Rain

Like, you buy a synth, and you mess with it and you find yourself with a new song or a new cover idea... That's what happened here, when I got that UAD bundle. Songs keep pouring out of that Onyx synth. I love that thing. So I ended up with a cover of one of my favorite 80's pop song, albeit one I would never had imagined covering - it pretty much just materialized in front of me. But there's this one part I am struggling with so I've been experimenting with it - and allowing inspiration to take me wherever it would. I just jam in Logic, you know... It doesn't really work (I think) but I had so much fun trying to evoke that The Cure/The Crow type of soundscape from memory...

I remember standing on the corner of the street when the cab dropped us off the first day, my (ex) wife and I looking at each other and going: this is not possible. Something's broken. It cannot possibly be this hot. And that was in September... This ties in with the Empire Strike Back thing I suppose - it was indeed like moving from Hoth to Tatooine.

Stumbled upon this in my memories again recently. The picture was taken in my hometown the year I was born. I've very fond memories of Canadian winters as a kid. Especially after seeing Empire Strikes Back, with all the snow. As an adult, not so much... I do miss it during the holiday season. But just for a couple of days. We rarely get snow here in Vegas and when we do, it usually melts the second it touches the ground. But in February 2019, I got to see a thin layer of snow on my house that remained for several hours.

Thanks to social media, I see kids whose parents weren't even born when I picked up the guitar who can play the craziest stuff - little 8-9 year olds a lot of them with genuine talent and heart, not just mechanical skills. Meanwhile, I'm still figuring out Shock Me... Good thing I'm old enough to no longer really care. I'm just enjoying whatever's left of the ride. And I'm in good company too, because, objectively speaking, most of my heroes are outplayed by those kids.

By these forums standard, I own a fairly limited number of Waves plug-ins, and I do not often upgrade my DAW, so I'd never actually WUP'd anything until very recently. I seem to have been unscathed by the drama if not entirely ignorant of it. By the time I had moved to a new computer and to an OS that no longer allowed me to use my Waves plugins, they had changed their mind about the whole thing. I am thankful to those users who picked up the torches and decided to let Waves know that this wasn't going to work. Currently at least, Waves allow to renew the WUP on individual plugins. The first thing I WUP'd was Element - which cost me $9 and brought my version up to date from 1 to 2. Not a bad deal after over 10 years. And I don't see myself needing to pay again for some time. I also have some plugins that I just don't care to renew at this time, like the CLA compressors, GTR3 and such. I recently purchased their Abbey Road Chambers and Plates for $50 and got to pick two free plugins as a bonus. I don't see myself having to WUP these any time soon, so, to me, that's worth it. But I can see how someone who owns and uses a boatload of their plugins and upgrades frequently may have a drastically different point of view.

After I decided to bite the bullet and renew my plan on a couple of Waves plugins recently, I also decided to demo a few things, including their Abbey Road Studio 3. It was the first time in a decade that I used headphones for anything other than recording, but I had used a plugin by 112db called Redline Monitor when we were on the road, "a listening, mixing, and mastering tool that makes your headphones experience more natural: as if the sound came from a pair of external speakers." What truly shocked me with the Waves plugin is that it actually sounded pretty much like listening to the same mix on my monitors in this very room and in this position (move a few inches and that's a hole different story). I sincerely doubt that it sounded anything like Abbey Road, though... It "fixed" the stereo image, put less emphasis on the mids and added bass, which these AKG-240 seem to be missing. So oddly enough, it gave me a sort of continuity instead of being some kind of alternative, pseudo-reality check. This means that, in theory, if I had to turn off my monitors for some reason and use these headphones to mix instead, I could pretty much pick up right where I left off. Something I had never considered. Not a bad thing, as, after 12 years, I am used to these monitors. I recently got ARC as part of IK's Studio bundle, so I'll probably be buying their mic and finally facing some awful reality in terms of what this room sounds like. I'll be curious to see how that plays out. And if the Waves plug-in still sounds like my humble home studio afterwards. 😁

My grandmother owned a hair salon and my mom worked there, so she did my hair until I decided to let it grow when I was a teenager. I've been taking care of it myself afterwards. I've had two professional haircuts in my adult life. I don't like people touching me, unless they're of the opposite sx, pretty, and have ulterior motives... 😁 These days I just trim the sides every couple of weeks. I have a big head with a weird, narrow face full of angles, so long hair doesn't really work for me unless I keep it in a pony tail - and I always end up feeling like I've a dead animal attached to the back of my head. Also, I don't want to look like one of those Las Vegas rock musicians.

Quite a coincidence - I would have had no idea who that was. But, strange coincidence: I was just watching an interview with Alice Cooper describing the time he met Elvis, and that guy was on the show too. That popped up in my Instagram feed, moments ago.

That's me 35 years ago today, after 10 hours on the bus to see Alice Cooper. The photo was taken early in the morning, shortly after we arrived. I believe this was our second bottle of Jack Daniels. And no that's not a hat. It was my first time in the big city, 400 miles from home. There was a giveaway on TV and I'd called in the hopes of winning a cassette. Instead I'd won a pair of tickets, a t-shirt and the cassette. Just my luck.. Going to Montreal was essentially the same as going to China. I had no money, no license, no car… But an older friend who had a bit of money helped figure things out. (In essence, he paid for everything in exchange for a ticket. I was always blessed with extraordinarily generous friends). I’d long been a fan of Alice, but during the weeks leading up to the show, I took a deep, deep dive into his discography to familiarize myself with records I’d somewhat ignored, like From the Inside, Goes to Hell and Zipper Catches Skin. That process made me the Alice Cooper fan that I have remained ever since. My own music has very little to do with his on the surface (except for a few covers), but he’s one of my biggest influences. I also came to understand and appreciate the importance of producers and people like Bob Ezrin because of him. The show made a phenomenal impression on me. I spent the next several months working on a big poster-size pencil drawing of Alice hanging at the end of a rope for my high school art class. While the teacher commended the skills and the hard work, he said that, unfortunately, due to the subject, he could not put it on display… Something I was kind of used to at that point, to be honest. My drawings had already earned me a series of visits to the psychologist's office starting in grade school. I guess wearing all black wasn’t just a phase after all, but I’m certainly glad that the hairstyle evolved a little. Although I’m sure I wouldn’t look out of place here in Las Vegas. This would also be my only visit to the sacrosanct Montreal Forum, the most storied building in hockey history. I'm thankful that I got to set foot there at least once.

Been away for a bit so I'm just reading this. Best wishes for a speedy recovery, mate.

Actually, I dated a Japanese girl who plays bass for a while, and we recorded some stuff. Maybe some day I'll dig some of it up.

I remember trying my hand at a version of Marian years ago but I could never come up with anything I was happy with.

Thanks, Craig. I tend to do that a lot, yes. lol

I needed something to test the new Apollo so I dug this old demo and re-did the vocals real quick... It's a tiny bit of a fun cover of The Beatles’ Baby’s In Black. Despite their version being on the country side, I've always felt that the lyrics made it kind of goth - a lament for a grieving girl who can’t get over her lost love and dresses in black… So I gothified it, in kind of a theatrical way. It's not mixed and not really properly recorded but I wanted to play around with the Apollo and to test the workflow. (Also, the piano is awful and rigid and over-quantized so my apologies for that.) I never thought something as basic as an audio interface could make such an extraordinary difference but I am absolutely blown away (regardless of the quality of the recording above, which is just a quick test). I regret no getting one of these before.

And I know that this is true. And yet, for me, the brown and gold team takes the cake in terms of unreliability. The orange and purple guys practically never failed me. Standard is usually here between 6 and 7 pm. Priority or whatever they call it before 2 pm. Once the package is out for delivery, I am 99% sure it will be here before the end of the day. The brown and gold trucks are the exact opposite. Even after I get confirmation the the package has landed in Vegas and that it is allegedly out for delivery... Two days later, I finally get an update - they don't really know where my package is. Last known location is LA. And that is the norm more than the exception. Here in Vegas, anyway.

Still had, yes. Wanted to make sure everything was working before removing it.

Sorry to hear that. I would understand maybe one specific thing but 3? That's strange. Ordered this Wednesday night at 11 pm. On my doorstep in Vegas Friday morning a little after 10. Of course I paid for ultra speedy service (wow, I am surprised by the words that get censored here, although I appreciate the automated heads up and kind of understand I guess). Because, I'm like a kid. And I wanted to make sure it was here on time for my 3-day weekend. In the last couple of months I got a few items from Sweetwater - all of them regular deliveries. The only thing that took slightly longer than expected was one of those Glyph drives - it took like 4 or 5 business days, which seemed unusual. The replacement arrived in two days I think.

Who needs a Christmas tree? I'd suggest investing a few bucks in a tuner next, though - at about 11 minutes in... 😬

Update - the Glyph was replaced. And ruined yet another session. It's going in a drawer and will be used only to archive stuff. What I'd really want to do, though...

Just spotted this on FB... PSP Chamber is available for free for all users with an active account at our user area. To get access to the plug-in simply log-in to your account. Wishing you a joyful and festive season! https://pspaudioware.com/products/psp-chamber

I could not possibly pick one, but Bridge Over Troubled Water would certainly be one of the top contenders.

I still have these though..

It all seems to be back to normal now. And I guess I can't really complain - that was the first real downtime I've experienced in 14 years. It's also the first time I was this careless, so I take part of the blame. Other than that, the only thing I recall having issues with is Line 6 Pod Farm systematically crashing my DAW way back then - and that's easily solved of course. That new Glyph seems to be a bit temperamental compared to my old WD. Its power supply was accidentally disconnected earlier and even rebooting the computer didn't fix things. It wouldn't even allow me to run disk utility on it. I had to eject it via software and then reconnect it. I can't count the number of times I accidentally disconnected that USB powered WD without ejecting it first. It's probably a weekly occurrence. I'd not really heard a hard drive in years, so I probably worry for no reason. Usually I walk in the studio and it's dead quiet, the only occasional noise comes from the street, but this guy I always hear, even when it's not working.

Last week, a new version of Logic was released, which required upgrading my computer to the latest OS or the previous one. I'm always weary of upgrades because, in my experience, performance always takes a hit on older machines. Not to mention I'd already been through one upgrade in June. But I I was really curious about the new Quantec reverb... I figured I'd do a back up and proceed, but then I started experiencing troubles with that. The back up process would stall at 53%. And that's when my old trusty external HD just vanished from the list of devices. I eventually got it back online, but it made me realize that, after 11 years, it might need to be replaced. So I ordered a new one from Sweetwater. Then I decided to just be stupid and go ahead and upgrade to the second most recent OS in order to be able to test that reverb... Things seemed alright for a couple of hours. But when I came back after a night of sleep, Logic took forever to launch and then wouldn't load my projects. I spent my entire night off troubleshooting instead of making music. First time in 14 years that I experience issues with my DAW. The irony is that the project I was working on used only Logic synths and plugins, as a challenge to myself. It is also the first time that I don't systematically bounce tracks. I know it's ridiculous but that's the way I learned to work back in the days to conserve CPU, so I usually commit to stuff as soon as I'm happy with the performance. And I usually print effects as well. In this case, everything in the project was still MIDI and real-time. Fortunately, I had exported stems a little earlier in the process because I wanted to be able to mess with them in Luna. So I had some of my stuff there. I spent much of my second night off trying to rebuild the mix in Pro Tools around the stems, but it just wasn't happening. So halfway through the night I took a leap of faith and proceeded to upgrade to the latest OS. A few Logic users I spoke with had ran into similar issues and that solved their problems. I was worried that this could not only not fix Logic, but hose my back up, Pro Tools. So I reluctantly proceeded. And indeed, that solved everything, even issues with other apps. The alternative and the back up plan was to restore my latest back up - dating from July, before I installed Pro Tools, the UAD plugins and all the goodies. So that would have meant a lot of time before I was back up and running. Of course, while all of this was happening, FedEx decided to take their sweet time and to take my new HD on a journey across the US so it only showed up once everything was back up and running... My first Glyph. Made me realize how tiny my old WD was despite being the same capacity. The Glyph's also noisier. Which isn't to say much, it's just that the WD was completely silent. As for the Quantec reverb... It's really cool. But I ended up demoing and buying Abbey Road chambers because it worked better on what I was working on. But I'm just so glad to be back up and running.

Was going through the old Logic certification books last weekend and I found this between the pages. Brought back memories... First sales rep who helped me - sold me my Alesis controller and portable USB monitors. Also, Sam Ash announced that they were reborn as an online merchant earlier this month.