The studio diary of Junai.
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    Sunday - Mincer | junai

    Day 3, polite and tinkly goes Mogwai for the close. (Sounds like a cryptic crossword clue.)



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    Saturday - Marauder | junai

    Second day, second track. Drums in this one.



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    Maunderer | junai

    An ambient shakedown of the Teenage Engineering OP-1, recorded in 30 minutes.



  • I finally got the time to put some volts through the Chimera bC9 that arrived last week, using Logic and a Kenton USB Pro Solo.

One thing you’ll want to be aware of if you’re considering buying is that in order to play the bC9 in a traditional melodic way you need to first map the external CV to pitch (hit the black key and twist the yellow VCO pitch knob), then adjust the CV amount knob so that an octave of input gets you an octave of output. It’s a delicate process and, to be fair, not what the bC9 is really designed for (at least as far as I can tell; I’ll check in the near future with Ben @ Chimera if there’s a way to lock it to a conventional “tuning”.

My first impression is that the bC9 is going to be more broadly usable than the bC8, simply because the ability to feed it sequences introduces a note of predictability. Playing with a bC8 tends to be a treasure-hunt for weird noises that can be hard to duplicate, somewhat like playing with a BugBrand BoardWeevil. With the bC9, the fact that you can fire it with timed and pitched sequences means that detuned, chiptuney arpeggios and a whole range of IDMish melody lines are possible, making it more mainstream usable and less of a special effects machine.

    I finally got the time to put some volts through the Chimera bC9 that arrived last week, using Logic and a Kenton USB Pro Solo.

    One thing you’ll want to be aware of if you’re considering buying is that in order to play the bC9 in a traditional melodic way you need to first map the external CV to pitch (hit the black key and twist the yellow VCO pitch knob), then adjust the CV amount knob so that an octave of input gets you an octave of output. It’s a delicate process and, to be fair, not what the bC9 is really designed for (at least as far as I can tell; I’ll check in the near future with Ben @ Chimera if there’s a way to lock it to a conventional “tuning”.

    My first impression is that the bC9 is going to be more broadly usable than the bC8, simply because the ability to feed it sequences introduces a note of predictability. Playing with a bC8 tends to be a treasure-hunt for weird noises that can be hard to duplicate, somewhat like playing with a BugBrand BoardWeevil. With the bC9, the fact that you can fire it with timed and pitched sequences means that detuned, chiptuney arpeggios and a whole range of IDMish melody lines are possible, making it more mainstream usable and less of a special effects machine.

    1 year ago on June 2nd, 2010 at 12:18 am | Permalink


    One haz Chimera bc9. Ordered last Wednesday, shipped Friday, in my hands the following Tuesday. And I live in Tokyo. Methinks (mehopes) this is a sign that Ben has started getting his business right.

(bc16 [top] included for scale.)

Will break out the CV interface and put some miles on this mofo shortly.

    One haz Chimera bc9. Ordered last Wednesday, shipped Friday, in my hands the following Tuesday. And I live in Tokyo. Methinks (mehopes) this is a sign that Ben has started getting his business right.

    (bc16 [top] included for scale.)

    Will break out the CV interface and put some miles on this mofo shortly.

    1 year ago on May 25th, 2010 at 8:25 pm | Permalink


    1 year ago on February 14th, 2010 at 2:59 am | Permalink


    …is the name of a decent blog, the subject of which you can probably guess, and which is worth checking out whether or not you have any interest in the genre. The link goes to one of my recent faves (which, I should note, I actually bought on CD), Yosui Inoue’s folk-rocky Kori no Sekai (World of Ice). But there’s a load of other stuff up there, from pop to scary 70s psychedelia with lots of deranged screaming on it, to more straight-line rock, most of it excellent and worth at least a listen.

    2 years ago on October 13th, 2009 at 3:12 pm | Permalink


    I’m more of a hardware than software user when it comes to percussion, but Analog Industries’ Tattoo drum synth and sequencer looks like something I could get into using. The ability to have envelopes that modify each drum sound over the course of a pattern, plus the randomization that’s one of AI’s hallmarks, sound like they could be very musically useful.

    2 years ago on October 9th, 2009 at 10:23 am | Permalink


    First thoughts on the new Korg Wavedrum

    1. Built very solidly, though it understandably makes a certain amount of noise when you whack the hell out of it. The casing is metal, which surprised me initially but I imagine is necessary to withstand the whacking.

    2. The included samples are crisp and the presets layer multiple sounds nicely to give some tonal variation depending on how roughly you go at it. If you’re habitually playing with your hands rather than sticks the default sensitivity will need dialing down a bit; as is, some of the patches require that you belt the hell out of them to get the “loud” version of a snare sample assigned to the rim, for example. I particularly liked some of the synthesized sounds using the Wavedrum’s models, which have a nice organic-but-unfamiliar character, though.

    3. The included delay and reverb are welcome, and I suppose could be helpful playing live to give things a dab of presence. Their deployment in the presets can be gimmicky in places.

    4. Korg really should have included either USB, MIDI or the option of an external editor (as with the previous Wavedrum). A quick scan of the editable parameters in the manual suggests that extensively tweaking them on a three-digit LED is going to be a chore on a par with brushing your teeth via your anus. I suspect the main issue is going to be that the limited knobs and buttons will control different things depending on patch and model, requiring that you have the manual around to refer to. This could well be profoundly annoying. (I stand to be corrected on this point, however, having not tackled it yet.)

    5. On the upside, you can edit quite a large amount of stuff, and there are several algorithms that treat the sound from the internal pickup, plus a dual-oscillator analogue synth model and so forth.

    6. The presets in places remind me of why I grew so frustrated with digital synths in the 80s and 90s; there is an overabundance in places of words like “jungle,” “midnight” and “alien,” which signal the whooshings, rumblings and watery noises that you might expect.

    Overall, though, buy it if you have any pretensions at all toward being a percussionist, which I’m assuming all keyboard players do. It is a decent piece of kit that will reward technique and experimentation and is an instrument with its own character, and as such a rarity these days.

    2 years ago on October 3rd, 2009 at 1:21 am | Permalink


    Too much.

    Current reading list:

    Queen of Candesce, by Karl Schroeder The Neddiad, by Daniel Pinkwater Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, by Douglas R. Hofstadter Gofun-go no Sekai, by Ryu Murakami 1Q84, by Haruki Murakami

    More music soon, I hope, when things stop getting in the way.

    2 years ago on July 5th, 2009 at 1:32 am | Permalink