Coming up for air

Occasionally, I am able to pry myself from my desk in, what my wife affectionately refers to as 'The Dungeon' and open these (and other) forums to keep my finger on the pulse of my somewhat spendy 'hobby'. 

I still see people posting on various boards who are teetering on the fence, unsure whether to take the plunge to X1, or even just Sonar in general. Most of their reported hesitance is based on 'all the bugs' they keep hearing about.

Seeing these, I'm reminded of my days as a supervisor in the blue-collar foundry/smelter world where you would be able to gauge a workers performance by the size of his personnel file: Thick file = "Problem Child" - Thin File = "Good Worker".

Basically, the only time anything was entered in a worker's folder was when he/she was disciplined or warned about improper attitude/behavior. VERY rarely (at the smelters I worked at) were 'Atta-boys' and/or 'Kudos' included. So basically, unless you were a discipline case, your file pretty much was a hollow reference to your work skills.

Since X1's release (heck, pretty much after most of Sonar's major releases) these (and other) forums tend to fill to the brim with all the problems and issues users are experiencing. That's great, as that's where the strength in online communities lie: Peers helping peers 

But for the uninitiated, they (to me) seem a lot like those old personnel folders...  Not a true representation of performance.

So... (for any of you still reading after all that rigamarole ), I  thought I would put my latest experience in X1's folder:

This week, I had three 4 hour sessions with an artist who is preparing for an exhibit scheduled for the middle of next month. I haven't seen her displays yet, but based on the audio she contracted me for, I'm thinking it will be a lot like Tim Burton and Laurie Anderson doing a wedding video... 

Essentially, she wanted to track down and pull the words 'I Do' as well as 'Something', 'Old', 'New', 'Borrowed', and 'Blue' from as many recordings as possible. Couple that with Midi recordings of Church Organs, live recordings of choirs, Groove Clips of Club-type beats and assorted flavorings of panning, delays, reverbs, and Vocoder FX... Well, I think you're kind of getting the picture... 

There were some VERY interesting thought processes and ideas coming from this woman... She definitely had a vision of the sounds needed for her show and, being an artist, her ideas continued to morph and grow as she was introduced to what I was able to offer.

Twelve hours, upwards of 50-some-odd tracks and blending 7 different themes into one 5:30 minute song later, she left my studio with CD in hand, promising to recommend my services to all who will listen (you can't buy that kind of advertising). 

And, through it all, X1 purred.

Although, there was one crash... About mid-way through the 3rd session. "Fatal Error" occurring after I was splitting some voice recordings and hurriedly Ctrl-Dragging them to create some Max Headroom-ish phrases... "Auto Save" was maybe only five Ctrl-clicks behind where I was working before the crash. Naturally, my blood froze when the crash occurred since we had just completed a few MAJOR changes to some sequences and I hadn't hit Ctrl-S since I-can't-remember thirty.

I shrugged and gave a slight: "Computers eh?" to which, she laughed and excused herself to use the ladies room while our project reloaded (and I prayed). When she returned, it was as if nothing happened... We were sailing along right where she remembered we left off. 

OK... Sorry for the long post... 

Just wanted to put an atta-boy in the file. 

glad to here X1 is doing well for you also.