There has been an extended break since I’ve had a chance to regularly get to my home studio. When that happens (not that there's anything wrong with it, that's just life rearing its ugly head) I have to sort of keep my head in a creative musical mode in order give meaning to my existence. If I am not doing what I really want to do how can I cope?
What works for me is simply to follow the field by reading relevant music tech magazines. There are several, but the ones I have subscriptions to are Keyboard, Electronic Musician and Recording.
Reading these magazines makes me feel like my head is still in the game. I can find out about new things that I might be interested in. There are new directions which I am sometimes interested in pursuing. I feel like I am still working it. This may not work for you, but for me I can go for long periods this way without feeling like I am missing out.
During this last break I have reconfigured my setup in a major way, transforming it into a fully computer based setup. All sounds are now coming from the Muse Research Receptor with Komplete Inside, which I have completely set up but not had an opportunity to explore. Now is my chance to go through it and see what I have and how to use it.
It is usually better to go into this with some kind of plan rather than do it haphazardly. Because I was able to successfully convert a huge portion of the sounds I collected over the decades, I have thousands (millions?) of sounds available with this system. My plan is to configure a setup that will boot up into one standard “band”, a preset selection of sounds, so I will not have to make choices of which sounds to use every time I sit down to it (as I have done in the past).
This has the benefit of making it easier to start any session. Obviously, as I work on a specific song I can add or change sounds for the task at hand but this eliminates making any decisions to start. That would be a big detriment to the enthusiasm of sitting down spontaneously.
By way of introduction, I have included above a fragment of a song I wrote a long time ago. I’m sure you want to hear what kind of stuff comes out of your humble narrator. I have chosen the oldie shown in the sidebar, “Still Won’t Ask”, out of historical interest because it was the first of my songs to garner professional interest.
To answer your next question, none of my songs has ever been used to generate income. No, I am not against it, quite the contrary. I will probably address that issue more fully in a future post.
As with all my songs, “Still Won’t Ask” is a one man production. Since I am not a singer, the vocal was done by a friend working from my guide vocal.
Below you can take a look at Muse Research’s ad for the Receptor.
Where To Get Music Tools Mentioned In This Post
Home Studio
