What are you reading at the moment?

[Commie_User]

I'm trying to find a moment to get into this:

Plenty left at the Internet's junk shop: https://www.google.co.uk/search?sugexp=chrome,mod=5&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=the+music+club+book+albert+chatterley

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It's the kind of thing I've been doing anyway and I just love this whole 'back shed' approach. I can imagine the going being harder in 1978 but it's still a great book for a retro studio like mine, housing gear that's come and gone as well as contemporary stuff.

Kids would have loved the 'concret' stuff too. And imagine their joy when the teacher would sling them their first sequencer a few years on.

Goes well with my Home And Studio Recording magazines of just a decade later. And boy, did things change.

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I have a few bowls and glasses I tested with the washing up water. Just marvellous. And nicer these days to only have to sample just the one.





Fantastic living history. Great to play with it and see how the methods turn out with today's completed rigs.

[Rapidkirby3k]

Currently, it's Making Comics by Scott McCloud. Before I purchased this book online, I was a bit skeptical at first for some silly reason. When I finally started reading the book, I loved it. =D

[Dumper]

Currently reading the first book in the Game of thrones series on kindle.

[Marcel Donné]

Godfried Bomans - Oude en Nieuwe Buitelingen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godfried_Bomans

[NecroPolo]

MIDI

[merman]

On a bit of a Dave Gorman/Danny Wallace kick at the moment, I got Danny's novel Charlotte Street for my birthday and it's brilliant. So I've gone back to their non-fiction. Currently reading Friends Like These, where Danny tries to meet up with old school friends.

[Commie_User]

Another three curiosities. And just the thing, warming back up after the rain.




Murray Hill Books 1949, Ravette Books 1985 and Track Record Publishing 1991.


Oxfam's dedicated music shop really helped out again. Bargains for loose change.

The preface is right. The likes of the BTR and Ampex, their extended ranges pinched from technology backed by the Nazis, catapulted tape light years ahead in a stroke.

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Together with the likes of RECORDING THE BEATLES, you truly immerse yourself. EMI engineers reported they fought each other to avoid using flangeless machines after the likes of the Studers came along.
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So much changed in just the 40 year span of these books. And maybe about the same again from then 'til now.
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So I love all this, as you probably guessed. And certainly a retro-shelfer, next to things like the Abbey Road book and Making Music: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9709

[Chris Abbott]

Reading my own code, alas...

[Commie_User]

Yes, they are good pages aren't they. Historic. And this looks much neater with a cover.

...As I'm sure you'd do if you had it.
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Making tapes. Some used brass. Imagine booting Lemmings from that.
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I've got the '96 edition of the seminal Sound And Recording by Rumsey and McCormick. I very much see this 1948 book as a 'prequel'.

How's that for a postwar Hard disk recorder? (And as the Commodore tape says, that's easy to remember, due to your howl of pain if you dropped it on your foot.)

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Intriguingly, the stereo recorder in there still used the steel wire technique of Victorian vintage. Perhaps that was their idea of retro.


I like that book. It saw much in the future but not the music, music which couldn't have existed outside of tape. Indeed, it mentions multitrack a few times but only in passing.

[Chris Abbott]

Even those pages were interesting as you can see he answers the question "what shape is best to record on" and comes up with "1/4" tape"

[Commie_User]

And now we go back to the future with an Usborne book and just look at that cover.



1985. Another retro-yet-timeless piece for the library.

And just £2 from Ebay, almost pristine.





I'm enjoying the pure 80s-ana of this one. It couldn't get more stereotypically 80s outside the script of some retro play.

...Or this Usborne book, which is the first I ever saw. The school library chucked it away and I was fascinated:



(..Or maybe this one: http://www.asciimation.co.nz/gallery2/m ... 9ec53864b3 )




And the type-in listing is for a step-sequencer/synth program. Which is probably sluggish in BASIC (they usually are), possibly wouldn't work anyway, plus it won't OCR, so I'm not going back to the misery of that sort of thing. However, I will snatch the BBC version's envelopes for use in BEEBSYNTH: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10407

No easy CD-Rom or floppy disk of samples going this far back.


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Now travel back in time to when all was outboard, though simpler but more of a rigmarole to get started:

[Vosla]

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Cringeworthy main character is Hiro Protagonist (yes, that's his name), a kind of samurai hacker and pizza delivery boy for the Mafia. The internet is called Metaverse and looks like a clone of Second Life. The whole book is absurd and reads like a mix of Neuromancer, Matrix, Shadowrun and Bladerunner. Forced myself through it. Wasn't that bad.

[analoq]

Shame on me, I still haven't read Snow Crash. Someday soon.

I've been very slowly going thru Miller Puckette's The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music, which I have a hard-copy of but it is available for free online:
http://msp.ucsd.edu/techniques.htm

I'm going thru the exercises as well if anyone would like to follow:
http://blog.apmatthe.ws/tagged/puckette-exercises

Also having a bit of fun with this:

Make: Analog Synthesizers

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cheers.

[Commie_User]

Agh, that brings back some formula nightmares of my schooldays. The only one I want now is x=plug + socket, where x is sound!

That's some really deep stuff and I hope you can track some iconic new sound because of it.

[LMan]

Loved the flick, love the book.

@Vosla: well said, exactly my feelings about the book.