Prepro is probably the easiest to underestimate in the recording process. It took me quite a few sessions to figure that out as there’s not the clear cut path to follow in my market as far as learning the ropes.

Let’s look at the basic premise of prepro: the producers of the project (bands, producers, engineers) talk over what they hope to end with and how they’re going to achieve it. Will everybody play together at the same time? Is everybody rehearsed, songs selected? Budget? Studio? Schedule?Deliverables? Click track? Rental gear? Do instruments need some tlc from a tech? Etc etc.

At a home studio or pro room ( or any combo of the two ) this simple process is the key to many problems that usually come up later.

It’s a painful lesson to learn, but once you get in the mode of planning, the sessions go sooooo much better. There’s quite a bit less drama in the studio with this short meeting.

Here’s a quick look at what your backup directory should look like. Note the date convention: year, month, day.

I mean, actually, that only you can say no to Quicktime. Updates that is. I should have listened to my own advice.

The other day I was having troubles on my PC with the transport stopping as soon as I press play. It’d backqueue a few milliseconds, and then stall out. After a few attempts, it’d let you play. Further exploration revealed that I was in AIFF as opposed to WAV. (More on why I prefer BWAV over AIFF in a later SMotD.)

I presume that the side grade to a non-standard QT release is what did me. Transcoding for a music video is what got me, I think.

I’ve worked with a few other soft-samplers for Protools and they all seem to be a bit buggy. Native Instruments pianos sound great, but can really flake out. (Using a Mac for my experience here.) I know it seems old fashioned, but the standalone thing worked really well. I ran two midi cables to my Giga machine, and ran a light-pipe back into PT. Lovely! Pretty low latency, and Giga rarely messed up once you got it going. Great sample sets. The first samples I’ve heard that can pass as “real.”

I remember cutting the Twistin’ Trees album. I originally recorded all of the piano tracks late at night on a concert length Steinway. It sounded simply amazing. . . until I got the tracks back on monitors and realized a few key notes were out of tune. I recut everything via midi through Gigapiano (the included one with GS 2) It sounded GREAT! The mastering engineer asked where I cut the piano. I was sold at that point.

A few caveats of course. I’ve never been able to register my software, despite trying the several times I’ve reinstalled over the years. Another is that on one particular mobo I couldn’t get the midi inputs to show up in the sampler. Everything was greyed out. No matter what voodoo I tried, no luck. I had to reinstall windows from the ground up, and it worked. The sample editor (if you’re really trying to make a GS “instrument”) is an absolute pain in the butt. I’d rather code something in assembly (note: I don’t know anything about assembly.)

Flaws included, I look back with fond memories. Of course, I’ll keep using the version I have, but now I’ll never get to know GS 3, and certainly not the short lived 4.

(Pouring coffee onto floor) Here’s one for my homie:

Giga, I hardly knew thee!

Looking around on the web reveals that more and more D2’s are starting to die en masse.  I’d still steer clear.

The culprit? I believe it’s the enclosure to one of my quadra 500 gig drives. During heavy use (such as batch exporting) the drive will “disappear.” Power’s still on (the Lacie support people will always blame this first. As if the power supply is the root of everything that can go wrong with their drives.)

Now I’m backed up (See this tip) so I’m not sweating bullets, but you do lose a few hours of productivity if a drive goes down.

My chain, for anyone who runs into this in the future: Dell E1705 ->Digi002R -> 500gig Lacie Quadra -> (Via FW800) 500gig Lacie Quadra.

My $.02: Avoid Lacie like the plague. A studio I work for lost one three weeks ago and then another started limping the other day. Combined with today’s experience, do yourself a favor. Skip Lacie all together.

I saw The Dark Knight last night for the second time. Everyone seems to be gushing about the film, but a few things occurred to me.

1) TDK is a better film then Batman Begins.

2) I enjoy Batman Begins more.

3) TDK is about 20 minutes too long.

To elaborate, as far as “art” is concerned, I think Nolan’s second outing with the bat-franchise is an improvment over the original. Not that the original is bad. To the contrary: I think that Nolan got as much mileage out of the story and characters as you can in a re-boot.

But why is it better artistically? All of the characters are developed further. The struggle of being Batman is brought to light in a way that hasn’t been done before. Ledger’s Joker is brilliant. The Harvey Dent character is great. Modern moral quandries are addressed without being too condescending (ie the cell phone eavesdropping.) The picture is sophisticated in a way that most blockbusters aren’t.

I just think I enjoy Batman Begins better.

I’d rather sit down after a long days work and put on BB. TDK is more of an event. Much the way the Lord of the Rings extended versions are. I’ll never put one of those on for shear kicks. I love them, but I wouldn’t. Starwars Episode 3: yes. The Return of the King: hell no.

The length is one of the major issues that I have with TDK. It’s about 20 minutes too long. Watching it the second time, I was hard pressed on what you could cut out of the film and yet still retain it’s greatness. Other then about 30 seconds of Bat-poddery the only other thing to do would have been to end the film at the capture of the Joker. Two Faces finale should have been saved for a third film. That’s perhaps the proverbial straw that broke the camels back.

People are quick to criticize, and I understand where they’re coming
from. The band has two very tough acts to follow: Rage Against The
Machine and Soundgarden.

I would still argue that they set the modern rock benchmark for this
decade. Their second record, Revelations, had a ton of hits. All of
the singles deserved the airplay they recieved, too.

Just calling it like I see it.