Re: Would love your input, stories, suggestions

[Richard Sales <richard@glasswing.com>]

No question software is incredibly vulnerable to planned entropy.  I've spent a fortune keeping up with the digital Joneses but turns out the digital Joneses are all hula skirts and Hawaiian shirts and no palm trees or ocean - or as they say in country music, 'All hat, no horse'.  They keep adding bells and whistles to every aspect of the experience that clog the data arteries.  Go figure. 

The move from regular wires to db25 which started around eight years ago has cost me a couple thousand pints of blood and totally forces new logic on my studio design.  I don't know if anything was gained from that.  Dats, ADATS... all worth about as much as a used mousetrap these days. 

The old saw is, Digital is a capitalist's wet dream.  Like buying a car that, in five years you won't be able to find tires or gasoline for.  

Revamping the wiring of my studio now.  It's like Extreme Tetris.  Enormous logistics, turning the Rubric's Cube this way and that and each time seeing new options and better, more ergonomic ways to set it up.  

As I said before, I used to love technology but now I pretty much resent its time sucking intrusion into my creative process.  High tech used to work for me, but now I work for it!  And the improvements strike me as running downhill.  

It's a transfer of wealth from the creative class to technology.  So my forty year spending spree is pretty much over - as Rick Walker was sort of saying.   I'm not paying Avid $1000 a year to subscribe to hardware and software (Pro Tools HDX) I've owned for decades.  

Someone in a third world country could feed, house, raise and educate a family of twelve... and retire in comfort for what I've spent on this stuff. 

I do think someone could make a fine living stripping out all the bells and whistles from the OS and selling those versions to recently born again, time strapped Luddites like me.  Same with software function of DAWs.  

There's nothing like a great guitar and great amp.  It's the willing spouse that's ever attractive and exotically faithful.  Add some pedals and your kingdom has come!  Of course, there's 20 fine guitars on my wall now and ten fine amps in the back room, but as long as I fire 'em up once a month, they will be singing long after this very expensive digital stuff has gone to the recycling centre... or sold for $200. 

Don't think my AxeFX II XL+ will be worth a dozen sets of guitar strings in ten years - but it IS fun.

There are some good digital companies like Spectrasonics that makes Omnisphere.  Also Native Instruments big Kontakt, although integration into Vienna Ensemble Pro requires huge Tetris finagling and hours under the hood trying to get the pistons all moving harmoniously. 

I just wanted to play music - not fly the Starship Enterprise!

I'm hoping this studio revision will make it easier, but I'm sure the software update/upgrade guys will do all they can to eat my precious time. 

My current thoughts on Time?  Don't spend it all in one place!

:)

Richard Sales

On Thu, Oct 6, 2016 at 4:13 AM, Ivodne Galatea <takas20@hotmail.com> wrote:

And then there was the nightmare of Logic Pro stopping accepting 32-bit plugins in the upgrade from 9 to X. For those of us who upgraded while sleep-deprived and deleted the old one to save room on our battle-weary 2009 macbooks it meant a sudden loss of facility that took breath away. I certainly didn't have the wherewithal to buy new shiny 64-bit plugins, and most of the old ones had developers who had disappeared. And I didn't want to lose the intuition I had developed with the old plugins.

It wasn't until that company SoundRadix brought out 32-lives that I could exhale.

I know the logic of shifting to 64-bit and addressability and legacy code, but it really felt abusive. Facing it all over again now that my laptop won't run the new MacOs.

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From: amyx@isproductions.com
Subject: Would love your input, stories, suggestions
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2016 21:29:32 -0700
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com

Folks --

This thread on Mobius problems with the new system is interesting. I use Mobius in my performances; my musical career is absolutely dependent on it. It works consistently well on the old system I am running, which I cannot upgrade until I get a new mixer/interface, because the one I have used to create my current repertoire requires MLAN software that Yamaha stopped making several years ago. Porting my songs over to a different technology (say a MIDI fader box and all effects in software), could easily take months, so I plan to take time off from performing next year in order to do nothing but that.

That kind of sucks.

Later this month I am giving a talk at Project BBQ (a yearly think tank of audio professionals -- http://www.projectbarbq.com) on the topic of how the pressure to constantly upgrade software, forcing one to often upgrade hardware, causing one to have to re-program, re-think and sometimes abandon one's compositions. affects the life of a working artist, or really anyone dependent on uninterrupted use of these products.

At the same time, clearly advances in technology have been stunning, and it's great to be able to take advantage of them.

I'm looking for:

a) any interesting stories you might have about how upgrades have caused disruption  to your art, and

b) any constructive suggestions for this group of professionals. How might they support artists who are dependent on their products? How might they continue to develop new products but keep us happy as well, and make this profitable? What about trying harder to keep upgrades compatible with older software/hardware? Are there options to having to purchase new laptops every few years?

Thanks all! I welcome your input on this ever-prevalent topic. I want to be helpful to artists in this talk -- it's an opportunity to speak directly to the folks who actually make the stuff.. what would you like to tell them or ask them?

xx

πππππππππππππππππππππ
Amy X Neuburg
http://www.amyxneuburg.com
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On Sep 26, 2016, at 10:33 AM, Richard Sales <richard@glasswing.com> wrote:

Yes indeed.  My question nowadays is, Who's serving who?

And it's a question that can range very wide - and reach into the deepest changes and most important elements in our culture.  Tell you the Truth?  I'm a little worried. And I'm not the worrying kind.

On Mon, Sep 26, 2016 at 9:07 AM, Kevin Cheli-Colando <billowhead@gmail.com> wrote:

I used to really love technology.

Isn't that the truth :-)

--

richard sales
www.glasswing.com

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - Emily Dickinson

--

richard sales
www.glasswing.com

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - Emily Dickinson