With the need for social distancing, the internet is full of remote shows. Take That got in on the action, as did Dua Lipa on James Corden, and countless others. Prompted by the questions of “how do they do that?” and “what are my options?” I wanted to dig into the state of the nation regarding remote collaboration tools, especially with regards to music. As it happened, my good friend Richard was also interested in poking around remote recording. ... Read more

Once upon a time I used to collaborate online and make a lot of music. As I write this, the UK is in the 10th week or so of lockdown (although it’s now “stay alert”) and I find myself with a little more free time on my hands for things like music, but without a workflow to make the collaboration happen! In the olden days, I had a shared Dropbox folder that handled the synchronisation of files between me and my collaborators. ... Read more

Two days ago I realised things were a bit wafty with my DAW setup, but now it’s time to do a proper cleanup, because upgrading to Reaper 5 64-bit has shown: My plugin stack is running 32 bit, but some plugins are starting to creep into the 64 bit territory. Half my plugins won’t run under 64 bit without upgrading them. Revalver is annoying the hell out of me and really just plain broken IK Multimedia just doesn’t quite work on the interface side of things anymore anyway. ... Read more

Back in 2015, when I wasn’t working I was trying to make music. I spent a lot of time and some money to assemble a set of tools to support my creativity. It was a careful blend of the physical space, the recording and instrumental software and the hardware (both instruments and computer), and it worked great. Life happened, however, and my setup was moved, reassembled and largely left behind while I upgraded my OS. ... Read more

This post is about a hobby that’s been languishing a while: music. It’s been a significant part of my life since I’ve been born, and I’ve been making music on and off since about 1997. Despite that, I’ve never done a deep dive on electric guitar tone. Mostly this is just reference, to document what I’ve learned in my explorations so far. One day I might swap the ASCII art out for actual images, but one problem at a time :) ... Read more

I was worrying today about the costs of my recording hobby, having assembled a collection of VSTs and recording software. Once I put the numbers down, however, it actually doesn’t look too bad. Since I’ve also been asked a couple of times what I use, and figured it was about time to link it all up in one place. My current software stack looks like this: Reaper v3 DAW for tracking (20110521 - £25) Addictive Drums 2 with Black Velvet kit for V-Drum noises (20121224 AD1 - £100, 20140629 AD2 upgrade - £80) Peavey Revalver HP for the amp selection and pedal effects stacks (20140515 - £7. ... Read more