The Igloo Studio Blog

DLP Modular Synth Underway

2010-09-18T14:16:00.005-04:00

Well, the file folder of schematics and notes that has been building over several years, is finally turning into something tangible. I've finally built a small rack, and the first module of the "Dirty Little Penguin" (DLP) modular syth.

Of course, the first module is a noisy mono distortion unit that leverages the CD4049 inverter chip. The circuit was based off of Stellan Lehrberg's Slowfinger guitar fuzz circuit.

Here's links to pics of the rack frame:

DLP Pic 1
DLP Pic 2
DLP Pic 3

And, of course, the FR-777 was used to generate test audio. Here's two samples, the original pattern without distortion, and another with:
FR-777 - No Distortion
FR-777 - With Distortion

Next up, hopefully by the end of this weekend, the first oscillator module should be alive. This module will be based off the NE5517, which should be enough to generate Triangle, Saw, Square, and Pulse waves(no PWM yet tho).

In other news, never did pick up the Waldorf Largo. It's a nice soft synth, decent interface, and the digital distortion filter mode is quite slick. However, it didn't offer enough to justify the cost.

One synth that I did try out, with some rather tasty results, is Rob Papen's BLUE soft synth. It doesn't look like much, but the way the interface is setup, allowing you to quickly configure each of the parts, lends itself well to creating nice stereo pads, dones, and effects. The filters available are quite good, a bit smooth in that Rob Papen style, but lend themselves well for creating very detailed and wide sounds, in a way that I haven't really seen in any other synth except for some Reaktor patches ;)

2010 - Studio Alive Again

2010-02-12T10:58:00.003-05:00

After moving to a new house in the country, outside Ottawa late last year, the Igloo studio is now up and running again! Gear is set up, and the new room has been given a rockwool treatment which has done wonders for the sound. This is currently the smallest room I've ever been setup in, so a bit of sound treatment was essential. With any luck, and a bit of time, should have some new releases for 2010 for both Calibrated and Blizzard!

The Igloo has already had a couple local Ottawa boys through with some productions, including DJ Dain-Ja

Also, a new CPU (AMD Phenom II - 940) for the main studio box is also on its way, which should give a bit more power with its 4 cores and slight clock speed boost.

Gigs and Gear

2009-06-05T16:47:00.005-04:00

Gigs: I'm playing out a hard techno set as phaXis at DFF tomorrow night (Saturday, June 6th) here in Ottawa at the Cock and Lion on Sparks. First time playing that regular club night and its rare that I play techno sets east of Winnipeg, so it should be a thumpin' night to remember!

Gear: Since the local shops here seem to be delayed getting their hands on the Waldorf Largo, and since Moog Audio in Montreal looks like they have stock of the new builds of Future Retro's XS, disturbingly awesome synth, it looks like that the XS and not the Largo will be landing next in the Igloo!

Software Upgrade Day

2009-04-02T12:28:00.006-04:00

Kickin' off some new freeform projects, and this calls for software upgrades!

The iZotope Ozone 4 upgrade was the first. Been waiting for that for a bit. Some nice solid improvements to the whole app.

Cubase 5 Upgrade was next. The hard part was finding out where in Canada one has to go for upgrading. Recently Yamaha has taken over the distribution of Steinberg products in Canada, but as anyone can see, the range of Steinberg products available on yamaha.ca is rather thin. Checking into SteinbergCanada.com as directed from a Cubase.net blog post was a bit more informative, however that site wasn't linked from Steinberg's main site - you only get directed to Yamaha's useless site now. Music Marketing is still handling all the Cubase Upgrades while Yamaha has taken over new purchases of Steinberg products; best go to L&M for products, and not through Yamaha's site.

So, now comes the impatient wait until it arrives!

Waldorf Largo

2009-03-30T10:02:00.001-04:00

Unofficial sources say Waldorf Largo will ship May 11, 2009 ... never soon enough!

Largo softsynth info

Next VSTi Purchase

2009-01-21T12:57:00.002-05:00

The studio's next VSTi purchase will more than likely be Waldorf's new Largo softsynth.

This synth which was announced, of course, at the 2009 NAMM show, seems to contain all the good things about the Blofeld hardward synth that came out last year. I couldn't justify paying $800ish for a DSP based hardware synth, when all I really wanted were the filter drives modes that it contained. So needless to say I'm VERY happy there's a VST version which appears to contain the same filter drive modes which produced some very tasty results when I played around with the Blofeld last year. Hopefully a demo or some samples will be out sometime soon!

Sidechained Compression

2009-01-20T16:57:00.003-05:00

Sidechained compression is something I still haven't used as much as I know I should, partially because it can become a routing mess very quickly. It was easier in Logic than Cubase, and the ease of routing is probably still the biggest thing I miss about not working in Logic anymore.

I tried a new trick in Cubase where I'm using only one compressor and using the left channel as the compression trigger and the right channel as the compression content (then expanding the right channel back to stereo before routing to the main mix).

It worked quite well, and allowed me to use VST compressors that don't natively support sidechaining.

Here's the sample: [link]

New phaXis Hard Techno Mix: Sour Gas

2009-01-19T11:42:00.004-05:00

I've put a new phaXis hard techno mix up on the Calibrated site in the releases section, called Sour Gas. The mix features a decently wide range of hard techno starting with liberator-ish styles, to Schranz, to some Industrial Strength stuff. Tracks featured includes some of the new Calibrated releases and a range of artists that have been doing some wicked cool stuff over the past year or so, including Concrete DJz, Patrick DSP, Rowland the Bastard, DJ Ogi, and Alex Calver.

N-Joy!

Happy New Year

2009-01-11T12:02:00.006-05:00

Happy new year!

Back from vacation in Belize. Very cool country, diverse in both culture, races, and topography. Not to mention having average temperature highs that fluctuate from 26 to 31 degrees throughout the year! Music down there (that I was able to see and hear) ranges from punta rock, raggaton (Latin influenced reggae), world beat/folk, and some good drumming like the Garifuna Drummers group that performed at my friends wedding down there. As much as I love Manitoba, going someplace that isn't -30 (yes, 60 degrees warmer!) for the holidays is certainly a plus.

Now that I'm back, I've finally got the first six Calibrated Records tracks uploaded to the digital stores, so they should be available for download within the next day or so.

Now that that the techno's taken care of, it will be back to freeform for a while.

On the promotion side of things, it looks like Facebook allows public pages designed for businesses and artists which don't require a personal Facebook page to be created, although it limits you to what you can do on the Facebook network. It does allow you to create a network of fans and browse the artists your fans have as well as keep a list of your own favourite artists - which rivals MySpace's functionality. So, I now have a dj phosphor Facebook page. We'll see how long I can go with this before I end up creating a personal Facebook account for myself. The only problem is that it is difficult (or impossible from what I can see) to search for other artists without chaining through fan and favourite links of existing pages - tho I expect that Google will eventually spider into the Facebook pages (hence the blog link here to spur that on). At least the layout is much more attractive than MySpace!

Audio, Video, and Noise Toys

2008-11-17T22:05:00.005-05:00

Here in Ottawa, the art-tech festival Electric Fields is going on. It started this past week and goes until this weekend. It is a similar concept to the Send and Receive Festival hosted in Winnipeg as it presents an array of experimental audio and video performances with a focus on creative use of electronics and technology. Needless to say what I've seen so far has been quite inspiring, as I love festivals like these.

The fantastic Carrie Gates was in from Saskatoon performing on Friday night in a very special collaboration of Carrie's no-input video feedback with the circuit bent audio of Ottawa's Squelchbox. One of the innovative features of the live performance was using an array of photo resistors suction cup'ed onto an old commodore 64 monitor split off from Carrie's video feedback which directly modulated various portions of Squelchbox's audio rig. Squelch's audio also directly drove - or overdrove in some cases - Carrie's video signals. Very cool to see live. Hopefully some portions of the video recorded at the event will make it onto her site.

One of the other performances Friday night was the Montreal based group Tvestory. Their audio is directly generated from what's displayed on the screen - so you're hearing 60Hz based music, and since white and black offer the most contrast on a screen, the audio follows suit. A very intense experience when you are presented with 3 large vid screens and a set of 6 smaller monitors in a darkened church with a nice sound system. The youtube clips just don't quite do it justice!

Hopefully I'll be getting out to the "Dorkbot" workshop tomorrow which is a showcase of a few people who do 'strange things with electricity.' Hopefully at lest one will focus on building strange sounding audio generators...

Calibrated Records

2008-11-11T01:49:00.004-05:00

The Calibrated Records site has now been officially launched.

Calibrated is the new sub-label of Blizzard Tracks focusing on hard acid techno represented by my alter techno ego, phaXis.

As a result, this blog is now serving both websites as a repository for the Igloo studio activities, be it freeform, techno, or whatever might be getting worked over, torn apart, or reassembled.

Samples for the first six releases are up on the site, along with a couple techno mixes from a while back.

Working on the details for a couple digital stores sorted out in hopes to have the releases available before the end of the year.

Studio Sorted

2008-11-08T17:21:00.002-05:00

The Igloo is put back together, and in a slightly tighter and more efficient setup.

Updated pics and gear list are here.

Nice November weather means one thing...

2008-11-05T10:39:00.004-05:00

Well we have a string of +17 degree days with lows that are good enough to keep the basement windows open. Since this is probably the last warmish set of days before winter really hits, that means only one thing: tear the studio apart and give the carpets their yearly clean!

Torn down studio

Storage room full of gear

Oh yes, and some pics from the Winnipeg Halloween event here.

Back to Ottawa

2008-11-04T13:37:00.001-05:00

Sitting at the Winnepeg airport, waiting for my flight back to Ottawa. It was a solid event on Friday. Both rooms were rocking and sounded great. Props to Soundwave for their production of the night! Tight crowd for the freeform set, and the techno tag set with Rayne was no different. New tunes in both sets were well received. A good variety of creative costumes as you'd expect from a hyped Winnepeg crowd! Will post some links to pix when some galleries go up after this weekend.

Halloween Preparations

2008-10-28T15:09:00.001-04:00

I've finally decided to start up a blog for Blizzard Tracks. I was hoping the new NuEnergy Collective site would have a blogging feature for the artists, but although the new site rocks, it's blog capabilities are not as full featured as what the Google empire has put together/bought out. And don't get me started on Myspace.

Regardless, this will hopefully allow for more of a freeform format (pun intended) for info about what's going on with Blizzard Tracks that really isn't suited for the "News" section. Since we all know Blizzard has never really had a high volume of releases, the blog should give some feedback to all of you about where Blizzard is at with tracks, artists, and gigs, as well as other random hardcore ramblings.

So, I'm getting ready for the Halloween event in Winnipeg on Friday at Soundwave's Scream event. I'll be doing a solo freeform hardcore set followed by a phaXis acid tech tag with Rayne. Looking forward to both. Haven't played back in Winnipeg for a good while, and the last couple of times were only techno sets.

I'm finishing off a new Blizzard tune for the event as well (as well as a couple tehcno tunes). The freeform track has a techno-ish foundation dropping to a huge trance breakdown. Here's a sample of it so far for you all!