Well, finally I'm on Steemit. Hello!
I'm here because of an Anarchast interview between Jeff Berwick and Dan Larrimer. Dan's explanations of Steem and blockchains and anarchy, making the old system obsolete, sounded like futuristic science fiction happening in my lifetime. I'm very excited to be here!
I'm a musician (in my spare time) in Perth, Western Australia. I'm also a Dad to an awesome 3.5 year old and husband to a beautiful Russian woman. I play the drums in a psychedelic post rock band called Cypher. We released our first album in 1999, our most recent in 2013, and we have unreleased tracks we are working on now. But I'll save that for another post.
It's been my dream to write and play my own Techno music for many years in the vein of Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, The Presets, Jeff Mills and Ritchie Hawtin. I've always been writing with whatever cheap gear I could get my hands on and I recorded a set of live tracks with my beloved Roland MC-307 back in 2006-2007. I played many nights on this machine, programming tracks into it that I would then playback live, bringing in the different parts in the right order to create the songs. I was never happy with the quality of the all-in-one digital drum machine/synth and was waiting for many years for something new to come along. I always wished I could afford an original 808 drum machine but other hobbies like drums are not cheap and neither are classic Roland drum machines!
Finally, Roland released their new AIRA products in 2014. And I could afford them! Built with Analogue Circuit Modelling technology, Roland faithfully and painfully recreated the perfection (and imperfections) of their original 808 and 909 drum machines from the 80's into digital analogue/hybrid machines and they are incredibly fun to play. Just recently I bought the final piece, the MX1 mixer to link them all together and provide effects. It's very powerful and I can get so much more interesting sounds out of them now. Over the last two years I've been playing on them and learning their secrets and writing techno tracks late into the night when i really should be getting some sleep before work tomorrow (like now).
I've even started singing, although I'm a little self conscious and need some tuning lessons but it's a fun part of the action, creating sounds and space over the top of the music.
I prefer to play live and just see what happens. I don't practice much, it's just about hitting record and letting loose. I have some pre-recorded patterns but all the buttons and options can take me in any direction each time I jam. No two recordings are the same. And everything I play is all original.
My goal for Steemit is to make this a content channel for my music and post up my live performances, bum notes and all, and do it regularly to start building some interest and hopefully you'll see the quality improve along with my vocoder skills.
Here is my first set for y'all. Hope you like it.
Consume. Conform. Obey.
Welcome to the Steem family...believe on hard work...Nice to have you in the community... follow me @nazirkhyber
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Hi @samthasham, nice post, I love to see people who use old school equipment like your Roland MC-307. I enjoy the limitations of such pieces of gear. My first synthesizer was a Roland SH-32 and I absolutely loved it, it made those really fat drones and great arps. What do you think of the AIRA series? I've heard good and bad things, and mixed opinions about their durability. I was recently looking at the Roland AIRA TR-8 Step Sequencer, do you have it? And do you like it? If so would you mind telling me what's the best thing about it in your opinion? Thanks, welcome to Steemit, keep us posted! Have a good one!
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