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WTF?!  :shock:

 

I know; it's sounds like 2 new VA synths from Waldorf.... but it are dogs.
Our dogs for that matter.

On the right is Nouk (male = a Galgo) adopted in April '08
On the left is Nicky (female = a Galga) adopted in August '09

Now, I've been a cat person all my life (we have 3 currently) but since we adopted our first dog 16 years ago I really fell in love with the bastards. That dog died early 2008 and we ran into Greyhound Resque Holland a couple of months later.

In all honestly.... both my wife and I were never particulary impressed by greyhounds; they look......... a bit funny!  :wink: Until we started to find out about their nature: they must be the sweetest dogs EVER! It seems no matter how much they've been abused (these two come from Spain and have had their share) they will never attack a person. It takes a few days to regain their general trust in humans and a couple of months to socialize them again but once they do they are the best dogs ever!  8-)

Now I even consider them to be beautiful. Funny how that works.....

:mrgreen:  Upgrade!  :mrgreen:

I took care of a few loose ends, studio wise. A bunch of low budget but very effective upgrades over the past few months:
First there was the e-drum kit extension + Toontrack SD2. Took me weeks if not months to get it just right. So much to tweak..... But I'm happy now! :-)



Then I got rid of my 2 CRT 19" screens and replaced them with 2 TFT 20" (900 x 1600) screens:



This also gave me some much need room to re-place my keyboard so now everything is superbly ergonomically.

Then I picked up:
- 5 T-racks plug ins + a reverb from IK-multimedia from their "pay one get 6" group buy. Excellent addition to my T-racks classics.
- Wusik EVE 2. A great addition to Wusik Station 5. It's a separate plug in for piano's, organ's, trons etc. Very nice.
- Sanford Cobalt. A dead cheap ($25) VA-synth plug in with a fantastic sound. I kinda missed having one of those.
- A Line 6 FBV-short board. It was about time. Ordered it yesterday to have access to wah/volume and switch on/off stuff.
- A Line 6 POD mount. The POD is now mounted (duh) to the wall for full access.
- 2 additional Line 6 sound packs; I now officially have 160 amps!  


It sounds like a lot but it are all purchases between 20 - 125 euro. I think the FBV is the most expensive one (€125). All in all these items make studio time more comfortable. And the last few months were great also to sort this stuff out. I also re-organized some sound/preset libraries (mainly from SampleTank and WusikStation) since they take up a crap load of space on my hard drive. I also figured out some undiscovered stuff in Cubase 4 and started working with the Line 6 editor software to re-organize my POD-XT. All those matters are usually ignored because there's no time.

So! I'm back in business. Ready to go and finish GCIII!  

It is! September!



Mighty nice of them! --> http://line6.com/news/offers/864
Does require a Line 6 device of any kind (a POD or audio interface, whatever) or an iLok. But that was the case anyhow. The package is free this month!  

Just wanted to notify you about a rather fab groupbuy thing IK-multimedia is running for the T-racks 3 single mix/mastering plug ins.

//http://www.ikmultimedia.com/

Normal prize for these are 75 euro a piece. The original deal was "buy 1 and get 2 for free".
Great deal all ready but IK raises you with 1 extra everytime they break a 500 customers barrier. It's all ready at "buy 1 get 3 for free" level and within a few days the "get 4 for free" level will be reach.

//http://www.ikmultimedia.com/Main.html?groupmix/index.php

If and when the amount of 2000 customers is reach before August 31th (which will most likely happen because about 100 customers jump in every day) you'll get the CRS Hall reverb plug in for free!  

I know I sound like a sales manager here but this is a sweet deal. I've been using the T-racks 1.3 classics for more then 6 years now and loving them. The new single additional plug ins are very good and highly recommended. If you ever wanted to get these, this is the time!  8-)

STORE NEWS:

The Great Frost* Giveaway is nearly upon us. All items left in stock will be available for £5. Larger or multiple items will have varying P+P costs depending on weight and distance.

Sale starts Monday July 6th.

eBay auction to follow.

This is all brilliant news..... but.... where on earth is it? Could someone provide an e-bay link please?

Thanks so much!  

I used to own a CZ-101. I could not afford the additional shirt and hairstyle though!  :?

//http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPWEnmEYxqs&feature=related

Me likes!  :shock:

I loved/still love  "Subterranea" and "The Seventh House" but somehow "Dark Matter" didn't do much for me. Can't explain it, it just doesn't. But "Frequency" .............kicks major butt!

Mark Westworth does an incredible job on keyboards replacing the (almost unreplacable) Martin Orford. And Paul Cook was/is a good drummer but Andy Edwards aka TBE is from a dark leaque of "extraordinary gentlemen of stupendiously good hit men" IMO.  8-)
The presence/addition of these two fine young men seems to spice up the band; the songs and performances are better then ever. Again IMHO. The skills of Mike Holmes, Peter Nicholls and John Jowitt are up as always but I didn't expect anything else.

Well done chaps!  

[HQ]

I've put together 2 vids of me playing my e-drum kit using SD2.0:

Drumvid 1
Drumvid 2

Make sure you watch the HQ version; the default YouTube quality sucks in both video and audio!
The intro tune was played by me also using the same software. Oh, and drumvid 2 will follow soon.  

Proud parent babbling....... :mrgreen:

My son Daniel picked up drumming last year and I first bought him a rather simple e-drum kit to see where this was going.
He turned out to be rather fanatic and talented so he recently upgraded to this:






Which means I took his e-kit and added it to my set up:



How does it look?! --> rather silly.  :|
How does it sound?! --> hooked up to Superior Drummer 2.0 it's fricken awesome!  

I'll shoot some vids soon.

So yeah.
This household is now officially overtaken by drum gear! 2 rooms full of drums. A hardware caddy in the hall. A set of drum gig bags on the attic. And going upstairs you'll run into an extra dubble bassdrum pedal and seat. Like you do.  8-)

Normally things are filmed at 24 frames per second. This is 1000 frames per second:
//http://www.vimeo.com/4167288  

:shock:

 
Then of course there's timewarp on discovery which can do up to 10,000FPS:
Mike Mangini on drums

 :shock:  :shock:

Prizes between 50 and 100K.

 :shock:  :shock:  :shock:

And your 80's sweater and join the course:
//http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA5wtM-FNz0

 8-)

Saw her yesterday in Groningen (NL) with the Mrs and junior. Great gig.    
What a voice! She makes it look and sound so easy!  :shock:
The band is great but a bit "we're trained musicians so we're not allowed to enjoy ourselves to much".  :roll:

If you have the oppertunity to catch her, it's highly recommended!

It's called: www.ronaldwahle.com

Not that there's anything spectacularly new over there; it's basically the same info on a new page.
So why bother then?!  :?

Well, because:
It's got a new url that makes more sense.
The program to build it with is way cooler and makes the thing look better (me thinks.....)
The new hosting company gives me all that + 50 times more web space then the previous one for less then half the money!

rwa-home.nl will be going down in a few weeks.
All in all my new MySpace page makes more sense. And my homepage makes more sense now.  

A solo project by Michael Mills, singer and guitarist for Template.

I found his band about 3 years ago on MS and absolutely love them. They're almost a punk version of Rush + Led Zeppelin. But overall it's a true power trio thing. With Toehider he manages to go deeper when it comes to production, layers and sounds.

--> Toehider



First EP is absolutely fantastic IMO and a 2nd EP is due for summer 2009.

[Chris Brown (GHOST CIRCUS)]

Just in case you hadn't heard about this yet... read on and see who's involved in this!  :shock:


------------------------------------------
TERRA INCOGNITA—Epic Fantasy novel, Epic Rock CD

Rancho Santa Margarita, California. ProgRock Records has joined forces with internationally bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson for a groundbreaking crossover novel and progressive rock project, TERRA INCOGNITA. Anderson has created an incredible fantasy universe with sailing ships, sea monsters, and the crusades. The first novel, TERRA INCOGNITA: THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, hits stores in June from Orbit Books.

Anderson says, "My work has always been heavily influenced by music, especially progressive rock -- but TERRA INCOGNITA truly takes this into new territory." Anderson developed and expanded one of the novel's storylines to form the basis of an epic rock CD, TERRA INCOGNITA: BEYOND THE HORIZON, under the band name "Roswell Six." He and his wife, bestselling author Rebecca Moesta, wrote all the lyrics to the songs.

Accomplished keyboardist/composer Erik Norlander (ROCKET SCIENTISTS) came aboard at the beginning of the project to write the music and produce the recordings. His wife Lana Lane, the "Queen of Symphonic Rock," provides the female lead vocals. Bassist Kurt Barabas (UNDER THE SUN) and Executive Producer Shawn Gordon from ProgRock Records round out the members of "Roswell Six."

"This project checked off about half the items on my bucket list," said Gordon. "Imagine what kind of fantasy world I feel like I'm in when I get to work with one of my favorite authors, favorite vocalists, and favorite musicians. Hearing the story come to life is really an amazing experience and I think there are going to be a lot of new crossover fans from this project."

The CD's male vocals are by James LaBrie (DREAM THEATER), Michael Sadler (ex-SAGA), and John Payne (ex-ASIA). Additional artists on the CD include David Ragsdale (KANSAS), Gary Wehrkamp (SHADOW GALLERY), Chris Quirarte (PRYMARY) and Chris Brown (GHOST CIRCUS), and Mike Alvarez on cello. Together, the creative team has sold over 45 million copies worldwide.

TERRA INCOGNITA is a synergistic project unlike anything ever seen in the publishing and music business -- an original novel and original CD from the same author. Kevin J. Anderson is currently writing the second novel in the epic trilogy, TERRA INCOGNITA: THE MAP OF ALL THINGS." He is best known for his bestselling DUNE novels with Brian Herbert, his many Star Wars and X-Files novels, and his original epic "The Saga of Seven Suns."

The completed CD will ship in April, and the novel will be released in trade paperback in June. We have arranged for you to preorder signed copies of the book, the CD, and the combined set at ProgRockRecords.com.
--------------------------------------------

//http://www.myspace.com/roswellsix

How cool is that, huh?!  8-)  I'm very happy for my buddy CB.  :mrgreen:

It's started out as a complete overhaul of "You/I" but then I got a bit carried away!  
It eventually goes back to that song but... well..... it's a 6 minute track now.

You and I experiments (RWA-remix)



Tell me what you think.

You might have heard of them........  

Picked up their "concert in Argentina" DVD the other day and watched it tonight.
Sumbitch! What a great performance and energy!!!!  :shock:
Also loved most of the new song arrangements.

All in all very impressive since reunion tours are usually "not as good as it used to be". Stewart Copeland still kicks major butt IMHO.  8-)














This makes me wonder though..... whether Wham! will get back together any time soon! I will SO be there!!!!!!!! :mrgreen:

"It's a big decision getting rid of my teeth and could actually cost me my career as I don't know if I'll be noticed with white teeth "

--> link!  :mrgreen:

Word has reached me our beloved vocalnick (Nick from T3E) is trying to get in here:

I can't seem to get into the new Frost forum, much to my disappointment. Never got an activation message, and emails to admins seem to be going un-answered.

:shock:

Could someone please fix this?!

thanks,

Ron