From: metlay@PHYAST.PITT.EDU (metlay)
Newsgroups: rec.music.synth
Subject: Re: Team Metlay 1992: Screaming Into The Aether (part one)
Date: 25 Aug 92 20:04:01 GMT


This is a reply to posts from two different people, done the hard way via
Berkeley. Sorry, gang, but until they get Pnews working on minerva I'se stuck.

>From: nick@dcs.ed.ac.uk (Nick Rothwell)
>In article <9208242258.AA11038@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu> metlay@PHYAST.PITT.EDU (metlay) writes:
>
>2. If a group of Emusicians gets together for a session like this, it is VITAL
>   that every member has his or her OWN means of working with musical material
>   without having to rely on a central computer or sequencer.
>
>Which means two things:
>
>(i)  Everyone must have a reasonably independent rig of their own;
>(ii) Each participant must UNDERSTAND how their own gear works.

Absolutely. No arguments from me at all. That was part of the reason why the
Bandwidth sessions worked as well as they did: Nick had the Mac, John had
his Atari, Kurt had an Amiga, Dean and I had hardware sequencers, and neither
Dan nor Carl required any sequencing hardware for presenting their ideas.

This time around, we only got off the ground whenever we could get the Mac
to do what we wanted, and many of us were either Mac-illiterate or Performer-
illiterate. Bad scene. Having everyone as a nation unto himself makes things
simpler in that regard. However, I am less worried about the second point,
as a lot of our stuff in the past came from doodling with barely-grokked
gear. Nick included this one because of one particular incident with one 
particular synth; my only comment was, what did you expect from a Yahaha?

I would agree, however, that one can and should wear a stopwatch with a time
limit on it agreed upon by all concerned (say, five minutes); when something
refuses to work as it's expected to, click the stopwatch and point to someone
else and say, "Come up with an alternative while he's trying to fix the
problem." When the five minutes are up, if the balky unit is still balky,
replace it in the mix and keep moving. This is one area in which I agree
wholeheartedly with John 3-- WAY too much time was spent this time around
watching someone paging through menus and scratching his head, be it me, Nick,
John, Eirikur, or William. Well, not William. To be fair, the VCS3 doesn't
HAVE any menus.  But we blew a lot of time trying to get the keyboard to work
before we finally threw equal temperament to the winds....

>I had an idea yesterday; if we ever do this again, have independent rigs which
>are ONLY attached MIDI-wise by Beat Clock and SPP. Then, we all get to use our
>own sequencers and the like, and run everything to tape just by MIDI sync.
>Sounds simple enough in theory. The main thing is it allows blame to be
>apportioned... :-)

I'd love it. It forces everyone to know their stuff to some degree, AND to
not rely on others. This "reliance" does NOT imply laziness! It refers to the
fact that just because Item "A" is in the session does NOT guarantee that
anyone can use it straightforwardly the way its owner does. At least two
of the synths left behind are now unusable by anyone until I get into the
manuals deep enough to undo the weird-ass MIDI multizoning setups that Nick
left in them. And watching John 3 and Eirikur trying to make sense of the
MTP routing setup was literally painful. Next time, I don't think we're
going to have a central Mac at all, just one machine that acts as a timecode
master.

>Except, watch future issues of KEYBOARD and EM closely; with luck there'll
>be some coverage of this. My theory is that MIDI Manager is toast, btw, since
>Worthington and Lentczner have both left Apple.

"Some coverage"? Don't dangle promises in front of the nice folx, Nick my lad;
in KEYBOARD, expect two irate letters to the editor in response to Apple's
lies, and in EM watch for our names in an upcoming article on laptop MIDI.
We were testing the PB100 and calling in our results to the article's author
on the fly, as he was running on deadline....

>8. Never try to get customer service from Opcode or MOTU during MacWorld week.
>
>Actually, MOTU were OK. Opcode was a hassle because Marsha was out of town,
>so I'm still waiting on OMS 1.2...

It arrived the day after you left, on a floppy marked BETA in big letters.
I'll mail it to you, okay?

>12. If a young lady advertising herself as redhaired, MIDIwise and available
>  posts a singles message on r.m.s, meet her first before dragging all of your
>out-of-town friends to a concert where she's playing. JUST to avoid surprises.
>
>Hey, some of us LOVE surprises.

Oh, meeting Lisa was much more pleasant than most, I'll admit. Running the 
flute transducer through the Zoom was worth the setup time: on a distortion
algorithm, the keys were magnified so loudly that they provided a built-in
percussion track. Flute in, entire Megadeth album (WITH drums) out.

>   13. If anyone asks you what the dividing line between the profound and the
>   absurd is, tell him, "About a perfect fifth." That's how much transposition
>   it takes to turn the Gyuto Monks into the Gyuto Smurfs. (Yowza!)
>
>Hyo Hyo Hye Hyo Hya Hya Hyo, ...

No, no, NO! It's "Hoy noy hoy noy voy voy voyp"! 

>   14. Never spend your summer vacation trying to teach an Englishman to say
>   "Yo!" It's an exercise in futility. (Sorry, Nick.)
>
>DuhhhI CAN DO IT!

*ahem* 14a. And don't show him Ren and Stimpy, either, if you ever want to
hear the end of it....

<while unplugging Cyclone from the MTP, which it just crashed>
"THAT ought to stop your hi-jinks!"

---

>From: bgood@sundagger.lerc.nasa.gov
>
>Funny you should mention that.  We're doing exactly the same thing in Detroit
>this weekend. We'll have what I suspect will be an eclectic bunch of people:
>a few Detroit Symphony players who are closet emusic freaks, a friend who
>was formerly the assistant conductor of the Broadway production of "Cats,"
>a few current and past U of Michingan music types, and whoever else wanders
>in.  

Hallelujah, they has SEEN tha' LIGHT! Post here in great volume about your
exploits! I'm looking forward to it.

>I'd be interested, Mike, in finding out how much advanced planning you all did
>(musically, not logistically);  we probably haven't done enough, as all we
>have are a few rough sequences and a few things written down. I hope to
>avoid as much as possible any on-the-spot patch writing as it will undoubtedly
>cause people to stand around with hands in pockets, so I'm trying to get a
>load of patches written by then.  We want things to be as spontaneous as 
>possible while avoiding the "Idunno.  Whatta you wannado?" syndrome.

This time around there was very little planned out. That was actually a 
real problem, in retrospect; having clearer ideas, as we did on Bandwidth, 
amde it easier to focus and accomplish things. Not to say that we didn't get
ANYWHERE this time-- we did some "Zap tapes," as John 3 calls them, where we
rolled tape after deciding on a basic chord structure and feel, and just went
for it. They're not exactly releasable material, but they were a lot of fun.

>Anyway, we're goign to try some completely free-form improvisation, which will
>probably fall flat on its face;  some more structured jazz things that need to
>be fleshed out, and some electronic realizations for a Detroit Chamber Winds
>concert next spring, and whatever else pops into our heads.   Hmmm.  Maybe
>we won't have trouble keeping busy after all, given that doing anything always
>takes an order of magnitude longer than you expect.

Sounds good for an initial fling. I'd suggest keeping the rigs as small as
possible: our gear pile this time was much smaller than last, but it was
still way the hell too big and complex for what we wanted to do.

>Now I've got to go finish that  "Circumcision_Yelp" patch on
>the Wavestation...

*wince*

--
dr. michael metlay          \ Metlay's Law: "A newly-announced, spiffy new
atomic city                  \ piece of gear may look *great* on paper
                              \ -- but you can't play paper."
metlay@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu \ 
Newsgroups: rec.music.synth