In the last couple of weeks, I've been using my daily trips to work on our commuter bus for productive things. I've written lyrics. I've written blog posts. I've brainstormed some book ideas for the Nanowrimo thing I'm doing in November. But best of all, I've been working on music.
Yup. Hour-long busride + laptop + Reason software + some music tracks to work on = stuff being created. It's excellent! It's like I've been handed a 26-hour day and the bonus time is just for whatever I want to work at on my own.
Like I said, it's excellent.
I've more or less wrapped up the music tracks for two tracks and a remix so far, and the process hasn't been too bad.
It works like this:
- I get on at around 7:15 a.m. I find a seat, I pull out the laptop and wake it from sleep ("standby"? "hibernate"? "induced coma"? "drug-induced haze"?). I haven't run into a situation yet where I can't get a seat and have to stand all the way in/out, but if that ever happens, well, that pretty much vetos any laptop work for the day!
- I put on some Sony DJ headphones. One thing you don't realize until you're on a bus travelling at highway speeds is that there's tons of loud background noise. Road noise, diesel engine noise, ventilation fans, and the ambient sound of 30 people talking over the road and engine noise and ventilation fans. When you're listening to something via headphones, there's lots of external leakage. Someday I may play around with noise-cancelling headphones (they're expensive) or at least some 'phones that are close-backed and completely over-the-ear. My Sonys are not ideal - they are close-backed but aren't fully over-the-ear, they sit on the ear - but they're not bad. The big long cord is sometimes a pain too. But they are better for this than just some iPod buds or something.
- I fire up Reason. Reason is software that runs synths, samplers, drum machines, sample loops and other goodies, complete with effects, all virtually. You want a new synth? You go to the menu and choose Create Synth. Boom. You have another synthesizer. You want it to have five delay units and some distortion. Create Delay, Create Delay, Create Delay, Create Delay, Create Delay, Create Distortion. Boom. You've got it all. And it ties it all together with a simple but usable sequencer that lets you record track after track until you've got a song. Ryan and I have been using it for a few years now, and it's the best thing to come along in the music world in a decade. It's that good. Revolutionary, actually, especially for the price. It's also cross-platform, so I can work on tracks with my Dell laptop here on the bus, and when I get home I can fire the file over to my Mac Mini in my studio, where the audio is exported from Reason and imported into our audio recording software, Digital Performer.
- I start recording tracks. This is the fun part, but it's also a little tricky while using public transit. See, I don't have a MIDI keyboard to actually play the parts when I'm on the bus. (I guess I could get one of those little mobile controllers like an M-Audio Oxygen or Axiom - they're designed to be used in mobile situations like this. But that's extra $$ to spend, and I'm not sure how easy it would be to use such a keyboard, small as it is, on a packed bus - the laptop is already big and space-hogging) I can get around this for now by either inputting the notes manually with a pencil tool (slow, tedious, Vince Clarke-style). Not fun, but it works. I also use a piece of shareware called Bome's Mouse Keyboard. It lets you play notes on a virtual keyboard using your mouse to click them. That sucks on a laptop with a trackpad (I'm sure it sucks with a mouse too) but one thing it does that isn't really advertised is it lets you also input notes by playing the QWERTY keyboard like a piano. That also sucks, but it's better than a pencil tool. I think some of the other riders on the bus are watching me like "What is that crazy ass guy doing?", as I sit in my seat, laptop open, and tapping these rhythmic lines on my keyboard over and over again!
- Oh yeah. Sometimes trying to play a nice piano melody or synth bass using a QWERTY keyboard on a laptop is made even trickier by the bus shaking and bouncing wildly over potholes, pavement cracks and construction zones. A true test of concentration! Sometimes I pass the test, sometimes I fail bigtime. But it's not a big deal. It's not expensive studio time, it's a city busride. Recording extra takes costs me nothing.
- When I get close to work I shut it all down (Hibernate! or whatever. I love Windows.) And when I go home, I do it all again. Battery life so far has been good enough to last there and back again.
Simple.
For me, it beats killing time reading a magazine or listening to music, even this early in the morning, even after our son has been up crying the night before. I actually feel productive. At some point I won't be working on the music so much, as everything eventually goes into Digital Performer, and it is not cross-platform (there is no Windows version, period). So I won't be able to mix the songs on the bus, which is just as well as with all the noise there's no way you could seriously mix in here anyway. But for now, I'm finding this all pretty damn sweet. Even if I look like a geek weirdo doing it.
cn
