I've Got a Fever...

YouTube via FatSynthDude
"...and the only prescription is MOAR (ANALOG) COWBELL!!!!!!1111oneoneone

Friend of mine on the intertubez posted something about needing more cowbell and since I'd done a vid recently that had a bit to do with the cowbell on the 522, I thought it would be mildly entertaining to make a cover of the infamous "Don't Fear the Reaper" song by Blue Oyster Cult to post as a reply. I'm at home sick today anyway (ironically, with a fever) so it isn't like I've got anything better to do. And of course, I made the cowbell way too freakin' loud intentionally. :-D It ain't pretty, but making this thing work with only one free hand is pretty much impossible.

So here's how it was done: The Akai MPC1000 (with JJOS of course) was used as the master sequencer. The actual notes were sequenced in using a Schecter Devil Elite outfitted with a GK-2a feeding a GR-30 and outputting MIDI to the MPC. The synth that mimics the main guitar riff throughout the song is an Alesis Andromeda ('bout time I got some use out of that beast!) The bassline was played with an Analogue Solutions Red Square. The percussive/distorted/band-pass filter synth thingie is Future Retro XS. Almost all of the drum sounds were handled by the MFB Schlagzwerg, except of course for the cowbell which came from the MFB 522.

Sorry again that this thing was done kinda sloppy, but doing all this stuff one-handed really bites. Anyway, enjoy!"

TeleKraftzSchlagz Jam

"This is just something I threw together real quick. Not supposed to be fancy or mind-blowing, just some simple fun. What I have here is the MFB Schlagzwerg being used to trigger it's own drums, and fire off gate and CV to the MFB Kraftzwerg and the Analogue Solutions Telemark and tweaking all of the above. This is just to show that while yes, the Schlagzwerg sequencer is a bit of a pain in some ways, it can most definitely be used creatively. (I'm even thinking that one of these days, I want to do a demo where I turn off the audio outs to the Schlagzwerg and just use the entirety of the sequencer to decimate one single synth.) When doing this video, I wanted to get a bit more going on as far as the number of synths going off at once, but sadly I didn't have any 1/8"-1/4" cables left when I thought I did have some, and half of my gear runs on 1/4", so I had to suffice. Oh well. This is totally giving me some ideas for some crazy synth jams, though. Almost wish I had like five other people, and then I could just use the Schlagzwerg to send pitch and gate and have an orgy of synthetic sound molding! I'm getting moist just thinking about it....

Oh, and I didn't have room on the Schlagzwerg video to append this, but it did turn out that the MIDI timing was partially my fault. The reason the timing was goofy was because the swing was turned on. ...this is especially odd since I don't remember turning on swing.

And sorry that the video and the audio don't quite sync up. My usual video editing app hasn't been cooperating lately, so I've been stuck with Windows Movie Maker and it doesn't quite sync up the way it looks like it does when matching waveforms up. ....see why I use so much hardware for music now? I hate computers. This also helps to justify whenever I use the camera's microphone to record this stuff. Helps to keep me fat and lazy! XD"