Naming Regions

[petemckavanagh]

Hi, can you explain how to name a region or set of bars and can you set up the playback to play these regions back in sequence ?

I am writing for pop group with strings so have a simple song structure with repeating elements: Intro, Verse, Pre chorus Chorus, Middle 8, Outro.

I want to be able to see these sets of bars easily on my score and get them to play in the right order rather than have to write out the whole song.

Many Thanks
Pete.

[Surfwhammy]

Hi, can you explain how to name a region or set of bars and can you set up the playback to play these regions back in sequence ?

I am writing for pop group with strings so have a simple song structure with repeating elements: Intro, Verse, Pre chorus Chorus, Middle 8, Outro.

I want to be able to see these sets of bars easily on my score and get them to play in the right order rather than have to write out the whole song.

Many Thanks
Pete.

You can use repeats, but they are limited to two times, where the first time a set of measures is played it has one ending measure, but the second time the set of measures is played it can have a second ending measure, which one might suppose can be the same as the first ending measure but usually is different . . .

[NOTE: There is a special symbol that is used when you want a "repeat" to have a different first and second ending measure, and it looks like a capital "L" that is rotated 90 degrees clockwise, where you select the special symbol and then click in the last measure of the repeat, which then causes the necessary stuff to happen, and you then have a second ending measure, but it is limited to only one measure . . . ]

Repeats are done with the "double measures + dots" symbols, which are two vertical lines (one thin and one thick) with a pair of dots either after the two vertical lines (for the start of a repeat) or before the two vertical lines (for the end of a repeat). There is another symbol, which when used in the last measure will cause a second ending measure to be indicated . . .

However, there is another way to do this, as explained on page 11.17 of the NOTION 3 User Manual:

Navigation marks in your score are very useful to keep your score to a compact size for printouts and help reduce the time and effort to finish a score. During playback, NOTION3 reads and follows codas, segnos, and other navigation markings in your file. These marks cause playback to jump from one section of your score to another – the way you want – using standardized symbols.

As best as I can determine, navigation marks are not referred to colloquially as "repeats", but all these marks (repeats and navigation marks) are found on the navigation section of the palette, which is selected by clicking on the following image in the palette, where for reference the left symbol is a standard measure delimiter, but the right symbol is the ending measure delimiter for a "repeat", which is the double vertical lines with dots symbol:



And while this is spanky for printed music that is performed by a real musicians and singers, if you are doing some of the instrumentation with virtual instruments and plan to record the performance with a digital audio workstation (DAW) application like Digital Performer (MOTU) or Logic Studio (Apple), it is not such a bright idea to use repeats and navigation marks . . .

[NOTE: I have not experimented with using the NOTION 3 navigation marks and a DAW application in a ReWire scenario, but when combined with using "repeats", there probably are some useful DISCO-Pop song structures that can be done this way, except that as explained in the following paragraphs, this is not something I recommend when the overall "system" or "formula" includes NOTION 3, virtual instruments, a DAW application, ReWire and Reason (Propellerhead Software), real instruments, and real singing, where the key is simplicity, which includes avoiding as much "fancy" stuff as possible, especially when you need to do everything in layers, where you construct and record a song one layer at a time, since by the time you have 100 to 200 "heavy" virtual instruments, you are working with a set of 5 to 10 synchronized NOTION 3 scores or project files, and dealing with "repeats" and navigation marks for this reason alone adds entirely too much complexity when you need to make revisions and so forth to the overall structure of the song, which becomes all the more complex if you need to revise the structure after you have recorded real instruments and real singing in the DAW application. You can make revisions to the structure of a song later in the overall process, but it is considerably easier if you avoid using "repeats" and navigation marks, where they key strategy is to synchronize the measures of the DAW application to the NOTION 3 scores, which basically maps to doing the "click" and "reference tuning" tracks in NOTION 3 via music notation and virtual instruments, which you then record as soundbites via ReWire in the DAW application, so that the real instruments and real singing is done to a NOTION 3 generated "click" track, and everything is tuned to the reference pitches of the NOTION 3 scores, which incidentally should be set to 440-Hz ("Concert A") to avoid confusion, since as I recall it probably is not set by default to 440-Hz but instead uses 442-Hz, although perhaps not, but regardless you need to check it and to ensure that it is set to 440-Hz to be consistent with standard "Concert A" for DISCO and Pop songs, which continues to be the standard reference tuning pitch for most popular music at the dawn of the early-21st century . . . ]

The reason is that you will use ReWire to record the NOTION 3 generated audio in the DAW application as soundbites, and while this is easy to do if you follow a few simple rules--which I have verified on the Mac with Digital Performer as the DAW, but at least in theory should work in Windows computers with one of DAW applications that works in WIndows--there are some curious behaviors that tend strongly to suggest that keeping everything as simple as possible is the best strategy, since among other things for ReWire transport control to work correctly in the host controller, which in this ReWire scenario will be the DAW application, the host controller needs to know about any repeats and navigation marks, which I am guessing will not be the case, because there are no repeats and navigation marks in the measures as the DAW application sees everything, since separately from whatever is in the NOTION 3 scores, the DAW application has its own set of measures, and you need to ensure that there is a precise one-to-one mapping of (a) NOTION 3 measures to (b) DAW application measures, where the simplest and perhaps only way to do this is to avoid using any "repeats" and navigation marks in the NOTION 3 score . . .

If you are doing everything within NOTION 3 and are not planning to do ReWire to a DAW application, then it might work nicely to use the NOTION 3 "repeats" and navigation marks, but if you are going to use a DAW application as the primary recording application where some of the instrumental parts are generated via music notation and virtual instruments in NOTION 3 and the recorded as soundbites in the DAW application via ReWire, then the best strategy is to avoid using "repeats" and navigation marks in the music notation . . .

For reference, a three minute to five minute DISCO or Pop song might map to 100 or perhaps 200 bars or measures, even at a very fast tempo (182 to 220 beats per minute), which is not going to map to a lot of printed sheets of music no matter how you do it . . .

For example, this is one of the DISCO and Pop songs that my pretend musical group (The Surf Whammys) is doing for the upcoming "Electric Underpants™" album, which is fabulous . . .



[NOTE: All the instruments are done with music notation and IK Multimedia virtual instruments in NOTION 3 and recorded as soundbites in Digital Performer 7.24 via ReWire on a 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.6.7. This is a headphone mix, so it sounds better when you listen with headphones. I am working on a new studio monitoring system using loudspeakers, but it is not finished, and the fact of the matter is that headphone mixing does not work, but so what . . . ]

"Feel Me" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3 (8MB, 300-kbps [VBR], approximately 3 minutes and 38 seconds)

Fabulous!

P. S. There is a topic in this FORUM that has a virtual festival of very detailed information about using NOTION 3 on the Mac for DISCO and Pop songs, some of which is not documented anywhere else on this planet, and I have another fabulous topic on studio monitoring systems in the IK Multimedia FORUM, which has some excellent information for folks who are focused on arranging, composing, producing, mixing and mastering and includes a detailed explanation of the most egregious bit of sneaky weaseling by loudspeaker and studio monitor manufacturers since the dawn of the universe, which I discovered mostly by intuition and pondering everything from the perspective of basic acoustiv physics but did not become abundantly clear until someone casually mentioned the "missing fundamental" auditory illusion in part of the discussion, which then led to my discovering the surprising research done in 2004-2005 by psychoacoustic researchers at Heidelberg University, who discovered that there appear to be two types of listeners on this planet, (a) fundamental tone hearers and (b) overtone hearers, where the fundamental tone hearers are not tricked by the "missing fundamental" auditory illusion, and the egregious sneaky weaseling involves the fact that all commercial off the shelf (COTS) studio monitoring systems are incapable of reproducing at equal loudness the lowest notes of an electric bass or string bass and, even when enhanced with deep bass subwoofers, have problems, which considering that adding the optional deep bass subwoofers (which requires two units rather than one, which is yet another bit of sneaky weaseling, since with only one unit the deep bass is monaural) tends to increase the price by double or triple, where for example the complete full-range top of the line JBL studio monitoring system costs approximately $7,000 (US) when the two deep bass subwoofers are included but is quite likely to work no better than the $600 solution I devised using a pair of Kustom KPC15P 15" Powered PA Speakers and a Behringer DEQ2496 Ultra-Curve Pro Mastering Processor, where the key aspect of the strategy for a small studio is that the PA speakers are so powerful that you can boost the deep bass but continue to run everything at a relatively low volume, which does not damage the PA speakers, since they have 15" woofers and can handle the boosted deep bass at low volume, which nevertheless maps to being able to achieve the desired 80db to 85db SPL in a small studio for final mixing and mastering, although in a small studio a SPL in the range of 75db to 80dB is more comfortable, as is working with headphones most of the time . . .

[NOTE: All this stuff is vastly complex, and it also is extraordinarily interdependent, so the key is to realize that you need to learn a lot of new stuff if you expect to be able to do arranging, composing, playing, singing, producing, mixing, and mastering yourself. In some respects it is mind-boggling, but if you work on it diligently every day, then after a while more of makes sense, and then there you are, ready, willing, and able to write a virtual festival of silly DISCO and Pop songs about ladies underpants . . . ]

Notion 3, DISCO Songs, and Sparkles (Notion Music FORUM)

The Fabulous Affordable Studio Monitor Project (IK Multimedia FORUM)

One of the most amazing recent discoveries here in the sound isolation studio is something that I call "sparkling", which is a technique that puts the notes of a single instrument into motion across the "rainbow panning arc", which is what I call the set of panning locations that range from far-left to top-center to far-right, which is demonstrated in the following song ("Sparkles") and is mixed explicitly for listening with headphones . . .



[NOTE: This has three IK Multimedia virtual instruments (a Psaltery Harp and two Moog bass synthesizers), and it is done with music notation in NOTION 3, of course. The Psaltery Harp is "sparkled", which is done by spreading the notes over 8 staves, where each staff is panned to a very precise location. The location of each note is determined by the staff on which it appears, and once you do a bit of "sparkling", it does not take so long to do, although the first few times it can take quite a few hours of copying, pasting, and replacing notes with equal-valued rests. It works wonderfully, and it is remarkably precise, so it make no difference to me how long it takes, since being able to do it with stellar precision is the important aspect here in the sound isolation studio . . . ]

"Sparkles" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3 (4.2MB, 298-kbps [VBR], approximately 1 minute and 55 seconds)

And this is another DISCO and Pop song that has a lot of "sparkled" instruments, which his fabulous . . .


"The Absinthe Drinker" (Viktor Oliva, 1901, Cafe Slavia, Prague)

[NOTE: This also is a headphone mix, and it is easier to perceive the "sparkles" when you listen with studio quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506 (a personal favorite). All the instruments are done with music notation and IK Multimedia virtual instruments in NOTION 3, where the generated audio is recorded as soundbites via ReWire in Digital Performer 7.24 . . . ]

"(Baby You Were) Only Dreaming" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3 (9.2MB, 276-kbps [VBR], approximately 4 minutes and 26 seconds)

Fabulous!

[petemckavanagh]

Thanks for the info , very useful.

[barnettart]

Hi surf whammy,
I just ordered Notion 3 after months of barking up the wrong trees looking for a way to effectively write notation for rock music, with special regard to how notated electric guitar solos sound, from bends to pull offs, slides (can I do that anywhere?) etc. I listened to a couple of your songs, which I like a lot, but noticed no soloing, so I am not sure if I am asking this question in the right part of the forum—a common newbie problem. Your description of how you finalised the cuts you shared is a bit confusing to me where you say

All the instruments are done with music notation and IK Multimedia virtual instruments in NOTION 3, where the generated audio is recorded as soundbites via ReWire in Digital Performer 7.24 . . . ]

.

Why is it necessary to use rewire (an expense I had not anticipated as I presume it is a function of Reason, which costs $500 (I should mention I am rather broke and have to watch expenses as if they are nuclear disasters) and to treat the songs as “sound bites”—a joke or does it mean something else?

Sorry about ignorance level. It’ll take a while before I have a clue what I am doing, but will try not to ask this level of question too often, of your or anyone else!!

Thanks for the great info you have provided that I could understand.

[Surfwhammy]

Hi surf whammy,
I just ordered Notion 3 after months of barking up the wrong trees looking for a way to effectively write notation for rock music, with special regard to how notated electric guitar solos sound, from bends to pull offs, slides (can I do that anywhere?) etc.

NOTION 3 is excellent, and for reference I do everything on a 2.1-GHz 8-core Mac Pro, so the specific information I provide applies primarily to the Mac. It probably works just as well in the Windows universe, but at present I have no way to verify it directly, so I write about what I can verify directly . . .

[NOTE: IK Multimedia has a free and unrestricted version of SampleTank that includes a good bit of sound samples, as is the case with XLN Instruments for their Addictive Drums virtual instrument, and both of these VSTi virtual instruments work very nicely with NOTION 3 . . . ]

SampleTank FREE (IK Multimedia)

Addictive Drum DEMO (XLN Audio)

One of the nice things about NOTION 3 is that the guitar articulations are very thorough and they work very nicely. And there is a specific "guitar tab" input method, as well . . .

My primary instruments are electric guitar and electric bass, and I do lead guitar solos with a real electric guitar, since it is vastly easier. However, I have been focusing on doing what I call "basic rhythm sections" in NOTION 3, so I have not done any lead guitar solos in quite a while, which is something I do every few years, because strange as it might be, one of the best ways to play lead guitar faster is to stop playing lead guitar for a while and to think about playing lead guitar faster, instead, since this is the best and perhaps only way to do the neural programming required to engage the Frontal Eye Fields (FEF) region of the brain productively . . .

[NOTE: Curiously, the FEF region of the brain literally and physically is located at the top of the brain, which colloquially maps nicely to the expression "I played it off the top of my head", because any time you play notes at the rate of 20 to 50 milliseconds per note, this is done primarily under the control and guidance of the FEF region of the brain, and it is too fast to do with any immediately conscious awareness of each individual note, so you have to do it "off the top of your head", and once you develop the basic set of arm, hand, and finger skills and dexterity, the only difficult aspect is discovering how to do it without actually thinking about in any immediately conscious way, which from one perspective maps to doing all the required foundational thinking over 6 to 18 months in "slow mode", where you ponder everything in what appears to be an immediately conscious way while simultaneously creating new primarily unconscious neural pathways in your mind, although there is a bit more to it than simply pondering and visualizing everything for a few months . . . ]

Frontal Eye Fields (wikipedia)

Nevertheless, I did some experiments with the guitar articulations (whammying, string bends, and so forth), and they work very nicely, so there are some electric guitar parts on the songs, but all of them are done with music notation, guitar tabs, and virtual guitars rather then with a real electric guitar played in real-time and recorded in Digital Performer 7.24 . . .

The reality here in the sound isolation studio is that I have a highly modified (a.k.a., "modded") Fender American Deluxe Stratocaster®, which at present has two separate and independent output channels that I feed to two separate sets of stereo effects pedals, including two DigiTech Whammy pedals and two wah-wah motion pedals, so doing everything I do with the real guitar and effects pedals would be very difficult to do with music notation and guitar tabs . . .

I also use AmpliTube 3 (IK Multimedia) but more after the fact than as a real-time processor

I listened to a couple of your songs, which I like a lot, but noticed no soloing, so I am not sure if I am asking this question in the right part of the forum—a common newbie problem. Your description of how you finalised the cuts you shared is a bit confusing to me where you say

All the instruments are done with music notation and IK Multimedia virtual instruments in NOTION 3, where the generated audio is recorded as soundbites via ReWire in Digital Performer 7.24 . . . ]

.

Why is it necessary to use rewire (an expense I had not anticipated as I presume it is a function of Reason, which costs $500 (I should mention I am rather broke and have to watch expenses as if they are nuclear disasters) and to treat the songs as “sound bites”—a joke or does it mean something else?

Glad you like the songs!

Using ReWire does not require Reason, although I have Reason 5 and had a bit of FUN with it when I was trying to make sense of getting Dubstep sounds, but after doing a bit of reading and experimenting I discovered that I can get Dubstep sounds with SampleTank (IK Multimedia), and the advantage is that SampleTank is a VSTi virtual instrument, while Reason 5 and the new version are not VSTi virtual instruments, hence do not work directly with NOTION 3 . . .

There is a way to export the MIDI for an instrument and then import the exported MIDI to Reason 5, where the notes then can play a Reason 5 synthesizer, which is nice to know, and the Reason 5 generated audio can be recorded in Digital Performer 7.24 as a soundbite via ReWire, so I can use Reason 5 with NOTION 3 and Digital Performer 7.24 if there is a particular sound that only Reason 5 or the newer version can produce . . .

[NOTE: For reference, ReWire is a technology that Propellerhead Software licenses to the music application developers (at present to companies rather than to individual developers), and it is included in NOTION 3 and many or perhaps all DAW applications. Application specific support of ReWire varies, but on the Mac it works nicely with Digital Performer 7.24 and NOTION 3, which I have verified to my general satisfaction. There are a few eccentric behaviors, bit I have workarounds for all of them, where one "eccentric behavior" is that I have to put four (4) empty measures at the start of a NOTION 3 score, since for some at present unknown reason Digital Performer 7.24 crashes if I rewind the transport to the beginning of any measure earlier than the first beat of the fifth measure. Whether this is a NOTION 3, Digital Performer 7.24, or fundamental ReWire problem is another matter, but Digital Performer 7.24 crashes, which on the Mac should never happen, so my hypothesis is that it is a bug or "eccentric behavior" in Digital Performer 7.24. The solution is trivial, although it took me a while to discover it, so everything is fine with me, since having four (4) empty bars or measures at the start of a NOTION 3 score is not a big deal here in the sound isolation studio . . . ]

The key bits of information for making sense of the "big picture" are as follows:

(1) NOTION 3 primarily is used to input music notation which controls VSTi virtual instruments and causes the VSTi virtual instruments to produce audio . . .

(2) NOTION 3 has a Mixer, but it does not record vocals and real instruments, although it will capture MIDI commands from a synthesizer and then convert them to music notation . . .

(3) Recording real instruments and vocals is done with a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application like Digital Performer (MOTU), Logic Studio (Apple), and so forth . . .

(4) When you are mixing (a) music notation and virtual instruments with (b) real instruments and singing, this requires both NOTION 3 and a DAW application . . .

(5) In Digital Performer, when you record a real instrument or a vocal track, the recorded audio is called "soundbite", which is where the term originates as I use it . . .

(6) Using ReWire, which is an application-to-application real-time communication protocol and is developed and supported by Propellerhead Software (the same folks who do Reason and so forth) is an industry standard way for a DAW application (which for me is Digital Performer 7.24) to act as the "host controller" for NOTION 3, which in this scenario is the ReWire "slave", and what happens is that NOTION 3 generates audio and sends it to Digital Performer 7.24, where the NOTION 3 generated audio is recorded in Digital Performer 7.24 as one or more soundbites, depending on how many instruments and ReWire channels you are using at the time . . .

(7) Everything is a bit different with recording live performances, but the basic rule for standard studio recording is that you begin with (a) a "click" track which establishes the basic tempo and can be as simple as a kick drum playing on each beat and (b) a "reference tuning" track which is used to tune real instruments, and in the strategy I use here in the sound isolation studio, I begin with a "click" track and "reference tuning" track done with music notation and virtual instruments in NOTION 3, which I then record via ReWire in Digital Performer 7.24 as soundbites. This establishes NOTION 3 as the foundation or "anchor" for a song, and by playing real instruments to the NOTION 3 generated "click" track and tuning the real instruments to the NOTION 3 generated "reference tuning" track it then becomes possible to switch back-and-forth from working with real instruments and singing to working with music notation and virtual instruments, since everything is synchronized to the NOTION 3 "basic rhythm section" score. On the Mac, there are some special rules that need to be followed to do ReWire, as well as to have hundreds of virtual instruments, but they are easy rules to follow, and the result is that you can do highly elaborate instrumentation and orchestration with music notation and virtual instruments in NOTION 3 and also record real instruments and singing in Digital Performer 7.24, where ultimately all the audio becomes soundbites in Digital Performer 7.24, which is the DAW application that is used for mixing and mastering, as well . . .

I have a very detailed and ongoing topic on the specifics in this FORUM, and everything is working very nicely . . .

Notion 3, DISCO Songs, and Sparkles (Notion Music FORUM)

As a bit of background, in early-2010 I decided to do a Flamenco song in the Buleria style but realized very quickly that the drumkit rhythms were too complex for me to do on the Really Bigger Drumkit here in the sound isolation studio, so I started exploring the possibility of being able to do drumkit parts with virtual drums, which pretty much was all I knew at the time, but after doing a bit of research I discovered Miroslav Philharmonik (IK Multimedia), which I purchased without actually knowing what it did or how it worked. Then I got an email from IK Multimedia telling me about NOTION SLE for Miroslav Philharmonik, which looked interesting and made it possible to "play" instruments via music notation . . .

I knew a bit about music notation from singing in a liturgical boys choir, but only the treble clef (soprano), and I never learned how to do percussion via music notation, but so what . . .

So what!

NOTION SLE for Miroslav Philharmonik was so easy to use that I upgraded to NOTION 3 about a week later, and then I embarked on a vast project to make sense of all this stuff, which took about 1,000 to 1,500 hours and a lot of experimenting with the computer and everything, since in some respects there is so much information that it is a bit mind-boggling, but if you work at it, sooner or later it makes sense and becomes very easy to do . . .

The high level summary is that once you understand how everything works (NOTION 3, Digital Performer or whatever DAW application you decide to use, VSTi virtual instruments, VST effects plug-ins, and VST mixing and mastering plug-ins), then for example it not only is possible but also is practical to do any song from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (Beatles) and "The Dark Side Of The Moon" (Pink Floyd) in a sound isolation studio . . .

It might require 500 to 1,000 hours, but when you put the time into perspective it takes about the same amount of time, except that one person is doing everything, so in wall-clock time it appears to take longer . . .

In other words, if an orchestra with 100 players works for 1 hour on a song, then this maps to 100 "individual musician hours", so when one person "plays" all the instruments via music notation and virtual instruments, it takes 100 hours, where the advantages are (a) that it can sound remarkably like a real orchestra and (b) that instead of costing perhaps $50,000 for a real orchestra, all it costs is your time and whatever the software and computer cost, and once you discover how everything works, most people cannot tell the difference, because the virtual instruments are sample libraries created from professionally recorded musicians playing the real instruments . . .

As explained in the "Notion 3, DISCO Songs, and Sparkles" topic in this FORUM, while the general rule on the Mac is that a NOTION 3 score can have perhaps 25 "heavy" virtual instruments, there is a way to have multiple NOTION 3 scores that are synchronized, which then makes it possible to have 500 to 1,000 "heavy" virtual instruments for a song, but instead of doing it all in a single NOTION 3 score, you spread it over perhaps 20 to 50 synchronized NOTION 3 scores . . .

And while Digital Performer 7.24 cannot handle 500 to 1,000 tracks simultaneously, you can do a "layering" technique where you combine already recorded tracks in the style developed in the 1950s and 1960s by Les Paul, Phil Spector, George Martin, et al. in the analog magnetic tape universe, which in the later years included digital magnetic tape . . .

There is a lot of stuff to learn, and it can be a bit frustrating at times, but if you keep at it, sooner or later it begins to make sense, and the songs start sounding better . . .

When I revisit songs that I did five years ago and compare them to the song I am doing now, it is a night and day difference, but while I have been able to get everything sounding reasonably good with you listen with studio quality headphones, this is not the case when the songs are played through loudspeakers, but I am confident that I have discovered the cause of the loudspeaker playback problem, which I am addressing in a topic in the IK Multimedia FORUM, where the solution is to use a pair of inexpensive powered PA loudspeaker units and a Behringer equalizer and calibration processor to create an inexpensive studio monitoring system that has a flat response across the full range of normal human hearing (20-Hz to 20,000-Hz) at a sound pressure level (SPL) of 80dB to 85dB, since yet another fact is that mixing and mastering need to be done using loudspeakers rather than headphones . . .

The Fabulous Affordable Studio Monitor System Project (IK Multimedia FORUM)

Lots of FUN!

P. S. I am making a bit of progress on The Fabulous Affordable Studio Monitor System Project, and I revisited "Feel Me" (The Surf Whammys) after doing the initial setup of the new loudspeaker units. I have not done the equalization and calibration step, but I think that everything sounds better now that I can hear everything at least reasonably accurately, which is fabulous . . .



"Feel Me" (The Surf Whammys) -- December 16, 2011 -- MP3 (8MB, 303-kbps [VBR], approximately 3 minutes and 38 seconds)

Fabulous!

[barnettart]

surf whammy,

Yeah, that is a LOT to take in, but I will take my time and maybe some courses...I will be using Logic Express as my DAW only because it’s all I can use, except maybe ProTools 8 LE M-Audio version. Sounds like I need a glossary. I do own own stomp box that you can dial in a ton of efx, but they are mostly crap and I play even worse, hence the desire to work in Notion 3...which still hasn’t arrived...hmmm, time to check my backlogged email/

Thanks again for giving a leg up to a newbie of sorts. I did all this stuff in the 80s in hardware, but the world has changed mightily again.

And I guess you helped prove Jimi was wrong about never hearing surf music again!

[Surfwhammy]

surf whammy,

Yeah, that is a LOT to take in, but I will take my time and maybe some courses...I will be using Logic Express as my DAW only because it’s all I can use, except maybe ProTools 8 LE M-Audio version. Sounds like I need a glossary.

There is a lot of stuff to learn, and it takes a while, but it is worth learning, because it works . . .

Thanks again for giving a leg up to a newbie of sorts. I did all this stuff in the 80s in hardware, but the world has changed mightily again.

Glad to help!

I did the same thing regarding hardware in the 1980s, but everything is different in the digtal universe, where one big difference is that "layering" with analog magnetic tape was limited by generational frequency response, which does not happen in the digital universe . . .

However, in the digital universe there is a different problem, which specifically is that all the background hiss and noise accumulates with "layering", so it very important (a) to get strong recording signals and (b) to use noise gates for anything that has gaps where nothing is happening (including vocals between verses and during lead guitar solos), which can be (a) hardware noise gates or after the fact can be (b) VST effects plug-ins, where it tends to be easier to use VST effects plug-ins and nearly always costs less. Using "brickwall" frequency filters is another excellent strategy for eliminating or reducing background hiss and noise, and there are VST effects plug-ins for doing this, with TrackPlug 5 (Wave Arts) being a personal favorite . . .

[NOTE: Regarding the learning time for all this stuff, it took me about two months to make sense of TrackPlug 5, since (a) there are a lot of controls and (b) it does stuff that typically was done by several signal processors in the hardware universe. I already knew about most of the stuff, but the concept of a "brickwall" equalizer was new, although I should have known about it. It is called a "brickwall" equalizer, because it acts like a brick wall in terms of blocking all frequencies below or above the two cutoff points. So, for example, if there is a bit of deep bass rumbling around a kick drum, you can set the low-frequency cutoff somewhere in the range of 20-Hz to 35-Hz, and the rumbling is removed automatically. Similarly, if there is a lot of high-frequency hiss, you can remove it by setting the high-frequency cutoff just below where the hiss is obvious, and the hiss is removed. There also are "brickwall" limiters, and T-RackS 3 Deluxe (IK Multimedia) has a very nice "brickwall" limiter. From a high level perspective, what you are doing is creating empty spaces where nothing is happening for a specific instrument or voice, where the goal is to make space available for other instruments and voices, which is a very nice way to get increased clarity in mixes. Curiously, if you watch Charlie Watts (drummer for The Rolling Stones), he discovered the physical version of the "brickwall" techniques decades ago, where most of the time he only plays one drum or cymbal at a time, which I thought was a bit strange until the concept of "brickwall" filtering and limiting made sense. In other words, when he is playing hi-hats and snare drum, he always plays only one or the other at any specific time, and this is especially the case when he plays snare drum rimshots. It looks a bit odd, and it was quite puzzling until I realized the logic for doing it, but it works very nicely for recording and pushing the snare drum rimshots to the front of the mix, and it was something he discovered after doing a lot of studio work, since he was not doing it in the early years . . . ]

"Around And Around" (The Rolling Stones) -- 1964 -- YouTube music video

[NOTE: The first time I noticed this was on the original video for "Miss You", and it is very easy to see Charlie Watts doing it in this live concert video of "Miss You" done in 2005, especially in the latter half of the song starting around 4:55 where the camera shows Charlie Watts and his complete drumkit for approximately 30 seconds. And it is not so easy to do, since you have to remember to play "air cymbal" each time you do a snare drum rimshot, which looks vastly awkward but really propels the snare drum rimshot to the front of the mix, which is something that all the musicians tend to do in The Rolling Stones, where in a sense the instrumental part of the songs are like a carefully choreographed series of individual bits played by one instrument at a time and is a stellar way to get superb instrumental clarity, because for all practical purposes everyone (musicians and singers) is doing a surreal type of a cappella one-note solos, although this is a non-standard use of "a cappella", but so what . . . ]

"Miss You" (The Rolling Stones) -- 2005 -- YouTube music video



TrackPlug 5 (Wave Arts)

Yet another very important difference that has happened over the past three or so decades is that loudspeaker and studio monitor manufacturers essentially stopped making full-range loudspeaker and studio monitoring systems, where the problem occurs with deep bass frequencies, and as best as I can determine the manufacturers did this to pinch pennies, because it costs more to design and build loudspeakers that reproduce deep bass in the range of 20-Hz to 100-Hz, and these types of deep bass subwoofers also are very heavy, since they require big magnets, strong metal frames, and so forth . . .

I have an ongoing topic about this in the IK Multimedia FORUM, and the summary version is that I use Kustom KPC15P 15" Powered PA Speakers and a Behringer DEQ2496 Ultra-Curve Pro Mastering Processor and ECM8000 Calibrating Microphone for my studio monitoring system, which in the US has a total cost of approximately $600 . . .

The Fabulous Affordable Studio Monitor Project (IK Multimedia FORUM)

The Kustom KPC15P 15" Powered PA Speakers are vastly overpowered, since they are designed for DJ and PA use, but I run them at a very low volume level, which then makes it possible to equalize and calibrate them for an equal loudness, full-range frequency response at a sound pressure level (SPL) of 80dB to 85dB, which I measure with a Nady SPL Meter . . .

The full range of normal human hearing is 20-Hz to 20,000-Hz, and you need to do mixing and mastering when listening to loudspeakers. Headphone mixing and mastering does not work, because each ear hears something separate and independent. In contrast, when you are doing mixing and mastering while listening to loudspeakers each ear hears some of both channels (left, right), and for some at present unknown reason loudspeaker mixes also sound better when you listen with headphones . . .

I use headphones when recording; when I am working with NOTION 3; and to do an initial mixing, but once everything is recorded and mixed initially I switch to doing loudspeaker mixing, where I revisit everything, since it nearly always is easier to hear instruments and singing correctly when listening to loudspeakers, at least for purposes of mixing and mastering . . .

And I guess you helped prove Jimi was wrong about never hearing surf music again!

When I first started transitioning to the digital universe approximately seven (7) years ago, I did a few Instrumental Surf songs, and these are two of them, both of which are done with real instruments, which is fabulous . . .

[NOTE: These are good for comparison purposes, since they were done with real instruments several years before I switched to doing most of the instruments with music notation and IK Multimedia virtual instruments in NOTION 3, so listen to these two songs and then listen to "Feel Me" (The Surf Whammys) in the previous post to get a sense of the difference in levels, clarity, specific placement across the Spherical Sonic Landscape™, and so forth, where for example something so simple as alternating the location of the snare drum rimshots from far-right to far-left would be difficult to do with a real drumkit but is easy to do with music notation and the NOTION 3 Mixer by having two staves for the snare drum rimshots, where one is panned far-left but the other is panned far-right, which is easier to hear if you listen with studio quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506 (a personal favorite) . . . ]

"Nuke Out" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3

"Big Red" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3

Fabulous!