I find myself, as I often do, in the Eastern Sierra. I’m just north of Mono Lake. I head this way whenever I’m able to get time off work.
This time I brought more stuff than usual.
A couple months ago I purchased a demo unit of Modal Electronics’ Argon 8 wavetable synthesizer. Since then, I’ve been trying to learn its various knobs, patches, effects and other doodads.
The place I’m staying has no satellite TV, and very slow internet. It’s a good place to concentrate; the only real distraction is the view of the lake. It’s a good location for sketching out ideas and doing some recording (and re-recording).
I have an old M-Audio Firewire 410 interface that only works with old versions of OS X on old laptops. So I brought the old laptop. The Modal app, however — useful for patch editing and the like — only works on new(er) laptops. So I brought the new(er) laptop, too.
As misfortune would have it, the Modal app stopped recognizing the Argon after I upgraded the latter’s firmware this morning. The synth still works fine. So it goes.