After some more tinkering, i’m trying to make the MIDI Pile ( or the “Groove Tower”) lighter, with more flexible mixing.

The rack-box was too heavy and too opaque, so with LM’s StandTastic stand, we can

divide and conquor

• top tier: new vocal rig
• mid tier: new drum/riff rig
• low tier: new mixing approach

details below for each…

Vocal Layer:

TC VoiceLive 3 and KP3 in a sandwich. — Sennheiser e835 goes through vocal path (vocoding, harmonies with freeze, full effects). Most effect switches on Momentary mode for “dub” like play.

• vocal path goes into KP2 for quick munging/sampling/cutting
• — KP2 returns to Guitar path of VL3 for further effects…. seldom ever touch Guitar layer

Drum and Riff Machines

Supplement ESX with

• Volca Bass – straight into mixer
• Volca Keys – through Zoom UltraFuzz (for nasty-feedback distortion).
• ESX now used for drums-only… as I can now change patches and patterns independently. Allows for much more free-flowing manipulation.

Both Volca-s can change their pattern lengths to allow for poly-rhythmic re-mixing tricks (that stay in sync). Their horsepower is undermined by their tiny and poor-visibility interfaces.

rethinking remixing

After getting frustrated with only being able to tweak FX and re-sample one path at a time, with the lack of busses on the Motu, and only having a movable stereo Insert point on the Matrix mixer, I found a new mixers mixer that allows me to select/combine any/all pats between a Dry and a Wet bus.

Welcome the Fostex DCM100.

• Fostex DCM100 rack mixer accepts 8 stereo channels. Each one is routed out Stereo Aux send 1
• Fosted MixTab control surface allows you to toggle between Aux 1 (Dry) and Aux 2 (Wet) without sweeping level. Stereo Aux 2 feeds KP4, which returns to Aux 1 Slave bus
• Main/Master bus is not used. I take my “main/dry” mix out of Aux 1 — KP3 listens to KP4 output, returns into it’s own channel. NOW I can have ANY COMBINATION of items reprocessed and re-sampled. This allows for filter-sweeps (or whatever) on most- or ALL channels, or re-sampling everything back to one layer. All devices slaved to KP3 as clock master The MixTab is perfectly matched for the DCM100, but it’s undersized and poor-visibility interface make it sub-optimal. Since I only touch the Faders, mutes, and Output Bus toggles, I’m considering (re) programming the Behringer BCF to handle this (which will likely cost me losing Mute control).
• right now, all looping is caught by the KP3. The EDP is amazing, but it’s rack-mounted super-powers don’t (yet) fit for this beast right now phased out… (not right for this organism).