DAN SELZER FOR NYC MAYOR

Like Christopher Walken, maybe.

That scene on the subway where's he about to get mugged then he shows them his gun, then throws a wad of bills at them and tells them he has work for them, then proceeds to have sex with his lawyer.

That's the life for me.

m.

Likewise, I don't think Kevin Dunn cd reissues would sell a ton these days, but I'm a pretty big fan. I've picked up a few of the records that were compiled on that CD and they're pretty great stuff as far as Eno-obsessed types go.

I think Cars and Explosions is a Dunn song and Dangerous Goodbyes was Villars.

For anyone who's lost but intrigued, the Fans were like, the first indie band in the Georgia in the mid 70s, sort of the southern equivelent of a Pere Ubu or something. But they were so UK influenced, and their biggest single came out on Albion, a UK label, that most people thought they were a UK band. Dunn produced or otherwise helped kick off the first B-52s release. And just before they broke up...Larry Tee, producer of Ru Paul, inventor of "Electroclash", was their keyboardist.

This is my favorite Fans song, the b-side to Cars and Explosions:

http://s37.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=11G798GQOEFMD0GN39SZ5X3TFP

And let's shout "SHADDAP" at Markowitz the next time he's 3 feet from us (usu every 2 weeks for most Brooklynites).

"I'm running for public advocat so I can abolish the office of public advocate"

Some start out ok, one of the socialists seemed like a nice guy, blue collar union worker type, then a minute in he starts talking about Castro and Cuba.

Leave Bensonhurst? FUHGEDDABOUDIT.

That's when he got my vote. But I think he finished a hair behind... Bernie Goetz.

Dear San Selzer,

Do you have a book on Digital Performer?

Love,
JW

Yes, but I need it.

would you recommend it? anyone have any recs?

The manual or the program? I definitely recommend the manual if you have the program!

The program?

On the mac side, the choices are generally Performer or Logic....or Live. Depends what you're doing and how. Lots of people are doing all of their production with Live now, it can do a lot of the basic stuff Performer or Logic can, but also has it's own special unique way of working which some people love. But if you want a more traditional (and deeper) program, the question is Performer or Logic. I went with Performer because I've used it before and have several friends who use it, and generally I think it's a deeper/more powerful program on a few levels than Logic. However Logic comes with more plugins, which people love, a less bizarre interface (performer's a bit long in the tooth, though the new version seems like an attempt to modernize the look). More and more people use Logic, especially as they graduate from Garage Band, leaving Performer to people who've been using it forever...though Performer seems to be the first choice for people who score film/video, which isn't a concern of mine.

I like performer and just need to keep using it more to get super comfortable with the way it works, which I'm not totally yet. The manual was very helpful though. For serious multi-track recording, MIDI sequencing etc etc, Performer's as powerful as they come, it's just a question if you like working with it.

And there's also ProTools, though I don't think it's MIDI features are near to Performer or Live, since MIDI was an afterthought whereas these programs started as MIDI sequencers and only added audio recording later on.

Also worth noting that some of the features that are associated with Live are available on Performer (and other programs I assume) like beat detection/warping for the quantizing of live audio, stuff like that.

But the kinds of ways people work with live, having something looping and grabbing some slices, recycling them, filtering them, triggering them, all without ever stopping...you just can't do that stuff in Performer.

And there's also ProTools, though I don't think it's MIDI features are near to Performer or Live, since MIDI was an afterthought whereas these programs started as MIDI sequencers and only added audio recording later on.

That was my thought; thanks for the thoughtful response. Maybe I should look at Live again, but I'm more interested in midi... I never got advanced with Live (or any DAW).

Live keeps stepping up it's game, has those "performance" type features the others lack, and really a new way or writing/composing that comes more from a loop-based type thing, but can also then work similar to a standard DAW.

Performer's MIDI features are pretty deep, as it's it's audio editing. They finally added a feature where when you go into waveform edit mode, the transport controls just that, not the entire song, so you basically have a built in copy of Peak or whatever. I imagine most what you'd want to do with Performer you can do with Logic, it's just a question of minor preferences and what you're used to.

Check out:

http://www.unicornation.com/

it's the Performer user forum of sorts, though not official, and you can see the kinds of issues people may be having, and also people discussing why they'd prefer Perfomer to Logic or another DAW, I imagine other brands have similar sites.

I think Performer's step sequencer is going to be awesome.

I've used it a little bit, it's cool, as is it's grid/drum machine style programmer, and it's new plug-ins, the drum machine one and the sampler one especially. It's all just a bit awkward, interface/usage-wise, but I think when you get used to it your golden, like any other program. Performer users, when they get initiated, seem to stick with it and are very satisfied with the interface.

DAZZLE SHIPS TONIGHT WITH SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO KLAUS DINGER

http://www.tropicalcomputersystem.com/040908.jpg

Thanks for reminding me!

hope that guy isn't disprespectful

nah, Jeremy's always nice.

To pitch in my own perhaps worthless opinions, I love Digital Performer, it's what I've used since it was just Performer. All of the records that I have made were made with it. I dally and mess about with Logic, spend plenty of quality time with MAX/Msp and recently have been enjoying Ableton LIVE 6, but I still go home to DP to really complete a piece. I have harvested some cool sounds/textures with MAX and can definitely get a skeletal arrangement up and running really quickly with Ableton, but I don't complete a piece in either of those programs because of various audio quality drawbacks in both environments. Onstage, I run DP on one laptop and Ableton on another. To me LIVE and DP are both great but very very different animals; DP is dated in many ways that are probably obvious. People get seduced by the ease and flexibility and portability of Live and it has all of that going for it, but for sitting and editing audio and tweeking MIDI event lists in a super careful way DP is just more reliable, more precise, and more of a homebase for composition. LIVE's interface encourages you to endlessly spiral around in a loop-oriented manner and is a great superfun time-vortex but it comes at the cost of some pretty gnarly artifacts audio-wise and some insidious ways that it tends to encourage certain compositional "choices" that seem to sneak their way into whatever you do with Live, and I'm not just talking about the obvious pitch transposition artifacts that sound really ghetto.

cf every nu rave podcast "dj set"

Yeah, any sound file pitched up one full octave in Live, even if you set the parameters for larger grain size etc, it always sounds pretty nappy. Fine for something transient like a live jam, fine for piling lots of other stuff on top, not so good if you're trying to make a record that people listen to closely. But different strokes for nu rave and, er, old rave . .

live's envelope editors could really use some fucking help. That's my only real beef with it. I don't fuck with pitching and stretching stuff much, though.

Glad to know you're using Performer, I was starting to think everyone was using Logic or Live.

I feel like it's like Quark, a program that's long in the tooth but once you learn how not to crash it, you're golden.

I used Linux for like 8 years so I'm not easily bothered by programs that look a little long in the tooth.

operator still the best softsynth for the money if you're going to buy live anyway. by a looooooooonnnnnng fucking shot (reconfimed this evening)

and btw jon no intent to beef but adding another tool to the toolbox never solves anything

that's just old man mr. limited B-side with some other nobody back in 1999 talking though