I’ve not even picked up a guitar during the month of October and so I thought I should get back on the bike, as it were. Don’t think I haven’t been busy musically speaking. I have – it is just that I haven’t been recording or playing. Much of the last month has been taking up with an archiving project I am undertaking,
In ye olde days, when I first started using my PC to record, I was using software called Canam Audiomaster, which was a budget application that came supplied with my soundcard, but despite it being at the lower end of the market, it was a very able digital sound recorder.
Unforunately, time and a number of operating systems have passed and so Audiomaster sometimes doesn’t always work and so I decided to go back to those masters and convert them into Cakewalk Sonar compatible mixes. Out of this idea came the “Legacy Editions” concept – go back, archive, remix and republish where necessary. I have been doing this for my first digitally recorded album “Fade In/Fade Out” and the remixing/remastering process has been interesting. I will eventually get around to publishing the album here for download in the coming weeks. The downside to this project is that it takes time and is incredibly boring to do and I think I’ve got another five or six albums to convert into this format to complete the cycle.
So watch this space!
Category: Diary
Today is The Missus’s birthday. This time last year this was overshadowed by us re-opening our premises after our incident and trying to run the place without mains electricity, relying on good ol’ fashioned car batteries. This year, things are a little more civilised and time can be taken to celebrate and reflect. With weird synchronicity, the building insurance claim is finally been signed off today and our outstanding creditors can be paid off. The thing I’ve learnt about insurance is that these companies and loss assessors work using a different concept of time compared to the rest of us. So something that should take a week takes a month…
This is more a tip for those of you EDIROL M-16DX owners out there who are thinking of upgrading their computer system to the new sparkly Windows 7 operating system. I was a bit cautious about upgrading as my experiences with my previous upgrade to Vista taught me that unless system drivers for your hardware are actually ready, you could end up with some equipment that just won’t work with your new operating system. As my digital mixer is the heart of my recording studio, I was naturally worried, but I needn’t have been.
One of the best features of Windows 7 is something called the Compatibility Troubleshooter. Basically, this allows you to use old Vista (or WinXP) drivers with Windows 7. The idea of this blows the top of my head off and is a feature that I’ve been waiting for for a long, long time. It means that no hardware need ever be made redundant by missing drivers ever again.
In the case of my EDIROL M-16DX, all I did was download the latest 64-bit Vista Drivers from the EDIROL website. Then I right-clicked on the executable file and selected “Troubleshoot compatibility”. The menu will ask you about the previous compatbility of the drivers before doing some tweaks to the executable. Before I knew it, the old Vista drivers were being installed and everything was working perfectly.
Top rate stuff, indeed. Hope this post helps anyone out there who might be having trouble with their Windows 7 setup.
It is hard to believe that it was this Sunday morning a year ago when half our house fell off… Where does the time go? Oh, I remember – chasing the insurance company for money. The building contractor moans at me and so again I have to chase up payment that is now nearly two months late. I keep telling myself that it will be over soon – though I don’t think that the actual work has been signed off yet.
After the “Pooh Hands” incident of a few days ago, Verity redeemed herself by dancing for her baby brother whilst singing the words “Herbie Man” to the tune of Teddy Bear’s Picnic and giving him one of her teddy bears…
It has been almost a year since the incident and still we find ourselves in the press. At the end of the week a big advertorial and advert appears as part of our drive to put the past behind us and encourage the Great British PublicTM to part with their cash.
I have seen the true nature of fear. Forget the maniac in the hockey mask or an unexpected visit from the tax inspector… No, true horror can be expressed in two words uttered with absolute glee by a child: “Poo hands!” Be afraid, be very afraid…