jamesnotjim.com a music site of solo recordings by james “wheatbread” martin

Finally worked out my DAW issues

I really haven't done much recording since I upgraded from Ableton Live 5.2 to Ableton 6. This is partly because I've been busy with other things, but it's also because I got bit by a bug in the upgrade process that makes Live loose track of samples. This messed up the few tracks I had recorded in Live 5.2 since switching to it as my DAW of choice.

I had taken the precaution of backing up my Live 5.2 library before I upgraded, but I didn't feel like trying to fix a computer problem. Part of the reason I switched to Live from Acid is, for the most part, Live "just works" and lets me focus on recording music rather than fixing technical problems with my platform. And I've been using that as an excuse to not record ever since.

But I decided I needed to get working on some new projects. Over at bassplaying.com, we're doing a little experiment called the BP Recording Project. The original idea came up in this thread. We worked out the details in another thread and people are posting their results to this one. The basic idea is simple. One member of the site posted a file of a computer generated song and we're all taking it, adding a bass line, posting the results, and discussing it. It's not really so much about the song itself as it is an experiment in how different bass players approach a song. And since I wanted to contribute, I had to fix my DAW.

And fixing it, it turns out, was dead simple thanks to the fine folks at Ableton, who posted a Live Pack to fix the problem (the Live 5 Compatibility Pack). I just downloaded and installed it and now all the tracks I did in 5.2 work perfectly in 6.0.3 (I went ahead an upgraded while I was at it). And now I'm inspired to do some work.

New year, new tunes?

Not yet, anyway.  But that's the plan.  The fall got very busy and I didn't have time to work on much.  My upgrade from Ableton Live 5 to version 6 has a problem I need to work out at the moment.  And I've got some grounding buzz in the studio that's killing me.  But I am eager to get down to some productive work in the next week or two.  So don't count me out yet.  :)

New mp3 Player

You can now listen to James, Not Jim tracks via a Flash-based mp3 player embedded in each music page.

New Site Notes

I decided to try out some new software to maintain this site. I'm still teaking the styles a bit, but it's getting there. One big advantage for you will be the new RSS feeds.

Goodbye, Acid

I have a brave new DAW. I switched from SonicFoundry Sony Acid Pro 5 to Ableton Live 5.2. I've been thinking about this change for a while, but I finally took the plunge. So now I have new software to learn, but I think it's only going to help this project, as Acid had been causing a lot of frustration for me.

I'm also going to roll out some sort of CMS for this site. It's all hand-coded right now. But that's getting old. It'll probably be a Drupal-powered site very soon.

Still in progress + performance notes

Still not finished with "Prodigal Son," though I'm getting close. Finally upgraded to Acid Pro 5.0, which should help with the stability issues. I put together some composition/recording notes for "Ocean," in case anyone is interested in how that track came together.

About track #2

I made significant progress last night on "Prodigal Son," which will be the second official James, Not Jim release. I'm running into a lot of Acid Pro stability problems at the moment which are slowing things down. But my goal is to finish this one before the end of March.

Oxygen8 + ASIO4All

Still finishing "Ocean" and getting used to my new M-Audio Oxygen8 keyboard controller, which would be useless on my Dell 5160 if it were not for the wonderful asio4all.com drivers.