Thursday, February 17, 2011

Life Sentance

A man sits in a jail cell serving a life sentence. He doesn't want to live anymore. To live the way he must live means no women, no safety, no life, no nothing. Just the rest of his life sitting behind bars waiting to die. He wants no part of it.  He wants to die, better death than God knows how many years in the hole. Everyday he looks for ways to kill himself. The guards took everything they could think of so he couldn't try to hang himself with his shoelaces like he did last time. The guards love when they get a guy who wants to die. They know they cause the man great amounts of pain by keeping him alive. The have no concern for life, they enjoy the amounts of suffering they can cause the man. The pride themselves in the duration of the man's suffering. They know full well that at some point the man will find a way to kill himself. Imagine seeking death as fully as you seek to regain your freedom. You would do anything! Imagine wanting death so bad. Imagine death as freedom. Wouldn't you hate the man that kept you from your death, your freedom?  All night, you would lie awake in your bed all alone, thinking about your death like you were thinking of your lover far away. You would miss what you never had. You would find a way to kill yourself. You would, you would die somehow. Some die inside, the guards can smell that a mile away, they can tell when a man's dead from the inside. They give up. The leave the man alone, the let him get fed to the sharks. That's how I feel sometimes, dead from the inside. I look in the mirror, I look dead, my eyes look tired and gone. Sometimes when I walk down the street I think that no one can see me, that's when I wonder if I'm dead. Like a big garbage hole. You can put stuff in but it never gets full. In fact you never see any of what you put in there again. Kind of like in one ear and out the other, but down and out of sight. That's where I'm at right now. I'm nothing and I'm passing time without guts to make a move in, out, up, down, or otherwise. That's the name of my tune. That's the ring on my hangman's noose. That's my death row hallway walk. I'm fake, artificial. I think at one poin I had it. I had it down but now I'm a swinging man. A cold breeze from way down the hallway blows my dangling body back and forth from day to day. Life has nothing in it worth living for, not in my mind. I tried all the things that were supposed to make me feel more alive and they damn near killed me. I was lucky once.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

My Setup





Here is my set up in all it's glory:
The mic is an AKG 220
M-Audio Axiom 25 controlling a Korg MS-2000R which is running though a Lexicon MX-200 reverb/effects unit
I have two Rokit KrK 6's
A Korg EA-1 as well as an ER-1
Boss Sp-202
Circuit Bent Speak and Math/ Box O' Drones (I'll post pictures later)
And a bunch of pedals and soft synths

Korg MS-2000

This beauty from Korg combines state of the art analog physical modeling synth sounds with a very vintage Korg appearance. Yes, this sounds as good as it looks! Remember Korg's MS-series? That's right, the MS or MonoSynth series are some of Korg's most sought after analog synths. They were some of the only compact Patchable monosynths of their time, and had a great Korg sound too. While the MS2000 is somewhat "hard-wired", it offers just as much and more flexibility while maintaining a straight forward and hands-on approach towards old-fashioned editing via dedicated knobs, buttons and flashy lights. In place of actual patch cables and input jacks, the MS2000 features a cool "Virtual Patch" mode in which signal can be routed to various sections of the synth (ie: LFO, Filter or Keyboard Velocity) using the LCD display and paging through various screens.
The MS2000 actually comes up against the similar Roland JP-8000 and Novation SuperNova & Nova synths. Despite its amazing look, the MS2000 has some surprising limitations. It has only 4-voice polyphony so you won't be creating very lush or complex pads and sounds with it. In spite of this, its sound is clean, crisp and very flexible. It can easily conjure up beefy basslines, sub-basses, wonderful sweeping leads, pads and hits. Classic features include a 6 pattern arpeggiator, a very flexible LFO with sample and hold and even vintage wood side-panels and printed block diagrams and programming data on the face.
Programming seems just about as classic as its look. The two oscillators offer up to eight waveforms plus noise. A great self-oscillating filter section provides 12dB high and band pass filtering and switchable 12 or 24dB low pass filtering. A typical set of Envelopes modulate the filter and amplifier. Extensive modulation is provided by the two LFOs. A 16-band Vocoder section is also on-board and it does an excellent job! There are also on-board effects which include chorus, flange, phaser, delay, distortion and EQ. It also features a "Modulation Sequence" mode which is a 16-step pattern or sequence you create in either step- or real-time and any tweaking or editing can also be recorded into the pattern to add movement to it. The MS2000 is a very well designed and flexible synth with a look and functionality that not only honors but transcends its classic predecessors. It is used by BT, Depeche Mode, Apollo 440, The Crystal Method, Placebo, the Faint, Royksopp, Adrian Belew, Jean-Jacques Perrey, Saga, Klaus chultze, Rick Wakeman, Yes, Yesterdays, Keith Emerson and Snoop Dogg.