I feel 2 cm closer to my initial goal: only rely on myself while playing.
A month ago, little young fool, I didn‘t know back then, that when tapping into electronic stuff you leave yourself entirely up to the gods of tech. Unreliable/buggy/understudied (by me) apps, my general slowness, huge learning curve — all that can fully substitute for a really poor (and robotic!) chamber music partner.

But I‘m getting there. Ultimately I‘m the one who can learn how to use that stuff correctly and creatively. Someday I‘ll probably move to Ableton and physical loopers, processors and effect pedals, but I‘m not quite yet ready to bury myself under gear and wires.

Daily updates helped me significantly to learn every day and not give up on my idea. I‘ll see if I keep it up from now — I really want to take my time and get used to the apps and MIDI to be able to make music I really like. 

Final snippet today:

I got an awesome new drum-machine from Audiokit, very simple, but groovy (the preset is in the video title). Look at me changing effects and triggering stuff! Yay!

1. Sobbing reading the manual 
2. Familiarizing myself with the whole internet 
3. Watching this video (!!!) by Non Standart Music Japan 
4. Riverdancing on my pedals to get anything out of them 
5. Trying and retrying 
6. Adding „for idiots“ at the end of my every google request... 
   
   ...it made a click, and somehow I set up my first 2 banks of the Behringer! 

Can‘t say it works awesome with every app, I need to do more research.
Most importantly, I don‘t really have to leave the Loopy interface again while playing. I can switch effects and trigger Loopy functions for now. I also found out how to start/stop the drummer from the Audiobus side palette. 

Synth1 still jumps back and forward when me and my pedal aren‘t even talking to him. So does the Bias FX, actually, but it‘s becoming more docile. 

In this particular session I made FugueMachine trigger Model D synth, which I hope to play around with in the future.

It didn‘t help.

The dreaded moment is here: I started reading the Behringer Manual. 

(Decoration added for less depressive look)

„The first time you recall the preset, it will send the controller value of CNT1 (VALUE 1), with each additional key press you can alternate between CNT2 and CNT1. Example: Select preset 1 without DRIVE function on the BEHRINGER V-AMP—each time you press the same button again, DRIVE will be switched on or off respectively: PROG CHG 1 = 1, CNT 1 NUMBER = 26, VALUE 1 = 0, CNT 2 NUMBER = 26, VALUE 1 = 127.“

Why hasn’t anyone  made a song out of it, it rolls right off your tongue! This booklet is gonna be my bedtime story for the next couple of weeks. No music today.

To be specific, I miss October 2020, when I was clueless and therefore brave enough to start my looping journey, thinking it would be easy and fun. It‘s definitely fun, but also brutal. 

I stopped using the pedal for looping just yet. Turns out, the pedal is ALREADY set up to talk to all the apps I own. Who knew? Not me.
Imagine a random stomp on my bad boy FCB1010, actually addressed to Loopy, that triggers my other 180 uber-obedient apps to change the synth sound, set the bar count from 4 to 257/234098, crash the sequencer and rotate the Earth in another direction.

I really need to read the Behringer manual, though it was written like 15 years ago when iPad wasn‘t a thing. Really really need to learn how to work the pedal. 

Anyways, today‘s pip is the Section A (because I don‘t know how to loop the Section B, that‘s also wonderful, let alone section C) of Stevie Wonder‘s „Golden Lady“. 

I pre-recorded it, because I didn‘t want to touch the monster pedal and cause a disaster. I played the melody live though.

I'm at it again, capturing a drowsy idea. For some reason, my brain generates (I'm not exactly sure if) original tacky 90's style melodies right before I'm asleep. 

Well, enjoy, I really like this one. And god please allow me to learn mixing, because no matter what I try, the outcome sounds like a synth Jambalaya.

The iPad, no matter how Pro, is definitely not the best option for working live. Its apps are unreliable as heck.

List of bad boys:
Oh, I see you set up the SynthOne with that smooth sound from your favorite list? Too bad as soon as you start looping it jumps back on one specific ear-piercing-stranger-things-esque sound. You restart the app, you restart the whole setup. That‘s cute. There will be no change. 
Playing through BiasFx is just barely audible.
DrumJam all of a sudden starts following some strange polyrhythmic path from his dreams in the middle of a session, changing tempo every two beats. Restarting helps.

That‘s why 𝚖̶𝚘̶𝚖̶𝚖̶𝚢̶ ̶𝚍̶𝚛̶𝚒̶𝚗̶𝚔̶𝚜̶ I have to cut my recordings several times: I just edit out my long uphill battle with all the above.

Today’s boffo is a smooth loopy session with vocals. Yes, I don‘t know why my mic channel sounds like a cassette tape either.

with all the apps in the AUM crashing but then restoring but then crashing but then losing routing — my job is keeping them alive and routed. I can‘t even take care of a plant, let alone several apps with many variables.

Anyways, today‘s crowd puller is the beginning of „I Love Your Smile“ by Shanice, perfect for looping.

Throughout this session:

• Cubasis was only kept alive by my humble prayer, very instable
• Funk Drummer was fired forever (or until I find him attractive again), because he wouldn’t understand my FugueMachine sequencer 
• I forgot to use FugueMachine altogether
• DrumJam was welcomed to the family

What I want to learn:

1. Find out why I was making involuntary loops at the end
2. How to route the Loopy metronom into my ear, so I don‘t need to bother DrumJam right at the beginning
3. How to trigger effects and change synths with the Behringer

I did it, I programmed the foot pedal!

Cutting corners for the win, just Loopy and Behringer, just MIDI learn!

Hands free looping session, the very first, very convenient, very fail-prone, full of screw-ups and fun, screen-recorded right here:

Did the loop totally randomly, first try, no redos. THE FACT that the looping part was done by my right foot is mind-boggling for me!

I'd like to thank:

Behringer for choosing the track, adjusting volume, quick-rec, re-rec, metronome

Fieldscaper for this nostalgic dreamy feel

Bias FX for muffled (why?!) bass and RIP-headphone-users solo

Harmonizr for 3in1 flute experience

Funk Drummer for random fills

Cubasis the Savior for keyboards after SynthOne failed me and stopped working altogether. 

Alesis for physical keyboards

AUM for poking at apps

Audiobus for allowing AUM to allow poking

I want to learn programming effects into Behringer, but that's next-level, I need my youtube geniuses to teach me.

No update today, I‘m waist-deep in configuring the Behringer pedal. I would like to exchange my brain to a brain of a that genius that can comprehend what anything on any interface does.

I am currently at this charming stage: I wanted to cut all the corners and set everything up through MIDI learn of Loopy. Loopy didn’t even acknowledge the Behringer. I replugged the pedal and put the MIDI „in“ end into the interface. Long and interesting story short, Loopy started seeing my attempts to program pedals, even programmed a couple, but it did nothing in terms of actually triggering any functions. After that Loopy stopped recognizing the Behringer <3

Let me google what MIDI is really quick...

to my super professional home studio. It‘s the Behringer MIDI foot controller, a monster machine that‘s half my size and a third of my weight. I haven’t got a chance to try it out yet, because I had to wait to get all the cables in the mail (there were no MIDI cables in my super professional home studio till now), but look at us now:

A little history on my relationships with cables and tech: I still get nightmares about programming video recording on VHS from 25 years ago, and since then wires and any digital process that includes more than 2 steps terrify me. But with Behringer I KNOW it will be extra brutal to learn how to work it, according to warnings all over them helpful forums. Instructions unclear, screwdriver necessary, a dozen 40-minute-tutorials ahead. I‘m so ready to screw up the setting up process the first 15 times, but it‘s definitely going to be worth it.

The initial plan was to dissect and recreate my favourite songs to the best of my ability — just for exercise. 

I love Genesis. I cannot tell Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel apart, but over time they morphed in my mind into one person I adore. So today I played the "Snowbound" again, but for a little bit longer. 

This song gives you so much space for having fun with all that different sounds and synths, I even whipped out my dusty expression keyboard Roli to capture those awesome upwards glissandi before chorus. Side note: I don't know, what's harder to do on the Roli Seaboard: aim at the right notes or make the app stop glitching and disconnecting. Sadly, at the moment this thing remains for me a somewhat expensive toy — I'm sure I'll find the way to make use of it in the future though. 

Future me will also be very grateful If I took time to learn mixing and mastering as soon as possible — but, one giant problem at a time, I guess. For now my favourite problem is hands-free looping, and I'm all over it.

So, today's smasheroo is Genesis' "Snowbound" with zero looping. My bad.

Unfortunately. My inspiration today — Genesis' "Snowbound". Fantastic song, its sound makes you immediately succumb to the atmosphere of crystal clear empty snowy deadly soulless air. 

I had to cut it down to one chord progression and add some dead air (pun intended) while I was noodeling around with 145 different apps trying to make the drummer shut up or change the effect. I really like the FieldScaper bit at the beginning and throughout the track, it creates a very special mood. I should definitely learn how to use it properly. 

Counting the days till I finally get my hands-free looping setup. I already know it's going to be a pain to set up, but:

1. Every aspect of my learning has been a pain up to this point, I kind of got used to it

2. It's so worth it

Solved the problem with BiasFX with its muffled sound (or I was using it wrong, who knows) by ditching the app and learning a new one: Harmonizr!

It does a really good job self-harmonizing or transforming that tweety flute sound to bass. Yes, maybe using the bass option I sound like a bari-sax made of paper, but for once it's a clear bass line.

Reasons to love Harmonizr:

1. Harmonizes hands-free (no need to hold a chord on the keyboard while playing flute with two additional hands)
2. Bass mode doesn't record your actual sound, only the transformed one
3. Fun harmonic modes

I made a loop with a bass line and harmonizer to hear how it works together. I like it! Still used BiasFX for extra crunchy negative 2 octaves bass line though.

So, recently on Tiktok I heard a tiny piece of music in the beginning of some challenge. How do you do, fellow kids?

Anyways, the harmonies in this piece of music triggered some brutal russian-ness in me, and I immediately shazam'd the song. It was The Living Tombstone's "It's been so long".

Pity that this harmonic minor scale awesomeness was hidden in the second part of the chorus and was so so short. Harmonic (Aeolian ♯7) minor is very common in Russian music practice and so natural us, but you hear it very rarely in Western music. I really miss my lifted 7th note and weird subdominants.

That's why I decided to steal this little bit of The Living Tombstone's song and bring the Russian cheesiness to the max. 

Today's crackajack is what I borrowed from that song, put proudly in the very beginning of the chorus. Otherwise all-new, fresh out of the head, Russian overkill. All possible motherland influences gathered throughout my life. Weird subdominants galore, lifted 7ths fiesta! I went ALL the way. All knobs to the right! Na sdorovie.

Expectation for today: perform an elegant theft of a very cute melody I heard on Tiktok, appropriate and make a track out of it.

Reality: my ears hurt from wearing headphones for 3 hours straight, but still no track. The possible culprits are Cubasis, MIDI-clock and sudden lack of ideas. I'll think about it tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is the beginning of my upcoming arrangement of Sam Smith's "Too Good at Goodbyes" for flute quartet of Tania x4.

Boy do I miss the concept of just taking the instrument and playing it! No MIDI-clock necessary, no effects, no Audiobus, no learning curve. What remains is this tiny detail: I can't play 4 flutes at the same time. Therefore I keep coming back to my little zoo of tricky apps every single day.

that my parents forgot to invite a certain GarageBand-affiliated witch to my first birthday, so she cursed me to end up with GarageBand no matter what I try.

Anyways, today I broke that curse and didn't even touch the GB once. Instead, I did the mix in Cubasis — an app that costs $50 and looks like it's 1998 again, and infuriates me 99% of the time. We'll get along eventually.

The reason I didn't need much work after recording is that I finally got my hands on sweet Audiobus Remote that looks like a candy: 

I pre-recorded the loops and all that was left to do is just to spread the fingers across that handy buttons. 

Back to my complaint session. The Funk Drummer infuriates me with his random fills and lack of control option through any remote. I have to record him separately through AUM remote and then reunite him with my loops through Cubasis, that, again, infuriates me.

Honourable mention: BiasFX infuriates me, because all that goes through it into Loopy sounds like a retro kitchen radio.

It's almost like I didn't explore my apps enough to be able to realise their full potential, but I really wanted to complain for a second.

To today's master stroke! I think, that RHCP's "Scar Tissue" was born to eventually be looped by someone. Other than its loopability, this song is one of my favourites (John Frusciante's solo! ❤️)

I got nothing today, I was a birthday girl, so see ya tomorrow!

Ok, not exactly a nightmare, but an idea, that comes to your not exactly right mind right after you start falling asleep. 

It's easy:

1. Try to fall asleep with 75% success, be very sleepy
2. Yet have a short riff keep circling in your mind
3. Don't be sure it's even an original one
4. Decide nonetheless to capture the idea, since no idea should go to waste
5. Without moving your sleeping mask, whip out your phone and open BandLab
6. Sing that melody beautifully
7. Play a proper piano accompaniment with three shaky fingers beautifully
8. Admire your coordination for a second and fall asleep immediately
9. Record that thing the next day
10. Congratulations, now it exists

I'm THAT close to start thinking about considering trying live looping, because I made this whole thing on AUM/Loopy and it wasn't painful at all. However, while eliminating dead air on (oh yes) GarageBand afterwards, the samples started to surprisingly and annoyingly fall apart timing-wise. I don't know what caused it, but I should consider eliminating GarageBand altogether.

So, today's sensation is that late-night tiny idea that I'm pretty sure was inspired by some cheesy Russian 90's song from my subconscious.

Anyways, extra enjoy that actual recording bit from BandLab in the beginning.

Imagine you're in a happy place.

Chant with me in E-flat major:

Omm I didn't really loop much today

Omm I installed Enso for ambient new-agey loops

Omm I love it it works fantastic but I wish it didn't make fart sounds when changing instrument

Omm I feel like a DJ creating an infinite loop

Omm AUM was really friendly to me today

Omm or maybe I just got used to it

Omm relax and enjoy this little creepy ambient meditation music