hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2464.txt

Episode: 2464
Title: HPR2464: The Alien Brothers Podcast - S01E04 - Digital Instruments
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2464/hpr2464.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 03:42:38

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This is HPR Episode 2464 entitled The Alien Brothers Podcast S-Nero 1-E-Nero 4 Digital Instruments.
It is posted by The Alien Brothers Podcast, ABB, and in about 65 minutes long, and carry an explicit flag.
The summary is
Casper and Rutiger Digital, Analog Sonic Setup, Sino-S and Android.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
Support Universal Access to All Knowledge by heading over to archive.org forward slash donate.
The Alien Brothers Podcast with Casper and Rutiger.
It doesn't help and it doesn't matter, so...
All i would say...
Welcome to you, listener...
Especially, you, the listener...
The one that's listening right now....
That's you. This is for you. This is the Alien Brothers Podcast.
This is the Alien Brothers Podcast with Casper and Rutiger.
as has been mentioned before. This is not another podcast. This is the Alien Brothers podcast.
This is the Alien Brothers podcast. It's for you, although I see the there is an irony in saying
it's for the listener considering I don't think we've actually done anything in any of our podcasts
to date. And this is the fourth one on the hacker public radio public radio that I don't think
we've done anything that came from any feedback from anyone. Well, that's because all we did was
get high praises from Klaatu, which is an honor in and of itself. It's high praise indeed. And then
we we had that month long hiatus between recording episode two star. And then
me uploading it for the first time. And then it didn't work because they apparently the server was
under a DDoS attack at the time. And they were having problems with large files. And maybe I was
using my VPN too, which probably wasn't helping. And so it took me a long time to upload it again.
And thanks to Dave and Ken and all of the volunteer administrators at hacker public radio for
making it all possible. We appreciate it. And also thanks to Josh for providing the hosting.
And as Florence Welsh from Florence and the machine says, the dog days are over.
I think they've just begun my friend. They just begun. They just the dog days have just
or alternatively the dog days have just begun. In which case, oh me, oh my. So how are you this
this this this fine evening Casper? I'm doing well. How are you doing, Reddicker? Are you doing well?
Are you feeling good? Yes. I'm full of high kicks. Full of high kicks. You stretch it out. I got
I'm blocking it in. I just I just finished about I don't know six or six hundred and twenty five
set ups or so. Oh wow. Yeah. One thousand one one thousand two. Oh, you got me again. I was doing
your I was doing one hand at pushups. You always you always outdo me, man. Hey, I'm I'm just I'm
just I'm I'm I'm hoping that you will go the extra mile with me. I know that's exactly I'd
understand that completely. You inspire me to push myself further. But to you, it's all a game.
Just not the green mile. It's again. That was I read that I read that when it was coming out in
episode form. Like in I think it was published as six books like six small books, as you would
imagine. And well, I read eight mile as it was coming out as a novella. And I you know, I thought
it was better than the movie. It's all game to you. It's like yeah, you know, I want it's like I
right here. I want you to do between six and seven hundred set ups and I do it and you're
you're doing a thousand one one on pushups. It's just I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
I'm just I just I'm I want you to maximize your potential because my biggest fear
is unfulfilled potential. And that is why that is why I am a motivational speaker and I will be
putting out my book coming out next month. What's it called? It's called
how to write a book and make a lot of money and become a motivational speaker just like me.
That that is motive that I'm motivated. But you have to you have to realize if you haven't known
by now, you don't have to trick me with subterfews to motivate me. I have to trick you in one
way. I mean, I actually actually maybe I do trick you constantly. In fact, I think our
relationship is based on tricks. I think I think I think I think I think I'm just beginning to
realize that the depth to which that is true that I've I've had a complete misunderstanding all
long. You fell for it. You fell for it. And now you're just a pawn in my game. You thought you're
you thought we were playing checkers. I was playing chess son. Do you were playing like 3D
chess like from Star Trek? I was playing 3D chess on the dark side of the moon with Stanley Kubrick.
And then had a confession in the form of a movie called The Shining where he
shat metaphorically all over Stephen King's original work.
Well, I would share the secret with you that Stanley Kubrick didn't fake the moon landing
but you wouldn't you wouldn't listen. But I may maybe listen. Here's here's how when people ask
me about the moon landing, they're like, what do you think? What do you think happened?
And my response is very simple. And my my response is the official narrative of the moon landing
is the least likely scenario. Anything but the official narrative happened. That's my conclusion.
And what's the official narrative? The official narrative is that we somehow figured out how to get
this piece of metal guided by like electronics that were just rudimentary by our standards today
through the Van Allen belt which couldn't even be penetrated with nuclear weapons we tried.
And we were able to get men past this highly radioactive barrier that nuclear weapons could not
break through and landed on the mirror. You're obsessed with shooting nuclear weapons through
the Van Allen belt which shows up in America. No, I'm not a last episode too. Yes, you are.
No, I'm not. I was obsessed with it. It was it was the US and Russia after World War II. They were
the ones that were obsessed with it. They kept doing it over and over and over again until they
realized that they just couldn't couldn't break through the Van Allen belt.
And we were doing it because we were trying to blow up the moon, right?
I think we're just trying to make it past the Van Allen belt. I think maybe they were trying to
blow up the moon. I don't know. Maybe we were maybe we were we reached a point in the arms race
where we were just racing our missiles to see which ones were faster. Yeah, because after World
War II the strange thing is that they they signed a treaty all of a sudden the US and Russia they
signed a treaty. They're like, okay, we're gonna start blasting off all these nukes and they did that
and they failed to penetrate that radioactive barrier. And then they said, okay,
treaty's over, okay, back to Cold War. Let's do the old skip-goating divide and conquer.
So by official, so the answer to my question is the Alien Brothers podcast with Casper and Rodiger.
The answer to my question is the official narrative is what John President John F.
Kennedy set us out to do. You're saying the official narrative that we sent people to the moon
and brought them back on multiple occasions is is implausible in 1969. That's that's your that's
your position. No, not necessarily that we didn't do it. But if we did do it,
there are some very big omissions in it in the official narrative. And I'm very skeptical that we
did even get that far. However, if we did get that far, I believe that there were other things
already there. And if you watched Neil Armstrong accept his, he got some kind of metal or something.
He does not look like a great conquering man, the first man to step on it. He looks like he's
terrified to speak. It's kind of sad. This is the Alien Brothers podcast, Casper.
And it is. And tonight we're not talking about the moon. We're going to
treat you to a hopefully brief show after the torturous marathons. We've been
subjecting our listeners to and we're I just figured thank you. Glad to for listening. We appreciate
it. Thank you to our listener. And tonight I just figured we would we would talk about. Well
and on that note, we're going to talk about since Casper and I both like to make
music and noise respectively, music and Casper's case, noise in my case,
and how and why we enjoy making music. And in my case, most of it's digital at the moment,
but you have some analog capabilities. So I just figured we'd talk we'd we'd have a little
rap about that. A short rap. Do you want to jam? Do you want to do you want to just rap? Do
you have freestyle? Maybe later, but for now, depending on when you're listening to
presumably, you're listening to this after episode three was posted. Since this has ever said
four of season one of the Alien Brothers podcast. This is the Alien Brothers podcast. And
we did a freestyle in that one. Oh, oh, in episode three. Yeah, you might want to check that
out around the halfway point. I think that was pretty sweet. And my recommendation is sort of
getting too close to the music. I would personally, at least at first, I would put it on some
headphones and then put the headphones on about half 50% volume and put them about 10 feet away from
you. And then and then cover them. Cover them with a piece of cheese cloth. Dig a whole six feet deep.
And then listen to it that way first. And if if if there's no ill effects, you might want to try
getting closer, but just don't start with them in your ears. Don't that freestyle. This is the
Alien Brothers podcast. We recommend you seeing industrial strength earmuffs at all times while
listening to the podcast. Yeah, or alternative brothers podcast. Alternatively, you could just put
gun that is like wax, firearm plugs in your ears and then then you could put the headphones on.
But in terms of how and are you doing what I think you're doing? No, sorry.
No, I was I was I was fidgeting with the harmonica.
Okay. See, like you can't make a tie that I thought we I thought we were on track.
I I didn't state it as a goal, but for our first non explicit tagged podcast, but I can see now
that's not going to happen. No, no, no, no, no, no. See, see, now the roles are reversed.
See, normally I have to keep you on track. Now you have to keep me on track.
That's because you have attention problems and you can't stand not, not driving the conversation.
That's okay. I don't love you any less for it. So sweet. So 14 minutes in. That's our intro. So
since we're going to keep this short and sweet, I'll talk a little bit about my audio set up
at the moment, which is quite dramatically different from the way it was a couple years ago.
In fact, Casper, I believe you have some chunks of it right now, but I probably have a
is it a majority chunk of it? Maybe we'll talk about I might acknowledge when we get to
yours. I'll start off with kind of, well, why I make noise is it's something I enjoy doing
at the time that I'm doing it, unlike writing, which is something I enjoy having done after the fact.
But I really dislike while I'm doing it, but creating noise, perhaps because I'm not trained
in the standard sense, although I did take electric bass lessons for like a year in my teenage years
and played in a number of bands, I have no formal musical training. I can't
sight read. I can't like draw a circle of fifths from memory or anything like that.
Is it true that your tone dafer was that a joke?
I, well, maybe in the show notes, we'll have some links to some music and let the listeners
decide. I could not identify four or four he hurts if you played it for me. No. So like I can't,
I don't have an ear that can pick out, you know, A, B, C, D, Q sharp. Okay.
You know, yeah, no, that doesn't mean your tone dafer, that just means you can't name the notes.
I mean, I can do Doremi Fosso. Okay. No. So you're not tone dafer. Okay. That was an exaggeration when
you said that. I can do, I can do the 12 tones of Western music. Yes. I don't know how to put
them together in, in even the simplest ways, but that's okay, because I like the activity of
making noises. And I do that principally. I have two platforms that I use sometimes together or
sometimes separately. On my Mac, I have Logic Pro X, which is Apple's Pro Audio Software.
For anyone who doesn't know about it, it's a really good deal at like $200. It's, you know,
Ableton users love Ableton, Pro2 users love Pro Tools. You know, this I think Logic Pro X aspires
to compete with them. It's missing quite a bit of functionality in terms of live performance,
but it's what we actually record, at least my side of this podcast on, and it's what we do the
post production in. And it's basically a digital audio workstation that has the standard plugin
support for all the standard virtual instruments and special effects, etc, etc. So it's basically a
DAW. And that's what I use mostly for arranging and mastering. Just for the listeners who don't know
what a DAW stands for, it's a digital audio workstation. Yep. It's Microsoft Word for making music.
Except Apple in this case. Well, DAW is a general term. I'm sure you're going to talk about your DAW
choice as well. It's not a choice. It's just of convenience because the software came with the
hardware and the hardware was cheap and it's easy enough. I think I know, and I'm still learning
every time I try and record, I'll learn something new. But that's part of the fun. You know,
you can always meet too. And sometimes it'll surprise you, you know. But anyway, I'll kind of run
through in terms, so you know, I use Logic Pro X for the midi side of it. Midis basically just
digital notation for music and control signals for things like vibrato and modulation and pitch control.
And pedals, Logic Pro X has a good number of virtual instruments built into it, like synthesizers and
drums. It has an artificially intelligent drummer that if you want to have it play along with you,
that's cool. That's pretty cool. It is neat. And it's actually a feature. The way Apple's working
now is that garage band, which is the kind of DAW light that ships with every Mac and every Apple
mobile products. They basically kind of run on the same engine right now and they just kind of
dumb down garage band a little bit, but they keep moving features. They kind of keep
promoting features up to or down to garage band from Logic. So actually, I think the AI
drummers, which have different styles and you have the ability to kind of tweak their performance,
might have started in Garage Band and then went to Logic. But I know some Logic features like
have moved over to Garage Band now too. But interesting. It's kind of like the Adobe products in
some respects. Yeah, they're shifting features around. It depend on which revenue stream they need
to make money from that year. You know how it works, man. That's the word on the subscription model.
Subscription model for everything. Yeah. I'm definitely down with that. I'm not down with that.
That's why I'm not surprised. I need to own it. I need to own it.
Well, we were talking about conspicuous consumption and consuming ourselves in episode three now,
weren't we? Yeah, but there's a difference between owning something or, say, acquiring something
for a low, low, low, low, low, low price that you can then use and spending money and feeding the
beast that is capitalism. So true. I'd rather let it starve. On that note, so some of the tools I,
this is the only brother's podcast. This is. So things will a lot of times wind up in Logic Pro when
I want to master them and that basically that means adding compression and EQ and getting them way,
the way that the horrible way they will sound when they get to a final mixing state. But a lot of
the time, especially as the last two and a half years, I've been starting sonic projects on my iPad.
And I'm going to list a couple different programs I use on that to either sketch things out that
will wind up getting exported in one way, shape or form over to Logic or sometimes entirely created on
the iPad and mastered from there. So I'm going to pick out a couple notable ones. Starting with
the aforementioned garage band, which is a pretty powerful DAW for free, essentially. I think it's
the most widely known. If if I were to take the number of people, when I say I'm recording music,
they're instant like nine out of 10 times, they say, oh, do you use garage band? And I say, no,
I don't use garage band enough to clarify. But that's what I'm basing most widely known.
Yeah, I can definitely see that with Apple having a lot of popular mobile products. I do have a
question for you. I mean, there's tons and tons of garage band competing DAWs in the Windows world,
but I was curious. Did Microsoft ever decide to take that on in terms of having some kind of music
creation thing? They bundled right with the OS or just not something that interested them that much.
I don't think Microsoft has the skill to pull that off at this time. I haven't seen anything in
Windows 10 that lends itself to music creation. I think that would be a great
addition if they did add it because that's something that's instantly. If you're if you're to
compare Apple and Microsoft, yeah, just Microsoft doesn't come with it, whereas Apple does.
Yeah. I think at this time, no, they're they're bundling Xbox and they've got paint 3D and
movies and TV and mixed reality viewers and all sorts of crap, but nothing good. They have this
thing called groove music, which is essentially a crappier Windows media player. And that's better.
Got it. Well, for anyone that's never used garage band on any platform, I think you
you mentioned Casper. Yeah, it is pretty popular because you know, I said kind of in one breath,
it's dumb down, but that's kind of giving it short shrift. I guess really what I mean by that is
they they build in a lot of functionality that basically lets non musically trained people make
relatively decent sounding music. Now, of course, they're doing that in part through a lot of built-in
loops, you know, a pretty wide library that just comes built into the software, you know, and some
pretty intelligent virtual instruments like guitars and basses and different types of keyboards
that have some pretty interesting user interfaces that are in some cases kind of a they kind of
are an analog of a real guitar where you get to pluck the strings and stuff like that, but in other
cases they take a more kind of AI or we'll take over for you approach where you just kind of kind of
pick the the key or the cord you want to play in and then it'll do some strumming patterns and
stuff. So it's it's a lot of fun, but I'll make music in that. Some of the other ones though
where I've done some entire projects are Corg's module product, which is a it's definitely for iOS,
I'm guessing most of these have Android equivalent to. It emulates a lot of famous analog and digital
synthesizers and you bet it's the rest of it's just basically a sequencer so you get to stack up
your different synths to give you, you know, I don't know if there's any kind of limit on how many
tracks you can have, but you can in my case certainly have enough to make a mess between drums, bass,
pads and melody. I'll do a lot of projects in something called tabletop, which is by a company called
Retro Nims. I haven't heard of that. Yeah, it's neat. Basically what it does is give you kind of a
virtual the ability to create kind of a virtual little digital slash analog recording studio. So
it starts you off with a kind of a blank canvas and a eight track a simple eight track mixer and
to that you add and again, it's emulating some some kind of famous historic analog and digital
synth. So it's got something that's sort of akin to a Roland 808. It's got something that's
akin to a 303 bass analog synthesizer. It's got a kind of a digital guitar thing that you can
plug into it. It's got a bunch of effects and what you wind up doing is wiring it together.
It also has some more modern kind of and like most things Apple it's got in app purchases where you
can go get more stuff. So it's got some electronic dance music sort of glitch effect type stuff that
you can overlay. It's it's pretty cool. Retrimans they've been doing music software on iOS for
probably since the beginning. They also make a program called IMPC IMPC Pro and now IMPC Pro 2 is
about to be released or just got released and it's a software emulation or virtualization of the
or version. I guess I should really say of the ackey MPC rhythm machine which is an actual
thing that exists in the world that's got drum pads and beat slicers and sample slicers and
stuff on it but they run the entire thing inside of iOS. I have a fretless bass app that I use
that probably not very surprisingly sounds like a fretless bass. And if I play it right now which
I was actually gearing up to do it's probably going to sound like crap through my lab a lyric mic
although I don't think I'll be doing it because I haven't opened it in a while and now that I'm
doing it is sitting there spinning which is probably telling me the developer has not upgraded
their freaking software for iOS 11. So moving right along we have sector which is a basically a
statistical beat creation system so if you think of beat making and drum mapping kind of like
the hands of a clock broken up into 16 parts or 32 parts this basically lets you make some really
interesting EDM type sounds by determining when you hit certain parts of your rhythm section what's
it going to do? Is it going to jump to another section? Is it going to stay there and repeat and
make a kind of glitchy sound? Things of that nature. I have a really cool program that I only
barely understand and has a really odd interface but came as another emulation of a real world program
it's called reactable as in react table. Some of you might have heard of this it started in the
real world where you think of a big, think of a giant iPad or a giant screen that is a tabletop
facing up and then the original version of it had these cubes you would put on the table that had
different icons on the various sizes and you know there were motion sensors and detectors and
stuff that would determine what cube was where and what function it was performing so basically
it's a combination of wave generators and effects processors, sequencers, sampler players and the
cool thing is just by putting these objects on the table and then kind of linking them together with
virtual circuits I guess you would say you come up with some really strange abstract sorts of sounds
and in the show notes for this I'll give an example of at least one song a piece for each of the
where I've used either this app principally or exclusively to do it because I have a lot of this
on soundcloud. If you do any music creation on iOS you're probably familiar with something called
audio copy which is a pretty bread and butter app it's also written by Retrinums I think it's
one of the de facto standards although things might have progressed in the last year or so where
I've been away from it a little bit if you want to get audio from one app to another specifically
chunks of audio like if you want to render something or
or bounce something out of one app and bring it over to another audio copies kind of like your
virtual clearing house for doing that and it's pretty cool loopy is another app where I've done
entire projects in you basically take a bunch of samples you bring them in you have each one loop
you basically set a beat and you set an increments and you think of it let's say like
like a four by four matrix of different loops which can be different dumb drum beats different
bass lines and you basically turn them on and off and it knows where the sync up points are in the
tempo so you wind up making this dynamic but continuously smoothly flowing music so again I
could think of a few things I've done in loopy that give you some examples of I'm trying to flip
through here and see what else which other I think I said before that module was corg I might have
been thinking of gadget they might both be corg I'm not sure I machine two as another drum and sample
player it's pretty interesting kind of on the out there side of things there's an app and I don't
know if they've been updating it recently called music pro which takes a sort of interesting
approach it's think of think of a physics simulator kind of like angry birds and instead of
flying birds into objects to make them explode you are putting objects into a physics world
where every time they hit something and you're defining all the different surfaces and things
that things are bouncing off of it'll make a sound that you define like a kick drum or a snare drum
or some other sample you might have programmed in and since you have control over the physics
and how things react and bounce off each other you can keep it very simple to make sort of
traditional sort of non dynamic beats or you can kind of go
to BS crazy see I'm keeping it clean and have parts of the beats literally be balls and squares
and stuff that are bouncing off each other so you wind up with these beats that are for some
periods of time kind of stable and normally rhythmic but then we'll take a shift and kind of change
a little bit which is pretty neat be bought as in robots or bebop kind of mixed together is this
except I don't know if not actually no one's hearing that because what is this it's an app
that basically has this little screaming robot that it you've ever heard of a Thereman
Casper I know exactly what a Thereman it's basically that an iPad form so it's
oh yeah you show me that you show me yeah you control the you control the pitch on one axis
and the oscillation on the other so it's either irritating as hell or incredibly powerful
depending on how you want to look at it um I'm on my I think last page and I've been skipping a
bunch of apps here because some of them are a little redundant um I think the last one I want to
mention and then I'll mention the single physical instrument I have in my house at the moment and
then I'll hand it over to Casper is where was it where was it where was it
oh ampletube is a amp and guitar effects processor emulator and they have they love to make money
so they do a lot of in-app purchases they have several different versions that are out there
um that are geared towards the specific tones and sounds of different famous guitar players
um they also have a um a pedalboard that you can buy and plug in to basically control the thing
I spent probably a pretty fair chunk of change maybe 30 or 40 bucks on the ampletube specifically
for Jimmy Hendrix's sounds and the way they have them the way they have them yeah the way they have
it's yeah it's got the pedals and it's got the amps but then what's interesting is one of the ways
you go through and look at the sounds is they have it broken out like by song and then by part
so it'll it'll be like you know foxy lady
well I mean if you want to sound like if you if you want the intro rhythm part to foxy lady
and you want to sound like that then you basically can go and sound more or less exactly like that
assuming the sound coming out of your stringed instrument isn't that distinctive and you kind
of turn off any features that may have going on but yeah it's it's amazingly accurate but
you know we live in a world where amp and effects simulation and you know we have more options
than we know what to do with the actual absolute last piece of software instrumentation
I'll mention and it's not the last one I use but it gets honorable mention is um from native
instruments which is one of the yeah they do they make a ton of they make hardware they make
software they make a shit ton of different virtual instruments um I think the last time I checked
if you buy what they call complete which of course has to be spelled K-O-M-P-L-E-T-E which is
all of their software instrumentation all all of their chunks we're not even talking about like
contact I'm not sure I'm not sure I'm not have it it's called contact five contact five is one
of their products compete is it is the bundle that has hold on a second because I wanted I wanted
to price I wanted to price drop how much the thing costs some of course I'm going to there
I have no idea how much it costs I'm going to tell you because I'm going there right now so complete
complete 11 ultimate which is everything they make which is 87 products 18,000 sounds half a
terabyte of instruments is where's the store hello you would you would think just by clicking
special offer would shoot me right there this is the alien brothers podcast yes it is thank you
oh well right now because it is on special for the holiday you should get it for the low low price
of a thousand bucks or twelve hundred but but I mean that given given both the quality and the
quantity of the stuff that you're getting it's pretty it's it is pretty radical but native
instruments if you're into music at all you already know about them but if not check them out they
make some pretty amazing hardware and software so the last thing I'll mention since most of my
instruments are in other places around the country right now is my sole analog instrument at the
moment is a Steinberger M3 I believe this is circa I want to say 1989 so it's a solid body
six string headless guitar it has a transposing tremolo which if you're familiar with Steinberger's
trans trim system it's kind of like a a Floyd Rose but it lets you lock into multiple different
positions which basically has the same effect of moving the nut up and down or having a capo
without having a capo so moving the moving fret zero around see you guys always take it back to
the gutter you know but that combined with the hyper cheapo USB to guitar cable input I have is
pretty much all I'm rocking at the moment in terms of things that aren't running inside on a
processor somewhere with that said this podcast is probably becoming very effective at putting
the listener to sleep but if they're still with us they want to hear all about your setup
Casper oh um you're listening to the alien brothers podcast this is the alien brothers
podcast the alien brothers podcast Casper and Rodiker welcome word yeah so my setup is not like yours
and actually I found something interesting I was trying to research mobile android music apps
and simply put there's nothing I'm sure maybe some people can give us some comments
but I suspect that the and see that this is the double edged sword with piracy now as that
android you can download an AP APK install it easy peasy iOS has a pretty locked down wild garden
and you got to go through some hoops to root them so while you can you know download
pirated things for iOS it's it's a much higher uh much higher hurdle uh then android
and I believe that's why the native instruments and the corgs and the the big money music companies
do not make anything for android at this time one other thing that was noted was that
until android 5.0 they did not have low latency audio like iOS did so that was also a hindrance
at least in the early android days so um so I got nothing on mobile um although I will use a program
called ASR to record uh if I'm out and about or when we did our first podcast I use that to
record the audio sorry sorry to interrupt but I I can't believe I didn't give a shout out to
just press record on iOS which is what I was using for the same purpose when we were on the road so
it's a cool iOS app that does basic audio recording and if you want it'll do you know audio to text
transcription to out oh that's cool yeah um so my system or my DAW as as you call it uh
consists primarily it centers around a pre-sonus audio box 22vsl which is a two channel
multi-instrument input device it also accepts MIDI um you can adjust the levels on the two microphones
um and you can record in stereo obviously two channels it takes either a quarter inch or a microphone
input on the front has two of those and then it also has the MIDI in and MIDI out on the back
it connects with the USB 2.0 on the back and it also gives you either uh what do they call them
the studio uh studio quarter inch outputs for your uh what do you call them
console monitors monitors thank you sorry um it's got the two quarter inches for that
which I realized I should have used the other night when I was recording with a buddy
but normally what I use is just the headphone jack which you can also adjust the audio on
another key feature that it has is phantom power which is absolutely necessary a very very
very dear dear person in my life uh gifted me uh or at least let me hold on to a tremendous amount
of mics mic stands guitar cables MIDI cables and uh a guitar pedal
enormous amount of audio equipment so um in when I finally got the passion to make music and
decided that I was gonna do it and I bought this uh this pre-sonus audio box I had all the
requisite cables thanks to this uh this person who will go on named um so that's what my system
is all about it's all centered around the pre-sonus audio box that's hardware uh when we get down
to software the pre-sonus it comes with studio one artist edition which is more than I need I like
I said I'm still I learned something every time I dive in uh it took me about eight songs eight
eight or nine songs or you know basically I'll just go and I'll record or what I would do uh at
the end of the week on Fridays every Friday I after work I would get home and I'd spend five six
hours straight and just try to make a three-minute song um and it took about six or seven of those
before I figured out that I could uh pan the audio left and right to actually make a stereo
effect so uh I believe that studio one also may have the capability to do the drumming it does
have a metronome and it also has an adaptive mode but I had have not RT FM yet on the studio one I
just kind of like to dive in and figure it out um so that's what's up with that um one thing the
studio one artist edition does not have is the mastering so if you want to master or do any mastering
on your songs and put them into a project uh studio one artist does not allow that or it doesn't
it doesn't have that option there is no project tap uh so you can find ways to
upgrade to the professional edition which I have and so now I can master songs and add effects
and sometimes I'm over mastering most of the time I'm way over mastering and just blowing out
the song completely um but it's it's it's a learning process it's fun it's I just do it for fun
and I've actually found that my own songs have become stuck in my head while I'm doing the laundry
or doing the dishes or something you know so I like what I do and I've gotten some good feedback
from people and you know it's just fun it's it's it's a good time so I like playing music with people
also uh as far as instruments go uh as Rutiger mentioned uh I do have a good amount of his equipment
I I'm not using any of it though I'm being a good steward and I put everything to the side
um for safe keeping and so it does not get damaged in any uh musical performances
you you realize that's that A I appreciate you're hanging on to it but B it's not just
it's also for using all right you know I it well it's just that I do not
and I don't need it right that's fine that that's cool I just wanted to yeah no I I appreciate it
but but actually the uh the axiom pro 49 um that was very instrumental in in getting uh myself
acclimated to using midi in studio one um and also just using midi in general I have an elesis
uh drum machine that you can use it's a rack mount drum machine and it's it's pretty basic
um so so that's nice and you can control that through the midi um but I've also bought a
novation it's basically the the same thing as the axiom pro 49 but it's a novation
sl or novation remote 49 sl so they're both 49 it's basically novation just the same
they're the same model just different brand uh so basically they're both 49 key midi keyboards
that have like some some degree of like what we would call surface control right so they have like
sliders and pads and nods and like things that let you if when mapped correctly manipulate
either instruments or transports which is a fancy way of saying play, stop, record, bounce forward
etc yeah right and the I do have to say the novation as opposed to the axiom product uh the
novation it feels like a better build quality it's not as big and plastic um but it also comes with
auto map which makes that process of mapping a little bit easier I can't say that I've I've done
that to perfection by any means um but still learning with the midi um and then I have a drum set
that uh I inherited from a friend who had it at his parents house and his parents
would rather it not be in their basement anymore and he doesn't he lives out of the country
most of the time so uh so I have his drum set so I have found the the immense enjoyment of being
able to bang on just just just just hit something uh in a repetitive fashion in order to uh to add
some depth to musical tracks um I have two of Rutgers bass guitars uh one of which is a higher quality
one that maybe needs the battery replaced maybe I'll go to the music store and see what needs to
happen with that tomorrow uh but I've been using the the lower quality one but it's fine it's great I
love it and it's probably it's probably a nine volt battery they the the active electrics are
almost always nine volts I've never seen never seen a musical a good string guitar electric guitar
electric bass that uses anything but nine volts and I think it's because they're less likely to
well if you remember when I was on the phone with you and I we were walking through this and you
said there was a battery and then I started to try to open that that compartment and I said yeah
I'm not gonna try to do this because I'm gonna break it so that's why I will take it to the music
store there's a friendly friendly music store nearby and they're they're good people um so I got drums
got your basses I have five or six guitars electric guitars two acoustic guitars
and my friend whose drums I own he also brought over some interesting instruments
if you'll just give me one second I can give you what those are they make for some really
interesting sounds one is a corg micro corg XL which is a small keyboard and it also has a plug-in
for a vocalizer and you can switch it and have it do a whole bunch of different things and then
there's one other thing which is a line six let me grab the model here
we've had a lot of fun with this the other night you can do a lot of sonic uthe type stuff
this is a line six
a dlr4 delay modeler which is a programmable delay in 42nd loop sampler
um really really cool and when you combine this with the corg mini mini keyboard you can
get some really really interesting sounds so those are the two unique things I have here and I
also have which I'm not using the the podcast microphone input thing in the rack and then I believe
there's something else there's an amplifier or something to that effect in there and that's about
and it all connects to a pc running good old windows 10 nice nice run through when you mention
microphone to I remember sitting right in front of me and glaring at me because I was giving it no
love as my yeti blue principally vocal mic which one of these nights I'll have to actually sit down
and try it to you and or use for a podcast and see what happens for all the podcasts which would
be episode two three and this one that we've done from our respective homes I've been using a usb
lava lear mic by a brand I don't even know that I got on some flash sale at some point the the
yeti blue is on which is like a snow but I think it's called the snowball actually it's a it's
like a fear they're great microphones there they're nice I mean they sound really
good the problem is the acoustics in this room are terrible and I would basically have to be
hunched over very close to the windscreen in front of it throughout the entire
events in order to not have it be reverb city so excuse me that's why I've been using the
lava lear attached to my shirt but there as they say in the in the bids there's always next time
yeah um there's also with microphones currently I'm using a tack star pcm 6100
which I have two of those are condenser microphones and those were gifted to me by
my benevolent benevolent good dear dear person in my life and I also have I would be remiss if I
did not mention it as far as guitar pedals are concerned so for any guitar effects or at least for
the primary effects before I then throw in secondary effects and throw you know one guitar channel
to the left one to the right and make it sound all all overdone I use a digitech rp 255 and it has a
22nd loop which is nice but it also has 99 presets and rottiger is not one that's a good one
and that's what I uh that's what I use that's all there's to it so the next time I'm over will
I be allowed to have a preset yeah actually what you can do which I did at one time uh you can hook
the pedal up to the computer and you can down you can download it'll have a hole in your face where
you can do you can you can set your own presets and it'll have exactly what you spoke of before
kind of like the jimmy Hendrix thing except it'll have it'll be song based so it'll say like rolling
stones uh a rolling stone songs I can't believe I will I know I the rottiger the rottiger underscore
zero preset which if you give me if you're willing to give me one give me shelter give me shelter
if you give me one slot I will I will give you the tone you've been looking for but you didn't know
is that the brown tone how did you know I I know you and your tricks
we just we started early on our relationship is based on tricks
well yeah and and to tonight's a revelation well here's what's going to happen I think what's
going to happen when we do this one in post is I'm going to take us out with some music from
each of us what do you think about that Casper I think that sounds like a wonderful idea I am
happy to it what we wind up using will wind up in the show notes because I don't know what I'm
going to put on there it's hard it's so hard to say but we'll also we'll also have we'll have
some links and some soundcloud accounts and all that stuff in in episode two and also you can
find on our Facebook social media account our soundcloud accounts that may or may not be done by
Casper and Rutiger or could be friends of Casper and Rutiger who's to say does our Facebook
account even have like an image up other than it does it does I I made some big strides today
our Twitter has one our Facebook has one Instagram I couldn't get it to work because you actually
have to take a picture and you know I'm opposed to taking pictures because geolocation and
my tinfoil hat could not allow for for the insta so you'll have to fill in the insta profile
but I was able to find some what I believe are creative common use pictures
for our Facebook and our Twitter and I I put out a couple topical tweets
did some Facebook stuff and yeah I got I got the ball rolling on the social media so
wow the the the crawlers haven't hit it yet because I just I just googled Alien Brothers podcast
Facebook and got Zulch it's Alien Brothers PC you did set up this account these accounts now
it's like all one word
and you're in the set you said oh no it's Alien it's it's Theo Alien Brother
yeah I'd use that old trick it's Theo Alien Brother
I know that's a terrible trick hey if if it if it wow it's amazing it's got it's got content
and stuff on it good good work Casper I told you I was making strides I was making
mistakes you're you're you're like the ultimate webmaster Facebook doing some high jumps
high kicks high kicks and some high kicks it's it's even got people we may know and I don't know
now we would know them I don't think I'm pretty sure we don't know anybody I just I just
clicked add add add add add add add add just just randomly so whoever's on there I I couldn't tell
you who that is I just want to get the broadest base that we can did you did you properly attribute
this radical image of these two aliens hugging each other uh I assume if I didn't then I'll be
notified good good good thinking that that's how I rolled that's how I rolled bro this is the
Alien Brothers podcast Casper and Redgar okay well I need to get I need to get to work on can
I I I did my contribution by like setting up the account and vow and activating it now you're
you've like jumped to light speed past I I need to be part of this this is the Alien Brothers podcast
aliens reminding us and on that note I think I'm I'm I'm gonna have to give a sad farewell because
A I'm tired and B I'm getting depressed because I have to go visit my mom tomorrow oh I'm sorry I
thought she she did take you up on the offer well I I can still hope for a blizzard which would
make me happy but make a lot of other people unhappy so I guess I really shouldn't wish for
the teacher zone I mean to say subjective just like music just like music the weather is just
like mine mine needs outweigh all all of northern Virginia's just like music well we were we were
on track to to get it under an hour but with that so I know but I I felt like we this is the
most on track episode that we've had yeah I know because we just like we just like ran through it
yeah we just ran through all the musical instruments that we own which is it's pretty easy and clear
cut it's not it's not a it's not a deep philosophical thing that could be you know cut into a
different you know different different different angles different ways of looking at it I wasn't I
wasn't I didn't feel compelled to attack anyone or put myself down that always speeds things up
but yeah but that's like half the fun is putting yourself down and it's so true you know it's so true
oh god because nothing gets me off then when I put it down six feet down the ground no concrete
trophy back you know and makes wakes up all right stop me then stop me then I know for me now
write it on a postcard anyway so listen to pavement folks thanks for tuning in again I love you
Casper love you Rettaker this is the brother's podcast and I'm going to just unplug I'm just
gonna unplug I'm just gonna unplug too okay all right all right peace out bye bye bye
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