Picture this… You’re sat in your car on top of the Yorkshire Dales admiring the rolling hills in all their glory. There’s you in the driving seat with your Macbook, your wife’s in the passenger seat with her Ubuntu Netbook, one of your friends is sat outside on the grass with his iPad and another one of your friends is sat next to him with his Windows 7 Laptop. Oh… and not forgetting your daughter whose sat in the back of the car with her Nintendo DSi.
So… there you all are, totally remote with only the sweet fresh smell of a Yorkshire Summer to warm your spirits. There’s no Starbuck’s or Wetherspoon’s with Wi-Fi ‘hot-spots’, no Ethernet ports to hard cable into, no electricity. Just a mobile phone mast one mile across the valley.

So ask yourself, can everyone of those 5 devices access the internet right there?
Well yes they can.
(more…)

In today’s Modern Studio environments there are what I see as 3 ways to play the ‘Keys’. Firstly, there’s the Original – a dedicated hardware Instrument such as a Grand Piano. A standalone piece of equipment that is purely analog. The sound it produces comes entirely from itself and what it is made of, which is predominantly wood, strings, metal plus all those other relevant counter-parts that go to make up it’s fabric.
To record such an Instrument requires the capture of the sound it produces and resonates out of it’s body as the musician plays it. A straight forward process – set up your Microphones and record it.
(more…)

In the beginning it was Cubase. Version 1.0 running solidly on the Atari 1040 STE. I’ve more processing oomph in my digital watch these days than a whole rack full of STE’s could offer. Still, there’s no way I’m going to flame Cubase and it’s humble origins. It was then and still is a Legend and Steinberg fully deserve their status amongst the ranks.
As I’ve said in early posts, I’ve spent many years rolling along the Cubase Highway following it’s progressions; developing my techniques with the technological advancements each new Version would offer. When I switched to the Macbook in 2007 though I also switched to Pro Tools and left Cubase by the roadside.
(more…)

Ahh… the sweet sound of Reggae. You’ve got to love it.
Yesterday I started traveling through my recording archives in search of the Reggae tinged tracks I’ve composed over the past 10 years. I’ve dug out at least 15 tracks to take through the next stage of production which equates to a solid hour of back to back Reggae music. So that’s going to be my next project and next album release.
(more…)

Our very first Digital Release has finally arrived.

La Isla de Yorksha is a 10 Track Mini-Album (I say Mini as it’s 37 Minutes long, is that Mini?) It’s a pleasant electronic listen with enough surprises to make the listening experience a conscious one. There’s no set program, the tempo’s go from the low eighties at times upto the late 120′s for some of the more upbeat sections.
It’s focus is for the discerning traveller and journeyman. Music should be able to travel well.
(more…)

Most Electronic Music Producers spend plenty of time working with Audio Loops and Samples. Loop-based Music is unquestionably the backbone of 99% of all Electronic Music compositions heard today, be it Drum Patterns, Vocal Snippets, Guitar jolts or whatever; Looping something generally takes place.
(more…)

Released today – a true classic. Rebirth for your iPad.

For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure to be acquainted with Rebirth I recommend a visit to the Rebirth Museum HERE
3 of the most innovative and widely used pieces of Electronic Equipment ever to grace the world of Audio Production all rolled up into one super smooth, super reliable application. (more…)

This week I finally arrived at the finishing post with some of my HD Video footage. Although I’ve been shooting pure HD for the past 18 months; processing it and rendering it has always been a heavy task.
Since the upgrade to Snow Leopard, Final Cut Express 4 seems to have come into it’s own and really does seem to run so much better. I could still benefit from a faster machine but the Macbook is coping and so HD delivery has now arrived. With the HD production line flowing, the final stage of the workflow was to get the movies uploaded and embedded in HD. I have evaluated 2 possible sources for this, Vimeo and YouTube. (more…)