Glad to help! ottoharp wrote:I sort of "grok" that Rewire is for AUDIO; bringing in the sounds, say of a set of samplers or synths from another place that is not native to the host. But I also have learned that there are such things as "virtual MIDI cables" that allow the routing of MIDI from one program to another.
ReWire 2 enables digital music production applications to communicate for purposes of (a) sharing audio, (b) sharing control of their transports (rewind, stop, play, record, forward, and so forth), and (c) sharing MIDI, including ensuring that everything is synchronized . . .
Generally, a ReWire 2 session involves applications running on one computer, but there are scenarios where networked computers are involved, although I think this scenario applies when a networked computer is acting as a streaming audio server; and ReWire 2 coordinates MIDI coming from external physical MIDI devices . . .
"Virtual MIDI cables" are software flavors of a real physical MIDI cable, but instead of connecting a real MIDI device to a computer, a "virtual MIDI cable" makes it possible for one application to send and receive MIDI to and from another application running on the same computer, and you described one of the scenarios, which for example is a way that an application can "play" and "control" a standalone virtual synthesizer via MIDI, where using Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments) as an example, NOTION 4 or a DAW application can play the standalone version of Kontakt 5 by sending it MIDI commands and notes, which can work nicely for a real-time performance, but generally it is better to do this in a ReWire 2 session, because in a ReWire 2 session where Kontakt 5 is running as a VSTi virtual instrument, the audio generated by Kontakt 5 can be routed to the ReWire 2 host controller. There probably is a way to route the audio from a standalone virtual instrument, but I have not explored that in much detail, although it definitely is routed to the main audio output of the computer, hence probably can be routed in other ways . . .
There are "virtual MIDI cables" available for Windows, but they are separate third-party utilities, where in contrast on the Mac the "Audio MIDI Setup" application provides "virtual MIDI cables" and is part of Mac OS X, which makes it easier to use, since it is there from the start, and you just need to read about it to make sense of how to use it . . .
ottoharp wrote:Usually the music I create (and the music I prefer to listen to) is very sparse; and I would tend to only have one (if any) or maybe two midi instruments going in the first place. I play and own numerous instruments; but, for example I don't own or play bass, and so I might use a midi bass to pad out the bottom of a project; but more likely I would play that bass on a keyboard in realtime and capture the audio. Or, I might want a sort of Kalimba ostinato running in the background of a piece; that's the sort of thing I'd be likely to do with midi and a kalimba sample. In other words I don't expect to be doing orchestration or band arrangements, or hours tweaking a violin sample to fool the listener into thinking it's real (it's a lot easier to get a real sounding kalimba or Hang Drum then a violin part).
So methinks that Notion is probably a bit more than I need at this time. If I find myself going in the direction of wanting more "western" sounds, orchestras, bands, ensembles, then yeah, maybe.
Based on this, I am not certain that NOTION 4 will be a lot of help, although you certainly can compose bass parts with music notation and have it played by virtual instruments . . .
ottoharp wrote:
If I go thru KONTAKT (sp?) I see vast libraries of other world sounds...and I'm tempted. I'm also tempted by NI's Absynth, which allows for alternately tuned scales, not just equal tempered ones. (It's odd that to buy just these two packages, it would cost me more than to buy Komplete, which would come with about a billion things I would never use not in a million years....and I HATE buying extra bells and whistles that I'd never use...but it is what it is...) When I look at IK Multimedia, as you suggested, I see one library of world sounds (but not much information on it.).
Kontakt 5 is intriguing, and as you noted there is a virtual festival of sampled sound libraries. There are two versions of Komplete 9, and one has Absynth 5, while Komplete 9 Ultimate has Absynth 5 and Balinese Gamelan, so depending on which sampled sound libraries you like, one of the Komplete 9 bundles can cost less . . .
Native Instruments had a discount sale on Komplete 9 recently, and they have discount sales every so often, so one way to keep track of discount sales is to get on their mailing list . . .
ottoharp wrote:As I said, for me, less is more, and probably the solution of libraries of sounds is not the way to go either, because I might end up using maybe a dozen of them...mgiht pay to scrounge around and come up with samples individually.
But eventurally, I'll have to at least get a fully functional Sampler, and that might be Directwave (for FLStudio) or Possibly Kontakt5.... if just to learn how to work a sampler! If I'm going to learn it, I'm going to have to have one, and a group of sounds to play with....but, as I said, the learning curve is so steep right now, that I might be able to put that whole decision off for some time, till I need it.
From my perspective, the important thing is to develop a plan for the future and to begin gathering information to determine the strategy that makes the most sense (a) for what you want to do now and (b) for what you might want to do sometime in the future . . .
When I first got NOTION, which at the time was NOTION 3, all I needed was a way to create Flamenco rhythms for a virtual drumkit, but after I got that working, I decided to add a horn section and some strings, and a while later I realized that it was possible to do just about anything so long as it can be done with music notation and there is a set of sampled sounds for the various instruments . . .
A few years later, the result is the complete digital music production system shown in the diagram in my first reply, and to the best of my knowledge this system covers everything, but I check it every once in a while and see how it works in different scenarios, where so far it continues to cover everything . . .
The most recent addition in terms of providing functionality that was missing is Cyclop (Sugar Bytes), which is a bass synthesizer, and the reason I added it was to be able to do Dubstep bass easily, which it does, but it also does a lot more stuff, and I like it for modern music genres like Pop . . .
Cyclop (Sugar Bytes)One of the reasons I mentioned Kontakt is that it is an industry standard, and there are a
lot of sampled sound libraries available for Kontakt; and there are a lot of specialty sampled sound libraries, which is one of the things that makes Kontakt attractive . . .
Native Instruments has a lot of sampled sound libraries for Kontakt, but there are a lot more third-party sampled sound libraries available that work with Kontakt; and you can get a sense of this by browsing through the sampled sound libraries at Big Fish Audio, which is a sampled sound library superstore of sorts, but it is not the only one . . .
For reference, NOTION 4 supports quarter-tone scales, where instead of being 12 notes, there are 24 notes to a scale, which is interesting . . .
This is an experimental song I did to explore the NOTION 4 advanced aspects of the NOTION 4 Electric Guitar Tab, which makes it possible to do tremolo, vibrato, string bends, and whammying (a personal favorite), and there is an instruments playing ascending and descending quarter-tone scales, which adds an ethereal flavor to the background . . .
"Abyss" (The Surf Whammys) ~ YouTube music video Lots of FUN!