After reading through this rather lengthy exchange about a Kompoz work posted on Youtube that had a CC license, I thought it might be good to remind everyone to take time to read about the licenses before just picking one at random.  If you choose wisely up front, it'll avoid problems later on!

Avid announced the upcoming release of Pro Tools 11 this week.  Besides the upgrade to 64bit, there are many other features that greatly improve processing power and workflow.  RTAS is gone for good, so all plugins will need to migrate to the new AAX format.  This upgrade is a significant change from prior versions and I for one am pretty pumped about it.  As Russ Hughes of the Pro Tools Expert Blog put it, Avid opted for a heart transplant rather than a boob job.  Cosmetic improvements were not what was needed.  Avid delivered and then some with this upgrade! 

For those of you wanting to beef up your VI's and plug-ins, there is a Computer Music Magazine Special Edition out on newstands right now that has a DVD with 150 free plug-ins, many of which are truly great!  Just one of them alone has to be worth the $15.99 US price of the zine. There are tutorials and guides in the zine and on the DVD.  There are Drums, Samplers, ROMplers, Utilities, Synths of all sorts, several FX, Guitar fx and even a couple DAW freebies (like Reaper!). 

For those who use Pro Tools and have the FXpansion VST-RTAS Wrapper, many of these (though not all) will wrap quite nicely and work just fine in PT.  But if you use Reaper inside Pro Tools, then you should be able to use ALL of them if you wish...though probably not all at once! 

You can get the scoop on it right here!  ENJOY!!!

For any of you Prop-heads or if you're thinking about getting Reason - they've announced the coming of Reason 7.0.  Based on the video description, it looks to be pretty cool, especially with the ability to MIDI wire in your external gear and use various Reason rack components to control them.  Looks like a lot of nice new features.

As today is the official end of the world according to the ancient Mayans, I want to take this opportunity to say its been a wonderful honor and privilege to be a part of the Kompoz Kommunity all these years.  I've never known more talented, dedicated musicians than I've found here and its been an awesome experiencing.  On the slim chance we're all still here tomorrow and into the New Year, let me say I look forward to more Kollaborations and kreating great musik!

Kompoz ROCKS!!

Wishing all my fellow Kompozers (especially those in the USA where this is a National holiday) a very happy Thanksgiving!  We all have much to be thankful for, not the least of which is the gift of music that we all share!!! 

So whether you're in the US or not, give thanks!

Wanted to share with my Kompoz friends this music video of a cover of "My Heart Will Go On" from the movie "Titanic" I produced for a young lady from the UK named Rebecca Roberts.  The vocals were recorded in a studio over near London somewhere and then vocal tracks sent to me via dropbox...not unlike what we do here on Kompoz everyday, with the exception that the recording engineer there had done some of the tuning on the vocals before he sent them to me.  The accompaniment track I made off a MIDI file I bought.  That was the real fun...taking those MIDI tracks apart and voicing each part using the samples, synths and VI's I have here in my studio.  Needless to say, I fussed over every sound!  But I think the final result came out rather nicely.

Becca shot and edited the video. She had wanted to do something more outdoors, but London weather didn't cooperate, so she went with the mostly inside shot at the mic.  Still, it came out okay, I think.  Hope you all like it:

Yeah, you read that title right.  I think I'm in the wrong business!  Apparently dance/trance is the hottest ticket around!  http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/inside-dance-musics-new-boom-20120706

Well, innovations can often come from unexpected sources.  The band, Linkin Park, whose newest album sits atop the Billboard charts right now, has teamed up with Open Labs and Dell to create a new software system that l"allows users to create sounds, as well as organize them logically, play them live and share them online."