Rain

One computer provides all the most current technology, bells and whistles, including the so-called AI players (that I really have no use for but, still...). So far, I've been using it to mix existing projects, and create instrument patches, but I've not written anything. The other provides the last solid release of the previous version - and access to Z3t4+ (on screen) and Dimension Pro. I have a hard time imagining the moment when I finally lose access to these forever. So far, I've been very lucky. Cakewalk released Mac versions shortly after I made the switch. And now, because I installed the last version on those old computers before the installers disappeared, I can still use them. But I dread the day... There are far better instruments out there, but these have been part of my workflow for so long now... When I think of my favorite instruments, it's my Les Paul Studio, then these Cakewalk synths and EXS24 (Logic's own sampler). If there was a fire and they were actual instruments, I'd grab Dimension Pro and Z3t4 before my Gibson SG. Anyway... The last one provides access to what remains my favorite DAW of all time almost 15 years later - as well as access to older incarnations of Cakewalk's Dimension Pro and Rapture, which I happen to be very fond of. Every time I take the laptop and the keyboard downstairs to work in the living room, I load my default template which is just an instrument track running Dimension with a customized Piano patch. And hitting one key is usually enough to get the ideas rolling. It's almost shocking. In an ideal world, I would find a PC that can run XP + Sonar 8.5 and all my old favorite softsynths, like those old RGC synths, and HG Fortune's Protoplasm and STS-21, and maybe use it as a live instrument. But the idea of dealing with a bulky tower and literally installing a soundcard... Uhg. I do have an old Alienware running the last Windows version of Logic and Sonar (and even Cakewalk Pro Audio 9), but it's not really in working order. I only use it to open up old Cakewalk projects and bundles and prepare them for transfer. I miss a lot of plugins and the simplicity of software like Sound Forge 4, and in my book, Sonar 8.5 is still one of the finest DAWs ever, but the gymnastics involved in adding RAM or a PCI card and the trips into the BIOS to troubleshoot IRQ conflicts I do not miss at all. Or the bulkiness. And the noise those old machines made... I'd sooner deal with my old reel to reel. That one I actually genuinely miss.

Huge Elvis fan, but I had no idea the same man wrote those two songs. RIP.

I was thinking about this whole "creating your own music" paradigm, and there's one thing... People have a strong need for attention and external validation. And I am not sure how much people will enjoy their own "creation" unless they get to share it. I am guessing that they will be hoping to accomplish that via social media. The issue at this point becomes over-saturation. A point where so much content is generated that it seems it'll be impossible for any of it to make any headway. If anyone thought the market was saturated now they have no idea what they are in for. Can you imagine a point where it's even impossible for anything to go viral because everything is instantly drowned out in background noise, and no one is consuming but everyone is generating? At any rate, as a musician, I don't see the future as a very happy place...

I can recognize anything with vocals on the spot, even though I cannot seem to formulate exactly what it is. But it's a matter of time until it fools me... And in a sense, a lot of humans are already doing the same thing - creating with prompts. What if this artist had written that artist's song? It's also something I've always liked doing, but I've always mostly felt that this was training. It was a means for me to forge my own vocabulary and do my own thing. And doing my own thing has never been contingent upon whether people would hear it or not. I guess that the literary background provided me with a solid sense of disillusionment - most of my heroes were ignored during their lifetime and died miserable deaths. So I write, regardless... But I don't envy people who made a career writing and performing music. I've done it here and there for short spells for fun, but I like a steady paycheck too much for that. I can't imagine how I would feel with AI taking over. That being said, AI won't stop there, so most of us are at risk one way or another, anyway. I can't imagine myself prompting software to generate my playlists though. I don't even like playlists. I am an album guy. And if there is no human connection, there is no music - it's just organized noises. I'll pull out Kind of Blue or Rush 2112 and listen to that until I am done down here...

And then you put a hockey stick in our hands...

Yesterday I dug up an old project of mine, a song I first published on MySpace in 2007 around this time of the year. A DJ featured it on his MySpace page, and thanks to the extraordinary chain of events and encounters that followed, here I am today. My now defunct marriage, all the traveling, moving to Vegas - none of that would have happened if not for that song. But a quick audition on my iPhone was enough for me to realize that song would never have stood a chance in today's world where most of the people who listen to music online do so on their phone. Granted, it was a very poor mix, but it still "worked" on computer speakers and earbuds. Against everything inside me that balks at the notion, I now always check mixes on my phone. Not to make any decision, but I know that the people who hear my music, usually on Facebook, will be listening on their phone, and I want to have some sort of idea of what they will hear. I've done so for a number of years. Actually, I started checking mixes on the MacBook's speakers years before that. I've also realized in recent years that I tend to factor in the shortened attention span. Whenever I put something online, most of the time, it is a short edit that gets straight to the point. I'm not sure why, because I'm not competing against anything else. I don't need clicks or whatever to generate income. And I write this stuff for myself, not to please others. But paradoxically, it's almost as if I worry that I might be imposing on the good people who are kind enough to check my stuff if I don't cut directly to the chase and give them the abridged version. Maybe I'm too polite. I mean, I am Canadian after all...

Get well soon, Dave!

Soulless. But I bet the casual listener couldn't tell the difference. Honestly, if I am stuck in a public place where I am forced to hear music I didn't choose, this probably would not bother me as much as the crap they usually play. I heard Beyoncé in a mall in Russia once in 2012 and I still have nightmares about it.

Sorry I'm just getting to this, man. But - outstanding job as always.

For a second I thought I'd be able to upgrade my old Alienware running XP + Sonar 8.5... ?

That time the (ex) wife and I went to see the Addams on Broadway. Usher: I'm sorry, the seats are odd. Me: That's ok, so are we...

I would Uber to the strip and put $5 in a slot machine. I might be on a winning streak - anybody knows the odds?

This one actually gave me goosebumps when they hit the chorus. I love the original but this is a nice twist on it.

I love it. I am a huge fan of the style, too...

I know some fans cringe when they hear Dynasty, but I actually really like it (as I do Unmasked, even if it's so commercial). Dirty Livin' is probably my favorite Peter Criss song. There is something about it that just gets me. And Charisma... I've always wanted to cover that one, but in a very twisted, dark electro, Nine Inch Nails sort of way. Maybe someday.

It is absolutely gorgeous. And I love the rosewood fretboard. I can imagine it mustn't have been a cheap one.... My best friend and I both got our first guitar on Christmas in 85. I got that awful Les Paul copy and my buddy got an olympic white Harmony strat copy with the maple neck from Sears. Come to think of it, that's probably the reason why I also wanted I white strat - because his was so much better. Another older friend got a candy red one, also maple neck. Those Harmony were so much easier to play - they felt like high quality instrument compared to my guitar. The irony is that my mother paid more for the piece of junk than she would have for a Harmony. Not to mention that a sunburst LP didn't exactly spell metal... I developed a profound dislike for the model and for rosewood fretboards. And that aversion lasted for decades. At least I had my Iron Maiden t-shirt to try and look metal, depsite the short hair and what I felt looked like a cowboy guitar... ?

I can hear the moderators...

I thought humanity ended on May 6, 1937, no?

? That must be the David Gilmour in Live at Pompeii influence (another factor that reinforced the black Strat status as my holy grail back then).

A fellow Québécois! Une petite ville du nom de Matane. Love Montreal. Lived there for a while on a few occasions, and for almost 2 years before leaving for the US. The white Strat has always been a very close second on my wish list. In fact, as soon as I bought the US one, I repainted the Korean one white. And a disaster of a paint job that was... ? Probably has to do with Hendrix. Actually, a lot of my favorite guitar players played white instruments, and my main guitar is a while LP Studio. I've purchased a couple of them since but always ended up having to sell them back. But I got one in 2022 - not Olympic unfortunately, had to settle for Polar White, and not a US, but a Player series. Honestly, I could not justify the expense, so a Player was more than enough. The frets were a bit rough, but other than that, it's a fine guitar. That being said, I don't play it as much as I should. But I "need" a white Strat. You might notice a certain trinket on my desk that should bring memories for a fellow Quebecer/Montrealer...

When I was 12, I made friend with a kid whose older brother and father were musicians. Walking into their house was like visiting Disney. There were all kinds of guitars and amps everywhere in the house. And whereas the local music store only carried cheap knockoffs, all the instruments in my friend’s house were the real deal. Mostly Fenders, but also a few Gibsons, including limited run instruments. His father even had a pedal steel (that thing fascinated me to no end). They also had a Simmons drum kit in the basement. Sometimes, the guy who dated his sister would drop by with his Kramer and Mesa Boogie. All stuff you’d only see in magazines. That was in 1984/85, in a minuscule French Canadian town, far from everything… I vividly remember the first time I visited and saw his dad’s mythical 1957 Fender Stratocaster in the corner of the living room. That’s like Iron Maiden’s Dave Murray’s! I thought. “Go on, try it! It won’t bite”. For a kid playing the cheapest knockoff guitar you can imagine, this was almost inconceivable. From that moment, that guitar became my holy grail. Black, white pick guard, darker maple neck with the thin headstock and spaghetti logo. As fate would have it, through an extraordinary series of unlikely events, 12 years later, I ended up buying an instrument that matched that description. A friend offered a lift to take me to my old apartment to pick up my mail. On the way, I asked him to stop at the music store so I could buy some strings. I walked in and immediately saw that guitar at the other end of the store. It drew my attention not just because it looked my dream guitar, but because it was displayed separately from the rest of the instruments. You couldn’t just grab it off the wall, you had to ask for it. That in itself was rather strange. They normally didn't take this kind of precaution with the instruments they carried. And indeed, as I soon realized, it was a US Strat - something still unheard of in that store at the time. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It even had the darker maple neck and the spaghetti logo! Of course, I had to at least try it. So they handed it over. And as I turned around towards the amp section, I saw something I never thought I would see there - a 1959 Fender Bassman (reissue). My dream amp back then. But there’s no way I could afford either the guitar or the amp... So after playing for a while, I reluctantly left with a few sets of strings and went to pick up my mail. I thought I'd have to stick with my Korean Squier strat (my first half decent instrument). But in my inbox sat an envelope with a check. An unexpected tax return adjustment for the past several years that covered the full price of the guitar and half the amp... That was 28 years ago today - meaning that my black Strat is now as old as that old 1957 was when I was 12 and first played it… The '59 Bassman (behind me on the first photo) I sold in 2000, but I can't imagine letting go of the guitar.

I remember my trusty old M-Audio Keystation dying on me the second I hooked it up when we arrived in NY. As fate would have it, Sam Ash was the closest music store, so the first thing I got was a replacement keyboard (an Alesis that I’m still using). I then got a pair of small monitors for my portable rigs, and a cheap Epiphone LP Junior as a traveling guitar because I didn’t want to take my Strat overseas that fall/winter. I also got a DBX compressor, a few cases, AKG headphones... The following summer I went looking for an inexpensive H-S-H Strat. None really felt right and one of the sales dudes insisted I should try an Epiphone LP. I had my doubts that I even wanted to try... My first electric guitar was a cheap LP copy, it sucked, and everyone else had super Strats back then, so I had developed an aversion for the model. I bought a Strat copy the minute I could afford one and played only Strats for the next 20-some years. But that day, I sat down with the ebony LP and it locked into my hands - it instantly felt right. Then I lift up my eyes and saw Jimmy Page (one of my biggest musical heroes) playing his black beauty on the tv screen… To me, in terms of significance, that was second only to being handled a sword by a strange lady lying in a pond. Had to sell it a few years ago, and it's one of the few instruments I truly regret having to sell.

Of course, the irony is that the lawsuit gives him free publicity... Might as well leech all the way.

How sad... Sam Ash is part of my best memories of New York when we lived there in 2011-12.