The exciting life of a Patchbay

I can’t believe that I haven’t written about using #PatchBays in the recording studio before! So let’s remedy that omission straight away with some essential points about how to use them.

Old style patchbay

At first, knowing how to use a patchbay seems like it would require a textbook, a doctorate in electrical engineering, an IQ of 300, and some magical incantations. The different types of patchbays available (analogue or digital, ordinary ¼ inch, long frame ¼ inch, bantam 3/8 inch…) and their configuration (Normalized, Half-normalized or Thru) adds to the confusion.

Patchbays offer flexibility.

Once you know the fundamental rules patchbays offer a simple way to connect one piece of equipment to another. As long as you understand how they work, there’s nothing to panic about.

Rule 1 - the top jacks are for Outputs

Always envision the audio signal going into the top back jack and coming out of the top front jack. The top jacks are called output jacks because the top back jack receives the output from whatever piece of gear you're using and spits it out of the front top jack.  If you follow this rule (as do all professionals) you will only be dealing with the outputted signal when you're patching the top row.  In most cases (keep it simple for now), the signal comes out of the keyboard or microphone, goes into the top back, and comes out of the top front. The outputs are top only, back-to-front.

Rule 2 - bottom jacks are for Inputs

So now you have your signal coming out of the top row on the front of your panel.  You plug in a patch cable and route it to the bottom row, which is the exact opposite of the top row.  It is only for inputs on your gear.  The signal flows into the cable, into a bottom front jack, and out of the bottom back jack and into an input in another piece of gear. The inputs are bottom only, front-to-back.

Rule 3 - Connections only occur top-to-bottom

Since outputs are on top and inputs are on bottom, you will never need to or want to patch a cable from a top jack to another top jack.  The same goes for bottom to bottom connections.  They don't happen. Patch cables only ever connect a top jack to a bottom jack.

 

Normal, Half-Normal, & Thru Modes

There are three ways the jacks are wired together that represent the three main modes of usage. These are known as #PatchbayModes. Some patch bays let you change modes with a switch. Some require you to physically manipulate the jacks. Some don't let you change the mode.

It's fine, though. You can stick with Normal mode and be perfectly happy, you'll just need more patch cables. But if you learn to use the other two modes you can really dial in the magic to save you effort and cabling time. Let's discuss each mode:

  1. Normal Mode:  The top output jack sends the audio signal to the bottom input jack until a patch cable is inserted. The cable interrupts that signal path and intercepts it, sending it through the cable only.

  2. Half-Normal Mode: The top output jack sends the audio signal to the bottom jack even if you've inserted a patch cable. This lets you split the signal to send to two inputs.

  3. Thru Mode: The top output jacks only sends the signal to each other, back-to-front. Unless you plug in a cable to send the signal to an input, the signal hits a dead-end.

For the most part, Normal Mode and Half-Normal mode will take care of all of your needs. Most of us hang out in Normal Mode, where we record and do simple mixing and clean-up equalization work out of the box and then send the signal to the interface, where we finish up the mixing in the box (meaning in a software DAW like Pro Tools or Logic Pro).

Patchbay rules

Patchbay modes

Aux Insert / Send

Two TRS insert jacks on your mixer will only get you two outs. If you are using it as a direct out with just a TS cable (instead of the standard insert y cable) you are only using the send (from the mixer) and the other half, the return, is unused. An insert is a loop out from a channel or bus and back in.

Here is a wiring diagram that might make it clearer

Connecting to mixer Insert send points

Using the Drawmer DS201 as an example this shows how to connect the dual gate to the insert points of the mixer or insert of an individual channel.

 

CV’s

Remember, the patchbay can also include CV’s to use with your modular setup !!!

Radio Caroline still rules the waves

RIP Ronan O'Rahilly 20th April 2020

Tonight I cooked a BBQ whilst listening to Neil Young After the Gold Rush on Radio Caroline. What a fantastic flashback.

Ronan O'Rahilly founded Radio Caroline in 1964 initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom.

Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never became illegal because it operated outside any national waters.

Caroline is now available on 648 kHz AM, via internet and via DAB radio in some parts of the UK. See the streams guide here.

Radio Caroline broadcasts music from the 1960s to contemporary, with an emphasis on album-oriented rock (AOR) and ‘new’ music from ‘carefully selected albums’. On 1 January 2016, a second channel was launched called Caroline Flashback, playing pop music from the late 1950s to the early 1980s.

Covid-19 Isolation filing bonanza

Filing during isolation

Isolation time is a wonderful opportunity to catch up on business filing. However I soon discovered that the neat labelling I had added to the tops of the suspension files caught on the inside of the filing cabinet making it very difficult to close, and then re-open the filing drawer.

I checked Google to find any tips on how to get around this problem but found nothing.

This morning I looked carefully at the drawers and I’m embarrassed to say that the solution was so obvious a child could have fixed it. However, if, like me, you have this problem here is how you adjust your filing cabinet so that the files fit without catching on the cabinet surround. The solution is to adjust the height of the two suspender rails in each filing cabinet drawer.

These are the Rexel suspended files I use. As you can see in the picture, the file labels project above the top of the files

The vertical rear post for the suspender rail can now be pulled upwards and clear of the slots it fits behind

First open the drawer fully by gently pulling open the drawer stop tabs - one on each side of the drawer. MIND FINGERS

With the rear post out, you can move the front rail support to the lower position and also change the rear rail support to the lower hole.

When both are in the lower position, replace the rear post in its slot and slide the drawer back over the stop tabs.

Now your drawers will slide in and out without the file labels catching on the inside of the cabinet. Isn’t life wonderful.

Empire - Andy Warhol film revolution

“Empire” is a film by Andy Warhol consisting of eight hours straight of the Empire State Building, doing nothing.

Warhol filmed the skyscraper between about 8:10 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. on July 25 and 26, 1964 from the 41st floor of the Time & Life building using a rented 16mm Arriflex camera push-processed to ASA 1000 to compensate for the dark conditions of filming which gives the film its graininess. It was filmed at 24 frames per second and is meant to be seen in slow motion at 16 frames per second, extending the 6 1/2 hour length of the film to 8 hours and 5 minutes.

The film does not have conventional narrative or characters, and largely reduces the experience of cinema to the passing of time. The passage from daylight to darkness becomes the film’s narrative, while the protagonist is the iconic building that was once the tallest in New York City. According to Warhol, the purpose of the film - perhaps his most famous and influential cinematic work - is 'to see time go by'.

To all of us, time is valuable, time is precious. Warhol knew this and he chose to spend his time to bring us 'Empire'.

"Empire" had its premier on Saturday, March 6, 1965 at the City Hall Cinema, 170 Nassau Street, in Manhattan.

Invitation card to the first screening of Empire

Making a film score for Andy Warhol's 'Empire' was a unique challenge. At over eight hours long and with so little happening on screen, how does one create a soundtrack that can engage the audience in witnessing 'the passing of time' as Warhol wrote about 'Empire', whilst not drawing overt attention to the score itself and away from the film?

As Warhol stated that the purpose of the film was "to see time go by", by definition it never repeats. Adkins followed with a work that never repeats for the whole duration of the film.

To structure the work Adkins used a bell-ringing pattern—NY Littleport Caters, first rung on 23rd October 2016 in New York. The bell ringing sequence (and I’ll simply quote the liner notes here) is an example of change-ringing technique—in which the nine bells are permuted continuously for several hours. From this Adkins created a nine-chord harmonic sequence each with nine layers of sonic material including old instruments and other ambient sounds recorded in large architectural structures. The Warhol film is stored on 10 film reels of 48 minutes each. In Adkin's piece nine permutations occur every 48 minutes—the length of one of ten reels of film for 'Empire'. The bell-pattern cycles through nine iterations, the combination of layers being unique in each occurrence.

When viewing the film the attention of the audience is drawn to the tiniest detail, for example when a flash bulb goes off close to the top of the building. The little subtle moments we take for granted suddenly become interesting. It becomes a sort of meditation. Adkins work has a similar effect on the listener. As you are drawn slowly into the depths of the piece you hear the tiniest changes of detail. It documents the passage of time.

How does Adkins keep the listener involved? We choose what we hear when listening; our listening contours the sound that we hear; we have the capacity to transform material so it becomes filled with our ideas, our preoccupations of what we should hear. Listening is not a holistic event. You extract only what you want from the moment by making that part your focus

The 51 minutes of the album release presents the prime bell ringing harmonic sequence in their original order (1 to 9) and concludes with a section of sound taken from the tenth film reel which has almost completely lost the original melodic sequence and supplemented it with additional distortion added to emphasize the increasing sense of being lost in the total darkness and the graininess of the film. As it fades away it leaves the listener lost in the depths of the art as viewers of Warhols film must have felt when night enveloped the Empire State Building.

Considering the nature of Ambient music

In the 42 years since Brian Eno’s release of Music for Airports our understanding of ‘ambient’ has developed and changed, musically, sociologically and environmentally. Although it has some stylistic qualities - such as generally slow paced; a tonal or modal framework; fragmented melody lines; use of drones; a singular ‘atmosphere’ - using combinations of these features can result in widely divergent music.

Liner notes for Music for Airports by Brian Eno

The concept of music designed specifically as a background feature in the environment was pioneered by Muzak Inc. in the fifties, and has since come to be known generically by the term Muzak. The connotations that this term carries are those particularly associated with the kind of material that Muzak Inc. produces—familiar tunes arranged and orchestrated in a lightweight and derivative manner. Understandably, this has led most discerning listeners (and most composers) to dismiss entirely the concept of environmental music as an idea worthy of attention.

Over the past three years, I have become interested in the use of music as ambience, and have come to believe that it is possible to produce material that can be used thus without being in any way compromised. To create a distinction between my own experiments in this area and the products of the various purveyors of canned music, I have begun using the term Ambient Music.

An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint. My intention is to produce original pieces ostensibly (but not exclusively) for particular times and situations with a view to building up a small but versatile catalogue of environmental music suited to a wide variety of moods and atmospheres.

Whereas the extant canned music companies proceed from the basis of regularizing environments by blanketing their acoustic and atmospheric idiosyncracies, Ambient Music is intended to enhance these. Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to `brighten’ the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think.

Ambient Music must be able to accomodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.

BRIAN ENO September 1978

“Brian Eno, ‘Ambient Music’, liner notes from the initial American release of Ambient 1: Music for Airports (USA: PVC-7908 AMB001, 1978).”

What has changed?

What exactly has changed in our understanding of ambient music? In the liner notes for Music for Airports Brian Eno wrote “… Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities”. This sense of "doubt and uncertainty" originally ascribed to ambient music is now being reintroduced by modern composers using fragility to disrupt and provoke the generally accepted innocuous nature of ambient music.

What critical aesthetical insights from the past 42 years can be drawn on to inform contemporary ambient music? The music of Eliane Radigue provides an intense listening experience and the ‘slow change music’ of Laurie Spiegel allows

… the listener to go deeper and deeper inside of a single sustained texture or tone […] The aesthetic aim is to provide sufficiently supportive continuity that the ear can relax its filters […] The violence of sonic disruption, disjunction, discontinuity and sudden change desensitizes the listener and pushes us away so we are no longer open to the subtlest sounds. But with continuity and gentleness, the ear becomes increasingly re-sensitized to more and more subtle auditory phenomena within the sound that immerses us […] we open up our ears more and more to the more minute phenomena that envelop us. This is also not “ambient music”, a term that came into use some years later. This is music for concentrated attention, a through-composed musical experience, though of course it also can be background

“Laurie Spiegel, liner notes from, The Expanding Universe (USA: Unseen Worlds – UW19, 2019).”
“Brian Eno, “Paul Merton’s Hour of Silence,” (1995) accessed February 21, 2020, http://music.
hyperreal.org.org/artists/brian_eno
/interviews/ambe2.html”

Eno encouraged the emphasis on active listening and reflection, writing that, “[…] the message of ambient music for me was that this is a music that should be located in life, not in opposition to life. It shouldn’t be something for blanking things out or for covering things up”

Fragility

Fragility can be thought of as a state of tension in ambient music where the sounds ‘failure’ is offset by its continued temporal movement forward. We will investigate Material fragility, Technological fragility, Temporal fragility and Gestalt.

This fragility gives a sense of both beauty and danger. Oliver Thurley writes:

“Oliver Thurley, “Disappearing Sounds: Fragility in the music of Jakob Ullmann,” Tempo, 69 (274)
(2015): 6.”

A musical situation may be considered fragile if the normal functionality of a sound – or the means of its production – is somehow destabilized and placed at risk of collapse. Fragility, then, can be understood as a precarious state in which sound is rendered frangible and susceptible to being destroyed or disrupted. To compose a fragile sound or musical event would therefore involve organizing a system either a) vulnerable to disruption by some small external force, or b) positioned upon an unstable foundation such that the system collapses under its own weight.

Material fragility

Today, our music is generally supplied in digital form so we enter willingly into the deceit that the music is somehow fragile. The ‘failure’ could be an old instrument, tape machine, or in the case of Stephan Mathieu and Taylor Deupree’s Transcriptions - 78 rpm records and wax cylinders. The ‘fragility’ is personified through the depiction of dementia by increasingly fragmented old dance hall records in The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time which was discussed here. In the case of William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, the magnetic tape actually does ‘die’ as it disintegrated whilst looping during the transfer from analogue to digital.

The potential for damage to the object or instrument used in sound production gives a fragility which creates the tension experienced by the listener. Deupree states that:

I often make my music balance on the edge of fragility, which comes from a specific design of the sounds and the composition. When it’s successful you have this very gentle, hushed music that has a lot of tension in it. It’s a very strange, but effective contrast. The tension keeps you engaged, in a way fearful that at any minute it’s going to fall apart, while the gentle qualities can relax you and ease that tension. It’s playing with this dichotomy that I find the most interesting music can live

“Infinite Grain 13, Interview with Taylor Deupree, accessed May 7, 2019, http://sonicfield.org/
series/infinite-grain/”

Technological fragility

We can hear technological fragility in the pitch warping of tape loops, hiss, wow, flutter and dropouts of many pieces. Good examples would be The Caretaker Everything at the End of Time: Stage 2 or Taylor Deupree and Marcus Fischer Twine

Very often these days ‘false noise’ is added to le bruit de fond giving a faux patina of age and fragility, heard often as record cracks and pops which also skilfully plays the nostalgia card.

Burial describes his methods of creating tension in his pieces like this:

I like putting uplifting elements in something that’s moody as fuck. Make them appear for a moment, and then take them away. That’s the sound I love… like embers in the tune… little glowing bits of vocals… they appear for a second, then fade away and you’re left with an empty, sort of air-duct sound… something that’s eerie and empty. Like you’re waiting just inside a newsagent in the rain… a little sanctuary, then you walk out in it. I love that

“Kek-W 2012 Online”

Temporal Fragility

The slow moving, repeated loops set out to destabilize the listeners perception of time. It becomes difficult to pick out moments to orientate their fragile listening experience. To render any changes almost imperceptible the pieces move very slowly with examples like William Basinki’s Disintegration Loops lasting around 5 hours and The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time lasting 6.5 hours

Gestalt

The listener is disorientated by isolated pitches or fragments of a suggested melody being presented, often isolated across the stereo field and using different pitches which imply multiple auditory streams progressing simultaneously.

Temporal connections are stretched so the musical line is difficult to track and the listener is left with a melodic line in which quasi-traditional polyphonic melodic syntax is implied but never actually stated. A beautiful example of this process can be found in Taylor Duepree’s Fallen album

“Taylor Deupree, Fallen (Japan: Spekk – KK037, 2018).”
 
 

Ableton folder locations and file formats - quick info

I wasted a lot of time trying to find the locations of Ableton folders and files, and wondering what exactly is an Ableton .asd file or a .ask file. Where is the Ableton default Template stored? To save myself time I decided to create a reference list. I hope you will also find it useful.

Folder locations

These are the default locations

The Core Library - Windows: C:\ProgramData\Ableton\Live 10\Resources\Core Library 
The User Library

  • Windows: \Users\[username]\Documents\Ableton\User Library

  • Mac: Macintosh HD/Users/[username]/Music/Ableton/User Library

  • Instead of the default location, you can set a custom path to your User Library. It can be stored in any local folder or on an external drive. In Live's Preferences' Library tab click the 'Browse' button and choose your preferred location

    • Mine is D:\Sound\User Library\

Max For Live

  • Mine is D:\Sound\User Library\Presets\

    • Audio Effects\Max Audio Effect\

    • Instruments\Max Instrument\

    • MIDI Effects\Max MIDI Effect\

Packs - Windows: \Users\[username]\Documents\Factory Packs
Ableton Template is \Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Ableton\Live x.x.x\Preferences\Template.als

File Formats

.als - Ableton Live Set 

This one you'll encounter first as it's the file that you're working on in Ableton Live when you're producing your tracks. It's what you get when you press save. It contains the layout of a set, such as tracks, devices and clips. This file type is also used for the template sets

.alp - Ableton Live Pack 

Ableton Live Packs can be downloaded or purchased from Ableton's website, like the Factory Packs. These are self-installing. Most of the packs from other providers are packed Live Sets that you can create yourself with Live's File Manager

.asd - Ableton Analysis File 

This file type is created whenever you import an audio file into Ableton Live and it contains specific information about analysed audio data like the warp marker positions, pitch, automatic tempo detection, ensuring the optimal stretching quality and a fast display of the waveform. When you save clip settings with the Save button under Clip View of a clip, these are stored in the .asd file as well

.ask - Ableton Skin

This kind of file can be used to change the colours of the graphical user interface. So when you choose the Disco skin instead of the Default one, there's an .ask file being swapped out in the backend

.adg - Ableton Device Rack Preset

This is the file type for all the different rack presets in Ableton Live that you can find in the browser. All the four rack types use this file ending, Instrument Racks, Drum Racks as well as Audio and MIDI Effect. So if you save a rack, it will be saved as an .adg file

.adv - Ableton Device Preset

Individual device presets have the file ending .adv. So this goes for all presets of MIDI instruments, audio effects and MIDI affects you encounter in Live's browser. Saving any presets yourself also results in an .adv file

.alc - Ableton Live Clip

These are files that save all the clip and envelope settings of an audio or MIDI clip in Live as well as the original track’s devices. While the MIDI data is stored within the .alc, audio Live Clips only contain references to the original sample rather than the audio data itself. This means they're very small

.agr - Ableton Groove File

The timing and “feel” of a clip in Ableton Live can be changed with so called grooves. The ones shipped with Live can be found in the Groove Pool. They also have their own file type which is .agr, because they can be extracted from clips and saved for later use

.ams = Ableton Meta Sound

If you have Operator, then you can create your own waveforms with the synth through micro-tonal, additive synthesis. These are stored in the .ams file format

.amxd = Ableton Max for Live Device

All Max for Live devices have the .amxd file ending, whether you get them from Ableton, maxforlive.com, third-party providers or create it yourself. They can be edited and modified with Max when opened from Ableton Live

Roland's TR-808 awarded a place in the NAMM Hall of Fame

On 28th October 1982 I bought my TR-808 from Hobbs Music in Lancaster. It’s been in constant use ever since, never disappointing. How much did I pay for this wonderful machine? The princely sum of £450 !!

Now, 40 years since its original inception, Roland‘s TR-808 continues to be a household sound, heard in house, hip hop, trap, pop and everything in between. The drum machine’s legacy lives on, seemingly forever, as it’s placed in the NAMM Museum of Making Music TECnology Hall Of Fame, with an official ceremony held at Winter NAMM this month. The Hall Of Fame recognises audio products and innovations that have made a significant impact on audio technology and production.

Save this Neve !!!

Buy this historic Sound City Neve Custom 80-Series 1972 with (34) 1073 EQs and four 2254 compressors - 16 buss, 24 monitor, 58 channels in mixdown, full Flying Faders system, loaded with 1272 amps: 

$325K - - - sylvia@sylviamassy.com Write me for more info: lets talk numbers. Specific trades considered.

If you don't save this console, it may be parted out.... and what a pity... it lived in the B Studio at Sound City for years where it recorded all the Sheryl Crowe hits, Queens of the Stone Age, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Smashing Pumpkins, Lenny Kravitz, Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Crows, etc.

In it's first home it recorded Quadrophenia at CTS in London.