Not one but two more songs ...

April 28th, 2008

Sorry for the tardiness of late but I’m busy mastering another two tracks for release. Unfortunately my schedule right now does not permit me much time in the studio with a trip pending I’m slammed trying to tie up loose ends.

That being said, I’ve changed the order in which tracks will be released. ‘Ne Plus Ultra’ is not going to be the next single out but rather a track called, ‘Anathema (Have Faith Mix)’. The track is predominantly trance but with a distinct house bass line. This last minute change is due to some creative ideas coming together quite recently. “Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?” Anyway, sometimes things just click and so this will be the next single I’ll be bringing to a close and releasing.

I will probably insist on releasing ‘Ne Plus Ultra’ shortly thereafter. I feel bad for this song because it has been sitting on the shelf for a while now and has been 99% done for far too long. Believe it or not it’s actually a track I’m quite fond of and need to just pull the trigger and get it out there. I guess this is a good problem to have …?

I can hardly believe that I’m talking about teeing up not one but two more tracks for release and talking about completing the release of an EP. It seems to have taken so long to make it to this point and I didn’t think it would ever happen many, many times. I’ve even started to enjoy not only the writing process but also the mastering and mix down process learning to incorporate many of the skills I have as a DJ has made this a great deal of fun. So, with all of this progress and enjoyment I imagine more tracks are around the corner.

I know I promised a release date for a new song late last week and had hoped to pin point another date when the next single would be released but I’ve been agonizing over the most ridiculous of details on this track in order to get it to sound, not perfect, but just how I want it. Remember, if it’s set in stone and I can’t change it, it needs to be something I can live with ?

Stay tuned …

Bounty Hunter Art work released ...

April 24th, 2008

It's not normal to release a single without artwork - are some of the comments I've heard from people. Well, the reality is I didn't. The single has artwork I just didn't post it with the song and it doesn't come as part of the mp3 when you purchase and download the song. In any event, below is the art work for the new song, 'Bounty Hunter'. Which is still on sale and the proceeds are still going to charity so if you have not purchased a copy yet you can do so from Music Freedom.

Analog Factory: I recently purchased Analog Factory from Arturia. A virtual synth that contains 3,500 sounds from 7 famous analog synths. Was it a worthwhile addition to my large inventory of synths or just another synth that's going to collect dust?

April 24th, 2008

As I mentioned above, I recently purchased Analog Factory adding yet another virtual synth to my already large inventory of synths. Analog Factory contains a total of 3,500 analog synthesizer sounds (instead of 2000 in the first version) and is a veritable rollup of many of the famous analog synths of the past. The package contains two of my favorite analog synths, the CS-80V and the ARP 2600 V. I had been using Analog Factory on demo for a while and loved the subset of sounds that it came with (approx. 140) so I decided to splurge on the full version.

The complete version comes with 3,500 presets carefully selected from Arturia's Classic Synths (minimoog V, Moog Modular V, CS-80V, ARP 2600 V, Prophet V,  Prophet VS and Jupiter-8V). The package itself is extremely good value when you look at the sheer number of patches you get. However, it should be made clear that this package is not intended for the hardcore sound designer. In fact it's intended for individuals who need or want a large variety of analog sounds at their finger tips with minimal sound designing capabilities. What's made available are only the essential sound tweaking knobs with the most essential parameters for personalizing presets: (Filter and LFO sections, 4 Key Parameters differing for each preset, Chorus & Delay mix, ADSR envelope). Which is a major disappointment if you're intending to attempt any kind of sound design with this tool. In its favor however, it does feature a Smart Preset Manager. You can fast filter the presets to your requirements: by Instrument, by Type (Bass, Pads, Leads…) and/or by Characteristics (hard, soft, complex, simple, short, long…), and find presets according to these filtered choices. It's a handy feature but one that could have been skipped in place of some more sound shaping capabilities.

So does all of this and the ability to organize the Presets in a view by Name, Instrument, Type, CPU usage, Favorites, or User Presets etc make this a worthwhile purchase? I'm on the fence on this one; while it's great to have patches available from all of the famous synths, it's hugely disappointing to have them available and not be able to morph and change them to suit your needs. Never the less, this is a nice addition to my collection and a fantastic way to audition the synths in the Arturia collection before you spend the money and purchase any of them individually. I have already begun using this on some of my productions and am utilizing other sound shaping tools to morph the sounds into something I can better utilize going forward.

The response has been phenomenal!

April 22nd, 2008

Wow, I'm shocked! The response to the new song, the one I thought wasn't very good, has been incredible. I can't believe so many people have taken the time to write me and give me such kind feedback. Thank you all! It's very encouraging and certainly provides the impetus for me to hurry up and complete the second single from the album.

My plan is to release the second song from the album titled, 'Ne Plus Ultra' which is Latin for 'the highest point, as of excellence or achievement, the pinnacle, the ultimate…'. This is a song that's been 95% complete for some time and was simply waiting for the album to be released. I’m in the process of mastering it now and it should get an official release date in the next few days. Stand by ...

Purchase my music and feed a child!

April 21st, 2008

Now you can purchase my music online! I'm finally biting the bullet and releasing my own music officially. You can listen to and purchase my music from the link below. Remember, all proceeds from the sale of my album(s) and songs will be donated to charity, specifically the World Food Programme.

Fill the Cup! It takes just 25 US cents to fill one of the "Red Cups" that the World Food Programme uses to give hungry children a regular school meal of porridge, rice or beans. US$15 would feed 10 children for a week. So the purchase of one of my songs will feed a child one meal!

I respect the fact that people give charity in their own way and I dislike it when people force charity down my throat. So please do not feel pressure to purchase or donate. However, if you like the song please purchase it and I will make sure the money makes its way to some deserving child!

The first single from the new album...

April 21st, 2008

I've been talking a great deal about the new album of late to a lot of people. Ongoing work is going very well and I'm writing and producing almost daily. In light of the fact that it takes a while to complete an album of 12-14 songs and given most people (myself included) don't have a great deal of patience to wait, I've decided to release singles from the album before the album is completely finished.

Consistent with that thinking, I'm releasing an early version of a track called, 'Bounty Hunter'. This track is not yet mastered but is pretty close to finished. I should be mastering it in about 2 weeks along with one or two other tracks. The song will receive an official release along with another techno track I've been working on shortly after that on Didactic records.

Anyway, enough talking from me, enjoy!

Live DJ Set from last October

April 16th, 2008

I've been pretty bad about posting links to my DJ sets. This is a set from last Halloween that I happened to be placing on the site for someone else and I thought, why not share it with everyone? Enjoy!

DJ Bri, Live from Marina Bay, Halloween 2007

Vangelis: Vangelis speaks out in a very rare BBC interview

April 12th, 2008

If you're like me and the Vangelis sound track changed your life to some degree, then you'll perhaps be interested in listening to this rare interview with the man behind the famous Vangelis soundtrack and the one everyone knows, the Chariots of Fire.

Fill a red cup and stop the food riots

April 10th, 2008

It’s hard to believe that in this day and age food riots still take place, that there are parts of this world that can barely afford to eat. If you’re interested, please read on.

Food prices are rising around the world. In an interview with ABC News, Gregory Barrow, senior public affairs officer at the World Food Program (WFP), said that "the WFP has identified a number of countries that have been badly affected, and we have identified a type of country that's most likely to suffer from rising food prices."

The poorest country in the Americas, Haiti has seen some of the worst food-related riots in recent months, with protestors taking to the streets, burning tires and looting shops. As the vast majority of Haiti's population struggles to get by on less than $2 a day, the rising prices of staple food items like rice and beans have left many Haitians angry with the government for not reducing taxes on foodstuffs.

President Rene Preval recently acknowledged that the country's problems were related to its dependence on imported rice and promised to boost food production. But opposition leaders immediately attacked him for doing little to address immediately the issue of food shortages.

Rising fuel costs have also made transportation of foodstuffs increasingly expensive, making the current global crisis especially painful for this nation, which already suffers from extreme poverty. On Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked donors to provide emergency aid to Haiti.

Food prices are rising across all of Africa - due to the cost of oil and demand for bio-fuels. This is causing social unrest throughout northern and western African countries and sometimes deadly violence, such as in Cameroon.

I recall seeing images of starving children throughout the world when I was younger. Images of children with bloated bellies and cheek bones protruding. Horrifying images that do and should stay with you for a life time. Remember the feeling of horror and helplessness? Now we’re adults. We’ve grown up. We’re the next generation, the generation with the control and the know how to prevent this from happening … but do we have the will?

I cannot urge you enough, to make a donation to the World Food Programme. Go without your Dunkin Donuts coffee or some other luxury for just one day and make a donation to a child, or family that’s in need today.

We cannot change the world alone but we can change it in our own small way. My new album is going to be released very shortly and I have vowed/promised that ALL, not some but ALL of the proceeds from the new album and the proceeds from the sale of all of the singles and gigs will be donated to help the starving people around the world.

We all have a choice, to ignore or get off your butt and help! Which will you choose?

The Juno 60 is plucked from the Roland family of vintage synths and undergoes a revival but is it relevant in today's modern dance music?

April 10th, 2008

I've always been a fan of the Juno family of synths, heck most of the records that attracted me to dance music were created using the Juno 105. As a side bar, I recently acquired the vintage Juno 105 (extremely hard to find) in excellent condition more than 20 years old. The Juno synths are synonymous with great sound and so the introduction of a virtual synth, the TAL U-NO-60 Virtual Roland Juno 60 VSTi that reproduces the original Juno 60's sound is a great idea in my opinion!

You can decide for yourself if you can find a place in your studio for it. The virtual synth is available in both Mac and PC versions and can be downloaded from Tal Togu Audio.

Ableton: now you can have it your way

April 10th, 2008

It's now possible to create your own custom skins for Ableton via a free application. You can find more details and download it from here: Sonic Transfer

Configuring Ableton to utilize virtual synths more effectively

April 10th, 2008

Actually, the title of this post is not quite accurate, it should probably say, "configuring Ableton to work AT ALL when plugging in virtual synths". I've recently been working on a new track for Diggers for the North America tour and had major latency issues when trying to use any virtual synths inside of Ableton Live. After some research and digging around the application's under pinning's I noticed the following settings needed to be changed in Ableton.

The CPU Preferences contain a Plug-In Buffer Size setting for balancing plug-in latency and performance. Here you can set the number of samples processed at any one time by a plug-in. Higher settings may result in a noticeable performance increase but will also result in higher latencies (not favorable). With the "As Audio Buffer" setting selected, the plug-in will calculate the exact number of samples per millisecond as the computer's sound card. This setting usually means that very few dropouts or performance problems will occur, especially with DSP cards. The size of the computer's sound card buffer (i.e., the number of samples it calculates per millisecond) can be set using the Buffer Size setting in the Audio Preferences.

This improved the situation but didn't resolve the drop outs and constant pops in the audio rendering. So a deeper investigation turned up issues with one of the latest Airport updates from Apple. It turns out, and it's not the first time, that Apple screwed up the virtual memory allocation of the Airport application and the resulting monopoly of memory kills the effective use of things like virtual synths hosted from DAWs which are widely agreed to be a huge memory hog as they crunch numbers to produce sound in virtual memory. Simply disable Airport and for that matter, DVD usage, Spot Light and any other application that's irrelevant while using your DAW, and you should be good. There is no update from Apple on when there'll be a fix for the Aiport patch that worsened performance. If you insist on using Airport while you compose, edit, mix in your DAW you could experiment with an earlier version of the Airport drivers. The drivers for Aiport are located here: Mac HD>System>Library>Extensions, and can be replaced by an earlier working patch version. I've made physical modifications in here myself in the past and resolved similar issues but haven't tried this with this new issue.

Good luck :)

Devolder Wins Tour of Flanders

April 9th, 2008

Stijn Devolder (Quick Step) has won the Tour of Flanders. The Belgian champion surged away from a group of four approximately 26km from the finish to win the 264-km classic in 6:24:02. A brave yet daring move which did not seem to be coordinated with his team leader, Tom Boonen, who had fantastic legs on the day. I believe as is usual, Tom would have won this race as he has always shown his class and dominance in the Spring classics. Unfortunately I did not see the race in it's entirety as Sunday was spent in the Airport ...

The TB303 goes virtual

April 7th, 2008

If you're not ashamed to let people know your age then you can reminisce with me about the days when the Roland TB303 was utilized on almost every club record you played. The distinctive and unmistakable "acid line" as it was called back then (a nod to the drugs that went hand in hand with most club nights in the late 80s and early 90s) has now gone out of vogue and there are few modern club tracks that include such a sound. All of that may change if AudioRealism's BassLine 2 grows in popularity.

To be frank, I've never been a big fan of the TB303 or that acid line sound and can't recall a single record that I've been a fan of that included it. Personal taste aside, this is a genuine quality reproduction of the famous retro synth and for those that have been fans of that sound will provide an authentic, easy to use and fun trip down memory lane. You can find more details at AudioRealism's website.

The coolest DJ controller ever?

April 6th, 2008

Maybe, you decide, EKS

Make your Mac Book even cooler ... LITERALLY!

April 5th, 2008

CoolBook is a tool for the MacBook and MacBook Pro computers. It lets you monitor the frequency, voltage and temperature of the CoreDuo / Core2Duo CP. It's neat and it does work. Check it out: Cool Book

Refuse to let spam control your life

April 2nd, 2008

If you've made a number of purchases online you've probably had the email address you used for order confirmation sold to marketing companies who are now sending you endless amounts of spam. So they're now at least daily and some times hourly it seems, filling your inbox with all sorts of of junk that you're never going to read let alone purchase the garbage that they're pushing. As a side note, is erectile disfunction really that wide spread that we're pushing Viagra to this extent? Anyway ...

Although there are many solutions to the spam problem I chose to adopt a method that would resolve it on my Blackberry device. If like me, you use your Blackberry for work and you often scan it when you're running from the plane, between meetings or whatever the scenario may be to figure out if the house is burning down the last thing you need is to look at the message indicator and see over 300 junk emails. The possibility of missing something important is too high. So, I decided to look for a solution and I'm pleased to say Antair have implemented a very elegant and successful solution to the problem.

Antair have a piece of software called, the BlackBerry Spam Filter 3.0. It's an intelligent piece of software that figures out which messages are spam (and which are not) and removes them from your inbox to a spam box for later review, if you so desire, so you can double check that it didn't make any mistakes. I've been using the product for less than 2 weeks and already it's removed over 2,000 junk emails and kept track of the offending domains and email addresses for me so that it can filter future junk. The program is smart enough to not filter anyone in your address book and has a whole host of nice features, most of which are not available in the trial version.

You can learn more and even download a 30 day limited functional demo here, Antair I highly recommend it!