stefkeB

I am re-installing everything. My Powerbook's drive died, so I had to start from scratch (and the partial backup I could recover). I've switched from Tiger to Leopard, but still have iLife '06 for PPC on that machine.

On the iMac, I have the more recent iLife '08 which is nice (especially iPhoto, which we used to reorganize most of our family snapshots). Garagaband seems to be improved somewhat, but not dramatically. I have not had the chance to try others.

I had a rehearsal/brainstorm with the "Reverse Violin Company", yesterday evening. We listened to eachothers tunes, looked at lyrics and gave suggestions. We also wanted to record a new song, based on a lyric I wrote. It was hard to find a suitable "genre", so we decided to try with drum loops to get into a particular groove. After a few rock oriented drum samples, we settled with a more electronic beat and then the creative energy got bigger.

If you look for a Linux distribution oriented towards multimedia, you can try one of the 7 distributions as discussed on http://www.junauza.com/2008/08/7-best-linux-distributions-for.html There are several interesting options for Open Source music creation applications, which include Ardour, Audacity, PureData, Rosegarden, CSound. I tried many of them, but not as extensive as Cubase or Ableton Live.

An article at http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/kokkini-zita-audio-software-fons-adr... explains the development of a realistic organ synthesizer and also the usage of convolution reverb (using room characteristics to improve the realism of a reverberation effect).

I still love this song, but I lost its original Cubase file. The lead voice is actually a bass sound, but pitched two or three octaves higher. I was lucky to have it recorded and burned to CD, as that is the only thing that is left. Oh well, plenty of other songs to go. The Cubase problem was the fact that I created songs which held different arrangements and in some cleanup session I forgot to save the arrangement for Spacy into a new song. To me, it actually improves the song. Oh and the wide pads too. I love synthetic strings and pad sounds. They can add a layer of richness to many songs.

First draft of a re-recording of "Weg" (Away), which was originally recorded in 2000. With better microphone and guitar, now using Ableton Live. But I'm not fully pleased with the drums and the guitar solo right now. A friend once told me that it had something of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song.

Jazzy popsong, about, well, Religion. It was musically originally inspired by "Here In My Head" by Tori Amos, but the arrangement is totally unrelated to Tori Amos music. The lyrics are thematic but also somehow vague, to indicate general directions but with some freedom to give your own meaning to the song. It combines two themes. One about religion and one about loss and death. The two paths are combined and related. This is the first listenable demo from 2000.

You can link Garageband from within Live, for both MIDI and Audio. 

My sister in law will get married in may 2007 and she asked a friend if she could prepare "Concerning Hobbits" by Howard Shore, from the Lord of the Rings soundtrack.As a result, she mail around to find help and we are preparing our first repetition.

Since I have been using Ableton Live (http://www.ableton.com), I am slowly learning many things I didn't know how to do before. One of the mysteries to me is how DJs are able to make smooth transitions between unrelated songs. Beats and pitch can differ, but somehow they manage to mix them together. I still don't know how they do this with turntables or CD's, but at least I now know how I can do this in Live.