NOTION Music Forum

I watched the video tutorial showing how to set up Rewire with Notion. It's intriguing, but so far I'm scratching my head because I can't figure out why anyone would want to go to this effort. I can get a lot of VST plugins right in the Notion mixer, I can do bus sends and returns, I can pan, what's the point?

Am I missing something here? Can anyone shed light on some practical application for doing this?

I often wonder the same thing

One thing Josh doesn't quite get to in the tutorial is that you can send each instrument back to it's own track in the sequencer, so you can fine tune the mix, etc.

wcreed51 wrote:I often wonder the same thing

One thing Josh doesn't quite get to in the tutorial is that you can send each instrument back to it's own track in the sequencer, so you can fine tune the mix, etc.

I don't know Bill, maybe it's like discerning different vintages of the same varietal. My ability to fine tune a mix isn't that well developed. I feel so inadequate!!!

idiotSavant wrote:I watched the video tutorial showing how to set up Rewire with Notion.

Can anyone shed light on some practical application for doing this?

There are several reasons for doing ReWire 2 with NOTION 4 . . .

There are two general scenarios for doing ReWire 2 with NOTION 4:

(1) NOTION 4 is the ReWIre 2 host controller . . .

(2) NOTION 4 is a ReWire 2 slave . . .

There are several things that NOTION 4 does not do, which is helpful to know when making sense of the ReWIre 2 scenarios:

[NOTE: My personal view is that NOTION does not need to do these things, since they routinely and by design are done via Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) applications and in some instances in cooperation with a video editor like Final Cut Studio X (Apple). NOTION does what it needs to do, and I like the idea of NOTION being intimately focused, where keeping NOTION intimately focused on its unique and necessary functionality avoids the virtually inevitable perils of what in the software industry is called "scope creep", which happens when a product wanders into trying to do things with the patently absurd goal of becoming a universal "do everything" application, which among other things Alonzo Church and Alan Turing in the mid-20th century proved definitively is impossible to do, hence is not just a bad idea but an extraordinarily stupid product managing and designing strategy. ]

Alonzo Church (wikipedia)

Alan Turing (wikipedia)

The Halting Problem (wikipedia)

Church-Turing Thesis (Mathworld)

(1) NOTION 4 does not record real instruments . . .

(2) NOTION 4 does not record real singing . . .

(3) NOTION 4 does not provide automation . . .

(4) NOTION 4 does not provide the ability to do intimate editing with respect to sequencing soundbites along a timeline, which is one of the things that a professional level DAW application will provide, and his includes the ability to copy and to paste soundbites and so forth, where for reference "soundbite" is the terminology used by Digital Performer for the recorded file for NOTION 4 generated audio for an instrument when is is recorded in Digital Performer via ReWire 2 . . .

(5) NOTION 4 does not have a synchronized video window and associated functionality for doing film, video, and motion picture scoring . . .

For all practical purposes there are a few very important scenarios where it makes sense to use NOTION 4 either as a ReWire 2 host controller or as a ReWire 2 slave:

(1) NOTION 4 acts as the ReWire 2 host controller and controls one or more applications that produce or play music, which includes instruments and vocals, where an example is NOTION 4 controlling Reason 6.5 (Propellerhead Software) via one or more NOTION 4 External MIDI staves . . .

(2) NOTION 4 acts as a ReWIre 2 slave and is controlled by a ReWire 2 host controller, where this scenario works nicely when a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application like Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) is the ReWire 2 host controller, and for reference on the Mac this allows the first scenario, where as example Digital Performer 8 can be the ReWIre 2 host controller and there can be two ReWire 2 slave applications (NOTION 4 and Reason 6.5), where additionally NOTION 4 is controlling one or more Reason 6.5 instruments via music notation on External MIDI staves, which I demonstrate in the following video . . .

Digital Performer 8, NOTION 4, Reason 6.5, External MIDI, ReWire 2 on the Mac -- QuickTime Movie -- MOV (63.7MB, approximately 14 minutes and 45 seconds)

Another scenario involves using NOTION 4 in conjunction with a film, video, or motion picture editing program like Digital Performer 8 (MOTU), Final Cut Studio X (Apple), or Logic Pro 9 (Apple), perhaps in an elaborate interdependent combination, depending on what one specifically needs to do . . .

(3) When a song or other musical piece requires more instruments than NOTION 4 can handle, this requires having two ore more synchronized NOTION 4 scores, and this certainly was the case with NOTION 3 due to the limitations of the 32-bit application workspace. Depending on the types of virtual instruments one uses ([a] Notion 4 bundled and expansion instruments and [b] VSTi virtual instruments), as well as the computing resources required by specific VSTi virtual instruments, I expect this will be the case with NOTION 4, as well, but it depends on several factors, including the total number of instruments, where for example in the types of DISCO and Pop songs I am doing at present I use a technique on certain instruments that I call "sparkling", and "sparkling" requires eight (8) staves, where each staff is panned to a specific location in what I call the "rainbow panning arc", with the technique being to put individual notes on one of the eight staves depending on where I want the note to be heard from far-left to top-center to far-right, and when there are a lot of "sparkled" instruments the total number of staves and corresponding VSTi virtual instruments can be in he hundreds, which makes having several NOTION 4 scores an attractive way to manage everything, since in this particular scenario there might be from 500 to 1,000 VSTi virtual instruments, and the only practical way to manage everything is to have a set of NOTION 4 scores where each NOTION 4 score has from 25 to 50 VSTI instruments, which maps at the extreme to 40 NOTION 4 scores. And for reference, the strategy I use is to clone the first NOTION 4 score, at which point I save the cloned score with a numeric part suffix (for example, "Song-PT-2.notion", and I keep perhaps five of the instruments common to all the cloned scores, where the five common instruments might be Electric Bass, Piano (playing the simple melody), Electric Guitar (playing rhythm guitar chords), Kick Drum (for the tempo), and whatever else makes sense, with the goal being to have just enough information in the common instruments to know where I am in the song and what is happening, which by the time I have done the basic rhythm section and melody is all I need to keep track of everything when I am adding a new set of additional instruments, and I keep the original NOTION 4 score and all the clones in a folder, so that they are easy to find, where this is the way I construct a song in layers, adding instruments as I have new ideas for more elaborate orchestration and instrumentation, where each new set of instruments is recorded in Digital Performer 8 via ReWire 2 as soundbites, and because at some point there is a limit to the number of tracks that Digital Performer 8 can handle, I merge soundbites and replace the individual soundbites with a single merged soundbite, which makes more tracks available for use in Digital Performer 8, where for reference this essentially is the digital universe analog of the layering techniques used by Phil Spector in the late-1950s and early-1960s to create his signature "Wall of Sound" in the monaural universe, and it is the digital universe analog of the layering techniques that George Martin and the audio engineers at Abbey Road Studios used to record and to produce the Beatles, where they used a set of 4-track analog magnetic tape machines to record and to produce "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in a similar way for doing a bit of "sparkling" and soundbite merging, where the key to doing songs this way is to develop a system or formula for constructing elaborate instrumentation and orchestration in layers, one layer at a time, which requires a bit of advance planning, which once you do it a few times is not difficult to do, and since in the system I use everything begins with NOTION 4, it is possible to add verses, choruses, bridges, and interludes later in the process, which mostly is a matter of inserting more measures in the NOTION 4 scores and splitting the soundbites in Digital Performer 8 and then moving the split soundbites along the timeline based on "measure, beat, tick", so that there are correctly timed empty spaces where the newly added NOTION 4 measures will be inserted when they are recorded as soundbites via ReWire 2. And while this might appear to be vastly complex, it is not so complex once you do it a few times and get a good sense of how it works, and for reference you can split the soundbites for real instruments and singing in Digital Performer 8, and while you can add new sections to a song later in the process, it tends to be best to have the song structured and mapped from the beginning, so that you do not need to insert new verses and so forth, and the song does not need to be mapped fully, since the more you listen to the song, the more stuff you are likely to hear, which maps to new ideas for additional virtual instruments, real instruments, and real singing, where the following DISCO or Pop song is an example of a layered song which is construction using a set of NOTION scores (seven or so, as I recall), and it has "sparkled" instruments, which is easiest to hear if you listen to the song when wearing studio quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506 (a personal favorite), and there are real instruments and real singing, which is fabulous . . .

"Feel Me" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3 (7.9MB, 301-kbps [VBR], approximately 3 minutes and 17 seconds)

Fabulous!

idiotSavant wrote:I watched the video tutorial showing how to set up Rewire with Notion. It's intriguing, but so far I'm scratching my head because I can't figure out why anyone would want to go to this effort. I can get a lot of VST plugins right in the Notion mixer, I can do bus sends and returns, I can pan, what's the point?

Am I missing something here? Can anyone shed light on some practical application for doing this?

First off:

You only really have to do the setup that is described in the video one time. After you do it, save a Template, both in Notion and in your DAW.

Second:

Using Notion in the Rewire setup is a very powerful tool. One thing that was mentioned was the mixing functionality that DAW's provide is usually outstanding, including Automation, Plugins, and the like. Most DAW's also come with their own software instruments, and being able to combine the efforts of Notion's orchestral and rhythm libraries with those instruments pushes Music Production to a much higher level.

And last:

The beauty of using Rewire is truly found in the ability to Record Audio into the DAW to go along with your Notion Scores. You can sync Tempo and Record along with the playback of Notion, or write Notion parts to go along with your recordings. This is great fun for music production.

Summary:

The video was simply created to help users learn how to do the constantly frustrating setup that is Rewire. We have integrated the Rewire Output list to make this a little less complicated, but as you know, Rewire is a third party application that we have no control over. All of the major DAW's are similar in their Rewire setups to other slave applications, but vary with some of the naming conventions and routing options, so this video was a simple walk through of a basic Rewire setup.

You can mix, record and add tons of parts. Notion is compatible with 32 and 64 bit DAW's now and it is a very useful and powerful item.

So create your DAW and Notion templates and every time you want to use your DAW and Notion together, open the template and Save As...

Hope this helps,

-Admin

+1 to what the admin said.

Rewire isn't for everyone, but I use it frequently when composing music for video. I run Reaper as host, Notion as slave, load the video into Reaper and away I go.

Other than the audio recording and mixing features already mentioned, you can also route the MIDI back to the DAW via the MIDI A, B, C, D ports in Notion (and a virtual cable such as loopMIDI) to get more sophisticated MIDI effects and editing capabilities. For example, I can route MIDI from Notion to an instrument in Reaper and edit CC data in Reaper without having to record it in Notion. Basically, I can use Notion for notation editing and Reaper for MIDI data control.

Thanks for the thoughtful replies. I now can see some uses, especially for live recording. I will have to give it a try. I have in fact exported midi files from Notion to use in Ableton Live and was frustrated because I lost the dynamics information, so I can also see the logic of eliminating the export/import process and working directly with Notion as a slave hosted by a DAW.

I do worry about horsepower issues. My poor old 2007 Mac has trouble with 64 bit Notion and VSL on 16 staves. I'd hate to imagine it trying to run a DAW, 3 or 4 VST effects, VSL and Notion all at the same time. It would probably just croak.

I do have to say, though, as far as continuous controller information, I'd like to see Notion "grow up" a bit. Ability to draw curves for velocity and other controls and to select multiple notes for editing of note duration are very basic DAW stuff.

So this raises another question. Ableton isn't really my first choice as a MIDI editor, it's a terrific sample editor and playback tool. I used to use Metro but haven't in many years.

Any suggestions as far as an economical DAW to use with Notion on a Mac?

idiotSavant wrote:I do worry about horsepower issues. My poor old 2007 Mac has trouble with 64 bit Notion and VSL on 16 staves. I'd hate to imagine it trying to run a DAW, 3 or 4 VST effects, VSL and Notion all at the same time. It would probably just croak.

Any suggestions as far as an economical DAW to use with Notion on a Mac?

Logic Pro 9 (Apple) is $200 (US) at the Mac Store, and this is an attractive price for a full-featured professional quality DAW application designed specifically for the Mac, where in particular everything works, since I have Logic Pro 9 and have verified that everything works correctly in Mac OS X 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion) . . .

[NOTE: There are other DAW applications for the Mac, but everything does not work on all of them, and some of them either do not do 64-bit ReWIre 2 or do it in a very cumbersome and counterintuitive way, hence I only recommend Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) and Logic Pro 9 (Apple) at present, because I have verified that they do everything correctly on the Mac . . . ]

As you might have guessed, I do everything on the Mac, and at present I have a 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (early-2008) with 20GB of memory, which is fine for doing everything, although upgrading the video card will make it faster, as will getting a PCI Express SSD memory card . . .

QUESTION: Which model is your 2007 Mac, and how much memory do you have installed?

If your 2007 Mac has 2GB of memory, then you can improve the performance by upgrading the memory, where for example it appears that 6GB is the maximum for the mid-2007 iMac, and for reference Other World Computing has several memory upgrade paths for the mid-2007 iMac, with the most expensive being approximately $130 (US) . . .

[NOTE: I always check Other World Computing first when I am pondering upgrading hardware for the Mac, since there are differences in hardware for the Mac, and some of the hardware that is fine and works with no problems on a Windows computer will not work so well on a Mac. And I also check the LaCie website, since they focus on the Mac, and as an example their external hard drives are bootable on the Mac, which is important, and LaCie external drives have everything required to run correctly with a Mac, which again is not always the case with every external drive. There are PCI Express or whatever SSD cards for Windows machines, but they do not work on the Mac, hence the focus on the Other World Computing PCI Express SSD cards, which cost more but work on the Mac, and the same thing happens with video cards, where there are versions of ATI video cards that cost less than the ATI video card which is the upgrade for the early-2008 Mac Pro, but the other versions do not work with this Mac Pro, so you need to do a bit of research when getting hardware upgrades for the Mac to ensure that the hardware upgrades work correctly . . . ]

Memory Upgrades for mid-2007 iMac (Other World Computing)

You can run Activity Monitor to get a sense of where the more resources are being used, and if the dual cores are not maxed, then upgrading the memory will be very helpful . . .

The new iMacs are considerably faster, and Apple is rumored to be releasing a new Mac Pro this year, which might map to the previous Mac Pro (new but then the immediately previous model) being discounted at Amazon.com, which is the strategy that I use, since getting the previous model just before a new model is released tends to map to a significant discount (perhaps 5 to 8 percent), and for reference the current 27" iMac with the processor upgrade is faster than the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (early-2008) with 20GB of memory, so a new 2" iMac with the processor upgrade is something to ponder . . .

Another possibility is to get a used Mac Pro, where PowerMax in Oregon is a reliable source . . .

PowerMax

As an example, a basic used 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro like the one I use here in the sound isolation studio costs approximately $1,500 (US), and you can get an extended six months warranty for another $50 (US) . . .

It typically will have only the factory internal hard drive, which is 320GB, but you can get a very fast Seagate 2T hard drive from Other World Computing or Amazon.com for approximately $150 (US), and they are virtually trivial to install, and you can use SuperDuper! (Shirt Pocket) to clone the factory hard drive, which then makes the new Seagate 2TB drive the primary internal hard drive, and you can upgrade the memory using memory from Amazon.com, which currently is approximately $160 (US) for an 8GB matched pair (800-MHz memory), where the older memory actually costs more than newer and faster memory, but so what . . .

You will need a display, and PowerMax also sells used Apple displays, where by doing a bit of homework and understanding the various Mac Pro models and how to optimize them, you can get a very fast supercomputer for the same or lower price than a new 27" iMac that has the fastest processor upgrade, and the advantage of a Mac Pro is that it has four internal hard drive bays (very easy to add more internal hard drives), and it has PCI Express slots, so that you can upgrade the video card and add a PCI Express SSD card, where based on what Activity Monitor reports when I am doing various activities on the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (early-2008) with 20GB of memory here in the sound isolation studio, upgrading the video card will map to a significant perceived speed increase, since most of the time the 8-cores are utilized at from 20 to 50 percent, hence the 8-cores are not maxed, so you look at other resources to determine where you get the most performance improvement for the dollar, and a faster video card is one of them, where another is getting a PCI Express SSD card, although the PCI Express SSD card is a bit expensive, while the upgrade video card at PowerMax is approximately $235 (US) the last time I checked . . .

Mercury Accelsior™ PCI Express SSD (Other World Computing)

And there is not so much you can do to increase the speed of the internal hard drive(s) once you get the Seagate 2TB internal hard drive, although doing a RAID might be advantageous, except that I would do the video card upgrade first, since as best as I can determine the computer at present is faster than the original video card can display, so for all practical purposes the computer (processors, memory, hard drive, and so operating system) finish their work quickly and then essentially wait while the video card displays the results, which is the reason that upgrading a video card maps to a faster computer in some instances . . .

However, the used Apple Cinema Display prices are a bit high, so I think it makes the most sense to get a new 27" Apple Thunderbolt Display, probably from Amazon.com, since they usually have the best discount and have free shipping . . .

At present, I have a 23" Apple Cinema Display, which is fine, but when I am running Digital Performer 8 (MOTU), NOTION 4, and Reason 6.5 (Propellerhead Software), there is not enough room to see everything, so I think that having a larger display will be nice, but it might make sense to get a second 23" Apple Cinema Display, since I like the particular model . . .

This is one way to get more computing power, but depending on your budget you can get everything new from Apple or whatever, and the fact of the matter is that it is vastly easier to do digital music production on the Mac, because everything works and with the exception of an external digital audio interface and MIDI controller like the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid, all the hardware and software for the foundation is on the Mac by design, and it is single-sourced, which maps to there being one way to configure everything, such that I can look at my configuration and tell you how to configure your 2007 Mac, which is different from the way things work in the Windows universe, because in the Windows universe there is a virtual festival of hardware manufacturers and corresponding drivers and so forth, so it is not always the case that you can help someone with a Windows computer when their hardware is different from your hardware, drivers, and so forth. You can provide general advice, but some of the hardware, drivers, and so forth require different configuration and setup parameters, which is fine when you can make sense of that stuff, but otherwise tends to be a bit confusing, and it also is highly dependent on the version of Windows, which is another difference . . .

Lots of FUN!

Thanks for all the info. I have a 2.4ghz intel core duo with 4 mb ram. It's a workhorse. I replaced the hard drive a year or so ago with a 1tb seagate and I have a couple of external drives as well. Maybe I should look into more RAM. 6gb is the max in this machine.

idiotSavant wrote:Thanks for all the info. I have a 2.4ghz intel core duo with 4 mb ram. It's a workhorse. I replaced the hard drive a year or so ago with a 1tb seagate and I have a couple of external drives as well. Maybe I should look into more RAM. 6gb is the max in this machine.

Doing the upgrade to 6GB of memory will help!

THOUGHTS

Soon after I got the 2.8-GHz 8-core Mac Pro (early-2008) from Amazon.com with the minimum factory memory, which as I recall was in Spring 2009, I upgraded it to 8GB with an upgrade kit from Other World Computing, where at the time the factory memory was 1GB memory strips, so the logical upgrade was to fill all the remaining slots with 1GB memory strips in matched pairs, since everything was 32-bits at the time, and for all practical purposes the machine could use only approximately 4GB of memory, but everything changes when applications are 64-bits, at which time more memory can be used, hence I upgraded to a total of 20GB, by replacing two pairs of 1GB memory with two pairs of 4GB memory, with the result being 4x1GB and 4x4GB for a total of 20GB . . .

Using Activity Monitor to check memory usage, it appears at present that the Mac Pro tends to use approximately 10GB of memory when doing digital music production, depending on the particular applications, so based on this I am very confident suggesting that your Mac will be able to use all 6GB of memory when you do the upgrade, and this will help in a significant way for 64-bit applications . . .

If your computer is an iMac, then upgrading the memory is very easy, and there are video tutorials that show how to do it at the Other World Computing website . . .

If you computer is a MacBook or MacBook Pro, there are a few more steps involved in upgrading the memory, but they are not difficult steps, just a bit more complex, and it requires a different but nevertheless simple tools, and Other World Computing as a nice toolkit for less than $20 (US) . . .

Lots of FUN!