Tigon World

David Toop on digitally generated sound

David Toop - Making Sounds from Expression Design on Vimeo.

I read David Toop's book "Ocean of Sound" years ago. It was slightly over my head at the time. But I just saw this very interesting video of him on Designing Sound, talking about "his interest on digital generated sound and the impact of that on experimental music, his love for the sounds and music making and his work on Laptop Orchestra." I have to go dig that book out of the garage and give it another go.

Music production: Ableton tutorials

Tom Cosm is an interesting guy. He's an Ableton nut down in New Zealand who runs a really useful website - www.cosm.co.nz - where he offers video tutorials and lots of other things. You need a "pro membership", which costs $10 per month, to access all the material. The tutorials are useful in themselves but what really makes them great is that Tom also provides the Live sets that he works on in the tutorials, complete with Live packs and all the samples he uses. So it's a great way to dive into the Ableton world and really get your feet wet.

Tom gives all the music he produces away for free and basically seems to live on teaching and subscriptions to his website. A very interesting business model!

His video on the unboxing of the Akai APC40 Ableton Live controller is well worth a look.

Akai APC40 - Opening the box from Tom Cosm on Vimeo.

Music production: Gear lust

I have a very basic music production set-up. I'm happy with my MacBook (black, of course) and my software. Ableton Live is amazing and I have all the plug-ins I need really (apart from a good piano, maybe). But what I really long for is a top quality audio interface and monitors.

At the moment, I'm using the Behringer F-Control Audio FCA202 interface. A great buy at something like 60 euros at the time that I bought it. But it's certainly not one of the heavyweights.