noizZze

Many of you know me as a music geek. That would be a correct assessment of my attitude to everything composing / hardware / software related. I like experimentation, layering sounds, playing with tune structure and working on tiniest sonic details that are so subtle that affect the listener only on the subconscious level, like ghost notes and other miniature stuff.

I wrote before about the hardware MIDI console we built with my Farther for the live performances (and also see here). Not that I do lots of these lately, but we both enjoy building things and it was an excellent opportunity to create something beautiful and particularly useful.

Today I finally made a decision to make a purchase of the boxed version of an excellent Ableton Live 7 Suite — the best sequencer, sound editor and live session tool I’ve used over the years of my composing geekery. Not that I’m a pro in a $1.5M studio, but my personal taste says that neither Logic, nor Cubase, nor anything else works for me better. Now what the package includes (just to tease you and myself a bit):

• Ableton Live 7 itself
• Sampler — impressive multi-sample playback instrument with everything open to automation
• Operator — simply my latest favorite in the world of synthesizers
• Electric — instrument modeling classic electric pianos
• Tension — synthesizer modeling stringed instruments
• Analog — the analog sound beauty unleashed
• Drum Machines — huge collection of vintage drum samples in superb quality (Roland 606/707/808/909, Linndrum, Oberheim DMX and many more)
• Session Drums — 29Gb library of acoustic drum samples in multi-mic raw and processed versions ready for production
• Essential Instruments Collection 2 — massive set of instruments from drums to pianos and basses.

As you can see this even sounds massive. Having some experience with Ableton products and knowing who is the main visionary behind everything (yeah, you are right, it’s Robert Henke aka Monolake), I have no doubt it’s a money well-spent deal and will definitely pay off if not in the financial sense then simply as an excitement booster.

At the moment I mailed the request for the invoice (if you don’t pay VAT, you can ask them to subtract it from the price, which is really nice of you guys) and waiting for the response. My plans are to keep you posted on the progress and results. I believe It may be interesting to my fellow composers here in Ukraine to learn about the experience with the Ableton customer care service, prices and delivery times.

By the way, in case it reaches you Robert, I saw you didn’t know (during the Melbourne workshop) if there was someone in Europe playing live using the home-made MIDIbox controller and Live. Well, I do.

Today is a BIG DAY for the crimusic.info — our local Crimean Modern Music Portal. That would be two Birthday celebrations:

• 4 years of the portal itself
• 1 year of the Aestetics (”Estetika”) radio program

It’s pointless to mention that the show is going to be spectacular. Crowds of clubbers, creative folks and fellow composers — everyone is going to be there. Amazing! I’m in anticipation of long talks on hardware, MIDI, 8-bit madness and recent electronic world music trends. Hey, it’s going to be magical.

The place is almost 100 kms away from where we live, but nevertheless we are going to join our friends on the long 2-hour drive and have a great night.

Hope to see you all there!

This week I stumbled across many interesting things, but here are the two most valuable for your Friday enjoyment.

Pretty and functional DHTML calendar for web applications. This one is the best I’ve seen so far. It’s used in some of my favorite web apps and I’m using it in my own projects. Easy styling, nice integration, ability to show date / time in one field and store the computer-digestible version in another, very quick start through lots of examples, PDF documentation.

And now the amazing has_finder Rails plug-in to convert many standard single-line finder methods into a nice declarative beauty. I’m just beginning to use it, and the Rails edge has already adopted it. Kosher, with no side-effects.

I’m thinking of making this kind of posts more frequent. It’s a nice reminder to me and a great source to those who value my advice.

Finally upgraded my blog to WP 2.5 today. Looks so sweet that I can’t help sharing it with you.

The administrative part is completely reworked, and it was a stressful experience to see the updated Dashboard, but eventually I’m getting used to it (sort of).

Basically I like the AJAXy Write Post page packed with nice “Add media” section, dynamic tags and categories, improved editor and many other things. It became much lighter and noticeably easier to use.

Give it a spin, it’s worth it!

• Short screencast on new WP 2.5 look and some features
• Download page

By the way, I find it a lot easier to maintain and upgrade when WP is installed by checking the code out of the Subversion repository. The whole upgrade process takes counted minutes as it involves running a single command to update sources and opening the database upgrade page in the browser. Check the WP on Subversion page for more details.