Rain

I always look back with a lot of fondness on the year 1994. This is just my feeling, but it seems to me that that was the last time that rock was relevant. Of course there were many personal factors as well, but it seems that there was a sense that something was happening on a collective level, lots of great music like Soundgarden's Superunknown, Nirvana Unplugged and NIN's Downward Spiral, movies like The Crow, Pulp Fiction, And Natural Born Killers (although I'm no fan of these last two and I can't stand Tarantino), all of these with great soundtracks, Woodstock '94 - things that were era-defining. Whether you were a fan of those bands and movies or not, rock was at the forefront, and it meant something to people, not just individually. Heck, we even had Pink Floyd on tour and Page & Plant getting back together. Things were good. And although it was actually a tragic event, Kurt Cobain's death did bring people together. But things kind of died out over the next couple of years. Interestingly enough, towards the second half of the 90's, it seems that many older bands got back together - KISS got back together with the make up and all, Ozzy and Sabbath, Vince Neil with Mötley Crüe, Dickinson and Smith rejoined Maiden. But at that point, they were the establishment. The subversive spirit of rock had been replaced by nostalgia. And tribute bands became even more popular. I wouldn't say rock is dead, but it's in a weird place. Anyway, it's great to have another perspective on these things. I guess there's a lot of things that contributed to it. Being Canadian, I'd never made the connection with the telecommunication act in 96, though.

I had zero interest in computers until I realized that you could use them to record and mix audio. Naively enough, I thought that I would be able to get away without having to learn anything more than how to use the music software I had chosen (I guess I really was a Mac user at heart). A couple of years later, I was editing .ini files, chasing IRQ conflicts and whatnot. I've always been thankful though, because all that stuff turned out to be very useful in my next job and allowed me to climb a few steps up the ladder. So thank you Cakewalk, I suppose.

Brings me back to one of my very first gigs writing music for short films. Back in the Cakewalk Pro Audio days. They'd given me an idea of what they wanted over the phone, so I started working immediately. When I received the VHS, I was super glad to find out that a lot of what I'd written seemed to align with the images - although I had no way to really sync anything. But I remember a high note on the guitar gently fading in as a locomotive appeared on screen and thinking - wow, it's like a train whistle, it totally fits! There was one piece which I wasn't really happy with or proud of - something I'd put together in Acid to match footage of an assembly line, using mostly chunks of loops and then adding a few notes of a recurring theme on top so that it would connect to the rest of the music I had written. I thought it wasn't really good but it worked and it didn't really draw attention to itself. The deadline was Friday, and I had to factor in HOURS to upload the mixes to a storage platform on dial up. By 6 pm Thursday I was done uploading. I had been up for over 24 hours to finish in time. At 8 pm I got a call - of course, they like that crappy bit the most and were asking if I could re-do the rest just like it. And have it uploaded by noon. So I spent the night in Acid, putting together some of the most uninspired "music" I have ever written, and managed to meet the deadline. Every time I hear or read or pronounce dial up, that's the first thing that comes to mind.

Ah, the old Cakewalk newsgroup. Joined that one in 1999. Man, I've been around forever! It's surprising how many of the guys names I remember. I think the whole ProRec staff was on there too - Rip, Jim, Joel, Bruce, Ted, Ethan... EDIT - Pete Leoni, if you're still around, sorry I forgot you. Oh what fun it was to launch Outlook Express in the morning on a dial up connection and to wait for it to load all the posts. And to only have access to internet from 6 pm to 6 am, because it was the only package we could afford... 🤣

Welcome back, John! Good to see you.

Absolutely!

My hometown was small (11 000 souls, if you count all the little villages around) so we never had a real music store. THE music store actually occupied a corner in the back of a furniture + appliances store. Until the early/mid 90’s they mostly carried cheap knockoffs and brands like Samick and Vantage, or the occasional Epiphone. Unsurprisingly, musicians usually travelled a 100 miles to get to a better store. But my family was poor so even that local store was too fancy for me. There was this place downtown owned by an old lady who sold all kinds of wicker furniture, mirrors, vases, artificial flowers and stuff like that. And in a corner, behind a small counter, there was the music instruments section, which consisted of 5 or 6 acoustic guitars and an electric bass - that I really wanted - and a few harmonicas. I think that stuff was mostly leftovers from the days when her deceased husband ran the place with her. The cool thing is that she would sell strings individually - and being flat broke despite my paper route, I became a very loyal customer. Sometimes I’d finally get money for a new string after 2 weeks playing with only 4 or 5 strings. She only sold Gibsons. Every now and then she’d drop a few black Gibson picks in the small bag. I hated the strings and the picks, but they were all I could afford. I’m guessing I probably was the only kid my age ever going there, as her clientele consisted mostly people in their late 50's and older, but I was sure thankful for her, and I always remember her fondly. I eventually made a big purchase, too - a Hohner blues band harmonica. Must have cost me at least $8. 🤣

I'm not sure why people worry about lights in the sky. Seems it's rather common occurence. I'd be a lot more worried if I saw something like say, a door, or even just a nose.

Blindness is in the eye of the beholder, just as beauty is in the face of the beautiful (and other parts of their anatomy).

Guitars aren't too bad but I'm having a really tough time resisting the urge to buy an amp these days.

I have Kontakt libraries authorized on the old iMac which I've been tried to de-authorize in order to be able to use them on the new studio computer to no avail. They're all on my external HD but for some reason I need to log into the old computer and use the NI manager there to deauthorize them and the whole process is a PITA, made worse by the fact that the old computer is on its last leg and it takes an eternity to load anything. Seems to be buggy too - it worked for some, but others just won't load for some reason. I kind of gave up.

You say you want a resolution?

I'm sorry Diablo. That was not an actual suggestion - just me piggybacking on Craig's comment about the frequency and using it as a platform to make a stupid joke. We do this a lot around here but that's no excuse.

😁 I absolutely am. 🇨🇦 In true stereotypical Canadian fashion, I must say that I am sorry for indeed being Canadian, thereby rendering your preemptive request for forgiveness unnecessary. That was uncharacteristically rude of me, and I apologize.

Dammit, why can't I be censored?!

Gonads?

You hacked the T word? You got balls, sir. Mucho cojones, señor.

Kenneth, is that you? I believe Dan Rather may have an explanation for that.

I've been working with the same DAW for over a decade and there are lots of stock plugins I've never ever used, so I guess not.

On their computer at the very least - that I can personally confirm.

At a glance, all these apps have a Mac version. Seeing how relatively extensive the list is (it even includes the iPad versions of certain apps as separate entries), I'd say that they may be biased a little.

That's alright because...

I'm in Vegas. I pretty sure we have a casino that's also a church, a brothel and a wedding chapel, somewhere.

Wouldn't be Christmas without these. In fact, I've been known to play them at the most random times of the year. Putting up a Christmas tree in the middle of the summer can be quite therapeutic.