TXT:: I hope everyone is having a happy Holiday Season! Despite the condition of the world, the holidays are always special when we can spend some time with friends and family :-) One of my family's traditions is to meet at my Aunt Esther and Uncle Roy's house and make Japanese New Years Cakes called "Mochi". I think we steamed 30kgs of sweet rice that was mortared and cut into little cakes. On New Years day, the cakes are served in a soup and eaten for good luck in the coming year. Pictured L-R: Me, Mom, & Uncle Roy. Anyhoo, I hope everyone is having a happy Christmas and I wish you all the best in the coming 2k3.

Reason:: Finally, I have a little time to get things moving around here again. I've uploaded the Spring Reverb Effect configuration which is handy if you're trying to get some dub style sounds. The effect uses a Reverb Module and the output is processed with a Malstrom Saturation and Filter combination. The filter is modulated with one of the unique LFO patterns which creates the swishy sound of a spring reverb box. Used in conjunction with a delay module, you can create some convincing dub mixes ala King Tubby. The file is available for download from both archives, the latest subscription URL and the public archive.

I have a more elaborate example of how to do dub effects, however it requires the use of the Skip to my Loops refill. I will make a stand alone version which shows a rather complex way to use delay effects in conjunction with the spring reverb effect.

Max/MSP:: I've been playing around with the MacOS X beta of Max/MSP. I cleaned up an old patch of mine that I used to create the samples in the ADFX refill. I think I will make the patch available for download as a collective file. It's a really cool patch that tweaks out sample loops. In some ways it works like a Malstrom Grainwave, but it can reverse the sample playback direction so you can create scratching like effects. Playback speed can also slide between steps so you get these cool transitions between points. This was the first patch I ever created with Max, so it's really crude and rather unstable.

I never thought I would make a max section on this site, however it looks like I'll have to make some changes in the coming year so that this site can grow.

TXT:: It's been stormy as hell this past week, and like a fool i've been doing a lot of driving out in the foul weather. Fortunately, no catastrophies have occurred...yet, but if this storm season proves to be like anything like the last El Niño incursion, then the worst is yet to come. I may have to cut down one tree that is slowly uprooting from the soft soil. One really nice side effect from the storms is that the hills around my home turn a really deep green.

On Sunday Night, I went to see Peter Gabriel in concert at the compaq center HP Pavillion (aka the Shark Tank) in San Jose, California. One benefit of signing up with his lunatic club was the opportunity to preorder tickets before they were sold to the public, and I managed to get really fantastic seats: Center floor, 4th row! I was sitting no more than 5m from the stage! The sound reinforcement was impressive as well, but I was sitting in the sweet spot because the mix engineers were directly behind me :) This was a really great performance! It had a different feel from the Secret World Tour, but Mr. Gabriel performed more of many of my personal favourite songs like "Red Rain", "Solisbury Hill", "Secret World" and "Mercy Street". It was really fantastic. Naturally I checked the technology, and I was suprised to see they were using Logic Audio to keep track of the set. Each performer had their own LCD display with the sequence running and the counter display.

The "Growing Up" tour performace had special significance since i was accompanied by my cousin Carole, her daughter Tamiko, and my friend Michela. Carole's Victorian Home once stood at the loading bay of the HP Pavillion, and she endured through a bitter fight with the City of San Jose to preserve her home. In the end Carole vowed never to step foot into the arena.

Tamiko was impressed by the skill of the band and with Peter's vocals. She compared the performance to others shows like Matchbox 20 and Blink 182, where the bands were not as tight and the vocals would go out of tune. There's a big difference from people who have talent vs popular music that's polished in the studio :)

My friend Michela was really astonished by the performance value of the show. She and I saw Cirque du Soleil a few weeks ago, and while some may criticize the theatrics of the Growing up tour, many people really enjoyed this. It started even before the show when the lighting people started climbing up the wire ladders to their positions on the scaffolding. The circular stage would rotate around like a big lazy susan with the band members panning across the field of vision, and at one point, Peter performed while riding a little bicycle weaving around the rotating stage. During the entire song "Growing Up" Peter sang from the middle of an inflatable ball that he maneuvered and bounced around the stage. After a brief costume change, Peter stepped onto stage wearing a jacket covered with halogen bulbs for his performance of "Slegehammer", but the really surprising feat was the moment Peter stepped onto stage wearing a body harness where he clipped himself to the circular scaffolding and started to perform "Downside Up" while hanging Upside Down :)

I would have tried to get better photos from the show, but I felt really guilty for sneaking in with my camera. When ever Peter would come to the front of the stage, He was less than 20 feet away, and out of respect, I didn't take any shots. However, the images from the show are clearly burned into my mind :)

Max/MSP:: Yay! finally Max/MSP public beta for MacOS X is available. It is still a beta test version, and unfortunately, there's no 'rewire~' object. It's still nice to see that cycling 74 is making progress to change over to X.

TXT:: These updates are getting less and less frequent. I've come to realize that I'm in desperate need of eyeglasses. About a month ago, while looking for the Leonid meteor shower, I noticed that stars were not sharp points of light. When i squinted, the stars would eventually come into focus, but the brightness was diminished. Even reading text on this screen seemed odd, but I blew it off as tweaky anti-aliased text. Anyhoo... I'll get this sorted and perhaps I'll be able to sp3lL brettr. This may also explain why i've been so slow to reply to e-mails. I'm still chipping away at them and have about 189 to go.

My friend wanted to see the Cirque du Soleil performance Varekai, which is currently playing in San Francisco, so we got tickets and went last Tuesday night. It was a lot of fun, and I have to admit the sound design was really quite impressive. The tent had a cool 6 or 8 channel system that handled spatial panning of various foley effects. Aside from the fantastic work by the sound reinforcement people, the performance was very entertaining.

I've also been a bit obsessed with tweaking the new messageboard scripts. There are tons of new features, and i've been messing with little modifications to the perlscripts. Fortunately, perl seems pretty straightfoward so my educated guesses have been working without destroying the script.

TXT:: A couple of months ago, I purchased a license for the full version of DCForums. I've been really hesitant about upgrading due to anxiety about losing the threads. There's a lot of useful information in the messageboard database, and I've already experienced problems when this site was moved. Well, I've finally managed to install the board scripts and everything is running smoothly :-) There are tons of new features available, including private discussion groups. I've moved the ReFill beta testing group to a private area, so If you're a tester, please register and I will give you access.

If you haven't seen the new messageboard click here:

http://www.peff.com/messageboard/index.html

RFL:: The Rhodes Refill is now available on the Reason archive page. It's been months, but it's finally available. This refill is big, so it's recommended that you have broadband access, however I uploaded it via a modem, so people should be able to downloaded over a 56k or less connection.

It's been brought to my attention that if the connection drops while the file is downloaded in Internet Explorer, you will not be able to resume it. So...if you're on a modem and have a fascist isp that disconnects you, you may not be able to download the file unless you "Baby" the download. This means you have to download a portion, then cancel the download before you're are disconnected. Then after you reconnect, reload the file which will resume at the point where it was cancelled.

RBM:: Well, I've managed to get quite a few of the unofficial ReBirth Mods on a server. Hopefully in a few weeks they will be available again for download. I know a few of you out there are still looking for the RBM goldmine which was lost when Niftywerks took Computer Controlled Offline. Also, if you have some RBMs that you need hosted, please feel free to drop me an e-mail and I'll try to get them included in the archive.

TXT:: The Last couple of weeks I've been going to some really cool events at the San Francisco Jazz Festival! Last night I went to see the performance of Ellis Marsalis and Bobby Hutcherson at the Herbst Theater. I'm not very familiar with either of the performers, other than the fact that Mr. Marsalis was the teacher of his children who are important figures in the Jazz world. The gentlemen performed as a duo with Mr. Marsalis on a nice yamaha grand and Mr. Hutcherson was on the vibes. Mr. Marsalis has a very unique style of voicing that I found really interesting. Many of the pieces worked on blues progressions, but the progressions would modulate to chord progressions that were completely unexpected! It was really quite brilliant. Mr. Hutcherson was quite the showman who did not hesistate to show off his virtuosity on the vibes. His flamboyant style provided a nice complement to Mr. Marsalis' sensitive performance.

The week before, I saw Mr. Marsalis' son, Branford who performed with his quartet at the Masonic Auditorium. The Branford Marsalis Quartet opened for the Wayne Shorter Quartet. I'm still quite new to Jazz, and I'm learning a lot by going to these performances. One of the things i learned this evening is that Wayne Shorter is a genius! I was literally sucked in and blown away by the performance. I can't really put it into words because the music was so incredibly deep on an emotional as well as technical level. If you ever have the opportunity to see Mr. Shorter perform, don't miss it! On a side note, if you ever go to a performance at the Masonic Auditorium, dress in layers. It gets really hot and the ventilation system is inadequate for the size of the audience.

TXT:: Like many others, I'm still astonished by the death of Jam Master Jay. I remember being introduced to Run DMC by my old high school roommate who played their first album all the time. While I don't really listen to hip-hop and rap anymore, I can still remember the really phat TR-808 beat and being really blown away by the scratching of Jam Master Jay.

It's nice that the media coverage has been noting the importance of Run, DMC and Jam Master Jay in the history of popular music. The first track, "Hard Times" starts off with the TR-808 with the distinct sound of the Bass Drum and Claps. Since then that sound has been vital to genre. This makes me realize that their work had a significance influence on the popularity and renaissance of the TR-808. It stands to reason that this had some influence on the popularity of ReBirth RB-338 :)

Reason:: I will finally put up some new effects that i've been working on. I've finally managed to create a spring-reverb effect configuration that will be handy for those dub style productions or anywhere you want that unique sound.

Reason:: It's been over a year since we started the Reason Tutorial project, and now the tutorial is finally released. Producing Music with Reason is CD-rom tutorial with quicktime movies that go through the process of creating a complete song from start to finish. Marc, Chad, and Bowen from M-Audio/Midiman did a lot of work developing the director interface, editing the quicktime files, and recording the dialog. The alternate title to this project is called "Watch the Fu##ing Manual", sometimes is just easier to see how it's done rather than reading about it.

This tutorial is primarily developed around Reason 1.0.1. While the features and functions of Reason 2.0 are described in brief, their use is not featured in this version. Also, the director engine is not compatable with Jaguar - Boo Hiss.... However, you can still watch the Quicktime movies in X. however to experience the tutorial, you should boot up into MacOS 9. Quicktime 5 should suffice, but Quicktime 6 is better :-). This is ironic since I took the idea straight off apple's website by using the same format as their MacOS X screen movies.

The Beginning of the tutorial runs through how a Reason song works and the four aspects of a song file: the sequence, the rack devices, the mix, and the output. The tutorial then works backwards starting at the output, setting up a mixer and effects, and inserting devices. While I don't directly warn people about the "Bad Format" problem of some reason song files, I introduce the method which has proven quite successful for me in avoiding this problem. This the old file saving and project folder method that I've told people about on countless occasions.

The next section starts with the basics of using the Redrum, Subtractor and Matrix pattern sequencer to create pattern based music. Once these principles are mastered, the tutorial moves toward developing a basic 16 measure drum and bassline phrase using the Dr.REX and Redrums and a subtractor.

Next is an important section on Tuning drum elements. This is something that isn't always discussed, and it's a common problem i hear in a lot of Reason songs. I only touch on the idea in this tutorial but the basic idea is nicely illustrated since you can see and hear how the percussion and basslines are tuned. I emphasize this section because it plays an important role in the Mixdown chapter. The tutorial describes a few tricks that I use to tweak the tuning.

After developing more elements of the basic 16 measure phrase, the tutorial describes grouping and arrange mode editing features and how these are used to develop a complete linear sequence from a short looping pattern. This is a common problem that I run into when playing with Reason. I'll get this cool little loop running, then a few hours later i find myself stuck in this loop! I figured that arrangement concepts was an important procedure to introduce to new users so that they will avoid getting stuck ad nauseum.

I tossed in a few arrangement tips as well as transition ideas so that users can plan strategies on breaking out of the loop. This section gets a little more esoteric and while the examples work around the basic garage track being developed, the techniques can be used for a variety of music styles.

The Next section is the longest chapter in the tutorial. This one deals with mixing. One of the things I try to do along the way through the entire tutorial is introduce the technical and musical jargon. I try to provide definitions of the terms at each step so that new users could quickly become familiar with the terms. It would be an impressive task to describe how to get the perfect mixdown, but this would be close to impossible. Each song has a unique set of mix parameters. Instead of describing what perfect is, I explain how to use the EQs, panning, compression, gain stages, and mixer automation to mold the mix. There are some handy settings which i often use to compress ReDrums and Dr.REX outputs. Another section desribes how to use eqs to balance bass frequencies between a bassline and a kick drum. The Supplemental Documentation PDF has a handy chart that I assembled that shows PEQ-2 freq settings in relation to MIDI note numbers, Pitches, and Spectrum Ranges. All of this stuff was crammed into one megachapter :-)

The tutorial finishes with the various output options with a discussion on what settings to use when rendering files from reason, as well as the basic ideas of creating self-contained RNS and published song files.

What else do you get on this CD-Rom? Well, each step of the tutorial has an associated Reason Song file. You can go to the song file and play with it to see how things develop. I figured this was really important since users could open the file and explore how the rack is wired and how the sequence is developed.

Also, I mentioned the Supplemental Documentation PDF which was beautifully laid out by Fred "Blank" Haglund. This PDF has a basic introduction to music theory and how it applies to reason--I found this important to people who don't know the notes on a piano or who don't know the difference between a measure and a bar (ok trick question). The SD.pdf also has several sections on creating more advanced effect configurations (some of which you will not find on this site).

I also created subtractor patch charts that should be used as an exercise. This is how I learned how to create patches the "old-school" way: by tweaking the parameters manually. While it's really convenient to just load up a subtractor patch, you don't get the feel of how a patch is created. Manual programming teaches you the basic functions of the subtractor synth. Listening to the sound of the patch evolve from the Init patch to the final sound really illustrates how modulation routings shape a sound. Hopefully, some people will find this helpful.

The SD.pdf has some sections which explain the optimal setup for your reference monitors as well as a discussion on the difference between mixing through headphones and monitors. There's a section on using ReWire and some advanced ideas on using multichannel interfaces with a hardware studio.

Is there more? Yes, there are excellent demo songs from my friends from around the world. Thanks to Kage, Jonas Hagberg, Fabian Lidman, Symbiont, Franck Stauffer, Progtronic, Slumbermonkey, Raydeeoh and Radian! Oh there are few demo songs from me. One you probably have downloaded, and one for Reason 2.0 that does not appear anywhere. There are also some refills from this site included on the CD-rom, but most of you have downloaded these :-)

So the bottom line is this: if you're a new Reason user, this tutorial is for you. If you want to see me work with reason, this tutorial is for you. If you want to know why Redrum keeps playing even though the rest of the song has stopped, this tutorial is for you. If you want to know some basics about mixing reason songs, this tutorial is for you. If you want to know how to automate the mixer and knobs on the Subtractor, this tutorial is for you. If you want to know how to create an audio file from your reason song, this tutorial is for you. If you want to know more about audio engineering, then go to a school or absorb the 1500 pages of the Sound Engineer's Handbook :-) If you're already making cool Reason tracks, then this tutorial is not for you.

This project was not easy for me because I had to step outside myself to understand what it would be like to NOT understand how to use Reason. It's much easier to explain things to people who have some proficiency with the application, but I approached the project with the idea that the user knows absolutely nothing.

I have to thank Marie Mockett for helping me edit the first drafts of the dialogue. Marie and I went to high school and even College together and has a lot of writing experience. Her help was invaluable because she had no understanding about Reason. My friends Jason Christ and Mark Griffin were quite invaluable as sources of inspiration. Their experience with DJing gave them some natural instincts for music, but their lack of experience using Reason shaped how the tutorial progressed and helped me define the key issues that should be described to new users. Casey Rice's engineering expertise was an invaluable resource for the mix down and supplemental documentation section.

A lot of thanks goes out to people who have sent me e-mails asking for assistance. I took into account all of the commonly asked questions about how to do this or that in Reason -- from the countless "Bad Format" questions, Mixer Automation questions, the Please listen to my Mix questions, How to program patch questions, how to load audio sample questions, etc. Rest assured, most of these questions are visually explained in the tutorial.

TXT:: This site has been falling apart lately. With Computer Controlled being shut down, the rebirth mods are offline. Sadly, i think all of the data on that server has been vaporized. This site has moved to a new server, and many of the links have to be restored. The perl scripts for the message board were not functioning, but I've managed to get the board up and running. I blame myself for depending on economical methods of hosting. Hopefully, I will have more time in the near future to get everything back and running.

ReFill:: The Rhodes Mark I Refill is finally online and being distributed to people on my e-mail list. There has been plenty of feedback regarding the sound, and as i've mentioned before, it does NOT sound exactly like a Rhodes--nothing beats the real thing. However most people seem quite satisfied with the velocity switching NNXT patches.

The samples are recorded with the EQ settings flat on the rhodes, and to enhance the sound, I recommend inserting a PEQ-2 eq module after the NNXT then adjusting the bass and treble settings to tastes. Also, you can insert a second PEQ-2 to shelf off the noise above 16khz and use the B filter to boost the hammer noise around 3.6KHz. This has a more authentic sound. Another trick is to insert a compressor which will provide a more even sustain. I've also noticed that using a compressor gives the sound a vintage feel--almost like it was recorded to analog tape.

I'll probably wait another week until I make the refill publicly available. Thanks again to Emmet for letting me distribute the Rhodes Refill off the beachin-net servers!

TXT:: I picked up the new Peter Gabriel album, UP, and I've listened to it carefully. It's immaculately (is that a proper adverb?) engineered, but the production seems to draw an awful lot on his previous work. Certain tracks sound a bit like productions of of So, US, Security, PG3, Lovetown, with a few hints from the Last Temptation sound track. I can't say that it's diaspointing, but it's not quite as inspiring as the previous albums. Instead of saying "wow", i was saying, "Gee, that sounds a bit like In Your Eyes, Love to be Loved, Biko, or Lovetown or Shock the monkey, etc." Although, The more i listen to it, the more i appreciate it. It invokes a bit of nostalgia which may or may not be the intention of the production.

Interestingly there will be an SACD or DVD with 5.1 surround available next year. The 16bit CD has a data track with a weblinks, and it looks like it was done in OS X.

As usual, Gabriel gives credit to the technology that he's using, and one track features a SuperCollider credit, several credits to MPC Grooves, and beleive it or not, the old Lexicon JamMan. I mention this because I've patterened a lot of gear purchases on what he uses.

TXT:: Again, it's been a while since I've updated the site. I've wrapped up a few projects and I'm getting back into the swing of things again (maybe).

First off, the file server that hosts my ReFills and other files has been rebuilt and placed back online. Big thanks to Emmet for getting that done! I think i need to switch the entire site over to his hosting facility. I will try to get some of the ReBirth mods back online as well. I sent a couple of CDs over to Jason Fletcher who offered to host the mods, but I haven't heard from him. I guess it was a vacuous offer -- oh well.

ReFills:: The Rhodes Refill for Reason 2 is just about finished. I've distributed copies for testing. It's a hefty download at nearly 40 Megs, and I haven't received any feedback. I will probably wait to hear from a few people before it goes public. I'll revise my mail list before the end of the week and send out newsletters to announce the release.

Finally...I've received my Minimoog Voyager! It's a bit different than the prototype announced before, but it's definitely a really sweet sounding synth. It has features from the classic minimoog as well as some new design changes that make it unique. I've only had a few hours to play with the voyager, but so far i'm more than happy with it. It was definitely worth the wait. I've been running little sequences from a Doepfer MAQ-16/3 (like a hardware matrix pattern sequencer) into the Minimoog Voyager and making some really cool stuff.

Interesting side note, Big Briar is now "Moog Music". I guess Bob Moog managed to regain the rights to his name!

TXT:: The site has been having a lot of problems lately and many of the downloads are currently unavailable until furthur notice. Also, there was message board crash and many of the posts since April were lost. I apologize for the inconvenience.

TXT:: Damn... No journal entries in a long time. I've been busy with crap that is rather boring, and I just haven't had the time to update things. Primarily, I've been tending to my health , and fortunately it's nothing serious. The doctor says I have to change my diet and get off my ass and do more stuff to stay fit. So, I've been doing that :-)

Reason & Jaguar:: Last Night, my cousin and I geeked on over to the Apple Retail Store to check out the new G4 Towers and to pick up copies of Jaguar, the new Mac Operating System. It went on sale at 10:20pm. Not really thinking ahead, we arrived at around 10:15 to discover a queue of about 500 to 600 people. We're it not for the damn free stuff, I don't think I would have stayed. About 100.2 minutes later, we finally made it into the store to get copies of Jaguar. The store manager kept the place open past the 12:00am closing time-- It was almost 1:00 am by the time we got out!

I installed Jaguar today on my old tower and my powerbookG4, and it seems pretty slick with a slight speed improvement. The good news, Reason seems pretty stable on it. The bad news, you might need to reinstall or put your serial number in after the 10.2 upgrade. They say there's multichannel Audio support and there's a neat little directory to stick your various plug-ins. I have yet to discover how to use this though.

Max/MSP:: Before waiting in line to get tickets to Star Wars get 10.2, I installed the new version 4.1 update to Max/MSP and the demo of Jitter from Cycling74. Jitter is a set of Video and image manipulation and open GL rendering objects for the Max/MSP environment. So while waiting I had a chance to play around with the cool example files. Now you can take your Max/MSP composition and have the parameters tweak out video (yeah sure, i know you could do this before using other objects). You can do something of the opposite as well where video data could be interpreted to manipulate audio/MIDI signals. A cool idea is that you can use the rewire object and route signals from Reason to control parameter tweaks of Quicktime Movie files. This opens up another dimenson of creativity. I can't wait until this is all ported over to 10.2 :-)

ReFill:: The Rhodes Refill is going to take a little bit more time. I've decided to split the files into two separate sets: One 100 Meg D.I. set and one 100Meg Mic set. This will cut the massive RAM requirements in half. Once I get the patches and demos rns files sorted, it will be ready for testing.