2009
Melodyne came out. Am I the only one in the music industry that thinks that playing in tune, in the correct key, in the first place is preferable to "fixing it in the mix?" I think so. While I appreciate the science behind this product, I think its necessity is questionable, and its use will no doubt suck any iota of remaining life out of pop music productions. On the other hand, once it is cracked it will lead to hundreds of exciting new mash-ups from the BoingBoingistas. Did I tell you I heard The Doors "Riders On The Storm" mashed with Blondie's "Rapture" the other day? Surely there's a law against that somewhere. If there is, I'd like to make a citizen's arrest against whoever did that.
Also, too, TC released a free reverb, M30. It is well-priced in my opinion. Although, for what it's worth, I still haven't forgiven TC about that whole Powercore Thing, so any opinions I toss off about their products, free or otherwise, should be taken with a large dose of NaCl. Caveat Emptor.
On the home front, DroneStation was rejected by Apple, but it was totally my fault. I had commented out the idiot check stuff from the state saving mechanism while testing, and I forgot to replace it. As a result, the person that went to test it for the app store got a crash in one easy step. I've put up a new binary, and as soon as they see fit to test it again, I have every belief that it will be available in short order.
And Tattoo is definitely winding up on the Windows side. The only thing of any note remaining is to get the cymbal sounds better. As soon as that's done, we'll move to the OSX side of things. Expect to be hearing a lot about that this week.
posted November 16, 2009 by Computer Controlled
posted November 16, 2009 by stepwriterun
So what do you think: two AD related instrument releases in the next week or two? Not bad.
posted November 16, 2009 by Funkybot
posted November 16, 2009 by 33degrees
On the other hand, I think there's more great new music available today than there ever has been. So if you ask me, the benefits of technology far outweigh the negatives. Not everyone shares that viewpoint however.
posted November 16, 2009 by Funkybot
Technology is a double edged knife...
posted November 16, 2009 by Computer Controlled
It will tune notes within a chord. Sometimes. So either you have the wrong and chord and want to change it, or a note is out or tune in the chord. How freakin often does this happen to these people? I can't think of how often I would take the time to tune a guitar track rather than replay it.
I'm not saying it's useless, I'm saying; How often are you really going to use that feature?
bb
posted November 16, 2009 by bongo_x
Now that I've got some better gear I'd like to retrack some of those demos and I've become partial to some of arrangements where I heavily improvised guitar parts and didn't bother to take notes.
I used to feel ashamed about this but I once read somewhere that Metallica had to relearn how to play Dyer's Eve from a guitar magazine for one of their recent tours so it can happen to successful bands. Nope, still feel ashamed.
posted November 16, 2009 by spittingangels
At least you can look at previous decades AE fads and they have some charm. Like wah wah guitars, disco strings, gated snare, two-hand tapping guitar solos, etc. But the Autotune, Beat Detective and L3, well, I hope someone goes back and remixes the decent rock albums of the last decade. Both of them.
Free + TC reverb = pass for me too. I don't even like their expensive stuff.
posted November 16, 2009 by synthetic
I tried the M30. Not that bad, but not all that good, in my opinion. Does this sound anything like the Powercore reverbs? I've only heard the TC reverbs in the old editing program for OS 10.1 (lousy reverbs, but a great editing program), and the TC 6000, which sounds really nice.
I can't tell if TC just isn't good at the software reverbs, or if they are going for the sparse thing of the really early Lexicon hall reverbs. The M30 uses a LOT of CPU, for sure.
posted November 16, 2009 by seancostello