I’ve had this ancient Alesis Quadrasynth as my controller in the studio, think by now it has been paid off even if it’s just been used as a controller, not as a synth. Actually I wanted to do keyboard playing at a jam last Friday so I took apart the synth to clean it up inside, too much cat hair — as I expected.

I’m always surprised over how little stuff is inside hardware synths. They look bulky but inside all you have is a couple of PCM boards and cables. The same was with an PPG Wave 2.3 that I used long time ago. Those synths were heavy, but when you opened up the synth chassis, all you found inside was an even smaller PCM board than the one in  the picture above. But the chassi was heavy. It’s another marketing trick to make it look like the inside is expensive. But it’s not good for the keyboard player’s back, that’s for sure.

Anyway, vacuuming the inside as well as using canned air fixed a lot of dust and other nasty stuff inside (like the mentioned cat hairs…) I remember when I did some stunts now and then repairing synths at a keyboard store in Stockholm, usually all it took was to open up the synth, clean up parts (or hook back in cables) and it was working.

If you ever want to get good deals, purchase a ‘broken’ synth, open up the inside, clean it up or check if cables are loose or something similar. And you get it fixed. Same with external effect boxes, pedals and so on.

Just now I’m saving money for an Edirol PCR-500, most likely that will be my next main keyboard controller, both for gigs as well as keeping it in the studio.   

I just realized this while doing programming, but it should also be applicable for any other documentation, such as documentation for audio software and so on. The best documentation is documentation that anticipates what the end user needs, and presents this at the right moment.

In my case I needed a quick answer how to transform mouse down coordinates from a window context to a view context (Cocoa programming). The NSEvent documentation mentioned this in the right position. This as I suspect anyone dealing with this issue needs the answer.

So, concerning other audio tools, such as Ableton Live documentation, if most common operations are discussed, that’s a good thing. I think this is something that I have not seen in basic documentation. Sometimes you have how-to sections, but it would indeed be handy to include common issues in the actual base documentation.

So anyone working on DAW documentation, please listen. The more common answers you reply to in the documentation, the better.

I created an account on talkbass.com as I’m hunting for a good 5-string bass, have my eyes on one brand/type, but needed more background info.

Anyway, the forum no-spam text field check for the bass forum was very clever, or what!

PS: You need to know how a bass is tuned…

I felt really stupid today when I had to take the car to work (I always bike if possible). And in addition, I had to do one of those few ‘drive around checking two new mixes’ trip with the car tonight. At least it’s a small car.

Anyway, we stopped subscribing to the daily newspaper, and otherwise we have tried to be minimal with trash. I’m trying to minimize the need for burning CDs, iPods and memory sticks with material work just fine.

This is also the reason I don’t mind about the digital download future we are heading towards. It’s fun collecting vinyl and CDs, until you have to move, or otherwise get lost in tons of stuff in the book shelves. And one day all that will end up in nature, whether we want or not, unless some future generation has invented a perfect trash destroyer.

There’s the problem of hardware, I have a bunch of old hard drives, waiting for a time and place for the next time some organization of company offers to pick them up for recycling. Can’t do much about electricity use in the studio, but each new generation of computers use less power. Otherwise, it’s best to let the nature heal, and not misuse it so it will be around.

It’s odd that the way I’ve noticed this site has more traffic is that I’m getting more spam postings nowadays, 10-20 a day. Akismet in WordPress (a default plugin, anyone should activate it) catches them all, so it’s not really a big deal.

I do have hooks in place inside Google Analytics to track all the rest of the incoming traffic, as well as a fun WordPress plug-in called Live that shows in real time incoming requests.

Anyway, the other reason I’m writing this is that due to the spam issues commenting is configured so that that first time someone is placing a comment, it is placed into a moderation queue. The second time — if the first comment was approved — you could write comments and they immediately show up. I only delete spam-based comments, anything else OK. So feel free to leave comments - I really appreciate reading them (as well as others), and it’s one of the charms with blog systems.

I’ve been planning on doing this for weeks, and I pushed it forward and forward, until tonight… Anyway, now the blog and the main web site are the same. Easier for me, and I think for everyone.

If you have existing RSS subscriptions, they should work, thanks to the magic of Unix symlinks, if not, email me and complain, same if you encounter anything odd…

I think some other links might also be broken, but the duct tape of symbolic links should fix that along the way.

Anyway, in other words, WordPress is both my blog software as the main asset service for everything on my site just now.

I had to switch to a new theme as I upgraded WordPress to 2.2.2, and the old theme stopped working. That happens, but this new theme I found today is better as it handles widgets and so on, and I’m in the middle of customizing it.

However, I noticed that the img tag paddings don’t work unless I go in and edit them via the editor, seems that the image padding is now saved in the database rather than picked up from the css. That means that I need to go through each entry and update the information. Just now the padding between images and text is not honored, so it’s too close, and I’m a perfectionist concerning easy reading of web sites.

This all means that for any of you who subscribe, and you don’t have ‘ignore modified postings’, you will later tonight get a listing of 266 or so modified entries. Sorry, but it’s better to do this today than postpone it.

It’s always a challenge to keep up to speed with software changes, indeed. But it’s better to do it early than later, I’ve learned the hard way.

I’m just now working on a set of Ableton Live demos to be placed up on YouTube. I was hoping they were ready tonight, but it’s important that they are good, and I think I need to redo the whole operation tomorrow.

A couple of notes. I’m using Ambrosia Software’s Snapz ProX that is now a universal binary. It’s a great program, but the provided kext module crashes now and then… But otherwise it’s very easy to put together video presentations, after you get the right settings in place.

It’s also a matter of rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. First I thought I would do a separate sound track and add this into the video, but it’s more natural to talk and show at the same time. But to do this requires that everything will work out, and I’m no actor. I need to speak far more slowly, especially with an accent that might distort the words. Also, it’s important to tell exactly what I’m doing at each step.

Fortunately my son had an unused USB headphone/mike setup, the mike is decent, not good, but it’s handy when working with my laptop.

Anyway, I will try to publish something tomorrow evening!

I was hoping to start looking into new Ableton Live betas, but they seem to have broken their nice tradition to release something each summer. I should write more about Live, in general. Meanwhile, here’s a series about music and money — it’s good to see where we all are heading. I would expect any musician at some point would like to be compensated for some of their work, not that releasing free music is nice, anyway.

This just posted article is a good summary of the oddnesses with the performance fees here in USA concerning radio versus net streaming. Basically, radio performances will not generate any royalties to the performer, only to the composer. The concept is that radio play is PR for the artists. Most of us would argue that those times are over by now with the advent of Internet.

It’s indeed time this is changing. In the electronic music world, it’s not that common to have separate composers and performers, usually it’s the same person or band. Anyway, I think the more clear trend is that the labels will have less and less to operate with concerning the royalties from performances. Another reason why big labels are in big trouble, as their business models were based on selling plastic platters and trying to sneak in with contract issues related to publishing rights.

What could you do just now? Well, to start with, if you create music, join any of the royalty companies, BMI and ASCAP are the big companies here in USA, and each country in Europe has their own specific royalty groups. There are some rules, but usually it’s something like that the person or band should have N songs available for public consumption. And remember, MySpace entries should also count.

The reason I recommend this is that these big royalty companies are the ones that will take care of all the lobbying, politics, administration and so on. It’s easier to let them handle it, than you get specialized in royalty legal issues, that might even differ from country to country.

It’s hard to know how much you could earn, but in some European countries radio play could generate more money than you expected.

I’m a member of BMI, as long time ago I liked their online registration system, but ASCAP is also good and they also have online registration now, Frank Zappa belonged to ASCAP, for example. Usually it does not cost anything to belong to these groups, but it could take some effort to justify that you are a performer with published material. You also need to show your social security number, tax id, and similar things.

After this you need to be very diligent and register any of your compositions on the service. Just now, at least with BMI, it asks for basic info such as title, artist, and additional info about the released product, length of time, and so on. Usually it takes me about 3-5 minutes to fill in the needed information.

As a result your song will also get a so called ISWC song identification id that are sometimes used with download services, and might play an even bigger role with future net-driven royalties and so on. Note, this is different from the ISRC id which is a track-based ID system, and usually the ISRC number ranges are provided to record labels, but anyone who has a label should get access to your private range.

Yes, this is not a music-related posting, I will send that one out tonight, but it’s a good topic for any creative person sitting most of the time in a studio, and noticing their waste line go up over time. Overweight is bad, bad, leads to all kinds of side-effects, higher blood pressure, triggers other kinds of things the body can’t handle. And you want to make music until you are super-senior, right?

If you work within 5-10 miles (7-10km or so) distance from work, use a bike. If you bike 40-60 minutes every day, and stop at traffic lights, and again pedal quite a lot, it’s like going to the gym every day for close to an hour. But you need to get to work and back, anyway, and you do two things at the same time, saving time for studio work!

The more you walk around at work, the better. Take lots of breaks. It’s interesting that if you work standing, you move more around, loosing more calories, than constantly sitting. It helps with your back, too. Always use stairs rather than the elevator, unless you work in a high rise, not fun walking 20-40 levels of stairs. When parking a car, place it the furthermost from the office entrance, plenty of space, and forces you to move more.

If you eat a big lunch, or dinner, it will just cause it harder to get rid of such calories, not to speak of being tired after the lunch. Take smaller portions.

Drink a lot of water, the stomach is happy it’s full and does not complain. Carborated water a.k.a soda is full of calories, by the way.

And never, never do what I did, went back to Finland and tried to remember my childhood days by eating candy I used to purchase when I was a kid…

OK, here’s the current system how I organize my projects on the disk, and I’ve used it for over three years, and sometimes deviate from it a little bit, but hey, nobody is a robot. I learned it from an article I read long time ago, and it was modified, and I suspect if someone else wants to do something similar, you will make a variation of it.

The whole idea is to keep track of the project status in folders with clear sub-folders, and move them from one state to another during the lifetime of the projects.

I have a top level folder called Recording. Inside this one I have four top-level folders called: 1-Attik, 2-Production Material, 3-Work In Progress and 4-Shelf (the others are for Live and Logic temp recording material). Attik is where I place things that will just gather dust and I might or might not need it in future. Production material is anything I really think is interesting and should be moved to work in progress soon. However, that material could easily get back to the Attik, too. Work in progress is where the active projects reside. Shelf is the final resting place for finished projects.

Inside each one I have the exact same sub-folders, DJ Mixes, Interstitials (short one minute tracks, Performances (DJ recordings), Remixes, and Tracks, There’s also sometimes a Film and Effect section. Biowaves is a forthcoming podcast series, hint hint.

Inside these I have each project with a running number and a prefix, I use KX<four-digit number>, KX is from prefixes I’ve used in private programming projects.

When I then work on individual projects, when I do backups I just drag this same sub-folder to another hard disk, the KX<zzzz> number is the one that will indicate the project. I now also put a short name after it as it’s easier to remember project names than numbers.

Anyway, the trick is to move the projects from one state to another, and also be brave and move things to the Attik in case you know certain projects will certainly just gather dust in the future.

Oh, one last note, inside the project folders I also have a small info folder called “Samples not archived”, so I know which project I have gone through and archived into my SoundBank. Maybe I need to explain how my Soundbank looks like next!

Ok, back home, and it will take me another day to get used to the California time zone as well as the lifestyle.

A couple of comments about traveling. I actually got inspired at the Helsinki airport and worked out 35 minutes of a forthcoming Pretty/Gritty/Strange mix. It also helped to have access to a power outlets.

Over in Stockholm I could not find any, I suspect they were locked behind the walls. As for Chicago, that place is just so super-busy and crowded, no way to do much work.

All said, it’s a shame that airports hide or don’t provide power outlets to travelers. We do pay aiport fees as part of the ticket, after all. Even the issue of paying big bucks for a short time of WiFi is silly, but with WiMax I think that issue will be quickly resolved.

I don’t mind the security checks and so on, not even that most airlines don’t provide much on the plane if you fly economy. But power outlets to charge iPods, laptops and so on, please… I even think all seats on all the airplanes should have power outlets, it should not be so hard to put those in today.

So Helsinki Airport is for me one of the top airports now, and Arlanda one of the worst.

OK, finally I have a DSL line I could use every day, so I could access the web, update this blog, and so on. It was not so hard to survive without high bandwidth Internet for seven days, but it was tough, too.

Above is a view from the cottage where I’m staying here in Western Finland just now, for another eight days. Nice, or what. I will later upload an image of my portable studio setup inside the cottage.

Like a writer, I’m trying to maintain a pace of having a quota of work done each day, like three kind of tracks, or three kinds of mixes, each day. Usually something is done, but it’s not exactly what I expected. That’s the problem with quotas. But at least it feels like I’m getting something done on this vacation, that and reading through a big pile of books that’s been collecting back home… Anyway, more soon.

Ok, what fun did I do the last hour? While working on DNA Tones, Part Three, I had a set of tracks playing the same MIDI clips — it’s one of those power-techniques to have multiple instruments playing the same lead, bass, and others. Heavy rock bands have known about this trick since the early day power chords.

Anyway, what I started doing, see image, is to deliverately shift the notes in the various same MIDI tracks, some would play now and then a couple of semitones above, or below.

This made a very interesting arrangement, sounds like some of the instruments are jamming now and then, and then falling back into line.

I just had to remember to cut the midi clips here and there — they were looping, so if I pushed one note up, it could have caused problems earlier in the total mix of the tracks playing.

You could also place one of the arpeggiator plug-ins into one of the tracks with same midi info as let’s say a bass line, with pushing it up one octave, and this way also get all kinds of interesting variations using the same MIDI data.

I installed last night a WordPress plugin called Live that in real-time lists requests to the blog, where they came from, search strings, referring sites and so on.

It was fascinating watching this in realtime. To show one odd example: someone was querying for “Biggest hits on Something/Anything”, the Todd Rundgren LP this blog was actually named after, and got here.

Also, I posted an entry about Reason 4.0 when I saw it was released, and immediately due to the magic of Google and my fast sitemap generation, many queries about Reason 4.0 ended up here.

Of some interesting reason, the studio image is something that ends up being queried via image searches, the image file name is studio_2.0.jpg, wonder if that has to do with those queries?

I’m happy to see a lot of RSS feed hits, so people use RSS feed services (if you don’t know, click on the info on the right side for bloglines and similar tools to read blog entries without the need to always poll this site).

I didn’t see much traffic with commenting, hmm, need to make sure more readers comment, that’s half of the fun with blogs. To start with I need to change the template so the comments are on the same level as the postings. So, who knows what that globe is in the picture, where is it located?

To summarize, I think I now know of all kinds of less ethical ways to drive traffic by using keywords and titles people search for. However, I don’t like that kind of marketing, myself.