Shouting Grounds

Anyone who has ever seen Lost Highway already knows David Lynch has a pretty wack-a-doo mind. As such, the video below should come as no surprise.

The reason you fine and upstanding people get to see it here today is because I find it simultaneously awesome and disturbing, and in my world that makes it newsworthy.

I know I’m a little late to the game in discovering this, but I couldn’t be more excited. Back in the late 80′s and early 90′s (and I suppose still to this day) there was a music phenomenon of sorts that allowed any computer user (that wasn’t an adept programmer) to create full musical compositions via a sample-based utility known as a tracker.

The early tracker application “VicTracker” for the Commodore Vic-20.

Trackers come in all shapes and sizes but they have evolved from utilities that meet the “bare minimum requirements of music making” to full blown powerhouses of sample and virtual instrument manipulation. The tracker that I started with back in 1996 was Impulse Tracker. Seen here in all it’s glory.

I liked Impulse Tracker at the time because it was all I knew, but having inherited a hardware synthesizer from my father I started to want more MIDI implementation in my software. Plus, at the time, there was a sort of chic-vacuum when using trackers. Probably from my inexperience in using Impulse Tracker I assumed that things like Groove Quantization and virtual instruments were not possible with a mere tracker. I also had discovered that I could load samples into my Sound Blaster 64 AWE and sequence them in Calkwalk with full-blown DSP effects! I started moving away from trackers thinking that I would be much better off using Calkwalk then eventually Logic for all my music making.

I have to admit that I’ve been able to do a lot with the much more expensive software packages like Logic. Multi-track recording is obviously suited for the bigger apps, but since I primary make electronic/dance music, multi-track recording is usually unnecessary. Enter Renoise…

Renoise has re-lit my appreciation for trackers like I never felt possible. It creates a bridge between what I wanted from a digital audio workstation (DAW) and what I need as an electronic musician. Sure it doesn’t have a full multi-track recording interface but it allows you to export all tracks into a DAW should you want to throw in some real instruments. Or you can just sample. There’s a sample editor, recorder, and generator built-in, including the ability to cue up any portion of that sample at any speed, direction, or repeat-rate.

It’s really liberating to have a tool that allows me to compose while within the limiting constraints of a train seat with only my laptop; nothing else. I’ve been searching for a really small MIDI instrument to control my other apps, but now I have the perfect input device, the computer keyboard. Sequencing is a dream when you’re just a keyboard shortcut away from any feature.

I was hesitant to use Renoise because of my prior experiences with Trackers, but Renoise is built for electronic music, has VST/VSTi support, is PC and Mac compatible and is actively developed. Yes, it’s not as Free as Impulse Tracker was back in the day, but 90 bucks is a steal for what this will do for your creativity.

I’ll be sure to post some samples of things I’m working on, but right now I’m just happy to be creating again.

The ProjectMix I/O is M-Audio’s answer to the more expensive Digidesign (despite being part of the same company, AVID), Tascam, and Mackie control surfaces. It gives you a flexible audio interface and motorized fader-based control-surface. I’ve debated making the leap in purchasing this thing on several occasions. I don’t have any need for it now, but seeing how M-Audio likes to drop driver support for certain products, I’m glad I didn’t pick it up.

It’s safe to assume that the ProjectMix I/O is one of (if not) the flagship devices M-Audio makes currently. OS X Leopard (10.5 to be exact) was released October of 2007 and M-Audio still has not provided support for the operating system. It seems odd to me that a company that has such a partnership with a software manufacturer could be “caught with it’s pants down” when it’s new, much publicized, operating system is released. No doubt M-Audio was given advance access to the pre-release copies of Leopard as to allow them to release updates to their product lines. Why a company as prolific as M-audio is in the Mac Pro-Audio field would not be able to write a driver update for their flagship hardware devices after over a year is beyond my sphere of understanding.

I’ve already come to grips that I won’t be able to use my much-beloved Omnistudio Pro USB anymore, since they’ve stated they have “no plans” to support it into OS X Leopard. Fine. It’s an older device; gone discontinued since 2005, I believe. Sucks, but I can take it. How the hell is anyone to have any confidence with this company when you can’t be guaranteed to have drivers prepared for your $1500 recording device a YEAR after an operating system is released. For fuck’s sake, point-releases are coming through (already 10.5.2 and 10.5.3 on the way) and nothing. I don’t envy ProjectMix owners.

Currently, I’ve been experiencing problems with my FastTrack Pro USB interface that I purchased to replace the OmniStudio (I believe in second chances). The audio will drop out after functioning normally for an arbitrary amount of time. I don’t know if it’s a problem with the device or with the driver software that M-Audio dutifully provided, several months after OS X Leopard was released. I like to know if there’s a company out their more trust worthy than M-audio to fill the void on reliable audio interfaces. I hear bad stuff about everyone else’s products like Tascam, Lexicon, Focusrite, etc, (minus Pro Tools rigs, but I hear issues regarding the software required to run them, plus I want be able to use software other than ProTools), maybe this is all their is? All I can do is tune in and wait.

Adding true multi-monitor support and “experimental” DX 9, it looks like version 2 of Fusion will fully close any gap that may exist between its rivals over at Parallels.

Anyone using Parallels Desktop 3 knows that their idea of “Multi-Monitor” is really “giant-ass monitor” support. They decide to combine horizontal resolutions of multiple monitors when in Convergence mode, using the root monitor’s vertical resolution as a base. This means that you aren’t able to take advantage of 100% screen realestate if you use monitors of varying resolutions. An invisible cutoff point will exist when you try to drag a Convergence window south of your initial display’s max vertical res. Weak.

Fusion 2 actually passes monitor detection to the guest OS, allowing it to treat each additional display as its own, configurable, and arrangeable output. Check the youtube vid below to see this in action. Their testing proves that it can work with as many as 8 independent displays.

Sure, the 3d performance won’t blow anyone’s socks off, but DX 9 support alone is pretty impressive.

the beta 1 release is available as a free download from VMware via the following link. You can see more videos of Beta 1 in action here.

Even though it probably won’t happen, I would like to see either company develop a utility to allow a user to convert a virtual machine into a Boot Camp partition, in case you wanted to dual boot. I realize that it’s probably infeasible, but we can hope can’t we?

This is the start of something special.

Cyberdyne

Skynet

Although Skynet needs to get it’s act together in order to convince us that it is in fact a truly self-aware computer entity, instead of a world parcel delivery company, my guess is that CyberDyne picks up the Skynet domain name once the company folds in a few years due to stiff competition with UPS, DHL, and Fedex and assumes the “taking us over” schitck we all know, love, and expect. We’ve got time.

UPDATE

Christian Bale is set to star as John Connor in a new series of Terminator flims

Tell me this isn’t pulled right from the plot of “Real Genius”

Look at the ship itself, for Christ’s sake. Sure it’s not a B1, but you know, you take what you can get. I’m just amazed we are still using prop aircraft in this day and age.

Kinda makes me wanna play DC. Get everyone in the gunship then flip upside-down and “park” it in the hanger. Hopefully this thing doesn’t do a barrel-roll with that laser engaged, thus cutting the Earth in half.

Good times

What the fuck does winning the West-Virginia primary really prove, at this point?

Seriously, guys (and gals). What’s does this fucking say? Are we to place these voters in some higher bracket than the rest of the hundreds of thousands of people who voted thus far? It’s such bullshit I can’t even breathe. I’m glad that Clinton’s cornered the much sought after Appalachian Mountain folk demographic. I’m surprised that they stopped raping canoers long enough to jab their shit covered, callused hands on the ballot console.

Chuckle, chuckle ya’ll.

Fucking Brilliant! What a goddamn lunatic. Pissed because he doesn’t understand the phrase “Play us out”, and afraid that he’s being made to seem out-of-touch, an adult child throws a tantrum. It seems to me like he got his dick caught in a drawer or something. The fact that it continues after the show has concluded is amazing and sad.