My latest album, Covidian Meditations, is an important record for me, as it indicates a kind of returning to earlier methods and primary inspirations in a more direct and honest form. It is also the most “timely” record I’ve ever made.
First the timely part, as it is the most obvious and easiest to discuss.
As of this writing much of the planet is on some level of lockdown or precaution regarding the COVID19 virus. As I have a number of “comorbidities” (I’m 62, I need to lose about 15kgs, I’m type2 diabetic, somewhat asthmatic, and generally could be in vastly better shape than I am) I have been especially cautious. The only persons I see on a regular basis are my wife, Beth, and my neighbour, Erik. (He has a number of similar issues, so we are both very cautious about the virus.) As a consequence, I’m going a bit stir crazy. Like many people my anxiety level is significantly elevated, and I’m doing what I can to cope, and my coping mechanisms aren’t necessarily adequate.
In previous times in my life, such episodes of anxiety would indicate a turn to meditation to calm and focus, and in previous episodes, I found that my greatest meditation was in the creation of music. This came out of a time where I spent 13 months living in a Zen Centre. While there, one of the residents gave me a record by Watazumido Shuso. More commonly known as Watazumi Doso (1911-1992), he played a huge shakuhachi flute, known as a hocchiku flute. It was plain, and unvarnished and as rough as his playing which could range from gentle undulations to breathy shrieks. Everything he played came from his centre, his most immediate existence, and I was deeply impressed by his work. There are some famous quotations from him (well enough they are in wikipedia) that I believe are worth repeating here:
“It’s fine that you are all deep into music. But there’s something deeper and if you would go deeper, if you go to the source of where the music is being made, you’ll find something even more interesting. At the source, everyone’s individual music is made. If you ask what the deep place is, it’s your own life and it’s knowing your own life, that own way that you live.”
“When you hear some music or hear some sound, if for some reason you like it very well; the reason is that sound is in balance or in harmony with your pulse. And so making a sound, you try to make various different sounds that imitate various different sounds of the universe, but what you are finally making is your own sound, the sound of yourself.”
“He who blows Ro 10 minutes every day can become a master.”
In the mid 1980s I tried to get inside that framework. It is why my music is usually “thin” or “unadorned” – I have always tried to treat my instruments as one instrument. It’s why I made a record called “Breathless”. My lungs are shot – I will never have the wind to play like that – shakuhachi, hocchiku, or even duduk. I have tried, valiantly, and it is not my path. My path was that of electronics and synthesizers – something more “native” to my experience and world. Yet, I wanted to maintain that directness that Watazumi demonstrated so clearly with his instrument. I no longer think it is possible. I think that is what he did and that is what is so beautiful about his work – it is not something to be attained, but to be implemented. You don’t get there, you simply go and discover.
Ever since then I have gone in and out of this practice of music as my meditation. Sometimes it’s very clearly so and obvious (Breathless, SNOW, Keraunograph, k2) and sometimes it is much less obvious and often absent (Live and everything through Array) and sometimes it is much more “abstracted” (viz. the Quintessence series) where the “point” is there, but the method of arrival is mostly impersonal.
This impulse to a meditation practice has been most necessary in the past year. Many people deal with the isolation of COVID restrictions easily. I’m really not that great at it. I’m a very social creature and I enjoy being with other people. Not in great crowds or anything, I prefer more one on one or small group settings, so this has been difficult for me. Over the past year I have procured a number of softsynths for my computer and the learning curve has not been insignificant. Keeping “busy” like this has kept my mind off my isolation to some degree. Yet, I have also felt the need for deeper contact in this regard, and so my older music / meditation practice has resurfaced to varying degrees, and this record is a result of that.
This doesn’t mean that it is full of spacey joy and warm fuzzies from some mythic “Meditation” space. Not at all. Some of it is rather abrasive, and this is an indication of the context of this meditation – hiding from a deadly disease in a broken world that is slowly dying. As a consequence, some of this is dark and difficult listening – some of it isn’t. It is always inventive and different. Each piece works on its own research or inquiry – its own path and development. I did arrange the works in sequence for a particular sonic / affective purpose or outcome, and outcome that has to be experienced and is not readily amenable to textual description. All that aside, the listener is under no obligation to listen to the songs in order.
I hope you find this album worthwhile, and that it resonates with your place in life and that it gives you the same challenges, comforts, and strengths it gave me. Fly! Be free!
I’ve made a lot of music this year. With the curtailment of entertainment in this time of COVID, I’ve had some “extra time” on my hands, shall we say… To make this stuff, I’ve spent too much money on software (Ableton – I’m looking at you…) and VSTs. However, I did shop for sales to get things for less, so I can’t complain too much (thank you ADSR and Plugin Boutique for your leads on sales). Still… You can’t beat FREE. And so this article is going to focus on my favourite FREE VSTs – VSTs that I actually use, not just ones that I think are a good idea.
When it comes to electronic music production, There are basically a handful of tool forms you use – you will need a DAW (a digital audio workstation) to put everything together. You will need something that makes sounds – a VST synthesizer of some sort. You will need something to process sounds – some kind of audio processors, like delay, reverb, EQ, etc. Many DAWs come with those built it, but they are often “not that great”. So, first, let’s talk about DAWs.
DAWs.
Normally I use Ableton Live to do that. As I noted above, Ableton is Not Cheap. In upgrades alone I spent about $600 this year. This has me less than amused, however, I find it very easy to use and extremely powerful, especially in a live music context. I also use Reaper. Reaper is, technically, not free. However, it is dirt cheap. Like $60. It has a nice 60 day trial period. After 60 days, it does not shut down. It just nags you for $60 every time you open it, and then it is still a fully functioning DAW. So, if you can bludgeon past the guilt, it’s sorta kinda “free” software. There is a free “DAW”, Audacity. It is not the sharpest knife in the drawer – it has its limitations, which we will get into. There is also a free DAW I am interested in called Ardour, which I do recommend in general, but not in specific – I will explain in a few.
This is what Ableton looks like. Here I have a MIDI melody I played on track #2. I used TyrellN6 (free synth) Spaceship Delay (free delay) and CloudSeed (free reverb) VSTs. Ableton is stupid expensive, with the best version at CAD$720. The introductory version is only CAD$95, but it has a variety of serious limitations. Standard is CAD$430, which I think is a tad bit excessive.
I’ve written about Ableton before. It is crazy expensive and extremely powerful. I’ve been using it since version 0.85. It is a huge and deep program that can do most all basic electronic music production right out of the box. If you can afford it, get it. If you can’t – read on. Seriously – you don’t need it to do quality work.
VERDICT: BEST IN CLASS. STUPID EXPENSIVE. RECOMMENDED FOR ALL ELECTRONIC MUSIC PRODUCTION!
This is the UI for Reaper. It looks and acts a lot like any other DAW. It costs USD$60. In other words, it’s cheap. However, it is a full on and extremely competent DAW. Also, if you don’t pay the $60, it will still work, because they’re not a bunch of dicks. But if you do use it, be a decent person and pay the measly $60. It’s nothing, especially considering how expensive its closest competitor, ProTools, is.
Reaper can’t do the crazy extreme things that Ableton does (like mod and run Max/MSP patches, or trigger looped audio on demand, etc.) but it can do pretty much most anything other mainstream DAWs (like ProTools, Logic, Cubase, etc.) can do, at a tiny fraction of the cost. I do use it. Not as much as Ableton – Ableton is a lot easier and more intuitive than Reaper. For example, in Ableton, imagine I want to make a track with TyrellN6. So, I arm the track I want to play into, I go to my list of VSTs (which I have organised as I prefer), double click TyrellN6 (this automatically puts it into my armed track) hit record and start playing. Bingo. Done. Happy.
With Reaper? Nope. First I add the track (it starts with none). Then I arm the track. Then I select the MIDI input device (in Ableton this is done in preferences, once, when you first open the software, and then you’re done), then I click on the FX button (because Reaper sees all VSTs as “FX” I suppose, durrr…) and then scroll down the list of VSTs to Tyrell, select it, and that puts it in the column of FX to add to the track. Then I click ADD, and then, finally, I get to start recording. What. A. Pain. In. The. Freakin’. Ass. It’s OK once or twice, but do it dozens of times in an exploratory session and you realise you’ve burned WAY too much time in that FX Window. Also – if you want to add an effect or change synth? Back to the FX Window. Ugh. In Ableton – everything is laid out and drag and drop. Easy Peasey.
However, there are times when I might not be on my “best” computer and I just want to sketch something out quickly. The image above is an example of that. Reaper is a lot lighter on computer resources than Ableton and will run on weaker / more primitive computers compared to Ableton. Another benefit is that it has a built in scripting system, so you can develop keyboard commands for everything it does. That can make some rote work very easy, and allow you to build your own workflow. Also, it can be skinned and you can arrange the UI differently within certain parameters.
Also, Reaper has a great support audience. For example, there’s Kenny Gioia on YouTube who has made a jillion videos about most everything you can do on Reaper. So, learning Reaper isn’t that hard – Kenny’s videos are simple and easy to understand.
So, overall, I rather like Reaper. I do recommend it.
VERDICT: A VERY SUITABLE AND USABLE DAW. NOT FREE, BUT STUPID CHEAP. CLUNKY UI. RECOMMENDED MOSTLY FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT TO PISS AWAY MONEY ON PROTOOLS.
This is the interface for Audacity. Simple, to the point.
I’ve written about Audacity before.Audacity is what I use for basic audio file editing. That’s about what it is good for. It has zero MIDI ability, which is its greatest downfall. But for opening a sample and editing it, or transcoding a file from one format to another, I usually end up running Audacity. Its nearest competitor is Adobe Audition, which is infinitely more expensive, at least, infinite in the sense that Audacity is free, so it’s a divide by zero infinity. It really is very good at what it does, and it does read VST plug ins, so if you have VST processors, you can use them in Audacity. However, because there’s no MIDI, VST synths are of no use. If they implemented MIDI, I think it would open up electronic music production to a lot of people.
VERDICT: BEST PRICE – FREE AS IN BEER! FINE FOR WHAT IT DOES – basic audio editing. HAS MANY LIMITATIONS. RECOMMENDED BECAUSE EVERYONE NEEDS A SWISS ARMY KNIFE OR A CAN OPENER.
Ardour is OK. It accepts VSTs, does MIDI, etc. like any other DAW should. It is also Free Software. I’ve just never been able to make any use of it. I’ve tried twice, and both times I just came away scratching my head going “What was that about?” It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and it comes from the Linux world of Free Software. And that’s fabulous. The problem is Linux is a nightmare for working in media development, and a lot of that balky dorkiness translates over to the Mac and Windows versions. I’ve never been able to make it work for me in a way I find useful or comfortable. But that was several years ago – it may have improved since then. So, if you are patient and are too cheap to buy Reaper, then sure – run Ardour. I will be investigating it next year and perhaps I will come to like it.
Edit: 2 JAN 2021: I DL’d the latest rev of Ardour. I’m still deeply unimpressed. The workflow is… unintuitive and cumbersome. It took me hours to get it to do the simplest MIDI things, and I still haven’t been able to get it to recognise my VSTs. I’m sure that if I dick around with it more, it’ll work, but dayum, what a pain in the arse. It makes Reaper look easy. Also, they now beg beg beg / insist you pay for it. You can still DL it for free, but it’s not as simple. I paid $60 Canadian and I feel like I wasted my money.
VERDICT: MEDIOCRE, BUT NOT TERRIBLE. DOES WHAT A DAW SHOULD, IF YOU COAX IT ENOUGH. IT’S OK.
So, that’s my round up of DAWS that I think are worth using. There are some that really suck (I’m looking at you LMMS) and others that are brilliant (like Logic, FL Studio, Reason, Cubase, ProTools to name but a few) that I didn’t discuss, because I don’t use them or anticipate using them. I included Ardour above, because I do anticipate investigating it next year. I did not include Garageband, because, like Logic, it only runs on Apple computers, and I do most of my work on Windows. Now, on to the VST Synthesizers I use and recommend.
VST SYNTHS
I use A LOT of VST Synths and they can be divided into two modalities: FREE and PAID. I use both. Because I use so many of them, I don’t want to go over them all here. Many People don’t like VST Synths. I don’t know why, but they just don’t. They seem to think that there is something grand and wonderful about hardware. I am not one of them. That said, I don’t dislike hardware synths at all, and if someone threw a Hydrasynth at me I wouldn’t say no. It’s a fine piece of gear. I just don’t have the room for all the synths I would like to own. And as far as “sound quality” goes, I agree with my friend Tom Ellard – “YOU CAN’T HEAR WOOD“. And speaking of Tom, I would recommend that you check out his reviews of synthesizers on his website. They are funny and insightful and I largely agree with his verdicts.
Here, I will talk about the ones I use most – some are expensive, many are free or super cheap.
This is “Analog Lab” from Arturia – it’s part of the V collection. It gives you a wee taste of what the full collection does.
The Arturia V Collection replicates a pile of famous old synths and keyboards – Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer piano, Fairlight CMI, DX7, Casio CZ1000, Synclavier, Mellotron, ARP2600, Yamaha CS80, Prophet 5, Mini Moog, Solina String synth, and many more. The ones I use the most? The Wurlitzer, the Fairlight the DX7, the CZ, the Solina, and the CS80. The rest are OK, but not that inspiring to me – down the line I will investigate them more. The CS80 is golden, though. Magic. A few are “not that good”, and the Buchla and the Modular Moog – with VCV and Modulair I don’t need either of them and they are the two I use least. Still, for $250 (it was on sale) I got 25 different synths – that’s like $10 each. $10 for a Fairlight? $10 for a CS80? Hell yeah.
What it does best: Makes very convincing imitations of vintage synths and keyboards. What it does worst: Anything new. Overall: Love it. If you’ve got the scratch, get it.
Loom is an additive synth that is fabulous. I got it on sale for $30. It costs about $100 now. The UI is beautiful and actually fairly easy to use.
What it does best: spiky digital sounds and warbly washes What it does worst: sound like anything “real” – it’s even more uncanny valley than FM. Overall: I really like it. It has this characteristic brittleness of additive synthesis.
Sektor is a fine wavetable synth. It has a lot of really great features – a sequencer, built in effects, all kinds of groovy stuff. I’ve been messing with this for about 6 months now, and have barely scratched the surface. Everytime I use it, though, I am impressed. It’s very Berlin. I got this on sale for $30 – it might still be? Excellent sounding device.
What it does best: Make wacky synth sounds, esp. of the more “digital” variety. What it does worst: Make warm fuzzy sounds. Overall: I really enjoy this synth. It’s fairly easy to use, makes sense, and good sounds.
Virtual analogue synth. It makes very nice buzzy synth sounds. IIRC, I got this on sale for $40 – it’s normally over $200. It’s closest competition would be Serum. Frankly, Serum’s better, but I got DIVA so cheap, I’m fine…. If I need a quick “go to” snyth patch, I can usually whip up something pretty quick in DIVA.
What it does best: Make buzzy synth sounds. What it does worst: Not make buzzy synth sounds. Overall: It’s a narrow synth – it does what it does – but it does it really well.
I paid $150 for this a number of years ago, and it was well worth it. It is the best Mellotron emulator you can get. Occasionally it goes on sale, but not often. This has tapes from dozens of different Mellotrons and Chamberlins. I use this a lot.
What it does best: imitate a Mellotron MkII, M400, and Chamberlin. What it does worst: sound like a synth. Overall: The best. A must have. There is M-tron and then there’s the rest.
is a very close imitation of the Roland Juno 106. So, if you’re looking for that squeezy Roland buzz, this is the best I’ve found so far. So simple to edit. A great repro of a great synth. Also, I got it for $25 – very worth it. As far as I know it is still going for that price. A good solid synth.
What it does best: Sound like a Juno 106 – squeezy Roland synth tones. What it does worst: sound modern. The same problem with the Arturia material. Overall: Love it.
One of the weirdest synths I’ve got. It uses a process called “spectral synthesis” which is very visual and cool looking. Imagine if a sampler got it on with Photoshop and this was the unholy progeny of such a union. It is not easy to use, but it easily makes some of the weirdest sounds. I got v1 several years ago and found it off-putting and not that useful. Then v2 went on sale for like $20 so I bought it. It’s still complex and odd, and I am still very very much learning it. However, it does make truly stunning textures.
What it does best: Make weird things. VERY weird things. What it does worst: anything easily. Overall: This thing makes textures like nobody’s business. It is complicated and weird, but there is really nothing like it outside of something like the Soviet ANS synth. It is a worthwhile VST.
That’s about it for paid VST synthesizers. I have many others I’ve bought, but those are the ones I use the most.
Now for the Freebies.
THE FREE VSTs SYNTHS I USE MOST
This could be a very long list, so I will only list the ones I use most. That said, I do want to first point out a few that are AMAZING – I just don’t use them that often. Also, just because these are free, it doesn’t mean they lack in quality. These are every bit as good as something you would pay for.
A virtual modular synthesizer that is arbitrarily large. Seriously. You’re only limited by your processor and screen real estate. And it’s Free. Play with this after dinner and it’s suddenly 4AM and you are wondering where did all the time go? Addictive and fun. It’s downfall? It’s every bit as difficult as a regular Eurorack synth. It sounds great though and it’s a great way to learn basic analogue synthesis without blowing stupid amounts of cash on a hardware system. Another advantage of VCV RACK is that many people who develop Eurorack synth units also develop soft synth versions for VCV, so you can “try it out” in a virtual way before you plunk down hard cash for the hardware version. As a consequence, VCV RACK has literally hundreds of devices available for it.
I don’t use it often in my music, but I do spend time playing with it because it’s fun.
There is one big downfall with VCV RACK, which is if you want to use it as a VST, you have to pay $125. The free version is a standalone. Which I think is a tad bit excessive.
That’s why there is CARDINAL. You see, many other people were kind of cheesed about that fact. They felt that VCV RACK, which comes out of the FOSS world, should be free and fully functional. So some of the developers got together and made CARDINAL. Cardinal is the free version of VCV RACK, only with the built in ability to be used as a VST. There is a trade off – you don’t get the latest and greatest virtual modules made for VCV. This is not as much of a crisis as one might think as the base collection of modules for CARDINAL still numbers a few hundred. So it’s not like you’re going to suffer.
That’s why I recommend CARDINAL over VCV RACK. If the purpose is to learn the basics of synthesis, CARDINAL will do all of that, it will function as a VST, and it’s Free, as in the proverbial beer.
What it does best: imitate the analogue Eurorack synth experience for zero cost and eat hours of your life. What it does worst: anything easily. Overall: If you want to do the modular synth thing but don’t have multi-thousands of dollars burning a hole in your pocket to plunk down on a fully blown Eurorack the size of your dining table, then this is your ticket.
Basically very similar to VCV RACK, just not as powerful, flexible, or messy. Time consuming to program? Yup. However, like VCV, it is addictive – you can really fall down a rabbit hole with this thing.
What it does best: imitate the Japanese modular synths of the 1970s. What it does worst:anything easily from scratch. This is mitigated by the presets it comes with, so it is much more approachable than VCV Rack / Cardinal. However, doing work from scratch on this, like VCV / Cardinal, can be tedious, although a very rich learning experience. Overall: As much of a time eater as VCV / Cardinal, and almost as fun. Modulair is a good way to learn basic subtractive synthesis.
The next bunch are synths I use all the time.
Tyrell N6
Formats: VST, AU Platforms: OSX, Windows, Linux
TyrellN6 models something like a Roland Juno6 or 106 subtractive analogue synth. It is fairly easy to use. It’s also very good. It comes with hundreds of presets, all of which can be modified. Also, the chorus effect on this is amazing…. And the saw on this is as buzzy as they come.
What it does best: Make buzzy synth sounds – great for leads! What it does worst: Sound organic. Overall: A really fine synth. I used to use it more, and then I got the DCO106 and DIVA, but it is still a go-to when I just want that Roland Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
VITAL
Formats: VST Platforms: OSX, Windows, Linux
Vital is a fairly new synth from 2020 by Matt Tydal. It is a wavetable synth, very similar to Serum and Sektor. It is a very powerful synth, yet it is also fairly simple to program from scratch. It comes with a fair pile of presets, so you can get a good head start on programming some sophisticated sounds in it. Everything is drag and drop. You want LFO1 to control OSC2? Easy-peasey. Click / drag / drop. Done. And it will preview your change. It’s lovely to look at, but the visuals and animated waveforms go to the GPU, not the CPU, so as flashy as it looks, it doesn’t burn CPU cycles. The free version comes with 75 presets and 25 waveforms. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. This thing can do microtonal scales, and if you spend money on the pro version ($80) it will do vocoding, give you more than 400 presets, 150 wavetables, and similar wonders. I’m still working my way through the free version – it’s amazing.
What it does best: complex evolving sounds, screaming leads, very trippy pads. What it does worst: sound like “something”, unless you use the built in sampler. It’s very synthetic. Overall: An absolute MUST HAVE. Get it now, HERE.
Crystal
Formats: VST, AU Platforms: OSX, iOS, Windows
Crystal is…peculiar… like, a lot. The antique user interface design is a sketchy time machine back to 1998 and Windows NT. Trying to do anything straight out of it from scratch is just… futile. However,it has a truly amazing randomisation function that makes sound design in it really fun and easy. There’s a “Father” and a “Mother” source for patch settings, (see picture above) and then a “Mutation” slider. More mutation = more random. Then you click the “Breed” button and BANG: new sound. I’ll just keep punching Breed until I get something in the ballpark of what I want, and then tweak the controls from there. I find it to be excellent at making very peculiar noises and atmospheres.
What it does best: make weird sounds, quickly. Especially washes and quirky effects. What it does worst: make anything useful quickly. Overall: A really fine synth – I love it in spite of its faults and ugliness.
Dexed
Formats: VST, A Platforms: OSX, Windows, Linux
Dexed models a Yamaha DX7 FM digital synth. It is VERY hard to use. So. Many Parameters… But it makes some incredible sounds, and patches can be downloaded from a variety of websites to give you literally thousands of sounds, because Dexed will read DX7 preset files. Considering the DX7 was one of the most popular synths of all time, and has been around since 1983, you can imagine how many presets have been developed for it over the past four decades.
This is a DX7. Note the lack of dials. Programming these was a nightmare.
Next is the Dexed interface – note the plethora of knobs and dials. Dexed sounds as good as a DX7 (in some ways better, as the DX7 could be a bit noisy at times) and it is easier to program. What’s not to like? It may be complicated, but at least it’s useful… Since I got the Arturia DX7 I don’t use this quite as much, but when I want to do some FM sound design, I’ll use Dexed.
What it does best: imitate – nay – dominate over what it imitates – the DX7 What it does worst: like the DX7, sound warm and charming. Overall: A required VST. The price is right, there are literally thousands of patches you can load into it off the internet. A really fine synth.
Tunefish
Formats: VST, AU Platforms: OSX, Windows, Linux
Tunefish is an additive synthesizer with a number of built in effects. It has been built, very purposefully, to be very light-weight. Its programming is very efficient. However, it is also very “touchy” and can be easily pushed beyond its limits. This can be useful. For an additive synth, it is remarkably easy to program – additive synths are notoriously difficult to program – they are not the most intuitive.
What it does best: make spiky digital sounds and lush pads – fairly easy to program What it does worst: behave itself. Overall: A very useful synth and well worth the price, which is free.
Spitfire Audio – LABS
Format: VST, AU Platforms: OSX, Windows
Spitfire is a very interesting system. Their synth (which is actually more of a restricted sample player) comes with piles of sounds, however your ability to edit or modify them is quite limited. Note: Spitfire will eat a solid 4GB of your hard drive space– it has a LOT of sounds. As you can see above, it has a very minimal interface, sparse actually. You can change some of the parameters of the sounds, but not many. It makes up for it with extremely high quality sounds, and a lot of them. And it’s FREE. They make their money selling more sound packages, which are rather expensive, but extremely high quality. All that said, Spitfire is excellent at creating atmospherics, soundtracks, and similar “lush” sounds. It’s not very good at buzzy synth sounds. That’s why you have Tyrell N6, Tunefish, and Dexed… Talk about a minimalistic interface, though…
What it does best: Make realistic and atmospheric sounds. What it does worst: Let you do much of anything to the sounds. You get what you get. Overall: a very useful program, especially for soundtracky type applications.
Anyway – these should get you started, at ZERO cost to yourself. With the above you will have all the basic forms of synthesis – Subtractive, Additive, FM, Wavetable, Rompler.
Now, once you have your synth recorded, you will need to process that sound, and that is the next section – VST processors.
Decent Sampler
Decent Sampler is exactly that – a decent sampler. It runs off of XML, and it is free. There are Decent Sampler implementations that cost money, but the Sampler itself is free. In the picture above there is a basic piano. This happens to feature two dials, one for Tone and the other Reverb. Each keyboard key or range of keys has a few layered piano samples. All of this is listed in an XML file that you can tweak. Decent Sampler is a great introduction to hacking, because all of this is available for the user to modify in a text editor of their choice. So, let’s say you DL a very simple Decent Sampler – you like the way it looks, you like the way it acts, you just don’t like the samples and want to use your own. It’s a bit complex of an operation, but not exceptionally so. You simply rename your samples to match the samples in the Decent Sampler in question, delete or move the original samples elsewhere, and take your samples which now have the old samples names, and copy/paste or drag/drop them into the place where the old samples were. Bingo – you have just hacked Decent Sampler.
Eventually, you’ll tire of that and will likely want to do more that way, like add features, or build your own UI for it, and that is also fairly easy-ish. There’s a variety of videos on youtube to show you how to do that, made by the guy who invented Decent Sampler. I discovered Decent Sampler via Venus Theory on youtube, so h/t to Cameron for this. He has built a number of Decent Samplers that are quite good for atmospheres and weirdness.
What it does best: Play samples like a sampler should. What it does worst: Let you do much of anything to the sounds. It’s limited by the features developed by the Sample set designer and the limitations built into Decent Sampler itself. Also, because it’s a sampler, it can become a bit memory intensive. Overall: useful. You can easily hack it and make your own Sampler. A fun easy intro to instrument design and the vagaries of sampling.
VST PROCESSORS
There are SO MANY VST PROCESSORS it’s absurd. If you use Reaper, Ableton, or Audacity, or even Ardour, they all come with a suite of processors, many of which are very high quality. I’m going to focus on the ones I use that I got for free. Otherwise I would write book describing all these hundreds of gizmos. Before we talk the free ones, I’d like to discuss some that I paid for that I think are pretty amazing.
First, these are some of the “paid for” processors I use the most.
StutterEdit was developed by the electronic composer BT. If you want to make stuff that’s glitched to bits, get StutterEdit. I got it on sale ages ago for $50. StutterEdit 2 goes normally around $200. I use this fairly often.
Normally Wires is about $60. I got it for $20 on sale – its price seems to vary. This processor emulates a Soviet Era wire recorder.
It sounds like EROSION.
It is an instant lofi corrosion device.
It turns everything into rust.
When I got it, they were throwing in another VST – REELS – for $10 which emulates old reel to reel tape decks. I use them both all the time and you can hear their effects on the album Songs for the Neocene by West End Electric.
I picked this up for $100 a few months ago, which is about 70% off from retail. It is simply the most amazing processor I have ever used. It can do effects that are glitchy, spacious, warping, evolving, twisting, echo, reverb, modulator madness – it’s all that and a bag and a half of chips.
So, that’s a good collection of things that cost money – now for the things that don’t.
These are some of the FREE Processors I use the most:
Fracture is an instant glitch machine. I use this often – I can put a sound into it, glitch it, then resample it and turn it into an instrument in Ableton Simpler. Fracture is a very handy VST that way. It is similar to StutterEdit in that it hashes things up, however, it is far less sophisticated. It doesn’t behave. This can be good at times – it can also be really annoying and difficult. But if you wonder what happens when you dump sound into a broken blender, this is it.
This bundle has 37 basic processors, all free. Compressors, delays, EQ, etc. Many of them are very very good. I relied on this for some time until I got the Waves bundle. These are not to be underestimated, just because they are free. Melda also makes more comprehensive Bundles that cost actual dollars, and they are also very good – again – not to be underestimated.
Spaceship Delay is an outlandish delay that works great – everything from subtle basic delays to freaky OMG stuff. The UI is pretty basic and straightforward, still, it is a powerful effect and easy to program. Some of the FX can get out of control very quickly, so you need to learn its “ways”. But the UI is dead easy and it’s a good powerful system.
this is one strange reverb effect – can be subtle and expected or really pulverising and perturbing. Its effects are hard to describe – it is very worth downloading.
This emulates a guitar amplifier, a la, a 5150, an EVH, or a Soldano, etc. guitar amp. And it’s free. However, to make it sound truly amazing you need a speaker simulator using what are called “Impulse Responses”. There are a pile of them floating about the internet for free, but the Really Good Ones cost money. However, if you are a guitarist, you’re not likely to change amps and cabs constantly, so investing in some good IR’s is a a good idea. Neural Amp Modeler comes with a fine set of Impulse Responses built into it, however, you can add more if you want. I have some guitars that I am always experimenting with, and when I do I use NAM. I used to work with Emissary, another free amp modeler. However, Emissary requires that you use external IR, so I use NadIR with Emissary. Emissary has way more controls than NAM, however, I just want something that works quickly – I don’t want to spend hours dialing in a tone. So I have come to prefer NAM, because I turn it on and I’m pretty well set.
Valhalla Supermassive is a STUNNING reverb and delay VST. It can sound like a closet or the Andromeda Galaxy on crack. The extreme settings of this are so vast and deep they are a different sound unto themselves. It can also do “normal” reverbs and delays, but you push this thing and it’s The End Of The World As We Know It. And it is 100% Free, so it will fit your budget. This is a required tool if you, like me, do any kind of deep ambient or drone work.
CONCLUSION
Anyway – that’s about it. I use many others, but these are the ones I rely on.
This is a pretty good guide to some very fine stuff. Some of it is expensive, but a lot of it isn’t. And even the free stuff is often of very high quality. So download a DAW, get your VSTs and start making some music!
A number of people have been arguing over the role of Beauty in physics, and frankly, I’m appalled. WTF is wrong with you? What makes you think that your human sensibility of “Beauty” has anything to do with the Universe?
Thought experiment: Let’s propose that there IS an equation or set of related / integrated equations (which we can call The Equation) that will absolutely 100% explain EVERYTHING in the universe down to an infinitesimal degree – it explains the origin of the Fine Constant, Mass of the Electron, Dark Energy, seriously, EVERYTHING – lightspeed, neutrino mass, gravitation, inflation – everything. And it is accurate against every test thrown at it to an infinitesimal degree.
However: it is 1 million elements in size and composed of 5000 different mathematical “characters” or terms (like 0-9, +, -, *, /, sqrt, sigma, log, sin, =, etc.) many of which are specific and novel to this equation – however, the equation is so perfect, it even explains its own novel terms! Still, it IS 100% accurate, no matter how it is tested. It clearly fails the “Beauty Contest”, and even in 12pt type it’s a good 500+ pages long. As a consequence, it is not actually humanly understandable in its entirety. Furthermore, it wasn’t even conceived of or written by a human – a human developed an AI specifically for this job, and it took (x) years for the the AI to figure it out. And figure it out, it did. And all of physics flows from this with 100% accuracy.
To corrupt a phrase from Haldane – what if the universe is not only more complicated than you think, it is more complicated than you can think? Afterall, as deGrasse-Tyson has said a number of times, the Universe is under absolutely no obligation to make any sense to you. At all.
Furthermore, if the equation I described is ONLY 1 million (10^6) elements in size, then compared to the universe itself, that’s a fantastic amount of compression, given that the universe is composed of dozens and dozens of orders of magnitude more elements, from quarks to galaxies, all of them in motion and changing over time and most of which we only have the feeblest idea that they exist (cough) like dark matter (cough). To the vastness of the universe, a 1 million element / term etc. equation would be extremely simple and elegant. But to these puny humans? “Eeewww! It has a dozen elements in it – that’s TOO COMPLICATED.”
Right. Whatever. It’s so sad to see people make such arrogant fools of themselves.
And finally: the solution to the Trolley Problem. It’s actually very simple. As we know, it goes like this: you have one person on a side track and a crowd on the main track. You are in a position to see both and the Trolley. They cannot see the trolley and the trolley cannot see them. All you have to do is press a button and switch the track. The standard (and stupid) idea is “Sacrifice the one for the many”.
The Trolley problem is proposed by people who don’t know anything about trollies.
The solution (borne of the experience of a mis-spent youth in the industrial nightmare of New Jersey in the 1960s) is simple: DERAIL THE DAMN TROLLEY. As soon as the front bogey goes over the switch, press the button / pull the switch switch / etc and that will set the rear bogey onto the side track. In a second or two, the trolly derails, and everyone lives.
Fuck you philosophy and your false dilemmas. So often it seems that damaging property is some great horror, yet in this case, it’s actually the solution.
Memories. We’d get high waiting for the bus. Then we’d arrive and go into the woods and smoke more before homeroom. By first period – I was totally cruisin’…. Then, there was lunch and they would let us into an area by the cafeteria to smoke cigarettes and we would run off to the woods and smoke something else. That meant the afternoon was hazy and the ride home utterly unimpressive. We would sing Beatles songs on the bus and drive the driver completely batshit insane. Stoned teenagers singing “Happiness is a warm gun” on a crowded sweaty schoolbus in New Jersey. YEAH BABY!
The driver would accelerate and go over a short bridge at speed. We would all go flying. We would complain. He was just “aaaaaaaa SHEDDEP ya punks! Now simmer down!” Once we asked “Hey mister bus driver – ya mind if we smoke?” And he said “Hell – I don’t care if you burn.”
Finally home, I would grab some food and go to the library to work for a few hours. Mindless stuff – shelving books, straightening the shelves. Once that was done, I’d hang in the downstairs kids section and do my homework or read. *A lot*. I read everything. I burned through the tiny philosophy section quickly. And all the art books – they had all the Time Life great artist series and a surprising number of pretty decent books – one had the Futurist Manifestos. I learned to look for that from the cover of “No Pussyfooting” by Fripp and Eno – it’s one of the books on the bookshelf.
The library had a huge collection of very meh literature. The massive collection of mystery novels they had. Barbara Cartland was the bane of my existence. Prolific and popular. Every day at least a few of those had to be reshelved.
If I wasn’t working that day, I’d be over at Phil’s getting baked in the birdcages. His dad raised prize winning parrots and other beautiful colourful birds. Or hanging out in the laundry room at the Roosevelt Motel with Mark and James and Dave listening to Yes and precisely arguing over the lyrics. Like Jesuitical precision. Nuclear quantum physics level nonsense. Or we’d sing along to Genesis songs, one after the other. Or we’d eat acid and listen to Firesign Theatre. It’s just this little chromium switch here…
Aaaaaahhhhh – the 1970s….
Remember when wage slavery, ecological destruction, rampant sexism and racism, and clueless stupidity was all we had to deal with? Now we STILL have all that AND THE FUCKING PLAGUE. AND A NIT WIT GAME SHOW HOST FOR PRESIDENT.
But we have the interwebs – a window to ridicule and a vector of accusation.
On that note, some Quiet Sun from 1974:
I’m looking in my little black book of European logic
Still I can’t make head or tail of it.
If I could only read between the lines,
Think of all the treasures I might find!
Learn the secret of trance and levitation,
Liberate my soul in six easy lessons.
Meanwhile I’ll stay at home,
and listen to Schönberg in the bath.
And leave you to the geometry of my laugh,
To which you’re welcome if it helps you at all.
To get your rocks off and have a ball.
Never let it be thought that we have nothing to share –
We drink the same water and we breathe the same air.
Deep down inside we need each other just the same –
Here in my car Where the image breaks down Will you visit me please If I open my door? In cars… – “Cars” by Gary Numan
In your burning tight leather you’re a firebomb with your handles smoking you’re on fire not a flaw, not a mess you’re way on top like a classic car, a firebomb
– “Firebomb” by Chrome
We are not lovers We are not romantics We are hear to serve you. A different face But the words never change.
– “Are Friends Electric?” by Gary Numan
After the exercise in nutty crackpot physics, I figured something a little more down to earth would be of interest. Above is a photo from my dining room. We have a small stained glass window in three sections and in each I have steel models of cars. Each is there for a sentimental reason. From left to right: A blue 1972 Chevy Nova, a red and white 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk, and a blue 1948 Tucker Torpedo. Two are gifts – the Tucker is a model my father gave me two years ago. The Studebaker was given to me by my friend, Dennis McGrath a number of years ago. I bought the Nova model back in the 1990s. Behind the Studebaker is a card sent to me by my friend Carole Danek about 10 years ago. Behind the Tucker is a license plate frame that says “Head In Any Direction On The Freeway Of Your Choice – Ralph Spoilsport Motors”. That is also a personal gift – from Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre. All of these models are accompanied by tiny models of bicycles. There is also a tiny tiny model that was also a gift from my father of a mid 1950s Austin Healey in a clear plastic box, behind the Chevy Nova.
All of this has meaning for me. Some if it is obvious – gifts from friends and family and people I admire. The Austin Healey is there simply out of convenience – I would rather have it elsewhere, but it is a cute little thing. Like a small shiny bug or jewel. The other, larger, cars form an interesting chain and I seek to explain that here.
The Tucker Torpedo was a car that looked to the future. Rear engined, it featured rear view mirrors, suicide doors, a headlight that turned with the car to facilitate driving at night, the fenders shifted when turning, disc brakes, a continuously variable automatic transmission, and a padded dashboard. It was decades ahead of everything available in the late 1940s. Or 50s. Or 60s. The other car companies weren’t happy for the competition, and Mr. Tucker wasn’t the savviest in business, and they only made about 50 of them before they (quickly) went out of business.
Fundamentally it was a gasoline fueled 5.4 liter ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) on a steel frame. It operated and acted like most any car, only it had extra gizmos and features. So, it supplied a vision of the future, but only a vision. It really wasn’t that terribly different from anything else made at the time. And I don’t mean in a topologically trivial sense, where a donut and a coffee cup are the same shape. I mean in more of a functional sense – you opened a door, you sat in a seat, you stepped on the brake, you turned a key, you took off the emergency brake, you put it in gear, you let go of the brake and stepped on the gas and by turning the wheel you set it into a given direction.
The Studebaker was also an “innovative” car for its time. It had a 289 cu in (about 4.7 liter) engine that had a supercharger, giving it a significant blast of power. It was faster in acceleration than the American competition – the Chevrolet Corvette, the Ford Thunderbird and the Chrysler 300 and had a top speed of about 125 mph (about 200 kph). There was a major recession in the late 1950s and that killed the Golden Hawk, which was an expensive sports luxury car. My uncle John owned one. It was Gold. It was Fast.
The Chevy Nova, especially the 1969 – 1973 models, was a muscle car. Originally, it was just an ordinary coupe – a cheap family car. With the rise of the muscle car syndrome of the late 1960s, it was pressed into service and the model is of the Nova SS (Super Sport) version. I owned a 1972. It wasn’t an SS. It was still a serious piece of muscle car. I was living with my girlfriend of that time (the mid 1980s) and she, Mary Jane, owned a yellow 1972 Nova. I needed a car and she loved her Nova, so I set about finding one. An acquaintance of ours had a great aunt who was going into an assisted care facility. She had bought the Nova in 1972 and had only driven it to church, the mall, and to visit her friends, so even though it was 15 years old it only had about 50,000 miles on it. I bought it for $425.
A month later the transmission died, so I put a Corvette automatic into it. The carburetor died, so I put a Holley 4 barrel in its place to feed gas into the 350 cu in (5.7 liter) engine. I then changed all the shock absorbers to heavy duty shocks. This gave it a tighter ride, and it was way more responsive and agile. The rear end drooped – a classic problem for old Novas – so I fixed the springs in the back and put a few bags of sand in the trunk to help keep the rear on the ground. Novas were notoriously light in back. I changed the wheels out for alloy rims that I pulled from an old Firebird, and put Goodyear Eagle high performance tires on it. This car was terrifyingly fast in short bursts. If I punched the gas, it would literally smack my head back against the headrest. Thanks to my changes in the suspension, it didn’t wallow down the road like my girlfriend’s Nova. Mine was less comfortable and much more surefooted. It pretty much kicked ass. The fastest I ever got it to go was about 120mph (about 190kph) and it felt fine. It could have gone faster. It got terrible mileage. 13 mpg (18L per 100km) on the highway, about 8 (29L per 100km) in the city. It was an ugly green. Sun beaten, all the gloss was gone – it looked more like a military vehicle. A later girlfriend called it the UAV – the Urban Assault Vehicle. No one challenged me for a parking space. Actually once, someone did. Some Republican yuppie in a BMW. I put on my indicator, stopped, and started backing into a space and he started honking – he was trying to dive in behind me – I ignored him and parked as he quickly reversed out of my way. He pulled up next to me and barked a bunch of entitled bullshit at me “this is MY space blah blah blah”. I just said “Hey asshole – listen – One – I don’t give a fuck – I was here first and your shitty little BMW doesn’t give you the right to scoop behind me on this space, so fuck off… Two – unlike your stupid little BMW, this car is paid for. Three – it’s made of welded steel. Now buzz off ya jerk.” He looked at the UAV. It was dented, it had rust. It was dull flat avocado green – the same colour as my fridge. This was one scary looking car. He barked “Oh fuck you” from his bow-tied throat and drove away.
The Nova died a sad death. I had spent a 4th of July weekend with my friend Ellen Quinn and her family at her parents cottage in Northeastern Pennsylvania in the Poconos. Their place was on a kind of peninsula formed by the meandering of a creek. We would grab large inflated inner tubes and slowly drift downstream. When we got to a certain bend we would get out, walk across the neck of the peninsula and then get back into the creek and slowly drift our way down – wash rinse repeat. GLORIOUS. At the end I figured I would do a night drive back to Washington DC. I left at sunset.
I bought a giant cup of coffee and put it in the door/window sill mounted cup holder. I put a tape of music by the Cocteau Twins on and drove into the dark. I was going about 85mph (about 135kph) when a very large deer walked out into the road and froze. I did a number of calculations very quickly – hit the deer: possible outcomes
– it crushes the front of the car, bounces over my roof – broken radiator, life will suck.
– it crushes the front of the car, rolls up the hood, comes through the window and kills me.
– I drive between it and the guard rail on the right, miss it and keep going.
None of the above happened. I aimed at the road shoulder between the deer and the guard rail and missed the deer. This was good. However – remember I said Novas were light in the rear? The shoulder was covered with gravel and the rear jumped a bit to the left and clipped the guard rail. This violently smacked the left side of the Nova into the guard rail and bounced it out spinning into the highway. In trying to get control of the vehicle, my elbow clipped the cup holder on the door and this , combined with the collision, took a quart of extremely hot coffee and flung it all over me and the windshield. It hurt and I was wet and the windows were now covered with coffee or steamed up as it was cool outside causing the hot spray of coffee to condense on the windows. The car came to a stop in the middle of the highway and my coffee covered windshield filled with headlights.
Everyone saw what had happened and they easily avoided me. And the deer. The engine had stopped during all of this. I turned it back on but it was badly flooded so this took a while. I put on my emergency blinkers and kept cranking at the starter. Eventually it turned over and I was able to put the car in gear. The transmission wasn’t very happy about going backwards in drive at 85 mph. While it wasn’t behaving very well, it did transmit power to the wheels and I was able to get going. I turned the car around and headed towards DC. At around 40 mph the car started to shudder violently – so I surmised that the frame was bent. So I drove from the Poconos to Washington DC at 35 mph. It took all night long, but I got home. There is something to be said for a car made of steel.
When I got it home, I put a For Sale sign in the rear window, explaining the serious damage, so I was selling it “as is”.
I sold the carcass of my mortally wounded Nova for $425.
From these events I have always had a soft spot for Chevy Novas. Heck – one of the attractions of this blog is that it is NOVAlark. Now, Novalark is a word I pulled from William S Burroughs, but that’s a different story for a different time. Novas were not great cars. They were simply adequate – over powered, inexpensive, and relatively reliable. However, this essay is not about my life and my friends and Chevy Novas.
This is more about cars and aspects of Capitalist Realism and hauntology and similar issues. If you’re not up on that, I recommend reading “Capitalist Realism” and “Ghosts of My Life” by Mark Fisher. I’m not going to go into detailed descriptions of his work here, and I will assume you have some knowledge of this material.
The Tucker Torpedo is really not that terribly different from my old Nova. Other than the supercharger in the Studebaker, it, and the Nova are extremely similar vehicles. The Golden Hawk, while very deluxe and delightful for the 1950s, was very similar to my Nova of the 1970s in terms of layout and performance. Fisher points out that music of today is not radically different from music of the 1980s, some 30 years ago.
The Nova’s body was designed by Fisher (no relation) and while its outer form looks very different from either the Tucker or the Studebaker, mechanically it’s not so different, especially compared to the Studebaker. The Nova would be a recognisable “car” and operate according to normative automobile use patterns – you opened a door, you sat in a seat, you stepped on the brake, you turned a key, you took off the emergency brake, you put it in gear, you let go of the brake and stepped on the gas and by turning the wheel you set it into a given direction. Even many cars of today operate on that same use pattern. And many cars of today hearken back to cars of yesteryear. This was especially true of the early to mid 2000s. Then things changed.
In 2007 Beth and I bought a new Toyota Prius. It was painted a kind of greyish green colour. Our daughter, who was 10 at the time, named it “GREENISH”. We asked why, and she said “because it is. It’s painted a kind of green, but not a real bright green, and it’s a hybrid, so it uses electricity and gasoline so it’s not as dirty as a regular car, but it’s not really clean either. So, it’s Greenish.” Smart Kid. To this day, the car has custom tags that say “GREENISH”. The big change began before the Prius – it began in the late 1990s – cars began to “look the same” – a cab forward design, small 4 cylinder engines, wheels towards the corners, less front and rear overhang. There were other premonitions of what was to come – the Honda Insight, the GM EV-1 in terms of drive train, and before that the Chrysler Concorde, the Ford Taurus in terms of body form. Everything took on the shape of a turd, a bolus, a smooth rounded form. There were technological reasons for this – computer controlled factories were now sophisticated enough to be able to competently build complex curving shapes, and these shapes were slippery and cut through the wind easily. But the Taurus and Concorde and Camry were really no different on the inside than my Nova. Not so much the Insight, the Prius and the EV-1. They were different. And while they were developing, the dominant car makers, especially in the USA, were often going retro – car makers were looking back at the past and mining old designs with which to wrap their old machines. A good example of this is examined in the video about the 2002 Ford Thunderbird by Regular Car Reviews. Once you get past his style of juvenile humour, he makes a number of good points about its design and the effects of retro in automotive design. This comes up again in his discussion of the 2004 Chrysler PT Cruiser.
Music has been eating itself since the mid 1980s, but it really got rolling in the 1990s. A prime example would be the career of Stereolab. Any given song of theirs can be dissected for their references, both literal and musical, to the Free Design, Can, NEU!, Faust, Burt Bacharach, The London Studio Group, Esquivel, and a host of other artists. While they were hardly the only people mining musical history at the time, they were certainly one of the best. Stereolab was, however, not a “haunted” band for all of their raiding of the past. For them it was clearly more in fun, they were content to meld and pastiche the musical grid, to mix and match and came up with new out of the old, and filled it with left wing lyrics earnestly demanding emancipation even as they ironically raided and pillaged the past glories of capitalist culture of the 60s and 70s.
Mark Fisher spends a good deal of time talking about this sort of thing, as does Simon Reynolds in Retromania. What I am looking at is how cars were in a non-development phase for decades – from the Model A to the PT Cruiser. They got better at being cars, and were, in a way, perfected in the early 2000s, where, having flatlined raided their past. While they were raiding their past, the next phase was underway, and that is their transformation from automobile to transportation appliance.
Cars are no longer cars. They are transportation appliances and have been for many years. Cars are no longer aspirational representations of the self through commodity fetishism. They are now giant toasters that take you someplace. At present you actually have to control them, but this is becoming increasingly less important with assisted driving technology and fully automated driving technology clearly on the horizon and approaching quickly. Eventually they will become bolus shaped transportation appliances that take you where you or your cellphone tell it to go. They will be electrically powered. They will have no roaring engine. They will hot have 350 cu in engines with four barrel Holley carburetors and alloy rims and high performance tires. They won’t get 13 miles per gallon because they won’t burn gas. They won’t spew carcinogenic crap from their tailpipes – they won’t have tail pipes.
We can see transitional forms – the EV1, the Tesla, the Prius, the automatic truck. There is nothing to love about these vehicles, there is nothing romantic in their presentation. They are here to serve you. They will look like cars. They will look like SUVs. They will look like trucks. As McLuhan noted the content of any new media is old media.
The drive to these new forms is driven by necessity. We can’t keep mining fossil fuels. We can’t keep sacrificing tens of thousands of people a year on the road. We can see the dim witted macho douchebags rolling coal, GM and Ford deleting their car lines, Tesla’s focus on automation, all of these actions are part of the same excrescence, the same billowing garbage dump of a society enamoured by its own stupidity and doubling down on its conviction of entitlement. Just as non-human forces are compelling the change from cars to transportation appliances, so too, non-human forces are gradually smashing the society that permits and encourages things like transportation appliances. But it is a strong and well armed society and it won’t go down fast or easily. Unfortunately, according to the IPCC it needs to go down fast, easily or not.
The Prius is Greenish, not green. The automated transportation appliance of today is the mobile toilet of tomorrow. The future that modernity promised isn’t merely being foreclosed, it is being abandoned. Quickly. What can shake us out of the twitching stupour of the screen based relations and the hegemony of industrialism? That is a question I’m working on. I will report back when I have an idea.
I’m not a trained scientist, but I do have an abiding interest in it.
So, this is a post that is basically an examination of crackpot physics. In this case, a physics of my own creation. It comes out of a basic question / misunderstanding regarding time and probability in quantum physics.
One thing has never been adequately explained to me, and this lack of understanding / lack of an answer has led me to some conclusions. The primary conclusion is that time doesn’t exist, and even our notion of change is illusory. How I got there is a bit complex, so I would rather begin with where I started – this one thing that has never been adequately explained to me. I am more than happy to accept my ideas as sheer crack-pottery. Seriously. I’m not a physicist. I am also more than happy to change / filter / abandon them as necessary. That said, I like thinking about things and following my logic as it flows. If I’m right (which I doubt – I’m rarely right about anything) I will be terribly amused.
So, to the root conundrum:
It goes like this – in quantum physics everything is reduced to a matter of probability. A classic example is Schroedinger’s Cat. The particle emitted that kills the cat is subject to probability. The “superstate” of the cat is of no consequence here – I’m not interested in that. What I am interested in is its probabilistic nature going forward in time. There is moment A when cat goes into box. There is Moment C when box is opened. In between is Moment B when/if the particle is emitted that trips the mechanism that kills the cat. Moment B is subject to probability. You can put the cat in a number of times, and, randomly according to a certain set of probabilities, nothing happens – you get a live C. Then at a particular iteration of B, randomly according to a certain set of probabilities, something happens, and the cat is found to be dead at C – a Dead C (_at) (Sea) (dumb pun) (Great Band).
Physics prides itself on being time independent – the equations should run forward and backward in time. The problem is, probability has a one way arrow. Let’s look at the iteration of B that resulted in the Dead C, and rewind it: Box is opened, Cat is found to be dead, Cat is dying, poison is released, trigger releases poison, trigger is set off by particle emitted, particle is emitted, mechanism is turned on, cat is put in box. This is completely deterministic. The dead cat can only reverse into a live cat. There is no reversal of events that is probabilistic. Probability only works in one direction. Its reverse is rigidly deterministic. Which means that physics is not time independent – it doesn’t run in reverse if there is a probability involved. It doesn’t work equally in reverse, because probability only works in forward gears, not reverse. There is no reverse where someone puts a dead cat in the box, turns on the mechanism and opens the box to see that cat is indeed (still) dead. Only live cats are put in the box. So, quantum physics isn’t correct – it doesn’t work in reverse because probability only works in one direction.
The Madness Continues:
Rather than say “well it’s all forward and all probabilistic, I suppose” and get on with it and merrily accept the complex and profound theories of greater minds than my own have spent their lifetimes considering, it is much more fun to trace the trajectory of these ideas and see where it goes. Thus, I think it is more likely that the time reverse thought problem is actually true: there is no probability – the universe is completely deterministic. The problem is that time, as we experience / understand it, isn’t fully dimensional. A dimension, say this line, A: <————————> goes in two directions, in this case, left and right. We say it is one dimensional. We like to think that the left arrow points to the past, and the right arrow points to the future, and each dash is a unit of Planck Time between. But time doesn’t go into the past. It goes into the future. It looks more like this: ——————>, not <———————>. This means that time (or what we understand and experience as time) is only half dimensional.
However, there is a problem: it seems that we can collapse it down to zero. This we know from action-at-a-distance (AAAD). When the polarisation shifts on one end, the other end shifts also, instantaneously. Time: Zero. As time and space require each other, then this means Space: Zero as well. Time: Zero is also acquired at c, but only relatively. With AAAD it is absolute – it is simultaneous in all frames regardless of velocity. Given these contradictions, it is simply better to assume that time, as in a sequence of changes in the thermodynamics of the universe expressed in space, is simply an illusion enforced by our particular state. At best it is simply how we measure change – however, because time does not exist change itself is an illusion: the universe is static and unchanging.
The universe can be seen as a great flower. We think it is unfolding as our state traps us in a seemingly half-dimensional time in a three dimensional space. Imagine a very thin slit of a light travelling along the flower petal. We get used to the undulations and colour of the travelling light against the flower and we think that time exists. This thin light is our condition. In fact, there is no thin slice, but it’s all we have. In one narrow way that has nothing to do with physics, Schroedinger’s cat is like Nansen’s cat – an object of a desired outcome. Schroedinger lets the universe decide if it lives or dies, Nansen demanded answers from the squabbling monks, who failed him, forcing him to kill the cat.
No one asked the cat. Not the monks, not Nansen, not Schroedinger.
I am hoping someone can explain a proper answer to me. Otherwise, this is my answer and I’m stickin’ with it, crack-pottery and all.
Shortly after my previous missive, I came across a company called Citrus3 that said I could have an online radio station for very little money that would have 256kbps quality, unlimited listeners, unlimited bandwidth, and unlimited storage. It seemed like a great idea. First I had to learn how to use the software – Mixxx and AutoDJ. Mixxx is what one uses for live broadcasting in the system, and AutoDJ takes care of everything else. The back end of AutoDJ is a CMS called Centavo, which is optimised for this purpose. They have an uploader, but it’s a piece of crap, and the tech there said I should use the FTP client FileZilla as it is a much better uploader.
I soon found out that FLAC files were not permitted. So I had to change ALL of my FLAC files over to MP3. With tens of thousands of FLAC files, this was a truly massive undertaking. It tied up my computer for the better part of a week. The I started deleting unnecessary files. jpeg. jpg. gif. ini. cue. pdf. doc. docx. txt. it was a long list, and had to be done carefully, as Windows file search sucks. A lot. Also, I found that I didn’t have a large enough hard drive, so I bought one dedicated to this purpose. I moved all my files over. that took 3 days. Then I started uploading them. I realised I needed to mimic the file structure online with my local drive, so I set them both up so that there were folder A – Z, a numbers folder (for bands like 9353 or the 5uu’s), and a compilation / various artists folder. I uploaded all the A files. Then the B files. Then the C files. Then the Compilations. Then Various Artists, which were uploaded into the Compilations folder. Then I figured – I’ll do W, X, Y, and Z, because they are small and quick. Then I did D, E, F, G, H, I and J. Each letter would take hours. Compilations / various artist took two days. Then I uploaded K. In the middle of the night, I heard my computer making odd sounds, so I got up. I saw that the upload was done, and that there were 900+ failed uploads. So I deleted what I had uploaded and then reuploaded it. That seemed to take. Then I went to the letter L, and started uploading, again it choked, so I deleted what I had done and started over. Nothing would upload.
I get into my email, and there is a message saying my account has been suspended due to abuse. I was shocked. Shortly thereafter email arrived saying that my account was the source of a DDoS attack on their system and that they had to restore the entire system.
This blew me away. I have no idea why or how this happened.
I am now beginning to suspect that it was no some hidden malicious code on my end, but that their system can’t consistently handle massive uploads. But I am not sure about this. I certainly did nothing intentional to mess this up – all I wanted to do is upload music to the server.
I had all kinds of plans – designing images:
I was really excited about developing this – not just as a “radio station” but also as a kind of digital art project. Began thinking of programming, and how to program different shows:
And now – nothing.
RFTO – an art project
Radio Free Toronto (RFTO) is an ongoing project where a number of strands of my work and research coalesce. Questions of the archive, access to knowledge, post-musical society, performance, contemporary electronic music and my practice thereof, and file-sharing all come together in this creative project. Aesthetic influences include, but are not limited to, Relational Art, Conceptual Art, Computer Art, Performance Art, and Systems Art.
All these ideas would be explored in RFTO. I was going to build this world of RFTO. Now, nope. I’m super depressed about all this. All that work for nothing. Just, shattering.
The fundamental lesson of the Panama and Paradise Papers is twofold. First, the people everywhere, regardless of whether they live in Russia or America, are being oppressed by the same minuscule social circle of wealthy elites who unduly control our governments, corporations, universities and culture.
We now know without a doubt – thanks to the incontrovertible evidence provided by the Panama and Paradise Papers – that there is a global plutocracy who employ the same handful of companies to hide their money and share more in common with each other than with the citizens of their countries. This sets the stage for a global social movement.
Second, and most importantly, these leaks indicate that our earth has bifurcated into two separate and unequal worlds: one inhabited by 200,000 ultra high-net-worth individuals and the other by the 7 billion left behind.
While street protest is losing its effectiveness, there is a force that could terrify these elites: the spectre of a ruthless and globally inescapable class justice.
Unlike in the 99%’s world where youth languish for months and years in jail for allegedly stealing a backpack or $5 worth of candy or a bottle of water, in the world occupied by the 1% getting caught stealing millions from the public through tax evasion might be embarrassing but is rarely prosecuted. That must change.
novalark 