composer wrote:When Notion hit the market in 2005, it was vanguard software in some ways. However, not being able to use other sample libraries limited the potential of the software. Combine with this an economic downturn, and a change in vision and leadership and you have the hasty and flawed release of Notion3.
The problem lies not with the ability to use other sound libraries in Notion; the problem lies with the flawed rendering engine in N3. I have yet to hear anything rendered in N3 that sounds better than N2. I think the people from Notion threw the baby out with the bath water with N3 and got rid of almost everything in N2 that was wonderful. How bizarre. Even more bizarre is the fact that very few people seem to have noticed.
At the risk of wandering into a truly pointless discussion about which genre is the best, which has the potential to be even more pointless than a discussion about favorite operating systems, my general impression of the various discussions in this FORUM is that nearly everyone appears to be focused primarily on
Classical music, which is fine with me, although my focus at present is on
DISCO,
Flamenco,
Heavy Metal,
Rock and Roll, and a bit of
Classical, since here in the sound isolation studio my goal is to discover how to sell more records than Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga, really . . .
Really! As a bit of background, I had a good bit of
Classical training as a child but mostly with respect to singing, which mapped to being able to sing soprano (treble clef) by sight for
Liturgical music, which is a useful skill but was a bit confusing until about a year ago when I realized that my
cojones dropped over half a century ago, hence instead of being a soprano I actually am a baritone or tenor . . .
And while music notation and music theory was interesting when I was a child, as soon as girls became fascinating (as contrasted to being stupid and yucky), I soon realized that being in a
Rock and Roll band was a great way to attract girls, which pretty much ended my focus on music notation and music theory, at which time I switched to playing "by ear", which continued until six months ago when I discovered Notion 3 as part of a project to annoy all the Spanish speaking people on the planet with a patently silly
Flamenco song, with the interest in Notion 3 primarily being to do the drumkit and percussion, since playing
Flamenco rhythms on a real drumkit is a bit beyond my current abilities as a drummer, especially since drumming is more of a secondary skill for me, as is playing keyboards, where my primary instruments are electric guitar and electric bass guitar . . .
It took a while for all the music notation and music theory that I had forgotten over the years to reappear, but I am making excellent progress in this regard, and it is nearly entirely the direct result of Notion 3 being so completely and totally easy to use, as well as a bit of studying the Joseph Schillinger System of Musical Composition (SoMC) over the years, along with a lot of Mathematics in college, where my degree focus was in Computer Science . . .
For reference, I never used Notion 2 or earlier versions, so I have no observations about them, but my understanding is that Notion 3 has a new user interface, and if this is the case, then I probably would
not have found Notion 2 or earlier versions very useful . . .
I found some YouTube videos of Notion from 2007 and 2008, which I presume are for earlier versions of Notion, and the user interface is entirely too busy . . .
From the perspective of Computer Science, my general view is that all software has problems in one way or another, so what matters the most to me is that I can devise a "workaround" whenever I encounter a problem, which with Notion 3 has been the case very consistently . ..
In other words, there are some quirks or "bugs" in Notion 3, but so far (a) I have not lost any work and (b) I have been able to devise a "workaround" whenever I encounter a problem or limitation, which gives me a stellar comfort level . . .
And while I agree that some of the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) instruments sound a bit like a 1960s Farfisa Organ or a kazoo, it depends on the instrument, articulations, and so forth and so on, where for some types of TONE the LSO instruments are stellar . . .
However, I tend to prefer the VSTi instruments in Miroslav Philharmonik, and one of my most recent discoveries is that when I use the standalone user interface to select very specific playing styles, the Miroslav Philharmonik instruments sound the way I want them to sound, so in this respect I think that a lot of the overall TONE is highly dependent on the VSTi libraries and the way they are used . . .
As noted in a previous post somewhere, I had a bit of problem getting brass and string sections to sound good on fast songs, but I finally discovered the reason, which is that instead of using VSTi samples that were recorded and digitized from performances where the musicians actually were playing staccato, I was using regular VSTi samples and trying to make them staccato via articulating the music notation, which simply does
not work . . .
Of course, I never read the documentation for anything if I can avoid it, so my entire experience might be based on having no idea what I am doing, but even if that were the case, then I think it is a bit
amazing that I can use Notion 3 productively without actually needing to read the documentation, which in part is a consequence of the entire "play by ear" mindset . . .
If I simply cannot discover how to do something intuitively, then I resort to using the online Help, but this does
not happen very often . . .
And as I learn more about the way VSTi instruments work, I am not so certain that some of the limits I have encountered in Notion 3 are due to Notion 3, itself, with one of the clues being something I read in the documentation for Miroslav Philharmonik that referred to loading one instance of Miroslav Philharmonik with 16 instruments rather than having 16 separate instances of it, which might explain a few things, except that I have no idea how to load 16 instruments into one instance of Miroslav Philharmonik, but so what . . .
So what! The same thing happens with T-RackS 3 Deluxe VST plug-ins, and there is no way to load them into one instance, where for reference on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro with 8GB of memory (8x1GB) and 5TB of very fast hard drive storage, the upper limit for T-RackS 3 Deluxe plug-ins in the Notion 3 Mixer is 10 or so, but while this is a tiny bit annoying, it is not a problem, since I record the Notion 3 tracks into Digital Performer (MOTU) as soundbites via ReWire, and I can have a lot of VST plug-ins in Digital Performer, although Digital Performer also has upper limits, where the general "workaround" is to do the digital universe flavor of what George Martin and Phil Spector did in the 1960s with 2-track analog magnetic tape machines, where they "bounced" tracks from one machine to the other, adding more stuff each time . . .
I did a series of experiments in this regard, and my general perspective at present is that I can have several hundred "heavy" VSTi instruments in Notion 3 and several hundred tracks in Digital Performer, but doing it requires working with cloned Notion 3 project files and doing a lot of "bouncing to disk" in Digital Performer, which mostly is a matter of doing a bit of planning for a song and doing a bit of
ad hoc pseudo-database work for the Notion 3 project files, which is harder to explain than it is to do, really . . .
Really! And while I certainly appreciate and enjoy
Classical music, the facts of the matter are (a) that "Bad Romance" (Lady Gaga) has over 331 million YouTube views and (b) that the European Single of "Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus) has approximately 6.5 million YouTube views, which is nearly double what it was one month ago, which works for me . . .
Since June 2010, I have worked on Notion 3 songs at least for 1,000 hours, and it is starting to make a lot of sense, which includes learning more about music notation and music theory in a practical way, which also is the case with VSTi instruments . . .
Another fact is that there are distinct differences in operating systems, especially with respect to audio, and while Windows machines can have outstanding audio systems, it does not always happen that way in the real world, which is one of the things Microsoft discovered when they made a valiant effort in Windows Vista to enforce very strict audio standards as part of certifying 3rd-party hardware and software vendors, as well as computer manufacturers, which for the most part was a waste of time, since there is no practical way to have high-quality audio in a $300 (US) entry level Windows computer, if only because Microsoft cannot force all the 3rd-party vendors and computer manufacturers to do much of anything . . .
On the other hand, although I stopped building custom Windows computers over a decade ago, I think it is quite reasonable to suggest that one can build an excellent Windows computer with outstanding audio capabilities, so who cares . . .
Not me! I am
very happy with Apple computers, and this works for me, which is great . . .
Great! I am very happy with Notion 3, which is also is great . . .
Great! And after six months of diligent work in Notion 3, I can do songs like these, which is a huge leap forward here in the sound isolation studio, really. . .
[
NOTE: Both of these are headphone mixes, which is the way I do mixing when I am working on a song. When everything is recorded, I switch to doing loudspeaker mixing, which curiously sounds better for headphones than doing headphone mixing . . . ]
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Im-Going-Goo-Goo-Over-Ga-Ga-11-28-2010-2-DP7.mp3[
NOTE: This is what I call the "basic rhythm section", and it is done entirely within Notion 3, where in contrast the first song is done in Digital Performer with the "basic rhythm section" coming from Notion 3 via ReWire, where it is recorded in Digital Performer as soundbites . . . ]
http://www.surfwhammys.com/Surrealeria-1-7-2011-ST25-XP2-N3.mp3Really! And if this annoys
Classical and
Flamenco music aficionados, then what could be more FUN, since my goal for this year is to sell one more copy of an album in Japan, which will double the worldwide sales of Surf Whammys albums, where my current thinking is that the combination of (a) lyrics about ladies underpants and (b)
DISCO,
Flamenco, and
Heavy Metal music is a winner, for sure . . .
For sure! And Notion 3 makes it both practical and FUN, which is fabulous . . .
Fabulous!