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...

weekly report (august 28, 2009)

[ Madmad liblib (in 7/8) ]

Take a listen. It's a bit primitive but it wojks, dunnit? All rhythm is brain candy and candy is addictive. I will work out this composition and it will definitely be more sophisticated.

That's about all for this week, kids. I've been experimenting with my studio gear and nothing really important was produced. See ya next week.

Read more...

weekly report

No real progress this week but a lot of tiny developments. I will share them here.

1. I have had five test runs with the final master before it was good enough for me to ship to the label. Main problem was volume levels. First I tried all kind of tiny corrections but couldn't get it done the way I wanted. After 3 test runs I decided to try with a limiter, but wasn't satisfied with the ones I used so far. There are millions of plugins (VST/RTAS) around for digital workstations but most of them use sloppy algorhythms that not only correct the problem that is bothering you but also affect other parts of the sound.

I decided to try the Event Horizon limiter that is developed by Stillwell Audio. After some experimenting that resolved the problem sufficiently. It not only works the sound like it should but it's also reacting lightning fast when you want a sudden change of threshold. It's definitely a keeper. Reaper has really dozens of small vst's under the hood and most of them are good (especially for a rock band) but in my case I need precision.

Oh, and by the way: I used Schwa's Schope as a master monitor for amplitude, frequency spectrum and phase linearity. It's brilliant in its accuracy.

Anyway, after test run 4 I decided to make a few changes in track 11. Can you believe it? You just keep hearing tiny things that weren't there before and require immediate fixing... I just stop listening now. It's all up to you, people.

2. I have invited Wouter Jaspers (Franz Fjödor) and Steffan De Turck (Staplerfahrer) for a chat. Perhaps we can start a project together. We will meet September 1. Strangely, after years of working online I'd like to work together with people in a room, again.

3. I have collected a lot of samples for the 'dub radio soundtrack' project. Nothing much of building, just collecting material. And thinking about the collage technique.

4. I am in the process of transfering a very old project from Audition to Reaper. You can hear the clips in [ these posts ]. I intend to rework them, do a complete sound overhaul and a add new material. Let's baptize this project 'mundohr' for all the obvious reasons. At the moment this is a tedious job. At the Reaper forum someone published a script for translating Cool Edit Pro sessions to Reaper projects. But unfortunately this only works for very simple and straightforward sessions. Which mine are not.... But the material is definitely worth reworking. Interestingly, the material is from 2002-2004 and I had not listened to it since 2006. There is also a video version of the music, but I haven't watched for so long that I am now able to judge the music completely anew.

5. Listened to my earlier tape experiments. They will get a place in both the 'dub radio soundtrack' project and the 'Mundohr' project.

6. Back to plugins, finally. Yesterday I saw that Jeroen Breebaart is working on a new plugin which looks quite interesting. It's a plugin which allows you to work with headphones on. Normally that is ill advised, because with headphones on you don't hear the indirect reflections of the room acoustics. On the other hand all studios have problems with these room acoustics, creating the ideal space for monitoring the sound. Breebaart is working on a plugin which emulates this ideal listening space. Quite a challenge. But Breebaart is not just your average joe the nerd. He works at the Philips labs as a researcher and product developer and has many patents to his name. He has also produced other plugins and sells them at ridiculously low prices from his site.

7. finally finally, I have been thinking about my activities for other musicians and composers. It is slowly taking shape. I intend to set up a 'business' where I mix and remix, master and remaster works for others and I will coach and consult in the creative process. If you like me to mix/master, remix/remaster your works, just contact me. If you wish my services to be done discretely (that is: without anyone in the world besides you and me knowing about it), this is of course possible.

Links

[ Stillwell Audio ]

[ Jeroen Breebaart ]

Read more...

Drumming the beat #2

Okay, I promised a few samples of what has come of my wanderings into the repetition galaxy. So I give you 3 things. They're all quite different and just sketches but I feel that I am getting into a part of the universe that I want to explore more deeply. It feels like anarchy now and again and that kind of freedom is what I am looking for.

[ sample 1 ]
[ sample 2 ]
[ sample 3 ]

RADIO DUB SOUNDTRACK
SOUNDTRACK DUB RADIO
DUB RADIO SOUNDTRACK
RADIO SOUNDTRACK DUB
SOUNDTRACK RADIO DUB

Well, that's about the words that flutter around when I am working on these pieces. And aside from the quotations from our recent musical history I like to concentrate on applying pop production techniques. Herrlich!!

Read more...