Dan Engelbrecht and Peter Sjöllen were in California last week for some programming workshops on the apple campus. I managed to catch up with them a couple of evenings to hang out and enjoy some nice dinners. The three of us went out to one of my local favorites, Gochi in Cupertino where I had them sample the Kim Chee Pizza. Peter even attempted to eat it with Chopsticks!

Later on in the week, I organized a big group function with some fellow Reason 4.0 sound designers and beta testers at Amber India - one of the better Indian restaurants in the area. Dan and Peter finally had the opportunity to attach faces and personalities to the names from the Propellerhead user forum. Hopefully they weren’t too annoyed by the constant questions about Reason 4.0 and that pesky broken Leopard library that disables Recycle 2.1.

Afterwards we went to catch up with Rick Silvestri who had a show at a pub in Cupertino. Rick plays bass with the Ry Kihn Band and tried to get the group to learn his new “I AM THOR” song. I’m guessing these serious rockers weren’t into it, so Rick stepped up to the mic in the middle of the set and started doing his best impression of the Reason 4.0 patch.

Last weekend, my dear friend Marie and her fiance, Gordon, finally tied the knot. It turned out to be an amazing weekend in Carmel. The weather was beautiful and warm. Gordon’s family came in from Scotland, and Marie’s friends and family travelled from Japan, the northeast, and the midwest.

The wedding ceremony was an eclectic blend of traditions. Marie made a stunning bride and wore a red Japanese silk robe over a traditional dress while Gordon and his groomsmen were in kilts. It was like scene from Highlander 3! I’m kidding… sorta… There were bagpipe players, Marie’s mother sang a traditional Japanese piece, and their friend, (Rev) Kurt Elling, presented a touching service. There was no shortage of wonderful music this day. At the reception, Gordon and Kurt had a little impromptu session.

Thanks to the internets, some video of Marie’s Wedding is online:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sspjrRL0a3c

Already? Really? Yep, there are a slew of Producers Conferences slated for the coming weeks. I wont be heading to Europe, but go see James do his thing in Oslo and Gothenburg. I’ll be in Hollywood a week from Saturday and in New York in November. The US tour is going to be pretty cool with some indepth looks into the new sequencer, and ReGroove, and of course, THOR!

Keep an eye out on the Producers Conference page

Reason Users who attended the Producers Conferences in the UK, DK or LA this year, probably saw my demo of building a granular type of effect in Reason 3.0 using the NN-19 as the primary sound generator. (NY people saw the beat repeater combi : ) Thanks to some new features in Reason 4.0, this patch has taken shape into a completely new device with some very useful features.

I’ve got a little youtube clip online that demonstrates using a snare drum sample in the patch to create some crazy elastic zipping sounds. The combinator is being triggered from a sequencer track, and the patch actually tracks the pitch from the MIDI notes. With the right sample content, the grains respond to a chromatic scale, and you will hear the snare at different pitches.

It’s not exactly granular synthesis, but the results are pretty close.

Well, up until this week, i’ve been busy working on a new project. It’s been about 5 or 6 years since I last created a Reason Tutorial video, so it’s about time that i got a new one out of the can thanks mostly to my friend Josh Mobley.

Up until a month ago, i was focused on working on a new version of Power Tools for Reason, but an opportunity came up with Groovebox Music to develop and produce a tutorial video. After a brief phone conversation with Josh, I had a spark of inspiration - basically we would take his Reason 4.0 demo track, Narrow Escape, and reconstruct it to show people how to make the most of the new sequencer, the new ReGroove Mixer, and a bit of Thor programming.

12 Hours after our conversation, I had drafted the script. A few days later, I was on a plane to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to work with Josh at his place where we spent 5 days cranking out several hours of screen capture animations as well as some video, and voice overdubs. Yes the picture is Josh’s Reason Tattoo. Click on that picture to see Josh’s livingroom/studio with the total minimal rig we used to develop the video.

This video is the cousin of my old Producing Music with Reason CD-Rom, but it’s much more relaxed and casual as you will see in the demos. Amazingly, here we are 4 weeks after the idea was sparked, and the videos are starting to come online at the link below:

Music Production with Reason 4.0

Yep, Reason 4.0 is finally slated for release tomorrow, Wednesday the 26th of September.

I’ll be in San Francisco at Robotspeak tomorrow night at 7pm for a little Reason 4.0 release party/clinic. Yes, they will be open late on Wednesday, so come by and pick up your upgrade, and GW Childs and I will be around to show off some of the new features.

Robotspeak
598 1/2 Haight Street. San Francisco, CA

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Robotspeak Website

Yesterday, I attended an event to support Senator Barack Obama as the democratic candidate in the 2008 presidential campaign. Yeah, normally i tend to avoid politics, but this seemed like a special opportunity to hear what the Senator had to say. I was quite impressed with Obama’s presence. He is quite charismatic and yet has a down to earth quality. His presentation lacked details about policies or goals, but he was indeed inspirational and knew how to work the audience. Senator Obama is a natural front man, and I think he would be an impressive president. I do have some doubts about the Senator’s electability, but he definitely embodies an idea that I would like to see succeed.

Barack Obama Campaign Website

I’m getting ready for another trip to the Producers Conference in New York, scheduled for the day after tomorrow, July 28th at 1:00pm. It’s been a long time since I’ve been back in NY so this will be a nice return to visit my old home and see how my old home and old friends have changed over the past decade.

The Line6 Crew and some of the Propellerheads crew will be attending, and we’re hoping for a turnout of about 150. Anyways, this is going to be a very cool event for several reasons, and I’m looking forward to meeting the NY Reason Users.

I think there are a few seats left open, so if you haven’t registered, you can find more information at the link below:
theproducersconference.com

Ed Bauman and I took a road trip on Tuesday to join up with a small group of Reason Users in Los Angeles for the first official meeting of the LARUG. Ed had a pretty long drive down to my place, and then he endured the second 5 hour drive from San Juan to LA. All things considered, we made pretty good time for the 300 mile trip.

Kenny M. organized the meeting at the PF Changs Restaurant in the Beverly Center. Since Ed and I were cutting it close, we drove straight to the restaurant and were the first to arrive. When we checked in with the hosts, they asked us to explain about the “Reason User Group”. I guess to civilians, it sounds somewhat like a MENSA meeting.

It was an interesting group of users who ranged from people learning to use Reason, to people who work for different companies in the music industry. We sat for hours just talking about music and software and eventually the laptops came out and we played around with different combi patches. Ed demonstrated a few of his ReCover tunes and I showed my Beat Repeater Combi (which will be public knowledge next week).

This was a great meeting and I’m looking forward to future LA events. Next time we will try to get more guys from the SF group to head down and maybe have a mini-jam.

Pictured: Peff, EditEd4TV, Andrew, Seth, Don, Kenny, & Joy. Boris had to leave early and missed this group shot.

I guess it’s semi-official. Reason Users in Los Angeles are planning a get together next Tuesday evening, and Ed Bauman (EditEd4TV) and I will be driving down to join in on this initial meeting.

Anyone interested in joining in should contact Kenny who runs the myspace Reason User page:

myspace.com/reasonusers

Ok, before you get all crazy about Reason 4.0 being on the iPhone, this is just just the screenshot from the props website set as my wallpaper background…

After having an iPhone for a week, I have to say that i’m pretty happy with this piece of technology, worthy of the hype. For me, it was worth the wait. Obviously, email and voice is nothing really new, but having a single communications device for email and voice and web browsing is something unbelievably handy. I was on the verge of going with a treo or crackberry last year, but decided to hold off when the iPhone was announced.

My first iPhone malfunctioned after 3 days of use. Perhaps it was all of the people who touched it and wanted to play with the features, but the touch screen simply stopped responding. I could still dock the device and sync it, but I couldn’t unlock and use it. I tried restoring the settings, but nothing seemed to work. Fortunately, i managed to pop the sim chip out and drop it back into my old Motorola V3i, and I had voice and sms back up and running in a matter of minutes. I was relieved to know that in the worst case scenario, I could have voice com back up in seconds.

The next day, i scheduled an appointment with the Apple Store in Santa Clara, and had a new iPhone in my hands within minutes. We swapped the Sim over from my Motorola, and reactivated the new phone and restored my contacts, music, video, bookmarks, and email settings from my laptop. It was pretty painless!

i can certainly echo the main complaints others have voiced: Namely, the speed of the AT&T Data network. However, it’s fast enough to get the basics done. I’ve been at a couple of meetings where a quick google search was in order and no wi-fi was available, and in a few minutes i had the answer to the questions.

Another issue I’m facing is spam going to my email account. Having access to the POP server is great, but the client application is bombarded with spam, so i’ve spent a lot of time sorting through the inbox. It’s going to be another expense to figure out a solution for this problem. I’ve got a system of filtering through gmail, but the POP client through Gmail is less than satisfactory at the moment since I don’t have access to the bulk folder.

Considering that Apple is so important in the audio industry, one would think that there are cool set of ringtones included in the iPhone, but most of them suck… bad… My other big complaint is that I cannot customize ringtones! I used Reasons to make a custom ring tone set for my motorola, and can’t transfer these over, so i’m stuck with the insipid system sounds. When I get some free time, i’m going to look into the hacks to see if there’s access to the audio resources….

It’s been months since the sneak preview of Thor was announced at the winter NAMM show. Finally the speculation is over and the anticipation begins as Propellerhead Software Announces Reason 4! Besides the new synthesizer, THOR, the upcoming release will include the RPG-8 arpeggiator, new transport interface and features, a new sequencer with improved automation features, and a new groove quantization system.

www.propellerheads.se

Did I not previously say that this would be an exciting month for Reason Users Worldwide?