Yesterday I got back into the studio, which I use so infrequently these days the dog has decided that that is where she poops whenever it snows. On this sunny Sunday morning the floor was turd free – a good sign! With plans to record keyboard parts for the second Manotaur album in the afternoon, I thought it would be a good idea to make sure everything still worked.
In the process, a strong argument for computers getting the blues emerged. If you want to get technical – you can turn the “swing” knob on the minibrute all the way to the right and slow the tempo of the DAW to 60 BPM and voila, blues pulse, highly reminiscent of lesson one at Otis Taylor’s trance blues festival year after year: nail down that heartbeat and deviate from it at your peril.
Thanks for taking the time to enjoy this video of me noodling around with some keyboards in my basement. With all the medicine and the child rearing and the Netflix and the need for sleep I forget to come down here sometimes. I love this gear and will do my best to continue justifying keeping it around. If you like what you see then why not see more at https://www.brianjuan.com ?
Not harmed in the making of this video:
Minimoog Voyager XL (someday I’ll learn what all the fiddly bits do)
Moogerfooger MF-104M Analog Delay (ditto)
Roland TR-8S (more options and easier to use than the 808 and in my opinion sounds just as good)
Arturia MiniBrute (Swing knob!)
Roland Juno 60 (Bought from Robb’s Music for next to nothing back in 1999. I’ll forever be grateful to Robb Candler for saying to someone “why don’t you call Brian and see if he wants that before we put it on the floor?”)
Wurlitzer Electric Piano (Found in the trash when I was in med school. Teacher model. Speaker was broke, but not broke anymore. Also not at all portable.)