The computer is as much a musical instrument as a guitar or keyboard. These days, it is synthesizer, reel-to-reel multi-track recorder, mixing desk, rack of effects units, amps, rooms to record in, all in one handy dandy electronic box.
Now, before you argue that this makes music soulless, this is only true if you abuse the computer and quantize things til they have no human-element left in the timing, etc. Leave your mistakes alone and don’t try to “fix” everything, and music on a computer is full of as much soul and emotion as that recorded on tape back in the day!
Anyway, this particular musical instrument was due a replacement. Last time I bought a computer (about 4 years ago), I bought something refurbished. Great value for money, and easier than what I used to do, which was buy the parts and put them together. This time I wanted something as state-of-the-art as possible, so that it would last me a good while – and so it was back to buying the parts:
Some I already had, like the case, the power supply, and the graphics card. The rest I had to order, and wait 3 or 4 weeks as it showed up in dribs and drabs. Eventually though, 2 weeks ago, I had everything, and spent a Sunday afternoon putting it together:
And what do you know – it worked first time! I was chuffed 🙂
Well, it had set the wrong memory speed, but that was easily fixed. That said, there was as much work to do cleaning up after the build as there was in actually putting it together – here’s what the front room looked like (and yes, it looked that way for a few days, ahem):
This was just the beginning of course. After that came moving all the software onto it off the old one.
I liken this to moving house – you have to find everything you need to move, make all the preparations to move it (tricky with music software due to the MANY different ways each piece wants to license itself, from dongles, to email sign ups, to registering on websites and copying codes…)
The one difference is it’s like moving house, where you don’t know if your sofa will let you sit on it once you get it in the new place (due to those licensing things). To my surprise, it was relatively painless, only Scuffham S-Gear got confused about licensing, and their support sorted that out double quick no problem (thanks!)
Of course the following weekend, a week ago, while I was in the middle of finishing this up, the power went out Sunday afternoon… for….. 25 HOURS!!
That was a nightmare as I was so ready to move the last of the software that Sunday night. In the end, I had to wait and do that during the week, on Monday night onward.
And this weekend, I’ve been loading up music tracks and finding out what works, and what doesn’t. Mostly it works, glad to say, but a few things get confused because they are on a different hard drive path, but mostly easy to fix. So I can finally pick up where I left off on the new tracks!
HANDY TIP FOR CUBASE USERS
Cubase has this media library that I find super useful. You can do things like save patches from your VSTs into it, then give them a category (“New Age” or “Experimental” etc), and give them a rating on a scale from 0 to 5.
This is perfect when you have thousands upon thousands of sounds, as it makes it easy to find the ones that you like – critical when you don’t want to break the creative flow!
Thing is, every time I updated Cubase to a new version I’d end up having to redo all this categorizing, which took ages. I thought I’d be doing the same here…. BUT I discovered how to move all that across! Sorry, this is going to be wordy 🙂
Not sure how important this part was, but you’ll find the database at:
C:\Users\YourUsernameOnTheComputer\AppData\Roaming\Steinberg\Cubase 10_64\mediabay.db
The “Cubase 10_64” will vary depending on which version of Cubase you are using. Anyway, copy that mediabay.db from that location on your old computer (or previous version of Cubase), and store it on the new computer somewhere safe.
Head to the equivalent location on the new computer/new Cubase install. Best to copy that file again, and store it somewhere (use folders otherwise you will end up overwriting the last one!)
Now copy the version from the old computer/Cubase installation into that location for the new computer/Cubase installation, overwriting the one that was there (this is why we save a copy first, juuuuust in case we need to undo this)
Next step, run Cubase, open the Sound Browser, right click on any patch there, and choose “Show in Explorer”:
This should let you find where Cubase is storing the patches, with all their related ratings etc. something like:
C:\Users\YourUsernameOnThisComputer\Documents\VST3 Presets
You’ll be “inside” a sub folder specific to a plugin when you first do the “Show in Explorer”, but step up a level and you will find all the folders for all your plugins (well, VST3 ones in this case).
You can copy these from the old computer to the equivalent location in the new computer – and presto, you should have all your ratings, plus all your custom patches that you made and saved.
That sure was a lot of reading – here, have a picture of Red XIII to refresh your eyes with something visual!
So, that’s what’s been keeping me busy the last couple of weeks. Building a new computer may not be something you naturally associate with creating music, as the sheer technical nerdiness of it seems far removed from the artistry of music, but there you go!
Well, that and I did make a few abstract videos so that I could get some tracks put onto YouTube, but more about that next time!
All the best,
Tom (Cu Sithe)