this is matt

Over the last several weeks, I’ve acquired some new tools for delicious audio goodness. It also occurs to me that I have never done the stereotypical musician thing where I talk about my gear, so guess what I’m talking about today!

I’ll talk about my guitars at a later point. Today is all about synths.

My audio software of choice is FLStudio, which was originally a drum loop program but has since evolved into a pretty amazing workstation. It’s good out of the box, but they also have a bunch of add-ons you can buy, like synthesizers, effects, and soundbanks. Stuff goes on sale periodically, and that’s when I strike.

When I started messing around with digital music, I was using SimSynth and WASP, which you can hear on The Evolution of Ezekiel Wallace. After I finished that one, I got an email saying a new synth called Harmless was coming out, and if you bought it right away you could pay whatever you want for it. I used Harmless extensively throughout the nanomusic project (spoiler alert: I replaced SimSynth and WASP with better Harmless sounds).

They did the same sort of pay-what-you-want thing for Drumaxx, a drum synthesizer, which I used a few times and love very much (it’s the faker-sounding drums, not the real-ish ones).

FLStudio synths went on sale this month, so I grabbed two more, Sytrus and Sakura. Sytrus made an appearance last Friday, and I haven’t used Sakura yet. At this point, Sytrus is still “the one with a million knobs” and Sakura is “the one that does strings”, but I plan to play with them some more in the coming weeks. They both seem to have loads of potential.

Finally, the newest additions were a result of my long-held desire to work with NES sounds. Last night I finally got off my ass and searched the FLStudio forums for chiptune recommendations. I ended up with Magical 8bit Plug,  de la Mancha’s basic, and everything from Tweakbench. I’m excited about all the new possibilities!

I was in college when Final Fantasy XI came out. My “job” was teaching guitar to about two kids, which was enough to cover gas and the monthly cost of the game. It also meant I had a ton of time to kill.

FFXI was my first MMORPG. I don’t know if that made me extra-susceptible to its wiles, but I played for way too many hours a day – basically every spare moment I had. It was ridiculous to the point that when I got Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for Christmas, I would sit at my computer and try to play both games at once. The game was fun, I’d made some friends and joined a guild, and everything rocked.

(Note to non-FF players: Final Fantasy games are generally not connected or related in any way. The Tactics games are a radically different style of game than the “main” series, so it wasn’t like I had a Final Fantasy addiction. It could just as easily have been a new Zelda game or Worms or something.)

Then I got bored. I was around level 21. My friends and guildmates played even more than I did, and were much farther along to the point where we couldn’t play together anymore. My job class (red mage) was basically reviled on my server, so I found myself trying to play solo, which was basically impossible in that game. I died often and never got beyond level 22 — the XP penalty ensured that I would lose a level as soon as I gained it.

I had two options: Switch jobs and replay all the noob areas (without the XP boost of the low-level quests, as they were no longer available), or quit playing. I chose to quit.

I’m not sure how to explain why Final Fantasy XIV appeals to me. It sounds like a solid game with good ideas, sure, but there is also an element of nostalgia, like it might be FFXI done right. That’s my hope, anyway.

The LAN party is the sacred ritual of geeks. In an era where the internet makes such things unnecessary, a bunch of people dismantle their trusty computers, cart them over to a friend’s house, and play games together. Did I say “unnecessary”? StarCraft 2 doesn’t even acknowledge the possibility of all the players being in the same location, and everything happens via the internet anyway. Welcome to the future.

That’s where I was all day and all night last night, and that’s why I didn’t queue this post up until about 2:30am (good thing I’m on vacation this week). It’s been a long time since I’ve stayed that late, and it was amazing. Not to make myself sound old and crotchety, but it was like being 19 again, ready to rock hard and not worry about what’s happening tomorrow. It’s a nice feeling.

I guess I should warn you that, since I’m on vacation (more like, staycation) this week, the rest of the week will likely be more of, “Oh man I just did something totally fun.” I make no apologies.

I got my new computer mostly setup (here’s hoping that everything works in Win7 x64). It’s pretty sweet and I think it will serve me well for many years.

I was surprised by a pang of sadness at the thought that tomorrow’s music will be the last that my old machine produces. Dustfarm has been my constant companion since 2002, when I first commandeered him for my musical experiments and gaming awesomeness (back then he was still known as “KITCHEN-PC” or some such). Over the years, I upgraded his motherboard and graphics card, but he’s basically the same as when I got him

Dustfarm was awesome back in the days of Cakewalk 7 and Adobe Audition 2. Unfortunately, FLStudio 8 and beyond were a bit too much, and I had to deal with random lockups when it was saving my recorded clips and ridiculous slowdown if there were more than two synthesizers playing at once.

Let’s not get into games.

He’s pretty sorry to look at right now. I had to pull both DVD drives out of him for other machines, and I couldn’t find the faceplates that go in the case, so he has black duct tape blocking the openings. Similar story for the 3.5″ floppy drive, though that was just transferred to the trash when it stopped working. His case is stained from this intense flea treatment Sarah had to use at our old apartment because our neighbors didn’t love their pets enough. When I say, “he’s a veteran”, he looks it.

My new machine, Dr-Horrible, is superior in every way. No question about it. But the irrational part of me is afraid I won’t like him as well as Dustfarm, or maybe he won’t like me.

Or maybe Dustfarm is weeping silently.

Do machines celebrate new eras, or do they nurse their betrayal and await the revolution?

My “new” computer wasn’t handling the audio recording very well, so after rearranging the living room, I reassembled my old one and set it next to the new one (I’ll have pics and a glowing review of my new workspace on Monday). Now I have one machine for recording and one for gaming. This isn’t as l33t as it sounds, though, since they are both Pentium 4 machines.

So far, so good…enough. It’s not the most glamorous solution, but it will do until I can build a new machine.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have as much time to work on new music as I would have liked. However, rather than dig through and find something old, I figured I would post one of the things I’m working on and talk about my process. Old stuff is fun for my own personal nostalgia, I guess, but I’m excited about what I’m doing now, so I’d rather share that, even if it’s rough and incomplete.

My hand-me-down machine from Sarah isn’t doing too great. I’m reasonably sure it’s all my fault.

It has to be the audio software. I’m thinking there are a bunch of things perpetually running in the background and killing the framerate of my beloved video games.

Also, it seems like every time I sit down to record, the computer can handle even less in the playback department. As you may know, being able to hear music being played back is vital to being able to record more music on top of it, so when it starts skipping and blipping and halting and grinding, there are problems.

The short-term solution is going to be to clear out the boxes that are cluttering up the office, move my desk in there, and set up my old machine next to my hand-me-down. The old one will be dedicated to music because, though it was pretty slow, it could at least handle the playing of sound. The hand-me-down will become the gaming machine, and if I’m lucky Jeremy will have a video card I can throw in there that is better than my current one. If not, it’s still not bad at gaming when it doesn’t have all of my stuff on it.

Long-term, though, I’m going to need a new machine. The two-system solution is inelegant, and with how hot Pentium 4s get, the idea of switching between two of them for just about everything I do sounds brutal.

I’m looking at building a system around the Intel Core i3-530. It’s the cheapest CPU for the 1156 chipset, and it seems to pack a pretty good punch. If it starts to suck, I can throw in more RAM and/or get a better processor in a couple of years.

Honestly, I’m kind of unsure of myself at this point. I’ve never built a computer with audio recording in mind before. I keep hearing that more cores = better, but the developer of the software I use is still recommending a Core 2 Duo since that is all the program is optimized for. Most games aren’t optimized for more than 2 or 3 cores at this point, and I have no idea how soon that is going to change, so I don’t know whether I really need to be worried about future-proofing myself.

Hrmm…

DaveLoven and I both signed up for a PHP course at SitePoint.com. It seems like it’s going to be pretty sweet, so I’m excited about that.

When I first graduated from college, I would say that I wished I could be a student forever. That was before reality set in and I realized that college didn’t prepare me, in any way, for life. Since then, I’ve kind of bounced around a bunch of different books (mostly programming languages) to try and teach myself new skills, but always had trouble seeing them through to the end. The problem is that the books always get you to a point where you’re almost able to start doing real programming, but they don’t take the assignments up a notch, they just keep asking for dumb things that no one would actually use. It gets frustrating.

I’m hoping this course goes differently. At the very least, if the assignments stay dumb, I’m hoping the video tutorials remain engaging enough that I can absorb the concepts without feeling the despair that comes with creating a random number generator that also has color selection options.

In other news, I’m officially committing to finishing my epic project on Friday, June 25th. I was hoping for this week, but I don’t want to rush through it and give you something mediocre. I want to be pumped about unveiling it, so it will be another week.

My computer was starting to show its age, so Sarah and I started talking about getting a new computer. Somehow I got it in my head that her computer had a Core 2 Duo, so we decided that we would build the new system for her and I would take over hers.

Long story short, the audio recording wasn’t happening over the weekend. The PC decided it couldn’t handle playing sounds, which is actually something of a problem when you’re making music. It was in the process of troubleshooting the problem and pricing out potential upgrades that I came to realize one very important detail: This computer has a Pentium 4 with hyperthreading, not a Core 2 Duo. I’m not super educated on the specifics, but I’ve seen performance charts and I know that 2 physical cores perform better than 1 hyperthreaded core. I’m not sure that software is aware of that distinction, however, because it was maxing out the CPU like I’ve never seen before. My personal, uneducated theory is that the software got really excited about two cores and took full advantage of them, which they obviously couldn’t handle.

I solved the problem by disabling hyperthreading. The result is a computer that is only marginally better than my previous one, but it works. And if I turn hyperthreading back on, it’s a much better gaming rig than I had before.

My computer situation is getting a much-needed update this week. I just built my wife my ideal computer (Core i5) and I’m taking over her old one, which still kicks the crap out of my old one. I’m going from a Pentium 4 system (haha!) to whatever it is that she has, some sort of dual core, probably Intel. At this point I’m just waiting on a new enclosure for (what used to be) my external hard drive so I can access my life’s work from the new machine.

On top of that, I acquired some more gear over the weekend. My wife bought me a teeny USB keyboard and my dad loaned me his fretless 5 string bass. Originally, I planned on spending massive amounts of time writing music yesterday (I took the day off), but the old computer just wasn’t feeling it, so about 50% of what was coming through my headphones was static. Not ideal conditions for working, but it will be remedied by the end of the week.