The reveal over at Propellerhead that I mentioned last week was stretched out over 5 days and turned out to be for Reason 5/Record 1.5 after all. A host of new features were announced (Peter Kirn has a good summary of the new features on his Create Digital Music blog), many of which have been requested by users for a long time, but sadly there was no mention of a 64-bit Rewire as I’d hoped. I’ll be upgrading of course, but I’m still hoping for the improved Rewire somewhere along the line.

Enjoy Live Online #63: Snapper

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on May 30th, 2010.

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Looks like there’s a new version of Propellerhead’s Reason on its way – well, there’s a countdown on their front page here, so people are assuming it’s for Reason 5.

I’m a long-time user of Reason (a lot of this podcast gets made in Reason), and while I’m happy with the current version I would gladly upgrade for a 64-bit version of ReWire, the software that allows me to tie Reason to my Sonar sequencer.  Cakewalk’s Sonar has long been a 64-bit application, but I’ve been held back from upgrading to a 64-bit version of Sonar by the lack of ReWire support. Being able to make use of more than 3GB of memory would be great, especially when working with large sampling libraries (LASS here we come!).

While we’re wishing, I also hope for an improvement to clips in Reason’s sequencer. I do a lot of switching between Sonar and Reason when rewired and I keep getting tripped up by the way clips are implemented in Reason, often requiring more clicks to edit than I’m accustomed to in Sonar. It’s not a biggy, but it does get annoying and breaks workflow. Let’s see…

Enjoy Live Online #62: Magnetic

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on May 23rd, 2010.

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I thought it’s just me, but I had a chat with some musician friends about the good old days of MySpace. For all its faults, it seems we all found it much more conducive to finding collaborators than Facebook. I find Facebook fiddly and unintuitive – I guess that’s the price you pay for not living your entire life on Facebook as you’re supposed to ;^/ Aren’t we due for the next big thing in social networking yet? Diaspora perhaps?

Enjoy Live Online #61: Kicks

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on May 16th, 2010.

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Em. and I spent the weekend in the Southern port city of Tainan. Pictured above is what remains of Fort Zeelandia built by the Dutch between 1624-1634. As a South African, I’m always struck how the story of the Dutch in Taiwan differs from the one of the Dutch in South Africa. In South Africa, the Dutch (as in Taiwan in the form of the VOC) arrived in the Cape in 1652 and basically never left. The Dutch Castle of Good Hope remains in Cape Town to this day – I’m myself probably partly a far-off descendant of those Dutch settlers.   In Taiwan, however, the Dutch lost their foot-hold forever in 1662 when they were defeated by Koxinga (also known as Zheng Chenggong). Today, Koxinga is revered as a god in Taiwan.

Enjoy Live Online #59: Tainan

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on May 2nd, 2010.

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Work on the National Geographic score is progressing well, with the one (big!) caveat that NGC hasn’t heard anything I’ve done yet. Whilst the cinematographer, director and editor are happy with what I’ve done, they’re not the client, so things can still go south. I’m holding thumbs painfully hard, since I’ve spent a fair amount of time on this and would love to see it through. I’ll have a better idea where I stand after I meet the NGC execs in Tainan this coming weekend.

Enjoy Live Online #58: Gravity

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on April 25th, 2010.

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Apologies for the occasional glitches in this one. I’ve upgraded to the Second Life 2.0 viewer and I think it’s more resource intensive than the last viewer – keep in mind that I run Ableton Live and Reason alongside the viewer to make these sets possible. Hmm, I’ve been looking at upgrading my current Core2Duo machine to a Core i7 or i5 (more likely) quad-core machine – I may have to do it sooner than I thought (or any excuse will do).

Enjoy Live Online #57: Ebb & Flow

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on April 18th, 2010.

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Today’s show was a welcome change from thinking in a more symphonic way for the National Geographic score – it’s slow going at the moment, but I’m hoping I’ll pick up spead as I settle into the process.

Enjoy Live Online #56: Calando

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on April 11th, 2010.

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Enjoying a day off for Tomb Sweeping Festival here in Taiwan – good time to chill!

Enjoy Live Online #55: Aerophone

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on April 4th, 2010.

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I worked hard on music cues for a documentary this week. I could use some of my previously released tracks, but I wrote quite a few new ones, too. Some of them have me excited for the planned Lemongrassmusic Label MoShang album due out when winter comes around again. Most of the cues are pretty short, but carry in them the seeds for full tracks. I should have loads of ideas to choose from and expand on for the album.

Enjoy Live Online #54: Papaya

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on March 28th, 2010.

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Nice! Had a bumper crowd at Substance this evening (keeping in mind SL’s 50 avi per sim limit). Great to see a whole host of new faces amongst the familiar ones.

I had a great meeting with a documentary film-maker in Taipei on the weekend – my crystal ball predicts a lot more music-for-picture work. I’m so ready for this new challenge.

Enjoy Live Online #53: Toffee

This recording was made at Substance (Second Life) on March 21st, 2010.

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