Admin wrote:This is unfortunately a bug on our end....I've reported it to development and they'll take a look.
-Kyle
Great!
It certainly is an unusual "bug", and it definitely happens on the Mac, but so what . . .
So what!
I devised a two-part "workaround", which basically (a) is not to use tremolo marks on an instrument that already is set to do automatic tremolo and (b) to use the London Symphony Orchestra instruments when I need to control tremolo at the individual note level, which from my perspective is an excellent "workaround" considering that prior to this discussion I had never heard of tremolo marks in music notation, although I am a huge fan of "by ear" vibrato, whammying, and "tremolo" (in the classic Fender use of the term, where it refers to fluctuations in volume rather than pitch) . . .
In addition to learning a lot of new information about music notation, I also got to have a bit of FUN composing a somewhat Classical piece that I currently am planning to use as the prologue or "intro" for a song that will be on the Surf Whammys "Holiday" album, which will segue to the DISCO and Heavy Metal part of the song where there is singing--probably for the song "Rocking Horse Elves and Sugar Plum Fairies" (The Surf Whammys), which is a surreal magic mushroom variation of "The Night Before Christmas"--and over the past two days I added more instruments and began revealing some of the counterpoint, which took about 20 to 30 hours of work with Notion 3, since in some respects I continue to do everything primarily "by ear", although I am getting a lot better at using music notation directly without needing to make "by ear" adjustments, which is fabulous . . .
[NOTE: My current strategy is to begin with perhaps 16 quarter notes that I put randomly on the treble clef, and then I listen to it and start adjusting the notes that do not sound "correct", at which point the "sketch" of a theme emerges, and then I add whatever additional instruments the aliens from outer space beam into my mind, which continues for perhaps several hundred hours until the song is completed, which currently maps approximately to 100 hours of work in Notion 3 per minute of music, which is fine with me, since there is no other way I could do this elaborate level of work with real instruments any faster, even if I were a billionaire and could afford to have three full-time symphony orchestras available 24x7. For reference, the MP3 is 1.6MB at 271-kbps [VBR] audio quality and runs for approximately 45 seconds. The PDF score is approximately 150KB and spans four custom-size pages (11" by 15") so that all the instruments are on the same page for each set of measures, which makes it easier to read in a PDF viewer . . . ]
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Ode-To-A-Mode-Surfwhammy-12-31-2010-ST-N3.mp3
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Ode-To-A-Mode-Big-Print.pdf
Fabulous!
This new version has two studio drumkits from Sample Tank 2.5 (IK Multimedia), as well as several Indian instruments (sitar, tambura, various drums, and so forth) from Xpansion Tank 2 (IK Multimedia), a brass ensemble, some Latin percussion instruments (castanets and maracas) from the Miroslav Philharmonik and London Symphony Orchestra VSTi libraries, and a few more instruments from the London Symphony Orchestra VSTi libraries (Notion 3), for a current total of 23 instruments (where the studio drumkits count as one instrument each). And I adjusted the levels on some of the instruments with the Opto-Compressor VST from T-RackS 3 Deluxe (IK Multimedia), as well as using one of the T-RackS 3 Deluxe mastering plug-ins on the Notion 3 Master Output, since ultimately it is a DISCO and Heavy Metal song, so I am not interested in having a lot of subtle dynamic range stuff . . .
The most interesting new discovery is that the Indian drums work very nicely with the studio snare drum rimshots and kick drums to create an elaborate melodic drumkit, all with eighth notes ("quavers") and sixteenth notes ("semiquavers"), as well as a few thirty-second notes ("demisemiquavers"), although for the most part thirty-second notes are entirely too rapid when the tempo or "beats per measure" for a quarter-note is 90 or higher in 4/4 time . . .
The sitars and harps are a bit subtle, but I am working on making sense of the best way to reveal their tonality and, curiously, the notes in the last half of the song that sound like a piano actually are sitars . . .
When I switch to doing loudspeaker mixing, the Indian instruments probably will sound more natural, but I do headphone mixes when I am working on a song, since it is easier to isolate specific instruments even though loudspeaker mixes always sound better on headphones than headphone mixes . . .
Lots of FUN! :)
