Today I'm going to take some time to talk about something that happened in a Woodcraft.

This will apply to nearly anything in life where you create. Music, programming, woodworking, sewing, gardening... basically anything.

I'll also be covering a music-mixing topic.

I'm writing this post because I want to test out using Dragon for Mac I have been having RSI issues lately and I need to find an alternative to typing on my keyboard. (Note: I actually abandoned this after a paragraph. Not for me.)

Line6 Helix Native. It's not cheap, but is it worth it?

Today I'm going to walk you through Line6 Helix and everything it has to offer, both to guitarists/bassists and other musicians/producers.

This is a BIG review, and there's a video review as well.

I cover EVERYTHING (except legacy effects) so hold on to your pants. We're gonna figure out if a guitar plugin can really be worth $399.99.

Let's start this one with a bang. Go download it right now. You have nothing to lose. The transient shaper portion is free to use.

THIS IS A MEDIA HEAVY POST!!!!!!!

Clicking through will load 15.6MB of data.

If you're a longtime reader you may recognize the image above. This post is just some text discussion about me, my DAW choices and how I feel about these three products:

• Reaper
• Digital Performer
• Cubase

I'm a longtime Digital Performer user, and added Reaper to my arsenal a while back. Things are changing though.

Spare me a moment to rant.

(Yes, that's my eye)

I've been doing a number of Live Streams making some leather strops, and now they are for sale on my Etsy store! along with some cool wood combs.

Parts 4 and 5 of the streams are linked after the break as well. So check those out if you're curious.

My etsy shop will be linked in my nav bar up top soon, but for now this is the announcement.

BUY BUY BUY BUY

Noise Gates are a staple on multi-tracked drums. The gate turns off the volume until the drum hits and it's near-instantly turned up for the duration of the drum hit.

There's 2 issues with this though:

• It sounds unnatural - Having the drum suddenly pop in with whatever background noise is happening just doesn't sound right. You get this weird blast of rumble and cymbals also messes up the mix slightly.
• It messes with your mix - The drum mix is setup with the relationships of the sound setup somewhat statically. Having a sound pop in that completely messes with that balance can (but not always!) mess up those relationships for that split second.

I have a method that can solve both of these things in some scenarios. It's not a cure-all of course, and like with any production technique there are tradeoffs. Let's explore...

The last post in the Bitwig update mini-series.

This is a quick look at the upcoming Version 2.4 along with my updated conclusions on Bitwig as a whole.

All previous post have (hopefully) been updated to reflect the new changes.

Other posts in this series:

Mixbus FIVE 32c is alive! (and I'm no artist, but I tried)

I'm interrupting the Bitwig series because I think it's necessary, and because I have the scoop.

Enough intro rubbish. On with it!

Yeah yeah... Bitwig 2.2 came out in September 2017 and Bitwig 2.3 came out nearly 7 months ago, but better late than never!

I'm going to cover all of the new stuff in Bitwig 2.2 and 2.3, what I think about it and update all of my previous Bitwig posts with the new information so folks that end up here don't get an outdated impression of the software.

On we go!

Other posts in this series:

A typical scenario in mixing is that your kick drum and your bass, or some other similar elements, overlap spectrally. The 'normal' solution is a volume sidechain.

There's a better way though! Well, sometimes it's better, but it's worth knowing so you can learn when to use it.

Still making the strops. Only one hour today.

Bitwig content coming in 2 days!

I'm going to be taking a look at The Retromod series from Tracktion Corporation.

I already reviewed their DAW product which was quite nice. I also reviewed their flagship synthesizer: Biotek, and that is quite a monster.

I did not pay for these products. I was given an NFR (not-for-resale) copy for review. I try my best to not let this affect my opinions. If you feel like I did, then please say so in the comments.

Retromod takes on the task of getting more vintage sounds, so let's see what they came up with.

ALSO Video review is available too!

Yet another live woodworking stream. Still making leather strops.

More audio content is coming in the next day or two!

I did a live woodworking stream in my shop on youtube. Here it is!

I may do more of these or not. I'm just trying to get view-hours so I can monetize videos. If you'd like to just turn this on in the background and mute it, it'd help me out.

Or... you could watch it :)

(Yes, I chose that thumbnail on purpose. I think it's hilarious)

Today I'm doing a review of something somewhat unusual: an online course.

Specifically I'm reviewing the Mixing in Reaper. Volume 1, 2 and 3 are discussed.

There's not going to be any images or video here. It's just a text review of a product that I think is...

A frequent scenario for some Reaper users:

• Multiple MIDI items
  • Each item corresponds to parts of the same instrument (like drums - kick, snare, toms, cymbals etc...)
• Editing the files requires working with many parts at once
• You go crazy jumping between MIDI items

We can fix this, and make it easy to use. It can also be toggled on/off.

Today I'm also doing a companion video. It covers the exact same thing as the text, but in video form. This is an experiment, so I'd like feedback on it! The video is in 4k resolution.

If it works out and I am happy with the output, I'll try to do this for future posts as well.

It's been 42 days since I started doing "30 days" with FLStudio. I haven't covered everything. This review is over 40,000 words (not including my notes, but including metadata inside the posts), which is the cutoff for classification as a 'novel'. I've written a novel on FLStudio. Great... hmm...

I spent 133 hours writing and working on this post. According to time sink I spent 230 hours using FLStudio in 42 days. That worked out to almost exactly 8 hours a day for 42 days. (I do schedule this, so I'm not too surprised)

As with all of these sorts of reviews, I feel like I could keep writing for a couple more months, but it's time to end it so I can move on... for now.

I'm going to discuss some things that I didn't cover in the other posts, plus give my overall thoughts on the product.

Lots of typing, few images.

Other posts in this series: