Finish Your Song

Helping you to get your music made

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Docked and iLok’ed out of my comfort zone

twin-monitorsJuly was a trying month, one way and another, featuring more than its fair share of computer problems.  After my Vista PC finally stopped trying, I quickly tired of plugging all the bits of kit into my Windows 7 laptop that used to be permanently hanging from the Vista tower, so I bought myself a docking station.  Theoretically, this had a triple benefit – only one USB cable needed to plug everything in, I’d have more USB ports so I could set up my external hard drives permanently and I could use the now-redundant monitor as an extension to the desktop.  Where was the downside?

The words “plug and play” now evoke something of a hollow laugh. [Read more…]

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Hasta La Vista, Baby

windows_vista_logoFor a while now, I’ve been running two computers – my main “home” computer has been a tower system and I’ve had a laptop for making music, as the tower wasn’t up to running much in the way of music software any more, being  7 years old and, more pertinently, as it was running Windows Vista 32 Bit. However, it was still perfectly adequate for running Office, casual surfing of the net and reading e-mails, (although my Outlook file had grown to such a size that any new e-mail took more than a few seconds to open).   A couple of weeks ago, it wouldn’t boot at the first time of asking, throwing a DOS disk error, but like a fool, I ignored this harbinger of doom.  Well, not quite – I did something worse and, with hindsight, something that could have been monumentally stupid.

[Read more…]

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Landmark passed

1050The last couple of months have been crazy busy and I’ve not had the time I want to devote to this blog and my music generally, but I couldn’t let a landmark pass without sharing.  Odd how we attach significance to arbitrary numbers, but I tipped over the 1,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel sometime in March, and then a whole bunch more added themselves. As I post this today, I’m actually at 1,050 subscribers.  So if you’re a subscriber, thanks for the support and encouragement.  If you’re not, please subscribe, but either way, if there is a topic or theme you would like me to cover in a video or videos, please let me know.

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Why I’m upgrading to Cubase 8

C8Pro300I posted a while back about how I was locking down my installation whilst I was working on an album, but my good intentions went out of the window when EZDrummer2 launched and I have added to my collection of plugins since then.  That said, I’ve deliberately put back installing the 64-bit version of the Korg Legacy Collection, as I’ve used the Wavestation on several songs and don’t want to mess things up by switching from my current installation of the (jBridged) 32-bit version.

But I’m upgrading to Cubase 8 mid-stream and here’s why.  [Read more…]

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It’s March? Already?

YouTubeLogo300It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog, as I’ve been distracted by real life and other projects, but I’m hoping to catch up with myself this month.  The big thing, (for me, at least), is that the YouTube channel continues to thrive, with the number of views having gone through 100,000 during February and, as I post this, I now have over 900 subscribers.  Compared with some, this is definitely small beer, but I’m happy that it continues to grow and that I am getting positive feedback on what I do.

One of the things that’s kept me busy has been climbing the learning curve from Cubase 7 to Cubase 8.  I’ve upgraded and am currently working through the process to drag the standard installation back from the “dark side” to my preferred colour scheme.  I’m almost there and, once I am satisfied it’s up and running and that everything is going well, then there’ll be a few videos to chronicle the process for those who take even longer than me to upgrade to the latest version.

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From the Boiler Room: Taking Stock

oasis_poolI’ve been away for 10 days recently; along with my wife and family, I was relaxing on Fuerteventura, a frequent holiday spot for us for several years.  As well as some real books, audio books, podcasts, new music downloaded from Spotify and old music downloaded from my PC, I also took with me work-in-progress mixes of the album of songs I’ve been working on for the last year.

Part of the issue with working on a solo project is that there’s no one to make you carve out the time – you have to do that for yourself, fitting it in around the multiple demands of “normal” life.  It’s more difficult on your own than when it’s a joint project, because the need to make space for your partners forces you to set some mutually convenient time aside, and everyone makes the effort to keep that regular space in the diary. There’s also no one to tell you when things sound great or, (more importantly), where an idea doesn’t fit or a direction isn’t working.  You have to gauge that for yourself.

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Adding a Solid State Drive (SSD) as an audio drive

mx100-2-5-ssdOne of the main upgrades that you can do to improve the performance of a computer is to replace the collection of spinning metal plates that make up your hard disk with something that has no moving parts at all – a Solid State Drive or SSD.  Although my PC is well specc’d for a laptop – 6GB of RAM, 750GB hard disk and Core i7 processor – that drive is a 5,400rpm model.  Which, for most things you’d use a laptop for, is fine, but not for audio, as the normal recommended speed is 7,200 rpm, which is not that common as an OEM component.  However, my laptop also comes with a spare 2.5” drive bay, so I installed a 512GB SSD drive as a second drive yesterday.  Normally, people install an SSD as a replacement for their primary drive, to get fast boot and load times for programs, but I had different priorities.  I don’t mind waiting a few minutes for Cubase to load, but it’s once I open a project that the hard drive really starts to get stressed.

[Read more…]