A new technique is driving me into creative block

Winter care for your guitars

Out here in the Midwest, Chicago specifically, the winter is an extreme,t dry time and that dry air could wreak havoc on your guitars. So this is how I make sure my guitars aren’t thrown out of whack every time we abruptly go from a...

Rest - a work in progress

Wellness

I didn’t mean to write a concept double album but here we are. The Radical Extremist sessions have produced 25 songs plus two more that I feel fall under the umbrella of a part 2 to the overall arc of the story being told by the album.

Radical Extremist...

How to stream the two new LPs (Metastasis and Revelation) for free all this month before they hit the streaming services

I promised to release three albums this year. It’s mid-November and I’ve only released one so far. I’m not pushing out the release dates of the new albums and,...

Surprise release of my new album, Meditations, out now on Bandcamp and everywhere else November 5th

I told you guys I was working on three releases that were in the can. This happened to be one that required the least effort to master so I worked on getting it out...

The Mid-Life Creative podcast episode I was on is out now

How productive have the Radical Extremist Sessions been?

My plans for late summer and fall of 2021 have totally changed in regards to releases. At first I was disappointed but then came to realize that there is no fan base or audience waiting on a new Darph release so it...

A Short Break

Normally when I embark on a new recording session I know what the record is about. This time around I’m a little lost. I am taking my time and I don’t plan to have it finished until next year (but if you’re looking for something sooner don’t...

Free downloads of all Darph releases

I want to make my music as accessible as possible. I want people to sample it, remix it, or just listen to it. With that in mind, what would you think of having a dedicated page here on the website where you could download...

Sleep & Relief Retrospective

Sleep & Relief was released about a month ago and this is a sort of autopsy/retrospective on what went well and what didn’t. Overall I think it’s a good album that builds on my past work as the Darph but it also has some major shortcomings...

Sleep & Relief is out now

Sleep & Relief, the first of 3 releases planned for this year is out now on Bandcamp and will be available on every streaming service starting August 5th.

This record was recorded during the depths of last winter and is a reflection of...

I’m on TikTok now

Come connect with me on TikTok! I am posting about the creative process, previewing new releases, and talking about leftist topics and issues over there. You can find me @thedarph on TikTok and Twitter as well. But mostly TikTok. So check it out and hopefully we...

New releases pushed back

A few months back I said there’d be a new release out in July. That isn’t happening now. There are actually three LPs that are fully recorded and ready to go but they just need to be mixed and mastered before they get a release.

The...

Update on Sleep & Relief Release Date

I've been having trouble mixing and mastering the latest LP which will be called Sleep and Relief. I have three albums ready for mixing and mastering and I'm focusing on getting Sleep and Relief out this month but I've run into some...

The Guilt of Not Creating

Every time I acquire a new creative tool I soon find myself feeling guilty for not taking advantage of it to its fullest potential or for not using it frequently enough in my art. It’s a strange thing when you think about it. Tools are...

Jazzmaster Buzz Kill (and Crackling and Humming)

Picked up my very new 2020 American Professional II series Jazzmaster last night intending to do some recording and got totally sidetracked by an unusual humming/crackling noise being created by the tremolo arm. Here’s an explanation of what the issue is and how...

Keep Your Logic Sessions Organized or Else

Not taking the time to keep my Logic projects and sessions well organized has come back to bite me hard. Here’s why it’s so important and a system you can use as a starting point so you don’t end up like me and...

How I Ended Up with T wo New Albums

Last year, right after releasing the last entry in the Kokoro series, I went straight into writing and recording for four different albums. Then creative block hit and when I woke up a few days ago I found two complete albums...

Creative Block Ends

Creative block always seems to come around when you most want to be creative. Right after I released my last EP I had a burst of inspiration that left me very frustrated. I soon got to a point where my ideas outpaced by ability to execute on...

Are SSD backup drives worth the cost?

Yes, this isn't exactly an exciting topic but I need something here while I build out the site and I got a new backup SSD today.

In music production they say if you don't have at least 3 copies of a file then it doesn't exist. So I use Time Machine on my Mac to backup to an external 2TB portable hard drive. I then have two additional external drives that hold backups of my field recordings, samples, OP-1 patches & packs, sample packs and patches for the Volca Sample and FM, impulse responses, and a ton more. That stuff is pure gold to me but the files are huge sometimes and it takes forever to transfer them for backups or just to use them. I needed a solid state drive.

I got the Samsung T7 (a blue 1TB model) today and I am very pleased but it's not all it's cracked up to be. Read and write speeds are blazing over the USB-C connection. I'm thinking of getting more of these to replace my HDD backup drives as well as one to directly work from. The drive is so fast I could easily keep Logic Pro's built-in content on the external drive and use it from there. I may even try working on project that being recorded directly from the Samsung SSD. So in that regard, this thing is amazing.

The problem comes in when transferring files from elsewhere. An SD card is only going to have a 100MB/s read speed at most and even if you're transferring from a USB 3 device, if you have more than 5GB worth of data then you're in for a wait. It took 5 minutes to transfer 30GB worth of field recordings from one of my HDD backup drives to the T7 and even if I was just importing directly from my Tascam field recorder it would still be just as slow or slower because that's using an SD card internally.

As far as I know, there's no way around the long wait times when initially backing up files from field recorders and USB 3 devices. But if you're transferring directly from your internal storage or from one SSD to another, then that's where you'll get the benefits of having a fast SSD. In my case, I'm only getting the benefits of the speed if I start using T7s for all of my secondary and tertiary backups.

The T7 does get quite hot if you're doing sustained transfers so working directly off of it may not be worth it. I suppose I'll report back later. I guess this is good enough for a first post. I'll have something more interesting to say next time.