Some Tycho News
Above is some (poorly shot on a phone, sorry) test footage from the new visuals set for the Tycho live show (next one is this Thursday, 4/7 in SF). The song is from the forthcoming album. It’s not all completely tightened up yet but you get the idea. I recently stripped down the entire live set — audio and video — and started from scratch. With the new album pretty much wrapped up I decided to rework the visuals to go with all the new material and to have everything work better with the new live band. What you’re seeing is VDMX effecting / compositing video in real-time on a Macbook Pro. Everything is being triggered / synced by another machine via MIDI over IP running Reaper which is handling all the audio duties.
I’ve been using VDMX for years now but just recently switched to Reaper as my DAW for recording and decided to use it for the live shows as well (Was never happy with Ableton. It’s a great app but it just didn’t fit my specific needs / workflow). It’s been a very freeing experience to say the least. Being able to use the same software in the studio and on stage has helped immeasurably and opened up some possibilities that didn’t exist before. Here’s hoping it all works as smoothly on Thursday (the first Tycho show to feature the new album and visuals) as it has been during rehearsals.
I also wanted to take this time to give a bit of a progress report on the new Tycho album. It feels like forever since I started, but everything has finally come together. Things took a lot of twists and turns; a lot has changed and some songs have been shelved while new ones have taken their place. But I think the album is now — finally — what I envisioned it to be when I started this process some two years ago. All that is left to do now is tie up some loose ends and complete the mixing / mastering phase and things should be ready to go. With label schedules and all that I’d imagine a release date sometime after this summer.
Thanks to everyone for your patience and support over this past couple years. You have afforded me the ability to focus on my work in a way I was never able to before, and for that I am extremely grateful.
