The iPad is Going to Change Music Production More than You Think.

Feb 032010

A lot of hoopla has been going around the internet this past week regarding the iPad. Love it or hate it, the fact of the matter is that Apple has a track record of producing new hardware that rocks industries in such a way that the entire industry changes. The question comes down to then how will the iPad impact music production?

One of the biggest complaints I have seen from people regarding the iPad is that it is not running OS X and while this might seem like a fault at first I actually think it is a blessing in disguise. OS X and even Windows are what I would call “dead” platforms. Not dead in the sense that people will stop using them, but dead in the sense that they have pretty much reached the pinnacle of their development. They are mature and probably won’t be seeing any revolution design changes.

There has also been several complaints about the restrictive nature of the iPhone/iTunes application ecosystem. Peter Kirn over at CreateDigitalMusic.com. I agree with his sentiment to an extend in so much that the closed fist that Apple has on the App store can be detrimental, but I am not so quick to jump to his side in that open source is the solution. I love open source as much as the next person, but the inherent problem with open source on the whole is that almost all of the products are not consumer friendly. And to be honest the way in which Apple governs its App store has probably not afflicted most consumers in any great impact. In fact it could be argued that Apple’s approval process has been a huge success at keeping the applications on the store and on the iPhone running amazingly well. Regardless though of what you think about that process we will see music production applications come to the iPad. It is safe to say that there will always be a place for those who want more openness to go as well, namely Android.

There is new OS war brewing and in this OS market there is tremendous growth potential for the company that takes it over. Right now the front runners are Apple with the iPhone OS and Google with Android/Chrome OS. What is unique about these OS’s and most of the products that they are running on is that they are middleware of sorts. They are complimentary to your traditional OS. They aren’t going to replace it. You will sync your general media, contacts, documents, etc. on them and chances are sync that back to your “desktop” OS when you are done. The assumption that these platforms are inherently less powerful is entirely the wrong way to look at these platforms in my honest opinion.

So being that they are middleware or complimentary, how do they come into play in music production? Are you going to be running the latest version of Logic Pro or FL Studio on them? Chances are the answer is no, and while that functionality may come with time that is not where its strength is going to lie. Instead think of ways in how these OS’s and devices can link up and also complement your traditional workflow.

If you can break away from the traditional mindset that these devices need to run your existing applications in existing methodologies, their potential grows tremendously, and not just for music production. Think for a second of the iPad not as the hardware running your DAW but instead as running or being a control interface for your DAW, or perhaps operating as you would an external synthesizer. May be it replaces your midi controller?

The power of external DSP systems has proven itself to be useful in music production. The TC Powercore, Muse Reactor, Virus TI, etc. How would your production setup be improved if for example you could run a modular synthesizer just on the iPad, where the DSP processing is handled and it shows up in your DAW as any other VST? Think of how the Virus TI works. The OS on the iPad has such low overhead compared to a traditional OS that you could do DSP offloading applications on it that you perhaps couldn’t do in a traditional OS environment.

Hey Remeber this guy? The Jazzmutant Lemur? It was the “groundbreaking” multi-touch control surface interface that everyone wanted for years, but was just too expensive to own. Well guess, what. Apple just announced a $500 multi-touch control surface.

Wan to know something else? There is already a control interface software that runs on the iPhone/iPod Touch called TouchOSC that utilizes Open Sound Control.

You see where this is going, don’t you? Just look at the plethora of other interesting music creation applications that already exist on the iPhone.

Jasuto

Noise.IO

Inuta

Heck, Even Akai is getting in on the synthesizer creation business and we have also seen how well the Korg DS-10 synthesizer has been received.

The point is I think there is a huge potential here that is going to explode. No, this is not a replacement for your desktop, but were you really looking for that anyways? What is is though is a very interesting piece of hardware (that will only improve in future generations) that developers are going to take advantage of in the near future to produce some crazy good applications for. Just think of what they can do with that screen real estate!!!!

A New Year, A New Direction

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Jan 022010

So the new year is upon us and the site has been dead for the past couple of months. I have been battling with what to do with the site since I do not have the time to do a regular podcast regarding music production and I do not want to try to keep up with the news related to gear releases.

As I have been dipping my toes into the water of tracking again I realized that it might be useful for people to have a blog that follows the development and music in the tracking world. Now, there are a couple of blogs out on the net that are focused on the demoscene and a few on tracking music, but the scope of tracking has changed so much these days. Many of these blogs, in my view are still very much focused on the oldschool of tracking, which is fine, but I would like to focus on topics of tracking that are related to the general musician. So many of today’s trackers can do full on music production as well as any other program and I would like to discuss the tools (hardware and software) and music that is coming out of that arena.

So, as I gather my thoughts over the next several weeks and months to focus the site, I would love to hear feedback if anyone has it regarding how to move the site forward with respect to tracking.

Presonus Studio One (v1.0) Review

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Sep 212009

Presonus is a company that for years has prided itself as being one of the best mid-level audio equipment manufacturers around. They have long been known for producing some quality audio interfaces and pre-amps and generally dominate that sector of the market along with Motu. It would seem logical then that Presonus would want to get into the DAW space considering how important and integrated an audio interface and the DAW can become these days. The question is of course, did they pull it off?

What is Presonus Studio One?

Studio One is Presonus’ first foray into the digital audio workstation market. Studio One is full featured DAW and comes packed with several built in plugins, a full complement of MIDI features and all of the multi-track recording and sequencing that you would come to expect out of a DAW in this price range. Studio One PRO is priced $400 in the U.S. and comes with not only the DAW package, but also with a mastering suite. The DAW side of the software alone will not be for retail sale and will instead be packaged into bundles with Presonus’ audio hardware.

On the outset Studio One has a lot going for it. It is a full featured DAW and it is well polished. In fact it demonstrates much of the maturity that we see in several others DAW’s and includes as I mentioned before the mastering suite, a 64-bit compatible version, Mac and Windows installation options and a robust audio engine. Presonus has even gone as so far to design the interface in the same color and design scheme that is seen on most of its hardware. As you can see in the picture, the interface is based around a darker color palate with blues and silvers. It is very easy on the eyes, but still contrasting enough to easily identify elements within the UI design.

Workflow and Interface

Launch Screen

When you first launch Studio One you will be greeted with a launch portal screen that appears to be becoming more popular in DAW’s these days. This launch screen allows you the option to select whether you want to create a new song or create a new project. Projects are what Presonus is defining as your mastering tracks. The terminology is rather confusing to be honest and there is not a place that readily defines what the differences are between the two options from the outset. Naturally most musicians would want to start out selecting the song option.

Also prominently displayed on the launch screen are three very useful columns of information. On the left you have your most recent files, in the center you have your audio/midi hardware information and artist profile and on the right you have a “news” feed from Presonus. The entire interface is rather well thought out but does have a distinct “Windows feel” to it, despite the shading and gradient textures used. The heavy use of these gradients also does take a toll on your system resources as the launch of the program takes up to thirty seconds to launch, presumably because it needs to pull in the latest news information as well as launch the detailed UI. I also question the usefulness of the news column in the long term. While it serves as a nice information section, is it really needed when the real purpose of the software is to create music? I am curious if users would utilize it in the long term and questions as to why an email from Presonus with news wouldn’t be more useful?

Now before you can begin creating music you need to authorize the software. Unfortunately the authorization process is not as simple as typing in your registration key. Presonus requires you to setup an online account on their website during the authorization process and link your software and registration key to this account. This is a time consuming and rather annoying process and personally I don’t see why it is needed. I can understand the concerns Presonus might have regarding piracy, but at the end of the day piracy is going to happen and there is no point in annoying the paying customers. Presonus is fighting an uphill battle in the DAW market right off the bat so they need to win customers over by making things as easy as possible.

Working with the Interface

Now if you have made it through the launch screen and registration process you then move on to setup options and launching of a new song. The setup of an audio interface is a very straight forward process, especially if you have a Presonus device. The rest of the setup for midi devices, sample library locations, etc. is self explanatory and very simple.

Studio One - New Song

Moving on to the song section, when you first create a track you are presented a template selection screen similar to what Garageband uses, only it is not as well done. You will notice from the screen shot that the template screen is focused on mixer routings for Presonus audio interfaces. There are a few other basic audio setups basic instrument setups but on the whole the entire template screen just doesn’t appear as polished as what some other software is doing and in fact it can be rather confusing. Wouldn’t it make more sense for the software to automatically detect your track routings when you setup the audio interface, especially if you are using a Presonus interface? It also would have been nice if Presonus could have at least provided templates for other popular interfaces such as those from Motu or M-Audio.

When a new song is launched you are presented with a standard tracking window with transport controls, pattern editing, etc. On the bottom right corner of your screen you will find the three buttons that you will probably be using most often during your composing time within Studio One. The “Edit” window opens up a piano roll screen and the instrument’s or sample’s parameters. The “Mix” window brings you to the software’s mixing desk and the “Browse” window opens up your library for instruments and samples. The entire setup is very standardized and doesn’t bring anything new to the table. In many respects it is using the workflow that many other DAW’s have used for years and it is sticking to that formula. Adding instruments, samples, loops or a Rewire device is as simple as dragging and dropping from the browser library into the tracking window. The appropriate audio track for the most part is automatically created, but if you want to use one shot samples, you will have to load up a plug-in first before dragging the samples over.

Once you load up an instrument editing it is super simple. Simply double click the track and the piano roll editor instantly pops up. The piano roll in Studio One is a competent system that truth be told has a rather Cubase feel to it. Again it gets the job done, but doesn’t present the user with any ground breaking features except perhaps one. Presonus has decided to include an interesting twist in automation within Studio One actually confused me at first. In addition to standard track automation, which can be accessed in the main tracking window via a dropdown under the track, an additional set of two “mini” tracks of automation options for velocity, automation, and panning can be found underneath the piano roll. Now this option can actually be quite confusing for users. The automation within this section is automation assigned per the pattern and not necessarily the track. Presonus calls this “Instrument Part Automation” and the idea behind it is that each pattern has its own automation that can move with it regardless of how you arrange the patterns and tracks. The idea is a fantastic one, but the implementation for me personally was too clunky and confusing. It was not always clear what automation is doing what. It would have been much more efficient if the instrument part automation could have been integrated and displayed in line with the track automation in the sequencing window.

Mixing Window

Now that the basic idea of how to create some tracks is down, the next logical step that one would want to take in a composition is add effects and work on mixing parameters. As appears to be evident thus far in Studio One’s design, the basics of the mixing console are fairly easy to access and implement. The console on its face has a standard interface similar to that of a traditional analog console. Each audio track has a channel which can be supplemented by send buses and effects. From there on out though the console can get fairly complicated very quickly. Plug-in instruments are not clearly represented or distinguished from their sample counterparts. This is a travesty unfortunately because it is mostly likely the case that the majority of potential users for the software will be software based musicians. As soon as effects get into the fray the console interface becomes increasingly more complex and it seems that the complexity is mostly due to a design choice on Presonus’ part. When expanding the console to try to access effect inserts and sends, the effects channels expand next to the audio channel or above it. This seems counter intuitive to how many other consoles operate with the effects sitting below the channel strip. This is largely just a cosmetic issue, but in terms of workflow, musicians who are used to one process may find this one confusing. Overall the console mixing window comes across as a fairly daunting and intimidating section of the software that I believe will be the roadblock to many people using the software. What Presonus has developed is a rather full featured and flexible mixing setup, but the complexity gets in the way of the basic functionality that 90% of musicians will need most of the time.

Built in Instruments

Studio One ships with four basic instruments in the package. Unfortunately the instrument offerings are very sparse and the ones included are mediocre at best. Many other DAW packages out there offer much better built in plug-in libraries. Even the smaller companies have deals that package in free 3rd party plug-ins to at least get the user going. Presonus does neither and unfortunately presents the user which a setup that does not really entice them to dig deeper with the software.

Impact

Impact is a 4×4 pad MPC style drummachine that will work nicely with any drumpad controller. It is a simple instrument, but accomplishes exactly what it needs to do. In fact more DAW’s should ship with basic plugins such as this with the prevalence of pad controllers now in so many bedroom studios.

Mojito

Mojito is a simple one oscillator synthesizer and unfortunately not much more than that. Of the four instruments that are packed into Studio One this one is the most disappointing. These days a DAW needs to ship with a solid virtual analog “bread and butter” type synth that can get someone up and running. It is understandable that they are not offering something akin to what Logic Pro or Cubase offers, but when FL Studio ships with the 3xOSC which can on its own right create great sounding leads, Presonus needs to step up to the plate.

Presence

Presence is a simple sample format player. Presonus calls them “Sound Sets” and it is unclear at this time if they plan to sell these sets or not. In all seriousness though it is a glorified soundfont player and not much more than that. Useful, but not as useful as it could have been.

Sample One

Lastly for the built in instruments is a basic sample playback instrument. It would not go as so far to call it a sampler as it cannot do multi-samples and cannot even edit samples.

Final Thoughts

Final thoughts on the Presonus Studio One are mixed. On the whole there is a good foundation here for a new DAW. Unfortunately though Presonus is not doing enough within the software to really sell the user on it and some of the design choices with regards to workflow could be major turn offs for its potential user base, namely new musicians/producers. Studio One for the most part seems to be getting in its own way and there are too many clicks and menu navigations to get to what you want to. The mixing interface, perhaps one of the most important sections of the software, is just too cumbersome for most users to efficiently navigate into. The software is also severely lacking on the plug-in front. Cheaper DAWs on the market offer more and better built in plug-ins. Cheaper DAWs on the market even offer free third party plug-ins pre-packed. Whatever the case may be, Presonus let the ball drop. They need to offer more to the user to at least give the perception of value and it is inexcusable to not offer a core functional sampler or synthesizer in a DAW these days. When it comes down to it in the end, Presonus is just not offering the value for the money that other entry level DAW manufacturers are offering.

Summary

Pros

Good tracking/sequencer interface
Excellent integration with Presonus audio interfaces
Competent DAW for musicians
Deep mixing console if you have the patience for it.
Useful launch screen
Mastering suite in “Pro” useful for basic purposes
Windows & Mac OS X support

Cons

Slow load times
Too many clicks to do most tasks.
Interface feels “heavy” in response to user
No QWERTY keyboard support for musical typing
Audio routing for non-Presonus interfaces is confusing.
Confusing interface with automation and mixing
Included instruments are poor.
Monopolized audio output on Windows Vista machine

System Requirements

Macintosh

Mac OS X 10.4.11 or Mac OS X 10.5.2 or higher
Minimum:
- PowerPC G4 1.25 GHz or Intel Core Solo 1.5 GHz processor
- 1 GB RAM
Recommended:
- PowerPC G5 or better or Intel Core Duo or Intel Xeon processor or better
- 2 GB or more RAM

Windows PC

Windows XP or Vista
Minimum:
- Intel Pentium 4 1.6 GHz processor or AMD Athlon 64 (Turion)
- 1 GB RAM
Recommended:
- Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz EM64T or better or AMD Athlon 64 3000+ or better
- 2 GB or more RAM

Tested on

Windows Vista
- Dell Dimension DXP061 32-bit
- Intel Core 2 Duo: 2.4 Ghz
- 2GB Ram
Mac OS X 10.5.6
- Macbook
- Intel Core Duo 2.0 Ghz
- 2GB Ram

Price

$399
http://www.Presonus.com

Are Homepages Still Needed?

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Sep 152009

Here a question I have been asking myself over the past couple of months. For years the artist homepage has been the home base, the go to spot for people to find the latest information on their favorite artists. I myself have spent countless hours slaving our homepage design trying to find the right idea and concept that just worked for me and my music. When it is all said and done though does a homepage even matter anymore? The internet has matured a tremendous amount in just the past five years. Search has become the lingua franca so finding an artist has become more easy than ever.

When Myspace stormed onto the scene several years ago bringing with it the social ecosystem design for bands, it in some respects changed everything. The dichotomy of information changed from the listener seeking out the artist to instead the artist almost seeking out the listener. In the social networking ecosystem the information that the artist puts out is pushed to the user. There also seems to develop the insatiable need to get as many followers/fans/friends as possible regardless of how valuable they truly are. This is something that just was never really feasible with a traditional website. I myself have seen more traffic for my music with a blog style website than a traditional one, but even a blog to many extents is to slow these days.

There are now more social networking websites designed around music than ever before. Myspace is no longer the dominate player and arguably might not even be the best player if it was not for the fact of its large user base. Even complicating matters even more, services like Twitter are changing the game once again as they act as a platform to deliver information rather then a service. We are beginning to see services fold over onto each other as as post on to Virb for example can automatically update a band’s pages at Myspace, Twitter, Facebook and others. When people are actively spending their time on other services and not even necessarily visiting the websites of these services, does it not make sense to push our presence as musicians onto these services?

I guess that circles me back around to my original question. Is a homepage still needed? With the pervasiveness of all of these social networks that people presumably want to be a part off why would someone want to participate in the isolated island that a single band’s page could offer? Certainly if the band is big enough they could support their own social ecosystem around themselves, but for most of us that just isn’t possible. One argument could certainly be made towards the permanence that homepage offers. With the development of so many social platforms there are bound to be casualties in the process. Does an artist want to truly invest their time into updating all of these sites and at the same time what if they choose the wrong one, it goes belly up and much of their fan base, music and contacts are lost? Is the homepage relegated largely to operating as a portal for people to then branch out to the latest social network?

Lets her some comments and thoughts from musicians out there. Many of you that I see don’t have webpages. Those that do, how does your traffic and listens compare to what you get on a social network?

Top Five Music Communities to Distribute Your Music Online

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Aug 052009

As musicians we want to get our music out there to the audience right? Sure you do and there is no better way for a bedroom musician to get their music heard than to get it online. With all of the different sites out there though, what is the best way to get online and heard by listeners? Sure you can host it on your own website, but how much traffic is your own website really getting? So to help everyone out, here is my list of the top five best places to host your music online (and to get it heard).

Soundclick.com

WHY: Soundclick is a staple in the online music communities world. It has been around since almsot the beginning and is one of the few sites from the original mp3.com days . It has an extremely large user community that consists of both musicians and listeners which creates a potentially large listener base. It also has recently implemented an embedable music player that you can put on your own site. You can also upload an unlimited number of tracks. The biggest drawback however is that it doesn’t afford all of the flexabilities of a true social network. It is slowly moving there, but the features are slightly tacked on and following and communicating with users is a little cumbersome compared to other sites. For a pure hosting solution it is hard to beat though.

Myspace.com

WHY: While Myspace these days is arguably a cesspool for communications it still does one thing extremely well and that is hosting for musicians. The site started out as a solution for musicians to post their information on and it still excels in that field. Myspace has one of the largest community bases around and they have integrated a lot of new music related features. The site however still stuffers from a limited amount of upload space with only 10 songs, terrible site design and a very clunky user interface. Also, one of the strongest features for musicians, the calendar, is not relevant for most electronic producers. The pure potential of userbase however still makes it an enticing place to put your music for fans.

Virb.com

WHY: Arguably, Virb is verything Myspace should have been, but it hasn’t quite blossomed into the go to place it should. It features all of the core tenants you would find on Myspace, but with a much cleaner interface, social network integration, easy site modifcation and much more. You can even add an unlimited amount of tracks for free, integrate your Twitter or Youtube (or any number of other sites). The biggest downfall here is that the user community is rather small, especially when compared to other sites. It also does not feature an embedable mp3 player to host on your own webpage or to distribute online.

Soundcloud.com

WHY: Soundcloud is the newest member to the game, being less than a year old. In that year however it has grown substantially. Soundcloud can best be described as a Twitter for music producers. The community is mostly made up of musicians and your music is fed to your subscribers in a twitter like feed. The strength in Soundcloud though is not in the community itself, but its ability to be a platform that can leverage other communities. Soundcloud is perhaps the most open of all of the sites listed here. It features an embedable and customizable player that can be posted almost everywhere. The site features Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and RSS support for your music uploads. It even has a dropbox feature where people can drop music off to you. One of the other big assests of Soundcloud is the inline comments users can make for your tracks. The player allows users to insert a comment at any point on the timeline of your track for reviewing purposes or just for fan purposes. The free service offers only five uploads per 30 days however, but there is no limit to how you can distribute/embed the players or to how many tracks you can ultimately have.

TheSixtyOne

WHY: This last choice probably has people saying “huh”? TheSixtyOne is a site that is almost completely different than everything else listed above. TheSixtyOne is not really a hosting music site in and of itself, but rather it is a social voting site for music perhaps comperable to Digg.com. As a musician you can upload your music to the site where it will be voted upon by users and the community and ranked in the chart system. The site claims that it is more oriented towards music culture than pure music, but the premise is based around a completely democratic user base that is mostly listener not musician based. If you are looking for true listeners to your music TheSixtyOne is a fantastic way to break out of the echo chamber. The one major downside is that they limit the number of uploads you can have based on your popularity. Your listens earn you credits to upload more music. There is also no way to bring your music out of the site onto your own page.

The Macbook Aftermath

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Jun 162009

Alright, so we are now a good week into the post announcements for the new Macbook Pros and I suppose everyone has had some time to digest the changes to the hardware. With the new announcements there have been a couple of changes to the hardware that could potentially have a pretty large impact on music producers. Being that Macbook (Pros) make up a pretty good chuck of the producer laptop market, lets take a look at some of those changes.

Unibody Design

Last year’s controversioal decision to have a non-removalbe battery has made its way into the entire Pro line now and it is once again taking quite a bit of heat. For most users people aren’t going to be swapping out batteries, but for the real pro user that is a legitimet concern. The 5 hour expected battery on the 13″ MBP I am sure will end up probably something like 3.5 hours in real life. That being said I can’t say that I actually know another user, including myself who owns more than one battery for any laptop they own.

Addition of Firewire 800

So with the introduction of the new unibody Macbooks a little over a year ago Apple decided to remove the Firewire 800 port on all of the models except for the 17″ model . This was a particulalrly big blow to the platform for creative types since so many of our audio interaces, video devices, etc. connect via firewire for production. It is nice to see that Apple has decided to put this back into the Macbook Pros and also consolidate the entire line into FW 800.

Removal of ExpressCard Slots

Apparently when Apple giveth, Apple must also take away. With the inclusion of the Firewire 800 they have decided to remove the express card slots. While I can’t say that I know many producers who are using the slot, there is a fair number out there who may be running a DSP module or their audio interace off of this slot. This also sort of cuts out a lot of other little advantages to the machine.

SD Card Inclusion

While this might not have an immediate impact for music producers there is quite a bit of hardware these days that use SD cards for sample transfers. With SD cards as cheap as they as well the could also make an excellent solution for storing and retriving sample libraries.

SATA I vs. SATA II

So this one isn’t really a feature as it is a concern that was unearthed a few days ago. Apparently the new Macbooks that are shipping with standard harddrives are shipping with the slower SATA I architecture that caps HDD access speed to 1.5 mbps. Normally that is not such a big deal, but if one were to upgrade their drive to an SSD you would find you have a bottleneck pretty quickly. On the flip side the Macbook Pros that come with an SSD do have the SATA II architecture allowing up to 3.0 Mbps access speeds. This is a disappointing outcome, but I am not sure if it is really a deal breaker for many.

Conclusion

So what seems to be the web’s conclusion on the new Macbooks? Overall the reviews seem extremely positive. It is sort of an intersting take that Apple is going by making the Pro line have three sizes and keeping the Macbook line with the old model style that is only $200 cheaper. One would think that the Macbook is going to fade out entirely in the next year perhaps to something else (netbook? tablet?) the way it is configured now. On that same token though Apple has removed some of Pro features of the books for some more mainstream options. Good for the 90% of users out there, but perhaps not so good for those pro users who really need it. Overall though it looks like the new MBP line probably wont have any major negative impacts on users, even music producers and I would presume that the accessories market will come to the rescue to provide adequate solutions to the minor niche problems that have arisen out of this transition.

Who is Leading Interface Design?

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Jun 102009

With the release of Record three weeks ago, there has been a lot of discussion floating around the net about its merit and place in the computer music world. While the merit of whether or not Record will succeed is certainly handled well in other conversations, there is one thing in the entire release that struck me most. The interface. As I was watching the promotional video for Record they kept touting its easy to use abilities. All the while I couldn’t help but get hung up on the interface. It seems to have almost the exact same sequencing and design interface as Reason, which IMO is one of the worst around, even after its redesign. That thought got me thinking….What DAWs out there on the market are leading the design realm?

Here are my top five picks

FL Studio 8

WHY: FL Studio is on this list primarily for one reason. That is because of its piano roll. The piano roll has emerged as THE number one compositional tool for any computer based musician these days and the folks at Imageline have nailed it. Not only have they struck the right balance in UI design between contrast and 3D, but the little nuances and fluidity of working in the piano roll make it one of the simpler tools on any DAW to work in. Imageline also has added some other fantastic features such as plugin thumbnails and a great wav editing UI that make the interfae even more slick and intiuitive.

Tracktion

WHY: Tracktion is one of those DAW’s that really does not recieve enough credit for what it is capable of. It is a fantastically well designed DAW that did a great job of breaking away from some of the older DAW design ideas. Tracktion’s biggest accomplishment was the single window UI design implementation. Prior to Tracktion really bringing a single window UI everyone was working in tabs or multiple windows bouncing all over the place. Tracktion found an elegant solution of collapsable sub-menus that when paired with its minimalist 2D interface was the first DAW to really get it right. Since the release of Tracktion v1.0 we have now seen other DAW’s such as Logic and Energy XT follow suit with similar design concepts.

Renoise

WHY: Who would have thought that 20 years ago the tracker would still be in use today? Not many I think. While most trackers have not progressed to keep up with modern DAW’s Renoise has done an excellent job of striking the balance perfectly. It maintains the effcient minimalist interface that make trackers so appealing, but at the same time was able to integrate modern DAW features such as graphical automation, waveform editing and routable mixing. Renoise in many respects has struck such a good balance between effciency and features that much higher priced software appears clunky in comparison. Oh, did I also mention that you can completely customize the interface design and color to your needs?

EnergyXT

WHY: While I mentioned Tracktion above as nailing the single window UI design criteria, the newsest version of EnergyXT has also nailed it as well. In fact it takes some of the greastest bits of other software UI’s and brings them together extremely well. It has the very intuitive one window UI design and flat UI color scheme similar to Tracktion. It can also be colored and customized like Renoise. Also however is the abilityto treat the sequncer in a modular fashion with the instruments. While there have been some other DAW’s that have and can do this as well, the easy integration in EnergyXT make them one of the only DAW’s to successfully pull it off.

Ableton Live

WHY: If there is one DAW out there that has grown the fastest and changed the landscape more than any other it is Ableton Live. Not only is the UI diesn elegant and lightweight, but the software was originally designed for live performance work. Ther session menu system that they implemented has almsot single handily changed the way electronic music is performed live and in many respects has changed the entire concept and perception of DJ’s on the whole. The software and interface design not only was flexibile enough for live performance, but was also flexible enough to make the jump into a full featured DAW and took that session view concept and expanded it to use as a sketch pad for composers to work in.

Are Electronic Musicians/Composers Really Musicians?

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May 132009

This is a debate that I always love bringing up with people time and time again, and that is the question as to whether or nor electronic composers really are musicians. Now for me the definition of a musician is someone who plays an instrument or sings. If you think about it though, most people producing electronic producers these days are doing neither. They really fall more into the category of a composer:

A composer (latin com+ponere, literally “one who puts together”) is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance.

via Wikipedia

There are of course all of the other musical forms out there as well such as entertainers, instrumentalists, vocalists, etc. Neither is inherently better than the other but there is a definite distinction between the different categories and I think it is important for people to identify themselves properly. Frank Sinatra for example was quite clearly an entertainer, but that doesn’t lessen his accomplishments or talent at all.

Taking this thought a step further though a whole other side of the discussion begs to question whether anyone can be classified as a musician or composer. With the prevalence and easy access of music composition tools these days, does anyone who has a cracked copy of FL Studio on their computer earn the right to call themselves composers or musicians? At what point or level of accomplishment (if any) can you define yourself has a musician or composer? There is certainly a level of student in all of us as we continue to learn and improve ourselves in this craft. Perhaps the level that you can call yourselve a musician is only reached when your fell peers identify you as one.

Anyone care to weigh in on the debate?

Website Currently Under Construction

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May 112009

As many of you can probably see the the site is undergoing a make over. What you probably don’t see is the underlying tech for the site is also being completely rebuild. Over the past five months Orju was a Beta test for me to experiment with the podcasting and distribution of the site. Through that Beta I learned quite a few things, one of which was that Joomla, the platform the site was previously built on was not the best solution for what I was trying to accomplish. Unfortunately that means that I have had to basically tear down the old site and start from scratch.

The new platform is built on WordPress and I think that will be more flexible in the future for the podcast focus of the site. In the mean time, while I am getting the site back up and running please follow us on Twitter to keep up on what is happening

New Apple Macbook Pro 17”: The Battery is Not the Real Concern!!!!

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Jan 072009

Yesterday Apple had their last Macworld address and while the releases were moderately interesting, one of the most controversial is perhaps the announcement regarding the non-removable battery for the newly announce 17” Macbook Pro. Now, I don’t imagine too many livePA artists are using 17” Pros to do their live performances because lets be honest, the things are huge. But this non-removable battery could very well be setting a design standard that we will all see trickle down into the 15” and 13” models come the next revision.

So in this new Macbook, Apple is claiming to have developed a super long batter that lasts up to eight hours and can have over 1000 charge cycles. Interesting, but I think we all honestly can admit that the real world charge life will last probably around 50%-70% of that claimed by Apple. So, 4-6 hours roughly. While the main crux of this debate and disappointment from many people comes down to the fact that business users cannot change batteries when on a long flight and so forth, I think there is a much bigger and more important issue here that most people are failing to discuss. That issue is of course the lack of accessibility to the internals of the machine itself now.

I personally have never once considered purchasing a second battery for my Macbook and I imagine the vast majority of laptop users out there, even “Pro” users are in the same boat. What I have done though is wanted to upgrade my Macbook as it grew older. Install a new harddrive with a higher RPM, add more RAM, etc. And while the new 17” Macbook comes packed with a nice 320 GB harddrive and 4GB of ram, this is certainly not the max of what it can handle. A few years down the road even, the cost of putting in a 1TB drive may only be $100, who knows. What Apple has done here though is effectively remove the personal upgrade options of the laptop from the user. No longer can someone really extend the life of their machine an extra few years by adding a bigger, faster harddrive or more RAM. You are now forced to either purchase a new machine or pay the exorbitant amount of extra cost to have the upgrade done at purchase. We all know that PC manufacturers charge an “arm and a leg” for harddrive and RAM upgrades at purchase.

The upgrade from 4GB of DDR3 Ram on the Macbook Pro 17” to 8GB of RAM costs a whopping $1,200!!!!!!! Admitingly, DDR3 ram is newer to the market and I could not find 2x4GB sticks for sale at either Newegg.com or TigerDirect.com at the time of this writing, but comparable RAM from both of those sites in 2x2GB configurations runs $200 at the most.

This is a slippery slope that Apple has begun to go down with regards to its customers. It is fairly easy to argue that the consumer market either doesn’t care or doesn’t notice these sorts of things, but I for one would like to think that the “Pro” market that all of us as musicians fall into are much more critical and demanding of our hardware.

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TheSixtyOne

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