Wed, 2 April 2008
Hello and welcome to installment 18 of Making Music with OS X. This time around I'll be
giving you the lowdown on where exactly the podcast and blog have been
for the last few months, talking about some new projects that I have in
the works, giving you a quick review the very cool Apogee Duet audio
interface and, as usual, I'll be covering some cool free
music software for OS X. ---------- New Website First order of business is to let you all know about the new website for Making Music with OS X. You can find all of the new blog entries, show notes and previous podcast installments of Making Music with OS X at www.MMwOSX.com. I've also been working on a major update/overhaul to my website cliff truesdell dot com. As a result I've been deleting some of the older pages, including the links to the free loops I've been giving away as well as the free loop, virtual instrument and plug-in effects links. All of those links have also been posted www.mmwosx.com and you'll find them just below the blog entry for this installment. ---------- Introducing Reason 4 The main "reason" that Making Music with OS X has been out of commission for the last few months is that I've been working on a new book called "Introducing Reason 4." This new book is a complete beginner to intermediate level look at Propellerhead's Reason 4 virtual studio software. It includes chapters covering all of Reason 4's new features, such as the RPG-8 Monophonic Arpeggiator, the Thor Polysonic Synthesizer and of course the program's very cool new sequencer functionality. I'll be talking a lot more about the book in the coming weeks and probably devoting some future installments of MMwOSX specifically to working with Reason. You can find out more about the book at www.IntroducingReason4.com. The book will be out on April 7, 2008 and it's already available for pre-order on Amazon. If you pre-order on Amazon you'll get an additional 5% off the already low, low price. I know, I sound like one of those cheesy guys on TV... Find out more about Introducing Reason 4 here. The book also comes with an included CD that has lots of example files to guide you through the various tutorials you'll find in each chapter. As an extras bonus there's a free ReFill containing exclusive REX content from www.BeatHive.com. Digital audio educators, bloggers and magazine writers, please feel free to hit me or the people at Sybex publishing up for a review copy. you can contact me here at me new email address: cliff at mmwosx.com Speaking of Amazon - for those of you who still haven't purchased a copy of my first book "Mastering Digital Audio Production" there are lots of new and used copies for sale on Amazon and prices start at around $15. - a pretty good deal for a $40 book. Mastering Digital Audio Production ---------- MMwOSX YouTube Channel Making Music with OS X now has it's own YouTube channel. This is something I had talked about in earlier episodes and have finally gotten around to. There are 4 videos up there right now. the first is a look at one method that I use for quickly creating loops using Ableton Live and Reason 4. There's also a three part series on creating Apple Loops with Reason, including exporting, audio editing and using the Apple Loops Utility. I'll be adding more videos in the coming weeks so be sure to head over there and take a look. www.youtube.com/mmwosx. ---------- Ableton Live 7 Videos I've also been working on an update to my video title at HowAudio.com on Ableton Live. They'll be posting that soon over there. In the meantime you should check them out and take a look at some of the new titles they've got. I've just finished watching the Battery 3 and and Axiom 61 titles, which are great. There's also very cool titles on B3 organ drawbars, acoustic guitar miking and a lot more. www.HowAudio.com ---------- BeatHive Store My loop store over at BeatHive.com is now officially up and running. It's called "Mission Control," named after my sunny little home studio in San Francisco's Mission district (even though I'm actually on the other side of the country right now, but that's another story...). I've posted about 80 loops over there so far and I'll be adding more every week. Be sure to check it out here: www.beathive.com/shops/missioncontrol ---------- Apogee Duet Review As part of an ongoing attempt to make my studio at least somewhat portable I recently purchased the Apogee Duet audio interface. This is an amazing little device and iif you are interested in combining high quality and portability in an audio interface the Duet should be high on your list of devices to check out. The Duet comes with a breakout cable with 2 1/4 inch instrument inputs and 2 XLR inputs. however, it's not possible to use all four at once - you can only use any 2 at a time. This is great for recording say, acoustic guitar with one microphone and voice with another or recording one instrument at once. It's probably not the interface you are going to want if you are recording a complete drum kit or a live recording situation that requires multiple inputs. Installing the Duet was very easy. Just a quick trip over to www.apogeedigital.com to download the drivers and software and from there it was pretty easy to get up and running. The Duet comes with it's own software called Maestro. Once installed Maestro starts up automatically when you start your Mac. You can make adjustments in the Maestro Control window to choose which inputs (1/4 inch or XLR) are active, turn on phantom power for your condenser mics, adjust volume levels and more. One nice feature is the ability to save and recall configurations. For example - attached to the breakout cables I have 2 condenser microphones a bass and an electric guitar. Since you can only have two active inputs at any one time I have 1 configuration for the two condenser microphones, for recording acoustic guitar and vocals. Once those tracks are done I can go to the Maestro File menu and quickly choose the configuration for electric guitar and bass, and then record those tracks. I could just as easily create more configurations, such as one for vocals and electric guitar or vocals and bass. The Duet has been specifically touted as integrating seamlessly with Logic and GarageBand, and this is definitely the case. Getting a up and running in Logic 8 was as simple an experience as I've had. Ditto with GarageBand, though I haven't spent much time with GarageBand and the duet. The Duet has also been absolutely a breeze to work with in Ableton Live 7. Looking at photos and reading descriptions online I was a little concerned about the unique hardware aspect of this device. It doesn't look or operate very much like the standard M-Audio or Digidesign audio interfaces I've worked with before. After working with it for just a few minutes it became very clear that the it's sturdy, solid, well-built and not at all complicated. As far as audio quality goes, I can't compare it to my previous other interfaces right now because I don't currently have access to my Pro Tools rig and I'm working on an entirely new system with entirely new gear (a story for a another day...). However, a quick look around the Web will tell you that the general consensus is that this thing sounds great, especially in comparison to many other audio interfaces. I definitely wouldn't disagree. You can find pictures and product information about the Duet at www.apogeedigital.com/duet. ---------- The Free Kore Player One of the coolest new free virtual instruments I've seen in a while is the free Kore Player from Native Instruments, released just last month. This is available as free download from www.native-instruments.com and can be expanded with a variety of Kore Soundpacks, all of which are pretty inexpensive. The Kore Player is a big file and when I first when to the NI site to get it the download took a loooong time. I have seen an email from Native Instruments about a faster d/l being availble, which is good. It is a free instrument and therefore somewhat limited in the number of availble patches, but the ones it comes with are for the most part very good. There's some nice "standard" instruments, like organ and acoustic bass along with some cool synthesizer patches and soundtrack-y ambient pads. There are some very good drum kits included and the Kore Player can also be used as an effects processor, though there are a very limited number of effects settings that come with the free version. I've posted an overview tutorial movie on the Kore Player on the Making Music with OS X YouTube channel. www.native-instruments.com ---------- That's all for now - thanks for stopping by! Cliff email me: cliff at mmwosx dot com Category: Blog -- posted at: 11:47 AM Comments[0] |
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