Reason – The Stupid American Tourist

Reason Book and Other Stuff

Education, Music, Technology Comments Off

Jan 052014

I’m starting to finally feel better. Well, except for the coughing that comes out of nowhere. I’ve heard that this cold takes a while to get over. Yay.

My Reason book showed up today. It’s huge! The type is kind of small, but the way it’s laid out, if it was published traditionally, this would easily go over 1000 pages. As it is, it comes in at around 356 pages or so. Lulu did a great job binding it, and color really makes a big difference– there are a lot of illustrations, and each one is sharp.

I haven’t had time to read the whole book yet (I just got it!), but I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with it.

Push or Maschine? Argh!

I’m still looking a lot at Push and Maschine as well. I’m leaning heavily towards getting one of them to speed things up. Since I’m not only using Reason, but also VSTs, I’m looking for something that will improve my workflow. I’m also looking for something that will help me come up with wild and crazy ideas.

Maschine has some nice features. It integrates really well with Komplete, and has an awesome preview method. But it looks like it’s geared more towards sampling, and I’m not really into that. I’m more into straight composition and using instruments, in which case Push looks much more attractive.

Push supports Live and Live Suite instruments natively, but Komplete and other third party VSTs don’t have that kind of deep support. I understand why. There’s also a third party solution that lets Push owners tweak the heck out of it so it’ll work better with third party VSTs and other DAWs as well.

I’m very glad that Ableton didn’t turn Push into a black box you can’t tinker with. I think it’s good that they welcome third party software. If anything, it should help sales.

I’d say the only bit I’m not looking forward to is configuring everything. Whoa. I sound like I’ve bought it already. I’m still thinking. It’s a lot of money.

Woof Woof. Books.

Travel Comments Off

Dec 312013

I’m sick as a dog. When we got together at Christmas, we not only exchanged presents and shared Christmas cheer, we also swapped viruses around, it seems.

I have a nasty fever and generally feel like the bottom of someone’s shoe.

The worst part of it is that my SO and I aren’t going to be able to go out for New Year’s. I don’t want her to get sick. That would suck. She has a lot of lawyer stuff to do, and being sick would just make it a lot harder to do it.

And no, I haven’t made any progress on the monitor stand. I don’t think inhaling fumes would help any.

Books!

Being sick didn’t stop me from ordering a really cool book. Robert Anselmi runs Reason101.net, and he’s one of the long-time posters on the Propellerhead User Forums. He’s forgotten more about Reason than I know. Anyway, he has put together a huge book on how to get the most out of Reason’s standard instruments, as well as a few of its Rack Extensions. It’s called “Robert Anselmi’s Reason101 Visual Guide to the Reason Rack.”

He’s self-publishing it through Lulu. I managed to find a discount code, so I ordered the book. I can’t wait to read it when I’m feeling better.

The best part? You can get spiral binding! If you’re a musician, you know how awesome spiral bindings are. That version also comes with a free ReFill, too. It should get here soon.

Another book I got recently (for Christmas) was Daniel R. Mitchell’s book, “BasicSynth: Creating a Music Synthesizer in Software.” It’s an interesting read so far, but I realize I need to get better at programming before tackling parts of it. Someday, I’d love to make my own synthesizer. That would be so cool. And it would have the shiniest knobs and buttons ever.

In Closing

Happy New Year, everyone. Be safe. I’m just going to go in that corner over there and be sick some more.

You Komplete Me

Music, Photography, Technology Comments Off

Dec 052013

Komplete Ultimate showed up today. It comes on a shiny little hard drive, and the install takes about an hour or two. I installed the full version of Kontakt first, then registered it, then installed the Komplete Ultimate cross-grade, and everything went just fine. I’m excited to get more into it. All of it. There’s a lot of it!

I’ve been looking at some of the other deals out there. One VST I picked up was SynthMaster, because it sounds great, and it was on sale for $49. I really like the sounds it makes. If you pay more, you can get more patches. In the case of SynthMaster, some great sound designers have made some really amazing patches, so I picked up a few to go with it.

I also picked up Chromaphone by AAS, because I’ve been looking for a good percussion modeling VST. I realize that Chromaphone does more than that, and, in fact, it does a lot of really wild and interesting things, too.

The last thing I picked up was a second monitor, because photo editing with just one monitor drives me nuts. Also, working in Reason with only one monitor also drives me nuts. I like having the sequencer/mixer in one window, and the rack in another. I found a Dell monitor on sale at Amazon, but it showed up with a bunch of dead pixels, so I sent it back. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get another one, so I had to spend a little more to get an Asus monitor.

Now that I have two monitors, though, I realize that I need to do something about my desk.

It’s always something, huh?

Oh, my new dryer showed up yesterday. It dries clothes beautifully, and it was cheap. Did mention it was cheap?

Music Composition // Bargain Hunting

Music, Technology Comments Off

Nov 232013

My music composition class is going pretty well. I finished one piece, and just finished another. They’re just little musical doodles, but I like them. I’ve been using MuseScore a lot to do the writing, then I’ll output it as a MIDI, then import the MIDI file into Reason.

MuseScore’s playback is a fine, but the sound quality isn’t as good as I can get in Reason. Then again, MuseScore is free.

MuseScore is pretty solid, and it’s free. I like free.

I tried using the composition software in Cubase 7.0, but it wasn’t as flexible or easy to use as MuseScore. I might try again later on, because it would be pretty cool to have composition and production software all in one.

Bargain Hunting

I’m starting to check out what’s going to be on sale next weekend. Black Friday and on is a good time of the year to get deals on all kinds of music-related software and hardware. My big hope is that Native Instruments’ Komplete Ultimate is on some kind of sale, because I’m eager to branch out into some new sounds. I’m also really interested in Kontakt as a sampler.

Also, Nine Volt Audio is going out of business, so they’re selling all of their software in one big bundle for $199. (Except their Taiko v.2. Dang.) The bundle has some really good sounds in it. The sale ends in early January, and then that’s it. No more.

I picked up the bundle and downloaded it. Getting the downloader to run was a little troublesome, because my anti-virus kept wanting to call it a virus. (It wasn’t.) But after that, it was simply a matter of entering codes and downloading. Some of the libraries are Kontakt-only, so if I can get Kontakt, I’ll have some nice third-party sounds to play with.

Digital Sound Design Class

Music, Technology Comments Off

Feb 272013

Well, the intro to digital sound design class on Coursera is over. That was an interesting class, and I learned a lot. I’m looking forward to the next class I’m going to take on Coursera, Intro to Music Production, taught by one of the faculty at Berklee. It will be interesting to see what’s the same, and what’s different. I wonder if they will cover anything related to Reason, my DAW of choice. I don’t really use Cubase as much as I should, but it’s because I’m not invested in VSTs.

FM Synthesis

Music, Technology Comments Off

Feb 172013

When Propellerhead Software released their new PX7 FM synthesizer for Reason last fall, I bought it on sale because I fell in love with the sounds of my childhood. It comes with over 100,000 patches that are translated from the Yamaha DX7, and that’s great.

But there’s one small problem: I don’t know anything about programming an FM synthesizer. I understand the basic theory behind FM synthesis and how it works, but I don’t know how to turn that into PX7 patches that sound musical and not like train horns. Yes, I could just use the 100k I got from the Props, but I’d also like to make my own.

Someone on the Propellerhead User Forum suggested this book: “FM Theory and Applications by Musicians for Musicians,” by Dr. John Chowning and David Bristow, Yamaha, 1986. I went to my local library and requested a copy, and they got it through an interlibrary loan. It just came in today. Looking forward to reading it, and maybe untangling those FM mysteries.

Also, I’m really enjoying the sound design class on Coursera so far. It’s all pretty easy to understand and relatively straightforward. Some of it I already know, some I don’t.

Jamming With Meg

Japanese Language, Music Comments Off

Sep 082012

One of my weirder ideas to improve my Japanese is to pick up a Japanese Vocaloid and write some grammar songs. I grew up on Grammar Rock, and I remember “Conjunction Junction” to this very day.

My idea is that by creating something that tunecrimes me into remembering grammar, I’ll jump ahead a few spaces on the board.

The problem is that buying the Vocaloid software is convoluted. Buying direct from Japan requires using a shipping agent, which adds fees to the already-expensive shipping. Going through a seller on Amazon means that the price is significantly higher, and that’s not figuring in shipping from Japan. (Again.)

So I went back to Vector, my online software store of choice, and found Megpoid Native for 9,000 yen in a download version. I also got Vocaloid 3 editing software from Bplats’ Vocaloid Store, also a download version. So for ~ 18,000 yen, I got a solid voice bank and the editor I need. It’s still kind of pricey, though.

Meg (or GUMI as she’s commonly called in Japan) had a good voice and solid range. I wish the software was more open, in the sense of working with ReWire and Reason. And I wish I could run it like I run Reason– use a USB key or a login and let me use it on more than 1 machine (like a laptop and a desktop.) Unfortunately, the license is one computer only, which sucks for when I travel. If I want to use a laptop, I have to shell out another 18,000 yen for more software.

Another annoying thing: the Japanese Vocaloid store is run by a different company than the English version. So the products they carry are different. And if you want to get job plugins for Vocaloid 3 software, the English store has a paltry 18, while the Japanese store has over 100.

I wish Yamaha and the other companies behind Vocaloid would work harder to reach out to the global users. It’s not easy to just “pick it up,” and it should be. The easier, the better for their bottom line, and my blood pressure.

Penciling Some Notes

Music, Technology Comments Off

Sep 072012

I dug out my old Edirol keyboard yesterday, and surprise, surprise, a large number of keys didn’t work.

Apparently over time, the contacts will lose the graphite they need to make the keys work properly, and according to this video, you can just fix it with a mechanical pencil and a 2H (not 2B) lead. Draw on the black parts of the contacts. If you screw up, you’ll have to erase and restart on the problem contact. I cleaned the more stubborn contacts with rubbing alcohol. Also, there’s a little black pad in the rubber cover, and sometimes that needs just a touch of graphite as well.

The main problem with doing this is taking the keyboard apart, and keeping track of not only the keys, but the springs that hold them in place. The best tool for removing the springs was a good pair of needlenose pliers. There are also a ridiculous amount of screws on this keyboard as well.

It took me a while to get some of the notes to work properly, but after a lot of fiddling in Reason, I got all of the keys to work again.

Now I can go back to messing with the new version of Reason, which I am digging, by the way. The last version of Reason I had was 2.5, and it’s up to 6.5 now. I love the new instruments, but I really love the new SSL mixer. That thing is a beast.