Moving Forward

Now that I have a Computer...

and finished my report for my meeting I still needed a music interface since the old Digi 001 was no longer supported and incompatible with newwer PC's. I decided since I had been running on old risky systems and antiquated hardware it was time to step up and lay down some Cash.

I purchased a Digidesign Digi 003R. It's quite a leap in functionality from Version 6.4 to version 7.4 which works well with Vista. I was weary because the New G33 Chipsets have not been tested by Digidesign yet I plugged it all together an was greeted with a zero error install and opened older 6.4 Sessions without any glitches except where I had forgot to install certain RTAS Plug-ins.

The usage of Virtual Instruments Like BFD Drums, Structure and Xpand make creating songs vastly easier. The full version of "Strike" is $299.99 which is digidesigns virtual drummer to compte with BFD Virtual Drums. BFD is good enough for now because I can combine it with Reason ReWire to suppliment the MIDI aspects of Virtual Drumming.

SO far in the last 3 weeks Ive started 2 new songs while learning the ropes of a new version of a software. Next challenge will be to see if Elastic Audio can fix some of the analog drums I did on the tape machine.

I'm thinking a doing a new MySpace page that is video/audio capable for the project but I can't think of a name for the webpage or anything.

Hopefully I finish my album, do some more video....

The Beginning

About a Year ago.....

I set out to record a solo album of music that just happens to pop into my head. After overtime at work and many other things to distract me I never made it past 1.875 songs on the 8 to 10 I originally planned.

One of the problems beside time is the extra-ordinary effort it takes to write music the way I had been stuck in. I typically would find a groovy drum patter on a drum machine and then lay down whatever rhythm guitar part that came to mind. Once that was completed I moved on to a bass track to follow the previously laid down groove.

After I had the music bed completed I would just jam to that until I found a melody or series of phrases. When you have a drumkit and your recording to a tape machine that is in a different room its a little more difficult to follow that process.

I've using digital audio for mastering "2 track" for a number of years, but never entire songs because I was limited by the number of inputs to the computer. A few months ago I bought an old Digidesign Digi 001 interface and bought Pro Tools 6.4. This allowed me to transfer 8 tracks of audio from the tape machine or record the drums directly to the computer. But... my computer was an old dog that had been ressurected several times and it really struggled.

Then... the old Dog died.

Pressed for time because I had alot of file I needed for a meeting, I had to buy a computer right out of the box, I opted for a Dell 530 Inspiron with a dual core 1.8Ghz. machine and 2 gigs of RAM.