The Prodigal Sounds

Progressive Rock Artist seeks Audience

Author: colin (Page 6 of 39)

March 2020 – The Inevitable Track List

March 28, 2020 / / 0 Comments

I’ve completed recording. I’ve been mastering the tracks in Presonus’ Studio One, because it has this great “Project View” that I haven’t seen in any other software.

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This allows me to set volume levels, frequency equalization, and cross-fades across all tracks, to ensure that they sound like a unified collection.

I still need to burn a CD and play it in a variety of locations but I think I’m close.

Next steps will be to finalize the artwork for CD duplication, and also upload to Bandcamp and/or CD Baby for distribution. This is going to be primarily a digital release but I do want some physical CDs to give to friends and family and anyone else who really wants one.

About 50% of these tracks are old music that Walter and I worked on together, and the rest is all (relatively) new.

Track List:

1. EULA (0:31)

2. Working the Paradigm Shift (8:42)

3. Listen (12:52)

4. The Toks Invade Bogland (4:57)

5. Cathedral of Hosts (3:27)

6. Enlightenment (6:06)

7. Omnipotence in 17/8  (2:58)

8. Priority Interrupt (2:07)

9. Head Crash (5:18)

10. Cathedral (reprise)  (1:12)

11. Introspection in G / Tubular DLLs  (6:57)

Tracks 5-10 are a continuous suite, so there is a choice to be made here about whether to break it up into separate tracks or keep it as one long track, for digital distribution. On an audio CD you kind of get both as it cross-fades between tracks cleanly. (usually).

I guess the right answer is “both” which is actually feasible, to have two different versions of the album up on Bandcamp. Or maybe just an additional bonus “EP” for the single-track contiguous version.

I’ll mull this over. In the meantime, stay safe folks. Don’t go viral.

New Felt for an old Keybed

February 28, 2020 / / 3 Comments

The KORG M1 synthesizer uses a well-respected keybed manufactured by Yamaha. It’s solidly built and comes apart “easily” for maintenance. I’m replacing some felt strips and adding a few more for mechanical noise suppression, but it turns out that in order to do that, you really do need to remove the keys. While I’m at it, a clean and re-grease is in order.

Walter Nicholls, I’ve found quite a lot of your hair, if you want it back.

Also, a shout-out to BustedGear.com for the excellent support on fixing dodgy key contacts.

Adjusting the pressure response (trim pots)

Also, this is a good reference for adjusting the aftertouch/pressure response.

Dec 2019

December 15, 2019 / / 0 Comments

When the heck was my last post? October? Ouch. Well, I’ve been busy, working on the album. Much progress has been made.

Also, I’ve created a new Cakewalk Theme called “SteamPunk” to inspire creativity and in the process, written a how-to guide on theming.

Here’s a picture of the introduction to the final track on the upcoming album:

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I realize that gives nothing away but does give an impression of the new UI theme: Slate, oiled bronze, leather, with gilt highlights.

Steampunk.sth

Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer on Themeable items in Cakewalk.pdf 
(updated 03/2020 to version 0.9.5)

Back to the studio; this album’s not going to finish itself.

VIVALDI’s USB ports

October 12, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Front Panel:

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My nomenclature, from left to right: F1 – F4

Rear Panel:

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My nomenclature, following a U-shape from top left to top right: R1 – R7

Type (according to XPS 8930 manual):

 ID   Description                 Speed    Connected 
 --   --------------------------  -------  ----------
 F1   USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type C         5 Gbps  
 F2   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps
 F3   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps
 F4   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps

 R1   USB 2.0                    480 Mbps  Keyboard
 R2   USB 2.0                    480 Mbps  Mouse
 R3   USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type C        10 Gpbs
 R4   USB 3.1 Gen 2               10 Gpbs  Scarlett 6i6
 R5   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps
 R6   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps
 R7   USB 3.1 Gen 1                5 Gbps  MIDISport 2x2

Here is a report from USB Device Tree Viewer 3.3.6:

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Quite by accident I seem to have connected the Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 to its own dedicated high-speed USB hub, which I’m guessing is optimal.

However, we should remember that the USB port on the Scarlett is only USB 2.0. So we’re hopefully gaining some isolation or immunity from interference, but no throughput gains. Chances are we may have another device that could leverage the 10 Gbps speeds…

Timeline Editing in Cakewalk, Reloaded

October 11, 2019 / / 0 Comments

This is an update or re-write of an earlier post from 2014, titled “A work-around for Sonar’s Timeline Editing behavior: Slippy Clips”. It was really more of a case study than a work-around…

Since then, Cakewalk’s SONAR has been reborn as Cakewalk By Bandlab and includes many updates and new features, including “Ripple Editing”. This makes timeline editing much more convenient, and therefore I think it is time to revisit this case study.

So I have this project that contains a mixture of 7/8 and 4/4 bars. For example, in this section I have a series of 7/8 bars followed by a 4/4 at bar 26.

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Whilst practicing the keyboard solo, I realized that one of those 7/8 bars needed to be 4/4 also. However, if I change bar 24 from 7/8 to 4/4 by inserting a meter change at bar 24, this happens:

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All the measures following bar 24 are no longer aligned on the beat. In fact, the meter of all bars following 24 have changed from 7/8 to 4/4, until bar 26 and 27 which have explicit meter declarations of 4/4 and 7/8 respectively, in the timeline.

This suggests that we also need an explicit declaration of 7/8 meter on bar 25 so that only bar 24 is affected by our initial meter change:

image

Of course we still have our clips offset from the underlying measures… The easiest way of correcting this is to enable “Ripple Editing” for all tracks and slide the clips into alignment.

First, to enable Ripple Editing we use the control in the top right of the track view to toggle it from “Off” to “All”:

image  image

Then we can simply drag the clip at bar 25 into alignment:

The Ripple Edit setting automatically includes all other clips in the timeline (on ALL tracks) along with the one we’re relocating. Handy! The Snap To Grid feature is very helpful to ensure that the clips move exactly 1/8 note to align to the start of the measure.

Before we do anything else, however, we should restore the Ripple Editing setting from “All” to “Off”, because if you forget that it is enabled while moving clips around, you can very easily mess up your project.

These kinds of edits are much easier with Ripple Editing! Thanks to the Cakewalk Developers for implementing it.

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