A caprice from the past

Sometimes I indulge myself and produce something rhythmic. This example below was produced in (I believe) 2005 or 2006. This one was never released. I played it today and liked the stomping stuff. I decided to do some tape experiments using this as a basic layer. Another reason for publishing is to let you know that a new version of Audiomulch is beginning to see the light of day. I have been beta testing it on and off for the past few weeks and I think you should know that it will be available from Friday June 5th 2009. This material was produced entirely with Audiomulch and only received a polishing with Izotope's Ozone afterwards.

Today I listened to it again and couldn't keep my hands still so I ran the mix through my Reaper postproduction setup. I downloaded Stillwell's CMX tool last week and ran two instance of it through the upper frequency regions, adding some stereo spice.

visit [ Audiomulch ]
visit [ Stillwell audio ] (really awesome vst's!!!)

listen to [ baaaa!! ] AND THE [ 2009 REMIX ]

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REAPER goes DEEPER (again)

Reaper 3 finally saw the light of day. I consider it as basecamp for all of the music that I produce. I find that the (sound)quality of my works has increased since I started using this because I have better control over the endresult. The first production I did completely with Reaper was Gaussian Transient (Megaphone). Later I remastered the EARLabs3 release as well with great results and fine reviews.

Reaper has a steep learning curve. It's not for the weak at heart. But if you have no or only a little experience with professional audio workstations you are being guided with a 400+ user guide (downloadable for free, can you believe it?). It took me approximately 6 months before I mastered it (at the same time recording and composing Gaussian Transient...). And I'm still learning. Much of this is due to the fact that the application is incredibly tweakable. Every one of us has their own prefered working methods. Reaper allows you to customize itself exactly the way you want it. Beside that it's fast, features 64bit pro editing, integrates with your studio hardware, can be completely controlled with your midi controllers.

There's a huge forum with active members who help mostly within the hour. Newbs are welcomed and not scoffed away. And, being Dutch, the price is an important issue. At $60 I am really sure I'm getting a bargain here. Or in the words of Sound On Sound Magazine (january 2009):"I suspect some would be more convinced of its excellence if Cockos significantly raised the licence cost, but those in the know (and I consider myself one of that number) simply regard it as a bargain." "Try it out and judge for yourself."

Go get it [ here ] !!

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New project starting

This week the new online project with Christopher and Sascha has been firing up. We have agreed upon the logistics: Reaper as the main platform, Dropbox as the exchange platform. We will work as much as possible with 24/32bit files and all files will be in FLAC format.. I think that's currently a good balance between soundquality and transportability.

The previous project, released as Helix by [ Entr'acte ], we worked with different platforms (Audition and ProTools) and we exchanged through a personal server. Most files were in 16bit format. Although we all love the result of that enterprise we think we should do better next time.

Of course we will keep you updated of our progress through these lines. today I am converting a lot of wav files into flac and placing them in our 'flea-market' folder. There is now one test project which we use to, well, test ;) .

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One step forward, two steps back

Was for six hours inside the studio today, but there was too much distraction. As usual I started fumbling with the insulation once I thought I heard some noise. It's because I work with these extremely silent parts that hear the smallest noises. Today a mattress in my doorway worked wonders....

As I said before I am in the process of glueing everything together. I am now experimenting with the indoor field recordings which I use as buffers between the compositions but also as an overlay (or underlay, a bed) for the existing stuff (piano and voice).

And almost everytime I listen to stuff that was supposed to be finished (or maybe not) I hear things that need tweaking. I know that these moments will diminish but still, it's annoying. Today I worked for hours on a beast of a project that's so heavy I had to reboot twice when it iced my computer. I decided to work with rendered bundles or groups of tracks in a new project and take it from there. Okay, so I (again) took out a lot of piano notes, leaving more space for other things. The work is now more smooth, not so bumpy. As an example there are two samples:

[ this one ] is the original, with lots of heavy notes
[ this one ] is the new version.

On the side: I'm reading the new Brian Eno biography. Give you details later. It's quite a detailed, but difficult read.

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Blip Blip

I have discovered Blip.fm. It's a sort of social network initiative which circles around the idea that it's always nice to share music with friends. Just check it out at [ blip.fm ]. I will try to blip three new compositions/songs every morning before I start working. There's also a widget to the right of my blog page, so you can also just click play and hear my selections.

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silent composition

Tried fruitlessly to compose 'presque rien'. An inhouse field recording with imaginary inhabitants. Terribly difficult. The stuff is supposed to be barely audible so I have to compose at very low volume. It's actually quite different from composing with your speakers really open. I have two of those landscapes here for your download/listening.

I started out with a basic recording of my living room. Recorded with the OKM mics (for binaural sound) together with the Rode (for extra detail). I then created a 3d reverb sound (in Reaper) and positioned other sounds 'in' the space.

In itself it's not bad, but when I tried two pieces to hear how they fitted in with the piano and voice pieces it simply didn't work. So, I have to go back to the drawing board. On the one hand the silent pieces need to be more silent. On the other hand, ....well, it needs to be 'music', doesn't it?

[ trial 1 ]
[ trial 2 ]

In these pieces the positioning of the different parts is still crude, just like the volume balances, and so on. It's really rough material.
Okay, so I'll try something different next time.

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Face the facebook

Yesterday I had some spare time and so I did what I wanted to do for a long time: add social sharing links to all of the reviews at the EARLabs.org site. Now, when you visit a review page at EARLabs you can directly share it with twitter, facebook, google bookmarks, digg, and delicious. Woohoo!

What gave me the most trouble was the Facebook link and so, in order to be able to test it, I had to open an account there. Oh well, might as well. So as a result I'm now hooked to Facebook and if anyone wants to come and meet me there, you're welcome!!

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