My studio, The Keep, is finally reassembled after our mid-June move and mid-July wilderness camping trip.
This new setup is the most minimal yet, compelled by this room being one of the smallest I’ve had, but also encouraged by the similar turn the music has taken over the past few years.
The rug was Daci’s great idea; it was time…
Left: Harmonium.
Top L-R: Keyboard weights; two Korg NanoKEY2 controllers; Novation LaunchControl; 2012 Laptop running Windows 7 and Camel Audio Alchemy.
Middle: M-Audio Axiom 61 Pro.
Bottom: Cheap Yamaha keyboard with a MIDI Out port.
Left: Custom computer (the Musical Box).
Back: Steinberg UR44 Interface; two 2005-vintage ViewSonic VA902b screens.
Front L-R: Radial Engineering and Live Wire Solutions DI boxes; Novation LaunchPad.
Floor: Boss RC-300 Loop Station.
The NanoKEY controllers connect to the laptop; the other keyboards connect to the Musical Box, running NI Absynth, Reason, and various Applied Acoustics Systems modules.
Since I acquired it in 2012 (the day before its first live workout), I’ve used the Loop Station exclusively for guitar. These days I’m more interested in exploring synths, voices and percussion, so I’m giving the guitars a rest. So now my Audio-Technica 3035 microphone (I am not worthy, but anyway) gets a turn with the looper. Some exciting possibilities there, I think…
Under the Hood – You Tell Me!
I’m not sure it would count as blissful ASMR material, but it’s well known that fans enjoy seeing the nuts-and-bolts workings of a studio. So let me know if that would interest you, by leaving a Comment on this post. If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll start filming.
Work in Progress
The next release will be Counsel of Perfection, which includes my performance at The Gatherings in Philadelphia in 2017, along with a new studio piece. The music is finished and the artwork is in progress. I hope to announce its release date soon.
Carving in Shadows, in gestation for 13 years, is the priority work now. It’s had enough time to ripen, I think. A double-CD, it’s probably 80% finished.
The meditation chantscape Pastimes of Creation – released in 2018 but later withdrawn – needs a remix. That’s probably a weekend’s work only, so it should really be done sooner. That will be the second release from my devotional project Mukunda’s Friends, after the chant-and-drone-driven longform Personal Bhajan.
The CD-length guitar quartet After the Sun, composed in four weeks at the beginning of lockdown in 2020, still needs its notation score completed. It’s about half done… administrative work to be sure, but still. Any brave guitarists out there want to give it a look?
After that, I have a few ideas for more synth jams – some of which made up the Light Echoes album – and Omkara, another large chant piece, has its four voice parts all written. Other speculative longform projects, including a multi-section groove-driven piece, an oceanic deep-atmospheric journey and a tectonic chantscape, are lurking in the background. More important, however, are several classical projects which have been waiting their turn, and are now demanding proper attention.