I figure.. even if I’m totally consumed by other things.. I ought to try and at least get up a post a week or so.. so here goes

These posts might be getting repetitive on this point.. but allow me to describe for you the first track.. as it stands

Lyrics

It’s based on some lyrics I tweeted.. I don’t have them handy.. but I’ll probably post them in good time.. kind of surreal / dada-distic, so to speak.. a strange style of writing.. pretty out there.. extraordinarally deep.. though there depth lys in a place that makes them difficult to understand.. seems almost like gibberish in places.. 

If I were to try and put it in a sound bit.. its as if it’s blaming our current economic problem as an effect of extroversion in the modern situation..  but I’m not sure if that’s what it’s really doing.

Vocal Performance

The performance is to be realized via VirSyn’s Cantor.. which is a vocal synthesizer.  I’ve really only fiddled with Cantor thus far.. so I’m not entirely sure about.. well if I’m going to be able to get an acceptable performance out of it.. not sure how it’ll end up working.. not sure if the work flow I’m attempting is realistic.. so this remains the big question mark.

The way I’m working it is to write out a synth line.. that’s the vocal line.. a kind of stand in.. and to take that performance data.. and put it into Cantor.. and basically fine tune it from there.

The frequency space of Cantor, versus the synth that’s doing the mock up.. will be different.. so.. a part of the process will be trying to make Cantor intelligible with all the other stuff going on in the mix..  well its actually slightly more complex then even this.. Basically.. we have a tun of instruments.. that I’ve brought down into a few groups.. the plan is the put EQ and Compression on the different groups individually.. via Liquid Mix 16.. also put something on the master buss.. and kinda automate the EQs as needed.. 

I also expect that.. once the performance data gets brought into Cantor.. I might start messing around with it.. and possibly there’ll be stuff like backing vocals.. and who knows what.

The Music

The music is pretty insane actually.. I’d say it’s sorta Indra’s Net-esk.. only more so.. taken to a whole new level. 

What goes into it

So far the production features about 30 instruments.. and about 8 auxiliary effects.. We’re talking 2 instances of Digital Performer’s convolution reverb.. 2 delay orientated Guitar Rig Patches, one EVerb from Digital Performer.. 2 reverbs from Kore 2… and I’m not sure what else.. 

To appreciate the insanity of this.. For each instrument.. besides simply telling it what notes to play when, and how hard to play those notes.. you have the automation of Pan position, volume, 8 auxiliary sends.. very often pitch bend and modulation.. and some of the instruments have other performance parameters that I might play with over the course of a track. So.. that’s what..  12 times 30? So that’s 360 parameters you’re programing.. never mind the notes.. So the production is very time consuming.. And though I’ve put in a lot of labor.. it’s currently only about two thirds of the way through… and only a little more then 3 minutes long.

Results thus far

As I was saying before.. It reminds me quite a bit of my Indra’s Net stuff.. only more so. The things I felt critical of in Indra’s Net.. well.. it overcomes those problems and limitations.. There’s more instruments, more effects.. more advanced software, way more powerful computer.. What all this means to the music is… well I’m not really sure.. but I think it’s something kind of big.

While we’re at it, I might as well share with you one of the question marks it presents me with…  Because the amount of instruments, and what not, are so much higher.. things are way more complex. Structurally, my music is not big on repetition…  at least not in a conventional sense..  One of the reasons repetition is important to.. say pop music, is it assists the digestion of the music… it is, after all, “the hook.” When my music was a few order of magnitude less complex then the current project.. I think the simplicity made it easier to digest.. So one of the things I worry about is.. well.. how difficult it might be to appreciate / digest / whatever… So… that’s like a design consideration question.

If we just listen to the music and try and appreciate what it is..  

Well its like a first step into a new world. I think it might be some of the best stuff I’ve ever done. It is full of amazing moments.. flying between a kind of symphonic like aggression kind of LSD trip.. to adventures in ambient space.. where we feel the contraction of space its self.. beneath our feet.. Along the way we travel through so many different sonic spaces and environments.. experience so many different sonic phenomenon.. From classical to all out electronica..  I just think its amazing.

On Lyrics and Music

Now.. beyond all that.. the music is actually a kind of score to the lyrics.. so the music moves through space in such a way that.. it in some way comments on the lyrics.. There’s a line “to creep the reaper out” and we feel the darkening of the space around us…. 

It seems, in a certain way, that both my lyrics and my music are like “adventures in run on sentences.”  It’s all stream of consciousness stuff..  we can go anywhere at anytime.. for any reason.. but..

The spirit of the lyrics is playfully subversive.. seeking to express truths that.. are somehow how in our collective shadow.. My lyrics are very often dark.. living in the abyss.. some of there darkness has to do with there.. transcendence of conventional.. limitations.. which is it’s self an expression of freedom.. all be it free to give satan a bare hug, or something.. freedom  to be monstrous… 

The music is another matter.. A music that is programmed.. note by note… where we’re probably programing something like.. well how many parameters per note? A lot…  That’s a slow a methodical process… It’s not really free as the breeze in quite the same way the lyrics are.. It’s more “free to exert influence over the momentum of the flux in question.” 

So the free as a bird lyrics becomes the central axis point of the whole production.. It’s like a stream of consciousness construction that’s.. somehow taken to this very extreme point of being realized.. via a slow and methodical process? The slow and methodical process is stream of consciousness to.. just that it’s a stream that takes place for days.. as a pose to a couple of tweets on twitter.. 

Going Deeper Into It.

It may sound like I’m just throwing a lot of random inane facts at you… that’s because I’m fumbling in the dark to try and express something I’ve yet to articulate… ok.. read onward for the break through.. or stop here.

We have streams of consciousness that happen at different time scales, what does that mean? Look at your self..  at some point.. and try to become mindful of all the thoughts as they stream past your consciousness.. We could be talking about.. “lets smell this flower” to “I think I shall now turn my head to find out what that dog is barking about.” 

You can look at it in such a way so as to see many thoughts as being made up of smaller thoughts.. and.. if you could imagine your thoughts as grains.. that made this kind of gass.. that filled a space.. you could say “show me all the grains that correspond to this theme” and you would start to see patterns in how various smaller thoughts where components of multiple larger thoughts.. 

I have a kind of pscyho-philosophy that has explored the dynamics underlying how all this works.. Why we think of what when.. what drives our attention.. and how this related to our concepts of reality and life, and what not.. And as it turns out.. this psycho-philosophical blah blah blah.. underlies my thoughts on aesthetics.. and is a major part of my the conceptual framework I use in making my art and music.. 

The idea that we’d be, essentially.. scoring streams of consciousness.. with streams of consciousness.. in a rather operatic way.. The idea that its sorta all on a lark.. that we then become committed to.. if for no other reason then to.. see what might happen.. that in a sense the whole production is nothing but a little experiment to see where all these thoughts lead…

Well that’s my problem with trying to articulate something.. how do you articulate an intuition? 

Well I guess that’s all I’ll write about on that track for now…  lol, but wait.. there’s more.. there’s also a Reason project in the works

The Reason Project

I was starting to feel a little burned out on the huge sound project.. so I thought I’d go take a stroll through Reason..  This project had me starting out via programming a couple Thor patches.. 

I don’t think of myself as terribly talented in the field of sound synthesis.. but.. sound synthesis is.. well I’ll end up with something.. and that something will probably give me something unique to try and go explore as a part of the larger production.

This project also had me loading up REX files..  Ages ago I blogged about how I had invested in ReCycle.. and used cheese open source voice synths to realize some lyrics.. and how I’d processed the hell out of those lyrics.. and then chopped them up into REX files.  Well.. I decided to take one line from that project.

This gets into another whole set of ideas I was playing with.. at the current stage… The idea is that we could eventually put together a track that would be.. that whole song.. with all the lyrics to it.. but for now we have one sentence.. going into this new project.. or one sentence.. cut up.. distorted.. processed.. rendered FUBAR.. played for it’s textures.. not even meant to be recognized as the sentence it is..

Here the vocals become.. a strange texture explored.. we emphasize a few words.. out of context.. as it turns out.. the word we are emphasizing in this project is the word “context.”

In any event.. there will be more to be talked about latter.. I’m over tired here.. what I will say is there’s some very interesting things coming into play with how I’m starting to play with lyrics and how they relate to the structure of the music I’m making….  leave it at that…

NaSoAlMo: What it is and why we like it

This month, or November actually, I plan on participating in NaSoAlMo, other wise known as National Solo Album Month.. This is a thing where various musician / sound artistic types.. decided to participate in a challenge to create a solo album in a months time..  Basically.. it’s an excuse to get serious.. for a month.

Last year, as long times followers would know, I created ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures.. for NaSoAlMo….  This, I must tell you, was one hell of an adventure. There’s nothing like working your ass off on something, if you want to grow by leaps and bounds… and at the end of last years National Solo Album Month’s thing..  I felt like I had made a giant jump in my music production / etc skills..  And so now, we embark on the next adventure…

On the Stategery and tactics of taking on such a challenge

Generally speaking.. if I’m working in my conventional ways.. and didn’t have a lot of other stuff to contend myself with.. was very focused.. I could maybe spit out about a track a week.. which might be around.. oh lets say an average of about 6 minutes a pop…. which comes out to what, like 24 minutes of music? Well.. the challenge is to make an album of at least 29:09 minutes.. so that’s not quite going to cut it.. and seeing as I have other things to deal with in life.. and seeing as last year I only found out about this about half way through the month… one must develop alternative strategies and tactics.. which is perhaps another interesting thing to deal with… 

So, lets take a look at last years strategies.. and this years strategies.

ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures Production Strategy 

I found out, as I said before, about this challenge, about half way through the month.. but had already begun work on a few tracks.. so figured I could still make a go of it.. If I tried something radicle.

My radical process started with.. working with different types of sound generating type programs.. where you improvise via tweaking various parameters and record the results. This instantly creates a whole lot of music.. but then you have the question of “is this interesting music?” So the next challenge is “how do we make this interesting music?” This became the jumping off point for an experimental sonic adventure. For the most part, this involved the following approaches:

1. Lets Process the crap out of these audio files.
2. Lets mix stuff together different versions of processed audio into a kind of composite audio file.
3. Lets slice up the audio file into discreet loops n stuff
4. Lets sequence the loops
5. Lets integrate this with our usual way of working 

 Well, that’s the broad outline anyway.. 

Tools Used

1. Ableton Live
2. Arturia Storm
3. Native Instruments Komplete (mostly Reaktor)
4. A Wimpy G4 Mac
5. Reason
6. A guitar
7. A Zoom H4 field recorder 

Ok, so that’s the basic broad brush stroke outline of it.. You can read more of my writings related to this project here…  That would be the full list.. The writings where I wrote during the production are as follows: Off In Reaktor Land, Red Rum Re Drumed, and finally Gonzo adventures in music production.

Should you like to hear the album in it’s entirety, you can find it on over here at mattsearles.com/music. 

At the time I created it.. I wasn’t real sure of it.. but since then I’ve gotten a lot of good reviews from people.. and now figure.. well, it’s probably a pretty good album.

The New Production Adventure

Tools likely to be used:

1. The Bad Ass 8 Core Mac Pro
2. This here new MacBook (2GHz Due)
3. Komplete 5
4. Kore
5. Ableton Live
6. Reason
7. ReCycle
8. A Tascam 16 channel Mixer as a MIDI controller
9. An M-Audio DJ like MIDI controller
10. A Guitar
11. A Slide Bass
12. Digital Performer
13. Liquid Mix 16
14. Couple of budget Condenser Microphones
15. Zoom H4

In addition to all that madness..  I’m looking to add VirSyns Cantor Vocal Synth and… VirSyns “Take Five FX bundle” which includes Bark, Matrix, Reflect, TDesign, and VTape. Indulge me as I talk about these a little, won’t you?

1. Bark is a pretty interesting looking  27 band filter / EQ and compressor
2. VTape is a set of analog tape emulation plugs that emulate tape based saturation, delay, and flange. I’m very much in need of a tape delay type effect.. and very much wanting some sort of analog tape emulation warmth.. 
3. Reflect is an Algorithmic Convolution Reverb. Even in the current version of Digital Performer, I’m not feeling like my reverb bases are covered quite enough.. and I expect Reflect to really help out along these lines.. and the integration of Algorithmic and Convolution technologies into a single reverb unit is a quite attractive thing.
4. TDesign is a Transient former.. I don’t know too much about this sorta effect.. but it does give you control over your dynamics / transience.. and there are quite a few production folks out there whom are very into such things
5. Matrix is a Vocoder, and according to a recent issue of Sound On Sound, a very impressive Vocoder.

 So… as you can no doubt see.. We’re talking about a massive upgrade from last year’s project.. studio wise anyway, so, what of the plan off attack?

Plan of Attack

I have lots of music ideas, and I’m pretty sure this project isn’t going to be able to explore them all.. but, we’ll certainly see how far we can make it.

• The first thing I want to do is.. See if I can’t jam out some stuff using Kore to control various Reaktor beatboxes, sequenced instruments, and sound generators..  This will effectively create one box full of building blocks.
• Next I want to experiment with a somewhat traditional-ish approach to sequencing.. where you play around on a keyboard, quantize stuff, and put together stuff that way..
• I want to use ReCycle to create REX files out of some of the results.. to use as building blocks that way.
• A rather central thing I want to explore is.. vocals. These vocals will probably be ether.. me speaking into microphones and vocoding the hell out of it.. / Melodying the hell of it.. or Cantor stuff.. somehow creatively mixed into the music.
• I’m actually thinking of the possibility that this album project could feature some sort of a narrative / lyrical whatever.. that might sit at the center of the album.. which would be a really huge jump for me to take.
• I see a part in the process where I jam away on guitar and bass to construct.. well… something or other.
• I imagine a part of the process where I have all kinds of content loaded up into Ableton Live.. and use the MIDI controllers / Mixers to kinda improvise out something…

 Of course, in the end, all this stuff must me integrated into one giant process… so, wish me luck…

After quite a hassle.. Digital Performer 6 is finally running on my system. The first thing you noticed about DP6, versus 5, is you got a new interface.. This new interface has 3 main implications:

1. How do you make a wheel again?: You have a new interface to learn… you must learn new ways of doing whatever it was you were doing before.. 
2. There is a Psycho Acoustic principle via which software with new shiny interfaces always sounds better then the old ugly ones: More then anyone ever wants to admit.. our perception of audio is influenced by suggestion.. and so it is that if the software you’re using looks pretty.. well you think it sounds a whole lot better. From the point of view of someone producing music.. this is a nice feature.. as it inspires you on your adventure..
3. Stuff is Streamlines, or at least that’s what MOTU would have you believe: For the period in which you can’t figure out how to do what you used to take for granted.. stuff isn’t streamlined…. But I must say.. there’s a lot of stuff about Digital Performer that I really thought was.. well ways in which DP wasn’t exactly making sense in a modern production context.. and what do you know.. they’ve worked out much of that.

Beyond this grooviness.. we got other new grooviness.. but none of this is what’s really striking me at the moment.

Matt, what is really striking you? 

What’s really striking me is a sense of Awe of what I’m able to do in my studio now. On the sonic software side of things we got Digital Performer 6, Ableton Live, Reason, Native Instruments Komplete, Kore 2, and Liquid Mix 16… plus a couple other odds and ends. There are gaps that still need filling, which I could go on about ad nauseam… some of which I’m looking to rectify in the short term, others more long term.. but however you want to slice it.. there’s a lot of power under the hood.

Why are you struck by this now?

This is a complex topic but.. There is this sense that “software tools are not as good as hardware tools,” or at least that would be a simple way of putting it. It’s quite a bit like some people feeling that vinyl records are better then CDs… That vinyl is somehow “warmer” then CDs. This is a complex topic that can go into subjects of sample rates, ramifications of particular mastering issues for vinyl… and on and on and on. In the world of music production technology the topic is even more complex as that the technology of production is much less static then the issues of Vinyl and CDs.. which, lets face it.. people are choosing low quality MP3s anyway…  so what does it really matter?

My production tools acquisition process has always been one where issues of “price versus performance” plays the key roll.. If hardware tools are 1o% better then software tools, but cost 40% more.. I’m probably going with the software.. But in the world of serious sound engineering.. it’s the finally 10 or 5 percent that separates the men from the boys.. Most of what makes a good record are the people making it, not the tools.. but tools are very important.. and if you don’t have the right tools.. you’re probably not going to get there.. 

All of this talk is somewhat abstract.. until you actually start listening to the gear… In the last few months I’ve been going through a few years of Sound on Sound magazine.. reading reviews, interviews, and whatever.. trying to get a better picture of what gear is out there.. production techniques.. and all sorts of related things.. as well as scouring the internet.. and listening to all kinds of samples of all sorts of tools.

Somewhere in this process I began to think “hmm, maybe my tools aren’t so great?” But then DP6’s new look and feel came to the rescue.. and I started to perceive differently.. and started to discover how amazing some of the tools I have really are.

So I mean it was a kind of subjective shift that brought a new perspective.

Where the Artist Plays

As I tried to get to before.. the most important thing is not your tools.. it’s you. And it’s not even really your skills so much as your spirit.. for it is, after all, the spirit who employs said skills.. and even said tools!

There is something to be said for habit.. I find myself approaching my music making in more or less the same way as I always have.. In the last 9 months or so.. I’ve gone on all manner of fun little experimental adventures.. exploration of process alternatives.. and what not… But even with all that.. as I approach the music making today.. I do so in the hum drum of habit.

Habit?

For many, habit is a state inside of which growth doesn’t really happen. However.. if there is sufficient anarchy in your habits.. that anarchy is always going to be putting you in varying positions which you will have to wrestle your way out of.. and that’s often where the interest in my work comes. Or that’s one way of putting it.

Still.. I’m not without desire to get out of my usual habits.. it’s just that.. such ambitions are not really the most important thing.. the most important thing is getting the damn ball rolling.. and if that means playing to your preexistent strengths, so bit it. 

Getting the ball rolling? 

Yeah.. getting the ball rolling is the most important thing. As we speak the ball is in motion.. Wether I’m working a way on music, screwing around with photography, working with video, computer graphics, web design, whatever.. at the very least.. each day.. I do something.

The end goal is to have as much of your energy as possible pouring into this work.  The more of you you can put into it.. the better the work will be… By which I don’t necessarily mean that you should “be in your work” but.. well thats complicated.

Next Day Sometime

My work is a strange beast!  In someways, going about what I’m going about.. I feel like I’m working on Indra’s Net version 2.. Indra’s Net was a project I worked on sometime in 2004… and at the time the laptop I was using.. well the screen was freaking small.. which effected things in a number of ways.. the processor, even for the time.. was very much on the budget side.. I never had enough RAM.. some of my software wouldn’t even run! And we didn’t even have enough hard disk room to save what we were doing in anything other then MP3 files!

Now of course.. we’re using 2 24″ HD displays.. We only have about 2GB of RAM but that hasn’t been a real issue in the music production department.. We have software that’s 2 generations beyond what I was using on Indra’s Net.. We have ridiculous amounts of processing power…  and we have more disk space then we’d ever use for music production. Finally, instead of Cubase we are now using Digital Performer.

Beyond all that we are 4 years in the future.. 4 Years more mature.. whatever I’ve learned about music production since then.. and 4 years evolution in my work. 

So.. The implications of all this.. are actually kind of big.

Implications on habit

I don’t think I spoke elegantly about this last night.. and now that I’m a little further along in my production.. new things are growing clear.

Habit, in a certain way.. is like a path you’re walking down.. habit being an act that keeps you on that path.. and so it is that we see our selves evolving further down a path.. There are certain things we add to our bag of tricks.. certain things that change things a little bit.. lets explore in the context of the current production.

New to the new studio.. is a lot of new Reverbs. Digital Performer gives us a convolution Reverb.. and Kore 2 gives us a whole number of other sorts of new reverbs.. besides new reverbs there is, for me.. new ways of thinking about how to use reverbs.. varying .. and how I might EQ them… all of which has to do with creating a sense of space inside of which our music is happening.

My music, of course, is about space.. moving through space.. more psychic space then real space.. and music production in general.. creating a sense of space is important..

project specifics 

I think of the music as something like a buddhist meditation.. it is something like thoughts flowing through consciousness.. consciousness is our stage.

The use of Reverb and delay, and how I’m mixing stuff.. can transform.. or contextualize something that would normally be thought of as aggressive or rocking.. into something more ambient.. something we don’t think of as aggressive or rocking.. and in a fluid sorta evolving mix.. with respect to our sense of space.. the context can give us different shades.. where the aggressive bits can be more like textures.. to being.. something to rock out to.

This production is very much like this.. about this..  We have this rather industrial type percussion.. which rises in intensity over several measures.. and also moves from very far away to closer.. It repeats.. with gaps between repeats.. and it isn’t until it’s second repeat that it ever gets close enough to us that we feel it as heavy in anyway.

The sound elements that start off far away, and move in closer to us.. are all simply repeating the same lines.. no variations at this point.. accept in how they play against the other repeating parts.. and with respect to there location in the mix.

Everything has this ambient like feeling to it.. Until part way through.. We have a rather lead synth sound.. it repeats twice.. but then.. when it might repeat.. in comes a church organ.. which though it does start of a little ways away from us.. it doesn’t start off in audible.. and it’s repetitions are variations.. and it becomes as if the repetitions of the different instruments are now kind of.. playing against each other in a new kind of way.

It’s during this stage of the music’s evolution that I’m now bringing in a string section. The string section will not be playing a repetitive part.. but will instead be playing in ways the plays off the harmonic ecology of the mix.. repetitions we do find in it.. will be to echo other instruments.. and to create a move clear coherence.. in the material.

For now the music is moving into a place where it could be quite a bit more aggressive.. to be heavy and rocking.. but where we are at now is still a bit of a dream. 

How this Compares to Indra’s Net 

What I failed to mention about the Indra’s Net Project was that.. I had just bought Komplete 2.. (5 is my current version).. and I was really just started to explore the tools.. and a new version of Cubase.. Now I actually know the tools..

What we are seeing now is subtleties.. between the new reverbs, the larger sound pallets… and the mix has a much greater kind of.. quality to it.

[Editor’s note: Matt doesn’t know what the hell his problem is..  yes he reads folks like Chris Brogan and has some appreciation for the value of writing brief entries.. and though Matt would argue that long can be good to.. if at least well written… surely this entry must fall short on both fronts!!!] 

[Editor’s Note part 2: This blog entry was originally written about 3 months ago… and thus represents a now out moded point of view.] 

So I just bought DP 6… well actually I haven’t bought it, but before I finish this blog entry I will have… as we speak I’m going through the feature list on motu’s website. This is an exciting development.

I’ve been doing a lot of research into sound studio type tools. The trouble, of course, is that these tools are expensive.. There’s a lot of questions around this stuff and the best… at least conceptual solution I’ve got.. seems to be to try to move forward organically.

Latter:

Let me see if I can explain the problem:

There’s a whole variety of “tools” one needs when on tries to do what I’m trying to do. For the purposes of this blog entry, we are talking about “plug-in effects related to mix engineering applications.” In the magical land of DAWs.. which is to say “Digital Audio Work Stations” there are.. market forces at work that would seem to have big long term implications to DAW developers. 

I’m thinking of Apple’s Logic. Assuming I’m not miss remembering anything..  the current Logic costs about $500 or $600… and is really the most complete DAW, right out of the box, in terms of digital instruments, effects, and sample / loop libraries. If I were to advise someone on what DAW to get.. for most folks, I’d say Logic.

This is not to say there aren’t pros and cons to all software of this type and class.. from my understanding of the subject, there are many ways you could argue that Digital Performer is a superior product to Logic (and perhaps vice versa)… but from the stand point I’m talking here.. I probably wouldn’t be thinking of spending as much money on effects if I was starting from Logic, as a pose to DP.

Digital Performer actually has a pretty good library of effects, with respect to the mix engineering job. DP has a great EQ… but.. beyond that really.. you kind of have a range of stuff that’s.. really old technology that doesn’t really stand up to modern scrutiny…  or I should say that some of the stuff in that range is in need of updates. The new DP doesn’t solve this problem, but it does take us a few steps forward.

Ok, let me back peddle a little… The instruments and effects I’m looking at are.. of a very high quality. Logic may ship with tools that cover many of the bases of the tools I’m looking at.. but do they do so at as high of a level of quality? There are areas of subjectivity in here.. but I think you’d have to come down on the side of no… even though I’m largely speaking out of my butt on this one…. do to not being a Logic user… But.. come on.. there’s no DAW that ships with EQs and compressors as nice as Liquid Mix.. and no DAW which ships with a convolution reverb half good as Altiverb… 

I seem to be getting side tracked by complicated philosophical topics.. Let me come out of this rathole with just one line of thought: Generally speaking, you don’t want to use the sounds “directly out of the box,” if we are talking about effects, synth or sampler patches, loops, whatever.. The reason being is that everyone else who has those tools has the very same sounds you’ve got so you’re probably not going to be all that distinctive in your sound.. if you just go with what’s in the box. The more you’re box of tools is comprised of tools from different places..  different companies, different whatever.. the more distinctive your sound will likely be..  So there’s something to be said for the path I’m on… not to mention that we all have different needs, and building a tool set custom to your needs is, of course, a huge advantage.

Of course I must confess that I’m lazy and often do use the sounds straight out of the box.. with little to no tweaking..  but as soon to be released blog entries will show.. this is a trend I’m looking to curve.

Back to a more direct rout into the idea of an organic studio evolution:

There’s a kind of question as to if you should invest in tools in bundles, or piece meal individually. My shtick on using tools from different companies, and what not, supports the piece meal path… but often when you buy a bundle you get more for less.. however you don’t really get a lot of say in what’s in that bundle.. and if some of what that bundle offers is something you don’t need.. well that’ll effect you’re calculous.

The big new effect in Digital Performer is a convolution reverb. DP has sucked for reverb.. and now it looks like it might just rock… The thing of it  is that there are two bundles I’m looking at that have convolution reverbs in them… so the question I have is.. is the DP convolution reverb “good enough” so that I might not want to go spend a lot on Altiverb? Or perhaps might not need to? It’s impossible to tell till you get to go play with it.

What I will say is that DPs new convolution reverb does look… interesting. As near as I can tell it’s a long way from Altiverb, but it does have some very nice things going for it… lets explore:

•  Surround Sound! For the bundles I’ve been looking at.. the included convolution reverbs do not support surround sound… or, as in the case of Altiverb, you have to pay a lot more for surround sound.. 
• Dynamic ducking? I frankly don’t understand why it would have a feature like this but.. basically as the dry signal gets louder, the amount of reverb applied to the signal lessons… the result of this would be that quieter sounds will sound further away.. which you may or may not actually want.. but it’s not a bad feature to have.. at least not from the stand point of my production style.
• It looks like you can make you’re own convolution samples.. or load samples from other libraries?

The Down Sides:

MOTU’s site raves “includes dozens of preset acoustic spaces.” If they had said “over 100,” well, I’d be digging it…  I should say that convolution reverb is to other types of reverb what a sampler is to a synthesizer… and though there are samplers that will in some ways behave like synthesizers in how they can modify a sound.. generally you get what you get.. which is true of convolution reverb to.. that there’s not really much you can do to modify a sound..  

It might also be worth pointing out that convolution reverb isn’t really the end all be all of reverb effects..  In part because you can’t really modify sounds all that much.. you end up loosing some control of your ability to place sounds in space. This is not to say that convolution isn’t great… just that it has it’s pros and cons.

Ok.. lets step to the side here.. One of the bundles I’ve been looking at is from Waves. There Natives Power Pack is… strangely enough… both very powerful for the cost, and very well tailored towards my interests and needs.

This Natives Power Pack bundle includes a convolution reverb that is in many ways better then DPs.. the “over 100 presets” immediately comes to mind… though waves’s IR-1 does look a little neutered when compared to the ‘fuller version,’ which even then doesn’t support surround sound…What makes comparisons down right impossible.. from just reading stats is.. what makes a convolution reverb sound good has to do with the quality of there samples..

In any event.. of the sorta mix needs I have.. having a good convolution reverb fits very high.. and is currently my most pressing need… Much of my excitement about the new DP comes down it’s inclusion.. and the feeling that it will, if nothing else, lesson that need.. which in tern allows me to spend more time plotting an organic studio upgrade map. We will, after all, see if Motu’s ProVerb is indeed good enough…

All of this said, as near as I can tell, the Atliverb looks like its by far the best convolution reverb going.

[Editor’s note: Matt Should have ended this entry around here, don’t cha think?] 

I do feel the need to wind things up here.. but..  DP comes with yet one other new effect.. Masterworks Leveler. Perhaps it’s my design / arts background, but I hate the interfaces on a lot of DP’s effects.. which causes me, if nothing else, to further think they aren’t all that great.. well, the Leveler’s interface looks pretty darn cool.

As near as I can tell the Leveler is a kind of automatic limiter / compressor… and it looks like it’s pretty sweet at that.

The compressors DP has ships with.. I’m not a big fan of, though I’m not really all that big on compression anyway.. and the limiter DP has shipped with.. well I think it’s pretty good.

As far as compressors goes.. my eye is now on liquid mix 16, or Liquid Mix. Liquid Mix, as near as I can tell, is really the ultimate place to go to for EQs and Compressors.. which are the most important tools for anyone doing mix engineering type work.. though where Liquid mix starts to break down is in the area of fast attack times.. as compressors with fast attack times.. well, those are limiters, aren’t they? But its something to do with using convolution to sample a compressor.. that when you get short attack times.. things start to not go so well.

The last downside to Liquid Mix, at least from my point of view, is that it runs off of hardware.. which sets limits on how many instances you get.. In Liquid Mix you get 32, and in Liquid Mix 16 you get.. yup, you guessed it, 16. These numbers represent “mono” instances.. if you’re applying this to a stereo channel.. you get half the count.. and if you increase the sample rate, you also get a cut in your instance count.

Another problem you get with Liquid Mix is latency: You play a note on an instrument.. and latency is the time between when you play it and when you hear played back to you through you’re speakers / headphones. Liquid Mix must send the signal out from your computer via firewire, to its hardware DSP processors, then back to the computer via Firewire.. all of which adds a lot of time to your latency… The result is you wouldn’t want to use Liquid Mix in any situation where hearing things back in real time is important.  

With software based effects running on your processor.. you get as many instances as you like.. limited only by you’re computers horse power… So for someone on a Mac Pro with 8 processor cores.. do I really need software running on special hardware? Further.. you probably want EQ on every channel in your mix! (I don’t currently do this, but trust me, I’m moving in this direction).. 

Summing up the effects:

In practice DP 6 sorta makes “making do” more viable.. but that’s about it.

That was a quick summing up, wasn’t it?

But Wait, there’s more!

(God Help Us!)

1. New Interface: Um.. in someways DP’s old interface felt a little like we were living in the dark ages, compared with other software of this type.. and from what I can see… things look pretty good this way. 
2. Final Cut Integration: One of the areas where DP is very strong in is when it comes to scoring film and video. Today, among independent film makers, Final Cut is kind of the standard… and it’s big all around. Indeed, I own Final Cut Studio.. so the integration features look rather nice to me.
3. Burn to Disk: Just as the CD format goes down the drain.. MOTU decides to make CD Mastering that much easier…  go MOTU? Here’s the deal: You can export to CD, with markers and all that, directly.. which is pretty awesome actually…
4. There’s other stuff.. indeed this old blog entry feels like a little bit of an echo of this entry.. So read that if you still want more…

To sum up my feeling of the over all situation: 

I used to feel like getting a big waves bundle.. like say Gold, Platinum, or Diamond, would really cover all my basics. Mind you.. the price for Gold is..  $975, Platinum is $1,575, and Diamond is $2,850. Now when I look over there product lines I see… that they do indeed cover all the bases.. but not quite well enough for me. They do have software that is.. similar to Melodyne.. which has the virtue of being simpler to use.. but the vice of less depth.. they do have software that would cover some of my vocal processing bases.. they do cover the reverb bases and many others… blah blah blah.. but.

Well I will say that they have a lot of different bundles, and if I were to go that way, at this point, I’d probably be looking at ether the Power Pack or the Renaissance Maxx bundles.. both under $500… (I now lean towards the latter)… 

I guess the thing is.. if I’m going to spend $1000 or more on plugins.. I really want to feel like I’m both getting a lot for my money and covering all my basic bases. If not that I want to feel like I’m kicking serious ass in a few departments to such an extent that its worth not having all my bases covered.

So for instance, a bundle with Altiverb, Speakerphone, and a couple other do-dads.. You feel like you’re getting the best of breed Altiverb.. Speakerphone is such a unique sound design type tool with so many different applications.. I feel like they set the bar in what I should expect, and Waves, at there best, doesn’t really come close enough… and the same holds true when we compare waves to liquid mix. While Waves does offer some tools to compete with Melodyne…. If, as I’m starting to suspect, Melodyne will start to play a central roll in my productions.. that’s just not an area where I can skimp.

Out side of the world of these expensive tools.. there are lots of “little things” to look at.. 

[editors note: this was written a few days ago] 

I’m sitting here going through old libraries of old sound projects of mine.. Projects that in someway anticipate a project I plan on venturing forth on in the not too distant future: The Fresh Meat Project. Music To Freak Out Stoners, or MTFOS, was created in what we call “The JP years.” This was back in the days when “The Doctor” and “Mr. Sketch” where living off in JP MA… lost years if you will.. lots of chemicals in there brains.. and I’d visit on weekends.. MTFS somehow had to do with the psychology of those circles.. and my reaction to them.

This had to have been in.. the very late 90s… I was still on a G3, had just gotten my MOTU 828 audio interface, and started F-Ing around on it… I’d just kinda Jam out a bit.. didn’t even bother mixing the Jam sessions.. which took place on guitar and synths.. this was total experimentation.. just to enjoy the sound quality of the 828. 

Around this time period.. my thought was.. I should like to make music that came out of extended jam sessions. The problem was that these jam sessions where.. I’m not sure how to characterize them. They had a kind of out sider art mentality to them.. there were a lot of levels on which they were probably very flawed.. whatever they were, they were so far out there.. that I wasn’t really sure how to turn them into something interesting..

Well now we enter a very different period in my musical evolution where I’m at least entertaining the notion of going off in radically new directions and I wonder if I could facilitate those older directions now.  Today I am both a lot more sophisticated musically / production wise.. and I have a lot more sophisticated tools that allow me to work in very new ways, and I wonder if these new possibilities might facilitate the older zeitgeist.

New to my studio.. in particular, is a fretless bass and ReCycle.. Ableton Live has been in my studio for sometime.. but I haven’t really used in the way I’m thinking now.. And of course there’s Melodyne…

////// 

I pick up my bass and start playing.. kinda all the time. It seems not at all infrequent that I’ll get into a mode where everything I play I think sounds good.. sounds interesting.. these little jam sessions. I think about taking them into my computer, recording them.. composing with them.. where might I be able to take them?.. what could I do musically?

While I have many ideas.. one idea I find quite appealing is the notion of repeating exactly what I did with MTFS.. accept.. when working with a synthesizer.. record only the MIDI.. when working with a guitar.. make sure there’s no transience recorded with it.. Between Melodyne and MIDI I could take the results and sculpt it into something. But what?

Part of the idea is something along the lines of capturing a raw moment.. How differently you think when you’re thinking in real time.. improvising, versus composing my usual ways..

I feel that this is a path I must go down.. a journey I must make.. even as I don’t really have a lot of confidence in it.. It seems like its important for the completion of a musical style I have yet to totally create….

Let me see if I can get serious in talking to you about this stuff.

What do we have thus far?

• Electronic Music Composed: I sit in a sequencer and program the sequences and the Mix. This method is the most sophisticated / mature.. of my processes.. I mean I’ve taken this method further then any of my other methods.. thus I tend to want to stick to it simply because its something I can rely on for good results.
• Electronic Music Improvised: We are talking about some sort of a process by which.. via tweaking various parameters of some kind of a sound generating device… music results. These results could be further processed, or edited, or whatever.. in order to be used as building blocks of a more programmed music.. we see this sorta thing Starting in Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures.
• Guitar based song writing: I sit down on my guitar, or perhaps now even my bass, and I play, come up with riffs, put riffs together.. create a song idea.. produce it.. 
• I improvise out some sorta performance… on real instruments.. wether we are talking a keyboard to control synths.. or we are talking about guitars and bass.. maybe something going on with a microphone.. and we sorta do something with this.

So these are our basic processes. The question then becomes how do we integrate them.. how do we bring them to some level of maturity.. where there possibilities become great; a sum more then the parts?

The answer lys, no doubt.. in continuing to work on each of these processes, going down each path..  taking it to its logical conclusion… building a library of raw material.. and playing with making stuff out of that raw material.

As near as I can tell this is a long term project.

A couple days latter:

I think I’ll just post this as is. 

As I read through the DP manual to try and get Melodyne working, I notice that DP would seem to have the same features as Melodyne.. How these compare is not obvious to me… surely Melodyne’s up coming ability to work with polyphonic audio sets it apart.. and one expects a tool so specialized to.. well be special. Still, looking through this feature in DP is enough to give me second thoughts. What’s more.. DP’s features will no doubt integrate with my DP work flow a good deal better! 

It does seem that melodyne does have a number of special features.. and surely its nice to have the ability to work with a program like Ableton Live in this way… or other such programs. If I ever go back to Cubase, which I do harbor many thoughts of (I’m way faster with Cubase then with DP after all)… this will prove helpful..

So as I try and say in this blog.. I’m not an expert, more someone struggling along his path, and we look at stuff inside of this context..  which strikes me as valuable.

Troubles 

I’m in software hell, or so it seems. Perhaps computer hell would be a better way of putting it? I mean.. just the amount of issues I’ve had since I bought this computer.. between Apple doing a shitty job of getting this computer to me in a reasonable time frame.. issues with, I suppose, guitar center and native instruments.. with both Komplete and Kore… Issues with Adobe.. and now onto the issues with Melodyne.

So I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in this blog yet, but I ran out and bought Celemony’s Melodyne Studio. My hope is this could revolutionize the way I work, but that still remains to be seen…  cause I’ve had a hell of a time getting the software to run on my machine properly.

First it wouldn’t install.. tech support got back to me pretty quickly.. and we got it installed.. only with a number of snags.

1. ReWire isn’t working.. which is fairly crucial to me. 
2. Now both Ableton Live and Reason aren’t working.. again pretty crucial.
3. Molodyne will not run as a plug-in.. which is pretty crucial to me…. haven’t tried to get it in ReWire mode yet.

Then tech support started to slack off a bit, I suppose you could say.. and I was only getting about one email a day… and then yesterday I didn’t hear anything from them.. so I emailed today, wondering what was up.. and explaining that this problem had sorta stopped my work, and all that.. and they tell me it is definitely not a known problem…. and gave me some instructions on how to.. I guess uninstall and then reinstall the software, and hopefully clear up whatever the issue is.

I haven’t bothered to go through the hassle of trying to follow those instructions yet.. only just got in the door a little while ago after all… Think I might jump in the shower, get something to eat, and see what happens. Mean while it’s about 12:15 am…

Some first impressions of the new possibilities 

I will give you something of my first impressions.. first impressions based off playing with some of the tutorials: I think melodyne could absolutely revolutionize the way I work.. and could be what I’ve been looking for for years…. I’m very excited about it, but we’ll have to see if can live up to that kind of excitement and expectation.

Still, even with the questions marks hanging over the situation.. dreams do flow. If, with the help of a little software, I can kinda sorta sing… that seems like an amazing possibility. I could write songs about anything! It’s not even that I have a lot of confidence in my song writing ability.. it’s more like.. well maybe confidence in my imagination.. I feel like I could do some freaking amazing stuff.

You add to that that you’re supposed to be able to sequence audio like I can sequence midi / program performances for electronic instruments? Dude, I could make metal like no one has ever heard before!!!

The combination of these two things has me dreaming in ways I’ve never really dreamed before. It has me feeling like a sound artist in a way I haven’t felt before.

And if dreams can become reality?  Well… lets just say I have a lot more confidence in the possibility of making a living from my work then I had a month or two ago.

So, how does this change our plot?

Next night:

Back to the tech woes 

It’s about 1:20 AM, I followed the tech supports advice.. and now Melodyn is installed, and Reason and Live are working.. The only snag is DP is not recognizing the Audio Units plug-in.

Let me see if I can sorta explain this a little bit: Melodyne studio has a plug-in called “Melodyne Bridge.” What you do is put the plug-in on the first insert effects slot of the channel you’re working on, and it streams the audio out of your DAW and into Melodyne Studio.. or something like this? Maybe it just puts it in Melodyne studio? In any event, if you want to do the serious audio sequencing of your stuff.. you do that in Melodyne Studio… and you do that via Melodyne Bridge.

Melodyne Studio will also allow you to work with Melodyn via ReWire, but as near as I can tell this means that whatever audio you’re working with has to start out in Melodyne. For the project I’m working in now.. I have audio in Live that I’d like to, one way or another, be able to mess with in Melodyne. This would be the crazy processed vocal tracks… It might be nice to control there pitches.. to whatever extent I could.. [editors note: the “crazy processed vocals” references a post I have yet to post.]

They are so processed that it is likely that Melodyne won’t work well with them.. Melodyne like’s signals that are as dry as possible, which is why you put the plug-in in the first insert slot of the channel who’s audio you want to work with.

Seeing as I haven’t actually worked with Melodyn yet.. not in these kinds of contexts.. I’ve only done a few tutorials and skimmed through the manual, I don’t know how all this works in practice… So what I’m saying here is not as reliable as it could be. 

The fear I have is… one of work flow. Ideally I’d like to be able to see what’s going on with what in an integrated fashion..  So if I’m sequencing audio.. I’d like to see those pitches in the same place that I see my MIDI notes, and as far as I can see, this is an impossibility. The best solution I can think of is to finally go ahead and take a look at getting a second monitor. I’ll likely do this sunday after the Boston Media Makers meeting.

The Second Monitor

I’m looking at Dells.. Dell offers 2 24″ HD monitors.. one is a bit more econo class then the other.. Origionally my plan was to go all econo class.. though I ended up running out and bying an acer, which is sorta super econo class. This isn’t really a problem.. I mean I still love the monitor and it’s amazing to me that you could get a 24″ HD monitor for so cheap.. but..

I really want my second monitor to be capable of playing movies from some sort of a Blue Ray type DVD drive.. or perhaps from cable.. and the higher end Dell has a much higher contrast ratio and.. well if you’re serious about color, which as a visual artist you can’t help but be, you really need the better monitor. Another feature I like of it is the built in card reader plus the USB hub. If that weren’t enough it’s rotatable.. so it can be a horizontal wide screen sorta thing.. or a vertical tall sorta thing. This latter option would be absolutely awesome for working with Reason.. among other things.

How’d the tech support leave ya? 

So, how do my technical challenges, and experiences with there tech support, reflect on Celemony? 

I think the problem came down to some sorta corruption on the installer DVD.. which is why, as the tech support guy said “this is anything but a known problem.” While it would be possible for the tech support experience to be better.. having to wait around to hear back.. and then having to email back to hear back.. and all that.. I have to say that.. I don’t feel that it was that bad.

How many times do you feel like it’s not really a human interaction with the tech person you’re dealing with? How many tech support people will treat you like a moron?  If anything they might have assumed I was more sophisticated then I am.. He told me I had to repair disk permission as a part of the process.. but didn’t explain that you do that through Apple’s hard disk utility.. I sorta knew that, but I wouldn’t necessarily imagine the average user would.

I think it was a stump the experts sorta situation… and that these kinds of things happen.. well that’s just the way things are.. so it doesn’t bother me too much. So over all it was a positive sorta thing.. my first interaction with company.. or I certainly don’t feel pissy about it.

So if the software works great.. yeah, I’ll be recommending it a good deal.. 

Back to how all this effects our Plot:

I dream of a creative process…  a process that is very different from my current process: My current process is very much a slave to technical considerations..  I see the possibility, at least, of leaving those shackles behind. I could sit down, write out some lyrics, see what I think..  sit down on my guitar, riff away.. come up with something here, something there.. and just sorta put it together in the computer.

Conventionally, if I want to put guitar playing into my music.. just a simple riff, it’ll take me about a day, between the conception and getting the performance up to par.. When you’re dealing with integrating guitar based music into an electronic context.. the beat of the electronic stuff is robot on perfect, which is different from how real humans play… this robot on perfect then highlights the imperfection of your playing, calling you to a higher standard. This isn’t always ideal.. there’s value in human imperfection..

In any event.. when I work on the electronic music side of things, I tend to work very very fast.. my compositional process is one of reacting to what I’m producing.. so if the process has to get slowed down to the point that it takes a day just to put in one guitar part… that kinda throws a monkey wrench into the process.. it disturbs your perception of your musics ecology.. 

If, on the other hand, I could sit down at my guitar, come up with a riff, record it, fix it, and go.. the process will not be disturbed.. If my guitar playing is more like.. a basis for something.. that I can then transmute into something else again… we’re really talking about limitless possibilities.. I mean the music I make will not be limited by the limitations of my musicianship.. which is really why I got into electronic music in the first place.

Video’s to End on

This is mildly off topic, but fits into the larger conversation, and I thought it was real interesting to take a look at.. from the 1980s

How about that.. a compact disk or “cd” using laser beams? Pretty sci fi ha?

Ok, so maybe this is old news.. but it’s sorta new: However many months ago.. I started the process of upgrading the studio. The trouble is.. I perhaps believe too much in spending lots of money on such things.. I’m willing to go pretty close to starvation, if I can just get that next piece of gear. Knowing that I have this kind of temperament.. I try to compensate by.. if nothing else.. impersonating someone who’s a little on the conservative side.. err.. let me try and explain this a little bit:

I started off by putting together a studio budget saying “I must work inside of these limitations.” At this point I began to look at various tools and try to make the best sorta decisions for working inside that budget.. but wouldn’t you know.. there’s that little matter of mice and men.. where I ended up spending money on things that were not in that budget.. Bad Matt!!! 

Examples:

1. I spent $500 for an upgrade from Macromedia Studio 8 to Adobe CS3 Web Premium. But can you really blame me? $500 for the higher end Photoshop, plus illustrator, acrobat.. oh and the must have upgrade to Flash… plus an upgrade to Dreamweaver and Fireworks? Not to mention that I had an actual Flash Job.. and needed something that would actually run on this computer! 
2. Something like $1500 for Cinema 4D. You know I don’t actually remember what my 3D budget was looking like.. I think I found Lightwave for some ridiculously low price.. and was debating Modo… but.. the Cinema 4D bundle I got was about half off the going rate.. so its sorta like.. “here are some tools you have no business being able to afford,” and I just couldn’t pass that up!
3. Getting ripped off on the Camera.. my memory isn’t serving me well here, but.. there’s one of two possibilities: #1 I simply spent more then I had budgeted, thanks to being ripped off.. #2 I spent all I had budgeted.. when I had planned to spend less, because I wanted to wait to see what I’d need lens wise.. so now I might very well need to invest in more stuff.. which will then bring me over budget.

There are other odds and ends.. I suppose my budget was more about a meditation and a discipline then it was about something I should tyrannically stick to.. but here are the things I’m thinking I  should like to spend more money then originally budgeted.

1. Video / Chroma Key stuff…  this is still somewhat up in the air for me.. I’ve done research into cameras and what I need.. and talked to some people.. and between lights and the actual camera.. it maybe that I should spend a bit more then I’ve planned.
2. Effects for the sound studio.. I don’t know what I budgeted… beyond what I’ve already spent.. perhaps I’ve already spent it all? But there’s a real feeling that what I need is.. well a range of effects really.. mostly for mixing.. I’ve talked about this endlessly in past entries.. so I shant go into it too much here.. accept to go so far as to say there’s been some interesting new stuff announced that… in some cases makes what I want to do more affordable.. and in other cases.. well I could end up seduced into spending more.
3. Microphones: I have mixed feelings on the microphone front.. I frankly don’t do a lot of recording, and don’t really know a lot about recording engineering.. so I certainly can’t claim to be smart about what to buy for what…  A “good microphone” can be up in the $1000 range.. and I’m just not sure if I’d do enough of that sorta thing to make it worth spending that kind of money… but.. to make matters just a little more complicated… there are maybe different types of microphones I might want to invest in for video, and the podcasting stuff.. and field recording.. versus studio stuff.
4. Sound proofing and Monitors: My guesstimate is I’m looking at about $1000 for sound treatment.. this is to turn your studio space into a good space for critical listening while mixing.. in addition to that cost.. there’s the cost of getting good quality audio monitors.. which again can take you upwards of $1000.. 

Besides all that madness.. there is the sense that I might want to invest in a laptop in the not too distant future.. frankly my preference would be to wait another year or two… there is the little issue that much of my software I might want to upgrade over time.. and blah blah blah.. lots of stuff.

iPhone 

One last thing, on this front, that seems worth mentioning is.. I’m thinking about getting an iPhone: I’ve wanted an iPhone since Steve Jobs announced the iPhone.. But.. it seemed a little too on the expensive side.. between the cost of the iPhone and the cost of the data plans. But now my perspective has shifted: For one thing, I’ve inherited my mom’s cell phone and calling plan. I don’t actually use the thing all that much.. I think of it as more her phone then mine, but seeing as I’m spending about $30 a month for that.. plus whatever extras might impact me, should I do any text messaging or talk on it too much.. It seems like the iPhone’s data plan is just not that much more money..  

Anyway, there’s a number of reasons why I think the iPhone would make a lot of sense to me: #1 I never answer the phone as it is.. and it would be great if people had a way to get in touch with me. For instance I have a cousin whom I may collaborating with on some online marketing with.. wouldn’t it be nice if I had a good way for him to get in touch with me? Another thing is I’m a big social media person. Being a social media person I’m forever going to meet ups.. and often getting lost on my way there.. wouldn’t it be nice to have google maps on the go? And besides that, I must say I’m jealous of folks who are able to twitter on the go… and often times, at social media conferences and what not.. twitter can be an important way to know what’s going on. 

There are rummers that a new iPhone is just around the corner… and that it might have faster internet and a video camera. If this is all true, I don’t think I’ll be able to resist it! I’m jealous of folks like Steve Garfield who are able to stream live.. doing there Qik thing! Qik may rely on Flash, which the iPhone still doesn’t do.. but one imagines that some sort of a live streaming platform could arrive shortly, should the iPhone get a video camera.. just do to the power of the iPhone platform…

Kore 2 

So all of this is just a preamble to the new news… which is sorta old news.. I just got an email from Native Instruments telling me that the Kore 2 update has been sent to me, and ought to arrive in about 8 days. 

Ok.. so what’s this Kore business all about? Well if you follow this link and scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll have a sense of it.. or of my blogging on the subject anyway.

 [editor’s note, I thought this demonstration from NAMM might help]

Kore is really a combination of things. You have a hardware controller, which in my case includes an audio interface.. and this controller is married to Komplete, basically..  If you’ve ever used Reason.. Kore is a bit like the “combiner instrument” in Reason. You can load up any number off effects and instruments.. and have patches that are combinations of patches and instruments.. 

Let me see if I can explain this concept a little bit: In a fairly recent blog entry entries on Kontakt, I explained the concept of “sample maps.” Basically, a sample map tells a sampler what sample to play.. depending on what note you’re playing, and how hard you’re playing it… Well, Kore’s combiner like qualities make it a bit like being able to program a sample map for all your instruments and effects.. You can have one “instrument” that contains multiple other instruments and effects.. You can say “as you play up the keyboard.. fade in this instrument.. as you hit the keys harder.. fade in this instrument..” and you can have this with all these layers of sub instruments, lets call them..  

So Kore does a lot of different things… of which I’m only explaining a tiny fraction here. At the moment I’m on Kore 1, and shortly I’ll be in Kore 2.. there’s a lot of differences between these two versions.. but with regard to the preamble to this subject, what’s most important is we have 32 effects, of which 12 are new, and many more updated.  

Back where I was talking about investing in effects… I was thinking about spending around $1000 on effects.. maybe a good deal more then that…. 

Ok, let me interrupt this flow, and regress to an earlier thread.. Because I’m going over budget.. I’ve basically stopped spending money.. that is there’s lots of stuff in my budget I haven’t spent any money on yet.. thus I’m actually not over budget.. (I know, I’m a tricky bastard that way).  

Part of the situation is like.. you have allllll this software / hardware / new tools / whatever.. The sheer amount of stuff I’m trying to learn is… well unrealistic…. depending on how long I want to give myself to learn this stuff.. and at what level I want to be at when.. Plus I’m a lazy bastard that will sometimes spend too much time twittering, social networking, playing endless games of command and conquer..  and what have you.. so there’s something of a feeling like “perhaps we should hold off spending more money till we are more in command of what we’ve already got.”

2 Days latter:

To give a sense of the insanity: I’m trying to learn Komplete 5, which is to say everything that’s new in Komplete since Komplete 3, not to mention the stuff that my computers weren’t ever powerful enough to deal with prior to getting the Mac Pro.. which is not at all insignificant. Add to this Digital Performer, Final Cut Studio, Cinema 4D, What ever is new / upgrades / I never got around to learn with respect to / Adobe CS3… Oh did I forget what is to be learned about Ableton Live?

There’s more on my plate then all that.. but the point is that just this much, to really master, could probably take a few years!  The problem with technology is.. once a new piece of gear is released it’s effective value starts to diminish.. as it drifts towards obsoleteness. To the extent you don’t use that gear.. you’re loosing money / getting less value from it.

The effect is.. the broader the range of stuff you’re trying to learn, the more dispersed your time and energy is… So you really want to limit the range as much as possible.. at least when considered from this angle.

The other angle to consider is you’re own creative impulse and where you feel your self drawn… In the last week or two I’ve been doing a lot of music production / composition stuff with my Toshiro Mifune VS John Wayne project, and as a result I’m feeling the need to think about my sound tools more then I might other wise.

As a part of that, I know there’s a number of directions I want to travel in.. These directions have to do with what sorts of skills I want to develop as well as where I want to take my work. There’s a certain amount I can do given where my studio is currently at.. but there is also the question of how acceptable the required compromises might be.

An example idea, which I may go into in a future blog entry… is I want to start playing with stereo buss compression… or with ideas that are slightly abstracted from that. An issue with respect to stereo buss compression is “what kinda compressors you got?” Digital Performer has a couple of compressors.. but I don’t actually know how applicable they are to doing the stereo buss compression. One of the effects packages I’m looking at is.. perhaps the best compressor library on the planet.. going today.. Well the best you could do if you’re not spending crazy money.. has.. well all sorts of compressors to choose from.. many of which are good for different sorts of stereo buss compression…

Another package I’m looking at has “a good compressor,” along with a number of other effects that would help my studio get to be a little more well rounded..

To draw all this to a conclusion.. Kore 2 is coming.. and it will greatly extent my effects library, making things a good deal more well rounded… Of course it brings lots of other advantages… and it really isn’t all that well geared to a lot of the sorts of effects / applications I’m looking at.. but.. it is something.. And.. to the extent that one of my current needs is simply to have a more well rounded studio situation.. it is perhaps possible that I could drop some items from the list of things I’m looking at.. and just use Kore 2, and wait for the next version of DP.. and maybe throw in the compressor library for good measure

[editors note: Matt is trying to go off the deep end.. linking a change management orientated business strategy… where you don’t actually tell folks what to do so much as you think about the ecological context of there work.. with his own creative process.. so this becomes a kind of first person narrative… somewhat unreliable narrator style perhaps.. (though this is perhaps for certain existential reasons)… case study: Another words this blog entry is really about how business might operate in the future.. but um.. you probably have to think pretty deeply to work all that out..  for the rest of us it’s just him talking about his process.. and dealing with various technical challenges.. while plotting out his future.. or like.. the future of his process… or something like that…

yeah.. so its a long winding rant of a post.. hope you can dig that sorta thing]

So.. I just posted an entry on some of what I’ve been sorta exploring in my music production adventures.. I have yet another post in rough draft form, to add to that.. and then there is yet something beyond that I’d like to post.. on process and the finely tuned human instrument.. or something like that. But all of that seems like old news to me today.. Indeed my last post on the subject was largely written about a week ago.. so lets get to the now moment of it, shall we?

What started off as a somber impressionistic piano piece has evolved into… well it makes me think of a fight between Toshiro Mifune, and John Wayne… if you can imagine that. It’s gone into a full orchestral type production (with some asian percussion)… and it’s now sounding very much like music made by yours truly.. which is something had I wanted to hold off from..

You know.. maybe we could go into that bit about the fine tuned human instrument stuff?:

This is a somewhat complex idea.. But basically we are complex ecologies.. we humans. What is it that causes us to crave ice cream one day and nachos the next… that’s the ecology. Every moment, just where you’re awareness is.. that’s the ecology. This is profoundly important if you want to understand the mysteries of you’re own being.. and I dare say it can lead into a direct experience of God. Ok, that’s probably a controversial statement, but what the hell! 

For an artist this means.. what colors you’re attracted to; what color relationships.. what ideas.. the whole of you’re consciousness..  this is the subtext of process, to put it a certain way.. and if you look at art.. its kind of like a window to the soul… Or at least lets say it can be.

My process is one of embracing this kind of idea… There are different approaches you could make to the artistic process.. which can influence what sort of an effect your underlying ecology has on your work. Still, the ecology will effect performance, thus the value of industrial psychology to business…. to say nothing of a companies culture.

In this blog I’m starting to talk about this subject.. under the guise of “mystery management.” What I’m talking about is ecological optimization.. management not through direct control, but by influencing the ecology.

Ok.. so that’s like a quick overview that idea… Now another thing I’ve been thinking about blogging on is.. my studio change’s impact on process…

Today is the first time in my life where I felt like I had a sound studio that doesn’t really compromise… That’s not to say that this studio isn’t a budget studio.. or that there aren’t things I should think seriously about investing in.. Only that.. I don’t feel like I have to compromise with my work… or any compromises I make, its not because of studio limitations really. The implications are dramatic.. When you’re used to living in an unrealistic situation.. with unrealistic limitations.. you don’t have uber high expectations. When I look back at my old work now.. there’s a lot of places where I think “gee, I wish I had done something about that.” The truth is.. this is common even among grammy awarding wining sound engineers… whom are normally not working under the same kind of limitations.  But lets face it, everyone’s working under some kind of limitations.. you know.. we have x amount of time to get this thing done.. we have y amount of money to spend.. None the less I now feel like I don’t need to compromise….

Next day:

My strategy has always been.. lets work in a circumstance where we minimize our burn rates: If I find a way of working where the cost of working is minimal.. the cost fo time.. energy, whatever… so that I can maximize how much I put into my work.. if I make that one of my differentiators.. I could potentially create work of a higher production value then someone going through the conventional process. So… the notion of time limitations is not one that I really want to deal with in my “personal work.”

Ok, enough said on that for now..  lets get to the implications, of my studio shift, on process… in light of the “finely tuned human instrument concept.”

My strongest background is probably that of a visual artist.. even if this isn’t a muscle I exercise as much as I’d. If you’re a painter.. you have the subject of “how you apply paint to the canvas.” You could do the Jackson Pollock painting dripping thing… you could drop water ballon full of paint on your canvas.. you could use an air brush, you could attack the canvas with a brush so that the brush gestures are a part of the energy of the painting.. you could pain in such a way that the brush strokes seem hidden.. where we perhaps have a realistic depiction of whatever it is you’re painting…

The attack the canvas thing tends to be a very aggressive sort of thing.. it’s about emotion and perhaps intuition.. perhaps about sensation. All this is expressive of your ecology.. It, at least on the canvas attack part of it.. tends not to be highly analytical… Though I confess I’m a highly analytic painter.. but as you well might imagine from reading this blog.. my analytic process integrates this kind of attach process.. integrates chance, integrates accidents.. integrates all of this.. in an analytic sorta way.. or perhaps in other ways.. The analytics of it is a juggler of sorts.

So… when it comes to music production, composition, mix engineering… I will often just attach the sonic canvas… which of course produces expressive results just as it would with a visual arts process.

But here comes the contrast between the old studio and the new: In the old studio there were a limited number of instruments you could use at once, and a limited number of effects. The positive effects of this limitations were.. it didn’t take long to set up a project.. because you weren’t juggling too many elements you could move through a project quickly… I mean if you look at my Zar Matt A Thustra’s Deep Space Adventures project, there’s a solo album created in a month, where speed was a principle value.

The project I’m working on now, at this stage in the process, has 11 instruments in it.. All those instruments, I’m pretty sure, have one insert effect on them, and beyond that, as described else where.. they all have some of there sound going off to an auxiliary reverb. Beyond this.. this project has been one where I’ve had to program, to one extent or another, many of those instruments.. and I’ve had to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to program / configure stuff to get the results I want.

Out side of this, the programing of the instruments performances.. as a part of the composition, has been more elaborate then projects past…

What all this seems to mean is it’s like you go from working in a small sand box to working on some vast beach somewhere.. The scale is all different…  It’s not a project you can just jump into.. you have to take your time with it.. so what does this mean when it comes to the subject of ecology and the finely tuned human?

A few latter, while working on said project:

So we now have 11 instruments. Normally I’d control the mix via mixer automation, and now I’m controlling the mix more via the individual key velocity of each individual note…. (meaning stuff is controlled more by “performance” then “mix.”) The result is that it takes much much longer to write a section, but the expressiveness of the section is many orders of magnitude more. In addition to key velocity, I’m often programing pitch bend and modulation to the instruments.. and there’s a number of other things I could be controlling, but haven’t yet gotten around to figuring out.

If this were not enough, in some cases I’m also controlling elements of the mix via mixer automation.. As stated in an earlier blog entry, I’m don’t want the mixing to call attention to its self too much. For this reason I tend to set the pan position in one place, and leave it there.. but for some instruments.. ones whom I can only control the dynamic range to a limited extent via key velocity and automation.. I now control them via volume automation and there effect send.. which means there’s elements of the virtual stage.. which is to say where the instruments are positioned in space.. that would seem to be moving.

This is a project where I don’t know where it’s going. I have a preconception that as it goes along, at a certain point.. I’ll start moving it away from a traditional orchestral production.. We’ll see the introduction of electronic elements to make us think of electronic classical, and perhaps I’ll start dealing with the mix in a manner I might normally control the mix.. which is to say having your sense of where the instruments are coming from spatially… in a constant state of flux.. This evolution will then be a central thematic element of the production / composition.

Latter that day:

I’ve done this sorta thing before.. In a composition known as “Information Theory: Plight of The Complex.” Which you can find as a free download as a part of my Indra’s Net project.  However.. that project was more of a budget orchestra then this one.. 

Back to the subject of ecology:

Lets call it my psychological ecology, it’s effect on my taste guides me in my interactions with the production.. in the projects forward evolution. Any art project can be thought of as a product of a series of decisions..  You’re staring at a canvas and how you interact with that canvas is you’re reaction to that canvas: It is you’re “aesthetic response.” If you attack the canvas.. you’re throwing at it a lot of energy in a concentrated period of time.. so it’s a bit like the ecology of a moment.. when you work for days straight on a project, well, the ecology of that longer period gets imprinted on the work.

In you’re reaction to the canvas…  over time.. certain things happen: If you’ve ever gotten sick of a song because the radio played it too often.. the artist’s reaction to the canvas can be many times worse…. as he / she is looking at it / listening to it many more times

An interesting quality to my work is that repetition often does not happen in the same sorta way as it might in conventional music. There is no verse chorus verse thing going on..  In conventional music this sorta thing aids the process by which you recognize order in it.. Aesthetic sense.. our notions of beauty… they are very much tied to our ability to recognize order.

Order is, to me, very important. Our concept of reality is a cognitive ordering of.. lets say sense impressions into.. perhaps a rationalistic framework.. though in practice it’s much more complex the this.. but basically. Order is a projection, it is not really the order of the universe. Or.. our framework for organizing reality has implications on how we experience and understand reality. The organization is a kind of lens… that magnifies certain things..  and also has the effect of making other things less visible.

The organizational principles of my music is a kind of critique of our conception of reality.. It’s, in a certain sense, about the organization. Part of what I find exciting about.. say in this particular piece.. is that it’s kind of a cognitive roller coaster ride. It’s in a sense saying “look, this is how you could look at things.” The vision I’m departing is one that produces a kind of cognitive vertigo.. It’s as if you suddenly looked around you’re world through the eyes of an alien. To the extent to which.. we were earlier saying ecology effects one’s notion of reality.. It’s a little like saying “what if we changed your ecology.” It’s like bending reality before your eyes… Could there be an “ideal ecology” that would produce the sorts of results in our lives that we might like to have?

At its best, I would argue, religion is about creating an ideal ecology.

So the point is.. if we explode our concepts of reality..  

A couple days latter:

What the hell was I talking about anyway? Jesus, I’m trying to tie too many themes together here… and you just can’t develop all the ideas, fully enough, in one blog entry.. so screw it.. lets end here. 

Well.. I’ve gotten rather into this sound project, and it seems to involve learning Kontakt 3 in at least some depth. So far the experience of this is mildly painful.. One thing Native Instruments sucks at is user experience.. making things simple.. thinking about the experience of trying to learn this stuff and making it “just work.” Excuse my Apple prejudices.

Examples of obvious problems: You have this manuel… printed, which is nice. In my instance I’m saying “I want to set things ups so that I have a convolution reverb that I can send all the instruments in my kontakt Instance into and automate. One would think this would be fairly straight ahead and obvious.. I mean how many production environments have I used before? But no.. this is stuff you gotta go to the manual for.

I wouldn’t mind if going to the manual was something you needed to do to get a complex piece of technology working… It’s that the manual is designed all wrong. What you want to do is figure out how to do one thing.. you go to that section of the manual and you realize that it’s description of how to do that one thing presumes you understand 5 other things.. and it doesn’t tell you where in the manual those 5 other things are located.

Eventually it seems to come down to trial and error… the manuel gives you some clues.. and you fiddle around and if you’re lucky you work it out.

The production I’m working with starts out, of course.. with a quarter tone tuned piano.. and what I want to do is create a string section that.. is more atmosphere then anything.. It’s something going on in the background. I don’t really want you’re attention to be called to it to much..

The way I’m working at the moment.. well I have a limited understanding of some of Native Instruments tools.. so this is all a learning exercise.. at any rate Kontakt 3 includes stuff from the VSL library. The VSL library is one of the top libraries you’d go to if you wanted to emulate real orchestral music on your computer.. Its the kinda stuff they use in Hollywood films if they can’t afford to hirer and orchestra.. and perhaps even if they can.. (so you can give the director / editors / whatever.. a kind of demo-ized version of your score prior to bringing in the orchestra.. and its a good way to work stuff out to, right?)

The VSL library you get with Kontakt, of course, is limited compared to the full VSL library.. but it’s still the best stuff I’ve got. So I start out by loading up a Violin Section. By default you can control.. would you call it the intensity or volume or? Well you can control it via you’re modulation wheel.. and it’s roughly the equivalent of “how hard the violin player is bowing the string.”So.. what I do is.. inside Digital Performer.. as I’m programing out the violin section.. I’m sorta making the violin swell a little bit.. It all ends up being somewhat complicated as I’m controlling key velocity, modulation, and pitch bend…. so far.

Tuning was, and still is, a big question mark for me. Ideally I might like to make the string section set out in quarter tone tuning.. but its not quite clear to me how to go about this, or what the implications might be. It might very well turn out that it’s a real workflow issue.

Lets explore the problem conceptually.. you have these things called “sample maps.” The sample map tell the sampler what samples to play depending on what note you play and how hard you play it.. So in our case all the notes of a violin are set up in that sample map. If you want to make that quarter tones.. do you have to do something along the lines of.. making it so that as you go up the keyboard… it only goes up a quarter tone per key.. and does that mean you have to radically change the sample map? If so, if you’re dealing with a complex sample map… that’s a task that could take a while to achieve.. and if it’s not really clear… all the details of how you do this.. you could very easily make a mess for your self.

Consequently I’ve decided to skip trying to deal with the tuning issue. A number of Native Instruments instruments are actually amazingly good on this front.. but its not clear to me how Kontakt works.. so screw it!

Now I’ve spoken a little about microtonalism.. and its implications.. in this blog.. as well as the implications for how I’m taking on this project. What I’ve decided to do is go with the usual tuning and just pitch bend stuff around. Trouble is.. for who knows what reason.. #1 Pitch bend is not enabled by default and #2 once I figured out how to make Pitch bending happen.. it wasn’t really clear to me how much pitch bending I was setting up..

Ok, let me explain. On you’re keyboard you might have a bitch wheel.. in your sampler you have a pitch wheel range.. You could make the pitch wheel range one semi tone.. which would mean if you move the pitch wheel on your keyboard all the way up while playing a note.. it will be the equivalent of playing the next note up on the keyboard. If you set the pitch bend wheel to an octave.. you’re going to get a pitch that is 12 keys up..

So.. the problem is.. it’s not clear what I’m setting the pitch bend range to.. so again.. I’m force to fly blind folded.. or lets say it’s as if the readouts in my cockpit are giving me information in a foreign system.. the equivalent to driving a car where you don’t get MPH, you get it in the metric system, whil