David’s Adventures Through the World of Music Creation and Sonic Exploration

I’m buying the MusicTech magazine from time to time since I like their articles. They don’t write contradicting Pro’s and Con’s boxes to their reviews which I found Computer Music doing, as I wrote in this post. But in the latest issue of CM they’ve actually shaped up. I wonder if they’ve read my post?

Anyhow. Attached to every issue of MT there’s a DVD. Every DVD contains samples ready to use in Kontakt 2.20 and Reason NN-XT by PinkNoise Studio. On the cover of the lastest issue it says “Summer Chill - Beat the heat with this pro-quality collection of laid-back leads and pads”. If you then open the folder where the samples are (there are both 44.1 kHz, 16 bit and 96 kHz, 24 bit - so no doubt about the pro-quality .. regarding the file formats at least) you’ll find a nice and tidy PDF file stating the following:

“You may use this sample library and patches in a non-melodic, solo-ed context in a musical recording”

What is a non-melodic lead? Why have they bundled that on the DVD? How should I use it then?

I guess I could run the lead sounds through a couple of nice plugins, like CamelAudio CamelSpace and OhmForce Ohmicide and turn it in to a distored pad which by definition should be non-melodic (I hope), but I already have enough pad sounds (haha - just kidding - you can NEVER have enough pad sounds - but still).

Feel free to add a comment saying your story of what a non-melodic lead really is.

One thing struck me last night while working on a new track.

GenesisCM started to behave a bit funny (didn’t trigger any notes when playing the keyboard) so I decided to reboot.

Square 1
I saved my project to a new file, and rebooted. When opening the project again after the reboot it totally hung Cubase, and clicking “Close program” in the Vista popup shutdown my computer in a fraction of a second. I tried again and this time read through the error message. Cubase4.exe has stopped responding due to some error in GenesisCM.dll. GenesisCM is a new software synth (or VSTi, if you prefer) that came along the second last issue (CM127) of Computer Music.

I had to boot my PC, rename the GenesisCM.dll to GenesisCM.dll.bak, then fire up Cubase 4. Accept that GenesisCM.dll is missing and remove it from the instrument tracks where it was loaded. Save the project, close Cubase, rename it back to GenesisCM.dll, fire up Cubase again and load the project. When done, I had to select the track where I wanted GenesisCM and load it. Now it worked fine. Until loading a second instance of the plug. Goto Square 1.

When I’ve done it all over again, I only loaded one instance of GenesisCM and tweaked a similar sound on Discovery Pro instead so I could save and bounce the track.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really impressed by the little bugger, but it’s a waste of time trouble-shooting none working plugins when you can spend the same amount of time programming sounds and composing instead. GenesisCM sounds in fact fantastic and is a great complement to Gforce Minimonsta and FabFilter Twin.

And the thing that struck me was that this never happened when I had 11 hardware synths in the studio. Cubase never crashed just because my Clavia Nord Lead 2 (which parts of me regrets for selling - it’s a darn fine piece of hardware and I shall get one again) wasn’t powered on, or had a cable disconnected, or was totally broken. Sure there’s a lot of hassle with MIDI cords, sound cabling and syncing issues, but you could at least load your Cubase projects.

After some digging on the Interweb I found the explanation to the GenesisCM problem all the way down on this site.

It would be a nightmare turning up at a gig and having your projects crashing because some software plugin decides to break. But then again, it’s a nightmare turning up a gig with at a broken hardware synth too…

As I wrote in this post, I now have gotten a third UAD-1 card. I’ll install it tonight, and I’ll probably get a the VCA VU since I got a bunch of vouchers laying around, which will expire on the 30th of June, and it’s on sale too. Yey!

This is why you shouldn’t trust the pro’s and con’s boxes in magazines when they’re reviewing products. When CM reviewed the VCA VU from Universal Audio they wrote that the pro was that it had a great sound. The con was that it sounded different and might not appeal to all. Okay, so the compressor isn’t for everyone, but as they’re stating on the review it’s great on vocals and drums (if I recall it correctly). So that means that the VCA VU is for people who’s not recording vocals, drums, guitars (it does work great on guitars - I’ve tried it - and I shall try it on my synthesizer collection as well). In the text it also says that it’s a compressor good for people who doesn’t want the good ol’ attack and release knobs, and in the con box it says that it’s lacking those two knobs.

The lesson is: Try things out yourself, and take the pro’s and con’s boxes with a pinch of salt.

I’m alive.

I got my third UAD-1 card the other day. Wrote a brand new pop song the other day which Fred kindly scribbled down the lyrics for in a jiffy. Now we’re looking for a female singer who can record it. Interested? Drop me a line.

Still working on a new mindXpander album, a new Ypsilon 5 album, a new Pretorium album and a few other things.

Sorry for been offline for so long, but I’ve got my reasons and please don’t ask. I’ll try to go through the big pile of e-mails soon and I will reply to them.

Thanks for tuning in!

While bouncing the remix I’ve done for Pandora I encountered a strange problem. I could, without any problem at all, play back the song without hearing skips and glitches. The CPU load was around 40% and the UAD load was at 85% - so you could say that the track was nearly finished - or that I need a third UAD-1 card.

When bouncing there was a short skip at 1′57″ which really puzzled me. I tried bouncing the track several times, but the skipping was at the exact same frame everytime. I even tried moving the track in the grid and added up to 70 bars of silence, and bounced the silence, but the skipping occurred at the exact same place. Yes, the real time check box is unchecked.

So, how did I solve it? Well, the solution wasn’t really the most obvious one. I moved everything from bar 68 to the end 8 bars to the right (so I could get the reverb tails and the decay of the delays and so on) and then bounced bar 3 to 76 (my songs almost always starts at bar 3) and then bouncing bar 76 to 233. Then I created a new project and added my previously bounces to the grid, placing them at the bars as in my base remix project. Worked like a charm, but it’s not the prettiest solution. If I tried to freeze tracks as well to solve the skipping during bounce but freezing resulted in a serious crash and trying to kill the Cubase 4 executable shut down my computer very rapidly.

I’ve also installed Cubase 4.1 64 bit, but that won’t find Native Instruments Battery 3. There’s always a problem lurking around the corner - isn’t there? And Z3ta+ isn’t working in a convenient way. It can, whenever it feels like it, produce 100 dB noise which would render some of my other plugins stop functioning - UAD Precision Limiter, for example.

My Motu Midi Express 128 works very well though. The timing is great and I can only blame myself for not hitting the keys on time.