Before the Shadow Play

Blog

  • What’s on the fire: update

    The sound design for the Rachel Rising project, a multimedia presentation of a song cycle as poetry, video, and music. This project had been stalled for some time, as I was trying to figure out how to get the effect I wanted for an installation; I think I’ve finally got a couple of good ideas that revolve around having the internals of the Scape app to build a custom set of soundscapes from my own samples and visuals. More on that in the Scape posts to come.Jamming as part of Shojo Blue – Shojo Blue kind of fell apart, as we were only three people, our guitarist left, and then I was overwhelmed by work. Greg Hurley has moved into his house as of last weekend, so perhaps we’ll start working on a Western Skies sometime soon.

    Considering whether the StillStream iOS app needs an iPad-specific version, and looking over the new interfaces in iOS 6. The Facebook API looks interesting, and it’s probably time to convert to storyboards and ARC. Given more recent reports of hiccups and hangs, I think I’m going to have to move forward at least to iOS 5, and I should probably go to 6 (perhaps as StillStream Radio Plus, re-releasing the old app as StillStream Radio Classic).

  • Reassembling the Studio

    My studio’s been half-assembled for the last six months (other things have been taking up my free time). I’ve decided that today I’ll try to get it reassembled and back to the setup I had when I was playing at Different Skies. That lets me use everything together again, gets the Vortex back in business, and lets me get some music recorded again. I have gotten back to the point where MIDI into the laptop works, but a hard disk crash on one of my server disks has caused me to temporarily disconnect the studio machine to get that sorted out again. I do have the Firebox working for MIDI and audio input again, but don’t yet have the Vortex reintegrated.

    Surprisingly, I’m finding that more and more I prefer the virtual instruments I have on the laptop to the internal sounds in the SD-1. Those are still good, mind you – I’ve still not got as playable a sax, flute, violin, and cello anywhere else – but the GarageBand pianos feel better than the internal ones, and they sound right. I’ve just started to scratch the surface on Live at this point, and an considering whether I should spring for the Suite upgrade now so I get the free Live 9 upgrade when it comes out.

    I’m still working on the portable setup, and actually have played out live with the iPad and my computer speakers (it all fit in the backpack except for the subwoofer, which is pretty good). Interesting new iPad instruments keep coming out and are quite impressive; I am wondering whether a Mini would do as a performance device if I stuck to MIDI; the compacted display is already a little tight for the apps that have on-screen keyboards, and I can’t see that being better. I am starting to see things evolving away from my iPad 1 at this point – Scape won’t run in the background there, and Borderlands flat out says it’s not good on the iPad 1.