ICS Lodge

I 'discovered' the ICS after reading 'Guerilla Home Recording'.... and took part in a virtual session not long after. That was in 2006.

Here we are in 2008 and I finally have set up a lodge here in NE England. Hurrah! OK there are only two of us as members but it is a start. We are the Wyrd Lodge!

And meanwhile I must find some motivation to get back to my music again. Still have no idea how I am going to record vocals in a crowded house full of noise. When I crack that, all will be well... meantime plenty to get on with if I can find the energy.

Busy!

Frank and I completed our first ICS game at the weekend. Still havent had time to sit down and properly listen to his tracks. I should be able to do so before the weekend - I hope.

I have made good progress on reworking some old material - more on that later.

But now I need an early night - sleeeep!

Logic?

Slowly but oh so slowly, I am getting up to speed with the new Mac and software. Logic is my main focus at the moment.

I will never understand why Logic has never spawned a dedicated drum editor. Instead you have the 'hyper editor' and Ultrabeat (its step sequencer). Die hard Notator/Logic fans will doubtless tsk at this point but the lack of a dedicated drum editor in Notator was what turned me into a Cubase fan back in my Atari days. Well I have to get on with it. Hyper editing I will a go-go.

Presumably there is some kind of Germanic logic to the lack of a dedicated drum editor... and for the existence of one.

Logic is undoubtedly a powerful tool but logical it ain't. As with all programs of this level of complexity it has it's own 'special' operating paradigm. Unfortunately in that respect it seems very un-Apple.

I have made a start. Sonically it seems more harsh than Live... I really need to understand which plugins will give me the sound I prefer. I am wondering what amongst the plugins, will 'warm' the sound.

What is becoming quite clear is that I will have to spend a fair bit of time up front getting things set up the way I like it. Not just Logic, but also Reason and other software such as Stylus RMX (more on that at a later time).

First up I want to be certain/confident that I can produce a good drum sound when I need to. I have the means, I just need to learn how on the new box.

I have been rather busy of late and as a consequence haven't spent all that much time on the software. Annoying really. So the Mac remains really quite thoroughly untested.

It's late

But here is a quick update.

My new Mac arrived late on Friday. I have been gradually getting to know the Mac and along the way, install Vista.

That was not very successful... Until I tried to do the boot camp setup on the second of the two disks I ordered from scan.

That worked... very quickly in fact.

So I have one duff disk which is irritating but hey ho, hopefully scan will quickly resolve the problem.

More later.

Mac 2

The beast is ordered and now it is just a matter of waiting. I can understand the build time, but the delivery time is eight whole days. Where do they build the Macs in Europe? So far away?

I have ordered up extra disks and the software updates. I have retained some of the money for one of those OSIDTOT (oh shit I didn't think of that) moments.

I also decided to go for Boot Camping Vista. Now that the EULA permits virtualisation on the home editions, it seems more sense to go with the newer OS.

I also switched to VMWare Fusion - and dropped Parallels - since it seems to be the better product. Thanks to a heads up from a friend, I will be able to better integrate the two operating systems. See. Told you it would get geeky.

Oh but of course. Being a Mac person I am not supposed to be 'technical'. Oops.

Mac Pro... here I come?

All being well, by the end of this week I will have ordered a Mac Pro.

At long last I will be able to make a noise again. I can't wait.

This is also opportunity to update my music applications; this time for the Mac. In all this will be a lot of fun. Not only will I be back on the creative front, but I will have the geeky pleasure of migrating over from XP.

Don't get me wrong though. If I was still very much into PC based development & games I would be very unlikely to switch. But now I can create music and Boot Camp into XP for the odd game, the Mac seems like the best option for me.

I will be updating MyWyrd with my progress so watch this space!

Still frustrated

My PC... argh! I thought I had nailed the problem and then it goes flaky on me again.

I will just have to accept that I will not be making any more music for the time being.

Talk about frustration. GAH!

New versions of pretty much all my software armoury are out there. There is no point to buying any of them given my current circumstance. Hey ho...