just been diagnosed autistic at 47 it looks like some of the traits I’ve struggled to change for years, such as being incapable of neurotypical standards of tidiness or being comfortable in novel social situations, are going nowhere - I know lockdown has it’s down side, believe me my wife got really ill, but many aspects such as less face to face and more social media interaction have really suited me). Thanks for the inspiration, constantly trying to take on board the bit about clarifying your goal, I struggle with focus but I do try, my attic may be full of cables but the huts full of meditation cushions!... re read this and it’s typical of me, lurk saying nothing for years then blurt, hope it’s not too off topic
Thanks for the message. Keep up the great work.