Music with GregePorter

Alright, I'm sending off my Volca Beats to this guy to modify (I'll have a separate post about that) but it'll be without it for a week or two so I wanted to do one last little jam with it before I sent it off. Again, with this one I tried to just play out for a little, and not to rush it. What do you think of it? Jungle Trash Can

One of the things I've been trying to work on with my music is to let it go for a while to see where it goes. Up to now, I've had a tendency to have a snippet of cool sounds and then I stop it after about 30 seconds. I don't know why I do that. I wonder if it's coming from a place of insecurity; like I feel a little timid to let something play out because I don't want it to spoil. That's no good. So, yeah, come what may, I'll try to let a song play for a while. After all, Kraftwerk's Autobahn  is a whopping 22 minutes long! And it's really cool. That all said, I made a fun song below and while it isn't a half hour, it is a little long than my other snippets. Click below to check it out! Futuristic Train Station What do you think?

So my wife and I were watching Stranger Things (Season 2) this evening and I was inspired during one of our bathroom/commercial breaks to play a little spooky synth with my Volca Keys. On the Volca Keys there is a knob to specify the type of oscillator. I'll do a separate post on that to go into more detail but, for the moment, let me note the one called Ring Oscillation. To be perfectly honest, I don't really understand it but it has something to do with how the electronics are set up; it looks like a ring on the schematics with the wave that will ultimately be the sound feeding in on itself. That sounds kinda creepy already. Never mind, the fact that it's called Ring Oscillation... Anyway, I made some actually spooky sounds; unlike my last post which was only kinda spooky. What do you think: https://soundcloud.com/user-220012061/spooky-scary-synth

I made some beats and a synth sound this evening and I wanted to share! I'm still trying to work out the best way to share music on here. Maybe there's a way to embed the music in here Kinda Spooky Synth Maybe Trappy Beat Let me know what you think!

I got these two Volca devices, as I've mentioned in these past couple posts, and one of the things that I had trouble with was how to record the music (I'm being generous here, maybe "sounds" might be more like it) I make with them. The first thing I tried was to record the snippets via my computers microphone but that felt really lame. The quality was iffy and it was a pain to coordinate. So, after some Googling, it turns out that these Volca audio is either from the little speaker in the device or from a 3.5mm headphone jack. I found the  Griffin iMic on Amazon which takes that 3.5mm and converts it to USB. Huzzah! That's what I need. It arrived in a couple days and so far so good. I used Audacity  with the input set to the iMic. I hit record and play on the beat and sure enough it started to record. I'm only have slight troubles with getting the iMic to play the audio through it's output port (into my headphones, that is) while the audio is...

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have made my first purchase in the world of synthesizers. In one fell swoop, I purchased a Korg Volca Beats and a Korg Volca Keys. The cool thing about the Korg Volca line of devices is that they aren't too pricey and they are meant to be chained together. That is, you have a drum beat going with the Volca Beats and you have a cable that goes from it to the Volca Keys. When this connection is made, the two devices sync up in terms of tempo (I think in this orientation, the Beats is in control of the tempo so changes to that automatically adjust the Volca Key). It helps with coordinating your different musical tones. Maybe this would come into play for live performances especially? Beats me. (pun intended) Now, I'm super new at this and, what's helpful when you're new at something? Tutorials! I've mentioned Syntorial, in a previous post, and that's really helpful in terms of the general concepts of synthesizers but, for...

So, I've been playing with Syntorial for a little while and I'm itching to get my hands on a synthesizer of my own. Now, entering in the market for a synth, feels a lot like entering the market for a new computer. It feels intimidating and potentially expensive. Googling "what should my first synth be" or "best introductory synth" is a fine start. Looking on Youtube for Synthesizer information can be a mixed bag. Because, sure, there are videos giving tutorial and reviews but then it's really easy to come across videos like this: Let's take a device with too many buttons for me to currently understand, and then get 9 of them... Alright, not the best start. Another route is to look for the highest rated synth on Amazon and then find a reasonably priced on and then go from there. At present, the one I found was the  Akai Professional MPK Mini MKII . It's got 25 keys and drum buttons, and it hooks up to computers or iPads via USB...