Better News

That pesky CPU bug I mentioned earlier? Fixed. My set is running smoothly again. For the record, it was a delay plugin that couldn't deal with silence and sent errors upstream to the mixer plugin. Odd stuff, but it works now. Just swapped out one very utilitarian stereo delay for another, better coded one.

Also, Scobot has just been added to the Static Glide lineup, providing live visuals! Yet another reason to enjoy the middle of your three day weekend at the Baltic Room.

The Good News, The Bad News

The good news: My live set is about 97% finished, give or take a little bit of time spent cleaning up the sounds and adding some extra effects to play around with. The actual composition is basically done, except for about 8-16 bars to take me to an ending point. I know how it's going to end, I just need to actually write it. I'm in the home stretch, barely 7 days away from the show.

The bad news: The software mixer plugin that I'm using has decided to start using an ungodly amount of processor power at a handful of specific points in my set, and I can't figure out why. there are 5-6 transitions that cause the mixer to use 60% (or more) of the CPU power of my Core 2 Duo Macbook. For reference, the normal range of CPU use for that plugin should be closer to 3%, maybe peaking around 10% if I'm moving a lot of faders at once.

So, now I need to spend some time hunting down the cause of this spike, and eliminating it. Because performing live and having your music slow to a crawl and get choppy is pretty wack. For obvious reasons.

The Skillz

I didn't realize this until Thursday night, when Hjalti and I were doing our dry run of our live sets, but I've been working on this set for so long, and setting it up so logically, that I can play it without looking at the screen. I would be sitting there, hunched over my MIDI controller rocking some plugin or other, and I'd look up and see that my screen had gone into screen saver mode. Once I hit F5 (the Buzz shortcut for play), it's all hands on knob action. No mouse clicking and staring at the screen for me! I'm pretty proud of this accomplishment, even though I didn't plan things that way.

If you're reading this blog and I haven't sent you a friend request for D.iscontent on Myspace yet, I recommend you get on over there and yourself to our list of virtual friends. for my own selfish reasons of course. But it will also be informative and useful, as the D.iscontent cadre ramps up their activities over this summer.

Pwnage

Not to be completely insular, but I'm listening to Hjalti run through his live set right now, at Casa D.iscontent. It's fucking killer. This shit is going to own your ass at the Baltic Room next Sunday. It's glitchy, minimalist, industrial, melodic, and dark. It's a fucking riot. I am not joking. I can't wait to hear some of these bass drops on a nice, big PA.

Business Time

That's right, it's panic business time. I have a show in less than two weeks. I've given myself a self-imposed deadline of this Sunday to have my live set basically finished. I'm somewhere around the 30-minute mark of a 45-minute set, give or take some flexibilty for fucking around with on-the-fly breakdowns and rearrangements. Every night this week will be spent hammering out transitions, tweaking filters, rearranging breakbeats, and seriously compressing that son of a bitch. that gives me one last week before the show, and in that time I need to practice, finish a remix for Hjalti as part of our secret split release (only availble at the show for now!), mixdown my half of the split, and throw up some cover art and a download page.

No rest for the wicked.

It's good times though. After this hard work is done, we'll both be focusing on expanding the mindshare of the brand that is D.iscontent. Look for us annoying the hell out of you and your friends on the social network of your choice this summer. We might even get around to putting out some more music. The possibilities are endless.

Everybody D.isco!

D.iscontent.com has launched. What is it? It's the label like thing that Hjalti and I have founded and unleashed upon the world. You should go there and listen to music of mine (which you've probably already heard) and new music by Hjalti. There will be more music released in short order, a show on the 25th, and some new artists joining the fold soon. We're taking over. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Viva Cascadia!