Sticky Jam #4 - "Miasma"

Less ambient this time and a lot of fun with Korg Volcas and Maschine. The main track is a live jam with Korg Volca Sample, Bass and Keys, plus using Maschine to play chords on the V Keys. I then jammed some extra high V Bass lines, then manually synched - the extra bits track into the left and right channels, sounds great on headphones. Then I used a sound reactive analogue video layer from the Vidiot into my digital layers and made the video mix (some minor post-editing also). Acid techno! I think.

A still from the video

Analogue - digital visuals

So finally I’ve managed to get my analogue video synthesiser, Vidiot, to speak fluently with my digital set-up so I can now fully integrate that analogue content into my live visual digital set-up.

Had to correct the VHS signal going into the synthesiser and I looked round for ages trying to find an affordable Time Base Corrector and a lot of the even recently obsolete / discontinued devices were very costly and reading more about them not guaranteed to work with my set-up.

So I followed the alternative route of buying an old VCR-DVDr combo which was originally brought out to allow people to easily transfer their old videos to shiny new DVDs (!). The main benefit for me being the machine has Time Base Correction built in so that the wobbly tape heads can be re-interpreted for smooth DVD copying.

Picked a vintage BUSH one on eBay for £90, plus a Scart to composite adapter, sent it to the Vidiot then into a Blackmagic convertor and out into my Mac via Syphon and into my live layers and it works (-:

Got some classic sci-fi movies out of their boxes - an added bonus with the hybrid machine is that I can have two movies loaded at once - one DVD and one VHS and then switch between the two.

Can’t wait to use it for a gig (although not looking forward to lugging the big old VCR around . . .)

Metropolis glitch

Rubbing through the analogue layer

My "new" VCR

And piggybacking it, the Vidiot and Blackmagic box. Analogue - digital harmony.

Playing around with frequencies and layers

Some nice saturation in this frame

STICKY JAM #2 - "SUBMERGED"

So, a longer one this time. This one is a much more ambient demo. The sticky definitely happened in the audio, which I didn’t notice whilst recording, but when playing back to mix visuals to I noticed two big fluffy clicks!

Still from “Submerged”

Sticky Jam # 1

So this is the first one, did a live recording (after a couple of mishaps!) of the music, then played it back, grabbed some clips it made me think of, did a live mix. Came out pretty well I think.