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.