Tag Archives: software

Too many synthesisers

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Last week I got older and to compensate I bought a red Ferrari a bunch of Arturia virtual synthesisers on the cheap. I think I now own about eleventy billion VSTs – bought, sent by nice companies, picked up for free – and truth be told I can’t remember all of them. There being so many important things I should do this weekend I avoided any of it and instead held a sonic rummage.

I’m past worrying about whether VSTs sound ‘real’. Perhaps not something cobbled together in Synthmaker, but the official versions of gear I’ve owned are impressive. For example Korg’s virtual MS-20 rewards all the tricks I’ve learned over years of owning three of the ‘real’ thing. I’d be tempted to call the MS-20 one of the best virtual synthesisers, but suspect it’s just familiarity talking. (The iPad iMS-20 seems a bit off to me but that could be headphones).

Likewise the SQ-8L. I’ve still got the hardware and have copied over all my patches. They sound as good, perhaps better, in the virtual instrument. Again, I’m an unreliable advocate as the ESQ-M was my wife for a couple of years.

In middle age you’re supposed to get all the things you ever pined for when young. Never owned a Jupiter-8, much too expensive. Owned an SH-1, SH-101, MC-202 roughly same era (the TB-303 Shitbox doesn’t count) and later a MKS-80 ‘Super Jupiter’. I’d previously avoided Arturia’s emulation of the J-8 as the demo proved insanely CPU heavy. It still is, but on an i7 you can get away with it. To check it out I make a sound I know well which mixes a sine and white noise through a very thin gate of high and low pass filter for a breathy tinkling sound. Perfect. But there’s plenty of 2OSC VSTi’s that can do that and more. I’m no longer sure why I was an advocate of Roland gear; the J-8 is not very exciting.

1993, a man surrounded by ‘real’ things. Real tape recorder. Real Super Jupiter. Real Casio CZ101 with strap. Real bright red shirt. Only the bug eyed expression is virtual.

Likewise the Yamaha CS-80, the only interesting thing about it is it’s insanely heavy and falls out of tune. As both problems are fixed in the virtual there’s not much to report apart from it having so many little knobs it tickles my failing eyesight. I’ve used a ‘real’ CS-30, it was ‘reedy’ if I can remember well. I should say in passing that people should stop making a fuss that Stevie Wonder once owned a keyboard. He owned every keyboard. He probably burned them to warm his mansion.

Of Arturia’s suite I think the only ones that will interest me are the Oberheim SEM, which has quite a unique sound and the Prophet VS which is a curiosity – it was Sequential’s last synthesiser before being absorbed by Yamaha, and ended up spawning the SY-22 and the KORG Wavestation. Never owned a Wavestation and never thought about it until I picked up the Legacy Collection – but again and again it’s been useful in creating odd overtones and inharmonics that flesh out sounds from another machine. Pity it’s an arse to program. Instead of the SY-22 I had the SY-77 and I can still feel how heavy that bastard was.

The one manufacturer that has brought me most good times in the new millennium is Native Instruments. They started with the wood grain but pretty soon moved into interfaces that work on a computer.

Simulated red LEDs on a computer screen – triumph of style over substance. To their credit NI very quickly dropped that shit for …

… muted white with larger, easier to see controls. Even if Yamaha chased them off, it inspired them to think about what people are doing.

Interface is part of the sound. If you can’t see what you’re doing then your sound design will be cautious and shallow. I love the FM-8, I had a ‘real’ DX-7 in 1985 that I agonised over, trying to get the kind of seamless waft that Eno could somehow achieve. The FM-8 is dead easy when compared and comes up all Eno in a trice. NI’s Absynth is supposed to look quirky I guess – truth in advertising. I can figure it out – hell I even taught it back at Uni of Western Sydney but imagine how much better it would be if they dropped all the aqua ducting. I also suspect that 90% of the Absynth sound is that resonant pipe effect. Turn it off and you’ll see what I mean.

Wobble bass – someone’s lack of ideas made grimly evident.

But my favourite NI keyboard is Massive. I avoided it for years, because everybody talked about it as dedicated to dubstep = damning it with very faint praise. Massive turns out to be an excellent synthesiser to make your OWN sounds. Starts as a three oscillator virtual analogue PLUS wave tables PLUS modular patching without stupid animated cables PLUS complex controllers. Start with simplicity and make good workhorse sounds, then gradually add the right amount of complexity for the weird and wonderful.

The other workhorse is Synth 1. If I have a sound in mind I can usually dial it up in a few minutes on Synth 1. Nothing unnecessary, nothing unneeded. Apparently it’s based on a Clavia NORD Lead 2, something that came out when I had $50 to my name so I’d have to take their word for it.

If I have neglected Image Line it’s not for the sound of their machines. It’s just that Harmor:

looks like a meat lover’s pizza. It does everything, but it looks like getting there is half the fun. I load it up. I stare at it. I feel the will to make music die off. Most times I use Harmless instead, which sounds absolutely thunderous and needs far less feeding. Both are additive synthesisers that have been tamed behind analogue style controls – which is the holy grail of synthesis really.

There’s not enough time to for me to go on. If you like you can go on with your own loves and hates.

The Academic Industrial Complex

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Right now: Work is renovating our curriculum. Fan shen is not the stated goal but you’d be crazy to miss the chance to scorch earth and build a new church you’d be proud of in 2016, when the first graduates come plopping out the other side. Years of frustration are bubbling up along with the usual academic flights of fantasy. Kind of like pink champagne.

How sausages are made.

The stated goal (put simply) is that students choose a more flexible structure in their degree. They choose a kind of ‘spine’, for example sound production or mathematics, then they add modular tracks that create a good collaboration. So for example Built Environment and Game Design, or Video Production and Performance, or what ever becomes useful in the years ahead. Then sprinkle Electives on top. The idea is good, but mind numbingly difficult.

Figuring out what to do with Audio is a good example. You might want to make Audio a spine to which other courses are connected. But a bit of analysis (pushing pieces of paper around in circles) makes it clear that a wide range of artforms can benefit from sound design. You’d thus place it as a secondary track. But then you have people who just want to create sound work. It has to be both a primary and a secondary track… and also an elective for people who just need basic skills in sound production – hell, put it in EVERY possible configuration. Now you have to make versions of every course for the level of specificity and your attempt to simplify everything ends up making it more complicated.

Or my area – video production. Let’s say I place their first documentary production at the start of year two. That means that they haven’t had a photography course yet, so either I move it along a bit so that photography gets them first, or I bring photography into the course as ‘cinematography’, which then duplicates some of the photography course. If I move it along, then Audio has to move along, because they’ll need to be composing later and … So maybe then I could require a photography course in year one. But year one is earmarked for conceptual learning and one of the things we want to do is have the students actually build concepts before whining about how-big-is-my-camera. And my conviction is that in 2012 anyone that needs to write an essay also needs basic camera skills – so Electives.

It’s like doing multiple jigsaw puzzle at once, where the pieces move on all of them. Which leads to…

I keep reading about how the university system is doomed. Usually the author goes on to tout some kind of ‘online revolution’. That’s a nonsense. People are still squabbling about how to provide a single course online. They are nowhere near figuring out how the hell to guide people through an entire programme of courses. Not. even. started. Go and have a look at Open University or iTunesU courses – they’re all isolated bits and pieces – hobbies and enthusiasms. Popular Mechanics. The word ‘university’ encapsulates that which online libraries cannot achieve.

It’s a good thing that we’re not relying on online teaching because it’s a toxic dump. Any time a paradigm is danger of forming you can bet on some structural weakness causing an embarrassing collapse, finger pointing & excuses. Since I’ve been at Kunst Kamp we’ve had three Learning Management Systems come and go, wasting effort and breeding more Luddites. Last time the Death Star shelled out maximum dollar trying to force some stability – but overspending has not stopped the latest tower from visibly leaning. I’ve backed down from such ideas until a system lasts more than 2 years running.

The leaning tower of Learning Management

BUT: I must admit that having delivered the same lectures 7 or 8 times over the last few years, I’m ready for some other way to deliver the goods. The temptation is to change things to keep yourself from being bored, but the students are still arriving at the ideas for the first time every semester, and the Lumière Brothers still created the Cinematographe whether or not I’m over it.

I need textbooks, electronic documents, with movies and quizzes and all that. Must be the hot spot because that’s where a battle is raging: on the left are Adobe with their InDesign/Folio system, to the right Apple with iBook Author, in the middle are muddles of middleware for Moodle.

That iBooks are poison for information should be clear to anyone (even that utterly predictable shill John Gruber momentarily denounced the idea before his leash was yanked). There is NO WAY I am ever going to make a document that can only be seen on a ‘book’ sold by one publisher. People that defend this because ‘Apple doesn’t owe anything to publishing in general’ should try to remember THE ENTIRE DAMN POINT OF A TEXTBOOK. Jesus, people it’s not football.

That leaves Adobe by default. There’s been an awful lot of leaving Adobe by default recently.

I’ve peeked at InDesign and the folio format. Maybe. I think Acrobat is probably a better idea, even if it’s not designed for Pads it will run on most things and even on paper. The ambition for the coming years is to start making teaching aids that will do the lectures for me – adds work at the front, takes it away at the back. Means that I can segue from running ten tutorials a week to running a script on Mondays. And if indeed universities are going to crumble, well I’ll be on the life raft won’t I?

All aboard the information super barge

Pip pip!

Readers Comments MacWorld August 2036

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DoCfan
Shen is way off the mark with the iDocX review. Apple have come up with a new paradigm for medical treatment here and Big Medicine don’t get it because they are stuck in the old ways. So surgery needs precision – iDocX has it in spades! Simplifying the tool set just means rethinking the way you work. So many doctors work solo now, the group features are overrated (more)
262 people liked this

Laughingas
Just because you did the full medical degree doesn’t make you an expert in everything. This is great for people who just operate around the home. I do all the doctoring in my family and the simple interface is going to make appendectomy heaps easier.
31 people liked this

Galen
iQuackX more like.
117 people liked this

Nightingale
The so called ‘medical professionals’ are hating on this just because it look a bit like iNursing Express. So what! That works for more people and the ones that really do the healing. You can leave Comprehensive Medical Procedures 7 installed any it’s not like medicine moves that quickly! Apple have said they are going to bring oncology back on board real soon.
26 people liked this

Todd
Loving the new Psychiatric Magic Wand. Haters gonna hate!
9 people liked this

Galen
Try it on yourself first
76 people liked this

Snips
This is so disappointing. All we wanted was a 256 bit upgrade. I can’t believe I can’t use this with my existing cases.
119 people liked this

Healing Momma
It’s time that hobbyists got a fair deal!!! I am just as good at CANCER as any doctor (that is NO good)  now everybody gets to be a PRACTITIONER so I say GOOD ON APPLE for dropping the price where a MOM can set up too!
2 people liked this

Faustus
This is a serious wall of shit. Can’t collaborate with another surgeon. All the operations have to go in one theatre, no specialised equipment. All the scalpels removed and some crazy gestural selection tool that I can’t use while staunching flow with a sponge. I’m seriously going to have to look elsewhere after 10 years of practice with CMP. This really sucks.
84 people liked this

R.D. Laing.
How does it feel to be a complete Adobe Fainboi?
11 people liked this

Faustus
I don’t work for Adobe. And I know Practioner CS5 has big problems with leaving metal in the cavity. I just don’t have three hands to sponge and suture at the same time.
43 people liked this

Old Fart
You people just should realise that doing it analogue is the only real way.
0 people liked this

Able Baker
Christ everybody getting all worked up. It’s not like this is anything important like film production or something.
5 people liked this

Murmur
Just because it’s not film production doesn’t mean medicine isn’t a real profession, I hate the way people bandy around the word ‘professional’ like its just a sales tool. I spent 6 years becoming a doctor. My parents wanted me to be an experimental musician, but my heart wasn’t in it. Medicine is professional too, it makes people better and (more)
0 people liked this

Get A Real Job
nt
997 people liked this

Coach Handbags
The lady has the predilection for quality? Is Coach only Coach will satisfy the distinguished and illustrious ladyship! Look she is walk down the road with Coach on shoulder and all the traffic is stopped in admire for it. www.coach.sellingdirect.com.ch
1 person liked this

 

Rough Cut

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I envy people that teach medicine. I mean, I know how hard it is and  all those sick people can’t be fun. But at least the company that ‘makes people’ doesn’t often decide to do a complete reboot. Three heads and seven legs, that sort of thing. No, my job is to teach video production and in my business I have to teach something that can at any moment be made more magical.

Just this week Final Cut Pro became ever so more magical. I mean, pink winged unicorns vomiting rainbows magical.

I’ve heard people call it a debacle. Some say catastrophe. I don’t think that’s a nice thing to say; if a company wants to have sexual congress with a dog, then as long as the dog is consenting I’d say well that’s just thinking different.

What’s the problem? Well for a start you know that some naughty software doesn’t allow you to save so that an older version can load it. That’s called ‘backwards compatibility’ and while PhotoShop is good about it, After Effects is very naughty. Apple have come up with something very magical here in that there is no ‘forwards compatibility’. Final Cut can’t load files made by Final Cut. Just stop there for a moment & be impressed.

It will load files made by iMovie and strangely it has iMovie’s interface and key commands and features and … well y’know one would be tempted to say that this just might be based on iMovie. Y’know? Just sayin’.

Something that was previously intended to handle feature films is now optimised for My Family Vacation. I start a new project and it is saved as an Event. Like My Birthday or My Divorce, rather than say Scene 17 of an existing storyboard and script. What used to be the asset browser now has that … that … well you kind of have to see it for yourself. They have a time line with word wrap. Because long horizontal data imagery works just so well in vertical containers.

Where does the footage go when you capture it? In Movies in your user folder, Silly! OK, so suppose my students are working in a group and need to organise multiple access? Or their user folders are on a server? Hello? Apple? Anyone left in the Pro Applications division? Have you really dropped Final Cut Server?

Once I have managed to edit something, and for the most part the editing is as before (although it’s a bit like an episode of Star Trek where the parallel universe is nearly the same as ours but Captain Kirk is secretly evil) then I get to the point where I want to save this thing. But you can’t save or export your project. You can only SHARE your movie on one of the usual clouds.

OK, so Apple have worked out that they can sell a lot of this to the home enthusiasts, fuck the clique that have been buying it so far. You can’t blame them, it’s in Apple’s blood to find the sweet spot where ‘it just works’, and they dropped the ‘Computer’ a while ago. But I can’t teach on this, technically or in practice and I’m now wondering who is going to take up the industry standard, how long that will take and what the hell I can do in the mean time. If it’s choice between Avid and Adobe, then the latter will do.

When combined with the forthcoming Ipad style OSX Lion the future of the media labs is looking a bit ‘finger painting’. Plenty of people like using iMovie on their iPad. It’s a great simple way to knock up a YouTube video. But we don’t all want to work that way, we are not all average and I don’t want to teach average. Not everything is a cat joke destined for YouTube.

I’ll keep the old version running as long as I can.

Education: Then and Now.

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Then:

  • Teacher: Learn these passages from the Bible by heart.
  • Student: I shall sir, but may I enquire as to the reasoning?
  • Teacher: This is the way it is done by all, and ye shall not quibble upon it.

Now:

  • Teacher: Here is Maya, you’ll be learning that.
  • Student: OK, but why Maya?
  • Teacher: It’s the industry standard.

Don’t be hard on poor teacher, it is the industry standard. But in tonight’s programme we’ll be asking just what makes something the industry standard? Sex? Drugs? Enormous space ships piloted by toads? Or something less obvious?

Industry standard applications are at first glance an ill sorted lot. For every prissy convoluted overly complex video editing tool there’s an almost Neanderthal audio suite. But after some reflection and much alcohol we can start to invent a common thread. As with Shakespeare’s villains we have a noble figure of humanity, troubled by a fatal flaw, which eventually leads to their failure.

Maya.

If you make 3D for a cinema there’s a 90% chance you use Maya. (Unless you’re one of those crazy bastards that uses Houdini because you also like riding your sports bike off a cliff onto a moving trampoline.) Recently Maya was bought by Autodesk because they wanted to lose money on two major applications instead of just Max.Yes, the leading 3D animation tools lose money hand over fist – the ones that actually sell are the ones that professionals would not touch with a stick. Here we can post a rule:

Rule 1: if it’s easy to use and very affordable it can’t be the industry standard.

The quality of Maya can be seen time and time again in the results. A nobleman among programs. But look at the interface:Mayahem

Here we have dynamic menus, pop down menus, pop up menus, radial menus, ‘shelves’, dialogues, and a really really bad case of iconitus. If this was a teenager it’d be ‘edgy’ or just ‘pimply’. Now I have very little experience with Maya so far and I may be yet to understand but either this interface grew over years of tinkering or the person that invented it has florid hebephrenic schizophrenia. Either way it breaks so many usability and educational concepts it needs a specially minted medal.

Pro Tools LE.

It’s been said before – it needs to be said again. There is a moment when you are teaching Pro Tools when you have to explain that if you have an hour long programme to bounce down and it’s due on air in 45 minutes, it’s Game Over. The student looks at you like you are insane, knowing at least 5 other programs that will export that audio in 5 minutes and asks, what is this?

You’ve got two ways you can run this message. Official: Pro Tools HD is hardware based and LE has to fit in with that and besides running the mix through the hardware insures always that what you hear in the mix down is what you get – no surprises. Alternative: That PT needs to pass that signal through that big fat blue dongle called an M box to make damn sure it’s a legit copy of PT. The student looks at you like you’re a tool either way.

When you get to RTAS, they are questioning you again. Yes that’s right, the effects that you use in Pro Tools only work in Pro Tools. Yes, industry standard means no one else in the industry uses them. No I am not a tool, kindly refrain from looking at me like that.

Rule 2: there has to be some convoluted reason why it won’t work with anyone else’s software.

Fortunately, Apple has come up with Audio Units as part of their ‘we are the computing equivalent of North Korea’ strategy. They make Digidesign look good. Speaking of Apple:

Final Cut Pro.

Most common question in any FCP class: why do we use this when every single other application we use is by Adobe? I have Premiere, why can’t I use that? Can I do this at home on Premiere instead? I tried barking at them but recently a stony silence showing lots of teeth seems to work best.

No kids, you have to pretend that the Pr isn’t next to Ae and Ps in the dock. Final Cut is the industry standard, and it’s much to do with a fight between Apple and Adobe over Intel versions that by a process of attrition let Henny Penny reach the top of the coop. Besides Final Cut is fun to use – it comes with games! Adventure game: move your mouse slowly over the interface looking for hidden features! Puzzle game: using the resize bar at the bottom of the timeline, puzzle out which way the timeline is going to zoom. Gambling game: which way will the fields in your PAL video export flip this time? Wish it came with a shoot ‘em up.

Rule 3: Overcoming arbitrary behaviour of industry standard tools provides teaching businesses with income.

Actually if you just want to edit video efficiently use Vegas.

Photoshop.

Ps is the good guy. The prince charming. If you ever grumble about photoshop then you need to be forced to use an alternative for a few days. That will learn you. If you are very bad we’ll make it The Gimp.

Quark.

Actually this is a cautionary tale. When I was a layout grunt, there was Quark. That was it. When Adobe first brought out Indesign, there was good natured shaking of heads. Everybody used Quark. The printers used Quark. What would you do with Indesign? There would be nowhere to get the damn thing printed! Just as I was ‘being made redundant’, a job came in from somewhere in Asia. An Indesign file. My job was to remake the whole thing in Quark, but we had to get Indesign to open it. It was a bit like Illustrator so that was alright, but no one more senior was going to touch the filthy thing.

Rule 4: Industry standards can change mighty fast.