The Rockula Update August 2015

I am not sure what has motivated me to finally move forward on my artistic plans but there is more than just a surge of optimism this time
There are quite a few concepts that I have been juggling in my head and it was time to figure out which one would garner the most attention and which one would require the least amount of preparation
I settled on one concept called “The One Man Tribute Band” and it would be called “The Ramone”

To force myself into action, I bought a Mostrite shaped guitar and painted it white

The setup will be me playing guitar and singing while I project video of me playing the drum and bass parts

I have built a pretty solid set that should appeal to as many Ramones fans as possible and am drilling it every day on guitar, drums and bass

Today was my day off which meant that I didn’t have to worry about getting enough sleep. I have started to drink coffee and I thought I was being really intense by drinking it at 10pm!
Last night was a great burst of positive energy but I was all Ramones out so I started messing around with the new Multiple Man concept
The biggest obstacle that I have encountered with my video sampler is that there is a very quick but very noticeable lag after you trigger the video
So much that I was having to alter my timing
The SPDS triggers instantly and you hit your samples “on the one” which means that you trigger the loop exactly the same time that the next part comes up
If you’re late, it shows and is the looping equivalent of missing your spot
That’s the danger of looping that makes it more than just “pressing Play and playing along”
When you trigger the video sampler, you have to hit it on the “and” of four
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 AND 1 etc…
Hitting something a half beat ahead of the next riff is really hard and I make the drum parts hard enough
That delay is called “latency”

Meat Pie tried to figure out the latency issue and so did David Lee
There were many different forums that hinted abut the problem but none of them offered any concrete solutions that would help us
That’s when I hit on a compromise
I separated the audio and video in my video editor and then did an experiment
I loaded the audio onto the SPDS because I knew it would play with no latency and then I started trimming single frames from the video clip and loaded several versions onto the P-10
The very first clip was the trick and I figured out that the latency was only one frame of video
My solution for now is to host the audio on the SPDS and the Video on the p-10 with one frame removed from the beginning of every video

It has taken me months to address this issue because I thought it could be solved by correcting the machine
I am still not sure if the machine can even be corrected but i couldn’t wait any longer so I went and tried the frame trimming idea and it worked
My only issue is that I lose the feature of being able to include audio in my video looping but I have another compromise that may work as well
My next problem is trying to figure out how to remotely trigger the A/B looper and reverse mode

My mood was very good and i was very proud of myself so I wound up playing all of my material and trying to figure out how to get it to conform to my new structure
Unfortunately, I am paying for it today because my joints are all sore after months of near inactivity

The next step is to start booking shows for both Multiple Man and The Ramone

In video news, I am editing a lot of old camera tapes and VHS in order to upload them to my various Youtube channels
I have already uploaded some Autonomy shows as well as “Psychedelic Glue Sniffin’ Hillbillies” and an autograph session by M.O.D at Underground records in 1988

I am aware that I have been neglecting my blog but I have been climbing out of a “Lack of motivation” hole and need to get in a routine again