Studio Update
70's Shannon CD Update.
I've been working on the studio aspects of recording for her new CD. What I mean is, trying to get this stuff to work and work together right. That issue is the big issue of our modern techno world - getting stuff to work like "they" said it would.
I got the EWI (an electric wind driver that sends both audio and midi data) to be seen by my M Audio midi box and into my computer for the first time in forever. The getting Reason to see it and trigger soft synths and refills (more sounds) was a drag. I did finally get them to "work together" and now have both my keyboard driver and EWI wind driver seen and triggering sounds in Reason and on Soft Synths.
To really work right, the breath control needs to be effecting the volume on the Reason stuff, but I have been editing the volume to create hits and swells after the fact and it sounds cool too.
Bottom line is I have spent a lot of time and been getting little in return. I don't know if you guys remember the movie Back To The Future when the Doc was in the Old West and he had made this giant machine that did a lot of work to finally drop 2 ice cubes into his cup. That's what I feel like - way too much of the time. A ton of effort and the production for the day shows next to nothing.
Well, you guys that play EWI, in Reason you need to set it up as a Basic Midi Keyboard and not a Keyboard Driver. The terms we use and the terms they use are different. We call this thing a wind driver. For Reason, it is a basic keyboard with no knobs. It took me all night of trying different combinations of settings to finally try that option and blam - working EWI in Reason.
This does bring up another gripe. Language! Why different people use different words to describe the same thing is understandable but sometimes frustrating. When the same person asks you to set up an account and you type in an email address and password, and then the log in page asks for a user name or account, or some other thing I can't remember right now - that is lame! If you fill in little boxes with a response on a sign up page, the login page for that same website should be the same questions so you can type in the same answers. Why do they do that?? As if it is easy to remember login information to 4-5 dozen sites?? And there are those sites that have requirements for your password like 5-11 characters using upper and lower case letters and numbers. the days of 1 password fitting every box is way over.
I digress.
In the time it took me to figure out how to make my gear work together, Shannon cut the Orchestra song from her new CD because it was going to be a ton of work and was probably not worth it. We asked how much time I had invested, the answer was not much. How much product do I have to show for the time. Next to nothing. Oh well. On to something that makes more sense.
Writing horn parts for a Steely Dan track that had no horns. That will be fun since I want to capture that - 'they would have sounded just like this' vibe. I will try --- really hard.
In other news - The KSBR Bash is this weekend. You can read about it with listed artists at ksbr.net. I still have to figure out what song to play and I can't seem to get to Tony Guerrero to see what he thinks will get the hype rolling for our new CD. I hope to get him tomorrow, on the phone and talking.
Lets see - the Saddleback Church Worship Conference is coming and I am supposed to have a band booked for it. I was told it had to be an all star band and I have no numbers since my last computer explosion. I called Tony for his book and his hard drive blew up last week too. Loving this high tech world
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Tomorrow I go to Long Beach State to play a Sax Quartet for pre-school kids. Shannon Kennedy got the call and I said yes because it is not the usual thing for me. I asked to play Bari too, because I have never played Bari Sax in a sax quartet. Sounded like fun!
So with that, I am reminded that I have to up very early, so tata for now,
SAXBOY Greg Vail
I've been working on the studio aspects of recording for her new CD. What I mean is, trying to get this stuff to work and work together right. That issue is the big issue of our modern techno world - getting stuff to work like "they" said it would.
I got the EWI (an electric wind driver that sends both audio and midi data) to be seen by my M Audio midi box and into my computer for the first time in forever. The getting Reason to see it and trigger soft synths and refills (more sounds) was a drag. I did finally get them to "work together" and now have both my keyboard driver and EWI wind driver seen and triggering sounds in Reason and on Soft Synths.
To really work right, the breath control needs to be effecting the volume on the Reason stuff, but I have been editing the volume to create hits and swells after the fact and it sounds cool too.
Bottom line is I have spent a lot of time and been getting little in return. I don't know if you guys remember the movie Back To The Future when the Doc was in the Old West and he had made this giant machine that did a lot of work to finally drop 2 ice cubes into his cup. That's what I feel like - way too much of the time. A ton of effort and the production for the day shows next to nothing.
Well, you guys that play EWI, in Reason you need to set it up as a Basic Midi Keyboard and not a Keyboard Driver. The terms we use and the terms they use are different. We call this thing a wind driver. For Reason, it is a basic keyboard with no knobs. It took me all night of trying different combinations of settings to finally try that option and blam - working EWI in Reason.
This does bring up another gripe. Language! Why different people use different words to describe the same thing is understandable but sometimes frustrating. When the same person asks you to set up an account and you type in an email address and password, and then the log in page asks for a user name or account, or some other thing I can't remember right now - that is lame! If you fill in little boxes with a response on a sign up page, the login page for that same website should be the same questions so you can type in the same answers. Why do they do that?? As if it is easy to remember login information to 4-5 dozen sites?? And there are those sites that have requirements for your password like 5-11 characters using upper and lower case letters and numbers. the days of 1 password fitting every box is way over.
I digress.
In the time it took me to figure out how to make my gear work together, Shannon cut the Orchestra song from her new CD because it was going to be a ton of work and was probably not worth it. We asked how much time I had invested, the answer was not much. How much product do I have to show for the time. Next to nothing. Oh well. On to something that makes more sense.
Writing horn parts for a Steely Dan track that had no horns. That will be fun since I want to capture that - 'they would have sounded just like this' vibe. I will try --- really hard.
In other news - The KSBR Bash is this weekend. You can read about it with listed artists at ksbr.net. I still have to figure out what song to play and I can't seem to get to Tony Guerrero to see what he thinks will get the hype rolling for our new CD. I hope to get him tomorrow, on the phone and talking.
Lets see - the Saddleback Church Worship Conference is coming and I am supposed to have a band booked for it. I was told it had to be an all star band and I have no numbers since my last computer explosion. I called Tony for his book and his hard drive blew up last week too. Loving this high tech world
>Tomorrow I go to Long Beach State to play a Sax Quartet for pre-school kids. Shannon Kennedy got the call and I said yes because it is not the usual thing for me. I asked to play Bari too, because I have never played Bari Sax in a sax quartet. Sounded like fun!
So with that, I am reminded that I have to up very early, so tata for now,
SAXBOY Greg Vail
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