It’s clear that I’ll be working on some personal music but I have consciously avoided thinking about it beyond one overriding goal – to wade through the last decade worth of half finished (or less) ideas that I’ve written, and recorded to varying degrees. As I’ve been mostly playing on other people’s material or projects it’s been a pretty diverse decade, but I honestly couldn’t tell you much more about what’s in that pile ‘o ideas as it’s stuff I documented in quick momentary flurries of inspiration – and didn’t spend much time with overall. The idea was that I’d eventually come back to them and finish each and every one – though at this point that obviously never happened nor was it likely to unless I made a concerted effort to set aside some time and do something about it. I guess that’s what sabbaticals are for, eh?

The hope is that either I find enough gems in that pile to justify finishing out a demo, or horrify myself into writing something better. So I’m going to call it creative semi-block- I guess when you’re starting with a surplus of ideas it can’t exactly be a tabula rasa type of situation. But given I have little memory of or faith in those ideas at this point, it is a bit unsettling. Here’s hoping the combination kicks me in the ass the right way. Keep posted.

I’m a bit of a mic snob when recording real tracks, but often need a good travel mic that doesn’t require as much associated hardware to get into my CPU- so I did a little shopping around to see if there was a good alternative to carrying around condensor mics and an audio interface. And boy, did I score- for just $99 the Blue Snowball is probably the coolest, hippest, cleanest sounding USB interface/mic I’ve ever heard. I also plunked down for the Blue Ringer Universal Shockmount to get a little vibration protection from the desk, and it really does make a difference. If you need a great sounding, inexpensive USB mic, I strongly recommend this little sucker.

Yeah- go ahead and call me a hater, but that’s some funny shit, mainly cause it’s for real.

volume knob

Originally uploaded by sfegette

Devin’s favorite ‘toys’ around the house these days are pretty much all the personal items I swore I’d never let my kids play with. Mainly my guitars. He’s gotten quite good at plinking strings and just recently learned how the volume knob works. Amazing.

What’s even funnier is when I play the bass (or guitar) and let him mash buttons on my footswitches. He again really loves the volume pedal (very obvious he’s making changes), but recently discovered my distortion pedal, which is a new fave.

I can only hope that he retains all of this learning until his finger dexterity (and body size) is a bit more amenable to actually PLAYING the instruments. I’m already proud as hell that he’s taken a specific interest in music, but if he shows any inclination/interest I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure he grows up with an instrument in his hands.

The interface is largely the same, but you can see the significant new sequencer UI down at the bottom:

Of note also within the above screenshot- the mighty new Thor ‘polysonic’ synth. If you thought things got a bit stale on the synth front after the Malstrom graintable synth way back in v2(?), then Thor is like a completely new class of synth. Completely configurable routing, step sync, OMFG it’s like a playground in there. It’s testament to the Propellerheads guys that even though I didn’t think I needed the upgrade, I was utterly floored with how much more usable and polished my old favorite soft synth/sequencer has become in it’s fourth incarnation.

Although I do most of my writing in Live, I damn near capped a whole song in Reason today without even plugging in a physical instrument. That’s pretty impressive. Considering I’ve got a Live upgrade coming soon, too… this is going to be a real fun holiday season.

So it’s not unexpected that when I saw the recent news about the new super-bundle Logic Studio I wasn’t immediately interested- until I read a bit more about what was in it, and had a chance to peek at it first-hand on a friend’s machine. It took about 30 minutes of hands-on to change my mind entirely. Consider me officially turned.

The Logic Pro 8 interface

First and foremost, the ReWire implementation is so slick it almost feels like it’s TOO easy to use. You can actually fire up a ReWire slave like Reason or Ableton Live directly from within Logic, and then choose from any of their instruments. For once, ReWire just works without thinking about it too much. Awesome.

The other thing that’s impressed me with Logic Pro 8 is that it really feels as if the UI has gotten a good once-over across the board, becoming far more intuitive and natural-feeling. The app as a whole is rock-solid and has not crashed on me once through my weaning-in period, which is a good sign (cause I can pile on the CPU/hard drive load like a monster). Oh, and it can bounce directly to MP3 – incredibly handy for taking working mixes with you quickly on an iPod/iPhone – something that took a bounce and then a conversion in Live.

In relation, ProTools has seemed to stagnate recently- getting little-to-no love and feeling largely like a port of the app I started using some 10-12 years ago. It feels like Digidesign has been lost in their new Avid home, and the app is just on cruise control enjoying it’s status as the reigning king of user base. Digital Performer is not much better, with MOTU’s energy and attention appearing to largely go towards their software instruments these days, and the DP 5.x interface being largely an OS X makeover with no real improvements or changes to the core app itself. Perhaps I was just ready for a fresh start- who knows. Either way, Logic has definitely learned from it’s history and really made a huge leap in usability and reliability. Live may still be my favorite songwriting app – and definitely my favorite performance app – but Logic is going to give it a run for it’s money now for the hardcore gigs.

The other apps in Logic Studio are, quite frankly, just interesting to have and not really essential. I already owned Soundtrack Pro from Final Cut Studio 2, and MainStage, their new ‘performance’ application, is hard-pressed to take on my proven Ableton Live + Reason + Novation REmoteSL 61 combo. The 3D graphics are swanky, but not anything I couldn’t live without. The loop libraries and JamPacks are quite welcome, and although the software instruments are nice, Reason still remains my software instrument swiss army knife of choice.

That being said, I still feel that even without the hefty discount I got on Logic Studio (a professional courtesy, for the record) it was worth every penny. I’m using it on my first real session this weekend, and haven’t looked forward to a session this much in a while. My fingers are crossed that the software gremlins don’t come out to bite me, though. Wouldn’t that be ironically predictable?

It’s no secret, Microsoft’s loudly-touted ‘iPod killer’ (aka the Zune) has been anything but. But in this case, they actually lost MTV, their banner partner on the Urge music network, due to the shady developer and business deals behind their rapidly-sinking Zune strategy – primarily Microsoft mothballing their PlaysForSure DRM strategy in favor of a Zune-only model and leaving PFS development partners stranded on a dead platform. Could the Zune actually be the catalyst of it’s own demise? That’s certainly the way it’s shaking out. In fact, this move among others seems to seal the fate of Microsoft’s music business ambitions across the board. I can’t imagine a developer or business partner who would want to get in bed with them again after this whole fiasco plays out.

And the same day Adobe announces H.264 video support in the Flash Player, no less- effectively cutting Silverlight off at the knees. See reference here- particularly the last sentence, in which MTV reaffirms their support for Flash Video (no doubt partially fueled by the parallel Zune fiasco). Here’s a slightly more harsh assessment on the Network World site.

Ouch. That’s gotta hurt bad in Redmond right now.

But now, they’ve gone and placed themselves strictly in asshat territory by deciding to finally go DRM-free with a ’select’ group of their repertoire, and of course bypassing doing so on the iTunes Music Store (the #1 online music retailer), again, ostensibly out of spite for Jobs’ resistance to UMG’s intended ‘variable pricing’ for MP3s in favor of a flat rate across the board. Sure, a ‘variable pricing’ scheme for UMG lets them price-gouge consumers at will, but ignore that. What they’re doing is a disservice to their own artists- by ignoring the best venue and channel for their music in the DRM-free distribution models.

Edgar Bronfman Jr and Doug Morris- f@#k you and your merry band of thieves. My best wishes for a swift and agonizing demise to the UMG empire as a result of your mismanagement and idiocy. And of course, that you pull your collective heads out of said collective asses long enough to actually watch it coming. It’s been vicarous fun watching you scurry about trying to protect your paper empire for the last few years, but given your collossal stupidity over the last 12 months it’s high time for you to come down screaming in flames. I’ll bring marshmallows to roast and a long stick to poke you with.

Until now. Fender just announced the VG Strat series – a partnership with Roland to deliver the quality of a Stratocaster with the versatility of a modelling instrument. But beyond just physical modelling, you can actually switch tunings with the VG too – standard, drop-D, open-G, baritone and D-modal, as well as a 12-string emulation. Pickup-wise you can go between Stratocaster single-coil, Telecaster single-coil, humbucker, and acoustic tones.

Awesome. If I wasn’t under budget-control right now due to the impending delivery of my son in 6 weeks, I’d be attached to one of these like a suction cup right now. If you pick one up, I’d really be interested in hearing your reactions/opinions. This really does seem like the best of both worlds, if you ask me.