Arlington Arts Centre, Newbury
01 July 2022
Not many comics I would pay to see live as most seem unsufferably left-wing and politically correct but along with Dave Gorman, one of the few remaining ones worth the price is Gary Delaney.
A bit of a hike to the Arlington Arts Centre in Newbury but a fun time was had, certainly not for those easily offended but luckily I’m not.
Updates have been few and far between on this site mainly due to me being very busy re-organising my synthesizer collection which entailed breaking up the old sofa bed that occupied that room in situ and attempting to sort everything out while being unable to move anything out the room.
It is now all laid out on a new bench and rack system and powered by some dedicated switchable boxes.
In hindsight, some of it would have been done differently but on the whole, I am glad it is done although I dread to think what the final cost has been.
Another oscillator was added to the rack in the form of the Sputnik Modular Variable Waveform Generator.
Not a digital one this time but a traditional analogue with some interesting tonal variation possibilities.
For some strange reason, there is no manual available either with the unit or from the website, luckily it is pretty straightforward to use but would be useful to know a bit more about it.
Visit number 5 to view Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds live on stage.
Justin Hayward returns and although he can still sing he is starting to look his age and I personally think someone younger with a bit more mobility would suit but at least is was not like David Essex appearance on the stage version.
The rest of the cast in Kevin Clifton, Claire Richards, Nathan James, Duncan James and Anna-Marie Wayne were excellent.
The visuals slightly changed with the dropping of the Martian scene at the beginning and replaced with narration through the ages by HG Wells played by Callum O’Neill with a “modern” message ;(
Added another Digital Oscillator to the Eurorack in the form of the Erica Synths Black Wavetable.
A good compliment to the other oscillators and certainly adds a lot more variety to basic waveforms and the sub oscillator adds some good punch.
Had the booster.
I get the feeling this will become an annual event which makes me think getting shares in a pharmaceutical company may have been a good idea.
This time they stabbed me with the Pfizer variant, a regular cocktail this will end up being and to what end? They are still shutting everything down!
I am rapidly becoming a conspiracy theorist.
“When you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow we gave our today.”
John Maxwell Edmonds
After many years of service, my old Korg DW-8000 has decided it has had enough.
My limited electrical knowledge stretches as far as replacing the external and internal fuses but neither bring the old girl to life.
There does not appear to be anything obviously burnt out internally but it is way beyond my comfort zone.
Time for more expansion!
The idea of getting small units to fully utilize the available space sounds good but you end up with a very cramped work surface so I have moved away from that.
The first unit I got was a Behringer 130 Dual VCA, you can never have enough VCAs. To complete the top row I also went for a Behringer 121 Dual VCF. To make room I relegated the original Behringer 110 to the second rack and thanked it for its service 😉
I also added a couple of Erica Synths Buffered Multiples, these have a very useful voltage shift switch that will act to shift pitch on Oscillators.
Well it was earlier than expected but our friendly new owners Standard Aero has announced they are going to make redundancies, at least 20 will go across the company in theory in view of the downturn in the aviation industry due to Covid.
When they gave their presentation upon taking us over the sense was “we are your friends, shoot to kill!”
With me being such a great fan of the original She’s All That film and the fact that this “re-imagining” also starred Rachael Leigh Cook I had to give it a go.
What a disaster, gender-swapping the characters does not work. Freddie Prinze Jr. from the first film was a likable character, the female version just comes across as a stuck-up bitch and it has none of the charm of the original.
Shoehorning Rachael and Mathew Lillard into it does not make it a good film.
It is fair to say I got a bit carried away recently!
I had been after a Behringer 1004 Oscillator but they were out of stock everywhere with a long lead time so was not expecting to get one any time soon then surprisingly Amazon had some so I got one straight away. This also spurred me on getting the matching Behringer 1047 Multi-mode Filter.
About the same time, I was struggling to use the Doepfer mixer which just didn’t work how I wanted it to, and also decided to bite the bullet and relegate the other unsatisfactory units, the TipTop Audio Wave Folder, and the Mutable Instruments Shelves, to the old NiftyCase to free up room in the main rack.
To fill this newfound space I then added a Behringer 112 Dual Oscillator and 305 EQ/Mixer. The latter seems to do what Doepfer and Shelves were meant to do but much better.
Will now hold fire on new purchases for a bit.
Went to see Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds: The Immersive Experience.
It’s been a long wait due to COVID but we finally got there and have to say it was worth the wait.
It is a good experience even if I did find responding to the actors beyond my comfort level but cannot fault them or the effort they put in.
A technical glitch meant the boat segment didn’t work so we missed a drink in the Red Weed bar to redo it and I’m glad we did. The graphics do look dated by modern computer standards but as it’s fully 360° I can understand why and the aerial scenes at the end truly outstanding.
The latest addition to the rack is a TipTop Audio Fold Processor.
Not sure I can explain how it works but it modifies the input waveform in some weird and occasionally wonderful ways.
I say occasionally because I’ve not found it that interesting, to be honest. Maybe something that will grow on me.