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Here’s how the Edirol UA-1EX install went down:

• plug it into the laptop
• windows detects it. “can we search windows update for drivers?” sure. “nothing found”. ok.
• install the drivers off the cd
• “device installed successfully.” easy.
• fire up REAPER
• selecting the Edirol ASIO device device hangs everything.
• asio4all’s fault maybe?
• uninstall asio4all
• fire up REAPER again
• success! audio is going to the headphones! sounds all right.
• find the usb cable for my Edirol PCR-50 midi keyboard
• plug it into the laptop
• windows detects it. “can we search windows update for drivers?” sure. “nothing found”. does this ever do anything?
• hunt around for my pcr-50 drivers cd. lost cause.
• search the roland/edirol site for it
• downloads section “under construction”. awesome.
• google search “drivers edirol pcr-50 download”
• find a download
• install it
• “device installed successfully”
• fire up REAPER
• no VSTis installed, doh
• download & install Triangle II
• fire up REAPER
• success! we’re playing softsynths with my midi keyboard with no noticeable latency.
• should test inputs and outputs
• maybe later. on to the firebox

So far the UA-1EX gets a thumbs up from me. Cheap little ASIO gizmo that works as advertised. I’ll have to actually read the manual though. There’s an “Advanced Driver” switch I don’t get and the mic input says “MIC INPUT – PLUG-IN POWERED”. Ruh?

Had a chance to play with REAPER yesterday. That thing is impressive as hell. It’s still beta and lacks MIDI capability, but even without that it’s very over the top. In a less than 1 meg install (700k without the sample project included) it offers a lightweight, rock-solid multitracker with:

• multiple takes per event
• group tracks
• ASIO support
• sends
• track automation
• punch-in recording
• cross-fading
• direct-x/vst/jesusonic plugin support
• effect chaining (as well as rearranging on the fly)
• ability to export all tracks

And a lot more. Interface-wise if you’re familiar with Sonic Foundry’s Vegas or Acid, you’ll find it easy to jump into. I think once MIDI’s in there, I’ll be giving it a shot for a full project. It’s extremely competitive with software that costs hundreds of dollars.

I’m always interested in the software people use to help their creativity, so I thought I should write up one of my favorites that gets very little attention. It’s Keynote by Tranglos software and it’s an open-source Windows-based tabbed notebook. Check out some screenshots here.

Keynote sits in my system tray and I can hit CTRL-SHIFT-F12 at any time to call it up and start writing. Escape sends it back to the tray. Inside of Keynote, my first tab is a Notepad that I use for writing anything or saving temporary scraps of information. Then I have other tabs such as a “music” tab where I can enter potential song titles or ideas. It’s a tree view so all I have to do when I have an idea is hit CTRL-SHIFT-F12, select the music tab, hit enter to create a new tree node, type my idea + enter and I’m done. I can also enter data in that node as well, such as lyrics or chords or whatever I’d like.

I’ve tried a lot of these programs and even though there have ben no updates to Keynote since late 2003, I haven’t found anything that’s as fast, feature-rich and simple to use. I’d recommend to anyone looking to capture their ideas or is just an information packrat.

I checked out the recently launched MSN Music last night and was pretty impressed. The interface is slick and clean and previewing is entirely browser-based (looks like IE only), making it even simpler than iTunes to check out clips of new bands and much simpler than iTunes to send people to pages of the store.

Prices seem to be the same as iTunes and the format is of course WMA chock full of DRM. This means it’s incompatible with all the iPods out there, which is going to hurt it in the short term. Also as far as I know you can’t buy anything from the store in Canada so there’s not much else I can say about that.

Some suggestions:

• Put more bio and discography content in there. Become a useful music encyclopedia resource like Allmusic with easy previewing and purchasing of songs. Do this right and you’ll have a resource that web savvy types would be constantly sending new potential consumers to even if they themselves aren’t interested in the purchasing part.
• Let users embed song previews — and links to buy the song — on their websites. So if I wanted to make my killer mix of 80s hits I love and you should have, I could list them all on a page on my weblog here with 30 second previews and links through to buying the tracks from the MSN Music Store. Why would I do that? Because it’s easy, it costs me no bandwidth and is something I can’t easily do on my own. Giving people referral kickbacks like iTunes would obviously be an added bonus. This would be like the awesome iMix feature of iTunes except instead of being only useful to people who are already inside the store, it would be open to the majority of web users.
• Artist and record label RSS feeds. Why not give users the option of instant notification when there’s new stuff to buy on artist pages, or entire record labels. I can’t really see a downside. The catalog is a bit empty in some areas right now and I’d like to be able to watch for when stuff I want shows up.

All in all I’m pretty impressed. Now they just need to get my music in there (delivered on August 27!) and we’re all set.

One of my favorite albums as a teenager was In God We Trust Inc. by the Dead Kennedys so I was pretty jazzed when I heard about the The Lost Tapes DVD. I had a chance to watch it last week and it was pretty fascinating.

The story goes that the original recording session for In God We Trust Inc. on June 19th, 1981 was lost due to defective tape. They re-recorded the album some time later and that’s what actually made it onto the In God We Trust Inc I know and love. They have since rescued a lot of the recordings from the defective tape and from other sources and were video taping the recording session at the time. So this is a pretty good look at what it was like to be in the studio with the Dead Kennedys.

The songs sound more or less identical to the album versions and it’s pretty strange to watch the process of recording one of my favorite albums.

Saw The Stills and The Miniatures Saturday night. It was an okay show I guess. The Miniatures had great energy and The Stills were interesting, but nothing really rocked me too much. I found it funny when The Stills’ frontman ranted against the American government and said Ottawa was a very cool country’s capital, all the while the bassist was violating our no-smoking bylaws.

You would think that a book called “How To Write Songs On Guitar” would be relatively simple and straightforward, but you would be wrong.
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I’ve been meaning to complain here about books on mixing and recording not including audio example CDs. I don’t understand why they don’t all come with them. They don’t cost much to include and it seems stupid to even try to talk about audio concepts without audio examples to illustrate what the hell you’re talking about.

I own a lot of books on recording, and yet for some reason Sound Advice on Developing Your Home Studio is the first one I’ve bought with an included audio CD. This is just one book in the six book InstantPro series and as the name implies, it mostly covers things like cables, monitor positioning and room acoustics.

It would be a good book without the audio CD. For a small book (79 pages), it has quite a bit of detailed and practical information for the beginner. But with the CD, it’s fantastic. You can write pages and pages about why it’s a good idea to worry about your studio acoustics, but one good audio example will get the job done better.

The book covered a lot of stuff I was already familiar with and didn’t have a lot of new information for me. However, the audio CD was well worth it and I’m really interested in checking out some of the other books and CDs in the series, particularly Compressors, Limiters, Expanders & Gates, and Equalizers, Reverbs & Delays.

Reason 2.0 is the bees knees. I picked up my copy the other day and the Malstrom synth is a truly impressive piece of work. So much so that I’ve cleared off my newly-made Linux box for it and am now thinking about selling my Emu ESI-2000 sampler that I spent a lot of money on and almost never ever use. It’s been a year and change since I bought it and I don’t think I’ve ever fully recovered from the expensive and draining multi-month process of hooking it up to my computer. SCSI was very mean to me and I’ve been unable to put it behind us.