My first tests of Notion 3

[Zblogny]

For a while, I was a bit concerned about being able to create Dubstep "noise bursts", but after messing with digital music technology for a week or so, I am confident that I can do it, as well as a lot of other stuff, with most of it ultimately being done via music notation in Notion 3, although some of it probably will require using real instruments or using Notion 3 to generate MIDI that I can import to Reason 5 to create recorded tracks in Reason 5 that I can get into Digital Performer 7 by controlling Reason 5 via ReWire, where the already recorded tracks in Reason 5 will be recorded as soundbites in Digital Performer 7, with all the computer-generated instruments and sounds ultimately deriving from music notation in Notion 3, which is fabulous . . .

As suggested by Achambily, maybe Reaper could reduce those intricate paths to a single round trip...
That's what I am trying to perform, with help from both sides of the force

[Surfwhammy]

Great !
And would you have an idea about performing the same with the native Reaper effects ?
(IK is a bit expansive !)

There probably are some nice effects that come with Reaper, and there are some nice effects that come with Digital Performer, but my experience has been that the effects that come with DAW applications are not very advanced, so the answer is "No" . . .

The various mastering components in T-RackS 3 Deluxe are excellent, and they are modeled using real physical devices, so although they are digital components they work like the real physical devices . . .

There probably are other products that do something similar, but they likely cost the same or more, and my experience is that when there are similar products they tend to cost more rather than less, since IK Multimedia is very good with respect to having high quality products at prices that are reasonable in a comparative way . . .

Basically, for individual instruments I use the Brick Wall Limiter, Opto-Compressor, and Pultec EQP-1A3 Program Equalizer plug-ins, and each one has a very specific purpose for which is works wonderfully . . .

One of my ongoing goals is to be able to create songs that have the same overall sonic qualities as hit songs done in major studios, which is a quite lofty goal, but I am making a bit of progress on it . . .

Having the T-RackS 3 Deluxe metering plug-in is a big help, since it provides a way for me to see what is happening in several different ways, which is important because especially for volume levels the rules are logarithmic, which makes it difficult to make fine adjustments . . .



In other words, for something to be perceived as being twice as loud, then actual volume level needs to increase 10 times, and what happens is that you hear something and decide it is too loud or not loud enough, so you try to adjust it by ear, which is logical except that the adjustments involve working with two very different scales, where one scale appears to be linear (your perception of loudness) but the other scale is logarithmic (the actual volume level), which is one of the reasons that mixing consoles have meters . . .

The "Perceived Loudness" meter is very helpful in this respect, and the green and red region is the suggested range for a particular genre, which in this instance is Rock . . .

The pair of "Peak" meters at the top-left are somewhat helpful, but the mastering software pretty much pegs everything at 0db, although in a way that allows dynamic range, so the "Peak" meters are not so useful in any practical way other than to verify visually that the Brick Wall Limiter is working correctly . . .

The "Phase" and "Correlation" meters are relevant to stereo imaging, and the general goal for a good stereo image is to have the "Correlation" meter with the indicator in the middle of the right half of the bar, while the "Phase" meter shows the phase relationship via dots that change in real-time, which also is very helpful once you discover how to interpret the information . . .

The real-time frequency spectrum at the right is helpful in revealing the distribution of sounds, and there are several ways to configure it, depending on what you want to examine . . .

There is more to mixing and mastering than a good metering system, but it is easier to do when you have good tools and understand how to use them, which is where T-RackS 3 Deluxe becomes very important, and while it is important to trust your ears, I think that it is equally important to verify everything with the various meters, since at least for me it is a bit difficult to determine some of the more subtle aspects of things, where for example lowering or raising the volume for a specific track by 1db or 2db might not make any immediately obvious difference in the sound but it can make a noticeable difference in the meters, so based on the "tiny adjustment" rule, I rely on the meters when a "tiny adjustment" appears to produce no immediately obvious change in what I am hearing, with the overall logic being that if I cannot tell the difference in a specific instrument when it is -5db versus -7db, then I leave it a -7db toward the goal of making more sonic space available for other instruments and vocals . . .

And there is at least one set of training videos for T-RackS 3 Deluxe available, and there also is an eBook that provides additional information on the various components . . .

The training video set is approximately $40 (US), while the eBook is approximately $20 (US) . . .

[NOTE: You can watch one of the video tutorials at this website, which is helpful in getting an overview of the way T-RackS 3 Deluxe works . . . ]

http://www.groove3.com/str/mastering-with-tracks.html


Mixing and Mastering with T-RackS ~ ISBN-13: 9781435457607

Another reality is that major recording studios have millions of dollars of equipment, custom software, and so forth and so on, with the consequence that they are able to do things easily which are very difficult to do with a professional small studio setup, but so what . . .

So what!

The various T-RackS 3 Deluxe components do what they claim to do, and they do it with excellent precision, which is very important . . .

Explained another way, it is like electric guitars . . .

One certainly can get an electric guitar for $150, and it will look like an electric guitar and in some respects it will play like an electric guitar, but when you are skilled at playing electric guitar you know without question that a $150 electric guitar is not the same as a Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul Standard, or something similar . . .

As a thought exercise, why are you using Notion 3 rather than MuseScore or some other music notation product?

From my perspective, the best strategy is to learn as much as possible about the various computer requirements, software, and so forth and so on, at which point you can develop a plan that maps to getting the best quality stuff possible within your budget . . .

People tend to waste a lot of money making small spur of the moment purchases, and what happens after a while is that they collect virtual festivals of toys that simply do not work very well . . .

The reality is that a professional small studio setup costs somewhere in the range of $10,000 to $15,000, excluding instruments and microphones, and this maps approximately to (a) $5,000 to $7,500 for the computer and external audio interface and (b) $5,000 to $7,500 for the various digital recording, music composition, and special effects software . . .

When you add instruments and microphones, the total cost easily triples, which is the way it works . . .

And while this type of system is just a drop in the bucket compared to a major recording studio, I think that it is sufficient for doing songs that at least are "ballpark" with respect to overall quality and so forth, and the primary evidence that this is a correct perspective is the fact that when you listen to hit songs produced by major studios on your computer, you are listening to them on your computer, which is a useful bit of information even though it is a bit subtle in some respects . . .

In other words, when you connect the dots it is not so difficult to realize that if your computer can play a hit song with high-fidelity, then at least in theory your computer should be sufficient to create a song with the same high-fidelity . . .

This does not map to anything being particularly easy to do, but I think that it clearly maps to it being possible . . .

And in some respects the thing that is making me a bit crazy at present is discovering how major studios produce hit songs that barely move the volume level indicators in a real-time frequency spectrum volume meter, yet are loud . . .

I have several hypotheses on how this might be accomplished, with one of them being that they somehow "slice" the audio in such a way that it there are tiny instances of complete silence between equally tiny instances of sound, such that for all practical purposes what you perceive as being continuous actually is played by the computer in tiny bursts of sound that are separated by equally tiny bursts of silence, with the overall effect that everything happens so quickly in an "in and out" way that the computer hardware and software simply is not sufficiently fast to realize that whether it is present or absent with respect to displaying it in real-time in any continuous way . . .

And it might be that the "slices" are done by an algorithm that essentially steps through different frequency bands, so that no specific frequency band is heard continuously, hence is not present for enough time actually to register on this type of meter . . .

For example, consider this snapshot of the Real-time Frequency/Volume Spectrum Meter in iTunes for "Hold It Against Me" (Britney Spears) . . .



This is a snapshot of an instant during the song, perhaps a few milliseconds or so, and the distribution and levels change during different sections of the song . . .

The important aspect is that the instruments and singing are loud but the instantaneous volume levels for the various frequency bands tend to be small and to fluctuate rapidly . . .

And this is something that a Brick Wall Limiter with advanced processing algorithms does, but there is more to it, really . . .

Really!

[Surfwhammy]

For a while, I was a bit concerned about being able to create Dubstep "noise bursts", but after messing with digital music technology for a week or so, I am confident that I can do it, as well as a lot of other stuff, with most of it ultimately being done via music notation in Notion 3, although some of it probably will require using real instruments or using Notion 3 to generate MIDI that I can import to Reason 5 to create recorded tracks in Reason 5 that I can get into Digital Performer 7 by controlling Reason 5 via ReWire, where the already recorded tracks in Reason 5 will be recorded as soundbites in Digital Performer 7, with all the computer-generated instruments and sounds ultimately deriving from music notation in Notion 3, which is fabulous . . .

As suggested by Achambily, maybe Reaper could reduce those intricate paths to a single round trip...
That's what I am trying to perform, with help from both sides of the force

As best as I can determine from reading the various topics in this FORUM, the current version of Reaper has significant problems working with Notion 3 via ReWire, which is not the case with Digital Performer 7, although there are a few special rules that need to be followed for Digital Performer 7 and Notion 3 to work correctly in a ReWire scenario . . .

In my testing, I was not able to get Notion 3 to control Reason 5 via MIDI, but I was able to get Digital Performer 7 to interact with Reason 5 via MIDI . . .

However, I did a few more experiments and was able to confirm that I can create a Piano instrument in Notion 3 and then write music notion for it, followed by exporting the Piano notes in MIDI format, which I then can import to Reason 5 for purposes of playing a Reason 5 instrument, which works nicely . . .

And I can get the Reason 5 instrument playing the MIDI notes exported from Notion 3 into Digital Performer 7 via ReWire, where I can record the Reason 5 generated audio as a soundbite in Digital Performer 7, which also works nicely . . .

The advantage of doing it this way is that everything is based on the music notation for the Piano, which is done in Notion 3, hence is synchronized to the other instruments in the song and can be modified in a straightforward way in Notion 3 . . .

Reason 5 does not work as a VSTi instrument, so it needs notes to play, which in this scenario come from Notion 3 via exported MIDI . . .

And these really are separate and distinct activities, where one activity is doing the overall composition in Notion 3, and the other activities are doing special sounds with Reason 5 using MIDI notes; creating custom VSTi presets, which I do with the various IK Multimedia VSTi standalone user interfaces with Digital Performer 7 acting as a real-time MIDI controller for purposes of inputting notes, so that I can hear something being played as I modify the various custom controls and parameters; using custom VSTi presets for Notion 3 instruments; and getting the Notion 3 and Reason 5 computer-generated audio into Digital Performer 7, where it is recorded as soundbites, although as separate activities since running both Notion 3 and Reason 5 simultaneously in a ReWire scenario with Digital Performer 7 does not work, which is fine with me . . .

It all keys on the music notation in Notion 3, but some of the work is done outside of Notion 3 via exported MIDI, which is fine with me, since even though the work in Reason 5 is done externally to Notion 3, it nevertheless is done with MIDI created from Notion 3 instruments . . .

The important thing is that I have discovered a way to base all the computer-generated instruments on music notation done in Notion 3, and it works . . .

And while it might not be so easy to explain or to understand, this is an excellent system, and it works reliably . . .

Some of the work must be done with each application (Digital Performer 7, Notion 3, IK Multimedia VSTi instruments, and Reason 5) operating in standalone mode with none of the other applications running, which in some respects is due to ReWire, but when the work truly is standalone, this is the most logical way to do it, as well as being the only way to do, really . . .

Really!

From the overall system perspective, these are the things I have tested and verified:

(1) I can have from 20 to 25 "heavy" VSTi instruments in a Notion 3 project (a.k.a., "score") but with no VST plug-ins . . .

(2) I can create a simple Piano instrument in Notion 3; write music notion for the Piano; and then export only the Piano notes as MIDI . . .

(3) I can import the MIDI file created in (2) into Reason 5, where I can use the imported MIDI notes to play a custom Reason 5 instrument . . .

(4) I can get the computer-generated audio from VSTi instruments in a Notion 3 project into Digital Performer 7 by having Digital Performer 7 control Notion 3 via ReWire, where I can record the audio as soundbites in Digital Performer 7 . . .

(5) I can get the computer-generated audio from Reason 5 into Digital Performer 7 by having Digital Performer 7 control Reason 5 via ReWire, where I can record the audio as soundbites in Digital Performer 7 . . .

These five activities ultimately have Notion 3 as the foundation, since all the notes played by the various VSTi and Reason 5 instruments come from the music notation done in Notion 3, which is very important with respect to being able to modify a song in an accurately synchronized and tuned way, with each step being repeatable with the same results each time . . .

Another aspect of this system is the reality that what I suppose are classified as Pop songs these days have a lot of instruments and virtual festivals of computer-enhanced vocals, where additionally there are virtual festivals of what I call "sparkles", and on the computer-generated instrument side of things this maps to needing to have perhaps as many as 1,000 "heavy" VSTi instruments done with music notation in Notion 3 . . .

And the reason is that the Notion 3 panning control for each track has a range of -1L to +1R in one-tenth increments, which maps to 10 increments on the left, 10 increments on the right, and two increments at zero (0.0L and 0.0R) for a total of 22 panning positions . . .

So, if the notes for an instrument being "sparkled" are spread over 22 panning positions, this requires 22 separate instruments (1 original and 21 clones) . . .

And if one has 50 such "sparkled" instruments, this maps to 1,100 instruments, which is a bit mind-boggling . . .

Mind-boggling!

In practice, I think that 50 to 100 "sparkles" with from 4 to 8 distinct panning positions is a more reasonable estimate, and this the overall number of instruments devoted to "sparkles" in the range of 200 to 800 instruments . . .

And I think it is reasonable to expect to have 100 "non-sparkled" instruments, as well as some number of Reason 5 instruments . . .

Another fact of the matter is that there is no way to have 1,000 "heavy" VSTi instruments in a single Notion 3 project, so the practical strategy is to do the work in subsets of 20 to 25 instruments, where at least a few of the instruments are common to every subset and are there for reference purposes so that it is easy to determine where a verse begins and ends, and so forth and so on . . .

The various subset Notion 3 projects actually are created by cloning the original Notion 3 project via "Save As", where they are kept in a common folder and are given meaningful names, which is a do-it-yourself simple database strategy, where the same folder or a subfolder within that folder is used to store the various Reason 5 project files, as is the case with the Digital Performer 7 project and its related folders and files . . .

Having the infrastructure is important, because for example after working on a song for a while, one might decide that it needs an bridge, interlude, additional verse, or whatever . . .

Whatever!

And when this happens, it is considerably easier to add the new measures than it is to start all over from nothing . . .

The worst case scenario is that one needs to do essentially the same set of edits to 50 Notion 3 subset projects, some number of Reason 5 projects, and then to get everything into Digital Performer 7, where yet another reality is that there is no way to have 1,000 stereo tracks in a Digital Performer 7 project, with the practical solution being to use "bounce to disk" repeatedly to combine subsets of Notion 3 and Reason 5 instrument tracks into soundbites, where some of this most likely maps to combining several soundbites into a single soundbite . . .

In some respects, intuitively this appears to be a bit absurd, but if you listen very carefully with studio-quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506 (a personal favorite) to (a) "Bad Romance" (Lady Gaga), (b) the European single for "Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus), and (c) "Hold It Against Me" (Britney Spears), it is not difficult to observe that there are a lot of instruments and a lot of "sparkles" (both for instruments and vocals), hence from this perspective it is not the least bit absurd to expect to have from 500 to 1,000 stereo tracks, where the bulk of the stereo tracks come from computer-generated instruments and vocals, many of which are "sparkled", for sure . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVbQxC2c3-8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJSm_QMO6zA

For sure!

There is so much elaborate minutiae in these songs that it is a bit mind-boggling, and it takes a while to be able to hear everything in an immediately conscious way . . .

For example, I did not notice the Pink Floyd style female background singing in "Who Owns My Heart" until I had listened to the song perhaps 50 times, and there is a lot more stuff there, where I think it is reasonable to suggest that each of these three songs has at least 50 separate and distinct vocal tracks doing a virtual festival of things, some of which are so simple as being (a) overdubbed specifically emphasized consonants at the starts and ends of words and (b) highly elaborate custom-created "sparkled" echoes, where "Bad Romance" is the most elaborate of these three songs overall, although the vocal production for "Hold It Against Me" in some respects is the most spectacular melodically in the sense of specifically spotlighting Britney's singing, and the vocal production for "Who Owns My Heart" is the most mesmerizing and surreal, except that it is difficult to beat "Bad Romance" as a Gestalt, which are a few of the reasons that I like these three songs . . .

SUMMARY

Based on my experiments, I think that it is practical to do very elaborate "basic rhythm sections" and "sparkles" using this system, which is based on using Notion 3 as the foundation from which everything follows . . .

There is more to the system, where for example (a) a lot of the vocal production work is done with the Melodyne Editor (Celemony) and (b) there are real instruments and vocals, all of which are enhanced with various VST plug-in components in Digital Performer, with additional work being done in Reason 5 . . .

And while it takes hundreds of hours to do a song this way, the facts of the matter are (a) that it takes hundreds of hours no matter how one does it and (b) that this computer-based system works very nicely on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro her in the sound isolation studio, which is fabulous . . .

Fabulous!

[bitfeld]

For the sake of comparison of various symphonic libraries , here's a rendition of this lovely piece by Vienna Symphonic Library Speial Edition (VSL SE) with the Vienna Instruments Pro player (VI PRO). All done in Notion3, the resulting audio was just slightly compressed and EQ'ed (to cut low- and high-end frequencies) in Logic Express.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1037795/La%20nuit%20Leila.mp3

The cello starts somewhat agressively, I have no idea why that is. Oh yeah: I have replaced the horn with Vienna's flugelhorn.

[Zblogny]

For the sake of comparison of various symphonic libraries , here's a rendition of this lovely piece by Vienna Symphonic Library Speial Edition (VSL SE) with the Vienna Instruments Pro player (VI PRO). All done in Notion3, the resulting audio was just slightly compressed and EQ'ed (to cut low- and high-end frequencies) in Logic Express.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1037795/La%20nuit%20Leila.mp3

Thanks Bitfeld,
I added this version to all others in the Reaper project that I created to compare more easily.

The cello starts somewhat agressively, I have no idea why that is.

Yes, it jumped out at me on first listen ...
Looks like you used an expander, not a compressor...

Oh yeah: I have replaced the horn with Vienna's flugelhorn.

I still prefer the horn, but eventually, why not ?