Due to request, I’ve put out a short preview of the new song, Windflower. The vocals haven’t been recorded yet, so I only included instrumental sections. Hopefully it’ll leave you wanting more!
Download it here: windflower-preview.mp3
Keep in mind that this is not the final mix, so the sound isn’t top notch.
I’ve been working a lot on a new song lately, for my band, Chirality. The song will be called Windflower, and this one has involved both members of Chirality in closer collaberation than before. The original idea, structure and lyrics was written by Katrine, but during the production process it has been changed and extended a lot and is now a work of both of us. It is also going to be over 10 minutes long (hey, we are prog artists), making it the longest song since Compliant Mania.
Right now we are currently done with pretty much all the writing and arranging. What remains is to record the whole thing and do the final mix. Expect more updates on this soon.
For the production I have used Renoise exclusively as the editing software, and I can only say that I am completely blown away. This is the first time in a long time that I have felt that the tool was not “in the way” of the work. I highly recommend it for everyone who are looking for alternatives to the sequencer style of editing, especially if you like using the keyboard for editing.
And of course, it works on all major platforms, Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.
A new version of the Jacktube audio/MIDI processor is out. The new features are mainly 64-bit support and general bugfixes. The fixes had already been lurking in Subversion for a while, and now they are available in version 0.21.
Grab the latest version here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/jacktube/
My wrist problem is slowly recovering, and I have been able to do some more computer and music work lately. I hope to have some more time for making music again in the next months, so hopefully there will be more updates.
My wrist support
There hasn’t been many updates here lately, and while I could go the common route and blame it on laziness / lack of time / lack of interest, it is in fact injury that has prevented me from doing much music and programming work (Ok, fall of 2009 was a bit of laziness, I admit).
I have caught the dreaded “carpal tunnel” which basically renders my hand into a painful heap of muscles whenever I come near a keyboard. This has prevented me almost 100% from doing any computer activities outside of work (which is already painful enough) in the last months, but I have been able to practice instruments at times.
Although I am still working in an office, I am in treatment, and I hope to make a full recovery in a few months time. Until then, it’ll be quiet…
Audio Technica 4050/SM
At least it feels that way after what I had to pay for my latest studio addition: the Audio Technica 4050/SM condenser microphone. I’m excited about it though. My first recordings revealed an awesome quality improvement in the sound. I’m expecting good things from this one.
I finally received my digital recorder yesterday, after having waited for it for several months. My main motivation for acquiring it was to do high quality recordings using a condenser microphone, which require phantom power. Normal audio cards don’t have the cable inputs for this. I’ll use this to do better voice recordings (that just leaves my actual voice…) and especially better acoustic guitar recordings.
Edirol FireWire AudioCapture FA-101
The model is an Edirol FireWire AudioCapture FA-101. I chose the model because of its seemingly excellent Linux support (at least from what I can read online), as well as it having lots of jack inputs, which I use for most of my electrical instruments. My initial experiments in Linux revealed some stutter in the sound, but hopefully this will go away after driver updates and some tweaking.
Next on the list: A good condenser microphone!
During this summer I went on a biking trip around Norway’s mountain areas. I have posted pictures and a journey log here. We also ate a lot of dried foods on the trip, and we have put up some recommendations.
My new band, Chirality, was created recently, and we released our first song, Saved. You can read more about it on the Music page.
Finally I was able to revamp the design of my home page. I may not be a Michelangelo, but it sure is better than my old text based design. I tried to use CSS as much as possible, and as a result, I decided to drop support for IE 7 and lower. This is not a big problem though, because IE 8 fixes all the problems, and is being rolled out by Microsoft now.