I saw a comment on a previous blog on my website robertrich.com, from a musician who asked me some gear questions. He suggested I start a forum for listeners who are also musicians, to discuss technical details of making music. Sounds like a good idea. I'll start that thread today, after this one. Stay tuned at my home site for that one. - RR

You can now obtain lossless FLAC or MP3 downloads of Live Archive at http://www.musiczeit. com

The concerts are available separately, so purchasers can focus on the stuff they like best. Downloads are also propagating through the mainstream system, so you should be able to find them at CD Baby, iTunes and others soon.

Big news first:

Live Archive is done, and it's working its way to digital download. If you check my Discography page on robertrich.com you'll see cover art, descriptions and track listings. The first place to find the music for sale will be musiczeit.com, where lossless FLAC downloads offer true CD quality audio. After that, the files should propagate through the distribution network, including iTunes, Rhapsody and others.

So, what is Live Archive, and why am I releasing it now? Live Archive consists of 7 concerts that I really enjoyed, whose recordings had a good sound quality and where I played something different from the studio. These are mixing board dubs, recorded at CD quality with my approval. Several of the concerts were completely improvised and do not repeat any studio compositions. A few of the recording were available as radio streams, torrents, bootlegs or limited CDRs, so I wanted to give people a chance to get mastered, cleaned-up, full resolution versions of these if they wanted. A few of these concerts represent important pivots in my career, and you can hear ideas in their raw stage of formation.

So why did I wait so long to release some of this music? Well, it's because of the realities of digital download. Back when a "release" meant a CD, and several thousand dollars invested in manufacturing, marketing, packaging and such, I wanted to keep my releases limited to the latest work. But in retrospect, some of these more improvisational moments of the past have value on their own, as action instead of object, like dance relates to sculpture. The download format also allows for longer durations. Manufactured CDs shouldn't exceed 74 minutes. Some of these sets were 80-90 minutes long. Even now I faced a challenge to edit them down to an 80 minute CDR-capable format, so people could back-up their lossless downloads.

In general, I prefer to keep my release schedule sparse rather than dense. So, I am releasing these recordings all at once. I'll treat this as a single release, although it's 7 releases as far as the outside world may see it. Since the concerts are available as 7 separate downloads, people can decide which ones they want to hear; I will let the listeners vote on the recordings they prefer.

In the future, I might consider releasing some or all of this music in a physical form, and I encourage people to comment on their interests. One possibility is to take pre-orders on a limited boxed set of 10 CDs and art, perhaps including suplementals such as a DVD of the films that Paul Clipson created for the Volume 6 "Lumin" event. I doubt that the physical release will happen, seeing how the world has moved almost completely to download last year; but I am open to requests.

I will write another blog, and send an email newsletter, when these downloads actually become available for purchase.

As an addendum to the big news, here are two tidbits:

I now have a Twitter account: robertrichmusic. If you want to get bits of news from me, feel free to follow on that address. I admit that I don't yet have a text-friendly cellphone, but I'll send news from my computer when anything big that's interesting happens.

Also, for those awaiting new RR solo music: I had a great recording session with my percussionist friend Ricky Carter last Saturday, to help me start some rhythm loops for my next album. I am VERY happy with the results. Now I have to chew on a bunch of cool grooves and maybe eventually come up with a few good ideas to go along with those rhythms. I'm sitting on a deep in-the-pocket vibe these days, wanting to find the voice for the next album.

Peace to you all - Robert

My friends can attest that I often think I have been lazy and slow. Well, of course I do. Life is short and new ideas are waiting. I try to enjoy each moment of life; then I torture myself and imagine all the other more productive things I could be doing right now. WASP work-guilt mediated by failed attempts at living in the moment. So here's a chance for me to redeem myself (to myself at least) and let you now what I've been up to.

After the release of Zerkalo and subsequent shipping activities, I mixed some 5.1 surround trailers for Vudu, who make a set-top box for viewing high definition movies. The previous month, I created some music for Hewlitt Packard to play at the release of their new TouchSmart computer, and I mixed the ad for that computer including my own foley and sound design, which has been showing on TV (using the Joan Jett song "Do You Want to Touch.") It's all a bit ironic considering I'm a Mac geek. I guess I never mentioned that I also did a bunch of sound design for a horror film called "Dead Girl," although I don't tend brag about such things. I'm also helping my friend Roberto Miller get the sound together so he can work on his new film.

I tested a bunch of new sounds at concerts in Latvia and Wisconsin in early September, using a portable rig that I put together to allow me to fly to gigs rather than driving. Yes, it centers on a laptop, with the ubiquitous Ableton Live. It's a great program with enough flexibility to let me improvise, allowing me to avoid the beat-synchronized clichés of techno.

As soon as I got back from those concerts, we bottled 74 cases of homemade wine, with much-appreciated help from our friends. 2008 harvest season came in early October, so after picking, crushing, fermenting and pressing we now have a new batch of Syrah and Cabernet soaking in barrels for this year's bottling in September.

From August until mid-December I taught a college course on Audio Mastering, which helped me clarify many of my festering ideas about sound quality and the music business, and also convinced me that I wanted to upgrade my surround speakers. I found two used pairs of Dunlavey SCII audiophile speakers to replace my small surround monitors. These integrate well with the Duntech Sovereigns that I use for main L+R, since they come from the same designer, John Dunlavey. I am extremely happy with the results, and I finally feel that I have a room where I can mix and master in surround when needed.

My first test with the new surround speakers came in December, when I spent most of the month mixing a massive new work by Markus Reuter in 5.1 surround (and in stereo for back-up.) Markus' piece "Todmorden 513" lasts an hour, and includes about 80 tracks of audio, ranging from string sections, woodwinds, organ, synths and multiple guitars. It's a massive undertaking, with the gravity of Messiaen crossed with postmodern timbres. I'm very proud to be involved.

I also created two short solo tracks for compilations, experimenting with the Spectral Filter plug-ins that I used heavily during "Zerkalo." One of these pieces "One Year of Sound" actually blurs togther granular fragments of every chunk of sound design I made last year in a perverse abstract retrospective, due out on vinyl this year in France on the Hangars Liquid label. The other piece "Spectral Canyon" remixes whale recordings by David Rothenberg using similar mangling technology, and should appear on his remix CD later this year.

Apart from the mastering jobs that come in every week or so, I am now working on a preset library for the astounding new synth plug-in from Camel Audio called Alchemy. They started shipping this in November with a bunch of my samples bundled in, but I never found the time to build a full library of patches before it shipped. So after meeting with the brilliant Scottish software designer Ben Gillett at NAMM last week I felt inspired to carry through with my promises and make sounds that I would use (and I will use!) for others to hear how cool and powerful this new resynthesis engine really can be. My friends Ian Boddy and Richard Devine have aready contributed, so I feel like I flaked out a bit.

These days my main obsession involves my new solo album, working title "Ylang". It's a tough project to start, as I want to use a certain rhythmic feel that I don't really know how to get at the moment. I'm starting with acoustic sources. It might not be ready for a while, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I'm planning to release some old concert recordings, perhaps for download only, some of which may surprise you.

Much love, with hopes for peace and prosperity in this new era. - Robert

At Midnight, December 28-29, we summoned a random number from www.random.org to help us select a gift recipient from all the orders we received since November 1, 2008. That number selected the order of Z. Narbutas in Lithuania. We'll send him any title he wants from our store. This is the last of our holiday give-aways. Happy New year!

At Midnight, December 28-29, we summoned a random number from www.random.org to help us select a gift recipient from all the orders we received since November 1, 2008. That number selected the order of Z. Narbutas in Lithuania. We'll send him any title he wants from our store. This is the last of our holiday give-aways. Happy New year!

At Midnight, December 21-22, we summoned a random number from www.random.org to help us select a gift recipient from all the orders we received since November 1, 2008. That number selected the order of T. Barkhurst in California. We'll send him any title he wants from our store. We'll do this again one more time, next Monday morning... Happy Holidays!

Every year around holiday season, my wife Dixie and I try to
think of new ways to say "thank you" for supporting our ongoing
efforts to bring you this odd introspective music I tend to
make. This year, we thought we might try giving away one title
a week, your choice. It's a lottery of sorts.

Here's how it works. We'll give away one item a week during
December, at the start of each week, first thing Monday morning.
Anyone who has purchased from our website order form since
November 1, 2008 is eligible for all drawings. Each order
counts as one entry. Everyone who makes a purchase from now
until midnight December 28 has a chance to win. There will be
five winners total.

Here's the best part - the winners can pick any one release that
we have in print, regardless of price. No shipping charges,
nothing extra. Our gift. We'll contact you by email to let
you know that you won, and we'll let you pick the title that
you want from our inventory. I can autograph it if you wish.
If you're a winner and you do not respond to our email by the
end of the year, we can't send you your gift.

I don't know how to spew that legalese that contests like this
are often required to say, so let's just summarize by saying that
all gifts are the sole discretion of Soundscape Productions, we
take no responsibility for hurt feelings, mistakes, or items
lost in the mail, and we make no other promises, stated or implied.

Drawings will take place just after Midnight, Monday morning
(00:00 AM PST, California Time) on December 1, 8, 15, 22 and 29.
We will announce the new winner on robertrich.com each week.

Thank you for listening. We wish you a beautiful and bountiful
winter!

- Robert and Dixie

Official Robert Rich Website

The gig at the Wisconsin earthdance went very well, and the PakaPaka lightshow team took some images of my set with some of their graphics riffing behind me. Here's a link to the first of five, and YouTube will probably load up the rest after playing it:

Robert Rich Earthdance Video 1

Sleepless at 3:30 AM here, Monday morning at the Plaine Hotel in Riga Latvia. Jetlag set in tonight, understandable since I've only been here for about 36 hours. Latvia's time zone is 10 hours away from California. The taxi should come to pick me up in about 30 minutes, so there's no point in trying to sleep anymore.

The concert Saturday night went well aside from cold rain. The locals say it's typical Riga weather, so they came out for the outdoor concert anyway. There was some attrition by the time I started at 1 AM, but the dedicated fans stayed on, and I got to meet several people whose names I recognized after the show. During the last half-hour, the rain kicked in heavy so I invited everyone up on stage under the tent canopy. I should have done this at the very start, because the energy suddenly became much more intimate and warm, and I enjoyed myself more than when I had to look out into the dark rain of the Opera Plaza. After my set, we weren't able to project Atlas Dei as planned, because the Opera House manager had earlier refused to turn off the flood lights that illuminate the front of the building. The lights would have totally washed out the projection. But to be honest, by 3 AM I think everyone was ready to head home. I certainly felt completed.

I would like to publicly thank the Klusa Daba organization, and especially Marina Tuidina and her husband for the warm hospitality shared with me this weekend. Also I feel deep gratitude to Girts Radzins for loaning me some of his Riga-based MOTM synth modules to augment the performance. I used them primarily for blorch injection and some arpeggio riffles. I like to have some real knobs to turn when possible.

Time to go, I need to make sure I got all my stuff packed up for the long trip home. - RR