Local Tv Hero

I’ve been DAW hopping for most of the year, and have written extensively about it. I’ve grown tired of Logic and it’s extremely slow development. It’s competition (Reaper, Cubase, etc) have all surpassed it with new features and workflow improvements. Add the colossal f–k up of the Final Cut X release, and my faith in Apple has been shaken. Logic users are now holding our collective breaths to see if Apple will butcher it in the same manner.

While waiting for Logic X to arrive, I began testing the waters of the competition, and I spent 6 solid months with Reaper during the Alpha and Beta test cycles. The truth? I like(d) it a lot. Reaper is a powerful program, but I find that, at times, it can get in the way of creativity, mostly because of it’s power and sheer number of choices. An oft written refrain on the Reaper forum is “I just want to make music and not code a program”.

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That brings me to Studio One. I was excited by it when it was released over a year ago. However, it was too limited at the time (no AU plug in support was huge for me), so I passed and took a “wait and see” position.

Thankfully, PreSonus dropped a bomb 2 weeks ago with version 2 of Studio One. The biggest selling point for me was the Melodyne integration. Melodyne is THE ultimate in pitch correction software. It will correct damn near anything without the dreaded T-Pain effect (unless, of course, that’s what you’re after).

I’ve been a Melodyne user for years, but I often reach for Auto Tune because, frankly, I’m lazy. Melodyne requires some work, and a small dose of music theory. In short, you can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing. The bigger Melodyne issue for me is with the plug-in itself. It runs “in tandem” with your DAW, making file management tricky. It’s easy to lose the pointers to your corrected files if you work with multiple drives.

To solve this issue, Celemony created the ARA protocol for Melodyne and partnered up with PreSonus. ARA provides internal two way communication between the plug in and the host. The bottom line is it’s now easier to use. If you’re not interested in S1, but want the Melodyne integration, fear not. The ARA protocol will appear in other hosts early next year. PreSonus is getting the head start.

As you can tell, I’m a bit excited about S1, and I’ve been test driving it a great deal. Yesterday, I decided to use it for voice over recording and audio sweetening on a commercial spot I shot recently. Let me say that the workflow for video post is well… awesome is the word I’d use… It’s much faster than Tools, Logic and Reaper.

In the screen shots above, I dropped a reference cut into S1. Imported the audio. Opened the Video window. Set a level on the FirePod and within seconds was recoding my VO. After some EQ and compression, I had it pushed back into Final Cut. I did the final mix in FCP, but next time I’ll mix the entire spot (music, VO, and sound effects) in S1 and print the final mix there.

It’s never been so easy… I haven’t even touched on the music aspects yet. I’m sold, and Apple had better bring the pain with Logic X, or I’m staying with S1.  I’ve already transferred some Logic songs to S1 to mix, and I like what I’m hearing.

As always, your mileage may vary…

After months of concentrating on video production, as well as trying pick a new DAW, I’m happy to say that I’m making music again.

The song “Vampires” was born out of usual frustration with the people and things that suck the life out of others on a regular basis, and NOT the crappy movie types with bad skin and tons of hair gel that women in their 40′s fantasize about.

But I digress, and that’s another rant filled blog entry all it’s own…

I realized that my approach to writing and production hasn’t changed much in awhile. With the exception of guitars, I normally do everything “in the box” (drum programming, bass lines, keys, etc) and that gets old. Just because one has 2000 drum samples, doesn’t mean you have to use ‘em all the time. And with that, the urge to stretch out and experiment with different mics and recording techniques took hold, and I figured the best place to start was with percussion.

There’s nothing like adding a little live percussion to a sterile programmed track, but the only percussion instrument I have is my Prince tambourine (and I’m not pulling that trophy off the wall), so I had to dig through my kitchen cabinet.

It’s amazing what you can do with a container of Sea Salt…

I’m now a believer. Playing it live (whatever it is) beats the hell out of programming it any day of the week. So grab something, put a microphone in front of it and shake it, strike it, or beat on it. Trust me…

BTW – Although Reaper is featured in the video, my DAW of the moment is Studio One by PreSonus – at least until Logic X comes out. In all seriousness, Studio One is worth taking a look at. One of my heroes, Teddy Riley, gave it an extremely enthusiastic endorsement, and is largely why I picked it up. Teddy produced and mixed Michael Jackson’s posthumous album with it, and he likes it better than Pro Tools. That’s all I needed to hear. I’ll post my thoughts on S1 soon.

Now I have to get back to the business of slaying vampires…

There are days that I find myself repeating David Byrne’s lyric, “Well… How did I get here?”

Today, I find myself in Ely Minnesota, which is literally a stones throw away from Canada, on a radio station consult. I never thought I’d ever be this far north, but here I am, and it was a blast. The gig was to recommend a new and better workflow for the on-air folks – which is cool.

Personally, it’s a chance to feed my lust for all things gear and dig through a radio station. I will say that WELY is a cool small town station, and the staff is super awesome – extremely friendly and inviting.

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First, I will say that I did not come up with the following images by nefarious means. Last week, I was in several webinars – the first of which was for the release of PreSonus’ Studio One 2, and the second was a drum mixing seminar by Waves.

The instructor was using Logic, but upon closer inspection, this was no version of Logic that I’ve ever seen. Logic isn’t really “skinable”, although some have ventured into the code to tweak it. The instructor finished his presentation and opened the floor up for questions. I thought long and hard about asking, but held off. However, 20 minutes later, I was bursting at the seems and finally typed my question: “What version of Logic are you using?”

It hung there for about 30 seconds, then the moderator came on and said, “Well, that’s it for questions. If you want to watch this webinar again, it will be available at waves.com.”

I cannot claim that my questions about a seemingly beta piece of software brought the whole works to a halt, but it is an odd coincidence. Who knows? Maybe they were “out of time”…

What I do know is Mac Rumors posted screen shots of Logic X a few weeks ago (which I did not see), and they were removed as fast as they went up. I’m posting what I have because - A: I don’t know if it is indeed Logic X, and B: If it is, then it should not have been used in a live webinar by Waves.

Armed with that, and a huge sense of righteous indignation, I present what I grabbed. I’ll let you know if Apple comes knocking…

I’m really trying here with this blog thing. Can you tell? Good…

Went into IPR today with Tom to discuss the class with another staff member. We’re responsible for the lecture portion of the AV200 class, but the students get the lab from another instructor. This method presents it’s own unique set of challenges to navigate, but so far, we haven’t crashed the bus.

We did, however, need to peek over each others shoulders and share info. During the meeting, we had a chance to look in on a student lab. IPR has, what I like to call, the Audio 101 room, and it’s here that students get a crash course in signal flow. The room is a bare-bones setup with older gear (mixer, outboard gear, etc) that is completely unwired.

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Students are tasked to “hook it all up and make it work”. We came in just as a student was unplugging it all, so I didn’t get any pics of that, but it was still cool to see.

Audio 101 rocks. I wish I had a class like that back in the day. For most of the Instructors, it was OJT – all on the fly…

I’ve been conducting my own personal digital audio workstation shootout for months, and I have to say that there is no clear cut winner. Logic, Pro Tools, REAPER and Live all bring something unique to the table – making it hard to pick just one app to work in exclusively.

Amongst the four, I find Ableton Live to be the “utility” player. I would never mix a song in it (sorry Ableton junkies), but it’s unique session view layout and workflow make it a good songwriting app. If you’re suffering from writers block, it’s hard not to get the juices flowing in Live. It shines when paired with Logic, Pro Tools or REAPER via rewire – if your into that.

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Logic has been my main app since 1999 (after leaving Sonar) and what can I say? I love it. It was difficult to learn, and after all these years, I only truly know about 60% of the program. I’m constantly learning new ways to work in it, and am amazed when I do. As I’ve said before, it’s the most bang for the buck out there – with it’s sample library, quality effects, scoring and mixing, it’s the full monty. Are the built-in effects Waves quality? Nope. Would anyone other than a qualified mix engineer be able to tell? Nope. Can you make a high quality out of the box recording in Logic? Yep – if you know what you’re doing.

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Pro Tools…. Ah, the de-facto industry standard. I would guess that 10 out of 10 songs you hear on the radio were mixed in it. I didn’t say recorded – as any program can be used for that, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that it was FINISHED in Tools. It’s hard to be taken seriously if you do not own it, or have a firm grasp of how to use it. I love it for editing. There’s nothing better. I even like mixing with it – not as much as Logic (which I find more intuitive), but Tools is hard to beat. That’s why it’s the Gold standard.

Midi composition is where it falls short, and while version 9 has made incredible strides in this area, it’s still a bit cumbersome. Again, Logic wins here. Another strike against PT in my world is stability. I get loads of errors when I run the hardware buffer lower than 256 samples, and the RTAS engine can be flaky with some plugins. PT can sometimes have a mind of it’s own. One day I can record a song from start to finish with 40+ tracks, and the very next day, it struggles to play back 3 tracks without errors.

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After all of that, I will say that REAPER has really stirred something in me. I have that same love/hate that I had with Logic back in ’99. Let’s be frank – it’s a convoluted, overly techie, laborious, monster of a program. There’s probably a key-command to defrost a pot roast, bake it at 350, and serve you on odd Sunday’s of each 3rd year after a quarter rotation around the Sun. It’s that deep. However, it’s the most bloat free, quality piece of music code that I’ve ever seen. Weighing in at only 36.6 MB (OSX version) installed, it’s footprint is so small that you can run it from a SD card or thumb drive. That’s crazy. Logic is 6 DVD’s worth of data, and can take 2 to 3 hours to install (depending on your computer). Heck, a typical Pro-Tools install download is 5 Gig (zipped).

REAPER doesn’t include samples or loop libraries, scoring features or a ton of effect presets. It’s not a suite per se, but it is a very capable no-nonsense DAW who’s rapid development is driven by it’s loyal user base. It’s not uncommon to submit a feature request (or bug report) today, and see it implemented/fixed days (even hours) later.

If I had to describe the app in only a few words, I’d say: kludgy, clunky, immense, customizable and powerful. The fan boys will tell you that the customization is the key. You can make REAPER behave the way you want it to. Don’t like the menu structure? Change it. Mixer layouts? Yep. Track and Project Templates? For sure. I spent an hour customizing and creating templates, and can go from launch to recording in 2 mouse clicks. The other hosts don’t come anywhere close to that. REAPER is also skinable, and a huge array of user created themes are available – even one that makes REAPER look just like Pro-Tools. I’m currently using the REACTION v4 alpha theme, which is similar to the Logic experience. Maybe that’s why I’ve been “getting” the program in recent weeks. I’ve also made good use of the Groove3 training videos by Kenny Gioia. They were instrumental in explaining the quirks and more esoteric features of the app.

So what does it all mean?

If I got a paid songwriting gig tomorrow – I’d reach for Logic. It’s what I know, and there’s not much I can’t do with it. Experience with the program counts.

If I had to edit/mix a huge project – I’d reach for Tools. Compatibilty is the name of the game, and the project will transfer to any studio in the world – just bring a hard drive with your files. A caveat: The HD version is 1000 times more stable than the native version. If I could afford the HD option, PT would be my DAW of choice.

If I had writers block or was hired to do live tour support – I’d reach for Live. Period.

For every other scenario, there’s REAPER. I’m learning it, and having a blast. The first few months caused me to pull my hair out, but now that I’ve streamlined the app, it’s fast becoming my go to. Who knows how I’m going to feel 6 months from now. There are grumblings that Logic 10 could be just around the corner.

As I stated at the top, there is no clear winner here. Each has their place, and I’m glad I have them all. At the end of the day, they’re all just tools.

Now, it’s time to go make some music….

Here’s vid of a potential bug in the v4.0alpha that I submitted to the dev team:

Every now and then, while walking the halls at work, I stumble upon something cool. We produce a lot of original programming here, and given that, we work with a number of local artist (musicians, authors, painters, performers, etc).

Today I came upon the audio setup for “Minnesota Originals” (MNO – for short). The music segments for the show are usually done in bulk – recording and taping 8 (or so) bands over several days. The performances are then edited with accompanying interviews and spread out over the course of a season.

Of course the audio setup caught my eye, and after a brief run through by Joe, I was allowed to take a few pics.

It’s a round-about way to record bands, but the setup offers a high degree of options for post. Eight discreet channels are recorded directly into Final Cut, so the editor has options for a rough mix while cutting. In addition, the audio is mult’ed to a separate system (through a MOTU/DigiMAX combo). Those tracks then get mixed by Joe in Pro Tools after receiving picture-lock from the editor, and that mix is re-synced in FCP for the final line cut.

It’s a round-about way to go, but it ensures that show will sound great for air.

I get to “look over their shoulders” for the next show taping. Now that is cool…

I was bored and needed a distraction, so I made this…

An original recording mashup of Sheila E.’s “A Love Bizarre” and The Pussycat Dolls’ “When I Grow Up” done Minneapolis style. The version is not yet complete.

Produced & Recorded by Terry Gray
All instruments & Voices by Terry

I’m a sucker for ergonomics, and I’m constantly trying to improve my comfort level while working.

As my gear has expanded, I found myself outgrowing my workstation. There wasn’t enough room for both computers, mice, controller, drives, keyboards, etc.

So it was off to IKEA, the most magical place on Earth, for a new desk. Because IKEA stuff is modular (and all kinds of awesome), all I had to do was buy a new table top, and use the legs from my current desk.

My work area has expanded and there’s now room for everything. I still have some ergonomic issues to work out – I need a new (bigger) trackball mouse and a chair with arms. There there’s the matter of exact placement, but it’s coming along. Having everything in one place is worth it’s weight in gold.

The 1st rule of Reaper alpha testing is: Do not talk about Reaper alpha testing. Yes, it is indeed a public alpha (that we shouldn’t be discussing), but there are a growing number of sites singing its praises. Count me in as a +1.

It’s funny how at some point on the journey of learning, you go “Ahhhhhhhhhhh… Now I get it…..”.

I’m beginning to have more of these “a-ha” moments with Reaper, and I must say, it’s a pretty slick program. I’ve also realized that some of my early complaints are actually due to bad plug-in coding, and NOT Reaper itself.

I still maintain that Reaper’s learning curve is steeper than it needs to be, but with each new alpha, it gets easier to use. It’s also fun tracking its development, and the two way communication between users and the devs at the forum is second to none. I only wish Apple, Ableton and Avid did the same. I just noticed that all of those companies start with an A.

My “wow moment” so far has been the sheer number of plug-ins that can be loaded. Native Instrument’s new Reaktor Prism is an insane processor hog that taxes Ableton Live and brings Pro Tools and Logic to their collective knees (with buffer settings 128 and lower).

Reaper doesn’t break a sweat with Reaktor 5, and I was able to load that with Battery, Sampletank and several KORE Player instances. All played nicely together with Reaper, reporting only 7 to 12% CPU usage. That’s stupefyingly cool.

I’m still very much at home with Logic, but grow more attached to Reaper with each update. I keep telling myself that it’s still in Alpha (with several bugs), but the final product could shake the DAW industry. That’s not hype.

I’ve said it before – Logic remains the best bang for the buck out there for what you get, but consider that Reaper 4 + Native Instruments Komplete 7 (virtual instruments) and Waves Gold (processing effects) would be a power house setup and all you’d ever need.

The total cost of that package would be around $1100 retail, and you could certainly go without the Waves package – it’s just nice to have. Taking that into account, Reaper and Komplete 7 are roughly the same price as Logic Pro 9, and at this point, offers more flexibility.

Exciting times indeed…