• Reaper works on both Mac and PC, which means you can collaborate with anyone regardless of their computer. It even runs well on old machines (including my 2008 G4 Mac mini). So if my main computer ever dies or needs to be taken in the shop, I can get back up and running in no time on another machine.
• Reaper is free to download, after the demo period is up it keeps working, fully featured. It just makes you wait 5 seconds when you launch it and reminds you to pretty please buy it. So there’s basically no reason not to give it a try.
• Reaper is only $60 if/when you do buy it. Plus there’s no annoying copy protection or iLok either.
• Reaper’s learning actually curve isn’t that steep. Check you my tutorials on You Tube. I’ll have you up and running in a few hours.
• Reaper gives you plenty of room for growth if/when you decide to do more advanced production. It can do everything Pro Tools can do, but often faster/more efficiently IMO. (Routing/bussing, for example.)
• Reaper’s editing workflow is great for radio This is a biggie but but a hard one to describe. As much as I hate Pro Tools, I liked its approach to editing narrative audio. Until I tried Reaper. Now everything else feels sluggish.
• Reaper’s edits actually sound better especially for beginners, because it does automatic crossfading as you make edits. Fades are also easier to tweak than in any other program I’ve used. I taught it to a ~60 y/o producer who had been using Audacity, and his edits improved almost magically overnight.
• Reaper is incredibly customizable I have my version set up with custom key commands borrowed from both Pro Tools and Logic plus a few original ones. Customization = working faster = more time for fun/creative stuff.

I recently mixed an indie documentary film, Chile Road, for my neighbors Andrew Cohn and Rachel Counce of Seven 34 Films. They got a nice a plug a few days ago in Wired’s Raw File blog.  Here’s Wired’s synopsis:

What do you do when one of your best homies is going through a tough break up? Well, just about anything you can to help him take his mind off it. For filmmaker Andrew Cohn, that meant indulging his recently dumped buddy Enrique’s fantasies of becoming a Food Network Star.

After his long-term girlfriend broke up with him, Enrique asked Cohn to help him film a foodie road trip through New Mexico’s Green Chili Cheeseburger Trail, an offer Cohn couldn’t refuse. So they set off, leaving New York for a ten day trip through New Mexico to make a film about cheeseburgers. But Cohn had a better idea: He’d turn the cameras on Enrique, rolling day and night, and make the movie about his friend getting over his ex. The resulting film is called Chile Road.

And the trailer:

“Chile Road” Official Trailer from Andrew Cohn on Vimeo.

They’ve submitted it to Sundance. Wish them luck!

Vermouth is one of those rare words that sounds like it tastes.

I began writing most of my YLTLSBC posts well after 10pm, and I usually spent more time brainstorming and jotting down sentence fragments (most of which I didn’t use) than I did shaping these ideas into well-written blog posts. (In the future, I would much rather spend the same amount of time writing fewer, more developed posts.) The exercise has, however, made me more conscious of how I am using/misusing my time.

With YLTLSBC/September ending, I’m imaging a new set of challenges for myself in October. I’m trying to stick to a daily schedule loosely built around the work/creative patterns I’ve established this past month. (Turns out breaking up my work day by practicing music for an hour after lunch makes the rest of my afternoon much more productive.) Nothing radical, really, but a way to avoid wasting time in the margins.
It’s literally just a sketch right now, jotted down on a post-it note…

I’ll let you know how it goes, of course–just maybe not on a daily basis.

I want to take stock of and refine my media diet. I’m surrounded by headlines and hungry for context. My old filters have drifted out of calibration or I away from them. I’m holding out for islands of honest analysis in a sea of spinning assertions. I want to fortify my politics with poetry, more intricacy than intrigue, to strip the arbitrary from my art. I find this music full of bombast and static, and am unmoved.