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Whatever TIME TO REGISTER TO VOTE Menu Home About A Brief Biography of John Scalzi Availability for Interviews, Appearances, Writing Work and Optioning Existing Work Books and Other Projects by John Scalzi Contact Information Guidelines for Publicity, Blurbing, Unpublished Work, Story Ideas, Retweets, Guest Blogging, Charitable Solicitations, Autographing, Educational Use and School Assignments Scheduled Appearances Site Disclaimer, Comment and Privacy Policy The Canonical Bacon Page The Scalzi Creative Sampler Scalzi Enterprises · The Scalzi Family Foundation A Cover Song and Brief Impressions of Logic Pro 11 Posted on May 14, 2024 Posted by John Scalzi 1 Comment Apple released a new version of the Logic Pro digital audio workstation , both for Macs and the iPad, and among its updates were session players,” basically flexible-yet-automated bass and piano player programs to go along with the flexible-yet-automated drummer program Logic Pro already had (which was also updated for this version of Logic Pro). I was curious as to how flexible they really are, so once I finished my writing for yesterday (I am soooo close to being done with the new book, y’all), I updated Logic Pro and picked a song to experiment with, in this case, Joey” by Concrete Blonde, who are one of Krissy’s favorite bands. I came away reasonably impressed with the new bass and piano players. For each player, Apple offers several versions of the instrument, along with a number of playing styles, and a whole lot of granularity in how the player plays” the instrument. Are these players better than a competent bassist or pianist? Nope! Are they better than me playing a bass or keyboard? Yes! As I am generally putting music together by myself in a basement, that’s an immediate improvement for me. Mostly. As with most things that are procedurally generated, with the bass and drum and piano lines the session player” proved, you get what you get. You can fiddle and tweak, but that will take time and effort and at a certain point it might be simpler to just learn to play a bass or keyboard or drum set/machine. This is what I call the Guitar Hero Problem”: All the effort learning to play a guitar-shaped game controller could have perhaps more profitably gone into learning how to play an actual guitar. Be that as it may, I got the session player” bass program to play down a slappy 80s bass line quickly and with less fuss than it would have taken me to plug in my own bass and slap my way sloppily around the fretboard, and the piano solo I put into the song via the piano session player is significantly more complex than I would have managed myself. I got down the instrumental part of this track in about an hour; it took rather longer to record and tweak the vocals. Yes, I know there are now AI” programs that will sing for me if I want. I’ll pass on those right now. One of the reasons I’ve preferred Logic Pro over some other DAWs is because of the versatility that its drummer program had offered over other similar programs; you can slot in a drum loop or program in a beat, but it’s nice to have a program that offers solid drum simulation while still having enough variability not to sound (too) robotic or repetitive. The bassist and piano session players” offer more of the same, and the update to the newest version of Logic Pro is free if you already have it (the program for the Mac is $199 if you get it new, which is a highly competitive price for a fully-featured DAW). I do use other DAWs — Ableton and Studio One and Reason all get a workout from me — but I do tend to default to Logic Pro. It’s really solid and this new update is a very good value add. With regard to this track, all the instrumentation is done using the session players,” either by using their performance out of the box (in the case of the slap bass and piano solo) or by swapping out the musical instrument but retaining the generated pattern. In the particular case of this track, I decided to make the song sound extremely 80s — hyperactive 80s drums, slap-happy 80s bass, glossy 80s synth pads — in no small part because that sound was very easy to do with the session players,” whereas going for Concrete Blonde’s grittier and more emotive rock-focused sound (see video below) would have been much, much harder. Weird! Playing actual instruments is harder! Who would have guessed. I feel pretty certain that if Concrete Blonde lead singer Johnette Napolitano ever heard this version of the song, she would drive her pickup truck to my house to kick my ass, so, you know. Don’t tell her. I hope you enjoy it anyway. Now back to writing for me. SO CLOSE to being done! — JS Share: Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Click to share on Threads (Opens in new window) Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Like this: Like Loading... More Than Just Mother’s Day Posted on May 12, 2024 Posted by Athena Scalzi 21 Comments Grab your bouquets and boxes of chocolates and buckle up because it’s Mother’s Day! The one day out of the entire year where we celebrate our moms for always taking care of us. A day to peruse the slim pickings of pink cards at Walmart at the last minute because you didn’t get a card sooner, and grab a box of assorted chocolates even though she doesn’t like dark chocolate (maybe she’ll let you have those ones). And with a resounding thanks for being a great mom”, we’ll continue on another year without truly appreciating them. So I’m here today to publicly announce my gratitude! Because if that doesn’t show my love for her, what does? I love my mom because she always folds my laundry for me. I love my mom because she always cooks me dinner. I love my mom because she always keeps our house so nice and clean. She gets all the groceries, and does all the dishes, and mows the lawn, and vacuums, and makes the appointments to have my car serviced, and gets me a glass of water whenever I ask, and takes the best care of me when I’m sick. But , is loving someone because of all the things they do for you really loving someone? Or is it just loving that they make your life easier? Mother’s Day makes me a little sad. I think it’s a great concept. Celebrating and appreciating mothers, awesome! The execution is not as awesome. Time after time after time, every sentiment of love seems to just be a thinly veiled I love you because you take care of me.” Every Hallmark card emphasizes how much mothers do for us, how we couldn’t do it without you!”, how they are a pillar and without them we would crumble. We love them because they are the backbone we build our fragile frames on, and we rely on them to keep us standing. But is that truly love? To me, to be loved is to be known. So what I actually want to tell you all about today, is my mother. And I don’t want to tell you how good of a caretaker she is, how strong of a matriarch she is, how good she is at housekeeping. I want to tell you that she loves Bloody Marys. I want to tell you that her favorite animal is otters. Her favorite color is yellow, and she loves sunflowers. Her favorite hot sauce is Cholula. To her, nothing beats a good brownie. She loves tomatoes so much she can just eat them straight up with a nice sprinkle of salt. She puts her tea in the microwave for exactly one minute and forty-five seconds and adds one packet of Splenda. She freezes her boxes of Thin Mints. She likes dry red wines. She loves goofy, bad movies. For beer she almost exclusively drinks Michelob Ultra but if we go out for Mexican food she’ll order a Modelo Especial or a michelada. She loves playing cards...