Author: Starthief

While it’s not scheduled to be played until February 4, here are the notes for my Live & Indirect session “Slow Teleport.”

Some time after the show I’ll also most likely release it on Bandcamp, as I did with Stridulation-Yukon-Relay.

I just submitted that recording yesterday, but last night I already recorded a new session, tentatively called “Krill” if that helps you imagine what it sounds like, with the wonderfully inspiring Incus Iteritas Alia (and Peradam, Marbles, Clep Diaz, Miniverb, Dedalus).

I tried all the available firmwares:

• Cursus is definitely a favorite.
• Incus is also a favorite, it’s super interesting how much variety it can produce and just how far it can travel with a 1/4 turn of a single knob.
• Debel — it didn’t stand out that much to me but would likely be useful to someone less already obsessed with FM. Deserves to be revisited to dig a little deeper though.
• Ataraxic sounds extremely close to its original hardware. Since I have the space for it and it’s been getting pretty regular usage, I’m going to keep my Ataraxic Iteritas racked rather than selling it, unless something really compelling comes along. (And yes… this plus Wave Packets absolutely puts me back at “too many oscillators.” I think I’m going to just live with that.)
• Manis — I didn’t spend long with it before jumping to Cursus, but I think it deserves a comparison to the plugin. My feeling at the moment is they’re somewhat different beasts and I’ll have reason to use MIA on occasion. But we’ll see.
• Basimilus… heresy though it may be, I just prefer it in plugin form.

I’m really curious whether Loquelic Iteritas will be translated in some form to Alia. Obviously some changes would need to be made. I can imagine a version with main and mod oscillators with a ratio parameter, rather than independent A and B, and perhaps using a knob to switch or even crossfade between algorithms so one of the three-way switches can remain B/A/T. But it’s also not unlikely that NE has other ideas, or is planning a redesigned Loquelic module that’s not part of the platform.

I’ve submitted my set for Live & Indirect, and in the next few days will write up a page of notes about it (before it’s even heard by anyone). I’m really happy with how it turned out!

---

We had severe, below 0F cold here a couple of weekends ago and then nasty, traffic-stopping freezing rain this Monday. The result caused a couple of things:

• The furnace ran continuously, which dried out the indoor humidity really badly. Our portable humidifier in the living room just wasn’t cutting it. Our skin and nasal passages dried out and static electricity got to be a lot more prevalent. We just had a whole-home humidifier installed today and hopefully that will make a huge difference.
• Delayed mail. The two modules I ordered on Reverb got delayed at both ends, the Alia just at this end. I did get the Alia and Cluster yesterday, while the Wave Packets is still “Moving Through Network” after arriving in St. Louis 3 days ago.

Cluster is just as I’d hoped, easy to work with, unexciting, does the job… perfect.

Alia is nice. I bought the Manis version (to help protect pangolins for the third time!) but after a quick “yep, that’s Manis” I switched to Cursus. And OH MY YES do I like the module version of Cursus more than the plugin. I did a couple of quick jams with it and was very satisfied. Thumbs up. I could honestly probably leave it on this firmware and be happy. Cursus is supposed to be the gentle one in Noise Engineering’s lineup, but it can get really gnarly with lo-fi formant-ish sounds in ways the plugin does not.

Today while waiting for things to happen at work, I tried Debel and Incus. Debel is FM percussion/plucks, and… strangely did not thrill me all that much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s solidly decent, it just has a lot of competition.

Incus though is more immediately interesting to me — a cousin to Basimilus Iteritas, there is a wild variety of sounds it generates with a combination of additive, FM and noise. It can get raspy, just plain dirty, or even phasey. Like some of their others, I could certainly wish for a drone mode – but triggering it at audio rates can get into some interesting rough textures and sync-ish sounds. Inverting and offsetting the envelope output and patching it back to Trig so it self-cycles is also fun and particularly well suited to Incus, so I’m just not going to complain at all at the lack of a drone mode.

---

I’ve been going through my effects plugins. Some of them got removed from the active list, because in direct comparison to others in their class, they just didn’t stand out much. For others, I’ve dug in, made an attempt to fully understand the controls and their effects, and/or found some fun techniques/tricks with them. I’ll write up a page of notes on effects, and separately dig into the synth plugins.

I have to say I understand some of the more complex or difficult-to-tame delay-based effects much better now… which both makes them more valuable tools, and increases my resistance to buying yet more effects 🙂

First bit of news is, I’ve been invited onto another internet radio show — “Live And Indirect” on Repeater Radio, which is a kind of successor to Sonic Sound Synthesis. And I already have my half-hour set recorded and it just needs to be mastered.

---

The second is, I’ve done a wave of module purchases.

1. Noise Engineering announced 3 new firmwares for their Alia oscillator platform: Cursus Iteritas Alia, Ataraxic Iteritas Alia, and a new one called Incus Iteritas Alia. Cursus is what I was waiting for to buy it, but now it’s a direct upgrade to my regular AtarIter and a total no-brainer.

This is nearly ideal for me — I like all of NE’s oscillators but they seem to be the kind that I don’t always want to use; being able to switch between 6 different choices (and most likely a few more in the future) will be fantastic. The only better thing would be if there was just a knob to turn to switch firmware, but unscrewing it (thanks Befaco Knurlies) and plugging in a USB cable and launching Chrome isn’t bad.

Incus is a percussion-oriented module but it also does FM synthesis stuff, as does Debel. My FM-obsessed self likes where they’re going here.

2. I realized that I haven’t been using my Monome Teletype very much. The functions I had used it for have been taken over by Bitwig Grid, Entonal Studio and Univer Inter. There’s the “Just Friends as Harmonic Oscillator” thing but I have other options for that in software too that are honestly just as good. So that gave me an opportunity.

I don’t need more oscillators as such, nor more effects or basic modulation sources or controllers. So the smart thing is to go for something a bit unusual but with a wide variety of uses…

Auza Wave Packets is a module that was released a couple of years ago. It combines a multi-stage contour (envelope) generator with an oscillator (audio or LFO) that has 3 pitch stages, and outputs that combine the contour and oscillator in different ways. So you can get some conventional modulation from it, a fairly simple but complete synth voice, or very fancy wobbles and waves and patterns.

Breaking it down, that style of envelope generator is uncommon but not unique — Stages can do it with more flexibility. The oscillator itself isn’t particularly exciting. A couple of those combo outputs are more unusual though, limiting the bounds of the oscillator with a method that both scales and offsets it. The oscillator pitch control synchronized with the stages but having a separate glide rate is also an interesting twist, and taken as a whole, there’s not really anything quite like it. Also the oscillator and contour times can be synchronized to each other so there’s an integer ratio between them. People who’ve owned one for a while would like CV control over a bit more than what’s available, but I see a lot of potential here and there are a few great examples of it in use. Mostly this has been one that was too weird and obscure to catch a lot of attention, though.

There’s no CV control over contour rates, but there are ways to sync it to external gates, and it’ll cycle at audio rates — so there might be some ways to use it for a kind of pulsar synthesis. (Or, you know, do that while droning.)

So I’m looking forward to trying this. I’ll count this one as a justified module swap too. 🙂

3. Toppobrillo Cluster to replace my Mutable Instruments Blinds. I mentioned that possibility previously, and decided to go ahead and do it while I’m moving stuff anyway. The modules have some similarities but a different approach — switching them is basically a small nitpicky optimization, making it slightly easier to do crossfading and the sorts of things I typically use Blinds for while freeing up a little space, and I’ll probably be able to resell Blinds for more than Cluster cost. The upgrade later from Ana to Ana 2 will make up for what’s lost.

---

Those foam wedges I got? Perfect fit. The thicker, 16 degree wedges bring the top of the case 6 inches toward me without compromising any space at the bottom. Leverage! As I realized when moving modules around, this makes the top two rows just slightly top-forward of vertical. I may choose later to also use the 8 degree wedges and bring it that much closer, but probably not — I think the ergonomics problem is resolved where it is.

---

I’ve been reading Gender Queer: A Memoir, which is the most-challenged and most-banned book in the US. Aside from the wave of transphobia that has been going on, which would immediately cause every conservative and a lot of moderates and a few supposed liberals to be afraid that the book was trying to recruit kids to the Trans Agenda… this book talks openly about body parts and processes that society would like everyone to forget exists.

I guarantee that EVERY HUMAN BEING going through puberty has strong — and potentially confusing and disturbing — thoughts of one kind or another about sex and their body and other peoples’ bodies. That part is really not unique to non-binary, trans, gay, or asexual kids.

This book isn’t porn. Very little in it celebrates sex; it mostly expresses the fear, horror and confusion that the author had over it — which was greatly magnified by the face that society tells you you’re not supposed to think or talk about it and you should just “be normal.” Overcoming that was the whole point of publishing the memoir. This kind of repression very literally makes people suffer and die.

And it’s increasing. There are proposed state laws to classify the bodies of trans people as “obscene material.” That is just straight-up Nazi shit. There are maps now of states classifying them according to how personally dangerous it is in the “Land of the Free” to be trans.

Anyway, I didn’t really grow up like Maia. If I wrote my own memoir, it would be less dramatic and urgent. I didn’t have strong dysphoria, more of a general sense that the body I have isn’t really “me” so much as something I got stuck with. But also, I didn’t really have the ability to put the concepts into a coherent form and figure things out for myself until I was already in my 40s. The existence of communities online where people could share their experiences and give these phenomena names was absolutely key — which is why I think this sort of information should be freely available, not banned.

I’ve managed to turn playing with Lego(s) into a kind of work. Lego is particularly subject to taxonomy, with some basic categories and a lot of variants:

(Image is from the Lego Storage Guide at brickarchitect.com. Does SNOT stand for “stud not on top?” There is also a whole taxonomy poster…)

The “Creative Fantasy Universe” set is 1800 pieces — and at least half of them are “weird little fiddly bits” of some kind or other, falling outside the usual bricks and plates. Props for minifigs — enough spears to outfit a regiment, and shields, scimitars, eating utensils… flags and banners, dragon wings and angel wings and lots of little flowers and frogs and so many eyes (be not afraid!) and so on.

The other sets I have (bonsai and McLaren F1/Solus) also have quite a few of these weird bits. (The bonsai has literally 200 “pebbles”, which are either low-profile circular one-stud tiles or something that doesn’t even fit on a stud at all, not sure.)

I have not yet built anything from the CFU set. I haven’t even unpacked all the bags yet, but have sorted most of the bulk. I bought a storage case that turned out to be kind of a mess — flimsy and fiddly and not really enough compartments to sort it the way I’d wanted to. I’m honestly a bit annoyed I’ve spent so much time thinking about how to store and organize the Legos and dithering with shopping for a better solution… so I just ordering a better set of storage boxes and a sorting tray as recommended by the guide. THERE.

But come to think of it, my hobbies and my job lend themselves to the optimization of organization, in ways that sometimes gets a bit obsessive. There’s ModularGrid for comparing Eurorack modules and rearranging them in cases. I have a page of notes for Soulstone Survivors skills and builds. There are websites dedicated to builds, tactics and skill rotations for MMOs, and I may be a filthy casual in a lot of respects but you better believe I spend time on some of those sites. I keep notes on my music-making, spreadsheets of gear purchases and trades and of gear used on albums, the history of modules I’ve tried. I have meticulous, constantly updated notes for work about what I’m working on, what to work on next, what changes are currently in review or building, etc. I have a bunch of online notes on all kinds of things. Scribes gotta scribe, I guess.

There was a thread about “things not to say to people with ADHD” on MetaFilter a few days ago, and the comment thread made me recognize that… yeah, I probably have it. I was never diagnosed, though I’m sure I could have been diagnosed as a child. I’m sure at least some of this organization stuff is a coping mechanism.

My tendency to want to be as small and invisible as possible in social situations works against the usual list of symptoms; “difficulty keeping quiet, and speaking out of turn” absolutely does not fit me.

But I’ve definitely had the stereotypical experience of being a gifted kid who was bored silly with regular classes and thus couldn’t focus and did poorly at times. The restlessness, losing the thread of a conversation because my mind goes elsewhere, task switching. Needing to get up and take a bathroom break, fix coffee, walk around, etc. just to do something else for a moment. Driving someplace on autopilot and missing my turn because I was thinking about other stuff. Procrastinating, or alternately (or simultaneously!) being anxious because the thing is not getting done right now. Lately, sometimes when I’m reading for pleasure I wind up picking up my phone and playing a puzzle game for a bit. Or watching anime, looking at my phone and then realizing I can’t understand the dialog without the subtitles. 🙂 Writing a blog post such as this one, answering a forum post, checking Instagram, doing some online shopping, and listening to music while also working on a bug at work (with other tabs open to research what I’m writing/doing.) And I’ll certainly hyperfocus sometimes when I’m in the zone, whether it’s music, work, gaming etc.

I’m wondering now how this might tie in with my musical inclinations. I like listening to albums, and I like drone music but not that drone music… there has to be a kind of flow more than stasis, but it can be slow and gradual enough that it bores some people and I’m fine with it. Drone or not, music can take its time, but it can’t linger too long without going anywhere, if that makes sense?

This also might be related to the process, where it’s always committing and moving forward — recording a full mix with effects baked in, destructive editing, etc. I felt like it was more fun and better for my creative flow, but I’m willing to acknowledge it might just fit my mindset too.

Anyway, if I do have ADHD (and I probably do) I’d describe myself as high-functioning. Things like procrastination, restlessness, inability to focus, excessive multitasking don’t really get in my way very much. It doesn’t make me bad at my job or unable to finish projects. But it’s good to acknowledge it for myself.

We’ve had cool autumn-ish weather this winter for the most part — a couple of days of snow that didn’t stick for long, a few freezing nights with chilly days, but generally more rain and gray than snow and ice. This weekend it’s going to make up for lost time, with a high temperature of 4F on Monday… and yet 3 inches of snow forecast for Sunday, which is unusual when it’s that bitterly cold.

---

Let me amend my gear resolution a bit to also include cheap fun toys. I bought a MØffenzeef MØdular Shtick!, a little USB-powered noisemaker that just does some kind of random drone or noise when you press a button, for about the price of a pizza. I liked a lot of the sounds I was hearing in a demo, and the idea of just seeing what it’ll do and working from the result seems like a good time.

---

I’ve recorded three tracks toward the next album already — but I think I’m going to use just the beginning of the third as an intro to something else. I’m also abandoning the original idea I had for the album and will just go with the flow as usual.

Mostly I have been continuing with small experiments. I think I’m going to write up some notes on Phonolyth Cascade first, since I happened to start digging into it to get a better feel. It’s a delay/reverb with 24 allpass diffuser stages and an overall delay/feedback/EQ loop, letting you create a wide variety of effects ranging from retro springy/BBD delays to lush endless ambient reverbs to metallic boxy nightmare reverbs and distorted dubby delays. But it’s not particularly intuitive.

It’s just one of many gems in the collection that deserves a closer look.

---

While I like my modular case, especially with my spouse’s pyrography on the side lending it charm, the ergonomics leave a little to be desired. The top row is more of a reach than it should be, given that I need some space in front of the case for the 0-Ctrl/Pod and a little desk space. Some smart cookie suggested putting something under it to tilt it at a bit of an angle, and I thought “yes, I should try that.”

I finally tried it with some of the stands I had used for other purposes. None of them were ideal for various reasons — not stable enough, minimal area of contact with the case, too much space required behind the case, and so on. But as a proof of concept, yes, tilting the case forward does help a lot with the reach issue.

The suggestion mentioned speaker isolation pads, some of which offer a 5 or 10 degree tilt. Which got me thinking about various vibration-isolating feet/blocks, dense foam wedges… aha. I happened to find a set of yoga wedges that comes as a pair of 8 degree and a pair of 16 degree angles, which can be combined for a 24 degree tilt, and the dimensions almost perfectly fit the base of my case. It might be absolutely ideal.

January 2, time to go back to work (from home, at least) and try to remember what I was doing…

And well past time for the earworms from a particular couple of Christmas musicals to be jettisoned from my headspace. Especially that one, thank you very much… uh-oh there it is again. If I had a bugle I would BLOW IT UP.

I’ve had to resort to whistling “Cruel Angel’s Thesis,” “Katamari on the Rocks”, “You’re Welcome” and even playing “Everything Is Awesome” to try to crowd these out.

---

I made a list of my current music gear, hardware and software (the “active” list that I use to select plugins in Bitwig). The intent was a sort of checklist to make sure everything gets thoroughly explored and maybe I’ll document that exploration in at least some cases. But laying it all out in that way opened my to just how much stuff I have to choose from, so I have amended my gear plan for 2024:

Don’t buy stuff. With the following exceptions:

• Direct 1-for-1 upgrades which have an obvious benefit.
• Possible replacement of Blinds with Toppobrillo Cluster.
• Filling available Eurorack space is OK.
• Trading modules is OK if well-justified, but this should be minimized.
• Accessories, knobs, panel overlays, etc.
• Software that is especially novel, exciting and relevant to my music — provided I first review my list of current gear to remind myself of what I already have.
• (EDIT: and really cheap fun sound toys.)

---

I really enjoyed assembling the Lego bonsai tree my brother got me as a Christmas surprise. I have some fond memories of building stuff with him using our combined sets (mostly Space and Technic). But I don’t particularly want to keep the finished models (as neat as the bonsai is) to gather dust and potentially lose pieces; I’ve already been considering what to do with my modest minifig collection (a proper display case, or box them up or sell them) to get some useful storage space back.

But, why not just get a more general Lego set, combine the stuff I have and enjoy the occasional transient build and teardown? It’s more about the process than the results after all.

I found an 1800-piece “Creative Fantasy Universe” set on Mercari at a decent discount. (I’ve seen in reviews that this set includes a lot of small pieces, especially eyes for some reason, so the piece count may not compare to some other sets… although the number of pieces in the bonsai set was inflated by having 200 “pebble” bits too. But still it should be a pretty helpful starting point.) That plus the various stuff I’ve got should be a nice starting point, though I could see myself adding a bit of Technic or other stuff later. Most likely I’ll want something to store and organize parts a bit, some kind of craft box/tackle box thing with a bit of room to grow.

…or in Europe, 231231.

There are approximately 8 hours and 19 minutes until it’s not 2023 anymore, in my time zone. Hawaii gets 4 more hours, and the uninhabited Baker Island and Howland Island another 2 beyond that. So that’s how much time remains before the early access release of Sumu is overdue… it’s not looking real likely to come in on time, is it?

---

2023 was… a year. Was it especially weird? Was it typical? I think the idea of a “normal” year either was always an illusion or it’s been broken.

I can’t really get aboard the “it’s finally over, fuck you 2023” train because it wasn’t all bad. It had some difficulties and some good stuff. There are reasons to be terrified of the future and reasons to be hopeful and no way to know how it balances out. I don’t want to make a list of either good or bad things, though.

Our calendar is arbitrary; January 1 isn’t really synchronized with any particular celestial alignment. Like so much in human life, it’s a thing that has importance because we collectively decided to give it some. But hey, celebrating is fun, and reflecting is useful, and considering the future is also useful. So, do those things, I guess 🙂

Like I had said, we generally spent our Christmas vacation at home. There have been several days of rain and mist and fog and general grayness, and that’s fine, except I’ve missed any opportunity to go for a nice walk. Yesterday there was a pretty good snow but the air and ground temps were too warm for it to persist. There’s still 4 more days off before I have to go back to work, but it’s going to be snowy tomorrow and still quite cold for the rest.

We made ourselves a feast. Slow cooker turkey with apples & onions, spiced root vegetables with walnuts & goat cheese, roasted brussels sprouts & butternut squash, roasted yellow beets for her (I am not into beets at all), garlic mashed potatoes (skin on of course!), dressing, canned jellied cranberry sauce for me, pumpkin chocolate brownie bars, and apple spice “pie cake” (pie filling with cake mix, normally done in the slow cooker but since that was busy, it was in cupcake form instead). The plan was to eat it for three days. We knew it’d be too much, we just didn’t realize just how too much it was, somewhat exacerbated by the fact we couldn’t get a turkey smaller than 7.1 pounds.

Today, to make up for missing our chance at the Georgia Aquarium, we visited the more humble but still pretty nifty St. Louis Aquarium, followed by lunch at The Fountain On Locust, which is a must-try if you’re ever in the city and like ice cream, booze, or boozy ice cream (and the non-dessert food’s good too).

Since our plans had changed at the last minute, my mom shipped our gifts two days before Christmas. The package got as far as the St. Louis regional post office and have been delayed. But we had the stuff sent by my brother, and by the other side of the family, and each others’.

The musical toys were a pair of Otamatones (probably an Amazon wishlist flub), which are trickier than I would have guessed to play, and the Paper Jamz “Pro Microphone” I had put on my list. This seems like a toylike karaoke machine with autotune, but it has mic and headphone jacks so what I see here is a lo-fi granular pitch shifter that does vibrato, chorus, autotune and harmonizer effects, which can get pretty wild with synth input. It’s even fun just using the included mic and built-in speaker for feedback howls, or applying the chorus effect to a desk fan…

I’ve generally been in a phase of trying things out. Plugins I had never tried before, most notably including the Sinevibes stuff (I wound up getting Whirl), and Madrona Labs Virta. I’m definitely going to have to test the latter on bass, but I was surprised at the things I could get from it with synth patches and will probably pick it up even if it doesn’t track the bass that well. Not sure what stopped me from trying it out before, it’s very cool. I’m spoiled by full modular environments and would like to add a slew limiter to it, but it’s still super neato. I’m hoping that “early access” version of Sumu is released in the next few days as promised, too!

I tried AudioThing’s updated Space Echo emulation, and… it sounds great, sure, and I think it sounds better than Cherry Audio’s take on the same device. But I realized I really don’t need either of them. I’ve got Twangstrom for the spring reverb, and plenty of nice delays.

Arturia gave away a very cool new effect called Refract, which split voices in a “super unison” method of some kind and then optionally filters and processes each a little differently, with a choice of bandpass filter, comb filter, distortion, bitcrusher, or harmonizer, making for a surprisingly cool and versatile plugin that… might actually be my favorite new effect of the year, coming in late as it did.

I may make myself a list of things I want to go back and explore in more depth. I’m feeling like I have a lot of tools that do a lot of things, and most of them deserve a more thorough exploration. Kind of continuing what I did with Synchrodyne, Shapeshifter, and Akemie’s Castle last year but extending it further.

---

Soulstone Survivors was by far my most-played game of 2023; it more than adequately distracted me from Diablo IV, which is great because I didn’t want to support Activision-Blizzard after the sexual harrassment and union busting stuff (and reviews are not super positive anyway). I think I’m cooling on Art of Rally, and still hesitating to buy the new WRC game even though it’s already discounted. EA apparently laid off most of the Codemasters developers shortly after release, it’s still reportedly got performance bugs to work out, they’re doing that season pass thing in some way and it reportedly has some form of unpleasant DRM.

So lately I picked up New Star GP a bit more, and Guild Wars 2. I never finished the Heart of Thorns expansion stuff because I found it a bit tedious and directionless. I never even started the End of Dragons story, after buying it on discount. But I picked up Secrets of the Obscure — mostly because it offers the Weaponmaster account-wide thing that unlocks more weapon types for each class, as well as a reportedly easier way to get the Skyscale mount. In reality… right now there is an issue preventing characters below 80 from using the Weaponmaster weapons, which is supposed to be fixed in January, and the non-temporary and account-wide Skyscale thing seems to be a tedious collection full of random dumb luck. I went to all of the mapped sites for skyscale eggs and searched them all to find nothing, and even if I’d found an egg I’d be looking at weeks (probably) of collecting stuff. And weeks from now my interest in the game is likely to have tapered off anyway, and I’ll wait for several more months before playing again… so it goes.

We’ve just found out our usual dog sitter needs serious dental surgery and can’t do the thing, so we’re cancelling our Christmas travel that was previously in some doubt for other health reasons. So it’ll be mostly several quiet days at home, not working, with maybe a trip to the St. Louis Aquarium which we haven’t seen since the pandemic.

---

For the past few years, I’ve made a point of setting goals for the year, sort of a variant on new year resolutions. And then, for the most part, I just end up following whatever path seems right or fun or necessary at the time, or (let’s face it) kind of lazing out a bit. So they don’t always work out, partly because I’m just not that resolute, and partly because I couldn’t see the future. And most things more or less work out okay.

For 2023:

• I kind of sometimes remembered not to participate in threads where it wasn’t going to lead to any positive result. I also stepped in a few minefields.
• I did not manage to ride the exercise bike any significant amount. I took a few, but far too few, walks.
• I really didn’t cut back on snacks.
  
• I did work on technique and understanding of my gear, and of theory and practice (especially microtonal and MPE.) I did end up shaking the gear tree anyway, and I have no regrets with how that has worked out.
• I did not get into any sort of consistent bass practice, or in any way elevate my bass playing. I played bass quite a bit less in 2023 than 2022. This… is okay. I shouldn’t force myself to pick up the instrument if what calls to me for that part is a synth, and it usually will be. Still, this is an area that I can explore more.

So how about 2024? It’s short, and it’s less formal — more just stuff I am keeping in mind than anything I’m especially committing to.

• I have a ton of excellent options where it comes to reverbs and delays, particularly in software. In recent years, I’ve let myself be tempted by interesting and characterful plugins in these categories, but at this point I probably have too many options. So unless something is REALLY unusual and excellent I’m going to pass.
• That is probably a good approach for nearly everything, where it comes to music gear.
• I also don’t really want more stuff that is going to have to take up space, be stored somewhere, collect dust etc.

However:

• Spectraphon in 2023 was special and worth making an exception for — a real game-changer that also fits extremely well into my setup. Anything like that that comes along in 2024 is certainly fair game.
• I’m already planning to grab Madrona Labs Sumu and Dawesome Myth when they are released.
• Some other FX types that I don’t have as thoroughly covered might get in. Sinevibes has both a phaser and chorus that I think sound cooler than anything else in those categories, for instance.
• A little utility shuffling is likely to happen with the updated Ana, and maybe swapping out Blinds for a Toppobrillo Cluster.
• I’m leaving myself the strong possibility of getting a Noise Engineering Alia, particularly once Cursus is available. It seems like the wave of the future, and even though the NE oscillators tend to be an occasional thing for me, having all of them on tap in Eurorack form will be nice. The plugin versions are good but in many cases, lead to different inspiration and different results.
• I had been considering an EHX Attack Decay pedal. I’m doubting this more though; this would specifically be for polyphonically rounding off the attacks of notes on the bass, which I’ve just said above, I’m not getting a lot of use out of. If I didn’t care about the polyphony, a cheaper pedal or software could do it, or I could just keep using Velvet Machine or granular synthesis which is probably the smartest thing to do.