My first demo version came in a copy of Computer Music magazine. It was a special version of BFD 1.5 but still had an amazing amount of functionality and a ton of grooves. I always wanted to buy the full version, both to support fxpansion and of course to get <<more>>. So finally in July of 2010 I burned a candle to the gods of debt and ordered it.

It took a while to install. Depending on how impatient you are, the available space on your hard drive, or just how many velocity layers you want, the installer gives you three installation options: small, medium and large. Having just plumped for a 500GB drive I went ahead and installed the large version which takes up about 55GB.

One of the interesting features in BFD 2.1 is “load on demand”. This allows you to quickly create a part with only a few basic layers and articulations loaded, and then when you are editing the track or rendering it, the entire kit is loaded.

The only complaint I have at the moment is that the GUI is awful hard to see and read due to the tiny font and dark color choices. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like the GUI can be customized, and a post on the FXpansion support forum indicates the company is not excited about creating that possibiity. But with the use of the Magnifier accessory and a little experience, so far I’m a happy camper.

last modified 2010 august

Below are players of the original version and the newly recorded version.

Hmm.. on laptop speakers or earbuds, you probably won’t hear a lot of difference, especially if you listen to it in a less than perfect environment. For a limited time, then, I’m going to give links to the underlying audio tracks (192Kbps MP3s) for you to download if you like. (Depending on your browser, you should be able to just right click on the following links.)

Last updated 20100606

Here are some notes about a few demo and freeware versions I’ve used. Your mileage will certainly vary, but at the least it may be something for you to consider.

Also remember that many of these are continually being worked on and improved, so the versions I’m writing about are probably already obsolete as you read this.

Studio Devil BVC (www.studiodevil.com)

+ VST

+ Free version  for eval! (BVC variant)

+ Cheap

Pretty nasty distortion tool which can border on shrill. A little of this goes a long way.

ReValver (www.alienconnections.com)

Free versions of this commercial product can be found that have a subset of its entire feature set. This is the ultimate tweaker tool. You have a tool box full of preamp and amp models and processors you can wire together into a virtual rack, sort of like the Reason model. In each device you can actually get in and edit it as though you were actually modifying the device’s electronics. Very powerful and capable of great sounds.

♥ Dirthead 0.80

My favorite single processor. May require a little EQ to tame the “honkiness” you can get from a cheap guitar.

++ FREE!

+ Three levels of distortion

+ “Cabinet” switch is useful and adds good sound

+ Simple to use, stable, extremely light CPU footprint

Voxengo Tube Amp

Voxengo BoogeX

After tinkering with these a lot, it became clear that they often had one or two great characteristics, but alone didn’t do the trick. This is where Ableton’s Rack paradigm comes in handy. It’s simple to create a Rack which is a layer of several of these tools. I have Racks that parallel three or four of them, usually Dirthead, Studio Devil and Boogex. Another channel with a Live Utility device allows you to add some clean signal.

Then you can map Macro controls to easily tweak the amount of contribution to the entire sound from each device.

I got a voucher recently for a $100 credit for Google AdWords. Just as an experiment, I decided to go ahead and set up an account and see what would happen.

Amazingly, it worked. Even with the clumsy choice of trigger names, it actually did drive traffic to this site.

Results of AdWords campaign

Here’s the number of visitors to this site over the period the AdWords campaign was running.

It didn’t really result in any sales that I can tell, but there’s probably other reasons for that.

last updated 2010 may

Gimme that comfy country vibe!

My camera just gave up the ghost. It had been working perfectly for a long time. I can still view and download photos, just can’t take any more. Oh well!

Guitar department

Is this nondescript enough?

This rather forbidding looking entrance is the front door to the CCMW IOC.The loading docks and executive towers are on the other side of the building.

As mentioned elsewhere in this site, the hardware components are inexorably being taken over by software. The main production is handled by a big computer named Colossus with lots of software editors, synths, DAWs and processors on it. A few years ago Colossus would have been state of the art (it’s based on an Intel quad-core Q6600 CPU) but now it’s “venerable.” However, it still has the juice to do what it needs to.

This is what the main production desk looked like from the rear. It’s been cleaned up and improved since this photo. The rack mounted Intel box is visible at the lower left. The light gray box in the middle is the retired Macintosh G3. It’s still there since once in a while we need to resurrect old project files that run in Metro or Opcode Vision that are Mac only.

From mid-2009.

Last edited 20100605

I’ve just finished “mastering” two new tracks that have been in the laboratory for a few weeks.

“Whispers of Doom: is pretty much like everything else I’ve been doing lately.

“Robot Monster 3″ is more fun as it uses extensive dialog samples from the 1953 grade-Z science fiction movie “Robot Monster” – see page 43 in the “Listen” section: http://crow-caw.com/40-listen/43-some-newer-tracks/

These were produced once again in Ableton Live (currently v8.1.1.) They make extensive use of the fantastic sounding Zebra2 synth — you can hear it in the bass parts and some of the leads, The venerable soft synths Triangle II and Crystal were also used, along with a weird patch from Arturia’s Analog Factory.

College students going tribal

Joshua Fried intensely focusing on some strange thing

Joshua Fried grabbing more input from his FM boombox

Tristan Shone's Dub Brutaliser waiting to be inflicted on the audience

NWEAMO is a cool organization now in its 11th year (as I understand it). Its mission is to maintain the connection between classical music and avant garde and popular. It makes sense the way they explain it. They support performances in Europe, the US and elsewhere as far as I know.

Anyway, last night was the first of two of these concerts they stage yearly in the US. Fortunately they are held at SDSU which is not far from my house.

The program was very excellent and fascinating and the only complaint I have was that it was too short! It lasted a bit under 90 minutes. In any case it was well worth it. Hopefully I’ll be able to add a bit more tonight.

There doesn’t seem to be anything recent on youtube, but do a search for NWEAMO and you can see videos from last year of previous performances in NYC and San Diego.

NWEAMO concert night; view east over the SDSU pedestrian bridge

Update 4 October: I’ll go ahead and upload the snapshots I took last night. Amazing and intriguing work and a lot different than Friday’s performances.

I just wish I had some video and audio to contribute. As it was, it appears that I wasn’t really supposed to even take pictures, although I had the flash off and was careful to mute the camera.

Tristan Shone's Dub Machinery

Joshua Fried's shoes, steering wheel and electronics

Boogieing down to Joshua's mashup

I’ve been wanting to get a portable computer for some time. I’ve been waiting for a decent laptop under $400, but nothing was really suitable. There are Atom powered “netbooks” but I want to be able to at least run Live and Reason on it.

I saw a Turion-based system advertised at my local Fry’s store for $299. It was almost suitable, but the deal killer was the Vista Home installation. As you may know this is the version of Vista that can’t be upgraded to Windows 7 when I comes out. So I “splurged” for an Acer 5520 which is powered by a AMD Turion X2. It was another $100 but so far I think I’m glad I spent the extra money.

Then yesterday I spent another $100 on a security cable, wireless router and carry bag. It’s all good fun and now I’m another $500 in debt but happy…

Update on the laptop

Well, that turned out to be a bust. The Acer laptop was flaky beyond belief. I followed all the instructions, made sure the anti-virus and updates were all there, but after many hours of work the thing still didn’t work reliably.

I took it back to Frys which efficiently refunded my money. I ended up buying a Toshiba model which I have so far put many hours on without a single problem.

last modified 2010 sept

Well, it’s not really “NEW” but I’ve uploaded a nice copy of my Buddha Machine 2.0 remix (info on this page: http://crow-caw.com/40-listen/44-buddha-20-remix/) OK, I can announce that I have at least uploaded something new! It’s a fairly long (7:23) piece from the loops from the second version of the infamous Buddha Machine, generously provided (under a Creative Commons license) by FM3. I put the track on bandcamp for anyone’s delectation.

(May 26)

As someone once put it to me: “Life is a lot of clutter.” There are so many things you have to do that keep you from making music. And as you get older there are more and more of them. Simplify dammit!

Anyway, I also have to confess I’m tinkering too much. I have a Novation SL keyboard/control surface I really haven’t optimized for use. It’s proving worth the time for me to delve into it and the “Automap” feature.

Anyway, my new strategy is to go ahead and chunk out some partially finished tracks. Maybe at some point I’ll set up some comment strategy to see if it’s even worth pursuing a particular musical idea…

Well, stay tuned and I’ll try to update. Before that I need to fix up the CSS for this site anyway. I’m sort of getting tired of the color scheme, but I’m afraid if I change one thing I’ll have to change everything…