Welcome

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live at leedsI’m a looping guitarist living in Sheffield, England. I have been performing for 35 years in a variety of professional bands and latterly, as a solo artist / collaborator.

Repetition and Intuition are the key factors behind my music. The guitar is an organic sound source that uses looping technology and treatment to build soundscapes. My pieces are born, evolve and die away.

This is my new site and will be expanding in many directions. I aim to share details of my progress (and regress) towards being a software-based looper as well as original music and live work.

Glow in the dark knobs!

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Custom stage lighting ;)

My first gig with a laptop passed reasonably trouble free, except that the lighting was almost non-existent, meaning I struggled to see the faders & knobs on my edirol controller keyboard. My first bright idea was to bring down a genuine 1950s PIFCO lamp to illuminate things, but I’m now considering other options. One is some kind of USB light, perhaps even this wonderful fishtank job, to be found on ebay.

finger lights

Jez (aka Modulator ESP) swears by “fingerlights” (which look like something to be found in a sex shop!) but they might just impede my guitar playing.

I actually bought some plastic glasses with a  little led light on either side, but I feel too much of a disk to wear them and the “clear” plastic lenses almost defeat the point of wearing them.

glowing knobs!I’ve seen some fairly cool “glow in the dark” knobs, but they are seriously expensive for what you get, it would cost more than the damn keyboard to replace all the knobs. Plus, they only seem to offer the ends of faders, not knobs themselves.

Ebay offers rotary knobs with a glowing stripe, but once again, they seem so expensive and being a tight Yorkshireman, I’d sooner paint my own. Will investigate luminous spray next. Any bright ideas?

All set? – hmmmm!

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Martin Archer

Martin Archer

A good first (and only) rehearsal with Martin Archer last night, preparing for tonight’s gig at Bishops House. It went smoothly from a tech perspective, although my previous audio “hiccup” issue seems to have returned on an occasional basis – the sound cuts out and I get digital clicking until I adjust the sample rate (then reset it!). Frustrating. It may be an under-powered laptop – it’s 1.8Ghz, when ableton recommend 2Ghz as a minimum. Could be further expenditure is required!

Musically, we soon decided not to loop the keyboard as well as the guitar – things got too mushy too quickly. Even with a single guitar loop, Martin’s twin DD20 setup filled things out nicely ;)

Gig at Bishops House

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I have a support slot coming up at the medieval Bishops House in the leafy suburb of Meersbrook on Saturday 11th May. I’ll be performing as half of a duo (!) with local legend Martin Archer. We’ve played together in ensembles before, but never as a duo. It will also be my first gig using software loopers instead of my EDP. Should be interesting!

modposter

 

Ableton jitters with Scarlett 2i2

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scarlett 2i2

I finally stumped up the cash to buy a second hand Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 usb/audio interface. Yes, the fact that it’s beautiful to look at influenced my decision, but in order to loop on the laptop, it was essential to minimise latency.

Plugged it in, installed the driver, all worked fine. Until, at irregular intervals, the audio out was replaced by a series of “digital clicks”. Going to the hardware setup, tweaking (and restoring) the buffer size brought things back.

After several weeks of utter frustration, I happened upon a google link which mentioned wi-fi causing issues. So I disabled it and Lo! the problem vanished. How utterly weird, but also wonderful, since I’ve not had a crash for some time since discovering this.

PS after several weeks of audio bliss, this issue has returned, albeit far less often. I’ll try turning the internal soundcard off, see if that helps. Grrrr!