Category: Music

Given how I make music, this could have gone under Tech. 🙂

  • PC, Vista, Music

    I was trying to do some music, using Reason on my dual G5 Mac, and for reasons (sic) that aren’t clear to me, started with two tracks of arpeggiated Combinator patches. Believe it or not, just those two tracks was enough to give me the dreaded “Your computer is too slow” message. Ugh.

    Normally, when this happens, I go through the rigamarole of rendering one of the tracks to audio (then slice and reload), or simplifying the sounds I’m using or some other hack to reduce the CPU load, but just for grins this time, I decided I try installing Reason on my PC instead. Time to figure out just exactly how much faster the C2Q is than the G5s!

    So, I installed Reason, the driver and automapper for my Novation keyboard, and the absolutely required to do anything useful musically on a PC ASIO4ALL — link removed, since it now goes to a spam site — universal ASIO driver. [Ah yes, I remember the “joys” of doing music on a PC.] And finally, I was ready to go.

    I recreated the original two tracks I built on the Mac, and then started layering more; not, you understand, to build something musically pleasing, but rather just to see exactly how many layers I could end up with. The result was this:

    What you are looking at is 13 Combinators, for a total of somewhere around 135 (!) individual modules. The result is, of course, an absolute mess, but if you want proof click here:

    A mess

    Remember now, I started with the original two tracks that brought the G5 to it’s knees, and it has another 11 layers added on after that. Unfortunately, that really was the limit, I tried for one more layer, but hit the “your computer is too slow” boundary. But still…

    Wow!

    Hm… Now if that’s what you can do with a Core2Quad, I wonder what you can do with one of these. 🙂

  • 36 seconds…

    … of something made with the SVC-50:

    SVC-50 sample

    It’s just a drum loop, a second random loop off this month’s computer music, and a couple of cello tracks with significant processing.

  • At last! Now, no one can hear me.

    I stopped at Long & McQuade one day this week and noticed that they had a Yamaha Silent Cello sitting in a box. I have always wanted to try one of these instruments, so Friday I managed to coherce Ken and Steve — no, it wasn’t that difficult — to go on a road trip at lunch time to see if it had been put on display yet. It turned out that it hadn’t been, but the salesperson who worked in that section was happy to set it up while we waited. I was pleased to see that he knew stringed instruments well, going from removing the packing material to having it fully set up and tuned in about five minutes.

    While waiting for it to be prep’ed, I looked through the cello bows they had in stock to see if there was something interesting to play. For grins, I ended up trying a fiberglass bow. Um… no. It seems that fiberglass bows have considerably more flex than pernambuco, and there’s something about the lack of grain / direction to the flex that felt very weird. Oh well.

    Since the silent cello is (nearly) silent without amplification, the salesman asked if I wanted to try it with headphones, or go for an amp, and I (being the brave soul that I am) went the amp route. After a little initial awkwardness I found that it was quite natural to play. Ken helpfully snapped a candid shot with his iPhone, then used his psionic powers to annotate it with exactly what I was thinking…

    Anyway, the summary is, money-or-no I decided to get it. Hopefully, somewhere between a year-end bonus and a tax refund I can clear up the $1500 damage. (Of course, any cellist will tell you that $1500 for an instrument is cheap, but that doesn’t make it any easier.)

    The thing is, it really is exactly what I wanted. Even though the SVC-50 is the cheapest of the models Yamaha makes, and is missing some of the sensors that are in the more expensive ones, it still sounds quite good — better, in fact, than the sound I got from the piezo pickup on my “real” cello. It has a built-in headphone amp and a line in jack that I can use to connect my iPhone, so it will be the perfect tool for practicing at work[*], while listening to the pieces for the orchestra.

    It’s also perfect for connecting up to music software, since you can hear the processed result without having to block out the original sound of the instrument. I’ll try to get something recorded soon, so you can hear what it sounds like.

    It’s very cool!

    Here’s one last image, from the official Yamaha site:
    Yamaha SVC-50


    [*] Since everyone I have said that to has replied “Aren’t you supposed to be working instead?”, I’m compelled to note that I mean at lunchtime.

  • Korg DS-10

    This was one of the things on my Christmas list this year that I didn’t get[*], so, during boxing week, I wandered down to my local EBGames and picked one up. It’s a cart for the Nintendo DS that provides software emulations of a pair of Korg MS-10, semi-modular analog monosynths and an analog drum machine. It also provides a simple step-sequencer, and has both a traditional keyboard and a “kaos pad” input device. Here’s a couple of screen shots:

    (Or not… that’s what you get for deep linking images off of sites that disappear. Oh well.)
    I haven’t had it long enough to do anything interesting with it, but if you want to see what it’s capable of, just search for “DS-10” on YouTube — last I looked there >1000 videos of people making music on them. Among other cool features is the ability to sync up to four DS’s running over wifi, so if anybody else picks up a copy, let me know.

    Anyway, here’s my first attempt at making some sounds on it; it’s dreck, but it gives you some idea of what it sounds like:

    (wait for it, it starts slow.)


    * Note: I did get a kick-ass, ice crushing blender, a GPS, a bottle of the 2000 Dun Bheagan Islay and numerous other cool gifts, so I’m not complaining at all.

  • The new album

    First, I have to apologize to everyone for the lack of updates on the site for the last while. Since I got back from EclipseCon my life has just been too fracking busy. There is one bit of good news though…

    Yup, that’s a new HBDI album. If you click on the above image, it will take you to a page with individual links for all of the songs, but you can download the whole album (as a ZIP, including a high-res image of the cover and a printable CD insert) by clicking on the link in the top left corner of that page.

  • Reason 4.0

    I picked up the Reason 4.0 upgrade this week. If you’re looking to do this, and you live in Ottawa, I heartily recommend ordering it directly from the Propellerhead store: I saw it on sale at one Ottawa music store for $299, but I got mine direct from Propellerhead for US$142, including shipping. That’s a particularly good deal given the current strength of the Canadian dollar. It also took less than a week to get here.

    In honour of the upgrade, here’s a little piece I pulled together from several copies of the new-for-Reason-4.0 “Thor” synthesizer, a couple of Rex loops and a little help from my friend Alex 😉 …

    It’s zero hours.

    (It’s what my G5 says to me at midnight.)

  • Upcoming Divertimento concert

    Just letting people in Ottawa know that there’s another great Divertimento concert in November. The program is:

    • Fruhauf, Grand Rondo on “Simple Gifts” and “Bourbon” (World première)
    • Beethoven, Symphony No. 7 in A, Op. 92
    • Dvoràk, Symphony No. 8 in G, Op. 88

    The Grand Rondo is a brand-spankin’ new, never publicly performed, short orchestral work by a contemporary organist/composer from California. It’s both lyrical and haunting, and well worth a listen. The other two pieces are both big works that really show the orchestra’s capabilities.

    There are two shows. The one on Friday is Dennis’ birthday, so I’ll probably be the only person from my family who will be there. [The show must go on!] If you come to the Saturday show, you can catch up with Deb, Dennis and many others.

    Friday, November 16, 2007
    Arlington Woods Free Methodist Church
    225 McClellan
    Nepean
    8 p.m.

    Saturday, November 17, 2007
    L’Église St-Thomas-d’Aquin
    1244 Kilborn Ave.
    Ottawa
    8 p.m.

    I’ve got tickets to sell, and I’d be happy to get credit for selling you one, so definitely let me know. They’re also available at the door, if you’re more of a spur-of-the-moment person. Prices are: $15 for adults; $10 for students and seniors; $3 for children 6 to 12; and free for (quiet 😉 ) children under 6.

    (Photo © Charles Frost)

  • Happy Father’s Day!

    In honour of Father’s Day, when I actually get some time on a Sunday afternoon to do “whatever”, here is a new piece of music:

    Father’s DAT 

    It’s nothing special — there are lots of problems (timing, reverb, derivative chord progression) — but it was fun to get back into it again.

  • GO46

    Like many of the first generation of G5s, the line out on my server is very noisy. Because of this, I have been looking for a decent external audio interface for it for a while now.

    Initially, I tried using an Edirol UA-5, but at the time the Mac OS X drivers were quite immature, causing frequent crashes and lockups. I did, eventually, find a successful way to use the device by taking the digital optical out from the Mac and feeding it to the optical in on the UA-5, effectively turning it into an external DA converter. This worked, but waisted a lot of the functionality (i.e. it was audio out only).

    Even if I could solve the driver problems, the UA-5 has three other significant drawbacks:

    1. It uses USB1 to interface to the computer, which severely limits the amount of audio bandwidth it can handle. In particular, at 24-bit, 92KHz, it is capable of doing one stereo in, or one stereo out, but not both.
    2. It does not provide a midi interface, so if I wanted to do some “mobile” music using my laptop, I’d have to bring along a separate midi box. (Of course, I have this problem at home too, but what’s one more box shoved in behind the server?)
    3. It needs AC power, which is also potentially a problem for laptop music making. (And the wallwart for it is huge.)

    Despite these issues, the UA-5 was working well enough that I had avoided doing anything more about audio interfaces until a couple of weeks ago, when Gordon Slater from the Divertimento Orchestra asked me about ways to improve the sound quality of the recordings he made of our rehearsals. He has been using using a Sony stereo mic plugged into a Griffin iMic connected to his MacBook. Theoretically, the microphone is reasonably high quality, which would seem to imply that the quality of the DACs in the iMic was the culprit, so once again I started looking at what was available.

    A friend of mine, Terry Mask from the Digital Music Center in Ottawa, helped out with the following suggestions for low cost interfaces:

    How about these options?:

    Edirol UA25 (USB)

    Edirol FA66 (Firewire)

    EMU 0404 (USB2)

    Presonus Inspire 1394 (Firewire)

    Presonus Firebox (Firewire)

    All the interfaces listed feature:

    • limiting (except the Firebox, to my knowledge)
    • 2 phantom-powered mic preamps
    • mac support (although the 0404 is new to the Mac …)
    • bus powered

    If he’s interested in some inexpensive mics, the Behringer C2’s would probably be decent for this application.

    In addition to the above, Terry mentioned that he had recently used a Yamaha GO46 on a recording session he had done and been very satisfied with the results. This box is a bit more expensive than some of the above ones, but has several nice attributes:

    1. It has 4 inputs (2 with very high quality mic preamps) and 6 outputs, at up to 24-bit, 192KHz.
    2. It has a built in midi interface.
    3. It is “bus powered” directly off of the firewire, with no wallwart required.

    Did you spot the pattern? 🙂 Yup, I picked one up last week, and have been playing with it ever since. So far, the results have been good, but not completely without issue:

    • I haven’t quite been able to get the latency down to where I wanted, topping out at around 8ms before it started to crackle. (If that didn’t make sense to you, the capsule summary is: that’s (effectively) the minimum time between when the computer tries to make a sound and when the sound comes out the speakers. If the latency is too high, for example, it makes it difficult to play software instruments in real time.)
    • I ended up needing to put a ground loop isolator between the GO46 and my speakers. Believe it or not, the noise from the G5 was actually travelling down the firewire and leaking out in the resulting audio. Doh!

    Despite these problems, I’m happy so far. I still need to do some test recordings, particularly of the cello. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

  • Courtney Love is a thoughtful, caring person.

    A bonus link-of-the-day for this week: words from Courtney Love about how the record industry works + some thoughts on how it needs to change.

    Courtney Love does the math