Jeremey's Weblog

Tiger Rocks

So Tiger rocks, of course. I'm sure you're surprised! We're off to some thing in Fresno, else I'd be very long-winded about it. I'll do that later.

Happy Tiger Day!

Mac OS X Tiger was released today... woohoo! I'm anxiously awaiting FedEx...

Audio Plugins

Some people might be interested in screenshots of some of the audio plugins I'm using (or desperately wanting, in the case of Altiverb).

Nomad Factory CP2S (Analog Compressor):

Nomad Factory PEQ2B (Vintage EQ):

Nomad Factory PEQ2A (Analog EQ):

And, finally, Altiverb 5 (Demo):

HOUSE!

We were bored this week so we bought a house on the Internet... hahaha. :) No, really, we did find a house we liked a lot in Sugar Land, and we put an offer on it (through our local realtor there), and after a couple rounds on Thursday, they accepted. Woohoo!

Oh, The Reverb!

OH... MY... GOSH! Altiverb 5 sounds AMAZING. I've had the demo for around 30 minutes now... wow!

Iain Eats Bananas!

Iain got his first taste of solid food on Saturday. He was a bit perplexed, but generally seemed to enjoy himself.

Human Synths

I've been spending time with Ableton Live again...

I think the next evolution of synthesizers will be (or at least, should be) to use human controllers as the synth. You have the keyboardist generating MIDI code and instead of that driving just a piece of software somewhere, you have it drive a piece of software controlled by a second person in real time.

Ableton Live is perfect for this... the keyboardist's MIDI output becomes one controlling input into a "sequencing instrument". The Ableton "artist" then manages the sounds being generated... first through a software instrument such as The Grand, Lounge Lizard, etc... but he also has a huge range of creative possibilities which the keyboardist does not (because he's busy playing the keys!)... effects, resonators driven off either the MIDI ins or the audio ins from the keyboardist, other software instruments, etc. And Ableton itself adds even more possibilities with all of its clip "munging" features.

All of this can be done in real time and the Ableton artist is free to be as creative with the sound as the keyboardist is with the notes. So much fun!

Tapioca

Also while in Chinatown, I discovered I really like tapioca drinks (they have a tapioca milk tea place every 30 ft or so). Mmmmm.

Chinatown

So last Saturday (I haven't had time to write in a week!) we spent the day in San Francisco, mostly in Chinatown. Even though I lived out here for three-ish years in the mid-90s, I never got to Chinatown. Weird. Anyway, Chinatown was really cool. We went to a highly recommended but off-the-beaten-path restaurant (The Pot Sticker), which was amazing. The people were really nice and friendly and the food was SO good. They accidentally made too many pot stickers so they just gave them to us. I was really full.

Then we spent some time wandering around... we were looking for Ten Ren tea company, which we found... so cool!

They have TONS of loose tea (all of those large gold canisters lining every wall), of varying grades. Basically you decide the kind of tea you want and then they have several grades of that kind, and you pick based on smell, look, and price. I got 2 ounces of several different things, including some hand-rolled "pearls" (shape, size) of jasmine tea. I also got a tied green tea (it looks like a ball, about 3/4" in diameter) which opens when brewed, revealing red and yellow leaves inside... looks like a flower. VERY cool.

Also turns out Ten Ren has a website. Nice.

Chinatown also had cool shops with cool shoes, but alas, none in colors I really wanted, and definitely none that fit.

And cool architecture.

[apologies for the general lack of photo quality, these were taken on my phone (6620)]