Holy shit - would you believe it?!

I am a capitalist! I am trying to sell you stuff! Phase one of my 'make it as a musician' is now fully engaged. There is something to purchase. Yeah so it's just a badge, but it's a pretty weird badge. Go to the shop!

A salute to Why

Today I made Camping work. This is another beautiful gem (no pun intended) from Why The Lucky Stiff. I found myself in his code repository and could not help but smile at the image down the bottom " i kind of want to switch to git, but it already took twelve years to compile mod_dav_svn ".. yeah.. me too... I saw him speak at RailsConf a couple of years ago - very happy, very excitable, incomprehensible without a lot of follow-up-research... inspiring. He also replied with helpful advice to an email I sent him asking how he 'does life'. I also see that tryruby.hobix.org is the first link on the ruby site now (where it deserves to be).
code.whytheluckystiff.net - an anthology.

Website improvements

I've spent today starting on some improvements to http://mf.grimaceworks.com - now you can download another (old) album in my releases section (including, at last, by popular demand, 'bendy gutter'. well - popular means Neil keeps banging on about it). I've made some things bigger and I've added post pages (not much on them yet but soon I'll enable comments through this site). Erm - why ? Yea. Coming soon: 'I am Michael Forrest' badges...

Denial.mp3

The music is the result of a tune I had in my head when I am being insomniac. Wanted to knock something up quickly with Dewex in mind, and I think you’ll agree the track benefits magnificently from his august presence.

I won’t lie to you: this one’s a bit weird..

Prototyping

From http://mf.grimaceworks.com

I spent a couple of days prototyping this hardware controller for my glitch machine. Got it sort of working but really I just wanted to chuck this video online to prove I've been working.

The amusing numbers creeping in from the left are because I was scanning through in iMovie. This really wasn't intended to be a high production value job :)

I learned a new word today

'Omoshiroi' : 面白 - it means 'interesting' or 'amusing' and I am making it the theme of my forthcoming work-in-progress breakthrough album. Should be fun. :)

Aphorism #8: Fear

Fear causes failure.

AND:

Ostensibly irrational fears can be traced back to causality viscerally experienced during childhood.

BUT:

Don't be afraid.

BUT:

Respect the mechanism. It is there to protect you.

Daunting task

One step at a time:

I have lots and lots of bits and pieces of tracks kicking about. I have been struggling to work out where to start with it all so I bounced down snippets of everything I wanted to work on, put them in a folder, and here they are for you to hear all the little bits. Perhaps the world at large has some preference about where I should exert my efforts.

GW Glitch work in progress again

More experiments: http://grimaceworks.com/mf/lab

I got tired of using Windows to make music. So I had to get a Mac. But my favourite VST Plugin 'dblue glitch' does not work on the Mac. So I decided if I was going to get a Mac I'd learn how to program an effects unit to do the job that the ol' dblue used to do. A week of struggling later and here is how far I've got. I've gone deep into the dark world of C++, deep into weird things to do with how XCode works, encountered strange examples of how to do things, become enraged at the poor coding standards that the API seemed to be promoting, and eventually came up with a framework that allowed me to create a plugin that did things the way I want.

The idea is you trigger the different effects using a MIDI controller. The parameter set is deliberately limited (though I have put in the ones that are most fun). This is to make it easy to wire up to a controller in Ableton Live.

Note that this is very much a work in progress. The Cocoa UI won't work in Ableton (Logic, Garageband etc... only) but I will be making something nice and slick that does. There are still plenty of issues with this but I was just so excited I had to show you.

GW Glitch work in progress

More experiments: http://grimaceworks.com/mf/lab

I've been learning all about DSP and how to program OS X using C++ and Objective-C just so I can start work on something to substitute the dblue glitch.

My plugin is structured very differently to the dblue one though - I'm not putting in a sequencer - it's more geared around being able to 'play' the effects with a midi controller. So each button will trigger a different effect. I'm happy enough with the code structure of the core now and fiddling with the DSP side of things. Note that this Cocoa interface is very much a temporary thing!

Work ethic

I was worried my work ethic wouldn't be strong enough after I quit my job to spend time on my own projects.

Turns out I have a very devoted work ethic. The problem is my lack of play ethic. I've been working an average of 12 hours a day for over a week now (every day) - and while this has been pretty productive (my website now works in Internet Explorer! Feel the market penetration!) I think I'm gonna go blind if I don't get away from this screen some time soon...