Translating dreams: I woke up from a nap this afternoon, and the entire dream, from what I can remember, was me sitting at the desk in the spare bedroom staring at a Fostex 16-track recorder. Any o

Jesus, yeah. I've beem so broke before that I dreamed I had ten dollars.

Recently, I hadn't dreamt so much as hoped, that I could start buying groceries with real money instead of a credit card (with a shitty 22%). That'll probably come true before I can stop bouncing tape tracks 1-3 onto 4 in order to have a decent sounding arrangement.

My recurrent dream is that I walk into a music shop and find a totally eccentric, delightful sort of drum machine/workstation that is simple, comically designed, and full of charismatic sounds. It has coloured buttons. It is designed for the home organ market, is of a 1982-3 vintage, but would have been very expensive in its day. It costs around $700 AUS, cheap, but too much money for me. I go home hoping it will be there next week. But when I return, it is gone, and I wake up, upset and bathed in sweat.

One of these fascinating drum machine/synth/sequencer combinations was a steam driven affair. Another one I have dreamed about so many times I am really not sure whether it is real or not.

Music gear dreams! Steam-driven drum machines! Woah. Colin, maybe you can help me figure out the third Matrix movie.

Matt, I'm still trying to figure out why the second movie revealed the rebels to be kitted out with more technology than Bill Gates. That air traffic control room early in the movie (I turned off the video after about 25 mins) is unaffordable by a small nation, let alone a rag-tag bunch of rebels (although they do change out of their rags and into high Euro fashion leather gear for their meetings, I noticed). What did they do, stealall the circuits from garbage cans?

Once I figure that out, I'll watch the third one. By the way, my only regret is not seeing the party scene in Matrix II. I hear it's hilarious. Which gives me an idea for a thread. I hope to see you all there...

Helltime, have you ever thought about getting a cheap audio soundcard and a 2nd hand version of Cool Edit Pro or something?

If you already have a PC, then it'd only cost say £100-150 to get yourself set up with a decent home computer recording system, then you can record endless tracks and have much more control over your music. Cool Edit Pro pretty much funtions like a tape machine anyway and its piss easy to use.

Sorry if you already know all this, and just want to stick to a hardware-only based set up.