The Sepiachord Companion

August 5, 2009, 14:32 -05 by chris
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Doing a compilation mastering gig this week for our friends at Sepiachord, who will be releasing their first commercially-released comp, The Sepiachord Companion, on Devil’s Ruin Records. I must say, “mastering” is sure a heck of a lot easier when you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) do much, if anything – the majority of the tracks are already “there” for the most part (or of the “that’s the deliberate character of the recording, don’t mess with it” variety) that it’s just a matter of bumping things up or down a fraction of a dB here or there so things sound ‘in context’ volume-wise from track to track, playing with the timing of the ‘pause’ between tracks so it sounds musical, and pressing the shiny red button (or in the case of this music, perhaps that’s rusty brown lever), and going off to listen on different playback systems. Not the sort of thing I would have expected to actually be fun, but in this case it (“it” being the “do no harm” school of mastering) is.

Success!

August 1, 2009, 20:13 -05 by chris
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The new versions of Logic, Waveburner, and Mainstage were totally worth the wait, IMHO. I’m just glad there’s a PPC-compatible version that I’ll be happy to “live with” for a while. That desktop background is a vacation snapshot from a hotel balcony in Amsterdam.

Mea maxima culpa…

July 28, 2009, 15:10 -05 by chris
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Well, well, well. Looks like I may have hit the ‘rant’ button with excessive haste, as “not supported” does not necessarily mean “it won’t work”, according to others who’ve already installed Logic 9 Studio (which is still a Universal Binary, it’s just not “advertised” as such, and you can’t call tech support and complain if you have problems – which I never have. Called tech support, that is…) on their even-older-than-mine G5 setups.

So it’s off to the Apple Store to pay another tithe to the Church of Jobs for the LP9 update, after ordering one of these (the one that came with the G5 is getting pretty gross, between the usual keyboard plaque, cat hair, and stickum from a set of rapidly deteriorating Editor’s Keys stickers for Logic), because I’m a cheap bastard as far as paying $119.99 for an actual “Logic Keyboard”, and keyboard covers are meant to cover up existing gunk, not keep it from getting in there in the first place…uh, right?

Plus, attaching one of those shiny new Mac Pro “slim” keyboards to the G5 would feel a little like putting a “Type R” sticker and coffee-can-sized tailpipe on an old Honda DX automatic.

All of which is a bit of a relief, as far as temporary reprieves from forced-multi-thousand-dollar-planned-obsolescence-hardware-upgrades go, as I’ve got enough sunk into Universal Audio, Native Instruments, Sonnox, and the rest to merit sticking it out as long as I can with the existing rig, and need to first figure out if this whole “pouring a slab and building a dedicated double-wall studio outbuilding from the ground up” (and, as yet another aside, damn you, stupid, stupid Steve Vai, for already calling your home studio the “Harmony Hut”, you fair-weather poseur of a fan of the second-best scene from Addams Family Values – the first being Wednesday and her fellow “Indians” taking their revenge on the Camp Chippewa “The First Thanksgiving” Parent’s-Day play, of course – you… now I have to think of something else lest plans be mistaken as an homage to wheedle-wheedle-wheedley-dee Guitar Hero histrionics…) is really going to be a workable, budgetable solution to the impending “gotta get all this gear out of the spare bedroom before it’s no longer a spare bedroom, and do it the two-thousand-layers-of-caulked-sheetrock Rod Gervais way while we’re at it” problem, before buying another computer that costs more than pouring a slab. 

It’s not obsolete, it’s “vintage”…

July 27, 2009, 11:59 -05 by chris
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So in order to actually use the “new” features in the Logic Studio and Final Cut Studio updates that Apple released late last week (which competing apps have had for years, and never mind that they only got to 8.02 on Logic with a metric *&%@$-load of bugs never addressed – thanks a lot for a “final” .02 version over the course of two years, without real bug fixes before moving on to the next full-number version, guys…) I’d have to shell out over four grand for a (used) new multi-Intel-core Mac Pro, another arm and a leg to replace UAD-1 cards with a UAD-2 since the new Mac Pros have a “new improved” kind of PCI slot, and then several hundreds of dollars for the actual updates themselves.  

Yes, those “flex time”, “drum replacement”, and other handy editing features sure would have been useful, oh, starting two or three years ago, thanks (doing in a couple quick clicks what I now blow entire evenings doing), but for the effective “gotta buy new hardware if you wanna use the new software” price of admission, one could arguably buy a workable drum set, tape machine, editing block, and razor blades.

Which, unlike all too many of our contemporaries, we actually do know how to use.  Then again, one reel of actual tape costs almost as much as the software update these days.

I totally understand not wanting to continue development for PPC users in the “gotta keep payin’ if you wanna keep playin’ ” Great Apple Abandonware Tradition, and I was already resigned to sighing dramatically, staring wistfully out the window, and making an appointment with a therapist to help deal with the deep-seated shame, anguish and humiliation of not running the latest versions of Logic and Final Cut until a hefty chunk of change falls from the sky for a new “studio computer”, but really, Apple, did you have to add injury to insult by having the most recent “Software Update” automatically break stuff that was working just fine before?

Since the last “Software Update” did its thing, I can’t use Safari on the ol’ dual-2.7 G5 now (well, technically I can, if I want to wait literally a couple hours for the “beach ball” to stop spinning as it grinds away – and manually downloading and reinstalling Safari, repairing permissions, and the rest of the usual rigamarole doesn’t make any difference either), the MacBook Air is permanently set to Greenwich Mean Time no matter how many times we tell it that no, really, we want PST, and dad-in-law’s MacBook Pro assures us that the licenses for all of his purchased-at-the-Apple-Store-Apple-branded apps are now stolen or otherwise illegitimate.

Now, I’ve never been one of those pain-in-the-boohonkus “Cult of Mac” people who drive around with an Apple sticker on my car cruising for hapless Windows users to poke with sharp sticks (after moving from 16-track reel-to-reel and hardware sequencers, to computer slaved to SMPTE on the reel-to-reel, to fully-computer-based, our first CD was done in part in Cubase on Windows, and part in Cubase on Mac, so I’m more of the “personally, I prefer a Mac now, but whatever works for you is cool” camp – and besides, it doesn’t suit my bleeding-heart-liberal side to make fun of the disadvantaged), and consider such behavior to make no more sense than it would to slap “My Other Dishwasher is Also a GE”, “Powered by Kitchen Aid”, “Make it a Subzero or Let It Rot”, “Spatulas by OXO”, and “My Cuisinart Shreds” stickers on the back window of one’s automobile, but it’s still a bit disappointing that Apple’s just “less bad than the alternative” in my mind, at least for this week. 

“It just works.” Except for when it actually doesn’t.

Music production advice of the decade

August 20, 2008, 12:38 -05 by chris
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“What a bloody stupid design. What’s the point of it being designed like that, if you can’t even put your drink on it?”- Kate Moss, on mixing console design 

Barack ‘n Roll!

June 8, 2008, 04:26 -05 by chris
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Join me at my.barackobama.com. If you haven’t already, set up a user account at my.barackobama.com – once you’ve set up an account of your own, search for my username, Chris in West Seattle, and you can add me as a friend (similar to MySpace and other social networking sites).  See you there!   

Fez Ballroom Playlist – 3rd November 2007

November 6, 2007, 17:58 -05 by chris
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Neat venue, good PA system, and a fun night. I was expecting to be DJing in a different room, but ended up on the stage itself, so I didn’t have to miss the live sets from Jill Tracy and Paul Mercer.

~ Chris

Hans Zimmer with Lisa Gerrard and Djivan Gasparyan – Progeny / The Wheat / The Battle (Gladiator Soundtrack)
Talvin Singh – Naan
Shankar – Mantra
Loreena McKennitt – The Mystic’s Dream
Emilie Simon – Fleur de Saison
Natacha Atlas – Mon Amie la Rose
Peter Murphy – Disappearing
Astral Grey – The Figurehead
The Tear Garden – In Search of my Rose
Ladytron – Destroy Everything you Touch
Mephisto Walz – Paint it Black
Editors – Munich
Interpol – Pioneer to the Falls
Ima Robot – Black Jettas
IAMX – President
Adam Ant – Physical
LCD Soundsystem – North American Scum
C-Tec – Foetal
Creatures – Standing There
Idiot Stare – Ghost (Doll Factory “Hex” remix)
Sevara Nazarkjan – Yor-Yor
Misia – Lamento das Rosas Bravas
Talvin Singh – Traveler
Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares – Kalimankou Denkou
Shake me ya Gamal – Sahila
(Paul Mercer, Jill Tracy, and Lance Coombes performances)
Dresden Dolls – Coin Operated Boy
Recoil with Nicole Blackman – Want
Creatures – Exterminating Angel
Peter Murphy – Our Secret Garden (request)
Bauhaus – Third Uncle
Virgin prunes – Pagan Love Song
Cocteau Twins – Blood Bitch
Siouxsie and the Banshees – Cities in Dust
Legendary Pink Dots – I Love You In Your Tragic Beauty
INXS – Don’t Change
Ministry – I Wanted to Tell Her
Lou Reed – Goodnight Ladies

Another “Behind the Scenes” episode posted to YouTube

October 25, 2007, 17:22 -05 by chris
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Finally got around to Final Cut-ting a few more minutes of stuff together last weekend, and posted “Doll Factory: Behind the Scenes – Part 2” to our YouTube Channel. Check it out (and subscribe, leave a comment, etc. if you like). I’ll be adding it to the Video Podcast feed shortly as well.