Studio Updates

Having quite some money but no life whatsoever, I made some upgrades to my studio setup over last few months.

Neutron 3 Advanced from my favourite company iZotope has been a tough choice, but everything that speeds up workflow at least by a little margin is always welcome. This one features multiband Transient Shaper with nice display to replace proven, but simple NI Transient Master with something more streamlined. The same is true with multiband Gate plugin. A completely new tool in my arsenal would be Sculptor, which seems to be multiband dynamics + EQ hybrid requested myself in one of user polls some years ago. Simple controls, but does wonders.

Finally purchased a D16 plugin (with money – got all others free). This is Godfazer, multi-purpose phaser tool with a plenty of algorithms and controls for every scenario. Subtle or extreme, classic or avant-garde, periodic or dynamic – you name it. In particular, stepped phaser is something I always needed for uplifting trance basslines. So far only Hybrid 3 got it.

2019 Roundup

It was one great year for sure!

First of all, I got a better job and moved to a new place, where I set up a studio more comfortable than so far. Not a bedroom producer anymore! Now I have both money and time, two commodities people are always struggling with. Nothing can stop me now!

A plenty of tracks got released – precisely, six of them. While I want to make more and certainly have some more left on my drive, it’s still a record. Another two tracks are already queued for release in 2020, first one coming just in January.

Ditching failed plugins

As much as I’m very picky when choosing plugins, everyone makes mistakes. Some of them simply didn’t pass real studio test and failed expectations. Here they are:

The Mangle – despite cool and colorful interface, as well as potential for unheard harmonic clouds, this granular synth is a chore to use. Not only is the interface split among many pages and dialing in desired amount of modulation is notoriously difficult (“drag and drop”, they said). It also tends to lose / forget loaded samples after some time, under different circumstances. The Mangle doesn’t come with suitable sample pack for granular synthesis in first place, so every time I need to search for something nice before I even get started. All in all, lots of wasted time with this one. Bye, bye.

The secret plan is Komplete

That’s right! Finally I got the most popular plugin package in the world, which is Komplete Ultimate 12. It was heavily discounted during Native Instruments‘ Summer of Sound – still, not a cheap stuff. Been looking forward to Komplete for years.

So what’s inside?

2018 roundup

2018 was unusual year, as I feel something has changed. Unlike in previous years, which were mostly all the same, bare from occasional musical enterprises.

VIP, Advance and presets

So – yes. I own Advance 49 keyboard with VIP preset browser for a year and a half now. Why I didn’t write about it earlier? Well, because goddamn thing didn’t want to work.

4K in a DAW

I’ve been looking forward to get 4K monitor to use it with DAW and recently made it. I would like now to discuss the benefits and observations in a form of short guide, as seemingly many people are still confused about these.

2016 Roundup

Ending year 2016 was quite interesting, full of ups and downs. For sure it was busy.

First and most important, I got my first track released – it’s remix of Ruska – Saimaa made for a contest. I was hoping now releases will be flying every month or so.

However, since then it was a downfall. Even though I feel I improve the quality of every new track, none of them was accepted. Some remixes were not good enough, others seemingly were off the style.

It took me a while to understand what is still wrong with the tracks and why people don’t enjoy them as much as commercial releases. And eventually I figured it out. Check the improved remix of Impellent:

The stats… we live in the world where no one cares who you are and what you do, but only how popular you are. I’m not very popular at all (especially compared to 2008), but the blog stats keep growing this year:

This is with lowest post count ever. Most of visits hit Chaotic Wavetable Pack for Serum, which turned out very interesting for users even though it was made over one day and in fact is nothing extraordinary. Personally I never used it yet :P.

Growing stats may also come from the fact that I no longer post about “work in progress”, but simply finish tracks and post worthy pieces of music. Certainly it would help if I posted some tutorials and started video blog, but there are other things I need to deal with first. Neverthless, I gave some lectures on production this year so it’s not far from here. Especially earlier show on FM synthesis turned out great.

I only mixed like 9 DJ sets this year… unfortunatelly it takes a lot of time. Even though, these few sets get great number of plays, so once I get back to it someday, things should be running well.

The studio… I got quite some gear and a number of synths this year. Acually it’s more than I was able to use so far. Which doesn’t mean I don’t try to – the quest for ultimate studio drives me both creatively and at regular work. I not only need money for better place, but also need to actually make use of all the synths (yet alone gear) I gathered so far. Now the only thing that limits me is the time. Which leads to one last point…

The workflow. Earlier this year I decided to learn how to use Push for real. And I did, it just works so well. Now I’m working in Session mode, creating clips and layers one by one. Then switch to Arrangement View, create whole arrangement in one go and… voila! Track is finished. Let’s do another one. Making tracks, even very diverse, is quite repeatable process – one I know how to. And creating better track doesn’t neccessarily mean spending more time on it. It’s all about the skills and just know-how.

The future. The future is now, 2017 will be a breakthrough. Just at the end on the year I have all the pieces I need to produce great music. Just have to sort out earlier unfinished projects before getting new PC and moving on to future productions. All I need now is time – and to make good use of it. The same is true for DJ sets. These should come back in a month or two.

Happy new year 2017!

Studio expansion: audio interface

So I got adventurous and purchased serious audio interface – NI Komplete Audio 6. It replaces my old E-MU 0202 USB.

This 9-old year interface was alright and still served me well, so I bought Audio 6 quite in advance. I’m hoping to expand with serious studio monitors (finally!), hardware synth, or maybe guitar. But it’s all distant future.

However, good interface gives me some immediate benefits – both planned and unexpected.

Firts of all, I’m finally able to connect my XDJ-RX to other gear – in particular home speakers and PC. Record directly to Audacity or, better yet, Ableton with some effects – not only generic mastering strip, but also some creative FX played live. Need to try it out someday.

Secondly, I am finally, finally able to run Ableton and any other audio application at same time. Be it Audacity, Winamp, Rekordbox or just Youtube tutorials and cat movies. Previously it was impossible, so I had to close Ableton in order to check anything and hope that interface doesn’t collapse into erratic state (aliasing at lower sample rate, maybe?). Now it’s all gone. You can imagine how much time it saves me (or how much time previous interface wasted).

As to Komplete Audio 6 itself – someone on forums said “it’s build like tank”. Absolutely. It’s like a brick, but covered with aluminium. You could kill somebody with it. Works smoothly, has current Windows 10 drivers and nice config window.

Oh, and they gave me some NI stickers in box. The box also comes with a selection of NI crapware, including demos for Kontakt (seriously?) and a discount voucher. The voucher expires 3 months after it’s activated, so I simply didn’t activate anything. Overall, everything but stickers is a komplete waste of time.

All in all, I’m very satisfied with this interface. Now I need to figure out where to place stickers.

XDJ-RX is here!

Beautiful, isn’t it?

Since 2006 I hosted 3 radioshows and recorded almost 300 mixes. However, it’s the first time that I have my own DJ gear. At least now I know how to use it. This is latest model with a number of features, so will serve me well for years.

Expect a plenty of mixes in the following days, recorded on this beauty.