It's been... one week...

... since I wrote. It's been a fun week, a busy week.

The Firebox is working fine. I need a longer fire wire cable to get it up on the shelf with the mixer, but never mind. Following its installation, I got started with Cubase LE 4. I had been working on Wendy's tune on paper, so I decided to get the basic framework of the tune recorded.

I laid down a basic Piano/Strings line to just get the chords outlined and dropped in a tempo change as I moved out of the intro. I'm pretty rusty with Cubase so I was off to the manuals to look stuff up with regularity.

I then used one of the better patches in the included HalionOne sample playback library, a flute, to lay down the melody. Except I wasn't done writing the verse yet - so it just abruptly stopped in the middle of the verse.

Now, I've done this "recording of songs" stuff before. I'm itching to get to something new, so I download the RealStrat demo which also installs Amplitube Duo. Now I've got a Stratocaster with some amp modeling and an overdrive stomp box (all virtual, of course). This is too much fun to be bothered with finishing the verse on the tune. I bring up various songs (Sultans of Swing, anyone?) and jam to them. At first I'm all thumbs, but then I start to relax, throw some modal licks around and generally have fun. The demos are stripped down so there was a lot that couldn't be done - but it was enough to sell me on the virtual guitar idea.

Back to the tune after a couple of days of just goofing around with the virtual strat. It's recorded as MIDI streams which makes it easy to go in and tweak notes. I use Cubase like a word processor, changing timing and melody lines around much as I fine tune wording on the lyrics in Word. I need to finish the verse, so I start playing around with melody ideas. I realize as things progress the lyrics I've written are missing a line. I want to inject an extra phrase. We can rework the lyrics later - in the phrase goes. Now I've got a finished outline, melody and chords, for the intro, chorus and verse (no bridge, but it'll come).

I start wondering about the virtual acoustic guitar so I download the RealGuitar demo and start seeing if I can lay down some acoustic picking and strumming behind the tune. This is harder to get sounding natural than the virtual strat but eventually I've got something half decent. I wish Vir2 offered an Acoustic Legends HD demo so I could try it.

It's time to step up to the real recording software I want to use. I'm already tweaking preferences and such in Cubase LE, which are sure to be lost in the upgrade. Steinberg Canada sells an upgrade to Cubase Studio 4, so it's nip to the webpage and order it! It arrived this morning and is installed and running fine, after some head scratchy moments on the upgrade of HALionOne.

So, now I'm looking through the lists of new features and plug in documentation, trying them out . Some of the effects processors like the included compressor and reverb have come a long way since I last used this software. More reporting on Cubase Studio 4, I'm sure, in the coming weeks.

Barrack Obama

This isn't a political blog, but I can't let Obama's election pass unremarked. You have to admit he has brought back to politics excellence in rhetoric and oratory. It is a wonderful thing to have leadership with the ability to inspire.