Whats cool?

[dayuri]

What are you listening to these days? What tracks have motivated you lately to go and crank up your Korg whatchamacallit and make something? These forums seem to be a lot about making but not much about listening, and since both are equally important, lets even up the score a bit.

Me first:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ1pqYKMB7E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU22Lh6K ... D0A6E43D12

NSFW http://vimeo.com/9405214

Ok your turn.

[billbaker]

On of the more inspiring things to me in the past couple of years has been seeing Thomas Dolby live, out doing his one man "Sole Inhabitant" show.

I've been a huge fan for many years. Seeing him live (again) was a treat. Hearing what he could do with the new generation of gear was: humbling, inspiring, astounding, just plain cool. At the show in Baltimore I was literally 20 feet away. Bought the album, the video, the T-shirt, and the cocktail napkins... and grinned all the way home.

In interviews after the fact (in keyboard magazine among others) he was explaining his rig, his sounds, and his controllers. An amazing (to me) amount of it was low budget ($99 m-audio trigger finger), second hand (touch screen computer interface), recycled (repurposed analog testing knobs), last-generation (i.e., mac g3) attainable stuff; bought on e-bay, scrounged, re-invented, home-made stuff.

Dolby's got a piece of every Nokia phone with a ringtone, he's not hurting for cash, but he's built his rig with the sensibility of the starving student musician he started out as.

It's gotta be heartening to anyone trying to make music happen using "budget" or "starter" gear and "entry level" synths.

BB