Finishing Touches

As many of you may know, my burgeoning relationship with living legend and electric bass player extraordinaire JEFF BERLIN is producing new fruit.

Specifically, we are in the midst of finishing mixing on his forthcoming Jazz Record. This trio is unbelievable and – dare I say – has a lineup and instrumentation the likes I have never witnessed.

It has been a blessing and a challenge to make this piece of art one of the most stunning projects I have ever worked on. If you are a TRUE jazz lover (not light or smooth), you’re going to absolutely love this new record.

Stay tuned, as we head into mastering this record, I’ll post more details.

Best,

David

New Test Videos Shot

And I don’t mean “shot = ruined”.

Spent the morning composing and filming keyboard parts in the studio for the – yet to be announced – YouTube channel for the new smooth jazz cd. Everything went well – however – I’m not pleased with the resolution. Sound is awesome – albeit a direct MONO feed from the board (Quicktime 7 doesn’t import stereo audio).

I’m looking into shooting in HD with another camera later this morning – the trick is getting decent audio into the “flip-style” camera. We’ll see and report back soon.

Thanks to all for checking in.

Best,

David

Off to the races

OK…So ProTools 10 is now functional within the confines of our studio. This means that:

1. We’re passing audio through the system (at least in playback mode).

2. All plug-ins and VIs appear to be running well with no significant latency issues.

3. All control surfaces (except my iPhone jog wheel app) are working nominally.

4. We’ve yet to confirm that our mic pres and the Euphonix channel strips are operational. Too, we’ve not yet connected the MIDI gear to see if we can drive internal VIs from external hardware. Lastly, we’ve not tapped out or line inputs to determine if any of our external musical hardware will pass audio through the system.

We will get to this in the coming week – and hopefully begin shooting video for the upcoming Smooth Jazz CD channel that appears on YouTube.

Stand by…yesterday was a productive day and – again – we’d like to thank the champions at Sweetwater Sound and Avid…so..THANK YOU!

 

Pro Duels (an update)

After spending nearly five hours yesterday attempting to download (ne: not install) ProTools 10, I thought I should update everyone about the Herculean effort brought to bear on the project:

1. After getting nowhere with the fine folks at Avid (via telephone), I was able to start up a technical support ticket with their support agents.

2. SImultaneously, my Sales Engineer – the lovely and talented Brad Every at Sweetwater.com – suggested that I take a breather and contact the Sweetwater Technical Team @Sweetcare. I did so, both online and via telephone. After waiting 25 minutes on hold – a killer Engineer who was most familiar with the problem – going back to earlier version of ProTools 9.x walked me through some interesting steps; specifically:

3. We compared the byte size of several identically named image files (.dmg). We did this to rule out that any data may be dropped during transmission by components on our end. The likelihood of different routers, wifi, hardline/hardwire, drive arrays and separate computers was fairly slight in causing this issue; however, if we saw that the same amount of bytes was present on all systems – then we could begin to rule things out.

4. We learned that whether we viewed the separate downloads on our Mac Pro (Intel), Mac Pro (PPC), MacBook Pro and or Mac Mini – ALL OF THEM HAD THE IDENTICAL FILE and FILE SIZE. Meaning: There was no corruption on our end, or with our ISP. The fault here is a damaged .dmg file residing on the Avid Servers.

5. Now whether or not Avid has a problem with their application, servers, hardware, ISP, etc – remains to be seen. And within minutes of suggesting this issue (arriving at it, I should say), our trusty-rusty Avid agent responded with an apology and confirmed that he would be sending distribution DVDs of the program to our studio – at no addition cost.

I wanted to personally mention Brad, Sweetcare’s Technician (whose name I can’t recall) and Matt Grace at Avid for bearing with us during this issue-filled day. We’re looking forward to get ProTools 10 up and running, and with any luck – on this Saturday – we’ll be there soon.

Ah – another day in the studio. Another day in paradise.

Pro Fools

There’s nothing quite as frustrating as being caught in the eternal hell of a bad application installation.

Welcome to my day.

I’m now in the midst of my eighth (yup, count ‘em…8!!!) attempt to install Pro Tools Version 10 in the studio. My experience today has included:

• Three calls to AVID (Pro Tool’s Parent Company) Technical Support
• One call to my sales engineer at Sweetwater Sound
• Attempting installations on three separate Mac computers and drive arrays
• Installation using both Hard-Line (hard-wired) and Wireless connectivity to the internet
• Nearly four hours of wasted time.

At the core of the problem is this:

With nearly every file installed properly, the two main applications – which reside in Digital Image Files (“dmg” for those of you who understand technospeak) – all of the dmgs echo back “corrupted image” issues upon installing/verifying. This renders the entire process fruitless.

Avid’s solution is – of course – to pay more money on top of the hundreds spent (and even more hundreds of billable studio hours wasted) in order to get distribution DVDs sent to us (that could take weeks). Wow – there’s a solution.

So – you will forgive me if I’m not whooping it up about PT today. At least with Logic (and Apple), they can deliver the products and the out of box (or in the box experience) is more satisfying.

It make you wonder: if it is this hard downloading the application, how difficult is it going to be to get it truly “up and running…”

Stay tuned if you dare…more to come

New CD Update

The music is flowing and the ideas are churning.
Two compositions are brewing and sometime in the next week – the videos (available on an upcoming YouTube channel) will start rolling out. It won’t be pretty, but it should be pretty darn interesting (at least for those of you who have contributed and selected the PRIVATE ACCESS TO SONGS IN PROGRESS premium located further down the screen on this page.

So hang in there…patience pays…and please tell all your friends about it.

It’s Time To Say Thank You

I am going to do my level best to say thanks to the “early-risers” who have stepped up so graciously and kindly with regard to helping me launch my NEW CD in an attempt to help fight pediatric cancer through the Margaux’s Miracle Foundation. So without further ado (whatever “ado” means)…Thank you so much to…

Alison Breslav

Shirley James

Corey Weiner

Brandon Scherff

Julie Kriegshaber

Bruno Fortunati

Scott Brockman

Scott Walters

I’m delighted to have received these contributions – but we need to raise soooo much more.

So please, spread the word…tell your friends and family…grab a premium, help me make some great music – and let’s put an end to kids having cancer.

Thank you,

David