New gear, phase 2

Well, yesterday was the big day. I deconstructed the old rig (which was not bad but a little oldfashioned (AMD athlon, with ddr RAM) and built the new motherboard with Core2 processor and monstrous cooler into it. I had to run to the store to get two strips of ddr2 (oops!) and fired it up with my original sata harddrive. The 2 terabyte drives are already installed but not yet functional since we need to study a bit more on how to rig up the Raid system. All in due time. This week I will slowly build up the software part of things so we can get going next weekend, when THU20 will be in the studio.

In the meantime, [ here's ] a bite for you to chew on. I really like it.

Read more...

New gear, phase 1

I am planning to invest in my computer. Have been 'shopping' last weekend and will purchase a new motherboard, processor, RAM and a raid harddisk system (2 x 1 Terabyte). I will construct it this weekend.... Install a 64bit OS, multiboot, so the creative process will be on hold for a couple days.
Today I bought the cooler. A huge thing which received nice reviews. It's big, but big is most times also 'silent'.

On another note: this is an interesting poll.

Read more...

weekly report (september 20, 2009)

Been working on and off. Had to get rid of a kidney stone. Got into the stone crusher (3,000 sonic pulses straight into your abdomen) on Monday and got rid of the stone(s) by Thursday evening. So there were several painful interruptions. Been sculpting a few tracks. Nothing that is presentable, I'm afraid.

On Sunday I received my copies of the latest release. Sietse van Erve's Moving Furniture Records released "The Drone Gnome", a short series of works that can be regarded as my comment on drone music.

Please visit[ Moving Furniture Records ] and support Sietse (and me).

Extra snack:

Read more...

weekly report (September 13, 2009)

Been working on a composition for the RDS series. The whole project starts to get a 'Gestalt' of some kind. Now it's in the fase of collecting bits and pieces and slowly, in my mind, forming a construction to give those b's and p's a place. By clicking them together. At the moment it's all very collage-like. But I also heard the phenomenal cd by Erdem Helvacioglu which has many moments where he layers sounds by adding reverb to some thus creating a sense of enormous immediacy in others. It is a construction form that is often used by electroacoustic composers and Helvacioglu passed the test with flying colors.

I have also been checking out a demo of the Waves SSL plugins. They are indeed fantastically sharp and responsive and such but I find the price for this bundle ($ 1500 !!!!) much too high for a semi pro like myself. Pity.

Another nicety that I found this week has to do with Reaper (again!). It appears that in the newer versions I can keep the binding of my midi controller with the vst plugins that I have preset. Earlier it was possible to control a vst through your knobs and sliders but as soon as you closed the software you had to make the bindings anew. Now Reaper remembers the bindings. So I can now include my favorite plugs into a track and directly control them by hand and not by mouse. Of course it's also possible to store the changes you make in the track itself but that's old news.

And another thing I learned: Reaper features 'soft takeover'. Those of you who work with midi controllers know about the sudden leaping of settings when you touch a button on your controller. That's because you left your session with volumes at level 0 and when you open it again your midi controller button is set at level -5. When you touch the button the level on your computer jumps immediately to level -5. In Reaper the volume now remains at level 0 until your button reaches that point and then goes along with the controller button. Very nifty.

Read more...

weekly report (September 6, 2009)

Nothing much. I worked on a piece that is based on the first three bars of a song by A Certain Ratio (bass only). I have cut up each bar and slowed it down and then started building up a new song with several variations.

I had a very nice meeting with Steffan De Turck (below) and Wouter Jaspers (left), two young composers from my home town. Steffan works under the monicker of Staplerfahrer, Wouter is aka Franz Fjödor. We have been discussing the possibilities of a collaboration. As far as I am concerned: I would love to have people in the EARLabs studio recording stuff and then collating everything into compositions a la the stuff we did with THU20 (way back). That's why I invited these two guys: they're ready to give anything a try!!

Both Jaspers and De Turck are active in the Tilburg music scene of Vatican Analog. Currently they run a studio in a derelict office building. Very cool, all that. Their 'Sturm und Drang' is very catchy and I am very curious to see what will happen when the three of us start to play in the studio.

Read more...