Citroen - Alive With Technology advert (Tomo Edit)

The picture is unaltered, taken from the "Citroen C4 - Alive With Technology" TV advert.  The music is Tomo remix of "Loopfish - Alive".  This video was compiled in April 2005.

New track released

Dr Dre feat Eminem and Skylar Grey - Doctor (Tomo Remix) by Tomo Music

This remix features vocals sung by Skylar Grey from the chorus of Dr Dre’s “I need a doctor” (featuring Eminem) that was released earlier this year.

Download here (right click, save as):
http://music.tomomusic.com/DrDreFeatEminemAndSkylarGrey-Doctor(TomoRemix).mp3

The track is on YouTube here.

If you would like a higher bitrate MP3 or WAV file of this, please contact me.

Mix of old tracks available

Tomo - Part 1 by Tomo Music

Press play above to stream the mix, or the direct download is HERE (right click > save as).

The tracklisting is as follows:

00:00 Kirsten - I'm Not Alone (Tomo Remix)
03:15 Tomo & Tuffcub - Owner of a Lonely Heart (Radio Edit)
05:47 Kenne - True Faith (Tomo Club Edit)
09:22 Loopfish - Mixdown (Tomo Club Remix)
13:18 Tomo & Tuffcub – Ace
18:16 Tomo & Tuffcub – Riot
22:12 Tomo & John Whitemann – Lonliness (Remix of Tomcraft – Lonliness)
27:33 Tomo & John Whitemann – Satisfaction (Remix of Benni Benassi – Satisfaction)
32:24 Tomo - Like This

These tracks are remixes and original work from around 2003-2004. I am not a DJ, and haven’t done a mix like this before, so please excuse the poor mixing.

I’m currently getting familiar with a new studio that I have built, after many years out of music, and thought it might be an idea to throw together a mix of some of my old tracks before work starts on new stuff.

The genre is mostly hard dance, and the tempo is 145 BPM. It’s 39 minutes, and approx. 54MB.

If you would like any of the individual tracks, please contact me.

That’s all folks

The PC box arrived safely and has been installed with no problem.

As soon as it was in, I started listening to music through the monitors and moved them around until they were in the best place for stereo imaging and frequency response.

I’ve been really impressed with the results.  Perhaps it is because I haven’t been in a studio for quite a while, but I can’t remember being in a studio that sounds so good.  It must be primarily down to the type, amount and placement of the acoustic foam (more luck than judgement!).



So the build is now complete, I just need to get to grips with the new equipment and see what happens.

Not bad

The cable tidies have helped make it look a bit neater.

Everything is finished ready for the PC box and audio interface, which should arrive in a few days time.

Then, after testing all equipment and connections, it will finally be time to start familiarising myself with the new software, and playing around with music.

PC build

The PC is assembled, and is currently being configured and optimised by the chairman of the studio advisory committee.

                       

It made sense to go for a 64 bit operating system (32 bit windows OS can only utilise 3.5GB of RAM, whereas the 64 bit OS can access hundreds of GB), as many music software companies have released 64 bit versions of their software now.

The hardware is generally good mid-range; a quad core Intel® Core™ i5-2500 CPU, 8GB of RAM, three drives totalling 5.5TB (1xOS/software, 1xaudio, 1xbackup), a good graphics card (AMD Radeon™ HD 6790), a relatively quiet Antec P183 case, all powered by an 850w Corsair CMPSU-850HXUK PSU.

We decided to try Studio One as the main sequencer, as it is 64 bit, and appears to be fairly quick and intuitive.  I just really liked the look of it compared to the other main sequencers.  Studio One is quite new, and apparently was started by the former lead developer of Cubase.

The only potential problem I noticed is that for audio importing, if it doesn’t know the BPM of the source file, it isn’t yet able to automatically beat-match it.  As I (used to) work with a lot of samples, this might be a problem.  You can manually stretch samples to fit, so it isn’t as if it can’t be done.  It would just be tiresome to do the task that other sequencers do automatically.

Spaghetti junction

Everything is wired in now, with the audio leads above the table, and the mass of power leads and UPS’ underneath it.

Hopefully this will avoid the potential problems, noise and interference of a conglomeration.

It does mean that the desk is pretty messy, but a bit of careful re-routing and some cable tidies should make this much neater.

Power to the people

One 540W/800VA UPS for the PC and one display, and two 405W/700VA UPS’ for the rest of the equipment should ensure that when surges and momentary dips in the supply occur (it does happen regularly here), the studio should be unaffected.

A complete power cut during operation would allow around 3.5 minutes to automatically shut the PC down at full load.

The APC UPS’ look quite sturdy, and all of them have easily replaceable batteries.

The cabling seen here is for power, audio, video and data.

All the gear and no idea

Well, nearly all the gear!  With the table in place, I’ve been able to start roughly positioning the equipment.  It’s starting to feel like a studio.

As soon as everything is positioned, the design and lengths of the audio, data and power cable networks can be finalised.

Apart from that, the only other equipment not yet here is the PC and audio interface, which is currently being assembled.

Oh, and of course the throne.

LED strip light installed

The potentially troublesome fluorescent strip light has been replaced with a much more efficient LED version.

There certainly is no problem with the brightness of the light, but the LED version is different to the traditional fluorescent in that it only emits light downwards, around 120 degrees, whereas the fluorescent emits light 360 degrees.

The result is a much more directional light, resulting in more shadows towards the edges of the room.  It is certainly fine for this application though.