A Kinky Threesome Ends Amid Name Calling, Tears And No Regrets

A long, long time ago, I thought I had it all. I was shacked up with two of the hottest songbirds on the market. Oh man, was it good. The three of us tangled up together, unable to tell where one started and the other began. Late nights pouring our hearts and souls out. Exploring every nook and cranny. Pushing our limits. Day after day, night after night. I diddled and experimented with them till I was spent. I felt like a sheik with his harem. There was nothing these high price gals wouldn’t do. I broke every rule, bent every cable, and they loved me for it. All of it without so much as a safe word. Exciting. Dangerous. Potentially deadly.

Everybody wanted what I had. Only a chosen few were unlucky enough to get it. You see, I would love to paint a rosy picture consisting solely of kinky authorization sessions and blissful musical climaxes together, but, alas, it was not to be so. There were issues. Serious issues. Who was I to think you could put two sexy, top-of-the-line supermodels in the same room and expect them to play well together? Sultry vixens can be vicious. First, one would sulk and threaten to never put out again. Then the other would act up intermittently, leaving me unsure of actually pulling off yet another tonally satisfying intercourse. And here’s why.

There’s something fundamentally different in their coding, man. Avid and Apple hate each other. Sure, on the surface they try and make it look like everything is hunky-dory but deep down, oh, these guys hate each other. Like drummers used to hate LinnDrum machines. An ugly, vindictive hate.

As their bickering and fighting increased over the years, I became less and less willing to coax them back together. The results of these “reconciliations” were less than optimal. At one low point, when I just couldn’t take it anymore, I screamed at them. Called them dirty, foul, disgusting names. I’m not proud of it. I threatened to throw them out. Kick both of these harlots to the curb. Yes, it was partially my fault. I had stupidly brought home the latest in computer porn, Apple OS X. What was I thinking? I knew they’d get pissed. I knew they’d lock me out of the studio, make me sleep on the Korg Workstation in order to deliver. Pure chaos. Their petty arguing and posturing had pushed me to my limit. I couldn’t take it anymore. It took multiple counseling sessions with studio tech extraordinaire Bob Rice and a couple of thousand bucks but we kissed and made up.

But it was never the same. People hold grudges. Some people just don’t like forgiving past indiscretions. Sure enough, only six months later, all hell broke loose. This was back when BT, another delusional composer like me, hell bent on trying to pull off this musical ménage a trios, said in Keyboard Magazine that he’d fly cross the country and pay more than top dollar for someone’s Protools/Logic rig on the spot if anyone had one running that wouldn’t crash. No one ever took him up on it! Crash after crash after kernel panic after kernel panic. I contemplated taking a hammer and mutilating their pristine interfaces. It was beyond frustrating. It was a million miles beyond unbelievably unfucking unbearable.

One night, the three of us were alone in the studio. We’d had a couple so we were getting along. I was using my best moves. I was being gentle. I was being careful not to offend. I did nothing that could have been remotely construed as in appropriate or “out of the social norm.” And wham! Ms. Princess Protools decides she’s not going to let uppity little Miss Logic slut recognize her hard body badunkadunk hardware anymore. “You can look at me right here in the equipment rack, bitch, but I will NOT permit your copyright-protected protocol attempts at greasy digital access to penetrate my most private of areas!” And with that came a grinding halt to my income stream. Late night calls to tech support, technicians, friends and even Jesus himself (albeit “in vain” at points), could not rectify what had become the beginning of the end of a very tumultuous relationship.

What a sucker I am. I cried for a couple of days. Took long hot showers curled up in a ball on the tiled floor. Buckets of tears later, I turned all of the gear back on again. It worked. And so I struggled through. Again. I dealt with it. Again. For another couple of years. It was tough going most of the time. Occasionally, I was painfully prick teased by the system running without incident for hours, even half days, at a time. There were moments of karmic harmonic bliss. Fleeting moments when I felt the nectar of technology couldn’t taste any sweeter. But undoubtedly, whenever the job was on the line, whenever it was the absolute worst time for the shit to overflow, I was swimming in it.

A couple of months ago, I decided I’d had enough. I wanted peace and harmony in my studio. I wanted to put away the chainsaws and light some damn candles. I wanted to use software that likes each other. Software that gets along. Can’t we all just get along? I was forced to choose. I was given an ultimatum. Backed into a corner. Bitch slapped into the reality that these companies do not care one fuck about the greater good of music. Do not care for one brief second about creating a situation that allows a composer to create at the top of his or her game. They insist you pick one of them. They insist you choose. It’s like pre-midi days when several manufactures were reluctant to allow other synths to violently penetrate their sacred ports. And what happened to them when they finally opened their manufactured legs? They sold more shit than ever before. Because it allowed all of us to do what we do unencumbered by their need to dominate.

No, it wasn’t entirely Ms. Protools fault. I love her dearly. She’s a smooth running, sweet singing hussy. The dictatorship of Emperor Steve of the kingdom of Apple aren’t 100% to blame either. They both make great tools. But they’re both playing the same cruel game on the side. Each one of them wants to rule the world and will suffer no competitors. Kill or be killed. I’ve got the scars to prove it.

I had to choose. Do you marry for sex or brains? Money or love? Complicated as fuck environment setup or plugins that cost 3 times more than the other formats? With the switch to Intel chips and Leopard, I could see into my troubled future and knew I had to pull the plug on one of them.

I went with Uncle Steve. The Big Apple. Current ruler of music. I had to. For Christ’s sake, I’ve been married to Logic longer than my wife! Protools will live a long and healthy life without me. They are the de facto standard. I just don’t need them right now everyday of the week. I’ve got an Mbox sitting on a shelf here so I can deliver in PT when necessary.

So now I’m running the Apogee Symphony, only using Audio Unit plugs. I added more packages like the Sonnox Oxford suite of things to cover stuff I really missed from PT. Yes, I miss Impact but Inflator does some serious signal boosting damage. Yes, I had to wait until the brilliant SoundToys effects were available in AU. Since I’m on an Intel Mac now, I’m forced to get by without Spectrasonics Trilogy and Atmosphere but how the hell long am I suppose to honor our marriage vows and not fool around on the side? Hey Eric! WTF? I’m sorry but I got a little tipsy a few times, got a little randy and loaded up some other developer’s pads (like the amazing Rob Papen synths) - I didn’t want to but you said you’d meet me at the bar later for a drink and some updated plugins but you never showed and I had to get this thing done, and well . . . Marriages have been ruined for less!

I’m happy now. Things run smoothly. My life is simpler. I download lots of pictures of kitty cats and pretty flowers.

Do I miss the wild and debauched times? The “hanging from the rafters” crazy out of my mind nights? That feeling building inside you that makes you realize you’re capable of destroying $30,000 worth of gear in a rage and not care?

Now, when my wife tucks me into bed at night, I have a smile on my face. I didn’t crash today. Not once. And that, my friends, to my ears, is beautiful music.

SP

How To Build An Orchestra And Live To Tell About It

I have been complaining (a lot and mostly to myself) about the lack of useable support for orchestral libraries. The massive amount of hours each of us has spent experimenting, learning, reading, and listening, in a futile effort to create the optimal orchestral template is staggering. The outrageous cost of the sample libraries themselves pales in comparison to the cost of our “wisdom.” I’ll pay any amount (and I think I already have) just to get something that sounds great and works.

None of us could ever look, with pained, exasperated faces, to the supreme sound developers for help. There wasn’t any. “Everyone uses our products in a different way so there’s no point in us trying to explain it.” I actually saw (drugs may have been involved) “Good luck trying to make this shit work all at the same time” written in 2 point on the back of one sample library box. The Garritan Personal Orchestral had the right idea, load up the orchestra and start writing. Unfortunately, I’m not a fan of the sound quality. I want great sounds and a basic template that I can fiddle with. What about it East West, VSL, Sonivox?

Well, I believe I have stumbled (drinking may have been involved) upon my (our) orchestral salvation. Piccolos at the ready!

Yesterday, I accidentally ended up at the VSL site and there, http://vsl.co.at/, like a pot of gold (blow) sitting in the middle of the street (console), were placed video tutorials on how to use their sounds. Maybe they’ve been there since Nixon, but I never got the email about it.

No shit. It was almost like going to the Apple site with their really great video tours. Really well done, well-explained, clear, concise videos. It’s a three part series dissecting a composer’s (Christian Kardeis) piece of music – IN LOGIC! (extra bonus for all Logic users) – showing how all of the instruments were laid out, how to manipulate the sounds, how to load an entire orchestra. Almost everything you need to get working with a great sounding orchestra – hell, they even threw in a few orchestration/composition tips. (love what you did with the cembalo Christian) And as if that wasn’t enough (and all sample libraries feel they have already done enough just by making the stuff) . . . They’ve included a downloadable template – the exact piece of music that Christian worked on (sure it’s in Logic 7 but opened perfectly in Logic 8) (Performer, Sonar and Cubase available as well) – complete with the impulse responses he used (because as the voice over correctly states, “the sound of the room is almost as important as the sound itself.” Yep, the whole setup. One easy download. I put the impulse responses in their proper folders – I launched Christian’s template – and, like it was a product from Apple (more blatant stock price manipulation) – it worked! And now, as a customer, I was actually able to dig deep into the sequencer template and have a look at exactly how this guy was using their sounds. He busses instruments “pre fader” to adjust reverb; he controls volume and expression in the VSL player; see how he layered a portamento string patch on top of another string patch and with a flip of the mod wheel the strings beautifully scoop up to the next note. I dug deep enough into his template to find I was developing a little crush on him. (blush) Naturally, since none of us can ever refrain from making the world a better place by fucking with everything!!!!, I “fixed” some of Christian’s patches (matrices in VSL speak) – he had loaded just what he needed for his piece and only used the VSL Special Edition – and I need a more versatile setup than that (i.e. worthy of my stature), but it was a great start to explaining the VSL player and one very good way to build an orchestral setup. BTW, the Special Edition version really kicks ass. Under $500 and you’ve got 90% of a balls deep orchestra. Sure, my Appassionata Strings sounded bigger (and bigger is always better, right honey?) than the Special Ed strings – but the “short bus” version did the job admirably. Better than admirably. So don’t look down on them for their size and limitations, praise their “specialness.”

In short order, I built a killer orchestra in Logic 8. Yeah, I’m on an 8 core MacPro (blatant cock waving) with plus size model ram (12 gig) but I’m thankfully out of the “Kontakt 2 ram is low” pain in the ass issues and I’m writing music! (Note to self: writing music pays bills, dicking with templates and writing blogs does not!)

OK – yes, I still had to load a couple of Kontakt instances (begrudgingly) because damn EW had to go and make their French Horns sound soooooooo killer - big and blatty – (horn players with balls as big as their bells) the Ethel Mermans of the horn sample world - that I refuse to write another cue without them (same goes for their timpani) - (which, if I’m not mistaken, they sampled while they beat it with a 30 lb. sledge hammer). And then, just to prove once again that you never get everything you need for $10,000, EW chose to include the absolute worst woodwinds to counter these fine patches.

My pimped out template loads in 3:30 - just enough time to cruise by youporn.com to check on their beta version and report any bugs – and I’m ready to put in another 12 hour day behind the screen.

Is this nirvana? Is this the reason I got into music? No – that’s still chicks and drugs. But it is why I got into film and tv scoring. I prefer writing music to staring confusingly at a computer screen trying to figure out why Controller 67 won’t route my pedal volume to the filter bank controlling my vibrato on my slide whistle. Yes, you will change things in the template. Yes, you will substitute, add on, tweak, layer and finger fuck Christian’s template to your own liking/working style. But I tell you, within couple of hours, you will have a working knowledge of the VSL player and a damn decent sounding orchestra. And you’ll be writing music.

And after 10 years of trying and crying, don’t you think we all deserve that?


Scooter