Noisetheorem

While talking with a (half drunk) friend, she offers me an opportunity to DJ thursday nights at a dive bar in Elgin, Il. The idea would be classic goth/industrial for the aging croud (of which I am certainly a member). There wouldnt be any money in it at first, but it would get my ass out of the house, and get me involved in the music biz again, if only at the very edge.

I think I am going to give it a go. If I suck, at least I tried.

But I will need more Cure albums.

Also this week ive been trying out the Reason 4 demo. I had reason up to 2.5, but never upgraded to 3 because I *hated* its sequencer, rewire crashed sonar (my primary sequencer) and really the only thing about it I really loved was the Maelstrom synth. I also just generally hated its very insular quality (its not so easy to get work into and out of reason without rewire working properly).

A few years pass, and I no longer use Sonar, but Live and Cubase which have properly working Rewire Implementations. Reason 4 has a rebuilt sequencer, and they have added an absolutely *brilliant* synth called ‘Thor’. The demo, unfortunately, shuts down after 20 minuts, but this is the *first* version of Reason I have ever used where I had tracks going, completely self contained within that 20 minuts, enough so that I was realy *pissed* when the demo expired on a few of them. I am very much on the edge of upgrading.

So lets add that one to the list: Komplete 5.0, Ableton 7, and now Reason 4. Whos going to be next to run me through the upgrade treadmill?

Oh, and two of my hardware synths just got updates too. I upgraded the Radius to 2.0 (which adds some *massive* new modulation capabilities) and updated my Virus TI to v2.5. The TI upgrade has made the integration software work *much better* in Live (it already worked near perfect in Cubase) and the fact it isnt crashing my computer every 3 minuts means I am actually really loving it. I found sysex dumps of my old Virus A and Virus C and loaded them up. Some of the patches sound different on the TI’s engine: some for good, some for bad, but all in all its an improvement.

The one thing not yet updated is my V-synth GT which roland needs to address STAT.

Moving is the surest way to interrupt ones work flow. Ive got a million things to do, and only a minimal idea how to accomplish it all. Of course I also have minimal time to devote to it.

The early fall software rush has begun. Everyone has released updates or announced them. Of particular interest to me are Komplete 5 and Live 7. I really want to upgrade both, but I desperately need a new PC before I even think about it. My current machine can barely handle Live 6 and one instance of Massive without choking. Its just time to do it.

I am considering getting rid of two of my main hardware VA synths – the Radias and the Virus TI. If I did that, getting a new computer would be a snap financially, and what I currently do with their hardware I could easily do in software, and without the large investment in space, cables and audio inputs. hmm….