Since my wife bought me a MacBook for my birthday (hey, I’m not complaining) instead of Spectrasonics Atmosphere, I went surfing to the Spectrasonics website to see if they were offering any deals on said “Dream Synth.” When I get to the website, I see that they’re working on this really cool successor to Atmosphere: Omnisphere. Can you hear my drool dripping onto the floor? Man, these timbres even sound great in the videos using cheap headphones! I can only imagine hearing them in my project studio.

Speaking of videos, the current episode (5) on the website announces a contest, providing loops from the forthcoming virtual instrument. “Way cool,” I thought; then I learned that you have to be a registered Spectrasonics user to participate in the contest. So, do I buy Atmosphere so that I can compete in the contest, hoping to win a license for Ominshpere that will make said Atmosphere purchase obsolete? Hmmm.

Although I received it almost 1 month ago, I thought I should tell you about my recent computer purchase (Re: Computer Shopping)…

I am now the owner of a PC tweaked for pro audio from ADK Pro Audio Systems. Why ADK? The price and quality seemed comparable to offerings from Sonica. In fact ADK owner/founder Scott Chichelli told me that if I didn’t buy from him that I should buy from Sonica. Indeed, all of my email exchange with Scott was very personable. He was very helpful in working out the final configuration. Furthermore, the ADK folks have a great sense of humor (Check out their About Us page.)

(Some of) The Specs:

The new machine is powered by an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU (under a large but very quiet CPU cooler with a cool blue glow), overclocked to 3.0 GHz. Since its running Windows XP Home, I only went with 2 GB of RAM (Win XP Home cannot use more than 2 GB of RAM for applications). The OS and handful of apps (SONAR PE, SpeedSoft VSampler 3, and a bunch of other VSTs and VSTis) are on an 80 gig drive, while I record audio to a 500 GB drive, and store my samples and SoundFonts on another 320 GB drive). For buring CDs and DVDs, I went with the less expensive LightScribe drive, as I’m tired of using gallons (a slight exageration) of printer ink to print decent looking disc labels. Since it takes just as long to burn a LightScribe label as it does to print a high-quality label in my ink jet printer - might as go for the LASER-etched labels that look more like commercial CDs than the paper labels.

The custom-built machine is housed in a sturdy 4-unit rack-mount case that’s about 20 inches deep. Much deeper than I expected, ruling it out for the typical 16″ deep rack case. Man, that case is big; But I love the black and blue motif (like you couldn’t tell that from this site). Even the front panel LEDs are blue. Cool.

Performance? I’ve run the diagnostics, and the machine smokes (figuratively)! In actual use, I haven’t done anything too tasking with it yet, but I can now play my VSTi’s in real time. Before with my 2.4 GHz P4, the latency was so severe, that I used an external sound module while playing, and later rendered the tracks with VSTi sounds. Now I don’t have to do that.

Ok. So I bonus myself a bit at the end of the year so I can continue (as in the infinitive) to upgrade my project studio. One of the things that I’ve been wanting is an external guitar effects processor. I’m not much of a guitarist, but since it was the first instrument that I learned, I sometimes find it easier to lay down electric guitar tracks with a guitar rather than sequencing the part via MIDI. The drawback to recording live guitar tracks is that - due to latency with plug-in FX - I’ve been recording guitar tracks dry and adding FX to the track afterward. That’s a problem because it’s hard to “get in the groove” listening to a dry (no amp; no nothing) guitar.

All that said, I didn’t want to spend $200 or more, since most of my stuff isn’t guitar-oriented, and I just don’t play enough to warrant a significant expense in that department. So, I did a bit of Web shopping, and read glowing reviews on this little item: Behringer V-Amp 2. For under $100 (eTailer price with my ASCAP discount), I figured that I didn’t have too much to lose. I didn’t! The unit comes with a foot switch, a canvas carrying case, and a bunch of nice presets. If the numerous presets weren’t good enough, you can download editing software, and hundreds of more user-contributed tones from the Behringer website. The MIDI control of parameters also looks promising.

How cool is this?

Earlier this year (which is almost at an end. =-o), I mentioned that I might compose a short tune using only two of the free/shareware VSTi’s that I downloaded about that time. Well, since I had real compositions to work on, I eventually got around to doing so.

Click here to listen to the short work that I created using FreeAlpha and Freehand. All of the tracks, except the “drums” were recorded using the aforementioned synths’ presets. I tried tweaking both synths to get a single percussive sound that would work across the keyboard, but in the interest of time, created the “drum” track using E-Phonic’s Drumatic 3.

I’m sure that any and all of these plug-ins offer a large variety of timbres with a bit of tweaking. For those of you that use VSTi’s, you might want to checkout these three and see what they can do for your compositions. If you like them, please consider a donation to the authors.

Having now upgraded to Sonar 6 Producer Edition (naturally, just before the release of Sonar 7), I am seriously considering a computer upgrade. Of course, I want the most bang for the buck, but the less time that I have to fiddle with it, the better. In years past, I would have gladly built my own system - but now that I am older, I try to use my time more judiciously. I’ll leave the PC building to those who do far more of it than me.

In short, I’m considering a system with a dual-core processor (Intel or AMD), 2GB of RAM, an 80GB drive for the OS, a 320GB drive for audio, and a 320GB drive for samples and SoundFonts.

Below I’ve added some links to the systems that I am considering (in no particular order). If you have any opinions concerning these systems or the makers (especially based upon experience) - or even other product suggestions - I welcome your comments.

ProAudio Solutions’ Studio PC Pro Core 2 Duo Intel Processor - Ego System WamiRack 192X w/Free Samplitude 6 Master; Sony Acid Pro 4

Musical Computers’ Core 2 Duo DAW System

Sonica’s HUSH-LR Workstation

ADK’s Core 2

Sweetwater’s Creation Station Tower+

Rain’s Element

It’s obvious from the infrequency of my posts that blogging is not high on my list of priorities. :[

Due to my frugal and curious nature, I sometimes go searching the Web for free soundware. Recently, I downloaded a bunch of free VST instruments and effects. Now I’m going through them bit by bit to see which ones I like, those that I don’t, and those I will never hear because they lock up my PC. >:[

As a composer of a wide spectrum of genre, I’m open to just about anything, so its fun to see what others are contributing to the music making community either to promote a commercial product or to demonstrate their latest SynthEdit creation.

Pretending to be organized, I’m starting with the A’s and working down the list alphabetically. Tonight I’ve been playing with two that show some potential: LinPlug’s FreeAlpha 3.0.1, and Angular Momentum’s Freehand 1.0.

FreeAlpha has some nice synth bass presets which would serve quite well in Drum ‘n’ Bass electronica compositions. I’ve tried tweaking the easy to use interface a bit, but sometimes don’t get the result I expect based upon my experience in subtractive synthesis. I’m pretty sure that operator ignorance of the synth is to blame. Time for me to read the docs.

AM’s Freehand features a sexy (I’ve always been a sucker for the high-tech infrared look), intuitive interface that lets you draw the waveform for any of its 3 oscillators. Add fairly flexible source and destination modulation, stereo chorus and stereo delay, and you’ve got a cool little soft synth. I’m also pleased with how relatively few CPU cycles it consumes on my 2.4 GHz P4.

Just for additional kicks, I think that I’ll try to put together a short track using just these two synths. Be cool.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of seeing The Ultimate Gift. This film definitely held my interest. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed it (Sorry, all of you nit-picking critics. I’m a composer, not a director).

After a long list of orchestrator credits, this film garners another composer credit for Mark McKenzie, doctor of Music Composition from USC. I confess that I was so taken with the storyline, that I didn’t consciously pay attention to the score – however, to me that’s sufficient evidence that the music really complemented the picture, since I’m usually keenly aware of scores that don’t work.

On my way home from the film, I got to thinking (as I have often done) that each driver on the freeway has a life story. More specifically, they each have dreams and struggles. Perhaps that life of anyone could make a good screenplay. I think what most of us enjoy most about the human dramas is that we see things in the characters that we can identify with. I would venture to guess that one of the greatest needs that we all have is to know that we are not alone.

One of the many things I came away from the film with is thinking that I’m probably too often preoccupied with my own dreams and struggles to appreciate and encourage others in their own dreams and struggles. May G-d help me to invest myself in others a bit more often.