barnettart wrote: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 . . .
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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 . . .
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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
barnettart wrote: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 . . . ]
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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 . . .
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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! 