StokeMaster's Music Notes

How To Use Invoice Mode to Collect Client Payment on Google Checkout.

2010-04-19T08:53:00.000-07:00

As a musician or an artist, you will often need to collect money from clients for the works you are going to provide (never perform a work without a payment or good promise of it!)

One of the easiest ways to collect money from your client is to use Google Checkout. Since it uses credit card and all major cards are accepted and it is far more reliable to get paid than to use checks. Also the system is sophisticated enough that it will check things like "return credit" history of individuals before the charge can go through. This will, in general, try to avoid you a hassle of dealing with people who do not have a real intention to pay.

You may have seen Google Checkout buttons on searches and some catalog merchants. But there is one more mode in Google Checkout that you can use to invoice people directly.

But first, if you have not yet set up a Google Checkout account, it is fairly straight forward to do, just go to https://checkout.google.com/ and set up your account. Now you are a Google Checkout Merchant. The word Merchant is important to remember because you will be dealing with Google Checkout as a merchant and not a consumer.

How To Invoice Your Client Directly via Google Checkout

First go to Google Checkout Merchant Page: http://checkout.google.com/sell/ And be sure to Bookmark this in your browser since you are going back there a lot. But if you forget, don't dismay. Just search Google for "Google Checkout Merchant" It is important that you remember to use the Merchant mode otherwise you will be in a consumer mode trying to buy things from other merchants.
Log in using your Google Account
Once signed in you see the Tools menu/tab on top part of the page. Click it.
Find "Email Invoices" link and click it.
Just follow the instructions on the page.

When the payment clears you will be notified via Email.

Apple Logic Pro: MIDI Track Gone "Grayed Out"

2010-04-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

I was working on a project last night and I muted all MIDI tracks to listen to the audio recorded track.

Then I unplugged a MIDI interface and restarted the Logic.

I was surprised to see all of my MIDI tracks when to "Grayed Out"

It turns out what Logic did was to muted all of the MIDI regions when it found unassigned MIDI track. Reassigning the MIDI channel does not do anything.

Instead you need to go to the Region menu and un-mute all of the regions.

Better Way of Music File Sharing

2010-04-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

By Manabu Tokunaga

StokeMaster's Music Blog

http://stokemusic.blogspot.com/

We continue to hear about RIAA bringing lawsuits to students and other people who cannot obviously afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars in awards. Also the industry is trying to work with the government to mandate the installation software that will monitor peoples music usage on computers. I personally do not agree doing that is a solution to the problem.

Most musicians doing music to generate their income may be sympathetic to that, but on the other hands we tend to see only one side of the story that we want to hear. If you are a professional musician, you may tend to side RIAA, but if you are a music fan, you may think RIAA is an evil greedy organization.

So I did a bit more search on the network and found Electronic Fronteer (EF) web site on this topic: http://www.eff.org/wp/better-way-forward-voluntary-collective-licensing-music-file-sharing

You may find this interesting because what they propose is to either use or start organizations like ASCAP and BMI who collect and distribute broadcast, in this case file sharing, payments to respective musicians.

According to the article, by collecting $5 to $10 from music fans per month and allowing them to do file sharing to their hearts content, the potential revenue it generates is significantly more for artists. Which I think is a great model especially for indepenent and individual musicians since more freedom for music fans to distribute music means a built-in promotion mechanism.

If you explore this site, it has many other useful information on music file sharing. As a professional musician, you should study this a bit as to where the industry and the digital public is heading to. Also I should remind you to join ASCAP or BMI if you have an album. Basically if you currently have your work released from commercial venues like Amazon, CD Baby etc., then you are very likely to be accepted.

What do you think about this?

Recording Mac's Internal Audio To Logic, How To

2009-12-19T17:15:00.000-08:00

Many people who do Pod Casts may know this already, but we sometimes have a need to record Mac applications' audio-out into Logic. You could do this with a pair of cables to loop back the audio out but it can also be done via a piece of software.

You may be wondering why you'd want to do this. Here are some examples;

You may want to do this for recording online telephone phone conversations, or if you want to use Mac's speech system's output into a cool effect.

One such software is SoundFlower which is Open Source and the information is at this site: http://cycling74.com/products/soundflower/

As with any digital recording technology, you do need to respect copyrights of commercial work as you do this.

Update on M3 FireWire with Apple Logic

2009-08-23T16:17:00.000-07:00

Previously I have discussed M3 with its Firewire Board (FWB) and today I have finally came to the arrangement that works fully digitally.

The key is that solved the main problem was that I was insisting on sending the output to M-Audio FastTrack device. As soon as I have eliminated that from the audio chain, I was able to do pretty much what I wanted.

The problem was that

It was almost impossible to rout the output sound to FastTrack
M3 can directly play back the sound coming out of Mac.

In my situation, what made possible to monitor both the Logic (samples and software instruments) and M3 to send the output to my keyboard monitor was to send the Output from Mac to the Individual Out 1/2 (or 3/4).

Turn the volume of all your external sound equipment to zero just in case.

To do this, first set the input mode on the M3;

Press GLOBAL
Press PAGE SELECT
Select Basic Setup Page (P0)
Press the AUDIO tab at the bttom
On the Top section with a (>) select FireWire
Then for Input 1 under Bus Select, select 1/2
For Input 2 select 1/2 also

Do not send the signal to L/R. This will cause the output of Logic to feed back into the input of the Logic.

You are not quite done yet...

On your Mac, launch the M3 Editor
When it starts up. Press the GLOBAL button on the M3 Editor window
Under the Audio Settings
Audio Driver is set M3 (0164) <- This number may vary for your card
Audio Output: Individual 1/2
Buffer Latency (4 ms works for me but experiment with it)
CPU Load (High setting works for me but experiment with it)

Now connect the external monitor speakers to the Individual Out 1 and 2 then you can hear what Mac is sending out. You can even enable Software Monitoring.

As for the Buffer Latency you need to experiment with it until you do not hear clicks and pops from skipped or missing samples.

Note: I have not quire figured out how to turn off the FireWire MIDI. Even the MIDI setting on the M3 Editor says USB, right now if the USB MIDI is connected the keys double up (i.e., if you press a key the same not appears twice in the Event List). I am using it without USB for the time being which is just fine for my applications.

Logic 8 - Audio Track Stop Playing When You Moved To Another Computer

2009-07-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

I use two different Macs for my project. I have a "Studio" Laptop which I use to compose and record tracks. Once I am basically done with it, I move the project to my Desktop iMac. It is much more comfortable to make some tweaks and do the mix on a big desktop machine.

When you copy a project from one machine to another though you might run into a problem of an Audio track not playing another machine. This happens to happen to me just about every time very consistently! May be the fact that I have a KORG M3 EXB-FW Firewire interface driver on my laptop. But, I don't know.

This has puzzled me for a good 3~4 hours and finally I have figured out at least what to do to correct the situation (not necessarily perfectly fix it.) If you are reading this and know exactly the best way to fix this, I would like to know, but here is my version of how to prevent and fix the issue.

Prevention -- Always Leave the Universal Track Mode On

Apparently this is important when you are moving project from one machine to another. So on all your projects, before you start them be sure to go to the Audio setup and be sure that the Universal Track is turned on and left being on.

How to Remedy If Your Audio Track Does Not Sound

First from the Arrange window know which Audio Track number is the one that does not sound.
Next, open the Environment window
Find the channel strip servicing the "dead" audio track.
Go to the left panel that where you are going to filled with it.
First check the Driver setting. This should correspond to the Audio driver that you are using on the second machine. Most likely Core Audio but you may have other devices.
Next try to assign this strip to another unused Audio track number. In my case just doing that make the sound to start feeding to the normal output channels.
If above does not work, click the Universal Track mode on/off, save the project, come back and turn it on/off again, save the project until you can turn it back on, and try the above steps. (I think there really is some bug in Logic along this line!)

OK, good luck and enjoy!

Logic 8 - Record Each Separate M3 KARMA Track

2009-06-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

Desired Effect:

You want to record KARMA output into Logic but want to create a track per channcel.

Do This:

You need to check how many MIDI channels are used in a COMBO
Create multiple External MIDI tracks
On Logic Go to File > Project Settings > Recording > Auto demix by channel if multitrack recording" option.
Go to M3 and Make the synth to MIDI LOCAL CONTROL only.
Press the Record Enable button on the Logic on all Tracks you created.
Record

Logic 8 How To Prevent MIDI Echo (Thru)

2009-06-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

Symptom:

You got both MIDI in and out connected through a MIDI interface to your Synthesizier keyboard and every time you hit a note the note doubles up. You may even know that the MIDI signal your Logic takes in is being echoed back to the keyboard.

Fix:

I found this part of Logic not very intuitive to me and took a while to figure out, or more like for it to sink in to my brain and accept they have done it this way. I fixated myself that there is a Midi-Thru OFF switch on the Inspector panel and stare at the UI and hunted for the switch for good 30 min. That was not the case.

Here is what you need to know with MIDI recording.

You do not need to Record Enable to record an External MIDI track. All you basically need to do is to highlight the track and press the Record button on the transport.

If you press the Record Enable button like the picture below (you see that [R] button of the [R] [M] [S] buttons is enabled) on the track strip the track will enable Midi-Thru and all the notes will echo back and if you are lucky you will hear that rich unison sound. In this case you don't want that effect.

Instead you make the [R] button of the [R] [M] [S] buttons is disabled and so it is grayed out on the track strip then the Midi-Thru and Midi Thru will stop.

You may ask "How can I record when the record enable is off?" That's what I am saying how non-intuitive this part is. Take my words. Once it has been turned off, you can press the Record Button while the track is highlighted like above illustration and it will definitely record incoming MIDI. Give it a shot!

A lot of people want to try these things on their project you spent a lot of time on. Don't! Just start a blank project and try out these few things instead of destroying your project! At a minimum save the project first!

Another Way

Most people do recommend that if you are using a Logic 8 or other Digital Music Workstation type software to make your Synth in a Local Control only mode in your MIDI setup. If you have a question about that on your KORG M3, just write a comment requesting for that information and I will write about it on my next article.

Going Solo with Logic. Be Weary of Solo Protect Mode, The S with a Shash (/)

2008-11-02T17:30:00.000-08:00

I encountered an issue with Logic Pro 8 in that the Audio Track kept on playing even if I wanted to solo another single track to adjust a few effects. I took me quite some time to understand what was going on, but again, the people at MacProVideo Forum came to the rescue right away. (I highly recommend that you sign on to that group and also watch the videos. I am just a paying customer there, but the amount of time saved hence the money is so great. People are so super helpful there. I had a question posted on certain company's official suppor forum, and so far I had not had any responses there.)

As for my problem, here was basically the core of it.

The Logic has a mode called "Solo Protect" and it basically disables a track from being put into "solo." I won't explain why this is important, but for example, if there is an effect send coming out of the channel like the one on the left, you'd often not mute it. Perhaps you may be using it to do some side-chain effect controls or triggers. When this mode is in effect there is a red slash (/) over the solo button on the channel strip.

Logic will automatically figure when to Solo Protect a track, but if you are unaware of this feature then you'd be caught for a big surprise thinking that there could be a bug or installation issues with Logic.

At any rate, if you do insist that you would want to turn this off, then all you need to is to press Control while pressing the S button on the strip. Do that again to turn it back on.

Be Aware of Contexts in Logic Library Search

2008-11-01T08:01:00.000-07:00

I was looking for some software instrument sounds in Logic 8's software instruments. The natural inclination is to use the Library Search feature under the Media panel's Library tab.

I wanted to add some bit of "Pedal Steel" feel for my project and so I was frantically looking for any instruments in the "out of the box" installation of Logic 8 for the word "Pedal."

I did not find any. So I asked on MacProVideo Forum about this and there are couple of things I've learned. This is also important for me to remember so I am documenting it here.

When a bare-bone Software Instrument Strip is selected, the Library search looks for Channel Strip Presets and not Instrument Presets. It is deceiving because quite a bit of ESX and ES instruments are preset as the channel strip preset.
If you are looking for actual file name, look for the name + .pst extension on your disk using Spotlight.

More detailed answer can be found at This Post at MacProVideo Forum.

P.S.: MacProVideo forum so far has been the most reliable and fast response source of questions. I highly recommend both their products (as I posted before) and forum participation.

Independent Distribution

2008-10-23T07:08:00.000-07:00

Writing and recording songs are of course the key activities of song writers, but making them available for the public consumption is another important stuff we need to consider, and also collect money from the sales.

A friend of mine leads a surf rock band and I use him often as a help in terms of questions. He does cut albums and his music is available on CDs and iTunes. He told me that he uses CD Baby.

Going that route means that I can call myself a recording "label."

In summary here is how it seems to work:

They stock 5 of your CDs for a $35 per CD processing fee.
For CD sales you name your album price and they take $4 per CD.
For digital distribution (i.e., iTunes) they take 9% commission.

I have a bit on online sales experience through my surf web site, and if you go completely your own route of distribution here are the some of the headaches you would run into.

You need to collect money that means you need to take a credit-card. I use Google Checkout and that's easy enough. You could also open your own Amazon shop but the commission significantly higher than doing through CD Baby.
People do fraudulent or semi-fraudulent things like claiming not receiving the orders. Google Checkout and Amazon shop can largely shield you from taking orders from repeat offenders and provide a convenient way of refunding but again the time is something you need to consider.

And never take a personal check unless it is from your close friends (and if they are close friends, give your CDs or send them the MP3 file. Word of mouth is a huge marketing tool.)
You also need to fulfill the order. That means you need to ship the order. This is a lot of leg work. Most of us work a full-time day job so when do we got a time to go to the post office? Also what if you go on a vacation or a long business trip from your company? You cannot make your customers wait. It is best to have the distributor deal with that sort of things and you concentrate on your own production.
You may need to deal with cranky customers who have received damaged orders.
How are you going to go on iTunes?

As I wrote in my previous post, public distribution evidence is required to join the ASCAP or the Grammy, and they both seem to accept CD Baby is a recognized form of public distribution, so basically when I will be ready to sell my tracks, I would go that route.

One important thing to note on distribution deal, especially digital media, is that it is highly discouraged to sign up multiple distributors for the same song or album you create. This will cause a confusion in the distribution and retail channels.

Copyrighting

2008-10-23T06:05:00.000-07:00

We were wondering about the copyrighting the songs you create. This article is not a legal advise but here is what we seemed to have found out.

Best and foremost, it is worthwhile for you to visit the US Copyright Office web site and read the Law and FAQs

The following were the main questions we had and were all answered in the Copyright Office FAQ. Again, we are not providing you a legal advise, so please don't use what we have written as the authoritative answer to secure your works.

Do I have to register every song with the Copyright Office to get a protection?

The answer seems to be no. We interpret that for us, song writers, as long as we save the recorded work in your own CD-ROM then the copyright will take effect. So the answer is that you do not have to register every song. The registration provides an official record of the copyright in case there is a legal claim against what you wrote. For this, if we are not making a lot of money and no very famous from our songs so we would forgo this, or wait until we have a major publishing deal. We would save them on CD-ROMs, make a written record of when they were created, and then don't share them with the public in any form if you think you could make a deal.

It is also important to note that if you wrote a song under an employment contract (work for hire) from someone else, say composing a video soundtrack, then the copyright is most likely going to belong to the employer. We are not sure if you can include a clause written in our own contract to specifically sate that all the songs we write under the contract shall remain as ours. This has some implications for group efforts, for example, a rock band.
Can we register online?

Looks like we can. They prefer that you upload MP3 or other supported media format files using electronic submission and pay $30 (at this time of writing).

$30 a song? That's way too much! Can I register multiple songs?

So long as they were not previously published at different times, then the answer seems to be yes. We would interpret then all of my online demo songs were published so we need to individually register, but moving forward, we should publish multiple tracks under one title on the same day or an "album". Again, though, that is if we decide to register.

What is ASCAP and how to join.

2008-10-12T22:29:00.000-07:00

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Producers (ASCAP) is member owned organization protecting the rights and hence the revenues of people who create and present music. I like the fact that ASCAP is one of the performing rights organization in the U.S. created and controlled by composers, lyricists, songwriters and music publishers.

To join them, they charge one time membership processing fee of $25.00 and they somehow collect royalties from various venues, and send you a check every so often. You do have to have some evidence of having created some music before you pay the due and join. I would personally cut some tracks and sell them through some only sales media like CD Baby or such.

You are probably familiar with Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI) as well, which is another organization who can represent your performing rights.

Both organizations clearly state that you (as an individual) can only be reprsented by one of these organizations. However, it seems to be interpreted that if you are a group or a band each member can join either the BMI or ASCAP so tha both ends are covered.

Logic Pro 8 and KORG M3 EXB-FW and USB-MIDI Integration Notes

2008-10-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

On this article, I am going to jot down any knowledge that I came to acquire in terms of integrating KORG M3 and Logic Pro 8. As you read this, please do not expect that I have the in-depth knowledge of Logic Pro 8 nor KORG M3.

These points are what works for me. If you know more about it, be sure to provide a comment in this blog post and I will make sure to update it here and also the KARMA Lab Wiki Page. Pictures included are too small on the post but clicking them will enlarge to the size that you can see better.

Whenever you can use the USB-MIDI interface in addition to EXB-FW. In spite of the speed of the FW interface, the MIDI signal goes through it is at the same speed as the original MIDI Standard. The USB-MIDI interface implements significantly faster transfer rate.
At least another person and myself have experienced that M3 won't start right on the beat even the M3 is slaved to the Logic. The best way to get around this issue is to let the Logic run for at least a bar and then start Bar 1 of your own material.
Out-of-the-box, you cannot make the M3 to be the MIDI Clock master, or at least you cannot get the Logic to start when you start the M3 sequencer. This feature appeared to have been removed from Logic and Express based on Version 8. It was available in Version 7 based Logic software. Source: http://www.logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=22957

In addition I have confirmed with Stephen Kay of KARMA Lab that the M3 does not send MIDI Machine Control (MMC) which is implemented as SysEx message to Logic so out-of-the-box it cannot trigger the Logic to start from the Sequencer start button. M3 sends System Realtime Message (MIDI SRM) that contains Sequencer Start and Stop commands, but this is not recognized as an input to the Logic. Though, the Logic (express) manual clearly states that when the MIDI Clock output sends most of the M3 supported MIDI SRM. I have posted a message on Apple Logic Pro 8 support forum and a response from there pretty much confirmed that the for the input into LOGIC using the MIDI SRM is unsupported. I've also checked the Yamaha Motif XS manual as well as Roland Fantom series, they do support MTC and MMC features.
Out-of-the-box, you do and can slave the M3 to the Logic's MIDI clock. Logic manual clearly states also that Logic does and will send the MIDI SRM message to get external (M3's) sequencer and such in sync. This is the preferred method to use the Logic in most MIDI production scenarios. To configure this on the M3 side, go to Global MIDI setting and set the M3 to sync with USB MIDI and then Logic's Project Sync to output the MIDI Clock on ALL interfaces. You may run into the issue that M3 starts significantly later than actual start. You may want to make sure to include an empty bar or two in your M3 sequence so that it will have ample time to get whatever internals started and drive the actual sound out (I am still investigating this to work perfectly.)

Don't confuse MIDI clock with Audio Sampling Clock. The Audio clock is the 44 Khz stuff that is the sampling rate of the audio signal. And it seems to work the best if you set the Audio sampling clock on the Mac Audio/MIDI control panel to the "Device." In this case the "Device" to mean your M3's FW audio output.
For recording the sound output from the M3 what works best for me is to use it as the Software Instrument, then divert the output of the instrument to another Audio Track. In my case, if you just bounce the tracks without first having the live-audio recording, the bounced track contains nothing but noise.

Some of the parameters that works best for me includes setting 2 Milliseconds latency and High CPU on the M3-Plug-in editor (read about the Audio Sampling Rate above as well). For the Core Audio option, set it to whatever audio output you are using (but not the M3). In my case I set this to M-Audio FastTrack. I will make sure that I will set every volume control knobs on your audio device to be in the dead center just so that you have not faded the input completely one way. Not doing so may result in a "dumb" error where you will only find out later (taking 1 hour checking cables, drivers and etc.) that it was just the volume control set all the way to left or right and the actual source was there but not hearing it.

Speaking of using FastTrack, be sure that A/B input switch is set to A or the output will direct to channels 3-4 and you won't hear a thing unless you also direct the output of the software instruments to 3-4.
The description of taking multiple inputs in the M3 Editor manual (about going to Environment window) seems to be wrong or other way around. I only get 2 channels under the software instruments. But on the stand-alone mode, you can feed all 6 channels into the audio channel strips (again though I have not figured out how to output those back into FastTrack without changing the AU settings between M3 and FastTrack).

I would like to thank KARMA Lab Forum users Coronado, Oddeo and also Stephen Kay in producing this article.

Please check out the following threads in the KARMA Lab Forums, if you have more problems or have answers, or post a comment to this article here and I will update.

OS2/FW Low Latency..Yay!!! Clicks & Pops...Booo!!! (http://www.karma-lab.com/forum/showthread.php?p=74142#post74142)

Syncing the M3 & Karma to your DAW (Logic) (http://www.karma-lab.com/forum/showthread.php?p=74228#post74228)

In addition, I do plan to make most of this content to be available on KARMA Lab Wiki Page at http://karma-lab.wikidot.com/ in late October 2008.

Update: Stand-Alone Mode Recording and Playback with M-Audio FastTrack

You can also the M3 Editor in the "Stand-Alone" mode and record the audio straight from inputs 1-2. In fact the signal does route through to Logic but if you are using the M-Audio FastTrack then you may wonder how to route the output. To do this you need to make an Aggregate Device in the MIDI Setup Utility and create the M3 and Input and FastTrack as the output device.

Once you named the Aggregate Device that's what you need to select in the Audio setup of the Preference section of Logic
You can now add an Audio track and if you record enable the track you should be able to hear the sound from M3.
Add an External MIDI track and set the M3's MIDI to LOCAL CONTROL OFF (Press Global Settings button and then press the Page button, then select MIDI from the screen.) Then record enable the MIDI track and the Audio track at the same time.
If the sounds (i.e., the MIDI events are) are doubling up sounding like in Unison mode (you can find this in the Event List) it is likely that MIDI is coming from both the FW and USB-2 interfaces. This is pretty standard. I will always Pull out the USB and see if that is what is going on.
Turn the input knob of the FastTrack all the way right so that you are not getting the line input signals into the Mix. If you are trying to mix in other live signal you do need to do so into the IN of the M3. I'd personally finish the M3 segment of recording first then move onto the live stuff.

Become a "Grammy Member? Yes It Seems Possible!

2008-09-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

So, if you have been in the music field, you've heard about the Grammy awards. Grammy is also known as The Recording Academy and also as NARAS or National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

We've looked into how to gain a membership in this prestigious society, and here seems to be the deal. The details are all spelled out at this URL (http://www.grammy.com/Recording_Academy/Member_Services/FAQs/DigitalOnlineDist.aspx)

But basically if you are on-line distributing your record with a minimum of 12 tracks and have a web site promoting your "product", which of course is the music, and possibly gigs, and it is "on sale" at Amazon, CD Baby, iTunes etc.,

In other words, if you can prove it to them that you are making your "life" through recorded sound, they will very likely to qualify you with a $100/year membership, $180 for two years, and $260 for three years.

Another way to qualify is to have two voting members recommend you in the membership. This is probably a bit hard for most of us to swing, and if you are established enough to know two voting members, then you'd probably would have gotten in already anyhow!

In terms of voting, yes people do vote to pick the Grammy winners, it sounds like most of independent musicians seems to qualify as voting members, but there is some credits you need to earn, and I have not completely figure that out yet. But even if you don't have credits, you can opt for non-voting Associate membership which can be later upgraded to voting once you earn the technical or creative credits. I am not sure how these credits are earned, sound like by the number of tracks you produced?

Logic 8 Tips: How To Stop Memory Eating Daemons (i.e. Entourage Database Daemon)

2008-09-27T06:28:00.000-07:00

One of the important things to run the Logic 8 smoothly is to give it an ability to use the CPU and Memory. So I would quit all other applications while I am using Logic 8, remove applications that isn't needed, such as Logitec Harmony Remote programs etc.

If you are using Micrsoft Entourage, you will also notice that it runs "Database Deamon" in the background, and there seems to be no way of keeping it from running even after you exit the Entourage applications. This is a nasty background application for Logic 8 users because it is a Power PC application so it requires memory hogging Rosetta virtual CPU environment, and on top of that, it will access the disk and more than 1 GB of memory!

Fortunately there is a way to stop this after exiting Entourage. Here is how.

Go to your application folder. You will find the top level of where your Entrougage is located.
From that finder window, do a search on "Database Utility". In my case it is stored under Microsoft Office 2004 -> Office -> Database Utility
Click the Database Utility
Select the Main Identity database if it is not selected. If there are more of them, you will need to repeat the each step.
Select "Set database preference"
Press Continue
Deselect "Perform Database Integrity check in the background" checkbox.
Save

That should prevent the database integrity checking to run after exiting the Enorourage application.

I usually keep the "Activity Monitor" utility always available in my dock, and whenever I see any performance issues, I will take a look at which processes are taking up the most memory or CPU cycles.

Great Logic Pro 8 Tutorial

2008-09-19T22:14:00.000-07:00

About a half a year ago, I bought Apple Logic Pro 8 as an upgrade to Logic Express. A brother of my former colleague is a musician in So Cal making sound tracks for movies and such and highly recommended I get Logic. He himself recently converted from PC Pro Tools to Mac and he really liked the fact that it came with so much stuff in the price. I do agree.

But I could not figure this software out so easily. Yeah, it is easy to record a few tracks, but once getting into the art of mixing, automation or even side-chaining effects... This is probably one of the most complex software tools you'd ever use (forget about PageMakers, PhotoShop or even Visual Studios), and you will end up and needing to be using just about every feature available to it to produce good sounding tracks.

I was looking for some nice books about it on a book web site and there was a comment from a user who wrote to check into MacProVideo instead of buying the book. I was a bit skeptical at first but I ended up buying already about half of their Video tutorial. Their sample videos were convincing and the instructor they pick are the people working at the top of the line in the industry.

I happen to think they are really great especially if you don't want to spend time and money learning it the hard way. Just sit and watch one of the videos for half a day and it is a savior in terms of climbing that hard initial learning curve. A normal course at your local art school extension would be $300 or $400 for a week or something, but with just $50, you can get your teacher to "come to your home" as many times as you need (so to speak).

So if don't have time to attend classes like me, do check out some of the courses MacProVideo.com

I started out using analog VUs, motorized boards, and patch cables to processor boxes and bouncing back and forth on 8 tracks with the studio time ticking by the minute. I could not have imagined that a I can carry a fully automated 64-track mixing studio and do a complete mix while traveling from SFO to NYC. It has definitely produced a lot of good mixes by a lot more people.

Chord Resources

2008-09-19T21:58:00.000-07:00

So how do you play C7+9+5 if you see that in the chart? Even though I can figure out how to play most of these chords from the theory, it is often just convenient if a software (or a web site) tells you what to do, especially if I ran into F#+9+5 (somehow I really dislike the key of F#. I'd rather play in Gb!). There are many sites that show chord voicing with some nice little Javascript. The A Passion for Jazz site is a good example of it and just really convenient. I am logging it here so that I can remember to refer to it whenever you and I need it.