Reaper

Hi again,
Just thought I'd share my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).

Well mostly the software, I'm totally converted to REAPER as my main editor.
It's fast - no long boot up and snappy when editing.
It's tiny - less than 6Mb, the size of an mp3 and it has a demo song included.
It's amazing - remarkable programing skills here with a vibrant, caring community and forum.
It's cheap

I use it both in WinXP when I need all the bells and whistles plugins and rewire, but it's really comfortable in Linux using wine-ASIO (see this thread ) which is the setup I use for my live recordings at The Barleycorn.
With REAPER's keyboard shortcuts and a CLI (Command Line Interface) I don't need a mouse to get around.

...up and running again

Following on from my previous post re "shit happens ...", owing to the money collected from the benefit, and a top up from my studio partner we have another VS1880 (which saves having to learn new stuff), and I'm getting a second hand laptop soon, so we're back at the Barleycorn as well as being able to record bands live again.

Almost up to speed re the gear stolen (also bought a car) fortunately it's a buyers market ATM, but altogether a hefty dent to the finances.

Anyways ... life goes on ... and it's not looking too bad :)

I'll try to start putting music up here again soon ... 'till then.

Shit happens but life goes on.

Yep, again there's a long pause between blogs, I guess that's just the way it is.

Anyways, this isn't really a musical entry, just a note to myself and any who read this that a few weeks ago I was robbed at gunpoint of my car, recording gear (Roland VS1880 / IBM T43 Laptop) plus mics, leads etc. wallet (R120.00) and cellphone (contacts backed up to laptop :( ), but I didn't get a scratch other than going through the emotions, so as the title says - Shit happens but life goes on.

This happened on my way to recording the Barleycorn Sessions a folksy kinda get together every Monday evening round the corner from where I live.

These guys are amazing, they really appreciated what we were doing (recording the seperate tracks for a remix if wanted and a live mp3 for the artists) so they held a benefit gig to help recoup some of our losses... wow I've never had a benefit gig before and was really touched, about R3000 was raised which won't cover much but was a really sweet thought.

Anyways I'm back to researching what's out there that can record about 8tracks at once, so far the pick of the current bunch seems to be the Yamaha AW1600, and perhaps a netbook for the mp3's.
Will get back one day to let any who read this know how things worked out, any suggestions would be really appreciated.

'till next time .....

Explosion in Am7

Dear Diary, this has been quite a hectic month so ....

Anyways, I met this nice chap Arjun on the SA Guitar Forum, he doesn't live too far away, we're both free during the day, so we had a jam.
This isn't a sketch as much as a snippet of the stuff we were doing.

Explosion in Am7
This is a wma file Am7 Dm7 at 95bpm
Arjun playing rhythm and lead guitars, myself bass, Reason3 (Dr Rex) drums.

Here's the forum's thread.

I'll let the tune talk for me, and just say we had some fun, he really liked the tone of the GT-Pro and I got off on his playing ability.

There will hopefully be another tune another time ... watch this space ...

GT-Pro Setup and patches

Just recently I got a Boss GT-Pro fx-rack to work with which is what I'm using ATM to record (via USB) my sketches.
This is unit has some great guitar sounds but not much for a bassist, it is however very configurable if a little noisy.
This page has some good advice which now makes the GT-Pro much quieter.

I was going to include a couple of my bass patches but after reading about the Fletcher Munson curve (the difference in tone at different volumes) originally here for the line6 pod and then here for the GT-Pro.

Basically the frequencies are :

Low cut filter 55hz
Low Eq +12
Low Mid Eq Center 4khz, Q8, -4
High Mid Eq Center 8khz, Q16, +8
High Eq +12
High Cut Filter 11khz

This has given me pause to revisit my patches so I will post them at another time.

A bit about

This blog is an experiment on a number of levels.

I am a bassist based in Cape Town South Africa, I recorded with a couple of bands in the mid '90s.
A few older mp3s.


My main instrument is an Ibanez Musician/Roadster which is a four string bass with 24 frets, and passive pickups but active electronics and so can be played either way. I mostly play passive but find the active useful if the sound dudes is having trouble.

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This blog, TABs mixes etc. are, unless otherwise mentioned, licensed under Creative Commons SA. which means that you may use them in anyway you like, but you must credit its origins, ie you put a link to your site in the mp3 comment field and on your site you place a link to this page. I think that’s how it works. It is also share alike so others can do the same with your work based or borrowed from this.

Please If i have misinterpreted or left something out post a comment, but if nothing else the above should state the intent.

Also should you want higher quality samples, other mixes, or something else similar to what is here, by all means ask.