Burnt Ogre/Unbeliever update

 feels like the best way to write this is with a blog post. on my blog which i still 'have'.

 so this post probably won't be very interesting to most people. but then, you aren't most people. and you probably don't care that i'm not stopping to add links and images to this post.

 

 Since i last did naything with this blog, i released 'Unbilever' under the burnt ogre facade in the year [checks bandcamp] 2024. despite it not really fitting with what i wanted burnt ogre to be originally - heavy post-prog music - it felt best to stick with that label for my ongoing releases, including the 'digital thermometer' ep i put out a couple of months ago.

 aside from 'in-person' band stuff, unbilever has been taking up all of my music time, in two ways:

1: creating unbilever 2, which is at the 'probably all written and existing in fragmentary ideas slowly coelescing together' stage;

2: refining unbilever 1 (the one that already exists)  into a format that can be performed live.

 to be clear, live in this context would mean me operating a mixing desk and parameters on synthesisers, while i also play some guitar on sections when my hands are free. i currently have a two-take playthrough on youtube where i did a pass at the mixing and played guitar separately. i'd be willing to work with another human to do one part or the other, but what with all my life that i have, i just can't see that time happening. so i've ended up recording new guitar loops for the main backbone of the performance, which i can double with guitarmonies while not twiddling knobs. this will take some rehearsal to get it down;  hopefully enough rehearsal will mean i can visibly enjoy myself while performing. because that's important too!

the ultimate goal will be to a) play unbilever live on stage and b) have the two halves of unbilever on a cassette, with every sale being a unique warts-and-all mixdown.

 

so i need to talk about gear as there have been some challenges and changes.

i bought a wiped laptop from cash converters for this project, which i am planning on converting to linux. i've tried this already but so far it won't install, i'll keep doing this though as the laptop isn't useful for anything except this and ordering takeaways.

i've been running four channels of audio and all the relevant midi out of the laptop, through a steinberg ur44, which is a device i really like. it actuallly has 6 inputs as it counts a stereo line-in separately, but unfortunately while it looks like there's 6 outs on the back, the 'main out' is a double of outs 1 and 2.

the 4 outs i've been using are: mono guitar, mono drums, and stereo samples (including sampled vocals, sampled music, and prepared sounds). i've been running these four outs into a subzero (which i think is a gear4music own brand) 8-track mixer, and using the fx return as a 9th and 10th channel.

i ahve all my gear on a bed-table i found on the street, everything plugged into eveything else in a hybrid i've been calling 'the abominoplex'. the setup was getting pretty crowded with only (!) 10 channels:

* mono guitar

* mono drums

* kick synth (vermona kick lancet)

* bass synth (the good old doepfer dark energy)

* stereo samples

* aux delay return (see 3 below)

* lead synth (now a yamaha reface CP) on the 2track in.

so there's been issues with this:

1: i can't fit my live guitar anywhere into the mixer, short of running the delay fx into the aux in of the reface

 2: i've gradually come to realise - particularly from working on unbi2 - that squashing all of those sampled, effected, sequenced and vst drums into a single mono channel is too much. i play with multiple layers of different drum loops and broken beats etc, and it's just ending up feeling small.

3: i've been through a number of attempted solutions to what kind of delay to use, as the subzero mixer has no on-board fx. i have landed on a fantastic 80s unit by boss, a half-rack rdd-20. this is mono but i can't justify upgrading it to the stereo version rpd-10, which would have to come from japan with whopping postage and import fees. the bank did me a favour by blocking my purchase of this. also the mono version has a modulation section which is fun and potentially 'sonically interesting'.

SO

the upshot of this is:

1: upgraded the ur44 to an ESI gigaport EX. this is a small 0 input, 8-output class compliant usb breakout box. having 8 outs will give me enough felxibility to have at least two channels of stereo drums (perhaps even a third mono channel), as well as the mono guitar and stereo sound effects. 

2: I could sell the ur44, but it's still a lovely unit with a great range of inputs, so i'm moving it over to my desktop pc to use for recording. it will be very helpful when using multiple microphones to capture acoustic instruments for instance. and i can also use it to mix the mic'ed-up live guitar with the output of the mixing desk and record into my pc, or output to tape.

3: upgraded the mixert to a soundcraft 12-track notepad. this has four mono, four stereo channels, plus on-board delay and reverb with tap-tempo which should make it easier to get the echoes in time with the different speeds in the music.

sadly the two units i've ordered this week to expand my setup are both new. i've tried to keep this whole project used-where-possible, in order to minimise consumption and climate impact, and i'm still committed to that. but i couldn't find these units 2nd-hand and they're already cheap enough to justify buying (often in this end of the gear market, i've found it's hard to find used units that are cheaper than buying it new. the economy is very strange).

when my two hopefully-last-pieces arrive, the next step will to remix unbi 1 into a format to use them. looking forward to doing this as there are a couple of errors in the current mix that it will be good to have an excuse to fix; plus i'll have to make interesting choices about what channels to set up. could put the speech samples in the mono section, for instance, giving the musical samples a stereo channel to itself and two stereo drums (e.g. sequenced in one channel, loops in the other; or perhaps a split could be in clean vs distorted drums).  in other words, playtime. i'm really looking forward to getting to a point where i'm writing and arranging *for* the abominoplex, and playing it as an instrument in it's own right.