woot

my VariOS came in the mail yesterday. it took me about 3 hours before i could even get a sound out of it, mostly due to the fact that the software that came with it was about 5 years old and not even remotely compatible with the newest version of OSX. but a couple of trips to the Roland website and I was on track.

the VariPhrase technology that allows you to do pitch and time warping effects on samples is pretty amazing, but not without it's limitations. i'll need to play around with it to get a good idea of what kind of source material is needed to achieve the sounds i'm looking for. for example: i loaded up a sample of the Beastie Boys "Intergalactic" and re-pitched it to sound like a choir of robot voices (as opposed to a single solo voice) and it worked great until the original sample does it's pitch bend effect. it seems like at that point the processor couldn't keep up with the constantly changing pitch and it produces some weird (and very noticeable) artifacts. i'm thinking the best result will be obtained by recording the vocals sung, but at a monotone pitch, that way i can use a groove map to quantize them and use a vocal transformer or pitch correcter to "normalize" their pitch before loading them into the VariOS and bending them all up! as i write this i realize that someone reading will likely have no idea what i'm talking about... that's ok though, makes me sound well smart.

anyways, here's a pic of the device in my home setup:

still need to solder together two more cables to connect the direct outs to the inputs on my soundcard. i'll do that on sunday. right now we are heading out to look after a friend's children. we'll be staying there overnight. i like hanging out with small children. you get to be totally silly and play with toys and nobody looks at you like you are a mental patient...