What we did at the weekend

www.betika.co.uk
Carolyn and I did an overnight session at a studio called Alchemea in Islington this weekend. We recorded acoustic versions of "We will not know peace", "You can call me brother", "Pink Hulk" and "The only way is up" with John Jeffreys, who is one of the many new friends we've made this year. The trip was the first long-distance trip Carolyn had made in her new (old) MG (a '79 BGT), and also the first time we'd attempted to fit guitars into it- it turns out that despite appearances, you can actually get quite a lot of stuff into the back. It's a good job she didn't get the roadster version! We travelled up in the early evening and did the usual hicks-go-to-London thing of getting slightly lost and exercising poor lane discipline, we arrived around 10 and we worked through pretty much solidly and very productively 'till about 7am, when we packed up and went home. Carolyn was far more sleep-deprived than me, so she went home to bed. I on the other hand was wide awake somehow, if a little ragged around the edges, and I wasted the afternoon doing this. I apologise if you are a fan of, or are even aware of the original version- this will probably upset you just as much as that bloke out of The Darkness' horrid version of "This town ain't big enough for the both of us". It just seemed like a good idea at the time. I hadn't slept for over 24 hours and I was very, very tired.
In other developments, I've built a sequential switch circuit into the Lexitone, as Betika's Casio MT-40 is henceforth to be known. I made a particular sound with it while recording the demo of new song "Penis" by manually sliding around the switch that selects the sounds, and I wanted to be able to recreate it automatically, so with not a little help from Imogen (who is our resident electronic genius) I designed and built a circuit to do the job. It's the first thing I've ever made with ICs in it, and probably the only thing I've built since school with transistors for that matter. I'll post a proper illustrated account of how I done it on the web somewhere when I get the time, in case anyone is interested in doing something similar, the circuit can be applied to any instrument that uses mechanical switches to select or modify sounds.

"I'm not showing you mine until you've at the very least described yours"