bitflipper

I saw something rare today, something I haven't seen in years. Something so unusual I would have whipped out my camera had I not been so stunned by the sight of it. What I saw was a bass player who sets up, plugs in, and before we start - get this - he tunes his instrument! I know!

One step closer to filling out the band's bottom. Auditioned two players today, both good. One sang well, but the other was locked in tighter to the kick drum. Leaning toward the latter. Four more coming over tomorrow. This may not be as painful as I'd feared it might be.

"Sir, in the box labeled 'Religion' you wrote 'Vegan'. I'm sorry, but that's not a religion" "You've never met a vegan before, have you?" (That's a joke my dad told me back in the early 70's. In the original version, it was "vegetarian", as that word was known back then. "Vegan" is of more recent coinage.) Actually, the term "Vegan" is quite old. It's an ancient Navajo word meaning "bad hunter". I once considered becoming Vegan, but soon realized it would be a big missed steak.

I was considering this, as it really is a great deal. I reckoned I'd have room for it after I'd deleted Kirk Hunter Concert Strings. Then I realized that this is basically Concert Strings with some added instruments that aren't as good as the strings. Oh well. I'd still recommend this one if you don't already have an orchestral library. Yes, it's old and soon to be retired. But it sounds great and has a good selection of articulations.

Before somebody complains about that limitation, I pulled up the most complex instrument I have (Kirk Hunter Concert Strings) and it has 30 keyswitches per instrument. Plus it's unlikely that I'll ever own a 255-key keyboard. Because I'd have to buy a longer van.

You could always record an impulse response before finishing the room, then use a convolution reverb to replicate it later. Of course, that can't duplicate the creative inspiration you get from playing in a reverberant space.

Ah, thanks, Mark. I've been putting everything into a single group, not realizing that there might be a reason for having multiple groups, even in a simple instrument such as The Fiddle. I don't see any reason why a given keyswitch can't be included in more than one group, so I'm thinking I can just duplicate them all. Sure, I'll then run the risk of accidentally putting two mutually-exclusive articulations atop one another, but I've always been able to do stupid crap like that.

My dad used to attend church services every Sunday, rotating between every church in his small town. He was not religious, he went for the music. The Catholic church was his favorite; he said they had the best music. They also had a killer sound system and a light show to rival a Las Vegas circus production. I've been told I'd burst into flames if I did that. Seriously, a pastor said that. Something about having a daemon in my head. Or something. Nevertheless, every year my sister-in-law's church orchestra and choir put on a Christmas concert and I get there early for a front-row seat. It would be the perfect night out if not for that horrid comedian they have opening for them. Back to topic. We had more responses to our ad for a bass player than we could realistically handle. There will be no less than six of them cycling through my garage this weekend. It'll be fun, I think. We've given all of them the same four songs to prepare. All are easy tunes, so no undue pressure. But all depend on a solid bass groove to be interesting.

I've resisted doing that, because although redefining note 0 fixes some VIs, it messes up others. It's easier for me to remember which instruments need to have an octave added and which ones to leave alone. Now, I have a dumb question. I haven't figured out how to have overlapping keyswitches via articulation maps. You can only have one map lane per instrument, and it doesn't allow articulations to overlap. For example, I'd like to enable an up-slide and auto-harmony at the same time in Indiginus' The Fiddle. ATM I can only do that by hand-planting one of the keyswitches in the PRV.

Ditto. Still trying to figure out how evolution justifies nature's chocolate imperative, though. Which is also something they do particularly well in the Alpine regions.

How could it be otherwise? Despite the years I thought of myself as a "professional musician", I was actually a liquor salesman. When you play in a bar, don't fool yourself - you are not the product, only the inducement. Lucky for me, I often felt really awful when I drank, due to an undiagnosed metabolic condition. You could say I was saved by diabetes.

Technically true. However, transit times are not microseconds, but picoseconds. That's a millionth of a microsecond.

Amen, brother. Austria, Northern Italy, Southern Germany and Switzerland are wonderful places for those who enjoy eating. Unless you're a vegetarian.

I long ago made my peace with the nuttiness of musicians. It comes with the wiring. When I visited Vienna, I got excited the first time I saw a brass plaque on a building announcing that Beethoven had lived there. However, every subsequent brass plaque making the same claim was a little less exciting. There were many. Turns out that guy had been kicked out of many dwellings in his life, mainly just for being too weird for the neighbors. So yeh, musicians have had odd wiring since forever. Even my tolerance for quirkiness has its limits, though. Like the depressed, meth-addicted drummer who kept a loaded gun under his kick drum on stage. We parted company after two weeks. He then filed a grievance with the union, saying I'd quit without notice. They fined me $100. Fortunately, the US Supreme Court had just ruled that no one could be forced to join a labor union. So I parted company with the musicians' union as well. Sent them my union card with explicit instructions for its disposition.

Well, I may have my doubts about God but I do believe in the power of COVID-19. Not many bands have survived it, resulting in a surplus of players now looking for something to do. We posted an ad on Craigslist last night and already have four people lined up for auditions on Sunday. I am encouraged.

It's unlikely that a MIDI device would gobble up much RAM. More likely, the message is misleading and the real issue is contention between two programs for the MIDI ports. Could be that the software you're using is trying to get exclusive access to ports already claimed by another process. Maybe it's got a a setting for that, similar to Cakewalk's option to allow applications to share audio devices.

Agreed, 1600 is a lot. Anything over a thousand we measure in "bapus"; you've got 1.6 bapus' worth of plugins. I have way too many plugins, but I only come in at ~0.5 bapus. However, the plugin count shouldn't really matter much unless you're doing a full reset/rescan. If you're only scanning new plugins the perceptible difference between 200 and 2000 ought to be negligible. How much time are we talking about, Lee? Several minutes? Whatever the reason, I wouldn't expect it to be due to issues with the scanner itself. Yes, it's had some updates (mine is dated 28 Oct, so still shiny from the box). But the basic function of the scanner is fairly simple and straightforward. Most of the run time happens within the plugins themselves. The scanner then just gathers information about them and adds them to the list after they report success. Consequently, one plugin can bog down the whole scan. Any new plugins added since before the slowdown began? Any Waves stuff? Anything with Pace or Pace-like copy protection? Both scanner and plugins access the registry, as Noel notes. Could you maybe have an antivirus utility that gates access to the registry, or that scans DLLs before they can be opened? Whatever A/V you use should have the ability to whitelist (exclude) specific paths. Nobody's ever been infected by a VST, so it's safe to exclude every folder in your scan path.

It's rock 'n roll. It's supposed to be a little messy.

Yeh, the 800-mile commute might be an issue, though.

Nope.

I actually did that for five years, because back then it was my full-time job and the money split better between three people than four. Over time, playing bass with my left hand became second-nature. But at best it was a kludge that audiences could overlook. I couldn't possibly imbue the performance with any real expression and still do justice to piano/string/organ/synth parts - which often require two hands by themselves. We have an entirely different outlook nowadays. When the singer asked me how I felt about adding a horn player, I said we're never gonna make any money at this anyway, so let's just make the best band we can. The sax turned out to be a wonderful addition. I actually wouldn't mind adding a percussionist or second guitar, but we have trouble squeezing the six of us onto some smaller stages as it is.

Well, the decision was made for me last night. A band member accidentally sent a text out that wasn't meant to include the bass player, in which he said we needed to play gigs sober. He didn't mention the bassist by name, but he figured it out and fired back an "I QUIT" text. So we won't be playing out in November, or learning new material. Instead we'll be auditioning bass players. I've contacted two people who'd run ads on Craigslist, which is a crap shoot at best. Wish me luck.

Sounds like you're pretty much loaded for bear already. So never mind. You don't need Omnisphere. btw, if you like The Resonator and The Steel, check out Delta Blues Slide Guitar. It's my favorite of the bunch. Well, if you don't count Renaxxance. But that's a whole 'nother animal.

^^^ Should be along any decade now. abacab, although you can't test drive Omnisphere you can certainly hear it. Watch Avatar, or a BBC nature documentary. It's all over the place. As for justifying the price tag, consider that it can replace every synth you have. Or ever wanted to have. I'd still rate Kontakt the better investment, but put the two together and you're pretty much set for VIs.

He's not the lead singer, but he's the only baritone in the band and the few songs he does sing lead on are among our strongest numbers that I'd hate to drop. I've had to replace band members before, but it's a whole lot easier when you have money to offer. We only play out once a week and the money isn't even minimum wage after you take into account travel, load in/out and rehearsal. Our only reward is the fun factor, and our only mission is to be the best band we can be. I do it to get out of the garage, interact with non-virtual people and - most important - to keep my chops up. My fingers start to rust when I'm restricted to just composing at the DAW. So along with the usual prerequisites of knowing how to sing and play, it also requires the willingness to work hard for little compensation beyond the joy of making music. And doing it sober. Gigs do come first. We have upcoming gigs on the calendar, including one venue that we've been particularly looking forward to playing. Another is one that we had to cancel last summer when our guitarist got Covid, and they were nice enough to reschedule. We're building a circuit despite overall having fewer places to play than in past years. I don't want to lose any of those venues. btw, the last time we auditioned bass players we heard plenty of good bass playing. But none of them were singers. We're already a six-piece band, and it's a tight fit on some stages, so adding another member isn't practical. I'd love to have a percussionist or a second guitar. Or a couple go-go dancers. But they'd have to be willing to haul gear, which is hard to do in a mini-skirt.