Tonight I tried to give a short description to most of the songs at FluxOersted.com

I tried to give at least a clue towards what lies underneath the links there. Maybe that will help people find things they like. I'm finding that the US contingency of visitors is listening mostly to Anthrope and Alien Influence albums. Those two are good, so I am pleased. The 2000 Chinese listeners are all over the place. I can't help wondering how they decide what to play. Big question mark there. I don't care as long as they are satisfied.

A listener is a terrible thing to waste. I felt that I should at least try to describe some of the cryptic titles that lie in wait at my web page. Some of my descriptions are telling, others more elusive. I'm trying to type this while a cat licks my hand, so pardon me if I cut it short.

Rockmartian Splendor

Music as therapy might describe my hobby if I were getting better, even more so. My latest effort, "Romancing the Stoned" is part a capella, part synth music, and a couple of old things. I always wish it was better quality, but I'm lucky to be able to put two sentences together as it is, so I really can't complain.

When I first started my web page at FluxOersted.Com most of my listeners were Chinese. As time has gone by, most of the listeners are Americans. Hopefully some of them not me. (I listen to my own music quite a bit.) As the number of songs there approaches 100, it seems clear that it's one of the best deals around for free music.

It's best to try as many songs there as possible. To some, they may all sound the same, but I think there are some real gems hidden among the MP3 files there.

I've been listening to some of my earlier albums from FluxOersted.com partly as an effort to prevent re-inventing the wheel, and partly because I don't fully remember them. I know there are some people who think all synthesizer music sounds the same, which is really just sad to me. I am not one of those people obviously.

Right now, my two favorites are Anthrope and Alien Influence. Anthrope was written during a highly stressful period when I was serving on the jury of a murder trial. I listen to that now, and it brings back the tension and the insomnia that I had then. Alien Influence is really some of my favorite music though, and if only the rest of the world could recognize my talent, then we'd all be in agreement on something.

For some reason, my ipod hangs up when I try to play m3u lists from some of these, and I think it is because the size of my mp3 files gets pretty big some times. I went for quality, and am too lazy to go back and re-sample them at a lower resolution to get a smaller size. Some of the earlier stuff is at 128k but most of the new stuff is 320k. At the moment, I don't have any plans to change this. If you purchase a Flux Oersted album from iTunes or Amazon, etc., you get like 198K which isn't bad, but I'd rather have the files that on my web page personally. I suppose it is a matter of how miserly you are and how little you care about how fidelity. I like my synths to be almost live, so I go with the top fidelity.

Goings On

Recently purchased a Line 6 guitar interface for my mac, only to find that it serves nicely for vocal, keyboard and bass recording. I'm still waiting for the snow leopard drivers to come out, but the latest ones they have seem to work nicely.

I thought I was starting a new album, only to have my attention drawn to several unpublished songs from yesteryear. I collected them all as "Glyph" see FluxOersted.com

I've been learning to program in Cocoa and reading about that. Haven't actually made anything, but it seems to be a worthwhile endeavor.

The Visitor has been getting a few downloads on Jamendo, but not sure how to promote my music in general. It just sort of occupies space on a server somewhere.

I listen to my stuff quite a bit, so at least I've built my own record collection.

Embedded JRL
JFred ruleset langauge has remained pretty much the same since Paco Nathan designed it in 1997 or so. However, some of its capabilities have been updated since then.

JRL is a scripting language for the JFRED bot, usually a java application but sometimes an applet. JRL tags for setvar and equals have been improved since the program's inception by some open source contribitions and by the hand of Robby Garner. For the bot, this means that variables can be set during a conversation with no relation to the grammar being used, and action rules may be executed conditionally based on the value of variables set elsewhere in the conversation. These are powerful features that make the JRL bot useful and scriptable.

Paco set most of these functions in place originally, but they are only recently being reclaimed as updates to the jfred library have been made. The Institute of Mimetic Sciences has been keeper of this code for some time, and is working to improve the code beyond its humble ambitions initially set forth by Paco and Robby.

Unexpected Road Trip
We always get lost when taking the mini back to the dealership for service. Where the fuck is it? Somehow we get fooled every time. Then, we figure out how to find it after driving around for an hour. Time passes and memory fades. Then we do it again. Every time the map doesn't show all the roads, the roads don't have any signs, the signs we see point to the wrong direction.

That's what we get for buying a car that has no dealer with many miles of us. We're on vacation though so I suppose we should welcome the adventure. Here we go again. . .

"Point me at the sky and let it fly . . ."

I recorded a documentary on VH1 Classic the other day called "Which One's Pink?" It details the origins of Pink Floyd and the demise of Syd Barrett's days with them. I can't help but think about our old friend Weird Steve, that I've lost contact with. He wasn't quite the same sort of casualty as Syd Barrett, but there are some parallels there.

Barrett's case is pretty sad though. He was the original spark of the band it seems, but there is always the adage, "life goes on." Everyone can't just stop living because somebody becomes lost or unhappy. The ironic thing to me is that Roger Waters thought Pink Floyd should cease to exist when he left the band in the mid 80's, despite having driven on the band himself after Sid left. Time be time man.

I've been doing some songs with guitar samples lately, or should I say, I've been playing some guitarish sounding tunes on a sampler lately, not having touched an actual guitar in years. The new will wear off eventually, but I've had some fun with these "Les Paul" samples.

I still have a crush going on with my old mac and Logic Express 7. There is an aesthetic advantage there that Sonar just can't touch. I'm not sure what it is. I feel more inspired with Logic for some reason, maybe my windows notebook just weighs too much or something. I don't know. It's better to just go with the flow and not ponder too much about why certain tools appeal or don't. Use everything.

Romancing the Stoned

Right now I don't know which I like more, Ruby or Emerald Dry Roasted Almonds. I'm sober as a judge here, not really trying to decide.

I've been going through "Rails" tutorials today, and am tending to grok them all. Now I just need to brush up on my ruby syntax and conventions and I'll be solid and ready to roll with rails. I see the argument clearly that if your app fits the framework you'll love it, but freaky web sites might not get along with rails. Rails has the benefit of RAD and all, but you've got to see how it all fits together or you'll be beating your head against the wall.

I've been going through the Emerald roasted almonds too, and they are my new favorite snack. Very hamburger.

Robby.

my plastic hell

Pipe dreams echoing
in the dimly lit corridors of my brain
like beams that go in every direction towards the sun
where the fountains are
that shine in the pitch black empty hell between my ears
that something moves me onward down the hall
to where the fountains are
that shine in the pitch black empty hell between my ears
my plastic hell

Trans Platform Express

I've been working on a song called Xen Rails lately. It started on my trusty old Powerbook, with Logic Express, until it got so big I couldn't get it to mix down any more. I was close to satisfied with the way it sounded at play back time, but when bouncing down to a stereo mix, a glitch developed where I couldn't get all the tracks to bounce together for some reason. Anwyway, after fooling around with it all evening, I finally sent it to my Vista notebook and imported the drums as an MP3 file, and the rest as MIDI to Sonar PE.

Then, I started assigning VST and DXI instruments to the MIDI tracks. On the Mac, I was happy with an Absynth voice on one track, using an organic Cello kind of sound. On Vista, I chose a Stringer string machine voice that really cuts through the mix. I like it better, but now I have to edit that track to get rid of some artifacts (accidentals) that I made while recording it.

There were a few tracks that I couldn't figure out which voice I'd used, even though I have the same synth on both platforms. I couldn't get the same sound, so that leaves me something to work on later. I guess I need to start labeling my tracks with the actual voice name since Logic sort of haphazardly picks that info up from the synths. I guess some of the synths have a more compatible interface with Logic, and that may explain why I couldn't get a mix down.

So far I'm happy working with it on Vista, but I'm further away from feeling finished with it now. The tracks are all in sync, but now I can hear things that I want to change that weren't quite as noticeable on tha Mac. I have a preliminary level mix going on Vista, whereas on the Mac everything was pretty much at the same level going in, only keyboard velocity making the difference in loudness.

I uploaded an excerpt from my mac version to MySpace a few days ago. The whole piece is about 4 minutes long. I'm thinking now about trying to tighten it up a little bit. As it is, it wanders around a bit and doesn't have a very good ending. I think I can fix that now.

Persistence of Vision

I find myself tooled up without any clear direction at this point. In the past, I've been more spontaneous with my musical projects, reluctant to edit myself, basically churning out songs like spent bubble gum. Distance and pride make me want to slow down and proceed with greater care and with more revision than I have previously maintained.

My sound pallete is greater now, and that gives rise to more thought about choices to make, but will it cripple me? When I had two keyboards and a 4-track deck I used to be prolific as hell, but maybe that's the life of a single 20-year-old vs. that of a 45 year old man of greater means and lesser inspiration.

I'm not sure that inspiriation is lacking so much as self-control has evolved. It is the kind of self control that is akin to modesty, or humility that I have, and to some extent it is to be despised. Because without some experimental muscle, my brand of music is nothing. The music I live to create is mine, so there is some sense of pride, and a willingness to edit within some degree of quality. Yet, there can be no experiment without throwing caution to the wind, and blowing the dust off the keys that haven't been touched before, or as often as some others.

Being a manic type though, I know there will come an impulse to create, and that will dictate more than my written words can mettle.

New Workstation

I was reading an interview with Trent Reznor, seemed weird that it was from 1994, in Keyboard magazine. I guess NIN was a bit more musical back then, but his opinions struck me as highly suitable for Keyboard magazine, and also quite a bit leaning towards my own tastes.

He said that he didn't like to mike guitar cabinets, preferring to go directly into an amp simulator. I could see that. Of course his production technique at the time was very sampler intensive. I personally prefer simulated instruments, but would not split hairs as to when the sound becomes a digital recording. He admitted using a minimoog for most if not all of his bass lines, and though I use a virtual minimoog, I can see why.

The Keyboard Magazine mentality came to mind reading Reznor's passion for technology. I can remember in the 80's they thought Thomas Dolby was using the guitar in its proper place by only using them for textures and accompaniment. That is to my liking also. Keyboard used to rave about how "thick" Gary Numan's synth lineup sounded, and that's a no brainer as well.

Ten years later, I read where the guy from The Prodigy used Propellerhead Reason as a sampler on a G4 Powerbook, which was a few years back, but may show a trend from hardware samplers to software based ones. I have thought about trying that, but I may be stuck in the 80's or some kind of facsimile.

I still use a G4 Powerbook with Logic Express to do preliminary mixes, and sometimes entire songs. I like the mac because it is already geared up for making music, whereas with Windows you have to do a great deal of poking around in the settings, loading drivers, and other time consuming maintenance. Even so, I use a PC for recording, partly because I already have it set up, and partly because some of my VSTi synths only come in a PC version.

I try whenever possible to purchase soft synths that work on both mac and PC. The GForce Software line does this as does Native Instruments. Some of my dual platform synths are Minimonsta, Oddity, ImpOSCar, Absynth, and Reaktor. I've written quite a bit here about my tastes in software synths and together with Sonic Project's OP-X, those are my primary tools. Sonar came with some others that I use every once in a while, but I think Trent Reznor actually endorses Oddity and ImpOSCar.

It has been said that Gary Numan's early sound was characterized by the Polymoog's "vox humana" voice through two MXR phase shifters, but that would be discounting the minimoog quite a bit. The Pentagon DXi has a phased pad that sounds remarkably authentic, and OP-X does a straight vox humana that sounds lightweight in comparison.

For me, percussion is a weak spot, though with so many loops available and all manner of drum machine simulators, I still want for a better sounding drum kit than I tend to come up with. I should probably build some samples together for my own kit, as that would seem to be in order.

Uncharted Waters

I've started working with some of the widgets in Reaktor by Native Instruments. Absynth, by the same company has a kind of organic quality that reminds me of Reaktor, but there's more to it than that. The weird gizmo beat box things are fun to play with, and inspiring to work with. My next few songs may sound very unlike my previous 30 or so, especially in the beats and percussion tracks. I'm still digging the OP-X and by the way, I have toyed more with Stringer since my last post and I can say that it is one of the best deals in VSTi technology if you like string machines. I'm sure it isn't as nice as GForce Software's "String Machine" but at a fraction of the cost, there is much to be liked. The Logan strings and Arp Omni settings are just great to me. I have to figure out something now to use it in. I worked up one piece but its really just a demo to me. All those sounds remind me of Pink Floyd and all the anthem rock bands that I went to see in the 70's. You can strike quite a mood with a string machine, especially if not overdone. Leave it to me to warn against over doing the strings.

Sonic Projects Stringer

Just a short note about another VSTi synth that I intend to review later, the Sonic Projects Stringer. It emulates 3 different string machines, Arp Omni, Logan, Weslon Symphony, and also does a Solina. I don't know much about these machines, so I'll have to get back with you to write about them in any kind of informed way. At this point, Stringer seems like a poor man's GForce String Machine. However, the sounds are very impressive to me, and once again I was sold by the Pink Floyd demos they did on the Sonic Projects web site. This is a very inexpensive device, and I feel like I should have no trouble finding songs to use it in.

Sonic Projects OP-X

I had been looking for an Oberheim VSTi for some time, given up, and then stumbled across Sonic Projects' wonderful OP-X rendering of the OB-X synthesizer. I was knocked out by their online sounds demos. Being a sucker for anything that sounds like Pink Floyd, I was impressed by the "Wish You Were Here" sounds it could do. The Van Halen "Jump" and Rush "Tom Sawyer" were just too much for me to resist. The OP-X was inexpensive compared to some of its close relatives from other companies, so I decided to give the demo a try.

The "Pro" version gives fine tuning ability for all the individual synth parameters, and when I say "individual synth" I mean every note you play on the OP-X has a separate signal path through an individual 2-oscillator synthesizer. It has 6 of these, and that is where the incredibly rich, "ballsy" sound comes from. I think the regular OP-X model is enough to get most folks going who are just trying to find a good classic analog sounding VSTi to play with, but the "Pro" model is really a fantasy come true. This is a VSTi with meat on the bones.

I have Minimonsta and ImpOSCar to compare it to. I think they compliment each other nicely. Each one has something the others don't. Throw in Oddity and you've got a sound arsenal as good as any 70's or 80's band out there.

OP-X comes with hundreds of preset banks, and one of my favorites is of course the "famous" bank. It has all the aforementioned sounds plus "99 Luft Balloons," and some Jarre stuff, Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, you name it. OP-X makes an excellent Jupiter emulator and even has that characteristic Roland filter sound available. There are a lot of Roland patches that make me very happy here. It does some decent MiniMoog patches too, but not to surpass Minimonsta in my opinion. I still like Minimonsta for that Moog sound, but OP-X is extremely versatile, especially in Unison mode where it is monophonic but phat as phuck.

My only complaint about OP-X is that sometimes, if you slip and accidentally bump an adjacent key, the sound stops and you have a very noticeable silence. This only happens in unison mode, and may be something that I am doing wrong (besides bad playing.) Other than that, it is very solid, amazingly not too CPU heavy, and just sounds like a dream. The side-by-side comparisons on the website between OP-X and a real OB-X are really amazing.

Here's yet another VSTi for the arsenal, complementing well with other analog simulators for a niche that was once reserved only for that of musical royalty.

Little Bits is available now at amazon.com. The distribution process happens in waves as each retailer picks up the new release. Amazon has very good prices and offers MP3 music without copy protection. Something I didn't know at first is that amazon is set up to load songs into your iTunes player, if that is your preferred method.

I'm very proud of this release as it is very homogeneous in being all new and all synthetic. This material was born of simulators and CPU intensive synthesizers. I really get off by this kind of material. It seems like each release I have with tunecore, the more I want to dig in and build something new. My first two releases this year featured lots of older material, some simply remastered, others reworked completely, but basically older stuff that I had never released to a commercial market. This latest one is all new with the exception of the epilogue, Velvet Elvis, 9 songs that exist entirely in the digital domain, composed and edited entirely on a notebook computer.

This is probably my last album for 2008, though I just get more and more wound up to try something new with the tools that I've been using. I have been in talks with David Gilmore, of A Presence Called Fred, to do a guitar based album, but that would probably span into next year at my best estimate. David and I go back to at least two bands we've been in together, and he is an undiscovered master of the guitar as far as I am concerned. We did a cover of Black Sabbath's Iron Man That was pretty faithful except for the reggae drum patterns, and some of David's original pieces have been innovative and fresh to me. So there is hope for us on that front. Of course, I shall be writing synthesizer pieces for as long as I am able, so next year, hopefully we will have some more new material to share with you. It seems the spark of musical ideas has ignited here in Cedartown, and will not burn out for a while.

Little Bits Released

The new album is called Little Bits and may be the best so far. These are some synthetic songs, no doubt. Alpha is a song with a synthesized vocal part and all the instruments were simulated by the computer. A few of the tracks on this album have loop based drums, or have real vocals, but this album was produced almost entirely in the digital domain. I'm very proud of it. Some of the tracks are available for a short time on MySpace.com/oersted. There is a link on this blog's side bar. Within the next 8 weeks or so, it will be available as MP3 on iTunes, Amazon.com, Rhapsody, Napster, eMusic, and other online stores. I hope my fans enjoy this one. I've been listening to it in the car, and in my iPod for the past few days, and I love it.

What Have You Been Up To?

I am often accused of sounding like a chatterbot, usually when someone doesn't understand my remarks, but perhaps more often than that. I would say that I am 99% robotized. That is to say, my inner soul gyroscope of humanity is less than 1%. It doesn't take much. A little goes a long way. But if I sound like a robot, maybe I am.

The inevitable question of "what have you been up to today" is usually hard to answer. Unless I've been keeping score, I might not even know this one. How do I summarize nothing? Should I just say "nothing" or "not much?" One tires of that quickly. If I spend my morning thinking about a problem, or writing something down that I made up, then a solid response would have to summarize those thoughts and sometimes I'm just not willing to go there. I mean no disrespect, but if I'm going to be accused of being a robot for saying it, then maybe it isn't worth saying.

One Bit At A Time

I'm still working on my next album, Little Bits. I've got seven candidate songs finished, though a couple of them probably won't make the final cut. I've been coasting for the most part doing songs that are easy to put out, but are not the kind of cutting edge stuff that I was doing in the mid 80's. That's not all bad, but I'd hate to think that my best work was done on a 4-track cassette deck. I have some great tools right now, but inspiration has been hard to come by.

Let's face it. Inference Patterns was mostly a reworking of songs that I wrote 20 years ago. But I learned how to use these new tools while making that album, so I'm happy to have landed here today with all this knowledge. I need to spend more time on this current material and resist the urge to just knock out MP3's without giving them a good working over first and good mastering later.

I have settled on a two station approach that is working nicely so far. I use my mac to start the song and do computerized vocals if needed. Then I copy a mix down to a windows vista computer where I can add all kinds of virtual synths, or record real synths and vocals in the studio. I have produced a couple of songs for the new album like this and it has worked out very well so far.

I've uploaded a couple of the new songs to the Beta 3 Lounge radio station. Listener response has been very good and I'm encouraged now to try some things I haven't done in a while. My sound is getting better and has a more thick heavy synth style than I was capable of for a long time. I used to get this sort of sound using lots of analog synths along with chorus and phase shifter pedals. I can now do everything inside the computer without any of that old equipment, and the sound is a little more flexible though consistently where I want it to be.

That's what I'm doing, one bit at a time.

Somnolence

or the lack thereof . . .

I once had a doctor tell me that in times of war, men sometimes go without sleep for 3 days. I found little solace in that as I am an insomniac. Last night I stayed up while editing a report that I'd been procrastinating for some time. Sometimes there is a certain inertia or potential that must build up before the dam breaks and all the pent up energy is released.

I do that with music, but I'm either completely off or completely on. There is no scenario where I sit and write a little bit one day, and then add some more later, incrementally finishing a song. Most lyrics come in a matter of minutes to me (maybe that explains something) whereas I don't always get music with them. I tend to get musical ideas and then get some inspiration for the lyrics, though sometimes I flip through my notebooks looking for some unused words to wrap around a melody.

As a synthesizer player, I spend a fair amount of time doodling on a keyboard and fiddling with the sounds. I think that is what really attracts me to the synthesizer, is that aspect of actually crafting the sound pallet for a song. Sometimes I use presets, or some combination, but even with presets, there is a process of sorting through them, listening for the right sound for a particular part of a song. I'm sure guitarists go through something like that, but guitar is so dense in harmonics that you can always tell it's a guitar (well, most of the time.) Sure, there are guitarists like Adrian Belew or Robert Frip, and I'm not sure if I'm even spelling their names right.

I think my cat just farted. I hope that's what it is. Gotta go!