Music • Sound • Video • Art

It’s funny (or maybe not so much) that almost a year ago to the day, I wrote in another blog:

“How do folks balance the different aspects of their lives? We all have obligations, passions, requirements, and interests. The things we do to live; the things we live to do. What happens when those two (or three or four) aspects compete?”

So I’ve a question for anyone out there who cares to respond: How do you manage the demands of the everyday versus the time for your creative pursuits? *

Personally, I’m having a helluva time getting things done, and I’m getting spun up because, well, time flies. A week will go by and…

• I didn’t get to practice Piano, or…
• That idea I had about my latest track (“Mehdi”) didn’t get auditioned (and I’m not quite sure what it was now anyway)…
• Oops meant to get that Blog entry out…

And that’s just the music-related stuff! 

I probably sound like a disorganized rube. It’s not that. I do get a lot of stuff done. It’s just that precious little of it is related to this aspect of things. I also understand that Life Happens and you just get on with it the best you can. And besides, this “problem” is a good problem to have in the larger scheme of things. It is, however, a mite frustrating.

Anyway, any tips, pointers, secrets that have helped you deal with this…or if you are struggling with the same…please share.

Hey!

Another quick update, this time on music production and music tool tutorials.

When you post a “how-to” question about music software on some discussion boards, you can often get a “RTFM” (Read The Effin’ Manual) response. And although I essentially agree with the sentiment, I find that a) I hardly have time,** and b) the softwares we are dealing with are increasingly complex. And those two facts tend to reinforce each other.

Because of this, I think my learning style has changed. I appreciate and enjoy video tutorials. I can see and watch how something is done, and I pick it up much quicker. Of late, I’ve come across some really nice tutorials:

• Digital Performer by MacAudioLab– First up is a set of new DP6 tutorials from MacAudioLab. These were just released in the last month or so. They are the only comprehensive set of tutorials on DP6 on the market at present. (The other set of DP6 tutorials out there by TutorialDepot are decent bite-sized chunks, but I’d hardly call them comprehensive.) Some of the material is taken from their DP5 tutorials (the bits that have not changed between versions), but there is A LOT of new material including several tutorials on MOTU’s VIs (MX4, MachFive2, Ethno) plus other material. I have to give it the thumbs up.
• Native Instruments KORE2 by MacProVideo — KORE is a very deep and potentially complex instrument. This set of tutorials from MacProVideo go a long way towards making KORE2 accessible. Highly recommended.
• Omnisphere and Stylus RMX by Spectrasonics — Spectrasonics puts out a set of video tutorials on Omnisphere that is very helpful in getting your head around the instrument. Same with Stylus RMX. You have to own these instruments to get access to the video tutorials, but if you do own either, and if you have not taken adavntage of these resources — stop wasting time and go there now to download them. The RMX videos are fantastic and I’m sure the Omni videos will follow in the same vein when all of them are done.
• Absynth3 and Kontakt 2 Tutorial DVDs by Native Instruments — Yes I know these are tutorials on older versions of the software, but 90% of the stuff on them is relevant and valid. These are available from Native Instruments on DVD (no downloadable options), and require a bit of investment in your time as they are very in-depth. But they are well worth it.

There are a few more that I am going through right now. As soon as I have enough of an impression, I’ll post info on them to.

Well, that’s it for now. Cheers!

nk:e

Just a quick update…and an experiment in “mobile posting”. (I’m on a break during jury duty.)

I posted 30 seconds of this track to SoundCloud almost a month ago. (Check out the “Current Music Projects” page link in the first column on the right near the top of the page.)  At the time I thought I would have it finished in another week or two. Ha! Hardly. It’s taken me longer for a couple of reasons:

• Life happens. This being a new dad thing requires a lot of time!
• I’ve been pushing myself to use more of my tools. This means I’ve been burning some time making things a bit more complicated than they need to be so that I can try using these tools. For example, I lost a solid week trying to use an instance of Battery3 in a multi-output configuration with KORE2 inside Digital Performer 6. Not really necessary as you can accomplish much of the same thing without KORE. And in the end I just set up Battery with multiple outs not using KORE at all.* Now I knew how to do that from the start, but I don’t consider it a waste of time as I learned quite a bit (though it was a tad frustrating).

• As I work on this piece, my conception of it evolves. A downside to working “organically” I guess. (Ok, here’s a confession: I’m not one of those people who conceives fully realized pieces in their head.)

In any case I finally made a breakthrough of sorts on the percussion and have finally moved on to arranging the song structure. After that I’ll finish up vocals and work on mastering. It should be two more weeks tops….!

Cheers

___________________________

* - There are several reasons — the main one being some sort of audio channel assignment weirdness with DP I think — but I want to explore it a bit more before I write anything.