The Troll Cave is the current name for my home studio. Why?
When my wife and I did a first walk-through on our house, we were told the the house was no longer occupied. All rooms on the main floor were bare. When we went downstairs, there was a strange locked door with muffled noise coming from it. This concerned us (and our Real Estate Agent) more than a little bit (especially with the darkness of the basement we were nearly blind down there).
We eventually knocked on the door and discovered a dark, dingy room, lit by 2 40 Watt bulbs and a tiny window, and an equally dingy man living in this single room, cooking on a hot plate and watching game shows on TV. He was a low-rent lodger living in this single basement room, and was told he could stay until the house was sold. The whole situation reminded us of a troll living under a bridge, so we started referring to him as the troll. Naturally, his room was the Troll Cave.
We ended up buying the house and gutted & remodeled the basement. My home office/studio/man cave is completely within the confines of what used to be the Troll Cave, so it seemed a fitting tribute to adopt that name.
Read the full post here!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Gear Review: REAPER
The most essential tool in your home studio is the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Sure, there are other dedicated hardware solutions, but those can be pricey. There has been an explosion of DAWs on the market in the past few years, which is good thing. The bad thing is that most of them are out of the range of a sensible budget. ProTools and Ableton Live are two of the good old boys of the DAW market, but the are pretty pricey. (The "discount" versions of both programs are so crippled that they are virtually useless.)
A fairly new DAW on the market for Windows is REAPER. REAPER plays in the same category as ProTools and Ableton, but it doesn't require specific audio hardware (like ProTools), and you can download a non-crippled, non-time limited version. The only difference you see as an unregistered user is a 5 second nag screen when you load it. To register, it's $50 for a non-commercial license, and $225 for a commercial license. There's no "spyware" aspect; it's all based on the honor system. Price definitely played into my first experimentation with REAPER, and after I started ripping into their sample project, I was hooked.
What is it, exactly? To quote their site: "REAPER is a fully featured multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing, and mastering environment."
REAPER is built on a solid end-to-end 64 bit audio engine, so you don't have to worry about quality degradation. It allows unlimited Audio tracks (recorded audio) and unlimited MIDI tracks. REAPER allows you to use DX, DXi, VST, VSTi, and JS plugins, so you can use (nearly) all virtual instruments and virtual effects you come across. Here's the nice part: once a piece has been laid down in whatever fashion (recorded audio, external MIDI, soft-synth MIDI, etc), then all pieces are treated equally. You can dump additional effects or effects sends on any track and they still function the same.
REAPER supports a wide range of control surfaces and external interfaces, so you can integrate whatever hard gear you have directly into REAPER. At this point, I regularly use an M-Audio KeyStudio 25, guitar via Lightsnake interface, and a microphone all jacked in simultaneously to REAPER, and I haven't had any problems. REAPER does support "MIDI LEARN", so within your project you can individually map pretty much any controls to your external control surfaces. I map the knobs on my KeyStudio to whatever VSTs I'm working with, so I can "knob twiddle" without having to control them with the mouse. Yes, it's a common feature on a pro-grade DAW, but it is nice to know you can get the same level of interaction when you're using cheap hardware.
This is such a big program, it's impossible to go into all the features that make it "pop" for the user. It has piano rolls, extensive routing controller - you can have unlimited parallel sends and up to 64 UNIQUE send paths, normalizing and quantizing individual elements, recording automation to capture pretty much any "knob twiddling" and parameter changes you need (recordable realtime or simply by moving lines to represent the values), a great pack of 64-bit VSTs and JS plugins to start your collection, and a lot more. Can you tell I'm loving this program? One of the other significant targets of the development of REAPER is to make sure the commonly used features are not buried too deeply in the UI. Most of the features you will commonly use are either available from the UI itself or from a simple right-click popup menu.
I only have one real gripe about using REAPER, but it is a common problem across pretty much all DAWs: some plugins are highly unstable and can crash the entire project. (I use mostly VSTs, so I can only speak to that) Most of what I use are freeware plugins, so they haven't gone through as rigorous testing as "professional" plugins, but even there you occasionally find one that doesn't work with a specific DAW. The unfortunate side of this is that I usually only discover a VST to be bombing out on me when I go to save the project. Then you're left with a trial-and-error to see what plugin crashed it out. So long as you do some testing with any new plugins before you commit trying to build seriously, you'll be fine.
The team at Cockos who is developing this DAW definitely stands behind their product, with new updates sometimes weeks apart as they respond to the user community and roll out new features and enhancements. There's also a great user community who does a good job of helping you keep on your feet.
I'm sure I'll have more to say about REAPER in the future, but you should consider checking it out.
The homepage is at: http://www.reaper.fm/
Read the full post here!
A fairly new DAW on the market for Windows is REAPER. REAPER plays in the same category as ProTools and Ableton, but it doesn't require specific audio hardware (like ProTools), and you can download a non-crippled, non-time limited version. The only difference you see as an unregistered user is a 5 second nag screen when you load it. To register, it's $50 for a non-commercial license, and $225 for a commercial license. There's no "spyware" aspect; it's all based on the honor system. Price definitely played into my first experimentation with REAPER, and after I started ripping into their sample project, I was hooked.
What is it, exactly? To quote their site: "REAPER is a fully featured multitrack audio and MIDI recording, editing, processing, mixing, and mastering environment."
REAPER is built on a solid end-to-end 64 bit audio engine, so you don't have to worry about quality degradation. It allows unlimited Audio tracks (recorded audio) and unlimited MIDI tracks. REAPER allows you to use DX, DXi, VST, VSTi, and JS plugins, so you can use (nearly) all virtual instruments and virtual effects you come across. Here's the nice part: once a piece has been laid down in whatever fashion (recorded audio, external MIDI, soft-synth MIDI, etc), then all pieces are treated equally. You can dump additional effects or effects sends on any track and they still function the same.
REAPER supports a wide range of control surfaces and external interfaces, so you can integrate whatever hard gear you have directly into REAPER. At this point, I regularly use an M-Audio KeyStudio 25, guitar via Lightsnake interface, and a microphone all jacked in simultaneously to REAPER, and I haven't had any problems. REAPER does support "MIDI LEARN", so within your project you can individually map pretty much any controls to your external control surfaces. I map the knobs on my KeyStudio to whatever VSTs I'm working with, so I can "knob twiddle" without having to control them with the mouse. Yes, it's a common feature on a pro-grade DAW, but it is nice to know you can get the same level of interaction when you're using cheap hardware.
This is such a big program, it's impossible to go into all the features that make it "pop" for the user. It has piano rolls, extensive routing controller - you can have unlimited parallel sends and up to 64 UNIQUE send paths, normalizing and quantizing individual elements, recording automation to capture pretty much any "knob twiddling" and parameter changes you need (recordable realtime or simply by moving lines to represent the values), a great pack of 64-bit VSTs and JS plugins to start your collection, and a lot more. Can you tell I'm loving this program? One of the other significant targets of the development of REAPER is to make sure the commonly used features are not buried too deeply in the UI. Most of the features you will commonly use are either available from the UI itself or from a simple right-click popup menu.
I only have one real gripe about using REAPER, but it is a common problem across pretty much all DAWs: some plugins are highly unstable and can crash the entire project. (I use mostly VSTs, so I can only speak to that) Most of what I use are freeware plugins, so they haven't gone through as rigorous testing as "professional" plugins, but even there you occasionally find one that doesn't work with a specific DAW. The unfortunate side of this is that I usually only discover a VST to be bombing out on me when I go to save the project. Then you're left with a trial-and-error to see what plugin crashed it out. So long as you do some testing with any new plugins before you commit trying to build seriously, you'll be fine.
The team at Cockos who is developing this DAW definitely stands behind their product, with new updates sometimes weeks apart as they respond to the user community and roll out new features and enhancements. There's also a great user community who does a good job of helping you keep on your feet.
I'm sure I'll have more to say about REAPER in the future, but you should consider checking it out.
The homepage is at: http://www.reaper.fm/
Read the full post here!
Friday, August 29, 2008
Gear Review: Daily Rock Wildwood Artist Acoustic/Electric Guitar
My first experience with Daisy Rock gear was with this guitar, when I managed to win it in a contest held on a Metal web site. How exactly an acoustic guitar got paired up with a site devoted to a genre not known for acoustics, I'll never know. But I digress.Okay, I am a guy, so having a guitar from a company whose promotional materials boast "Daisy Rock Girl Guitars", it does take a certain sense of self to play it. (At least I got the Rainbow Sparkle finish, which really looks mostly black. The other one in production when I got this was Pink Burst. Impossible to retain any machismo while playing that!)
Let's go over some of the vitals: The Body is a single cutaway design built from maple with a spruce top, mahogany neck and rosewood fretboard. It comes strung with D'Addario EXP 11 strings, which have a really warm tone on this guitar. Since this is an acoustic/electric, there is an additional panel on the upper side of the guitar with the controls. The built-in electronics include an electronic tuner, 2 band active EQ, and a master volume control. The controls are clean and free of any noise/popping/clicking when changing them. The 1/4" line out jack is on the bottom curve of the body, which keeps it nicely out of the way.
As an acoustic guitar, this is a fine piece of workmanship. The neck is a little smaller than most acoustics, which makes getting around the neck a lot easier. The tone, I must say, is wonderful. It has wonderful resonance and it has a lot of character to the tone.
I'm not going to say it is the ideal guitar for cheap recording, since it is out of my normal "budget gear" range. It is less ideal for a home studio (unless you live alone) mainly because it is acoustic (i.e. no way to turn it down), but it is still a sweet piece of gear.
Suggested Retail price is $569.00, but the average street price I've seen is around $400.
Read the full post here!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
What Is Troll Cave Music?
I have been writing and recording my own music on and off since I was 11 or 12 years old, banging away on an Amiga 500 using MED - one of the better successors to the Fast Tracker legacy.
Over the years, the tools available for a home studio have gotten a lot better and a lot more affordable. There are great tools out there, but many of them still come with price tags that keep them out of reach of the amateur hobbyist.
However, times are changing. There is a wealth of good tools to be had for free (or cheap), and low-cost hardware combined with an average home computer means that you can set up a home recording studio frugally. (Keep in mind your computer can produce better quality recordings than professional studios could up through the early 80s.)
Troll Cave Music was started as a place to share gear recommendations, personal experiences, and other items related to being a DIY musician with a minimum of out-of-pocket expenses. Making music should never be about spending your life savings on a new rig. It should be about having fun and making music with what you have.
Welcome to the cave. Make yourself at home.
Read the full post here!
Over the years, the tools available for a home studio have gotten a lot better and a lot more affordable. There are great tools out there, but many of them still come with price tags that keep them out of reach of the amateur hobbyist.
However, times are changing. There is a wealth of good tools to be had for free (or cheap), and low-cost hardware combined with an average home computer means that you can set up a home recording studio frugally. (Keep in mind your computer can produce better quality recordings than professional studios could up through the early 80s.)
Troll Cave Music was started as a place to share gear recommendations, personal experiences, and other items related to being a DIY musician with a minimum of out-of-pocket expenses. Making music should never be about spending your life savings on a new rig. It should be about having fun and making music with what you have.
Welcome to the cave. Make yourself at home.
Read the full post here!
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