New collaboration?

I have a semi semi appointment with Sascha (Neudeck) and Christopher (McFall) to start a new online collaboration. In October. But as yet nothing has materialized. Except for a tentative mail to see if the guys are up to it. The problem is I want us to use Reaper, all three. In 2007 we did a collaboration already (which will be published by Entr'acte soon) and Chris and I used Audition but Sascha has a mac and used another program. Chris and I were able to exchange Audition sessions which is quite handy because then you can see exactly what the other compadre has been doing in Audition. Sascha however had to make mixes of every track he used and send those over. That way the receiver was confronted with a fixed situation. So a new project where we all use Reaper as a composition and production tool would be excellent.

Oh, and the new release (with the results of the previous coop) will be called Helix and the group name will be EARLabs3. Or something similar :)/

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Pause: unpublished material #3

The video version of this material has been shown during the Earational festival of 2006. That's the last time I ever saw it. I still have the ISO with the DVD material but it has never been viewed. I don't think it will ever be released as DVD, because of the high production costs. Perhaps somewhere online? I don't think I will start another such project all by myself (but maybe in a coop with someone else?). l have given up working with video because I don't have a good camera. I dó have quite a lot of ideas but not the time to materialize them. Soit, as the French say.

Below are the two final sequences for your pleasure:

seq6_a

seq6_b

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New studio: first pics

Today I have started moving my stuff to the new studio room. Here are the first pictures.

This top picture shows the keyboard, Behringer BCR2000 midi controller and the screen with a Reaper session open. I have place the BCR against a laptop stand so that I have a better view on the settings of the rotators.

The screen I have placed on a wallboard, accompanied by left and right loudspeakers.


This picture shows a more general view: the Spirit Absolute 2 monitors left and right of the screen.

To the left on the desk is my old buddy the Korg MS10 which has served me for 24 years now. In front of the MS10 is a more modern Yamaha CBX-K1XG keyboard which I use for entering midi data. On the far right corner of the desk you might discern the Audiofire box sitting quietly doing its excellent job.

The computer case is in the other room, so that I won't be bothered by the (little) noise it produces.

I'm not finished of course. More cables on the wall, my records and my recordplayer nearby. And I intend to design some kind of a microphone lab setup with which I can quickly record live sounds.

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Pause: Unpublished material #2

Part 2 then. Tietchens material revisited. When I had almost finished the music, I decided that I wanted to experiment with video. I bought a very cheap webcam, I took pictures with a pda (700 kb pixels, so not even 1 mb) and I started to experiment with VVVV software. VVVV is a video specialized counterpart of MAX. Naturally, as with all experimentation this was a struggle. I didn't have a fast enough videocard in my pc to do all the things I could and wanted to make with VVVV. But in the end I got what I wanted and went on to the next stage: Adobe Premiere. So I mastered that software as well. That was great fun, by the way. I really liked it. Syncing the sound with the video required a new mix of the audio. That being finished I authored all of the material onto DVD.

Pfeww, yes I did learn a lot in those days. But I also learned that I am very bad at 'selling' my stuff. I wrote to a few labels but they refused to release this as a DVD. Business is bad, of course. And releasing a DVD, well, it's just too risky.

This weekend there are four downloads available:

seq2
seq5_a
seq5_b
seq5_c

Next week the rest (of the story).

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I now have a 24 track mixing desk

A week ago I wrote about how I couldn't get my midi controller connected to Reaper. Well, with persistence and a lot of help from fellow Reaperites on the [ Reaper forum ] I got it working. And so far it's working really fine too! I now have control over 24 tracks with real manual handling. No mouse clicking or drawing envelopes but clicking multiple buttons at the same time and turning knobs by hand.

It feels better, it works definitely faster. If you want to know more about how I did it, just check out the forum. If you use Reaper yourself, check this out as well because all of the people there are really wanting to help you out. Even if you don't succeed immediately they keep on coming up with suggestions and tips.

By the way, Reaper has default mappings to other controllers, like Mackie Control Unit and MCE. Also the fader version of the Behringer controllers are included. So they should be connected in a flash.

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Pause: Unpublished material #1

Because my production has come to a stand still (for the moment) I have decided to offer some unpublished stuff for download. There is a project that I have been working on from 2001 to 2003. It has never been released. I offered it to Die Stadt but they turned it down (after leaving me hanging for 2 years, thanks very much). Does anyone remember Asmus Tietchens' "Von Mund Zu Mund"? Three 7 inch singles with vocalities. Heavily distorted stuff. I liked it immediately and decided to 'do something' with that material. I reworked all of the music into an opera. I invented characters for the voice treatments and so made up a plot and went ahead. All fine and dandy but the story never really materialized. And so the end result was a suite of electronic arias.

For download there is :
sequence 1a
sequence 1b

There are six other parts in the series. Next week there will be more.

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Getting in control

In between all the stuff and preparing the layout of my new studio I have been diving into the issue of a midi controller again... again? again! You see, I have bought myself a Behringer BCR2000 controller last year because I thought it might be good to control the software with a more 'live' feeling. With this controller I can use a software Korg MS20 and assign all the software buttons to real rotators.

The thing is that Reaper is not able to return midi signals to the BCR2000. Which is very unfortunate. Why? Well, let's say I have a volume setting at -3dB. If all is working correct I can use a rotator on the BCR2000 to make a change (like setting the volume at -1dB). Now I close the application (saving everything of course) and I shut the BCR2000 down. Next day I return to my desk and I switch the BCR on, open Reaper and the session that I have been working on yesterday. If the midi feedback works correctly then the assigned controller knob will put itself in the -1dB position. Well, it doesn't. What's the problem, you say? Well, the problem is that the moment I touch the knob and it happened to be in the -40dB position then Reaper will immediately turn the volume down to -40dB. Which is bloody irritating if you have 20 tracks and pans and solo butons that have to be reset manually, every time you (re)start a session. So, I'm not so happy with Reaper at the moment. I expect them to fix this, but it's something that has been bothering other users for quite a while now.

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