So in the little spare time I have between work, preparing to move, and trying to finish a w-a-a-a-y overdue track with Tetramorph, I’m trying to prepare for an upgrade to Snow Leopard. Essentially this means checking lists to see if any key apps are incompatible, trolling for updates, and generally “tidying up” before upgrading.

Somewhere during those travels, Alchemy decided to stop working. Just “pffft!” Anytime I launched Logic or LIVE, BAM! instant crash out of the program and to the desktop. This had not happened before. I thought maybe it was the LOGIC9 install. (Nope. As it turns out, it happened in LOGIC8 too.) I updated to the latest version of Alchemy (a Release Candidate at that), but the same thing happened. I trashed preferences, rebuilt permissions, etc. Zilch. No luck.

So I searched online. Were others having this issue? It seemed not. Nary a peep of problems with LOGIC or LIVE. So I headed over to CamelAudio’s forum site over at KVR. I posted a question on the forum asking for help at 5:46 pm. 20 minutes later, Andy from CamelAudio responded with some suggestions. These didn’t work, so we went back and forth a bit. He suggested I send to him some log files, screenshots, etc.

Live for Video...?

…and I can’t tell you how excited I am by this.

Resolume Avenue 3 is a “VJ” app although I think it has really outgrown that label. Resolume brings the immediacy of Live to working with both visual and audio materials seamlessly. And given that Resolume works with both MIDI and OSC in this version, and Live8 is now extensible via MAX for Live in some very low level ways, I can’t wait to see what others more skilled than I am come up with. To me, this is the first step one of the strongest steps in the true integration of music and visual technology into a performance and eventual music/audio writing and composition tool..

Given my interests, I want to explore this app for producing material that is not as club oriented, so I’d like to see what it does with audio material with less defined transients or more complex rhythmic structures than your basic “4 on the floor”. Maybe I’ll try combining this in my current uber-review project using the Live8 beta, SynPlant, and the “5 way path” challenge material from Daevl.

Yeh, what the hell? It’s not like life isn’t already complicated….

Peace.

OK. So I was, um, not thinking. If I had been, why would I make a resolution only TWO WEEKS before NAMM to NOT buy any new synth plug-ins before June 2009? I don’t even have the excuse of being hung over. Oh well…

Here are some damn interesting things announced on the first day of NAMM, several of which will migrate into my possession at some point this year. (Note that except for a short discussion of Live8, this is mostly a list with links. I’ll write more on each of these in the future.)

Ableton announces LIVE 8…

The biggest surprise to me was the announcement of Ableton Live8. Caught me completely by surprise.

First, if you have not checked out the videos on Ableton’s site, please do. Reading about the new features is not nearly as effective (IMHO) as seeing some of them in action. I’ve provided links to YouTube videos below, but better quality videos are available directly from Ableton at this link: http://www.ableton.com/home?movie=4

First up, there is an overview of Live8…

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But it gets so much more interesting. Check out “Share” for remote collaboration…

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Then there is “Extend” the integration of Max/MSP into LIVE…

There are a few mac-based “pro-level” generative music programs out there: ‘M‘ by Cycling74, Nodal by Peter McIlwain [EDIT: as part of a team at CEMA], and Intermorphics Noatikl by the team who brought us Koan Pro some years back. I would add to this group Ableton Live and its ‘Follow Actions’ as this can create some very nice generative compositions if employed skillfully.

I am planning to take a look at each of these over the next few weeks and will post observations, walkthroughs and such as I get them done. If you have any experiences you would also like to share or contribute, please do so.