James Bisset: 50th Anniversary Edition

A while ago, I delighted in the fact that my little Epiphone Valve Junior 5 watt practice amp had been modded to include a line feed from the output transformer. As aficionados will know, this means that I can get all the tone that a simple valve amp creates, but because I’m bypassing the speaker I don’t need to wake the neighbours.

But of course, the downside is that a guitar amp speaker tends to colour the sound too, which is why guitars still get played through vintage Celestions instead of modern hi-fi speakers.

The plan was to use to use the guitar amp simulator in Logic (Guitar Amp Pro or GAP) to simulate the speaker cab I wanted, but I was disappointed to discover that I couldn’t have the speaker simulation without amp simulation too. Which kind of defeated the purpose.

So I posted a little moan on the Logic Studio discussion forum and forgot all about it. The day job and the life domestic has occupied my time since, but this weekend I decided to check up on the discussion thread.

In response, one by the name ‘bdevoid’ had suggested using Space Designer and a link to a selection of impulse responses for same.

[Cue thunder, lightning, light bulb switching on] Doh! Space Designer is a tool for simulating a space like a bathroom or a cave or the Albert Hall (did I mention that I played in the Albert Hall once?). But the space could just as easily be a speaker cab, or for that matter, an acoustic guitar body.

I promptly downloaded the Beamsonic Impulse Responses he’d linked to and discovered a ‘Matchless Chieftain’ amongst a whole lot of other goodies.

You can hear the result here:

And for those without Flash:

• speaker-simulation.mp3

3:27 am

Bad News: I did something very strange to my knee whilst out running three weeks ago. I’ve been limping ever since.

Good News: Now I’ve got good reason to resurrect that ‘make your own hiking stick’ project I started last year.

Good News: Logic Pro 8 looks like being the upgrade I’ve been waiting for - full of Apple usability improvements. This is pissing off the professionals who’ve been using the app day in and day out for the past five years. T’was ever thus.

Bad News: The upgrade is processor hungry.

Good News: With the death of my 20in 1.8gHz iMac, the office dual processor 2gHz G5 is now the studio machine, and it hardly raises an eyebrow when Logic kicks off.

Bad News: nine fans! And this machine is now three years old so the fans are getting a bit wheezy. Good thing my hearing is getting worse!

Good News: We heard back from the Clarity and Sparkle Show: they’re going to let Fergus have a re-match! We’re probably getting the benefit of all these TV and radio competition scandals exposed recently. The show wants to look generous and fair-minded.

Bad News: I’m off to read my ’stickmaking handbook’. You’ll have to find something else to read.

9:51 pm

My big mistake was assuming that if iTunes could drive the MOTU 828 successfully, then so could Logic, because I’d already proved that when Logic couldn’t drive the MOTU, neither could iTunes. Never assume.

So I’m taking a step back and trying to see exactly what variables we have here.

When I first brought the G5 home, none of the Firewire ports worked at all; this despite the fact that they had all been working fine the previous day in the office. Only by unplugging everything including power, leaving it alone for 24 hours and then restarting could I get any Firewire device to work at all.

So, I started again from scratch this morning by switching off the Mac, unplugging every Firewire device (including the 23″ Cinema monitor with Firewire bus) and then unplugging the power cable from the back too. This apparently resets the PMU (Power Management Unit?) and you can certainly hear a click as if something just switched off when you pull out the plug.

Tonight it’s one step at a time:

1. plug the MOTO 828 mk2 directly into the back Firewire 400 socket, and start up the Mac. Yay! Logic runs fine. Create a little two bar loop driving two instances of Ultrabeat, copy the patterns to the arrange window and switch off the Ultrabeat sequencers. So now we’ve got a little ‘ezylode’ startup file with two tracks.
2. Switch everything off, connect the monitor Firewire bus and then plug the MOTU 828 into the monitor. Start up again. Yup - Heave a sigh of relief. Everything is running fine.
3. So far so good. But remember, all the music is stored on the external HD. So next test - while Logic is running, I’m going to plug the external HD into the Firewire 800 bus. Here goes… As the last time, the sound disappears a couple of times but it eventually settles down. Strangely, one of the Ultrabeat tracks is coming and going, fading out and in again in the second bar. No - it seems to be OK.
4. Plug the iPod dock into the 2nd monitor Firewire port - and one of the ultrabeat tracks has now disappeared altogether. Unplugging the iPod dock makes no difference. I know, let’s try switching it off and then switching it back on again. Well restarting Logic fixes it, and this time, plugging in the iPod dock makes no difference.
5. Let’s push the boat out. I’m going to connect the portable HD via a Firewire socket on the back of the external HD. Fingers crossed… Whew - again the cutouts, the switching in and out, but stopping the playhead and starting again are enough to fix it.
6. And finally, I’m going to restart the machine and see what happens… Jeez - still working. OK, as you were. Back to work everybody. Nothing to see here.

Shit. What was that all about? I think that there is every guarantee that this will happen again. And I’ll need to go through the whole diagnostic process and then suddenly the computer will just decide to start working again.

9:59 pm

Update: 12 hours later and it’s all gone pear shaped. I’m off to Asda. Read on for a fuller explanation and await a further post in which we plan to use binoculars to see just how far up the creek we now are.

So, as I explained briefly in the last post, due to the untimely demise of my iMac, I now have a three year old Powermac G5 in the studio. This was a fairly painless installation, because both machines were used for work (one in the office and one at home) and had the same software installed. The only complication (other than the agonising struggle to copy approximately 11,000 tracks back from my iPod into iTunes) was the sudden announcement from Logic Pro that there was an “Error while trying to synchronize Audio and MIDI.”

Instead of hearing my music pounding through the MOTU 828 MkII via Firewire, all I could hear were a few clicks and pops followed by an alert box - “Error while trying to synchronize Audio and MIDI.”

I googled the phrase. I trawled through the Logic Pro discussion forums at apple.com. I stared in frightened awe at the list of ten possible solutions on the Apple Knowledge Base: Logic Pro/Logic Express: Error while trying to sync Audio and MIDI.

Word Clock? MTC? Aggregate Device? I’m just a guitar player!

But fear not, dear readers. For I have found a much simpler solution.
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2:26 am

So, we had our family holiday break in August. A fun fortnight of camping in the rain. We managed to pitch our tents(s) in Orkney, Durness and Arisaig before settling down in Arran where we caught up with the usual suspects. Big shout outs (or whatever the current expression for ‘Hello’ is) to Si and Sue, Bomber and Sharon, John, Pete, Dave and Hilary and all the other folkies who turned up.

Finally we returned to our sweet domestic chaos. I fired up the iMac with a new enthusiasm for the 50th Anniversary Edition as soon as the rest of the family retired to bed, and the hard disk crashed.

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9:30 pm