26 January 2007
Improvement
I am currently looking forward to an improvement in my quality of life. Next week I take delivery of a brand new computer. And not only a brand-new computer, but two brand-new operating systems. For I am shortly to be the owner of an Intel-based MacBook Pro, which will be running both Mac OS (Tiger) and Windows XP. I'll also be getting ProTools, which I'm sure will provide me with hours and hours of amusement... erm... solid work being done. Sorry. Slight slip there :-)
It's been amazingly stressful, working out the upgrade. ProTools is notoriously fussy and there are a bunch of sites listing all the tweaks you need to make to Windows in order just to get it to run. It's fussy about chipsets. It's fussy about the operating system. It's fussy about everything with the result that the makers' website lists only 6 Windows laptops that they recommend to run it (3 from Dell and 3 from HP if you're curious). They do test out specific chipsets and whatnot, so in theory you can find your own system that should work, but in practice, the Windows forum on their site is full of people saying "Why won't this work?" whereas the Mac forum is full of people saying "How do I get this cool effect?"
So I started off looking at the recommended machines, quickly ruled out HP as ludicrously expensive, then discovered that Carillon (who make their living producing systems for musicians and custom-tweak the OS before you even take delivery of it) produce a laptop which was about the same price as the Dell. So then it was Dell vs Carillon - which boiled down to "off-the-shelf generic machine possibly leading to problems setting up" vs "more expensive system but they'll ensure it works". Just as the Carillon was inching ahead (that "more expensive" bit was hard to overcome!), a friend emailed me saying he had just bought an Intel Mac and Windows XP ran lightning fast on it and why didn't I come on in, the water was fine. So I went and had a look at the Macs and... it all went from there. It was a bitter struggle, but in the end the MacBook Pro won, and it should be arriving early next week. I'll be running ProTools under the Mac OS, and pretty much everything else (to start with, anyway) under Windows XP - going to be quite the experiment!
Needless to say, my old laptop has been driving me nuts the past week - with the prospect of a new speedy machine on the way, the slowness has been unbearable, not to mention the crashing-five-times-a-day routine. I am looking forward to retiring it to the position of MP3-minder, beside the stereo.
But nevertheless, I have managed to get work done. The Satie arrangement is proceeding quite well, but a little bit stalled as I need ProTools to work on a tape part for it. I have also nearly finished a new song, to words by Walt Whitman, for tenor and piano, which I think will be part of a set of either four or six similar songs. It's been marvellous to be writing vocal music again. I really enjoy it. I think I might mostly work on songs for the next little bit.
Labels: arrangement, composition, computers, laptop, mac, macbook pro, song, tools of the trade, vocal music
