Uses This

Who are you, and what do you do?

My name is Rich Vreeland, and I do lots of sound related things using the alias 'Disasterpeace'. I've primarily created soundtracks for various things, but I've also done a lot of sound design, audio implementation for games, procedural music system designs, music software, audio direction, songwriting, live performance, etc.

What hardware do you use?

I try to keep my hardware setup as minimal as possible. I have a 2012 MacBook Pro that I use for all of my work, and an iPad I occasionally mess with too. I've got a pair of Sennheiser HD 600s, Yamaha HS8 monitors + sub, and an old Novation Remote SL 61-Key MIDI Controller. I've also got a Yamaha Upright Piano that I love very much, and a few guitars. I wanna buy an electronic drum kit.

I figured out that having a big desk was eating into my stereo field, so I switched it up for a very small, shallow desk, which is actually a piece of composite wood I found in my backyard, vice gripped together with Floyd Legs. I usually mount a big flat screen display to the wall in front of me, behind my monitors (speakers).

I went through a ergonomics phase where I became totally obsessed with improving my sense of comfort and flow while working, and came out the other side with a Herman Miller Embody chair, and a 'skateboard footrest' called a Webble.

And what software?

In the past I've done audio work with GarageBand, Pro Tools and Reason, but for the last 8 or 9 years I've primarily used Logic Pro. I've started building my own MIDI Scripts for Logic too, which allow me to approach creative problems from different angles.

For code and web work I went way down the rabbit hole with Sublime Text, which is a highly customizable text editor. From there I can upload directly to my FTP server, do build tests for software/games, and lots of other related things. For real-time CSS editing I use Espresso, and for Git like to keep things simple for myself with Gitbox, and Kaleidoscope for file differential.

For two-track audio editing I use Sound Studio (for quick simple things) and Izotope RX (for more corrective repairs / etc). For batch audio processing I use Max (for quick simple things) and Myriad (for more elaborate processes). I use Keyboard Maestro to automate a lot of the repetitive tasks I do on my computer, and to automatically do things in tandem. One example is I use it to run a shell script to automatically pull the latest list of blog post tags from my website whenever I open Sublime Text, so that up to date tags show up as autocomplete options when creating blog posts in Markdown. I also use it translate phrases to French without having to go to Google Translate (which probably isn't saving me much time, but it's fun!).

What would be your dream setup?

My dream setup is to work in a supremely comfortable, quiet, minimal space with great lighting that is a short walk from where I live. An AR interface for working with software is something that appeals to me too. One day..