Monteiro's fusion

SynFire Pro

2009-01-02T11:52:00.000-08:00

SynFire Pro is an intriguing new product from Cognitone Systems. It will probably revolutionize the way professional composers work on a day to day basis. It greatly facilitates melodic development end harmonization. Probably of greater significance is how it enables the exploration of ideas. There is really nothing out there that comes close. There are other products that scratch the surface. Some generate both melody and harmonies, notably Band in the Box an interesing and useful product in its own right. Others, like the Palette help in melodic development. Yet others like Onyx Arranger will morph your input based on the notion of templates from a variety of styles. Again all of these just scratch the surface and although useful and not to be dismissed they do not provide a comprehensive solution. Therefore, it is probably fair to say the SynFire Pro is a one of a kind product. Unfortunately for some or rather for most it comes at a one of a kind price tag. Indeed, only those that would use it on a daily basis can justify the hefty prize of approximately $1,500.00 dollars. However, that target market i.e. the professional composer market is according to my sources responding well to the recent intial offering. In conclusion, I would say that words cannot at all come close to giving justice to the promise of SynFire Pro so I'll challenge the user to be as equally intrigued by SynFire as I have by checking out their videos here:

http://www.cognitone.com/support/tutorials/index.stml?p=1

I plan to blog about some of the features illustrated in the videos found above as well as other features once the evaluation demo is available to the general public.

Making the Time

2008-12-24T19:05:00.001-08:00

First of all, are you sleeping 8 hours a day? Well, that has to stop. It needs to be cut down to 6 or 6.5 hours per day with a half hour nap upon returning from work. Basically 6 hours at night plus that half hour nap. Then again maybe you have spare time, I don't.

Let's smell the coffee together. releasing my first CD , your first CD will take time and it requires putting in the time. This doesn’t mean that we need an 8 hour day but we do need to find 1.5 to 2 hours a day and try to push for 3 to 4 hours on Sat. and Sundays. For most people that's do-able. It just requires some time management.

Now that we have decided to put in the time I'm afraid that putting in the time is not enough, it has to be quality time. You cannot be falling asleep at the wheel or with your guitar strapped on. So when would that be? What is the best time to focus on your obsession ? You may not be at your best after a hard days work. So for me and because of that the best time turns out to be 4.am in the morning after having had some rest and regained the alertness to let the creativity flow.

Those first 5 minutes are tough, still are today and even after a few months but I have my techniques and very strong dark tea.

My morning starts by actually standing up to turn off an alarm strategically too faraway to snooze off and the knowing that I have to be quick not to disturb the rest of my sleeping pack. That is followed by some shock therapy. I start with a burst of refrigerated pressurized saline spray right into my eyes , face and nose. Followed by more cold water on my face and back of my neck. I then go to the kitchen guzzle some oj for the sugar rush, and fuel up with nuts and dates. Then a couple sets of push ups and then and only then am I awake enough to think about music.

A mountain will never be climbed if you don’t put one foot in front of the other.

So what are you doing to climb your mountain ?

REAPER | Download

2008-12-23T02:06:00.001-08:00

Just in time for Christmas:

REAPER Latest Version

REAPER v2.54 - December 22, 2008
Changes:

* Dynamic split detection improvements
* Action: restore previous scroll position
* ReaVerb/ReaSamplomatic user/gdi object leak fixes
* Docked midi editor / fx window / mixer user object leak fixes
* Fixed looped-resampled-item glitches
* ReaSynDr, ReaSynth, ReaSamplomatic, ReaTune: smoother automation
* JS: fixed some issues with small increases in PDC
* Better wav/wv project filename setting when autosaving to .wav.rpp
* MIDI bank/program tracking fixes, duplicate note removal
* OS X performance updates
* Display rendering updates
* Faster meter rendering
* Left/right edge adjustment snapping now respects X track-distances like moving
* Massive memory use reduction when using large numbers of MIDI files
* Fixed bugs removing automated parameters from ReaPitch/ReaDelay/etc
* Fixed end/start of item sample rounding for items with no fades
* OGG decoder: fixed subsample seeking accuracy
* Clipping fix for fully buffered peaks drawing mode

2009 Release of RealBand and Band in a Box

2008-12-19T09:44:00.000-08:00

Both of these products can create great stub or placeholder tracks. Great tools for n brainstorming a new tune.

Here's a blurb from their site including links to video and audio. Check it out:

Watch the Videos!

There are Video Demos here:
- BB 2009 Features video: http://64.40.109.185/pgmusic/wmv/BB2009_new_features_1mbps.wmv (or download http://nn.pgmusic.com/pgfiles/video/RealTracksDec2009_1mbps.zip )

- RealTracks demo: http://64.40.109.185/pgmusic/wmv/RealTracksDec2009_1mbps.wmv (or download http://nn.pgmusic.com/pgfiles/jazzu/Tobin/temp/exp090401/BB2009_new_features_1mbps.zip )

Listen to the audio demos below!

Audio Demos for All 101 new RealTracks

(note: many of these demos are demoing the RealTracks instrument only, and have MIDI tracks as well to accompany them. We will be replacing those MIDI instruments with "Real-only" demos.)

inspiration

2008-12-16T19:48:00.001-08:00

Inspiration , where does it come from?

Internal
External

Internal inspiration is what comes to me when I walk my dog or at other unexpected times. Since it's unexpected it is best to be prepared. My pda cellphone has an audio recorder which I use to capture these gifts .

Then there is the forced type of inspiration which one forces to different degrees. For example:

Record yourself Jamming to somebody else's music.
Record yourself doodling on your instrument.
Jam to your fav. synth patch
Jam to some drum loops
Grab a midi file from the web, strip out the melody and drop some riffs.
Grab a lead sheet, copy chord changes into Band in a Box or Jammer then drop some riffs.
if you can, do all of the above on a guitar, bass, keyboard end vocals. you will get different results

Word of advice make recording easy. I have set up things so that pressing the low E in my Keyboard controller will trigger recording.

After this initial important step produces the seed for your new tune, its important to commit. commitment is essential. Without it one can get stuck, in "doodling" land for a very long time. Been there , done that. and it is hell.

Rev: 1.1

The Trinity is Complete

2008-12-13T20:22:00.001-08:00

I finally took the plunge and bought Trilogy the last in the trinity of Spectrasonic’s instruments:

Omnisphere
Stylus RMX
Trilogy

This now gives me a go to bass module and its really all there. It truly sounds great and now I’ll be eligible to the upgrade to Trilogy’s STEAM engine integration.

Methodology For creativity

2008-12-09T18:41:00.001-08:00

A methodology is:

A set or system of methods, principles, and rules for regulating a given discipline, as in the arts or sciences.

It's a way of thinking about a subject matter, in other words a way to skin a cat. This is my personal method. Developing from thoughts I gather as I try to compose music to my satisfaction. Ideas that can turn into a process which I hope will make me more fluid and ultimately more productive. A lot of these ideas come from my software development experience but most from my struggles with composition.

So lets start by brainstorming some concepts:

Inspiration
Commitment
Vision
Big Picture
Go with the Flow
Development
Stamina
Energy
Space
Gravity
Direction
Focus
Contrast
Speed
Incremental and cyclical
PlaceHolders

Enough for now. Next I will try to define these terms.

Coming Soon.

Naming your Chords

2008-11-25T20:49:00.001-08:00

I find it very useful to setup what I call a "Chords" track. For the
same reason that chord names are specified in most modern compositions i.e. Jazz and Pop music. I first tried doing this with markers in Reaper but that was less than ideal. Recently , it occurred to me that I could simply record basic block chords for the changes in question. Then its a matter of splitting the chords track into generally 2 , 1 or half a measure in duration accordingly. Not only can I see what exact change I'm on but I can also listen. Check out what I mean in the pic below.

BTW , do you find this useful ?

Making a Push with ScribeFire

2008-11-23T18:01:00.001-08:00

ScribeFire is a Firefox addon that besides being a pretty decent blog editor it has the added benefit that one can work offline. That along with my new UMPC and AT&T 3G LaptopConnect card will give me less available excuses to not blog more actively. Of course, that's a bunch of BS. Either I'm too unsure, have nothing to say, have no reason to say anything or think that nobody's listening , these are all better explanations than suggesting that I don't have enough time.

But time will see.

Anywho, this is my first ScribeFire blog.

Stickys for your DAW ?

2008-11-11T11:32:00.001-08:00

I would love to be able to freely drop notes over the wave form track area of my DAW. I'm using Reaper. Basically this amounts to Stickys , little memos one leaves behind to remind oneself of issues, action items etc. In the case of a DAW these notes would be associated with a specific position on a timeline and for a specific track. Global markers can already be left in Reaper but they just amount to a label on the timeline. There is not much room to leave much of a note at all. Pretty powerful way of getting the big picture , whether the project is still an evolving tune or whether everything has been tracked and is ready for mixing. Some other Reaperites feel the same way. See here. Hopefully it will catch on.

If the reader knows of any DAW that already does something like this please drop me a post. thanks.

Portable Vocal Booth

2008-11-09T19:38:00.001-08:00

About a year ago it occurred to me to research if somebody had built some sort of mechanism to handle recording vocals in very hostile spaces i.e. my home studio. I could viably DI everything else but vocals were a problem. At the time I found the SE Reflection Filter. Yesterday on the Reaper forum, I bumped into the Real Traps Portable Vocal Booth. Its for one much larger and just in that sense it seems more effective. Also because of its size it has more applications e.g. it is viable to use it to isolate a guitar amp. It goes for the same amount of cash which is just under $300.00. Check them out.

Reaper Skins

2008-11-06T20:17:00.001-08:00

Its amazing the number of skins available for Reaper. This is one of the new flavors of the week , most of them created by the community.

Pod Farm Is up!!!

2008-11-06T19:16:00.001-08:00

See the discussion at Reaper forum:

http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?p=249175#poststop

Here is the line6 page for it:

http://line6.com/podfarm/index.html

Pod Farm is the next incarnation of the Line6 GearBox plugin. If you owned that just doing update via the Line6 Monkey is only you need to do. The UI looks much better and you do get dual amp configuration which is nice. Time and playing will show whether there is more tone. It does seem to come with more pre-sets which include the GearBox plugin presets.

Is this Delicious

2008-11-06T19:02:00.001-08:00

Lately , I was turned on to Delicious. They have been around for a while so I'm a bit late to the party. Very useful especially to bookmark the posts I make into the various forums and some of the resulting web surfing that arises from that. You can embed your delicious links into your blog as I have done on the right panel of this blog. I might move that to the main content area. I wish that there was a filter so that I could limit the links here to be just music related links. Currently , either one shares a Delicious link or not.

Just went alpha

2008-01-24T19:58:00.000-08:00

no not alpha male but I did just get my Frontier Designs AlphaTrack which has to be one of the coolest control surfaces out. It installed in a second and became immediately useful and immediately indispensable. Click on the image and check it out.

BFD 2.0 looks amazing but ...

2008-01-07T21:13:00.000-08:00

If you looked at the demos, it was simply a no brainer, if you had BFD 1.5 you simply had to purchase the upgrade and quickly, it was that impressive, and it is but I can't help thinking that Fxpansion may have been pressured by their retailers to have this available for the xmas / end of year retail season. I think that maybe its release was a tad early.

The features, the sound quality, the workflow, the interop to trigger units, the number of grooves provided all of these make BFD quite arguably the top virtual drum package. Unfortunately, I don't get to enjoy all of that. I'm still trying to make sure that my investment in some of the expansion paks is safeguarded. You see the upgrade process from 1.5 to 2.x is not free of its kinks and so I have started the year on a very frustrating note indeed. That's what I get for being an early adopter :)

Blogging from the Road

2007-12-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

Blogging from my pda . Maybe I will blog more consistently in 2008 ?

MOTU 2408 vs Edirol FA-101

2007-11-09T10:08:00.000-08:00

Well more of a comparison. I purchased the Edirol FA-101 firewire interface because I needed a unit that could hook up to my then notebook based DAW. However, as part of my efforts to resurrect my home studio I decided to put back to use my old MOTU 2408mkii. Said unit was actually dedicated to my PowerMac Dual Processor G4. I now wanted to leverage the 2408 from my new PC Core2 Duo. That entailed buying a hardware upgrade from MOTU, the 424 PCI express interface card. So what are the differences between the two units ? Here we go:

Portability

The 2408 is simply not. It requires a PCI card in the host machine. The Edirol on the other hand requires firewire on the host machine and as a matter of fact on the MAC it just uses the native firewire support. So the Edirol will be indespensable on the road on a notebook or on the occassion that I may want to record a gig.

Latency

The Edirol on my Core2 Duo system provides 3 ms latency at 152 samples which is the lowest the ASIO driver will allow, nonetheless this is quite good. However, the MOTU provides 1 ms latency at 64 samples and I can go down to 32 samples but did not want to push my luck. So I'm a happy camper indeed.

Sampling Rate

Here the Edirol outshines the MOTU providing up 96K sampling. The MOTU only goes up to 48K but in practical terms that's just fine. Most pop to even instrumental guitar music i.e. my music does not need to go over 44.1

Connections

The MOTU has by far more connection possiblities but again in practical terms and for me that would entail getting more hardware to leverage the ADAT and Tascam connectivity provided. So effectively , the MOTU has 10 channels available including 2 spdif i.e. digital connections. That is exactly what the Edirol provides except that the Edirol does toslink i.e. optical instead of spdif. The Edirol does provide 2 mic connectors with decent preamps. In reality I prefer to go thru something like the Studio Projects VTB1 which is a tube hybrid pre-amp which does a great job of warming this up.

Conclusion

The MOTU will become my interface on my main audio workstation. The Edirol will be now dedicated to my G4 which I have plans to make a midi workstation which I can use to pump soft synth's output back to my main DAW on the PC.

The MOTU 2408mkii is a great interface even six years later after my initial purchase. I will probably look for another on Ebay. The new 2408 mkiii has great specs but is overkill for my needs. If you are looking for a digital interface for your audio workstation I would highly recommend finding an used 2408mkii.

Professional audio presentations in NYC

2007-09-30T19:48:00.000-07:00

I just bumped into a group that I plan to be spending sometime with:

Part of the American Engineering Society, the NYC chapters have monthly presentations on professional audio engineering topics.

The next one's on the 16th of October.

See: http://www.aes.org/sections/ny/

The parent organization is having a conference Oct. 5 - 8 th at the Javitts Center in NYC.

John McLaughlin at the Town Hall

2007-09-28T11:26:00.000-07:00

I attended McLaughlin back to fusion concert at the Town Hall theatre in NYC last nite. First fusion concert in something like ten years. I think that McLaughlin may not be my cup of tea. He is one of the acclaimed Jazz fusion greats, has fantastic chops. Everybody in the band did. But it just did not grab me. The groove was too straight and too busy and too technical.This is coming from a guy that likes chops but where is the music. I think that it may just be an acquired taste. Certainly many will disagree with me. The show was sold out and the audience was as fired up as any I have seen.

It just does not seem to do it for me. Maybe I don't get it. I do get DiMeola and Metheny. I love their stuff. So maybe McLaughlin is just in another planet that I just don't understand.

I have heard that he has nice acoustic music, maybe I need to now check that out.

We do share one thing in common i.e. McLaughlin and I. We both thnk that Godin makes great guitars and especially great if one likes to blend synth tones into the mix.

Do you dig it ? Part 1

2007-09-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning to find a plumbing crew getting ready to replace my sewage pipe. We have had issues this morning but our landlord just popped this one on us.

Resurrection of my Wiki

2007-09-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

MediaWiki i.e. the php framework used by Wikipedia, and the framework I was using on my last wiki, is actually quite prone to spam and it takes a community to fend of the evil spammers. Obviously, I don't have a "community" per se so I found a great wiki framework with a lot of bells and whistles and which has quite decent security mechanisms in place. The framework is called PMWiki and one can read up more about it here.

I like PMWiki so much that I got rid of my regular web site and now my new PM wiki is my web site. I do need to spend a bit of time adding more content but I think it already has the "look" I always intended to implement.

So check it out:

http://www.monteirosfusion.com

Testing Video upload

2007-09-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

Musicians noodling while floor is being setup to record Jon Raney's original composition Sumbate.

Death of my wiki

2007-09-08T21:21:00.000-07:00

I am sorry to announce that due to my total neglect and abandonment my wiki has died. I actually put it out of its misery after I found it to have been pillaged by a gang of virtual hoodlums. Yes, I'm talking about spammers. I used WikiMedia which has lousy admin to guard against spam. The various Php Forum software on the other hand have decent protections. My only option it seems would have been to entirely disable registration. I may try this later but for now I have to concentrate on the music. The front may pick up soon. It has been a slow and frustrating year so far but my friend and collaborator Jon Raney may finally come back online towards the end of September.

Keeping it safe

2007-06-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

Recently, I started getting really paranoid about the safety of my content. I have been thinking about setting up a backup system for my music system since I got the new system in January but I guess now that my friend Jon and I are resuming our collaboration the issue has stepped up into the front burner.

So what's my strategy for my music content security?

First of all, start with a 500 gb Western Digital SATA drive that has enough space without accounting for compression to back up all of my drives. Then buy the right enclosure. I opted for the ICY Dock eSATA/USB single tray enclosure. Mostly because of tray driven design where once the hard drive was fastened to the tray, there was zero need to make any cable connections.

It worked perfectly and as I write this blog I'm formatting the Western Digital disk.

The hardware side of the solution i.e. disk and enclosure cost around $160.00. Not bad at all.

The software solution entails using PathSync , a utility for folder synchronization developed by the same developers that develop my preferred multi-track recording digital workstation i.e. Reaper.