Tim Smith

If you guys are twins one of you hit the nipple more.

Definitely has that middle eastern sound. Enjoyed ?

Thanks for comments all. I had planned to maybe take everything up to a different key but I didn't have the time. Occasionally playing a real bass helps me to hear a groove.

I enjoyed this. Like the horns.

You lost me there jack. It's a bit over the edge in LUFS. I'll fade the intro and maybe pull the total down. Thanks for pointing it out. I was concerned it might not be loud enough. I am slow today. Not sure what ELP is? -Tim

Here is something a little different than what I normally do. I might make more like this in the future. I enjoyed the music and midi programming in this. A few tempo changes as the tempo slightly increases. Modo bass, UJAM Iron 2, Addictive drums 2, Air Vaccum for the solos. I used a few libs in Kontakt for the effects at the beginning and end. Mastered in TRacks. I used a stereo spreader and Sunset sound studio reverb as buses. I ran my voice through an Eventide Harmonizer plugin to get different effects. The pic I chose is chopped here. Not sure why, so it looks a little odd.

I haven't had any issue with solar other than shorter days here. In the summer they would stay on all night. Now they don't stay on as long. I also put one on my mail box post out front. Even in winter they stay on until the wee hours of the morning. Occasionally I might need to replace a battery. That isn't very often. Looks a little odd seeing them lit up out back in the snow when in summer they pointed at bushes and trees. My first experience with the led lights similar to the ones used in studios was when I built my custom coffee/tea bar and I needed lighting over it. I picked up a set of led lights. You basically stick them to almost any surface. They come with a remote control and are powered from a plug in transformer. You can configure them in different ways. They do a bunch of stuff I really don't need. There is the heart beat setting that pulsates like a heart beat. They dim to different levels. I didn't like the battery powered lights because then you're buying batteries. Since I just needed light above my coffee bar I mostly just use a basic light setting. Those kinds of lights would be cool as mood lighting under a studio desk or in some other place where they could be inconspicuous and still see the lighting effect. They are not expensive. I prefer mostly the incandescent look for working. The yellowish filament copy led lights.

CLAP sounds interesting. Maybe it will eventually branch out into more plugins. DAWs will also need to be set up for it. I have developed more of a passive approach. If I can update it inexpensively I do. If I can't I let it go. Pretty simple for me. I wonder if those using PT and Logic have any similar issue since all of their plugins are in a different format? I did notice quite a difference in how many plugins scan Cubase compared to Cakewalk and wondered why. As it turns out all of the plugins I needed for the mix were there so I never gave it a second thought at the time. I suspect that's the way I'll keep rolling. If my best bread and butter plugs are there, my " I give a durned"switch is off

My back yard lights are all solar. I have pics of the one project. It's a 30' string of solar patio lights.

Ghost Hunters lol. Yeah I watched a bunch of those. I'm imagining the set in the background, " Hey Henry, when you get the signal pull that invisible mono filament line." Or the dude who goes in and challenges them- " Come get me you SOB I know you're there". Oh S*** let's get outta here!! Seems like a really bad plan- Someone was sitting around with nothing much to do and said to themselves. " I know! We'll go into known haunted houses and challenge demons for kicks". Then something follows them home for sport. SyFi isn't what it used to be either. We have Netflix, Amazon Prime movies, Xfinity movies, A few movie channels as a part of our package, movies about other movies, movies about nothing. Thousands of them literally. And most of the time there is NOTHING to watch. As I understand it T-Mobile has the largest coverage area in the US by a long shot. Anyone out in the mid west boonies is probably connecting on a T-Mobile tower. I am on AT&T. I have been on it since it was Cingular. Their coverage is good on the east coast and around most major metropolitan areas. I would not trust them on a trip by car out west. Part of that multi trillion dollar package that was recently passed to support infrastructure was funding for wireless tech. 5G is better than 4G in terms of speed and ability to access information faster. There are still holes in the security though, and maybe you've heard the claims that Cell tower signals are killing off honey bees and the new 5G frequency is too close to the same frequencies used by large airliners for their navigation potentially causing inaccurate auto pilot and landing errors. Since I put the new chip in voice seems a lot clearer using speaker phone. AT&T doesn't technically flip the switch on 5G until Febuary 2022. My phone still shows I am on 4G.

The really good guitarists often detune some strings slightly.

Some of these guys who run audio podcasts like to make the studio look like the star ship enterprise. I'm thinking I might go with some mood lighting, but not quite that far. I understand the appeal of shooting a video with an interesting backdrop. For myself I am asking- What environment make it easiest to mix and play in? Looking at pink and purple lights for hours on end would probably do me in.

Everything is outdated sooner or later in tech. I probably would not have moved to replace any of it yet, only I was making some changes and I had some drop outs with my old router. Will a new router solve the problems? The thing I have found about tech in general is that sometimes solving one problem presents another. I don't watch much TV. I just had two things go obsolete on me. My old iPad is now demanding I update YouTube. When I try to do that it takes me to the apps area. I finally got it to work only it wanted to send me a confirmation through my phone. I didn't feel like getting my phone then, so it hasn't happened yet. YouTube was working just fine so I have no idea why I was forced to update it. Then I received a 5g card from my cell phone carrier. I made sure it wasn't bogus first and then I updated the sim in my phone. Apparently in Feb. 2022 Major carriers are putting 5G online. 4G will still be around for a long time. 2G and 3G are going away. Luckily my phone was compatible with the new tech. Some phones are not and need to be replaced. For anyone who threw that snail mail in the trash thinking it was junk mail. They just threw away their key to the network in Feb. 30.00 to replace one.

Thanks Tom. I didn't expect this would be the kind of thing most here listen to. Thanks for listening and comments. Thanks Jack. I am a sometimes church musician, so I guess I come by it naturally. Covid has messed so many things up. Thank you David. I will re visit the midrange on this. I have to work more on those endings as well.

I have loaded over 20 multiple instances or more of Kontakt, each with multiple instruments for an orchestra into a permanent template. This can be very useful for those larger projects. The cumulative drain on my cpu for those instances if done separately would have probably been too much for the cpu as compared to stacking separate instances of Kontakt. For smaller projects though, I prefer to simply load an instance for each track since the drain for the Kontakt shell isn't significant in smaller track counts. For me at least, things got occasionally interesting at those higher numbers. Why am I playing an oboe sound when I play the flute?

Yeah they are all decent to a point I guess. I always try to do a lot of research. You can't be sure about all user reviews. I rely more on the known tech sites that do these reviews. I might read a few user reviews and try to see what's real, what was paid for and what was user error. I once had a company call me and try to talk me out of a bad user review. They offered me a discount on the item. It happens. If a person is watching 4k video streamed on a smart TV or heavy gaming then I think ASUS is the way to go but that's only my opinion. I have used TP link and Netgear with no major issue. I'll let you know how my experience pans out with it. Not sure who your provider is? Maybe you mentioned it earlier. They don't always offer the speeds they advertise. They all have a disclaimer that they don't necessarily guarantee a certain speed and I suspect they throttle some accounts at times. To make matters worse, the advertised speeds are under supervised ideal conditions. Probably doesn't hurt to occasionally investigate to see if the speed is any where near what they advertise. It should be close. I don't usually do that because I'm a light user unless I'm downloading a sample library. I rarely upload large files. Sometimes out here in my rural area I'll reset my routers for the fun of it because they can occasionally slow down. This forces the system to reconnect. Someone somewhere is watching all of that, but they aren't about to call you to tell you your internet is slow.

This is an old Martin Luther standard. A few things I noticed. I will withhold my comments to see if anyone else picked up on the same things. I added some different parts to this that aren't a part of the original composition. Wait till you see what I'm working on next. Hint- It's the opposite of this -Tim

Nice work on this as always. I can appreciate maybe to a smaller degree the effort that went into it since I have attempted some of it although not using VSL. I admire that you have a dedicated web site for it and even went to the trouble to show scores. I hope you draw a client in if that's what you want. Best -Tim

Sort of a mixture of jazzish rockish and funkish all rolled into something else. Maybe we need a new genre name for it? I enjoyed the listening experience. You definitely have a system down for this. The nice thing is you can probably use a template for most of it? I wish I could do that. I jump around too much. Kudos!!

I enjoyed listening to this. Definitely the feeling I think many people are getting these days. Can't comment on the mix. I need a better setup when I'm away. Everything sounds mid rangy in these phones. Thanks for sharing. It's a great pastime and a great outlet (making tunes). -Tim

@Shane_B. It's trial and error sometimes. My netgear worked fine for what it did. Most smart home is tied to 2.4 which is really a good thing because it keeps the 5ghz band clear. Some routers don't differentiate the bands on the ID so you have to go in and separate them. Maybe why you didn't see the bands as separate. My Xfinity box, the XB6 comes setup already with a wireless hot spot and 2.4/5ghz channels. When I would go on my wifi I would see both of those channels, netgear 2.4/5. PLUS my Xfinity hotspot. Which is for the general public. I want to turn all of that off, especially the hot spot on the Xfinity since this isn't good IT practice if you're using another router. Any web search will show ASUS is really tops pretty much everywhere. I'm sure they made a few duds. What makes a router a good router isn't just the hardware, it's just as important to have a good program to operate it and set it up PLUS security. ASUS has a good track record. I needed signal strength, backward compatibility and some future proofing. They say wifi 7 is just around the corner. I don't have anything wifi 6 yet. The Orbi RBS40V I have is supposed to be an audio system, an Alexa and a wifi extender. Gotta watch the model numbers. One model only works with other Orbi gear, one will work with any router. The problem I have with it is occasionally the weak signal from the wifi would drop but it would not stop transmitting. When that happens all my other devices looked at it instead of my home network since it duplicates the signal from my router. It would transmit the carrier but no wifi from the router. When it works though, it's great. I bought it open box because someone else probably couldn't figure it out. I believe they are phasing these out. I still see them on Amazon.. Orbi has gone more to selling mesh pairs instead of one unit that hooks into an existing network as an extender. Hopefully the new router won't drop it like the old one did. @Bapu Solves a lot of problems going wired if you can pull the wires. We are 99% wireless in my house. The only things wired are my DAW, my Honeywell wifi thermostat module and my security system. For security cameras wifi battery powered cameras are not always reliable.

I like the PC because it tells you a lot more than a simple effects stack like we see in PT or Cubase among others. You can access effects chains right inside of it. I keep forgetting I have Breverb with hundreds of settings in the PC and often reach for something else. This was a cutting edge novel idea. The ability to see a bunch of things happening in the PC using less steps than many other DAWs. Having said that, as a commercial venture I think most if not many plug in makers would prefer to write something that can go into any DAW. It would be great to see development of plugins for the PC. I realize the implications of allowing something like an open source code to develop plugins for the PC. There would need to be some sort of a vetting process to make sure everything works ok. Maybe pass it through the brass for a check out first....or a willing and knowledgeable Cakewalk tester with that authority. Judging from all of the skins people made for Cakewalk, the PC would be similar if tinkerers were allowed in the door. That's the only way I see this taking off unless there are more changes to Cakewalk. People who downloaded for free only because the software is free aren't as likely to pay for plugins. Just my opinion.

You have a roaster?

There for awhile I had those color changing bulbs in my studio lamps. I didn't change the colors very often. Then I bought one of those energy balls that if you touch it it looks like miniature lightening. Those are not good for a studio because of the static charge they give off. I might make use of colored LED lights in my next studio. I don't want to over do it though. That skull thing is a great idea. I think that would go great at the morgue on the front desk.

Before , the router was sitting on my studio desk. No external antennas. The antennae are built in on my existing router. It's ok. Nothing spectacular. What many people don't realize is 5ghz doesn't travel as well as 2.4ghz. The signal travels mostly through a few drywalled walls. I'll need a stronger signal for my new studio location if I plan to go wireless. I'm thinking about just going wired but man that's going to be a long run. The new router has external antennae. I plan to put it on a shelf higher up as of now. I considered a closet but am leaning against it for the reasons you stated. I ran a wifi test and my xfinity modem/router has nowhere near the power my netgear does. I'm not sure if they ever bridged it. The ASUS not only has a stronger signal. It has mesh capability which will be nice if I need it. I considered putting it in a hallway that's in the middle of the house up high instead of in the room at the end of the house. If I do that I probably won't need mesh.