REEL WORLD - “Catching Up”
Sorry it’s been a while since I’ve written to you all. I needed a little break from my writing duties as I’ve been busy with a number of projects. Let me catch you up on what’s going on in the film music world - at least mine.

I am continuing the process of redefining my studio, and I believe I’ve found some novel new ways to improve how I work. As you know from recent columns, I’ve been leaning heavily on the software side of things - soft synths, soft samplers, and soft effects are the first, and often only tools I use in my work. those of you who have read this column know how several recent projects, including “Black Hawk Down,” “Mothman Prophesies,” and, most recently the indie film “Shelter Island”, and some upcoming album work have been done entirely without audio hardware. There are a few exceptions. I am still in love with a few ‘real’ instruments - including the brilliant Akai Z8 sampler, Access Virus, and some vintage synths (which I define as more than 2.5 years old). My GigaStudios (I have several) are the mainstay of my larger samples, while the Logic EXS24 is there to back up the Z8 for the quick ideas.

All the Gigas output their audio via 24 bit Lightpipe to my mixer. But I now want to stop using external mixers and start using Logic as my only mixer. So I am weaning myself off the mixers one channel at a time. But I haven’t wanted to invest so heavily in Lightpipe inputs on the TDM side of my audio chain. TDM still offers the best latency specs, though native audio on the Mac is catching up rather quickly. So I have come up with a reasonably inexpensive way to substantially increase the capacity of my virtual mixing environment.

MOTU makes some wonderful audio interface hardware, the 2408 series. Up to three units of the Mark2, and four units of the Mark3, each supporting 24 input and output channels, can be linked so that any input can flow to any output - like a high speed digital patch bay. I could simply use the 2408s as intended, as inputs to my sequencer, but I don’t. Instead I use the 2408s to strip away unused channels from each Giga Lightpipe (I often only use 2 to 4 channels of the 8 available on each unit) and recombine the rest of the channels to a smaller number of Lightpipe outputs. this all happens with only about 2 milliseconds of latency. I feed those packed Lightpipe cables to the TDM inputs for Logic. Voila! No wasted channels means getting many more sampler channels into the sequencer’s mixer. And with the 2408’s analogue inputs, I am starting to run my synths into the patch bay system as well. And I did add one more Lightpipe interface to my TDM system for a total of 32 inputs. Which, these days, is virtually all I need from external instruments.



I’ve been experimenting with new plug-ins as they come along. My favorite source for soft synth news and demos is www.k-v-r.com. Native Instruments remains the absolute king of soft synth technology, but there are so many cool and interesting sounds from other, small companies. Emagic is also coming up with some brilliant new instruments.
And speaking of Emagic, now wholly owned by Apple Computer, I’m interesting to ask a question of those Logic owners running it under Windows, which Apple has chosen to discontinue (hardly a major surprise).

Are you going to switch computers and keep running Logic,
or stay with Windows and switch to another Sequencer? Why?.

Log onto www.reelworld-online.com and leave your answer on the XCHANGE. Check what others have said.

That’s all for now. Next time I’ll talk about my approach to scoring the indie film “Shelter Island” and tell tales of my trip to the music oriented Flanders Film Festival in Belgium, where I was a speaker and more. A microcosm of international film making.