I’m participating in the RECORD Betas and wanted to post a few thoughts. Note that the NDA prevents me from discussing any details or juicy stuff, but head over to Propellerheads‘ beta sign up site and get a copy for yourself.

My initial impressions were not what I would call “over the top” with enthusiasm. I actually found the interface a bit confusing at first: The screen is JAM PACKED with stuff (nothing you can’t figure out from the screenshots and micro-tutorials on the Prop’s site). On a 13″ macbook screen (my main machine was in the shop the first time I fired RECORD up), it is just too much (although the function key based focus switches help.) Anyway, I am talking about my first impressions here and my first impression was that there is a disconnect between what I was looking at on the screen (a LOT of stuff) and the product’s marketing (”stripped down recording simplicity”).

My next mental hurdle was due to my being familiar with REASON. (Note I said ‘familiar’ and not ‘expert’.) There are enough similarities in the interfaces and many methods of doing things that – as a prior user of REASON – I tend to forget that I’m not IN REASON.

It’s interesting sometimes how restrictions (in this case a time restriction) can lead to interesting insights.

A friend of mine sent an email yesterday. The short exchange (I was pressed for time) is below pretty much verbatim.

On Wednesday, January 28, 2009,  [my friend] wrote:

>lunch sounds good…
>
>btw, what kinda music software do you use? and what’s good out there
>for mac?

I replied:

I use Digital Performer, Logic, Live and Reason depending on what I am working on.

Reason – Very complete and relatively inexpensive. I believe there is a demo at their site (www.propellerheads.se). Strength: All in one, rock solid, reasonable CPU demands. Cons: Self contained; (To add vocals or external audio tracks have to use it via ReWire with another application.)

Live – Absolutely fantastic. The new Live8 will be even more phenomenal than the amazing Live 7. I discuss the new Live 8 on my blog (scroll down below the “Chinese HipHop” article). You can also get a demo from their site. (www.ableton.com) Pros: Effin’ fantastic program with amazing loop playing capabilities and built-in plug-ins. Cons: Not many.

LogicStudio – Amazing what you get for $499 — loops, plug-ins, industrial strength sequencer. If you were seriously getting into music, this would be perhaps the single best purchase you could make.

Well, true to their word, the folks over at LogicKeyboard have set a release date of mid January for their next custom keyboard for Motu Digital Performer 6. This one is based on the original Apple Pro keyboard and at $135 is about $35 cheaper than the wireless aluminum keyboard they released a couple of months back.

Available right now is their Logickeyboard™ DP 6 keyset made for the original Apple Pro G5 keyboard and the Bluetooth Wireless version of that keyboard. With this you can simply pop the keys out of your existing keyboard and substitute the custom keyset. This is much cheaper at $90 and is likely the one I will purchase soon.

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Previous post on LogicKeyboard can be found here.

More info on LogicKeyboard is available here.

Ready for Anything?

Whatever program you use, it’s a real time saver to develop a customized default template. That way, when you start a new project, all of your track routings, groups, favorite instruments, efx, etc., are there waiting for you. No fuss. No muss.

I have customized templates for Reason, LIVE, Logic and DP. What I want to do is share information on a couple of my templates and the “why” behind some of the choices I’ve made in the hopes that you will find the info useful.

Of course all of this is still evolving as I learn more and have new experiences. So if you have any suggestions, or see me heading down a blind alley, I’d appreciate your feedback.

Digital Performer

Anytime I create a new project, this is the project template that pops up ready to use. (If you click on the image, you get a really large 1280 x 1024 version in a new window or browser tab.) The template for DP6 is probably the most involved and evolved since I’ve been using DP6 a lot lately. It’s also the one undergoing active development as I learn more about the program every time I use it.

MOTU DP keyboard by Logickeyboard (no less) - Logickeyboard’s custom keyboard for Motu Digital Performer is available though only using the Ultra Thin Aluminum Apple Pro keyboard at the moment. It features all the regular letter, number, and symbol labelling found on a conventional keyboard, so it can be used as your regular keyboard. It’s a bit pricey, but Logickeyboard tells me that they are also developing a set of replacement keycaps for older style Apple keyboards. (This will be much less expensive obviously.)

Bandcamp – I’m probably a little late to announcing this party, but Bandcamp is another free music distribution/viral marketing/sell-your-music-directly-to-the-public site that looks the business. It provides “drop-dead easy tools to share your music with their friends, and most importantly we do it in a way that drives traffic back to you. We also give you complete transparency into how your music is spreading…” The last point refers to their extensive online stats which are pretty impressive. Check out the screencast.   

SoundCloud goes live – I know for sure that I’m late announcing this party, but SoundCloud officially opened to the public recently. SoundCloud is a music distribution/viral marketing/’net 2.0 kind of application with a focus a bit different from Bandcamp. SoundCloud is not really set-up for the general public to find music for downloading.

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.