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Build a synthesizer | THINK, MAKE, PLAY | Max/MSP
Build a synthesizer | THINK, MAKE, PLAY | Max/MSP. article by Mr Steve Powell
What’s the first thing you do when starting a new track or build a synthesizer on your computer? Fire up Logic or Max/MSP? Warm-up the TB808? Sit on top of a hill and hope musical inspiration hits you whilst pondering the meaning of existence? Any of those things would do, but if you’re like most people, you sit in front of a blank screen wondering where to start for at least ten minutes. If it’s a bad day you sit there for hours, not getting anywhere. One of the hardest things about making music can be trying to force inspiration when it won’t come. Sometimes you can kick yourself into it, sometimes writers block is as stubborn as a mule. There is avenues of relief though, and some of them don’t involve vegging in front of the TV or raiding the fridge for the fifteenth time that day. Carrying on in part from my last article, I will try and give some food for thought about ways of being creative with music.
As I see it, there are three main things to stifle the inspiration of the creative music maker, presuming you have all the stuff and are ready to go; not knowing what to do, not knowing how to do it, and being worried that what you do is going to be any good. Well, for the last one I can answer it really quickly… everything you do is good because being productive is good and the next time you do something it will be even better. In this article though I’m going to dig into the first, and partly the second stifling factors. If you are lucky enough to have a Roland TB808 as the guy in the first paragraph, you pretty much know what’s going to happen. You select a drum, press a button in the sequencer and you make a drum groove. That’s what 808’s are, and so it doesn’t take long before you’re in Detroit Techno heaven, and that’s why they’re great: focus. So… what does a computer do? Well, lots of stuff. You’ve got three hours to make some music so you may start at the synthesiser. Or perhaps the sequencer, or record some samples for the sampler. Maybe buy a sample pack, or download some new loops for inspiration, or one of the massive variety of programs at your disposal, and that’s before you even get into the program itself or write a note. The conclusion? Choice is a great thing but also, it can be a bad thing. Conventional wisdom says to find one or two instruments and a few effects and learn them inside out so you can use them really well. This is a fine way to go about limiting your options so you can concentrate on doing rather than deciding. There is more than one way to skin a synth though, and the way I’m going to explain does the job of helping decide what to do and teaching you how to do it at the same time. The answer? DIY.
We’re not going to be putting up flat-pack or hammering in nails but in practice it’s not too different than doing just that on a computer. Often as not, after learning how to use a music program, getting it to do exactly what you want can be tricky, or even impossible. Most of the time there is a work-around or some kind of compromise, but often as not we don’t want a compromise; we want it exactly how we want and it seems those functions should be clear, accessible and functional. I personally find that I often use huge programs in a very simple way and have no need of all the bells and whistles it offers. Then when the trial period is over and you find yourself with a potentially big bill for doing something simple it can grind a bit. Therefore another big bonus to making it yourself is that it can be as simple or as complicated as you like, although if you fancy making a fully functional commercial DAW it may be worth letting the entire however-many-strong Apple development team do it for you. Right then, back to the title… think, make, play.
I’m going to skip over the actual thinking process here, just to say that whether it’s on the aforementioned hill, on the toilet or in the hazy morning after the night before, ideas will come, usually when not expected. When you have one, break it down to find where to start. An example of this started with a problem given to me by a guy who wanted a little plug-in design help in Max/MSP. He wanted a gizmo to read the pitch of whatever instrument he was recording (usually guitar and voice) and to play harmonising notes in real time through any synth, whilst recording the audio, and the midi notes into Logic. The choice of program (instrument) on the synth and the type of harmonisation was to be controlled by a midi foot pedal. Step one: Get all the routing done so all the midi and audio runs to the right places. Two: Set up pitch detection. Three: Set the pedals to control harmonisation and program change. Four: Test, debug, tweak. Five: Graphic User Interface Design. Doing all this is of course a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the process in a nutshell. During this process I had two great ideas that I decided to put into practice in my own performance software: An arpeggiator that creates harmonised delay lines of incoming audio by reading the pitch, and using pedal combinations to create shifting harmonic lines around the main melody. So by making something for someone else, I got great ideas just when I wanted a new gizmo to play with.
The main point I make here is that synthesiser design, sampler design, FX design and pretty much any tool you can think of design can take us in new and interesting directions, and can really beat those blank page blues. Also, for those of us that want to do something a bit different, or really stamp their identity by doing something in a new way, try a new angle. Try this thought for size: Why adapt your music to someone else’s system when you can adapt a system to your music? After all, the music is what it’s all about. Don’t compromise your music, change the system to suit it best.
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Approaches to electronic music production (EMP) in Max/MSP
New Approaches: Max/MSP Digital Synthesiser Building in electronic music production (EMP) by our course designer and instructor Steve Powell: 11/1/11
Everyone has different ways of writing music whether you sit down with your guitar, play and hum until you get something you like, or draw out some beats in Reason. However, one thing that many electronic music production (or EMP) composers often have in common is linearity in their music making. What I mean by this is that when you sit down in front of a sequencer and program in some notes, you’re placing them on the timeline of a song which you can see from start to finish on your screen. When you’re writing a song on an instrument, you fill in the verses and choruses on a timeline, one after another.
This fashion of writing is as old as the hills and is probably the most tried, tested, natural and widely used way of composing. The mixing desk and the tape recorder were even more linear in that at first you couldn’t go back to alter the recording. You played the part from start to finish and to alter anything was a whole new take. When computer music as we now know it evolved, as soon as computing powerbecame able to imitate the environment of the mixing desk and the step sequencer it did so. This was mainly because the companies making the software had to try and coax guys who had been using studio gear all their careers into buying the software, and the best way to get them into computers was relating what was happening on-screen to what they knew.
So… We are now in the position that the vast majority of commercial electronic music production (EMP) software is based on a linear timeline. Some of this software is truly astounding and they allow you to do all kinds of incredible things, and it’s getting better all the time. I love some of these programs and have dedicated much of my time in learning to use them and composing using the linear timeline. However, it’s not the only way to do things. There are simply some things that a sequencer cannot do, or at least cannot do without a great deal of effort. Even more importantly though is that doing things differently opens up so many new music making possibilities.
Much of doing things a different way is a change in perception, or coming at it from another angle. Take this as a simple example; to represent the standard house beat on a sequencer, you could write out:
Kick:
x—x—x—x—|x—x—x—x—|
Snare:
—-x——-x—|—-x——-x—|
Hi-Hat:
–x—x—x—x-|–x—x—x—x-|
This is, to put it in drummer terms, a four to the floor kick drum with an off- beat hi-hat, with a snare on the second and fourth kick. To think of it in linear terms, you could say it is a kick, then a hi-hat after half a beat, then a kick and a snare after another half beat etc. To look at it from a global perspective of the timeline, you could say there are eight kick drum hits, equally spaced over the course of eight beats, starting on the first beat. The hi-hat is the same but starting on the first half beat, and there are four snares equally spaced, starting on the second beat. That’s a very long way of saying it though isn’t it? That kind of pattern can be described very concisely in a textual programming language but that’s not what this article is about.
In Max/MSP electronic music production software (EMP) this drum pattern could be made by a using an object called a counter that counts upward four times per beat. Once it gets to a specified number, it starts again, say after sixteen quarter-beats, one 4 /4 bar. With this in mind it is simple to make the program play a kick drum when the counter hits ‘one’, plus every fourth quarter-beat after, a hi-hat when it hits ‘three’ plus every fourth quarter-beat after, and the snare on ‘five’, but only repeating every eighth quarter-beat. With the counter looping you have the same musical effect as
before, but with no visible timeline. This may seem just a different way to get the same effect and it is, but the perspective is different and the system is different. From here can add two more counters, one resetting after eight beats and the other resetting after eleven. Attach a few more sounds to be triggered on the other counters on different beats. Make one counter count at a different speed. Make the other stop for eight beats in- between it’s normal count. From these simple parameters you can make some crazy sounding beats and musical phrases that you may have never thought of before which would be very time consuming in a normal sequencer, and would probably take ten years of drum practice to reproduce in the acoustic world! Beats and timing aren’t the only thing to mess around with though. Melody, harmony, timbre, synthesiser parameters, whatever you like. You can pretty much create or change anything you want to. Want to import a picture of your studio and have the picture colours dictate the notes of your track? Do it. Want to have different notes played from your guitar set off different drum loops? You can do that as well. Trying something apart from the timeline can reap great rewards, especially in inspiration and being able to have an idea for music and putting it into action.
Don’t get me wrong here, I love to sit down with Ableton and make some dance music or write a song and record it into Logic. They are amazing programs and do what they do so well along with many others. But I also love to have the chance to break away from the mixers and sequencers and do something completely different, or do an new take on an old idea and that’s where I find Max/MSP comes in. One final thought to send you away with; how many times have you been writing music on a computer and thought “Why won’t this program let me do this thing that way?” Well, here’s your chance to make it that way.
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A New Era for Sound Design and Music: Video Games
A New Era for Sound Design and Music: Video Games. Article by Tim Vasilakis.
There’s a new market for music production emerging stronger than ever before with increasing sales volume by the year. That is the video games market. Having it’s origins in the early 1970’s, video games have changed and continue to change rapidly. The games industry is a place where creativity and technology merge with a constant drive to raise the bar higher. The expectations for audio have never been higher. The Game Audio Industry has emerged from the video game industry and is connected with the music industry in general.
The video games industry has always been successful, but especially the last decades it has become one of the most common choices of entertainment for kids and adults. Some people say that the games industry is the new Hollywood or even the New Jazz. An impressive 75% of household in the United Kingdom alone play computer games. As technology progresses video games become more and more like films, only better. And the reason for that is because they are interactive.
One of the most important elements in video games is audio. Game Audio refers to the sound effects, music and dialog that are placed in video games. Audio is a huge part of the story telling and fun factor for games. From the beginning it was an important, interactive element in the gameplay. At first it only gave the player the notion of success or loss.
Video games were always treated as an art form. As a matter of fact, many early companies would treat their team as artists highlighting their work by giving them proper credit on the end product. It was a rapidly growing industry.
Computer graphics and audio have developed hand in hand as multimedia and computers evolved. The more sophisticated games became, next generation audio was needed to enhance the development of the gaming experience. Music and sound design have come a long way, and have always been directly influenced by technology. The evolution of games and game audio has been so immense and within just 20 years it has hugely transformed from simple midi-sounding music themes, to complicated orchestral music scoring and futuristic sound design.
The art of video games has been evolving non-stop in the last three decades. It has absorbed into modern culture and it is the number one entertainment choice for the 21st century. There are numerous game development studios around the world. Countries like the US, UK, Germany and Japan account for the largest part of games production.
Early video games music was exclusively developed by the engineers themselves, and it was rather simple. As technology evolved, it had its impact on technology and animation,therefore high quality audio became a necessity. Back in the day, the only way to embed sound into a game was by directly programming it into the computer chips. Therefore early video games musicians were required to program those sound chips and transcribe their music into the hardware. Musicians always needed to stay on top of technological advances.
The rapid evolution of games and improved game consoles made it possible for music and sound in general to be created outside the game development and then later to be embedded into the game. Very much like the film and television industries. Furthermore and considering the interactive nature of a game it required musicians and sound designers to create content that would be completely influenced by the user’s actions. Therefore the sound continuously evolves or adapts as the game progresses, which directly enhances the interactivity of the game. This is what’s called interactive or adaptive sound.
The need for video game sound and music is on the rise. Game music is sold as soundtracks, and symphonic orchestras or live bands are part of the recording and performance. It is an exciting time to that people are open to all kinds of music.
In todays video game market there is a constant demand for high quality music, sound design and voice. From orchestral scores, to intense electronica, and absolutely everything in between. Musicians and sound designers work in house for developers and publishers. Most game companies have their own audio department, where the audio is actually produced. In other cases music production and most of the time dialog is outsourced to independent composers, sound designers or studios who provide their services on a project by project basis. No matter what platform or how advanced the game is there is always a need for composers, musicians, sound designers and audio engineers to create audio that drives the game and enhances the player experience.
Jeff Schmidt Sound Design/Music Demo [PROTOTYPE] from Jeff Schmidt on Vimeo.
The demand for high end music, sound design and voice for games is bound to increase. As mobile technology evolves rapidly and mobile gaming becomes more and more sophisticated, there is a whole new market opening up with tablets and smart phones, while console games are becoming more interactive than ever before, and in some cases the user is the controller. The new era of sound design, interactive audio and music is here to stay.
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Check out the Sound Design and Music for Video Games course
Which DAW is better – Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton or Cubase?
Which DAW is better – Logic, Pro Tools, Ableton or Cubase?
When I very first started in the early-nineties, we all used Atari ST’s with a whole 512k of Ram for sequencing MIDI and not much else. All the audio was dealt with using 24 track 2″ tape, with up to 3 slaved together synchronised using lynx synchronisers. Back then for sampling, we had the classic Akai S900 and S950 and later the Akai S1000.
The two most popular sequencers were Steinberg’s Cubase and Emagic’s Notator. From what I remember, Notator looked like the event list in Logic and that was it. Cubase on the other hand was a lot more intuitive, giving us the ability to drag, drop, copy and paste blocks of midi information. Later on Emagic changed the name from Notator to Notator Logic then finally settled at Logic, long before Apple bought them out of course. I think before Notator, it was called Creator but let’s not go there! Speaking of Apple, in those days Macs were quite new on the music production scene and Atari STs were always thought of as more stable, and they were rock solid timing wise. So back then, Cubase was my sequencer of choice and I zipped around on it like lightning as I knew it so well.
Towards the mid-nineties Macs were creeping in, they were better computers, even better than the Atari ST 1040 model; they had colour screens and it wasn’t long until we had the capability to record and edit audio to a degree. I remember once I was on a session with a producer called Ian Green at Metropolis Studios, and we were using a rack of Akai S1000 samplers so high, they were taller than Ian, although he isn’t the tallest bloke in the world! Obviously the more samplers you have, the more outputs to plug into the desk and more importantly, in those days, the more sample time you had. I think we had lots and lots of backing vocals and he wanted to keep all the harmonies separate, triggered of course from the Atari ST running Cubase. We were chatting about computers with audio capability and I guess the first DAW. I’ll always remember that when we touched on audio capability, Ian asked me about plugins. I had no idea what plugins were!
Things seemed to have changed faster in those days than they do now. I think now with my 8 processors in my Mac Pro where five years ago it was a dual 1.8 PPC, i’m still doing the same thing on it, i’m just not thinking so hard about being economical with plugins, and the plugins then were not so juicy as they are now. That’s the only difference between 5 years ago and now really. That, and that people are finally realising that that the concept of DSP to be done outside of the computers processor is a dated one.
Okay went slightly ahead of myself there, sorry about that – back to the olden days. As macs were used more and more, Emagic Logic was emerging and at one point overtook Cubase, there was no question of that, because for some reason Emagic Logic and I think around version 3 was much better on a mac than Cubase was on a mac, and by this time, macs were the way forward. People then were mostly either using Cubase on an ST or Emagic Logic on a Mac.
Cubase as it was in the early 1990's
Around about this time I could see macs running Logic were much better than Atari STs running Cubase, so I had to switch and had to learn Logic. I learnt Logic by changing all the Logic key commands to Cubase key commands. I was amazed you could do that at the time, and I don’t think I could have got to any reasonable level in Logic in the time I needed to. All the key commands were stored in the one preferences file, and I would have easy access to my preferences file with my key commands, because I had emailed them to my Hotmail account. By this time a dial-up internet connection was usually in most studios office. Doing this was pretty impressive at the time!
For many years Emagic Logic on a Mac was by far the best all round DAW. Cubase had lagged behind massively, the MIDI in Pro Tools was appalling, and Ableton hadn’t been invented! There was a period when I beta tested Logic for Emagic, they would send me updates first before releasing them to the public to go over, and give them my feedback. I would try and make it break by pushing it as hard as I could, tell them the results of the tests and also tell them if I thought any of the new features were useful. In 2001, Apple bought Logic from Emagic so that all stopped and I guess they have guys in white coats beta testing full time. You can tell this because of some of the stupid features they come out with, like the comp tool and the loop end tool to name just a few. Why can’t we after all these years, adjust the length of a region from the left? Anyway, I’m not here to grump, but I think if they had more people actually making music involved in the development, it’d still be the obvious choice DAW but it isn’t.
It’s only recently and I’m talking in the last 5 years Ableton has emerged as a contender with its intuitive and very creative session mode and warp marking, although now we warp the audio instead of the grid in version 8, warping has been around for a long time now. I’ve been warping multi-track drums now for a long time now in Ableton. I’m currently working on a sample based record with Russ Jay. I warped the sample in Ableton because it wasn’t originally played to a click it’s that old. Logic have come up with Flextime but its not as good as warping.
It’s only recently and I’m talking in the last 5 years that Cubase has massively improved, particularly its audio. A friend of mine was showing me the way Cubase deals with the audio in a completely unique way just as Pro Tools’ playlist system is so different. Again in the last 5 years, Pro Tools’ MIDI has upped its game massively, and now there’s not much you can’t do in Pro Tools you can do in Logic, and I know nothing about Pro Tools 10 which is bound to have further MIDI improvements.
It was around seven years ago I sold my Digidesign HD3 and 192 system and swapped it for a G5 dual 1.8 with an Apogee interface. There were a few times my dual 1.8 PPC struggled and I wondered if I had done the right thing, but I struggled through. Now I have my 8 x 2.8 intel. I can’t understand why anyone would need DSP on PCI cards these days, especially now Pro Tools 9 and onwards software supports any interface. I do wonder if Avid have shot themselves in the foot there, I do hope not, and pat them on the back for giving people more options. I’m sure there’s more behind their motives than doing it out of the goodness of their hearts!
More on this article here.
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Music production schools student from Copenhagen, Denmark
Music production schools student from Copenhagen, Denmark:
A student who finished last week travelled all the way from Copenhagen in Denmark to do the mixing and mastering course. It’s always very pleasing when a student travels from far away to do a music production course. I was very happy to receive this card and some Danish marzipan in the post after the course.
When the penny dropped on compression, I saw his face light up with excitement as he finally understood what compression is, when and how to use it and on what. He liked the bit on acoustics in the early stages when we generated standing waves and now he knows what peak filters, shelf filters, high pass, low pass, band and notch filters are all about. I see many professional producers and writers who have been hitting and hoping for many years and all wish they had done some music production courses many years ago.
I do like the personal intimate vibe of running a boutique music production school out of my house, and although it will be a good thing when we move into a dedicated building as the school has grown out of the house, i’ll make sure that a certain amount of the personal intimacy carries over which undoubtedly makes us unique.
EDM: Electronic Dance Music Production – Nu-Disco Filtering
EDM: Electronic Dance Music Production – Nu-Disco Filtering:
Here’s number four in my SOW series on a short Sound Design course I wrote back in the day.
The learners will:
Will identify with filtering, how the three basic filters work – LP, HP and bandpass and judge when it’d be a good idea to use them.
They will be able to identify the most common parameters on a filter, relate to analogue and digital.
They will understand how to create filtering using envelopes.
Explain filters and filtering. Explain Low Pass, High Pass, Band Step and Band Pass filters,2,4,6 pole and db/octave slopes, resonance, cutoff, drive, key. Low Cut is the same of High Pass, High Cut is the same as Low Pass.
Group listening of Low Pass filtering on Daft Punk records.
Group identification and discussion. Demonstrate by recreating the same low pass filtering on an old speeded up 70’s disco record. Filtering samples, Low pass disco house filtering.
Explain why different makes of filters sound different.
Discuss analogue and digital filter algorithms. Set group task of controlling filters using envelopes which we covered last time.
Demonstration on filters in Logic where the filtering can be seen and audio can be seen on the spectrum analyser in Logic’s channel EQ as well as heard. Learners to experiment with filters on their developing sound.
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EDM – Electronic Dance Music Production Envelopes and ADSR
EDM – Electronic Dance Music Production Envelopes and ADSR:
This is the third one hour EMP – Electronic (Dance) Music Production Sound Design lesson in a scheme of work I wrote a long time ago on a teaching course with GSS in mind. This is about envelopes and the ADSR parameters
The learners will:
Define how envelopes work and the individual elements of the ADSR parameter. They will be able to practise different ways to apply envelopes and what they can apply envelopes to.
Explanation on envelopes and the individual elements to the ADSR (attack, decay, sustain and release) parameter. Uses for envelopes on both synthesised oscillators and audio samples.
Activities:
Group listen to some famous records with heavy use of envelopes used point out when they’re used then learners activity would be to identify them themselves.
Demonstration by me on ADSR in Absynth where learners can hear and see in real time the effects of this parameter.
Learners activity now is to experiment with envelopes using ADSR on their mix of oscillators and individual waveforms using Absynth on their personal DAW
EDM: Electronic Dance Music Production – Oscillator Waveforms
EDM: Electronic Dance Music Production – Oscillator Waveforms:
Here’s part two of my 6 one hour scheme of work I wrote for a teaching course I was on a while back. This is on the Oscillator and waveforms and I built on this when I wrote the Electronic music production course at GSS.
Objectives and outcomes: Understand the oscillator in detail, have a basic understanding of the principles. The learners will know about the four most common waveforms used in electronic and dance music production, how they differ in sound and what waveforms are most commonly used for certain elements of music. They will know how to layer more than one oscillator. Learners will have an understanding of how Absynth works and will at least be able to operate it as much as they’ll need to in this course.
Activities: Recap on previous session. Talk about the oscillator; what it does, where it fits in – ie its the foundation to the sound – you start with the oscillator and build from there. The principles of oscillation: the periodic fluctuation of two things based on changes of energy vibe. Listen to some well known records with oscillators easily audible. 4 most common waveforms; sine, sawtooth, triangle, square. I show learners how to operate Absynth in their preferred DAW and learners get experimenting auditioning different waveforms and hearing how they differ in sound. I show them how to draw their own waveform in Absynth combining a sine wave with a square wave. Learners experiment drawing waveforms and hearing how they sound. Learners layer up 2 or more oscillators using different waveforms as they are now beginning to build their unique own sound.
Antares Autotune pitch correction software on Xfactor shows
Antares Autotune pitch correction software on Xfactor shows:
I had a chap called Will Payne from the Sunday Mirror contact me and ask if I could spot any Antares Auto-tune pitch correction software on Susan Boyle’s pre-recorded audition performance of ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ on Britain’s Got Talent, which is a Simon Cowell show like Xfactor. He gave me two Youtube links to analyse – one of the pre-recorded audition which apparently had been Auto-tuned and one of a performance in the live final which can’t have been as it was live. I did point out at this point that you can run Antares Auto-tune pitch correction software live in real time.
Audition pre-record performance HERE
Live final performance HERE
I listened to both, one after the other trying not to analyse the vocal tuning too much. The first thing I realise is that overall the performance from the live final seemed to be much better than the pre-recorded and allegedly tampered with audition. Because Auto-tune can tune in real time, why the accusations only for the pre-recorded shows? The performance was so much better in the final so there’s more chance they were using it then than the audition anyway! Having said that, Autotune doesn’t cope well with vibrato and this big old bird loves a bit of vib. I put the improvement down to her being more relaxed and used to singing in front of an audience. I’m assuming there are endless rounds where everyone has to sing and each week one gets knocked out each week until just a few are left in the final. Does she sing the same song every single week?
Someone who can’t sing at all asked me if I could make them sound like a great singer using pitch correction software, and my reply was that I could probably make you sound 20% better almost immediately and if I was left with your lead vocal performance for a a few hours with Melodyne or in the old days Auto-tune in graphical mode (how tedious was that?), I could probably make you sound around 40% – 50% better. The point is that you have to be pretty good in the first place to sound great. Over the years I can probably count the amount of times I haven’t used Auto-tune on a vocal on one hand – from the very best in the business to the really bad ones. Of course, no names. The only reason I haven’t used it is when the artist insists that they don’t want it which is rare.
I analyse the pre-recorded audition for signs of Antares Auto-tune pitch correction software and notice that a lot of the longer notes tend to fluctuate in pitch at the tail end of the note when she begins to run out of breath as it’s more difficult to stay in tune, Auto-tune will not let that happen so I’m pretty convinced that no Antares Auto-tune was used at all. I told Mr Payne this and that given the poor quality of compressed audio on Youtube clips, I couldn’t hear any evidence of Melodyne either. I’ve investigated a bit now and find there have been some stories flying around the net that this performance has been tampered with, but how and who could tell, I don’t know. If it had, then it must have been Melodyne and whoever was doing the tampering didn’t do a good job because the tuning was all over the place!
Apparently Mike Stock was also asked by the Sunday Mirror at the same time as me to analyse the two videos too. I bought the Sunday Mirror and was sheepishly reading through it on my way to my gig at Carnival and didn’t spot any Susan Boyle Autotune scandals. I see now that THIS is Mr Payne’s Sunday story so Mike Stock must have came back with the same conclusion as me.
George pointed out, it’s tough that Antares are bragging about all the publicity and fuss this story is generating but the more sophisticated Melodyne can’t because it’s more difficult to spot so no one is talking about it so the general public have never heard of it!
Get your music heard by A and R at music management/label
Get your music heard by A and R at music management/label:
Antony Meola is the A&R manager at Upper 11, they are a top music management company and record label in London. He’s been in touch with me asking if I could recommend any hot up and coming producers at Garnish School of Sound to collaborate with existing producers on their roster working with artists both on and outside of their company. This could end up with you having a management deal with them so I have decided to offer this opportunity out to all of my supporters. I can’t forward off all emails myself and we can’t have email addresses published, so to get round this and spread the music career furthering love in as much of an automated way as possible, I have set up a Gmail email address which will automatically forward to Antony’s assistant Jess. Please send your MP3′s, Myspace URL’s etc and contact details to garnish.aandr.forwarding@gmail.com
He is looking for all genres as long as it’s master quality sounding. I think that’s why he wants to hear my students 
He is looking out for remixers too which is what I think a lot of you dance music producers might be more interested in. I will keep an eye out and give feedback where I can – I’m quite looking forward to it actually!
I’m taking a bit of a risk posting this on all of my social media because I know not all of you have done a course at Garnish School of Sound so PLEASE only send in mixed material you think would pass on a UK club dance floor or on the radio. Antony is looking for good production, If he doesn’t get much of it, he probably wont ask me again or even ask me to stop the forwarding. I’m afraid I don’t have time to listen to all of your masterpieces and only send the quality stuff on to Jess so please take this into consideration, because if you don’t, it could spoil it for others. Of course I do appreciate that one persons idea of master quality is not everyone else’s but Jess knows what to listen out for. This is really an experiment which I hope goes well and i’ll know quickly if it isn’t. I just wanted to offer this opportunity to all of my supporters.
Good luck and please let me know how you get on – I’m really looking forward to hearing the success stories!
Electronic Sound Design Classes in London
Electronic Music Production Sound Design Class in London:
I’ve just finished designing our Electronic Sound Design class, and it’s due to kick off in August. I’m really excited about it as I really feel it will be our best course yet. Obviously when I started the school just over a year ago, I wasn’t as experienced putting courses together, and my team around me are brilliant and I didn’t have that before. For all the info on the course, check out our electronic sound design classes page where you will find details on sound science, ambient textures, advanced wavetable synthesis, sound design for video games, game score, arrangement tips for theme building/stem creation, all you need to know about sync, glitch, advanced FM, modal synthesis, the science behind rhythm and a whole lot more.
Recording vocals: DIY vocal booth and pop shield or filter
Recording vocals: DIY vocal booth and pop shield or pop filter:
This is about how I record vocals at home with a DIY vocal booth. We cover more on this on the Sound Engineering course.
I have a macbook pro plugged up to an apogee duet, pop shield or pop filter, some cables running from my dining room to my bedroom where I have made a DIY vocal booth out of my wardrobe and some dressing gowns.
You can see that I have the mic pretty close to the clothes in the wardrobe to ensure as many as the sound waves from the voice are captured and absorbed before they get a chance to bounce back/reflect and end up back down the capsule of the mic again. The microphone’s polar pattern is set to cardioid so if anything did get a first reflection back out, the mic is optimised for one side. oooo, I love talking about microphones – I’ll try and do a whole post about them soon. I have two towel dressing gowns hanging up on each of the inside of the wardrobes. The idea is to create as much of a dead controllable environment as possible which then can be treated with exactly the amount and type of reverb you wish. There’s NOTHING worse than the sound of a vocal where someone’s just chucked a mic up in the middle of a room with stone walls – you get reflections bouncing all over the place. It’s a very thin horrible echoey sound which you can’t do anything about.
Pop shields are important and pretty cheap too – they capture the compressed air you give out when you make a ‘p’ or ‘b’ sound which ends up as really low frequency on your recording and can even cause digital glitching if it’s fierce enough. Once a hypnotist friend of mine popped over to record some vocals for an online hypnotising project she was involved with, I set the mic up as it but couldn’t find my pop shield, so I broke down a metal coat hanger, made it the shape of a pop shield (or pop filter) frame. The next thing was to find some tights to wrap around it, but I couldn’t find any of my girlfriend’s so I dug a pair of her nickers out of the laundry basket! It did the trick with some gaffer tape and headphone wire.
Acoustic Treatment and Positioning of Studio Monitor Speakers
Acoustic Treatment and Positioning of Studio Monitor Speakers:
Okay so now it’s time to choose and position your studio monitor speakers and just dip your toe into the wonderful world of studio acoustic treatment. More on this on the Mixing and Mastering course
Most people listen to music in their cars or on a cheap home stereo sometimes even in mono. If your mix doesn’t sound good on a pair of small speakers, there’s not much point. A pair of ridiculously expensive active monitors may sound amazing, but no one else has them, so your mix will be lost in translation. In an ideal world you would like a pair of studio monitor speakers which are easy on the ear and capture an element of the ‘biggies’ you’d fine in big commercial studios, so perhaps a ported design like the Genelec 1031‘s I use here and a sealed box type like Yamaha NS10′s for more of a ‘truer’ sound. Truer is all to do with their skewed frequency response, lack of low frequency resonances, low distortion and remarkably accurate transient response behaviour, all of which are qualities of infinite baffle designs using small, responsive drivers. Ported designs are popular in programming rooms and projects studios because you get more low frequency output which we all know and love – especially if we’re woking on dance records!
Genelec 8040a studio monitor speakers
If like me you don’t have space for two pairs of studio monitor speakers and like me given the choice of a ‘truer’ sealed box infinite baffle design or a more pleasing ported design, you’re going for the ported design you need to decide which ported studio monitor speakers you want. I’ve had my old Genelec 1031′s for donkeys years now and couldn’t recommend them enough! The new version of the old 10 series are the 80 series. I’ve heard that they aren’t as good as the older 10 series which personally makes me happy. If you have space, the 1032′s are a bigger and louder version of the 1031′s. In fact the whole Genelec 10 series always sounded the same right from the 1029′s right up to the 1032′s. Just the higher the number, the louder they got!
Focal SM-6. They do look nice don't they?!
I had a chat with Gav at Kazbar to get some info on popular choices these days and he recommended the Tannoy Reveal range starting at around £250 a pair if you’re on a budget which sounds really cheap to me, and Focal, a brand I hadn’t heard of before.
If you choose any of the common active brands on Gav’s or any good pro audio dealers website, I’m sure that you’ll get used to the curve, the room and as long as you check the mix in as many different environments as possible, I don’t see why you wouldn’t get the best results for your mixing ability.
I always recommend active speakers these days because the pain of even more studio cables, more hassle transporting, finding the right amp, messing about with crossovers if needed, and generally the greater margin for error is taken away by the guys in white coats at the testing centres of these popular brands. Let them do all the work so you can get on and enjoy mixing your record. Now there’s just the small matter of getting good at mixing!
Positioning:
I wouldn’t worry too much about exact angles when you decide where you are going to be sitting and where you are going to be placing your monitor speakers because you’re going to be moving around, which in itself is healthy for your mix because you’ll be getting a different perspective the more moving you do. For your main seating position, your head should be roughly one point of an equilateral triangle with each of the pair of your monitor speakers the other points of the triangle. So roughly an equal amount of distance between your head, each monitor speaker and distance between the speakers themselves.
Studio acoustic treatment:
As for studio acoustic treatment, and think next on the agenda is to write a whole piece on it, but very quickly, and you may need to do some Googling – you may want to start with some treatment behind your monitor speakers, consider a bass trap above your head and if you’re in a square room particularly, try some absorbing treatment to your left and right on the the wall.
Choosing Powered and Active Studio Monitor Speakers
Choosing Powered and Active Studio Monitor Speakers:
The positioning, orientation and mounting of studio monitors can have a huge influence on the final sound of a room and of course your mix. I wouldn’t go out and buy hi-fi speakers and a massive sub woofer if you have a room with parallel walls the size of a match box and don’t intend to apply much acoustic treatment.
We should be looking for a happy medium, neither too bright nor too much bass. If the aspirations we have for our work are that it should sound as good as it can on the widest range of systems out there; from top of the range hi-fi systems, portable mono radios to ipod players, then the perceived tonal balance of our monitors should be as close to the peoples average as possible. I encourage students to check their mixes in as many different environments as possible before putting their mix down; from studio monitors, built in computer speaker to simulate a poor quality mono radio (we use an Auratone speaker in professional studios for this), the car stereo (a favourite of mine), and even standing in a different room to hear only the reflections of your mix from a number of ‘natural’ diffusers and part absorbers which make up the hallway, curtains, plant in the corner and chest of draws under the stairs.
The most common nearfield monitoring systems found in professional studios are Yamaha NS10′s, usually used closed up and reasonably close to each other. The idea of having the same make of studio monitors in every studio you go to seems like a good one, you’d expect the sound to be the very similar from one studio to another, but because they’re passive (they need an external amp which can differ) the mix can sound completely different. On top this of course the differing sound of the rooms themselves. I personally wouldn’t fancy listening to NS10′s all day every day; high-mid frequencies feature prominently in their curve so they can be quite harsh on the ear, and there’s not much bottom end at all. I remember some engineers using them with a subwoofer, but not many. My NS10′s and amp are in my Dad’s garage – I just didn’t have the surface space for them in my programming suite right now but when I move, i’ll try and fit them in somewhere . The more ways I can check the mix as I go the better of course.
Left: Event Studio Precision 8. Right: Yamaha NS10m
This is the main reason why engineers like to use the same room for mixing time after time – they know the sound of the room, monitors and what’s powering the monitors, they are of course used to the console, outboard, assistants, staff, restaurant etc but in some cases they’re superstitious. Mark ‘Spike’ Stent was never comfortable venturing outside of the old Olympic Studio 3 after all the success he had in that mixing room. Once he outgrew the room, he had no choice but to move and he ended up buying the SSL G-series console he’d mixed so many hits on and plonking it in a bespoke control room he had built at Olympic just after my time there in the late 90′s. His near-fields of choice were the passive KRK 9000‘s. I wonder if they still are.
Then you have the main monitors or ‘biggies’ – some teachers and magazines say ‘far-fields’. One use for these monitors is when the A&R guy pops into the studio to tell us all that we need more midi or something (A&R people are much better these days, especially the ones who employ me now!). The biggies have plenty of bottom end, they are VERY flattering – you can fart down a mic and it’d sound amazing out of the biggies! The typical 90′s A&R guy will always leave the studio happy after hearing the a rough balance of the mix on the biggies before we’ve even turned on the (automation) computer. And of course after he’d played producer soloing the entire desk for no reason.
Genelec main monitors and some NS10's in Olympic Studio 1
But is this what we want all of the time when mixing a record? Of course not – we are not looking for the most pleasing experience for our ears, we want an accurate tool that will help us make the correct decisions, but at the same time not give us earache after an hour of monitoring. For this we want a pair of what I would call ‘alternative near-fields’. I say alternative nearfields because these monitors would not be the standard Yamaha NS10′s and be situated (usually) either side them. These are the monitors we should buy for our home studio set-up. So what are we looking for when we are choosing near-field monitors? And where do we put them?
To be continued…
Norman Jay MBE on GSS and Notting Hill Carnival after party
Norman Jay MBE on GSS and Notting Hill Carnival after party:
Just thought I’d celebrate my latest release with Toby Tobias by dishing out the horn sample we used for the downbeat of the drop. We’re calling ourselves Badnonday and the track is called Albondigas. Too early to say how it’s doing but as I write this, it’s the first record on Phonica’s homepage which is a pretty good sign!
The horn is a long sample that rises towards the end and pans slightly from right to left. It really gives the drop an uplifting feel by bringing out the major chord but you can’t really hear it unless you’re listening out for it.
Download the horn sample HERE
Norman dropped in to the office to grab his copy early. There may have been a football match on too that day but we won’t talk about that! Since then he’s played it at Glastonbury and reports are that it went down a storm. I still haven’t heard it on a big system and I can’t wait to hear it at Good Times at the Notting Hill Carnival. I’m going on the Sunday and we’re both DJing at the Good Times after party at the William IV if anyone else is about. Hover your mouse over the image of us. We thought it was funny at the time!
Download Reaktor 5 synth ensembles from the EDM course free!
Download Reaktor 5 synth ensembles from the EDM course free!
In my latest video on Reaktor 5 available in Native Instruments’ Komplete 6 bundle, my voice goes high pitched when I say ‘hi’ and then it settles down to what it’s normally like. I also say “crack it open” rather a lot for some reason.
Anyone can build an Ensemble (synth, FX unit, sequencer etc) in Reaktor just like anyone can build an application for an iPhone. The difference is that Native Instruments don’t police or make money out of the distribution like Apple do for their apps. You can imagine there are a hell of a lot out there. I have uploaded all my synths beginning with the letter S for you to download. I can’t give you my whole library because it’s over 9 gb. I’m giving you a selection of synths because they’re probably more useful to you than sequencers or samplers and I picked the letter S randomly.
When I mention Reaktor, my students on the Logic course at Garnish School of Sound tend to glaze over before I’ve said anything more – they associate it with geeks who want to spend all of their life building synths. It is for geeks who like building synths (I don’t think many make records) but who is going to be playing with these lovely creations after they have been built? The answer is you and me. So in this video, I scratch the surface of Reaktor 5, talk through some of the bizarre terminology, show you how to navigate to your sounds and FX (ensembles) and how to flick through the presets (or snapshots in Reaktor land)
Once I settle on a bass, I show you how easy it is to assign controllers in Reaktor, I send the signal to an aux and pop in a reverb on the insert demonstrating reaktor as an FX unit too. I do dip my toe into the building blocks but just show you how to access them. In my Dance Music Sound Design course, we cover Reaktor in depth and even get synth building!
Watch the video HERE
Download over 100 Reaktor synths HERE
Download free drum samples!
Download free drum samples:
At Garnish School of Sound, we not only share the knowledge but we share the sample love too, and I decided some time ago that when we get to 173 Facebook fans, I will dish out some free drum samples. Samples I’ve been collecting and swapping with producers, engineers and programmers from all over the world for over 17 years now. My first of many giveaway free drum samples is a collection of unusual glitchy percussive sounds. I have made a video here so you can get a feel of them before you download or have to map them out if you’re not using an EXS 24 compatible sampler. There are a few little EQ tips and tricks for them too. They may not be everyone’s cup of tea but they are quite nice quirky sounds and you download the wav files here. I’d love to know what you think. Next free drum samples up are the horn samples we used in ‘Albondigas’ You can’t hear any horns on the track so I’ll tell you where we used them and why we used them and of course, they will be yours to download.
Visit our Facebook page to grab your goodies HERE
I have some amazing Kick, snare, hat and shaker I’m thinking about giving away too. I can’t say where I got them originally but I have ‘made them my own’ by processing them through Urei compression and Neve EQ. I’ll do a similar video when I have some time and will probably ask you to do me a little favor in return. Watch this space…
Apple Logic Pro with Avid Pro Tools HD DAW Systems
Apple Logic Pro with Avid Pro Tools HD DAW Systems:
I heard here that Apple (Logic) are to stop support for Avid’s Digidesign products (Pro Tools). This is a massive kick in the teeth for Avid who I here are struggling a bit at the moment. Neither rumor surprises me; I cashed in my (digital signal processing) chips a long time ago when Apple brought out the G5. The chips I cashed in were a Digidesign HD 3 (before excel) and a 192 interface. I could see the end for the need of processing power on PCI cards.I thought I should get as much money for my Digidesign Pro Tools HD system as I could, I already liked the sound of Apogee interfaces so I bought a Rosetta 800 and made do with a G5 dual 1.8. It was a bit sluggish but I knew bigger beasts were ‘in the post’. And in the post they were beyond my wildest dreams because I had no idea about the intel chips they were going to load them up with. I have to say also that I thought the Rosetta sounded much better than my 192 I had. Engineers often criticise Apogee stuff saying it sounds a bit sheeny. If they do then I like sheeny!
I hated the way Digidesign’s upgrade systems worked. I spent a fortune upgrading my Mix system to HD and it seemed only months later HD Accel came out. It’s part of the reason I sold my HD system when I did; I wasn’t about to fork out all that money AGAIN! Here is a recent letter they sent out to their customers telling them that they are building a website and dropping the Digidesign name if you’re interested. All those brand names were a bit confusing; Pro Tools made by Digidesign and Digidesign is owned by Avid. I don’t think many users even knew about Avid.
I do feel sorry for all those Logic users now lumbered with a HD rigs but soon will be unable to upgrade Logic. I don’t know why Apple are withdrawing support, I know that Avid and Apple have never been the best of friends but this really feels like kicking them when they are down. I wonder how much my Logic using pals will be able to get for their HD rigs now. I’ve been native for a few years now, I’m running 2 x 2.8 quad intel xeon, a load of ram and I can’t even get the beast to break into a sweat. I use an Apogee Ensemble interface now. I swapped my Rosetta 800 for the Ensemble because I wanted the lightpipe i/o when I ran Gigastudio. The stereo sp/diff i/o still comes in handy.
I can see the Mac Pro doesn’t break into a sweat because I use islayer’s iStat: http://www.islayer.com/ It’s a neat app which lets me know what’s going on in my mac; from the temperature of my processors and disk drives to how much processing power I am using and from which processors, handy when you want to see how your individual plugins use your processors. There’s even a handy ethernet bandwidth counter! All the stats appear at the top of the screen and look great; there are drop down menus of everything for more detailed statistics.
My advise to any Logic users with a Pro Tools rig is to come and do a Pro Tools courses with George or get those cards and interfaces on eBay NOW! Apple Logic Pro with Avid Pro Tools HD Systems
Dave Garnish runs a music production school specialising in sound engineering courses and mixing courses
Article URL: Avid and Logic
Logic Pro training: Zoom tool and using loops with regions
Logic Pro training: Zoom tool and using loops with regions:
I made a video at my studio about zooming for Logic Pro Training. I don’t know how I managed to talk about zooming for over 6 1/2 minutes but I love it. The first 4 minutes can get a bit tedious if you’re familiar with all the weird and wonderful ways you can zoom in and out in Logic 9 but I have to say that the way I zoom with the zoom tool assigned to the right mouse button is very quick and I haven’t seen anyone else zoom this way before I’ve showed them. And once they get used to it, they don’t go back to their old way. There is another way of zooming in Logic 9 similar to the way you can zoom in Ableton Live 8 but I was unaware of this when I made the video. My way is still quicker so there’s not much point talking about it here.
If you zip forward to 4 minutes and play from there, I touch on how I use loops and why I don’t use the loop tool and also on my preferred way of using the zoom tool these days. I’ve never seen anyone use loops and stop them with blank regions nor have I ever seen anyone set up the right mouse button to use as the zoom tool before either so it’s well worth watching, and I can’t see how anyone would go back after getting used to doing it my way. I really don’t know why anyone would use the loop tool and it’s starting to show that it’s not people who make music who beta-test Logic these days.
Watch the video HERE
Ableton Live 8 music production and DJ courses coming soon!
Ableton Live 8 music production and DJ courses coming soon!:
I’ve been making some records with Toby Tobias recently which seem be be getting picked up by labels before we’ve even had a chance to mix! I know I can’t complain but he does have this habit of playing very rough demos to labels, then we’re up against it to finish the master because everyone is excited and people want to put the record out. It does say a lot for the A&R guys these days when they can hear the potential from such a rough demo. We are going to be called Badonday, our first tune is called Albondigas and will be out on Flashback after we have mixed the dub and it has been cut!
Toby is THE Ableton man and although I have used Ableton to warp mark mutitrack drums in my time (and very nice it is too), I’ve not made any records using it alone. I have purchased a copy now with a view to rewire it into Logic and use it as a slave. Now it looks like Toby and I are going to be working together a lot, it makes sense to make a system which works for both of us. Next project is immensely exciting btw – same vibe, he’s played it to some labels before we even arranged it – I don’t even think Ableton Live was out of session mode! I previously dismissed Ableton as a bit of a toy, it didn’t sound great and was only good for warp marking drums and fiddling about with loops quickly. But seeing Toby Tobias on the mouse…. no, it’s great, version 8 sounds much better so now i’m going to include it here at Garnish School of Sound!
I’ve persuaded the Tobias to write up some courses with me and I’m aiming to have 6 workshops ready for mid July, and best of all, he has agreed to take at least the first set of workshops!! Amazing Ableton Live news from Garnish School of Sound!