If you have removed unnecessary files (check /Library/Caches/ on the Mac that sometimes could have a lot of old cached content), and you still don’t have enough space, there’s maybe applications that have installed lots of content into the hard disk. As an example, Apple Loops are placed into /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/. Another place good to check out is /Library/Application Support/.

Now, unfortunately various applications assume that they could find content in the pre-defined places, so you can’t just move it to another disk. What you could do is either to make an Alias (Make Alias in the Finder File menu, or Command-L) or if that does not help, make a symbolic link via the command line tool. The alias should be made on a folder on the other disk, and then renamed so it’s the same as the original folder on the system disk is named. This is where it’s good to first rename the original folder, copy over everything to a new location, make an alias, and then drag the alias back to the original position and give it the same name as the original file. If all that works, then remove the original folder.

Now, it all depends if the application could resolve aliases. There are some programs that due to bad programming or otherwise can’t resolve aliases. In this case you need to make a symbolic link in the command line tool (The command line is in the /Applications/Utilities folder).

As before, copy over the contents to the new location, rename the original file, then in the command line type in something like:

$ ln -s /Volumes/OtherDisk/Folder '/Library/Application Support/OriginalFolderName'

You have to use the ‘ ‘ notation if the folder has a space in the name. The -s option tells that this is a symbolic link so it works across multiple volumes (disks). The /Volumes directory has all the mounted hard disks, where the disk name is the same as you see in the Finder.

A couple of notes, first practice before you do a critical operation, and always have a backup in place in case something bad happened.

To get more blog postings happening, I will start with small mini-five series postings. Seems I’m most productive when I have to deliver material. This first series is about computer systems and performance concerning audio productions. I will use the MacOSX system as the basis, as I work with it every day, even developing applications for it, but many of these topics cover the Windows system, as well.

First about the system disk and available disk space. The main operating system is using the hard disk to page out and in pieces of memory, this is called virtual memory paging. When you start an application, a lot of memory objects are created, and they all can’t fit into memory. So what the system does it to look when one of those memory blocks was accessed, if it was long time ago it is moved over to the hard disk. When this memory object is suddenly needed, it’s loaded back in.

Now, this means that there’s a lot of disk activity happening. If there’s more real memory, there’s less need to page out the memory pages (as they are called), or paged back in. So if you add more RAM, then things are faster.

Secondly, if the main disk is very full, it will take longer and longer to find disk sectors that could fit various pages. So the second rule is to never let the system hard disk get too full. My own rule is never to let it have less than 10Gb free space.

You could use Omnidisksweeper and similar tools to find what files and folders on the system disk use most disk space, and either delete them or move them to another hard disk. More in the next installment about this one.

Recently I’ve been testing out Pandora with a strange new angle, using it to put together DJ like sessions. Now, it was not about mixing together tracks, rathering testing out if suggestions of tracks would make a cohesive listening experience using dance music recommendations.

As the DJs will get more and more tracks as part of their laptop archive, it will not be uncommon to get lost in let’s say 10,000 tracks, figuring out how each one sounds like, or what works together with each other.

This is where Pandora’s suggestion system could be a meta-level solution that might show up in future DJ browsing systems.

So far I’m both hopeful and not delighted. One problem with Pandora’s marking of similar tracks is that it’s not deeply granular with underground dance music. For example, for a channel where I tried to make it play Berlin style techno, Tiesto tracks show up from time to time.

But I’m hopeful about this kind of browsing technology, with better and better classification of tracks — if possible where the end user could adjust the tags for each track — this might work just fine. So if someone is interested in another music software project, here was the idea.

This is something that I found a couple of months ago, and wish I knew about it long time ago. The nice thing with looping in Logic is that you just drag in the upper right corner of the MIDI track to extend a region so it loops multiple times. The bad thing is that you usually want to turn the loop into a real midi track segment at some point, as you want to edit individual MIDI notes to make things more variated.

Well, Logic always had the menu option in the Region-Parameters called Turn Loops into Real Copies. And the default command shortcut is comand-option-control-L. So now it’s a breeze for me to just let it loop, and when I want to go in and start making a different kind of MIDI segment, use this to get me a copy of real MIDI notes. Bye-bye copy/paste of midi segments. Duh.

I’m not a member of Taxi, but I’ve been on their mailing list for a very long time, as the postings are very good, they talk about the music publishing business, and so on.

Anyway, some days ago I got a special deal for a free review of a track by a Taxi reviewer. So I scanned through material and found something, and sent it off today.

The problem I’ve had with Taxi, as I assume, is that film material sent in should fall into certain specific styles, if possibly mimic:ing existing artists and styles. And I just don’t have time to do that — the few hours each day I have for studio work is reserved for private and personal music, not sounding like let’s say Nine Inch Nails.

I’ve had some correspondence with companies licensing music to film/tv/commercials. On one specific case they asked me to sound like a contemporary drum&bass band, but I just balked, of the same reason. If I do music, it better be something unique and different.

Anyway, I could be wrong. So I scanned through my list of tracks that have not been released — they have piled up recently — and picked out one that was electronica, but could maybe be used for film or tv productions. I also sent in a letter explaining the current dilemma with us electronica producers, our music is fresh in the world, but not in USA, so we always have a harder time bubbling up.

Anyway, if I get any results back, and interesting feedback, I will share it. Meanwhile, if nothing else, subscribe to the taxi newsletters. They are free, and have interesting insights into how to sell music.

I did tonight a radio mix of a track for a project I can’t talk about yet, but if it pans out it will be really cool.

Radio mixes are actually tough to make, not that it didn’t take that long, but there’s another mind set when putting together a max four-minute track from an original dance track. It was easy with Ableton to just cut out four-bar time slots here and there to scale down the track, no need for a long intro and exit.

Also, I spent some time to make a big bang from the first four bars played, as the first eight bars or so are critical, if you don’t get the listened hooked, its over.

I also had to think about the intro-chorus-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-verse thing, been a while since I last had that mindset.

I need to make more radio edits of existing tracks long-term, anyway, as if I ever put out a compilation CD of PlanetoidPark material, the tracks can’t go over five-six minutes, anyway. Maybe it would be even best to render out radio mixes, anyway, as they are easier to sell.

There’s even an option to really make a radio mix first with an original track, and then extend it to dance remixes, hmm… Wonder who many are thinking like this, or is it old-fashioned producer thinking?

While driving yesterday in the car, and I had a compilation of concurrent Berlin techno music playing, my wife said that this kind of music was designed for partying and going out, but not for listening purposes.

It was just one opinion, but it might have some truth in it. A lot of electronic underground music produced today is really for the dance floor. Just the format of the intros an exit parts, with extended drum parts, are designed for DJs so they could easily mix in and out tracks.

Hmm. Actually I would prefer to compose for listening purposes, too, where dancing is one element. One way is to release multiple remixes of the same track, but in the long term that’s also a drag.

However, something that is more and more common with contemporary DJs is that they don’t really need the extended intros and exit parts. With CDJs, Ableton Live, Traktor, Torque et rest, it’s not so hard to set loop points and make your own intro and exit sections. It’s really for the vinyl and non-computer DJs where they need such parts. So in the long term there is really no need to make really extensive mixes.

So what I will actually do with my productions from now is to just make them more listening-centric, and not worry so much about the remixing live, as more and more DJs know how to do it, and I should not worry about that part. So I think this compromise from now will work out just fine with my production work.