Notion to DAW or DAW to Notion ?

[Surfwhammy]

As a bit of follow-up, these are some relevant bits of information regarding Propellerhead Software''s ReWIre 2 technology with respect to Digital Performer 8, Live 9, NOTION 4, and Reason 7 . . .

[NOTE: In the terminology used by MOTU in the Digital Performer 8 User Guide, a ReWire 2 slave is called "ReWire synth" . . . ]

ReWire also supports basic transport control, allowing you to play, stop, rewind, shuttle, set loop points, and so on, in either Digital Performer or the ReWire synth.

ReWire synths are different than plug-ins because they run as a separate application. But they can still operate in a tightly integrated way with Digital Performer, so practically speaking, there is little difference.

[SOURCE: Digital Performer 8 User Guide ]

The ReWire technology, developed by Propellerhead Software, provides ReWire-compatible programs with:
•common access to the audio hardware;
•shared transport functionality;
•synchronization to audio word clock and song positioning;
•exchange of audio streams.

[SOURCE: Ableton Reference Manual Version 9 for Windows and Mac OS ]

In the user guides for both of these Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) applications, one of the key bits of information is the ability of ReWire 2 host controllers and ReWire 2 slaves to share transport control in varying degrees depending on implementation specifics . . .

Digital Performer 8 (MOTU), Live 9 (Ableton), NOTION 4 (Notion Music), and Reason 7 (Propellerhead Software) support the ReWire 2 shared transport control functionality, which among other things is the reason that I was able to record in NOTION 4 the real-time virtual MIDI sent from the new Reason 7 External MIDI Instrument (EMI), even though both NOTION 4 and Reason 7 were ReWire 2 slaves and Digital Performer 8 or Live 9 was the ReWire 2 host controller . . .

In both experiments, the only thing I noticed that could be improved was the metronome counting, and I think the logical solution is to add a few measures to the NOTION 4 score on a staff that is assigned to a snare drum playing quarter note rimshots or something similar, which is easy to do and for example can be used to provide four measures of quarter notes as a lead-in count to give you time to get a sense of the tempo and to switch focus to playing your MIDI keyboard, and it probably will be helpful to add a hi-hat on the first or last beat as a clue for the beginning or ending of a measure, although I would do one or the other but not both, and at the moment I would do it on the ending beat as a cue that the next beat is the "one", as James Brown called it, where for reference James Brown made a point of emphasizing the importance of putting accents "on the one", which is entirely different from the strategy used by the Beatles, where their emphasis was on the "backbeat", which according to wikipedia is the "off" beat or in 4/4 time are the "2" and "4" beats, which makes a bit of sense and probably is the reason that I would put the hi-hat cue on the "4" in 4/4 time . . .

THOUGHTS

For reference, I am registered Mac OS X and iOS application developer (Apple); a registered VSTi and VST plug-in developer (Steinberg); and a registered Reason Rack Extension and ReWIre developer (Propellerhead Software), which basically maps to having the respective Software Developer Kits (SDKs) and all the various documentation and code examples, although at present I am not doing any specific designing or coding for products that use these technologies . . .

All this stuff is covered by Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA), and I cannot comment on any of the proprietary information, but it gives me the ability to get an accurate sense of what most likely is happening behind the scenes when folks understand and follow the respective guidelines and specifications; and I am vastly intrigued by the idea of designing and coding Reason Rack Extensions, which logically could be provided as VSTi or VST plug-ins, as well, although whether I will do this is a decision I reserve for the future, but I think about it regularly, and I have what I think are cool ideas for Reason Rack Extensions . . .

I also ponder ideas for products that enhance NOTION 4, and in this respect I am making good progress with respect to understanding the MIDI specification, which from my perspective is the key to having a bit of FUN enhancing NOTION 4, since it does not require the existence of a NOTION Software Development Kit and so forth . . .

NOTION 4 does a lot more stuff than I think most folks imagine (or perhaps more accurately are willing to reveal in posts to this FORUM) and in particular this is the case when one does everything on the Mac, which from a practical perspective is the case in part because nearly all the companies that provide products for digital music production always ensure that their products work very nicely on the Mac, where one of the reasons is that it is a consistent platform in the specific sense that an algorithm developed for a Mac OS X application is quite likely to work with only minimal changes in an IOS application . . .

Lots of FUN!

[Surfwhammy]

As promised, I did the real-time MIDI recording experiment where Ableton Live 9 is the ReWire 2 host controller and NOTION 4 is the ReWire 2 slave, and I like the results, for sure . . .

For sure!

I used the KORG Triton Music Workstation (88-Keys) connected via standard MIDI cables to the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid external digital audio and MIDI interface to compose and perform in real-time a new song that I call "Ice Crystals", which is fabulous . . .

Recording MIDI in NOTION 4 ~ Live 9 as ReWire 2 Master -- YouTube music video

Fabulous!

THOUGHTS

This is the first time I recorded the KORG Triton Music Workstation via Ableton Live 9 and NOTION 4 in this particular way, so there probably are a few subtle rules that I need to discover . . .

The first few times I tried to do this, it was not working, but after pondering everything I noticed that I was not rewinding the Ableton Live 9 transport and then repositioning the NOTION 4 transport, which apparently is important . . .

It also is important to click on the NOTION 4 staff to which you want to record MIDI, and it is important to set the MIDI Input for NOTION 4 to the correct MIDI device, which in this instance was the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid MIDI Port, noting that there also is a MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid Sync Port, but I used the MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid MIDI Port . . .

Ableton Live 9 already was set to listen to the IAC Bus, MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid MIDI Port, and MOTU 828mk3 Hybrid Sync Port, and Ableton Live had one stereo audio track with its input set to the NOTION Master stereo track with its output set to the "Ch 1-2" ReWire 2 output channel pair . . .

The MIDI recording parameters were set as shown in the following screen capture:



I recorded the first version of "Ice Crystals", which went smoothly, and then I erased the notes and did a second version, but it did not work, which could have been due to forgetting (again) to rewind the Ableton Live 9 transport, and at that point the NOTION 4 measure counter was stuck in a loop, so I saved the NOTION 4 score; closed NOTION 4; and then restarted NOTION 4, which is the general procedure when anything becomes confused in a ReWire 2 session, where based on doing a lot of ReWire experiments this usually happens when something is not done correctly, with typical examples being (a) forgetting to do an otherwise simple but necessary step in the overall procedure or (b) forgetting to set a key parameter in one of the applications participating in the ReWire session, where the key bit of information is that missing one tiny step or incorrectly setting one parameter is all it takes to cause problems in a ReWire session (which applies to 32-bit only ReWire 1.7 and to both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of ReWIre 2) . . .

Everything in NOTION 4 Preferences, including MIDI Input, needs to be set correctly; and there are Preferences in Ableton Live 9 that need to be set correctly, where for reference there are considerably more relevant Preferences in Ableton Live 9 . . .

It also is important to save the Ableton Live 9 project and NOTION 4 score after making changes to Preferences, ReWire 2 input and output channel pairs, and so forth and so on . . .

I tend to avoid reading the owner manuals, since I prefer to discover how to do stuff intuitively, but this often results in missing key bits of information, so it is not unusual to need to do a few experiments before I discover the correct way to configure everything, but so what . . .

So what!

Once I discover the correct way to do something, it works very reliably . . .

The only odd behavior I noticed was that the NOTION 4 Bundled Drum Set playing a snare drum on every beat and a kick drum on the "4" skipped a beat in the 17th measure, although it was back to normal by the beginning of the 18th measure. This could have been due to the real-time MIDI notes being more complex at that time, which in turn led to NOTION 4 focusing on correctly recording the MIDI notes at the expense of playing the Drum Set notes on time, and this could be related to the way the MIDI recording parameters were set, since although the MIDI recording parameters were set to low values, the "Min velocity" and "Chord looseness" parameters were set to "2" rather than to "1", which intuitively might be similar to holding the sustain pedal and naturally would cause a bit of buffering of notes waiting for a "note OFF" to appear or whatever, but regardless of the cause, this does not bother me, since the MIDI notes were correctly recorded, and it could be related to the Audio Buffer Size in NOTION 4 Preferences being set to "1024 Samples", while the Buffer Size in Ableton Live 9 was set to "512 Samples", where apparently little mismatches in parameters like this at times will cause problems in a ReWire session . . .

As shown in the following screen capture, NOTION 4 recorded the real-time MIDI using four voices, where the fourth voice (in green) is seen to the right of the yellow cursor:



Yet another set of factors involves the KORG Triton Music Workstation, which at the time was set to the "Stereo Piano" factory preset, which is a tiny bit "wet". The FabFilter Software Instruments' Twin 2 VSTi virtual instrument was set to the "Ice Crystals 02 bM" factory preset, and this particular preset is very "wet", having both heavy reverb and heavy echoes . . .

It also is useful to understand that I was listening to the Drum Set and Twin 2 playing through the calibrated full-range studio monitor system, which in turn indicates that while NOTION 4 was recording the "Stereo Piano" MIDI output from the KORG Triton Music Workstation, at the same time it was playing the notes on the Twin 2 synthesizer. Whether this affects the behavior of NOTION 4 real-time MIDI recording is something I do not know for certain at present, but it is one of the things I typically test by doing some experiments, where for example it might work best to have a "dry" piano preset for the KORG Triton Music Workstation and a very simple "dry" piano assigned to the respective NOTION 4 staff for monitoring purposes, where I probably would use the NOTION 4 Bundled Piano . . .

Dropping a Drum Set beat temporarily in the 17th measure is a bit troublesome, but it could be a matter of the Mac Pro not being sufficiently fast to do all the required computing in the limited time frame, which is a possibility since it is 5 years-old. When this happens, the obvious sign is that a beat drops or something similar happens, which also can happen when lookahead buffer sizes are too small or too large. Whether it is the processor speed, lookahead buffer sizes, or video processor speed is another matter, and I am planning to upgrade the video card, which tends to map to increased performance at this stage in the cycle of a computer, where it is not so much a matter of making the computer faster as it is a matter of reducing the time the processor core(s) are idling while waiting for the display to be painted, where it is important to understand that even though the Mac Pro has 8 cores, NOTION 4 most likely is single-threaded or at least not multithreaded in a very complex way, which maps to everything it does for the most part being run on a single core, hence a newer Mac with fewer but faster core processors will be faster, and I would expect this to be flawless on a new iMac where everything is maxed . . .

SUMMARY

I am satisfied that this is working nicely, with the caveat that it probably will work better if I do a bit of fine-tuning of some of the various parameters, but "nicely" is sufficient, especially considering that the MIDI notes were recorded correctly. This experiment does not determine whether using (a) standard MIDI or (b) USB MIDI makes a difference, but I have the required standard MIDI equipment, hence for me this does not matter, and for reference the MIDI instruction videos that I studied indicate a bit of concern from the presenters regarding USB MIDI, since USB MIDI requires some additional arbitrary conversions that do not happen in standard MIDI . . .

On a related note, when exploring this type of functionality I think it is important to focus on the Gestalt where the goals are (a) to determine the best way to do each thing that needs to be done and then (b) to devise a complete well-defined system of guidelines, practices, and procedures, which is one of the things I realized as I was reading and studying "Recording the Beatles" (Curvebender Publishing), where the fact of the matter is that there was a detailed set of guidelines, practices, and procedures for everything, to the extent of Abbey Road Studios actually had a set of guidelines, practices, and procedures for the way "Pop Singers" were supposed to position themselves and to behave when singing, which included guidance to "avoid unnecessary fidgeting and dancing", which explains the virtually robotic way the Beatles "worked" their vocal microphones when they were performing concerts and doing television performances, and this makes sense, because maintaining a proper singing position is very important with respect to optimal vocal recording . . .

Recording the Beatles (Curvebender Publishing)

"This Boy" (Beatles) -- The Ed Sullivan Show -- YouTube music video

Lots of FUN!

[ben amato]

thanks surf whammy!
actually what i'm trying to do should'nt be so far out as I see it( not to say that your experiments are not;)

All I want to do is integrate standard orchestral notation work with audio production work in an easy way. I read lots of other guys on forums trying to achieve something similar, with lots of tearing of hair ... I guess most audio production peeps don't use notation much, and the notation users are more classical types who don't know the production side. So the need is not clearly seen...
But I am determined to find a way.
Thanks for showing me that recording into notion works when it's a slave! I think it was because there was a precount setting that it wasn't working properly. That's great, another step along the path.
Starting to figure out the whole rules thing now, I have to make the EWQLSO patches inside Vienna Ensemble (in Live) receive keyswitch messages from the articulation or technique markings in notion.
All the best!
Ben

[ben amato]

recording behaves really unpredictably though, does very odd things, and doesn't work often.... sigh. I will revert to my plan of writing into notion in non rewire mode before synching up( while still routing the midi through to live) . Or else tracking parts into live while rewired, then passing them over into notion.
Ben

[Surfwhammy]

Thanks for showing me that recording into notion works when it's a slave!

Glad to help!

As noted, I was not thrilled when there was a dropped beat in one of the Drum Set measures, but that might be remedied by matching the NOTION 4 Audio Buffer Size (which was "1024 Samples") to the Ableton Live 9 Buffer Size (which was "512 Samples"), althoug for reference I checked the playback, and it plays correctly without dropping the Drum Set beat, hence the MIDI input was recorded correctly, which from my perspective is what matters . . .

THOUGHTS

I use a different workflow, where initially I usually start in NOTION 4 running by itself and compose a basic rhythm section, which when completed I record as soundbites in a ReWire 2 session to Digital Performer 8 (MOTU) . . .

I limit the number of instruments in a NOTION 4 score to 25 as a general rule, and most of them are VSTi virtual instruments, so when the basic rhythm section is composed and then recorded as soundbites in Digital Performer 8 in a ReWire 2 session, I do a "Save As . . ." of the NOTION 4 score and then use the now cloned NOTION 4 to add more instruments--either (a) at that time in the same ReWire 2 session, where Digital Performer 8 is the ReWIre 2 host controller and NOTION 4 is a ReWire 2 slave or (b) later--and I keep all the NOTION 4 scores for a song in a common folder for the song and append something like "-PT-n" to the names of the NOTION 4 scores so that I know the sequence in case I need to revisit the music notation for an earlier part, where the files might be like {"Song-PT-1.notion", "Song-PT-2.notion", . . . , "Song-PT-n.notion"} . . .

I developed this system in NOTION 3, which was restricted by the 32-bit application workspace limit (4GB maximum for Mac OS X), and it works nicely, so I use it with the Digital Performer 8, NOTION 4, and Reason 7 (Propellerhead Software), all running in 64-bit mode . . .

Over the years, I have taught myself how to think in terms of a song being constructed in layers, so most of the time I do not need to hear all the instruments to compose and perform a new layer, which makes it easier, but there are times when I need to hear specific instruments, of course . . .

As a rule, I reserve 5 instruments to be common to all the NOTION 4 score clones for a song, and these typically are drums, bass, rhythm guitar or piano playing chords, and some instrument playing the basic melody and perhaps one instrument playing a background harmony part or some counterpoint . . .

This leaves 20 staves available for new instrumental parts in a NOTION 4 score clone, which is plenty, even when I am "sparkling" an instrument, which is a technique where I create 8 staves for a single instrument; set the panning location for each staff so that in toto the staves form a "rainbow panning arc" running from far-left to top-center to far-right; and then move the individual notes from the original instrument staff to whichever staff is panned to the location where I want the note to be heard, where for a typical 3 to 5 minute song this takes perhaps 3 hours for a single instrument, depending on the complexity of the notes and how much motion I want to create . . .



[NOTE: This is an example of a "sparkled" instrument, and it is a Psaltery Harp from one of the IK Multimedia virtual instrument collections. The stationary instrument is a bass synthesizer. It is easiest to hear the motion when you listen with headphones, but it also is heard when you play it through a studio monitor system . . . ]

"Sparkles" (The Surf Whammys) -- MP3

"Sparkles" -- Sheet Music -- PDF (90KB, 5 pages)

DIGITAL MUSIC PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

This is no "best" way to do digital music production, so the general idea is to develop a system or formula that works nicely for the way you prefer to arrange, compose, perform, produce, record, edit, embellish, mix, and master songs . . .

There are a lot of variables, which curiously includes the way one learned how to play instruments, where for me this involved playing vinyl records either slower or faster and identifying notes one at a time, where for bass parts I played vinyl records faster, since this makes the bass sound like a guitar, which I could do because I can sight-sing treble clef, but for guitar I played vinyl records at half-speed, which makes the guitar sound like a bass guitar, and I did it this way because I learned how to play bass first, so by the time I decided to learn how to play lead guitar I could listen to a bass part and then play it "by ear" nearly instantly . . .

Another key variable is the way one learns how to focus on listening to a specific part when studying a song, and I think this requires listening to the same song over and over, since it is a skill that improves with repetition . . .

[NOTE: I am planning to have a bit of FUN with a new Surf Whammys song inspired by "Applause" (Lady Gaga), so I am listening to it over and over, which I will do for few days, although it is not such a complex song in terms instrumentation, where for reference the complexity is in the elaborate vocal production, which is best described as "mesmerizing" . . . ]

I like the precision of music notation, and the way most things work in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application are intuitive, since I did a bit of work in the analog universe in recording studios and doing concert sound reinforcement, but the new thing for me is Reason 7, which is an entirely new concept, although I started exploring this with Reason 5, and it makes sense to me now, but at first it was completely and totally alien . . .

Reason 7 primarily is focused on automated sequencers that can be set to play from 16 to 32 notes in various patterns, which is very different from working with music notation or playing a real instrument, but it makes it possible to do some fascinating things that are not done so easily any other way, noting that like NOTION 4, Reason 7 is MIDI-centric, which is the common factor, since both of them have MIDI "piano rolls", as do DAW applications . . .

By the time I have a basic rhythm section and have recorded a few real instruments or some singing, I am sufficiently attuned to the song to have ideas for things like Latin percussion instruments, where after listening to the song a few times I might decide that adding some castanets in few places will be nice, so that is the next layer I add, and the process continues until I think the song has enough stuff to be "complete" . . .

And as noted in previous posts to this topic, I can switch to whichever of the three primary applications that is best suited to the next layer (Digital Performer 8, NOTION 4, or Reason 7), and this is a very important aspect of the complete digital music production system here in the sound isolation studio, because the various instrumental and singing parts do not always arrive in the same order, where for example with some songs the Latin percussion parts appear early but the melody appears later, but with other songs the melody appears first and then I work on the rhythm guitar chords, hence flexibility is very important with respect to which of the three primary applications gets the focus at any given time . . .

It also is important to be practical and to put everything into a reasonable perspective, where using "sparkling" an instrument as an example, while it might take three or so hours to "sparkle" a single instrument, doing it with a real instrument would be vastly difficult and would take considerably longer than three hours, so the practical aspect is that being able to do it in three or so hours with high precision--which comes from doing it with music notation in NOTION 4 and the fact that NOTION 4 has true stereo panning controls which can be set with specific numeric values--is fantastic, and it is the way it is, where inputting all the rests one at a time with the mouse is a bit of a hassle, but it works and I like the way it sounds, so I deal with it, and there are ways to streamline the inputting, since after doing it for a while you discover that there are specific patterns that work nicely . . .

From this perspective, I am happy if I can devise one way to do something that I want to do, and sometimes there is only one way . . .

Lots of FUN!