Rick Reifenstein

Christmas has come and gone at Roundstone Cottage. The kids got what they wanted as well as some things they didn't expect but enjoy. I performed Pachebels Canon in D and Silent Night Christmas Eve. I always wanted to play the Canon in D, but never had a reason to learn it. I was asked this year to play with a choir who was going to sing an arrangement of Away in the Manger over top of my playing the Canon. I don't play live much anymore since concentrating on production music; so I was a little nervous. The performance went off without issue and the evening was very enjoyable. In other music news: I have music in Action Bronson Watches Ancient Aliens. If you've never seen this show, it's....different. It's on the VICE Channel so you'd have to expect different. The Episode is "Aliens and the Creation of Man". I have new cues to put into my Jingle Punks catalog this week. At least one big orchestral action piece. There are a few new electronic piec...

One of the coolest things about writing music for TV & Film is not only seeing what shows my music is in, but in what countries the shows end up airing in. Sometimes when I stop and think about it; it's really exciting to think about my music being heard in all the different countries. November marked the first time my music was heard in Hong Kong and Malaysia as part of "Going Deep With David Rees". Hello Malaysia & Hong Kong!! In November I saw continued airing of shows in the United Kingdom, Canada and Brazil. Pretty cool. Some of you may know that I also work as a technologist. As a technologist I often research new technologies and am tasked with figuring out how that technology might be used in the real world. Lately I have been thinking about augmented reality and how it could be used in music composition. What I am excited about is the potential for VST's (virtual instruments) to become augmented reality objects in a Hololens or something similar. I...

I've been thinking about my brand lately. A colleague of mine who works in marketing is always talking about how important it is to know your "brand". If you don't have a good understanding of your brand then it's very difficult to create a way to market yourself. So what is my brand? During my 20 plus years as a musician and composer I've written and played all kinds of different genres. Rock, Space Rock, Industrial Electronic, Ambient Electronic, Rockabilly, and Orchestral for all kinds of situations. Bands and stage productions; small independent films, and major TV shows. During all that time I never gave a thought to branding. I just wrote what ever style I thought was necessary. However since 2010, I've been fortunate to be represented by one of the best production music companies around, Jingle Punks. Since then I've been able get some great placements. Now I have data to look on and determine which styles have been getting the most work. S...

I'm looking forward to a long weekend with family. My in-laws should be arriving today. The weather seems like it will be nice for much if the weekend; however the Fourth looks like we might have thunderstorms all day. The studio has been quiet lately. I'm in the middle of my annual "re-tooling" period where I re-evaluate plugins and sounds before heading into a heavy writing and recording period. I've also been redoing my guitar setup in the studio. I've been getting pressure from friends lately to get out and play live again. I'm such a studio rat, and I haven't played live in 12 years; I don't know if I'd enjoy it anymore. Will see...

This weekend I was in need of a different approach in the studio. So I picked up my Roland GR-1 that I've had since the mid-90's. My goal was to use it for the whole track. Now of course many of the sounds in the Roland GR-1 are dated. They sound very 90's. However, the guitar synth offers articulation possibility that I can't get from a keyboard controller. When using strings in the GR-1 I can get more realistic sounding phrases. Of course the ability to use the language of guitar playing that I've developed over the past 30 years allows me to create pieces that are more complex. Now all the above being said I can't live and compose with sounds stuck in the 90's; so it's important to connect it with a sampler and new virtual synths. I'm always looking for better ways to get the music out of my head and new ways to manipulate the waveforms and notes on the screen. I'm definitely looking into using pen and touch more when working in my DAW. I w...

I've been using computers for over 20 years to compose and record music. During those 20 years I, like most, who use Windows based computers in our productions have gotten used to using ASIO drivers for our audio hardware. Well I think those days have come to an end. I read that with Windows 10, Microsoft gave their audio stack some extra attention. The result is that WASAPI is way more robust than in the past. Cakewalk posted on their website that Microsoft worked closely with the major DAW makers out there to ensure their software would perform better using Microsoft drivers. I decided to test this last night in the studio. I have to agree that using the WASAPI drivers on my legacy M Audio gear gave me much lower latency at higher bit rates than with the ASIO drivers. Another side effect seemed to be more robust performance in Cakewalk Sonar X3 Studio. Since this isn't a tech audio blog, nor am I an audio technology professional I'm not gonna start posting a long list o...

In the studio today to work on two items on my to do list. 1. Finish a few pieces for a wedding I was commission to compose and record music for; then upload them to my online folder for sharing to the couple. 2. Compile master list of tracks to upload to Jingle Punks. Once the list is complete I'll start mixing and mastering. My goals is to have new music upload this week to Jingle Punks. More later...