Continuing the tradition of audio world peace pipe philosophy topics, this one has been bothering me for a while.
Nowadays developing plug-ins has become much easier than producing hardware synths. There is more choice of effects and instruments out there than weird vegetables in a Chinese grocery. That’s scary. Software for music-making gets more sophisticated (read, complicated) every day, and it’s supposed to make our lives easier, and free up time to walk Sparky, or learn to cook that fancy omelette.
There is always new versions of something coming out too, but do we constantly need new updates and versions of software we have just finished learning, as opposed to spending that time composing?
Continue reading ‘More New Gear - Bleh?’
A while ago, I’ve read about digitalmusician.net in Sound on Sound. The idea seemed super great - you could collaborate with other users by inserting a VST plugin on a track or a bus in your sequencer, and all the sound from that source would get transcoded into mp3 and sent to the other user in real time. That, coupled with webcam support, seemed like a really cool way to collaborate. You could basically jam via Intertron, quickly bounce ideas, send files over, and do whatever it is you want to do with the webcam during your jam breaks. I’ve tried the plugin personally, and it worked great, but for some reason the idea didn’t really take off.
Now, the guys at digitalmusician have released a new piece of standalone “internet-enabled” multi-track software. Pretty much the same idea as the plugin, but now you don’t even need a host to run the plugin. That, by the way, could have been why it didn’t take off too - the plugin, from what I remember, was VST only, shutting the doors on all the bedroom users of Pro Tools, Logic, and DP.
I’ll give it a run, and I suggest you do too, but personally I think that nothing can replace the beauty of human collaboration, with all the sweating, physical abuse, and peace pipe sessions during tape rewinding time. Ye.
I’ve been subscribed to the RSS feeds of a few audio gear categories on eBay as well as all the music related ads on Craig’sList in my area, and the prices on some old/vintage gear have made me wonder.
There is plenty of gear out there now which used to be made for musicians on a budget, but now costs quite a fortune due to that ’special’ signature sound. But wouldn’t that mean that lots of cheap gear that you can buy new nowadays will go up in price as shit slowly turns into gold?
Continue reading ‘Expensive cheap old gear’
This band added our project as a friend, and I went to check them out.
What can I say - the girls rocked my world. I’m completely in love with the second track on the EP which is full of the stuff I like so much as of late - female vocals, lots of distortion, and simple hooks. Yeah Yeah Yeahs still rule the Most Player chart in my iTunes, but as soon as Zambri release the EP in good quality, they’ll be played quite a bit as well.
Very nice tracks, Jessica and Christi! Thanks for adding indeed.
I am going to tell you why you should listen to progressive house. Even you, grandma.
This is rather strange, but recently I’ve discovered that I have a pretty bad addiction to sometimes rather mindless progressive house. ETN.fm, the station that I usually listen to, has switched to a new streaming format. Now, I didn’t know that, and when I would try to use iTunes to listen to the station, it just wouldn’t play.
So, big deal, it doesn’t work. I kept checking on it all the time, and in the meantime tried the other stations, like ABF and Hotmix, which are full of dance hits with some vocals and melodies. Holy crap! Unbearable. While the bigger names in the latest electro house aren’t bad, the smaller ones are just overcompressed rubbish which wears out your ears in 10 minutes. I’m really starting to miss disco house now.
Continue reading ‘Progressive House Addiction’
We had a guy drop in the store with a machine today. He just couldn’t get the MIDI to work at all, and the problem appeared to happen on the OS and not the software level.
We would go into the Audio MIDI Setup utility, and after spinning the beach ball for a little while, the MIDI tab would tell us that it was “Unable to Launch MIDI server”. Turns out, Digidesign was to blame. I think they are quickly turning into the audio world scape goat ala Microsoft, and for a good reason too.
UPDATE: One of the people who commented on this post, franck, may have come up with a solution, or at least a temporary fix. I don’t have an Ultralite on hand so let me know if it works out for you. And make sure to comment if it doesn’t - maybe we can at least make MOTU listen and absorb the costs of getting this worked out. Seriously, what the fuck.
Continue reading ‘PowerBook + Ultralite: Unable to Launch MIDI server’
