Sat down last night to do some actual musical type recording (because the number of random demos kicking around is getting stupid and a few of 'em have a coherent thread that might be worth, you know, finishing... maybe even a new Looptron record) so I fired up the trusty old MacBook pro. Then, a million years, an Ableton upgrade, a couple of NI upgrades, a few months worth of Mac OS X security updates and no recording later it was time to go to bed.
On the bright side, my upgrade frenzy did take me back to the Expert Sleepers site (who seem to specialise in cheap but awesome plugins - my favourite kind!) to get the latest Augustus Loop tape delay thingy (which is basically what runs the Looptron live rig) and pick up their newly released Oomingmak plugin. It's a strange beast - it takes an audio input (say, fersinstance, a guitar), figures out the pitch and supplements/replaces it with varying types of analogue-esque synthesis. With filters and envelopes and everything. Lots and lots of fun, and it tracks insanely well. Very nearly managed to get the "I Want To Break Free" guitar solo noise out of it :-) And you can make such lovely digital noises with it if you starve it of input. Ooooo, and had lots of fun singing through it too... you can get some nice early Goldfrapp-esque type effects if you blend it in behind the vocals. (Although, obviously about two octaves lower and with dodgy pitch in my case.) For twenty quid it's well worth a punt, I reckon.
However, playing with said new toy kept me up waaaay past my bedtime. Expert sleepers, my arse.
Days without incident: 35. No, 36. Plus I've just realised Lent is actually more like 46 days because they don't count f**cking Sundays. I could cry.
