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STRATEGY FOR THE DAY: Take all bets.

Software Hell: Part Deux

So... I still haven't been able to get Digital Performer 5.0.1 to work smoothly with Reason 2.5. Still getting the ugly bursts of notes when I hit play. Big delays when I try to record my Reason synths from my midi keyboard. Obviously this is not okay. When I installed my brand new sound card and found I couldn't go back to my old DP3/Reason set-up where everything worked together, I tried to figure out some work-arounds. Got some helpful suggestions from the Unicornation forums but nothing I could really use in my situation. I emailed tech support at MOTU (makers of Digital Performer) and am still waiting for a reply. Let's see, it'll be about a week tomorrow. They took two weeks to reply to my previous email. That is not okay, either. Since I had a client this morning who was planning to record rough demos with me, I needed a fix NOW. I finally decided to shove my old sound card back into my Mac and just use what worked. Forget the $700 or $800 I spent on this upgrade.

As it turned out, I didn't use either of those programs in my session today. When I want to work quickly to record rough demos in the Country genre, I use Band In A Box. The trick is finding a drum/bass/piano style you like. BIAB has several good styles to choose from in the Country genre. (They are also pretty good at jazz and traditional rock, even Alt Country. Okay with neo-soul. Not good at alt rock. Terrible at anything remotely resembling hip-hop, rap, urban. Use loops for that.) BIAB is an inexpensive program at under $100. The trick is to find a few styles you like. You can buy sets of styles separately. Just type in the chords of the song you want to demo and BIAB creates the drum/bass/piano arrangement. Besides rough demos, I sometimes have it create a whole song, then I pick the bits I like, shuffle them around, and use it as the basis for a new song of my own. It's like having the sanest collaborator on the planet, one that never tells you your ideas stink.

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Read A Brief History Of Love Songs by Robin Frederick at the Sound Experience Music web site.

Copyright 2006 Robin Frederick. All rights reserved.