Troll Cave Music

JH Audio in-Ear Monitor Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 02:45:00 +0000

I came across this item, and thought it was too good a contest to keep for myself. Here's the official release on it:

Press release after the jump:

Win JH Audio’s Flagship Headphone System Worth $1,100

July 11, 2011 Apopka, FL – JH Audio, makers of the custom in-ear monitor systems used by the pros is offering a pair of their flagship custom in-ear monitors for a Facebook sweepstakes. The JH16 (priced at $1,149) delivers amazing detail and isolation for performing musicians or audiophiles alike. The contest runs through the months of July and August.

Like all JH Audio custom in ear monitors, the JH16 offers -26dB of isolation eliminating stage volume and ambient noise – critical for performing musicians and audiophiles alike. This extreme ability to block outside sounds enhances the listening experience and allows lower listening levels reducing the potential for hearing damage.

Each JH16 is a unique hand-built creation based on custom ear molds made just for your ears. These headphones are incredibly efficient, offering greater detail and accuracy over the competition. JH Audio is the only company offering dual -driver technology across the entire frequency range.

Click here to enter the contest on the JH Audio Facebook page.

iPhone Music Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 00:52:00 +0000

This blog has been a little quiet lately, because I have been studying iPhone App development. My goal is to make engaging music apps. I have since discovered that this requires delving into quite possibly the hardest area of the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad to work in. Somehow I always end up pursuing the hardest topics.

Anyway, one of my projects in development is currently a rhythm/beat tracker. I want to pack in as many features as I can, but I want to put in stuff that people will find useful. So I am putting out a call for people's "wish lists". It doesn't have to be only for tracker-style apps. Any music app ideas are welcomed.

If you could design a music app for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, what features would you want?

Leave a comment or send me an email with your "dream app" features. I'm not making any promises, but I aim to please. Thanks!

Gear/Site Review: Virtual Keyboard

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 04:20:00 +0000

Once in a while I came across a music app online that I think is worthwhile not as a tool, but as an amusement. The Virtual Keyboard is just such an application. The Virtual Keyboard is a web-based app that is (apparently) part of a teaching resource site for the Birmingham (UK) area. But this is the web, and if we can find it, we can play with it.

What Is It?
The Virtual Keyboard is exactly what it sounds like. Think of the cheap bargain bin synth at your local department store. Remove some of the features. That's the Virtual Keyboard. The keys are labeled with the note names, which really helps when it is used as a teaching tool.

What Is That Noise?
You get a whopping total of 9 dreadful (fun dreadful, not the bad kind) synth instruments. When you activate the keyboard (click on the screen), you can use your computer keyboard to play, or you can click on the keys with your mouse. Actually, the sounds aren't all bad. The double bass has a good low end, and shakes a few things on my desk when I hit a low D. It does require a brief delay to reload when you change instruments, so you won't be switching in mid-song with this.

Give Me A Beat
The Virtual Keyboard also contains 6 canned drum patterns selectable to accompany your master works. The drums are actually pretty good. Most are pretty synthy/dancy things, but there's a couple good psuedo-latin percussion patterns(Patterns 3 and 5), and a decent straight ahead rock beat that could actually be usable (Pattern 2). I'm not saying you'd want to sample it on your next track, but it's still pretty good for the context.

Chord Mode
There is a cool mode that you don't normally see in any synth. Chord mode allows you to build a chord one note at a time. You click on all the keys in the chord, then click "Play Chord" to hear what you just did, without the need for actually figuring out the fingering on your own. This is really useful(?), since the keyboard is technically polyphonic, but the notes don't always trigger at the same time. You'll get more rolling notes than chords if you try to play it properly.

You Get What You Pay For
There are, as you might guess, a few features that it lacks, since it was designed as a teaching tool. Volume is the big one. Most of the synths absolutely overpower the drum beats, at an almost laughable level. There is also no velocity sensitive mode, probably because your mouse and computer keyboard are on-off switches, so there's no way to specify the strength of the velocity. Also disappointing is the lack of a tempo control on the drum patterns. After these "lackings", there should be no surprise when I point out there is no record/playback mode, which I would think would be a great addition to this as a teaching tool. After all, hearing what you really played versus what you think you played is a major learning experience.

Final Thoughts
If you've got kids (or want to act like one), this is a great web app to goof around with, as long as your speaker volume is kept in check. The organ will likely drive you nuts, as will the saxophone, but the steel drum, double bass, and pan pipes are fun to groove with.

With zero learning curve, this is a nice teaching toy. The Virtual Keyboard is definitely worth a few minutes diversion before you get back to the world of your own music.

Gear Review : TuxGuitar

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 03:45:00 +0000

As readers of Troll Cave Music will probably have picked up by now, I love guitars. I play guitar, but admittedly not very well. Part of it is that guitar is one of the absolute hardest instruments to replicate with computers. However, computers can help in some ways.

I have recently come across such a guitarist-assistance tool, TuxGuitar. TuxGuitar is a music transcription program, but it goes way beyond that. Best of all, it's open source and free.
Basic Overview
TuxGuitar is an open source application that boasts the following features:
* Tablature editor
* Score Viewer
* Multitrack display
* Autoscroll while playing
* Note duration management
* Various effects (bend, slide, vibrato, hammer-on/pull-off)
* Support for triplets (5,6,7,9,10,11,12)
* Repeat open and close
* Time signature management
* Tempo management
* Imports and exports gp3,gp4 and gp5 files

Translate for me, please!
I see TuxGuitar as a guitarist's electronic notebook, of sorts. You can write out your music as guitar tab and traditional score at the same time. It also boasts a wide variety of guitar effects that are missing from most non-guitar-oriented programs, like hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides, bends, etc. All of these are easily accessible in the toolbar. To make transciption even easier, you can even add a fretboard image to the UI, and pick off the notes by their fretboard position. So there's 3 separate ways to enter the notation, and the program figures out the other two for you. You can also add chords, and it will include the Chord image above the transcription of the notes.

TuxGuitar also gives you the option of other instruments, including bass, drums, and other items like organs. Differences in the notation (Bass clef, for example) make native support for other instruments essential, especially if you want to make notation for the whole band. There's also the ability to add lyrics to the sheet, so you can generate pretty complete sheet music.

Drums do suffer, though, since they do not (yet) support traditional drum notation. Instead, percussion mode uses General MIDI note numbers to represent the drum "tab". This is OK if you're planning on using those directly into a MIDI-enabled drum module, but pretty useless when you print out the drum tab.

So I can see it, so what?
Transcription is a good foundation, but TuxGuitar goes one step further. It also has enabled a music player, so you can hear what the transcription sounds like. This is OK, except for the thin, horrible samples that are embedded in the program. The web site does give instructions on how you can reconfigure to use other programs for the playback. You could, for example, reroute the MIDI out into REAPER, Ableton Live, etc., if you really wanted to.

Windows? Mac? Linux?
Yes, yes, and yes. TuxGuitar is available for pretty much any OS you're running. And if not, there is also an online Java app so you really can use it just about anywhere.

Why Use TuxGuitar? Can't we do this in [random DAW]?
I've been asking myself the same question - if this is just a MIDI player, can't I do that in REAPER? Yes and no. I don't see myself ever using TuxGuitar to record a masterpiece. This is not a DAW, and doesn't pretend to be. It's a MIDI authoring and playback tool on steroids. The real strength, as I mentioned earlier, is a guitarist's notebook. You can transcribe your fragments and keep them safer than notepaper scribbles (which I always lose). Recording guitar audio is nice, but you don't always remember where/how you played a specific passage. With TuxGuitar, you can tab it out based on the fretboard without even knowing the notes themselves. (I think I just felt a collective shudder at the thought of people playing without knowing the notes. Relax. It does happen.) The other side of this coin is that you can use it to help translate traditional notation into guitar tab, so you can use it as musical middleware, if you will.

When you look at the TuxGuitar site, many users are posting their own full-blown compositions in TuxGuitar. Ambitious, and weak, since using the normal TuxGuitar playback reminds me of everything bad and wrong about the old days of .MID files back in the day.

Final Thoughts
TuxGuitar is a nice little tool that doesn't really presume to be more. Although it has some DAW-like features, the ability to create sheet music (and tab) of your work is a great win. I have countless random scraps of hand-written tab of a good riff here or there, and I lose them with great frequency. Being able to properly document what I'm working on (with all the bends, hammer-ons, etc) is a wonderful thing.

The best part? It's open source, zero cost gear, so no need to cost-justify it.

Then and Now Moment (AKA My Gear Is Too Good!)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:00:00 +0000

I've been considering how the landscape of home recording has changed and evolved over the past 20 years, and we have come a long way. We now have more recording power and flexibility in our home studios than the top professional studios had available back then. Back then, the enemy was signal degradation and tape hiss. Now we actually have folks working hard to build effects to add in "better" artificial tape hiss to too-perfect recordings.

Yes, we have come a long way. How many tracks can you record at home? I routinely use 30 or 40 individual tracks in REAPER. The capacity is only limited by the power of your machine and how much horsepower each VST or VSTi or audio track need to process, and I've never dogged out my machine while doing real work.

But something feels different when I record and build songs in my studio. It has taken me a couple of years to put my finger on it, but I think I know now.

This is something that I feel made me stronger in the late 80s/early 90s. I had less power then. I had a LOT of systemic constraints. This forced me to get to the meat of what the music was trying to do, rather than allowing a lot of fluff to drift in and change my focus.

Fewer Channels
When you have fewer channels, you have to think more about how to accomplish the desired effect. My old studio was based on an Amiga 500. The Amiga had 2 left channels and 2 right channels. All 8-bit audio. That's it. Anything else had to be driven from outboard MIDI gear. I added a Yamaha RY-30 Drum Machine to take care of the bottom end (16-bit sounds!), but everything else was through the Amiga. 2 Left, 2 Right. And it worked. I made songs that sounded a hell of a lot bigger than you would expect. Occasionally, I would share a channel, but for the most part I kept it straightforward. Four instruments, usually 2 being a stereo-paired lead line that mirrored each other (with a slight offset so you added a spatial element/echo to the sound.)

Samples, Not Instruments
Another big difference between then and now is Virtual Instruments. VSTs, one of the most popular formats for Virtual Instruments, weren't released to the public until 1996. Prior to that you either had hardware instruments (i.e. real stuff), or you used audio samples. It seems to me that creating samples is a dying art. I don't mean just recording a bit from another artist and using it. I mean taking a raw sound into an audio editor, twisting it, rearranging it, and making it something fresh and new that has NEVER been heard before. Then load it into your music program and do something with it.

Back in the old days I had a portable tape recorder (you remember cassettes, don't you?) that I would wander around recording random sounds with it. Then I would sample those sounds into the computer and see what I had actually captured. When I sound "jumped out" at me, I put it through the meatgrinder to make it even more unusual, more me.

I think many of us have fallen into the trap of "needing" Virtual Instruments for just about everything. It can be useful, or it can be a crutch. The sounds made by a VST are the same sounds everyone else with that VST has to use. It's a shared experience. Sure, you can morph the sound by adding more VST effects onto the basic instrument. And more VSTs.

Personally, I prefer to find a basic sound from a Virtual Instrument, record it, and then bring it into Audacity and corrupt it into something that is wholly mine. I can (almost) guarantee than nobody has ever taken the same source sound through the same "audio meatgrinder" I use. Since it is an organic, seat-of-the-pants creation, I would be hard pressed to duplicate a sound that I made previously.

Final Thoughts
As old Uncle Ben used to say, "With great power comes great responsibility." We don't need to be responsible, do we? So try a little experiment on your next project. Try to limit yourself to a set number of tracks. 4 or 8 tracks - the classic tape capacities. Can you get the song you're after if you can ONLY use 4 tracks? I'm willing to bet you can get a stronger song in that 4 or 8 track space. You might just surprise yourself at how much "waste" there is in your recordings.

Before the haters bring it: Don't get me wrong, I love (free) VSTs. They give us the options that we never really had in a small home studio before. I couldn't afford to buy another keyboard to get that ONE new sound I was looking for. You made due with what you had. Now we have so many options to choose from, we often get caught in the "chasing the perfect presets" in our VSTs, instead of chasing the perfect song. If you can't find it, make it.

Native Instruments' Holiday Selection 2009 - free download

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 04:25:00 +0000

For the holiday season, Native Instruments is giving away a special free instrument pack, HOLIDAY SELECTION 2009, for their successful KORE 2 PLAYER. Don't have KORE 2? You can download the player for free, also directly from Native Instruments. It functions both in standalone and as a VST/RTAS plugin. You have to get an activation code via email, but their registration process is really simple and painless. (Less than a minute total time invested).

If the demo songs on their site (made with ONLY sounds in this pack) aren't enough to spend a few minutes downloading this, I would be surprised. This is available for both PC and Mac platforms.

You can get both downloads here.

(No idea how long they'll have it available. It was posted on NI's site on Dec. 17, 2009. Presumably through at least New Year's Day, but maybe longer, maybe shorter.)

From the Native Instruments site:
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Native Instruments is happy to present to you a free instrument made up of premium sounds from highly-successful KORE / KONTAKT instruments. HOLIDAY SELECTION 2009 is a full-featured production-ready sound library that includes 45 Kore Sounds® with 360 Sound Variations, drawn from 12 different KORE / KONTAKT instruments. From classic sampled instruments to futuristic soundscapes and poly-effects, HOLIDAY SELECTION 2009 brings together the cream of this celebrated and diverse range.

For use with the free KORE 2 PLAYER:
No previous product ownership is required to use this instrument – simply download both the free KORE 2 PLAYER and HOLIDAY SELECTION 2009 for free, and get started!
Download free KORE 2 PLAYER for Mac or PC.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Demo Track: (E)motion Violation

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:15:00 +0000

Many years ago, I had a band/project with an ambitious, excitable young man named Matthew Schultz. As my long-time readers will recall, Matt died this summer. (See my post about it here.)

I mentioned the one and only full studio-produced vocal demo we recorded, a song called "(E)motion Violation". I had written it about a year before, and we were making plans to record a full EP, when circumstances led us down two different paths in life.

I present to you, for your listening pleasure (hopefully), that rough demo. You can download or listen to it here.

Listen to it, share it, but please leave the authorship (in the ID3 tag) intact. I retain all rights to the track, so if you want to use it in your project, let me know. I'm sure we can work something out.

How It Was Made
The song was composed on an Amiga 500 (with a whopping 1 MB of RAM, and two floppy disk drives!) Most of the main instrumentation is done with samples.

The guitar is a single sampled powerchord recorded through the headphone out jack of a Gorilla Tube Cruncher amp with the gain cranked up. The tone is also helped by the 8-bit sampling on the Amiga, since it dirtied up the tone that much more. That one powerchord was then played as a sample up and down, to make the main guitar riffs.

Drums were played through a Yamaha RY-30 Drum Machine (the best machine on the planet!)

The bass synth line was originally done on a Casio CZ-101, but since it was having power problems when we went into the studio, we used a nice synth that was resident in Pumpkin Shell Studio. All that we really needed was a deep growling bass line, and it was perfect.

Everything was controlled by the Amiga running MED 3.20 at 16 tracks. For those unfamiliar with the Amiga, there were 4 sampled audio channels, 2 left, 2 right. To achieve the studio mix, we ran it though about a dozen times, recording one voice at a time. We were able to slave the Amiga to the studio controller, so we could keep the multiple takes in sync. It was in the mix that we were able to take the mono voices from the Amiga and pull them out as stereo tracks, which helped fill it out considerably.

Once we had the instrumentation laid down, Matt tried a few vocal takes before he hit on the right sound for the lead vocals. (If you listen carefully during the chorus, my own vocals are hiding in the background behind Matt's. I had a little different cadence to my vocals, so it provided a nice thickness to the chorus. Not quite gang vocals, but just a hint of extra grit.)

The recording engineer & producer on this track was Richard Schultz, then proprietor of Pumpkin Shell Studio (Matt's older brother). The whole studio experience was wonderful and Rick has always been more focused on music as a creative art form than as a business. In addition to being the producer/engineer on this track, Rich is one of my favorite indie musicians. (Shameless plug: Rick's web site is at: http://richardschultzmusic.com)

Since the questions always gets raised: where did the samples come from? "Official" and "Model" were word samples from George Carlin. The two "Fear" quotes were from some talk show around 1990 (probably The Jerry Springer Show), from a guest who was attacking the polygamist way of life. The laugh was, I believe, from a Man-O-War track. (Matt found that one.)

Lessons I Learned From This Demo
A huge lesson I have learned, in retrospect, is how big the song sounds, yet the gear that it was created on is an absolute laugh by today's standards. We had so little room to expand, we had to be more creative and inventive in how we achieved the sound we wanted. Now, in this world of infinitely multi-tracked DAWs, it is easy to get lost in the sea of options and spend more time playing with the song than actually creating it.

Food for thought: Each and every one of us has, sitting in front of us, more audio technology than was used to produce the entire catalog of the Beatles. Yet so many home studios are used as little more than beat boxes and loop machines. Before you're tempted to dial up a preset on a VST to be your lead voice, try making a sample that is more uniquely YOUR sound. It's one way to stand out. That's what I was doing with this song back in the day. The sampled guitar, played within the tracker was unlike most of what was expected in that day and age ('91 or '92).

Drop me a line and let me know what you think of the track. What do you think works? What doesn't work for you? I can take criticism, as long as it's constructive.

G2M Giveaway - Winner Announced

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:30:00 +0000

The G2M Giveaway is over. The winner has been chosen, and the prize has been delivered to the winner.

The winner of the Sonuus G2M is Alex D. of Moreno Valley, CA. Thanks for entering, Alex, and enjoy your G2M! Due to delivery issues, a new winner is being chosen. I will update after delivery is confirmed.

The winner of the Sonuus G2M is Paula H. from Garden City, Michigan. Congratulations, Paula!

Thanks to everyone who entered!

For those who are interested, winner selection was aided by Random.org, a wonderful site for generating random selections.

Gear Giveaway: Sonuus G2M

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:00:00 +0000

I am pleased to announce our first gear giveaway on Troll Cave Music. We will be giving away one brand new Sonuus G2M Universal Guitar To MIDI Converter to a lucky visitor. (If you're not familiar, check out the Troll Cave Music review here.)

The people at Peterson Tuners were kind enough to provide the prize for this giveaway.

Rules
* Entries will be accepted by email only, between September 1, 2009, and 11:59 PM CDT on October 15, 2009.

* Giveaway is open to residents of the United States 18 and over only.

* Entries must be sent to trollcavemusic@gmail.com with "G2M Giveaway Entry" in the Subject line. The body of the email must contain your first name and a simple "Yes" or "No" as to whether you would like to be added to the Peterson Tuners email list.

* One entry per email address.

* One prize will be awarded. A brand new Sonuus G2M Universal Guitar To MIDI Converter, Approximate Retail Value $129.00.

* All submissions will be used for this giveaway only. The only entry information shared will be your email address, provided to Peterson Tuners, only if you choose to subscribe. At the conclusion of the giveaway, all submissions will be deleted.

* Potential winner will be randomly chosen from all valid submissions. Potential winner will be contacted by email within 24 hours of the close of the contest. If a response is not received within 3 days (72 hours), Troll Cave Music reserves the right to pick another potential winner in their place.

* Winners name (First and Last Initial) and City, State will be published on Troll Cave Music when eligibility has been confirmed. If the winner wants additional "bragging rights", they may optionally provide a photo for posting with the winning announcement.

Gear Review: Sonuus G2M - Universal Guitar to MIDI Converter

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:40:00 +0000

The world of digital audio is really split into two different types of signals, and it can be hard to get a handle on it for the novice home recorder. The first, audio samples, is the easiest to understand. You record something, and it is stored in a format that sounds like what was put into it, like vocals, guitar, etc. The second type is MIDI. It can be confusing, because the term MIDI is used for both the interface and the data that describes what should be played. You really don't have a lot of crossover between the two worlds, since one is the sound, the other describes how to make the sound.

The one type of crossover that we have seen in recent years is the MIDI guitar. You play it like a guitar, but it sends out MIDI signals. These signals can then be used to control something totally different - a synth, a sample player, a piano, etc. These are very cool and full of possibilities, but they are expensive and usually require a special guitar or permanent modifications to your guitar. It seems like the cool toys are out of reach for the low-cost or frugal home studio.

Enter the Sonuus G2M. Billed as a "Universal Guitar-to-MIDI Converter" and retailing for around $100, the G2M aims to fill that gap in the affordable hardware department. I had the opportunity to spend a few weeks experimenting with the G2M, and I will be sharing my experience here.

Descriptions First...
The G2M is a pretty simple box with a 1/4" Input Jack, 1/4" Thru Jack (for direct routing to your normal signal path), and a standard 5 Pin MIDI Out Jack. There is also a "Boost" switch that amplifies the signal within the G2M, in case your input level is a little low. The "Clip" LED shows when you are clipping the signal (not a bad thing in this case), which you should run your signal so you occasionally clip so you know the G2M is getting a hot enough signal to interpret correctly. However, not having a needle gauge or digital readout of the level, this is only a ballpark accuracy measure for the overall signal strength. There is also a strobe tuner function built into the power light. The slower the light flashes, the closer you are to a standard note tuning. Nice, but that's not the primary purpose of this box. The unit is powered by a 9V battery only. There is no wall wart power supply option, but this isn't a major issue since the battery life is boasted to be about 70 hours. I have played with the G2M a lot, and still haven't run my 9V down, so I tend to believe their claims in that respect.

What Are The Specs?
Note Detection Range: E2 to E6
MIDI Latency: 16 ms to 30 ms (depending on note and characteristics of input signal)

How Do You Use It?
This is possibly the simplest box to get running. Insert a 9 Volt battery, plug a guitar to the input, a MIDI cable in the output leading to a MIDI Interface, and you're in business. Set up something to respond to the MIDI signal on the other end, whether a MIDI keyboard that accepts a MIDI In, or to your DAW, with a VST plugged in and "listening". Play your guitar, and see what happens.

Does It Really Work?
Yes, it really works. I've experimented with a few instruments, and the claims are true, to a point. What's important to remember is there are a few caveats that Sonuus is very up front with making clear. First and foremost, this is MONOPHONIC ONLY. Any attempt to play chords or multiple notes at the same time will scramble the signal and confuse the G2M. This is the one major concession made by having this box sit after the guitar. Since the signal from the guitar is a blended tone of all notes currently sounding, it becomes muddled in the line, and the G2M can't separate it out. Secondly, it works best with MIDI patches/VSTS with a pitch-bend range of + or - 2 semitones. Anything more sensitive is prone to a wobble to the sound. Thirdly, playing in a higher octave will result in better tracking of your notes. Since higher octaves are thinner, sharper tones, they are interpreted more accurately than lower bass tones.

My Guitar Experiences
I was off to a bad start when I first started using the G2M. It is a good idea to read the Sonuus G2M Guide available at http://www.sonuus.com/g2m_guide.html. In the Tips & Tricks section, it explicitly identifies piano sounds as sounding strange with a warble. Not having read that yet, I started with a piano patch. It resulted in tones that we used to describe as "alien" sounds. However, once I switched to a different VST to play through, it worked great. I really enjoyed the experience of playing live through the Prophanity (currently without a web site) and Oddy-Free synths. These are both modeled after classic modular synths (the Prophet V and ARP Odyssey Mk. II). Both of these synths had amazing responses and a really nice "feel" to the sound when triggered by the G2M.

Now I must admit, I have had some difficulties with the G2M, but they have mostly been my fault as a player. I'm a rather sloppy guitarist, with a lot of excess noise coming off the other strings. The G2M picks up the additional sloppy hits, completely misunderstands them, and I get strange high notes popping into the stream, usually about 2 octaves above what I'm playing. Some palm muting at all times helps, but being a clean guitarist helps even more. I feel like I'm becoming a cleaner guitarist the more I play through the G2M.

I have also had issues with the too-accurate capturing of the notes. It tracks so well, that slight warbles in the notes are translated as pitch bend parameters that are transmitted in the MIDI path. It is this accurate detection of pitch bending that causes piano VSTs to freak out. If you really want piano, you can remove the pitch change information from the recorded MIDI. (In Reaper, you can do this in the Piano Roll. Change the bottom "levels" frame to show "Pitch". If you hold down your right mouse button and wipe across these Pitch levels, it will erase them all, and the sound will clean right up). This doesn't help live situations, but for recording, it will work.

I'm always skeptical when a piece of budget hardware claims to have a low latency, as the G2M does, with the stated 16 ms to 30 ms. I don't have an accurate bench test in my gear to determine the actual latency, except for audible comparison. I have to say that it performs similarly to both POD Farm and Guitar Rig 3, which clock in around the 30 ms total signal time. The latency is low enough that it isn't really noticeable. Of course, there is also the fact that I can't play fast & clean at the same time, so it's possible I'm not pushing the speed threshold where latency might throw you off (i.e. in speed metal shredding).

Alternate Controls
When I first heard about the G2M, my first though went to the "undocumented" options. It takes an audio input. What about other audio sources?

I have tried a Bass guitar, and it is a bad idea. Since the G2M responds best at higher pitches, the bass is mostly out of range. In my testing, I couldn't play a note lower than D on the second string of the bass. Strings 3 and 4 were completely invisible to the G2M. And what I could play was tracked very badly, with a lot of extra blips where it tried to read the harmonics as the note. Worth a try, but not worth using.

The best alternate success I have had was with a microphone. Using a moderately cheap 1/4" mic plugged through to Prophanity and Oddy-Free (in REAPER), the result was delightful. It reminded me of playing with a vocoder with the original voice 100% consumed by the rest of the sound. I also found it to be really fun to control the Delay Lama with the microphone to G2M path. For the most part, though, the more precise the sound from the VST (where all notes really sound distinct - like bells, piano, etc) the worse the performance when using a microphone. I think the human voice has so many pitch variations that it becomes a little too dynamic for the G2M.

My G2M Wish List
A few things I would have liked to see on the G2M:
* Controllable Sensitivity Range (to help sloppy players!)
* Polyphonic ability (Melodyne developed a system that can break apart chords into component notes, so it is technically possible)
* Variable boost control
* External power pack option

Final Thoughts
I really like the G2M and the possibilities it opens up for the home studio. There are definitely limitations and some performance considerations that must be made in a trial and error method (like which VSTs sound good with it), but I still think this is worth the $129 retail price for this little box. I have been listening to more experimental music lately, and this could easily find its way into the toolkit of any glitch, noise, or aggressive electronica project, especially when used as a sidekick process to a vocoder, since you can get really wild effects when you push the G2M to its limits (and beyond).

When used according to the instructions, this can be a nice tool for a guitarist if they play fairly cleanly and monophonic. I think the monophony is the greatest limitation. If you can work with that one concession, this box performs exactly as their claims. As this is the first product from Sonuus (a U.K. based company), I am eager to see what they come up with next.

Disclosure
In the interest of full disclosure, I was provided a review unit by Peterson Tuners, the exclusive distributor of the Sonuus G2M in the United States and Canada. This was a loaned unit only - I had to give it back. There have been no incentives, financial or otherwise, provided to me for this review. (i.e. I didn't get a thing from them except the opportunity to play with this gear)

Guitar Rig 3 GO - free for a limited time!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Anyone who has looked into Guitar amp and effect modelers knows that Native Instruments' Guitar Rig is one of the top players in the field. The biggest problem I have with the modeling software is that it is expensive enough that most home studios can't necessarily justify buying more than one. True, the modelers are a lot cheaper than buying the physical gear that they model, but as my regular readers know, I'm focused on the best gear for the lowest cost.

So I'm happy to share the new that for a limited time, Native Instruments has made available a free version of Guitar Rig, Guitar Rig 3 GO.

Free? What's the Catch?
As you might imagine, it's not the full version. Instead, you get a single stack of Guitar Rig components: Skreamer (distortion), Lead 800 amp, Lead 800 4x12 cabinet, and Delay Man (chorus & vibrato). Also included are the tape deck (for playing an mp3, aif, aiff, or wav file into the rig), and a tuner. Also, there are a dozen presets already in the browser. You can also create your own rigs and save them. So you're getting a single rack of Guitar Rig gear - which is pretty good, since in the real world, most of us have only one rig to play through, too.

How do I get it?
Guitar Rig 3 GO is being offered in conjunction with ESP Guitars. To get to the download, you must go to ESP Guitar's site here, and enter their contest to win an ESP Kirk Hammett LTD KH-602 guitar (MSRP $1,599.00 , street price $1,200.00). Follow the instructions to download either the PC or Mac version. They will email you the registration code and download link.

How do I use it?
Guitar Rig 3 GO comes as both a standalone and a plug-in version. When you operate in standalone mode, you can switch to a 30 minute demo of the full version of Guitar Rig 3, so you can get a good taste, if you want to upgrade. The plug-in mode (32 bit VST), works great in REAPER. Drop it on your track and go. I've used it along side POD Farm (and even in the same fx chain with POD Farm) without any problems.

How Long Does This Last?
The bad news is this promotion is only good until September 30, 2009. Be sure you go to the site and get your copy before then. Check out all the details at: http://www.espguitars.com/news/news_guitarrig.html. Make a note of the code at the bottom of the first screen. You will need that in order to get Guitar Rig 3 GO.

Troll Cave Gear

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:48:00 +0000

I've had a few questions recently about what gear I'm currently using in my studio, so I thought it was about time to give a quick breakdown on my studio equipment. I will update this list as I add or remove gear.

Guitars
Washburn Idol Series WI-64
Samick Strat (80's vintage, I think)
Daisy Rock Wildwood Artist Acoustic/Electric
Daisy Rock Mojo Jojo Guitar (for decoration, mostly)

Bass Guitar
Canvas Bass CTFB10

Microphones
Peavy PVi2 Microphone (XLR)
Battlerap.com branded microphone (1/4")
Radio Shack Realistic micphone (1/4")
3 or 4 random generic PC microphones (mini plug)

Interface Hardware
Line 6 UX1 (Blackface)
M-Audio KeyStudio 25
Steinberg USB-2-MIDI Interface (2 x 2)

Misc. Guitar Hardware
Danelectro Black Coffee Metal Distortion Pedal
Epiphone Studio 10S practice amp

Monitors
Audiovox Home Theater System (junk, but it's all I have)

Computers
Dell 3.4 GHz Hyperthreaded CPU, 3 GB RAM (primary), Win XP SP3
Compaq 1.4 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM (slave), Win XP MCE
Dell 933 Mhz CPU, 512 MB RAM (slave), Win ME

Software
REAPER (primary DAW)
Psycle (nice retro tracker)
Audacity (sample editor)
Session (junk)
MIDI-OX (great for monitoring MIDI signals)
MIDIYoke (virtual MIDI cables to connect MIDI programs)

VSTs
I have a massive collection of several hundred VSTs (all free except for POD Farm)
My current favorites are:
POD Farm
Independence Free
ShortCircuit 1
Tweakbench plugs
GTG plugs
Kjaerhus Audio Classic series
ArcDev Noise Industries plugs

If you are interested in finding out more about any of my gear (buying recommendations, reviews, etc) drop me a line.

In Memory of Matthew Schultz

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:45:00 +0000

Faithful readers, bear with me, or skip this post. There will be no tips and tricks in this post, but perhaps a few memories and food for thought in the grand scheme of things. I do feel the need to say goodbye to an old friend and pass along what I have learned about life, death, and how the choices we make affect everything. If you choose to join me, you are more than welcome. If you pass by without a glance, I understand.
On Friday, June 5, 2009, Matthew Schultz drown in the Missouri River. He was an old friend of mine, though we hadn't seen each other in a decade. He and I formed a band while I was in college and he was just out of High School. We had 3 names, as the writing and demoing process went: Wampa Spectrum, Wombat Spectrum, and Susperia. (We always preferred Wampa Spectrum, but figured if we ever released an album, George Lucas might take us down for using "Wampa".) Anyway, I was the principal songwriter with my Amiga-based studio (running OctaMED, with a Yamaha RY-30 Drum Machine and Casio CZ-101 keyboard slaved to it). He was the impetuous kid I met at work who styled himself to be somewhere between Paul Stanley and Rob Zombie - he was neither, but his voice really worked well with my writing style.

We started to cut our demo in Pumpkin Shell Studio (owned by musician extraordinaire Richard Schultz). We completed one rough demo for the song "(E)motion Violation". This has been my favorite song from my catalog for a long time. I recently began to re-make it in my current studio, because state-of-the-art home recording has come so far since that demo was cut in 1995 or 1996. I cannot continue on that project at this time. The rough mix with Matt singing will stand. I plan to release it here in the near future.

Anyway, we had compiled the songs for an EP. We had it priced out, planned out, and were going to start auditioning local guitarists to replace some of the scratch guitar samples I had used. I took a vacation, he had a change of heart during that time, and we called it quits. End of the band, end of my music for many years. We exchanged emails once in a while for a couple years, but then he disappeared for a while, and I had no idea where he was until last year. Yet I put off getting in touch with him, and now it's too late to send him an email.

So what, right?

Here's what: I went to the Memorial service his brother held for him (on the shore of the Missouri River, close to where he died). I only knew a couple people there, but most were from Matt's life after I lost touch with him. Everyone said the same basic things about him - his quest for knowledge, his drive to pursue his dreams, the way he was on a journey through life. There were Rocket Balloon Races, Belly Dancers, Singing, Glow Sticks, Drums, and a solemn sing-along of KISS' "Shout It Out Loud", all in Matt's honor.

Near the end of the memorial, I realized that the person they were talking about was not the same person I remembered. All the talk of his being on a journey, and his journey had come to an end in the river. It was then that I realized that I knew Matt at the beginning of the journey, when he was still the impetuous kid idolizing his big brother and not yet seeking answers to the big mysteries. He had grown, evolved, and pursued a life much bigger than any normal life.

And that's when I realized why learning about Matt's life in the past ten years and his untimely death shook me up so much: I could have been him. He pursued some of the same topics I myself had been studying earlier in life. He chased his dreams. I took the safe path: went to college, got a steady job with a conservative company, got married, had kids. Safe across the board.

Matt lived life boldly, and he died boldly. He left his mark on all the people he ever met. I am known as being more reliable than spontaneous. Matt's death is a wake-up call to me in a lot of ways. I know I need to live life more fully, instead of putting it on the "to do" list. Pursue my creative goals doggedly, not passively. That's not to say I'm quitting my job and running away from responsibilities. It's about unlocking the passions and the fires that burn inside. If we don't fan the flames, the dreams will die in a vacuum.

Adding a little more kindling to my "wake up call" - the day before I learned of Matt's death, I was in a car accident that left my car pretty much totaled, but somehow I walked away from with only a slightly sore arm and shoulder. (I was hit directly in the driver's side door and the car was thrown a considerable distance.) I have been living a safe life. Even when bad things happen to me, they happen to me safely.

Matt lived a spontaneous life, and a spontaneous decision to wade into the Missouri River led to his death being broadcast on the evening news. I envy Matt his choices in life. It's not often that we can see a glimpse of what we might have been had we made different choices. I have seen that alternate history of my life, in the shapshots of Matt's life. And the single biggest impression I saw of Matt's adult life is how many people he touched, and how deeply he connected with life on every level.

Although I regret not getting to see the "upgraded" Matt of the last ten years, I cannot dwell on it. I am assimilating what I can, and will move forward with more purpose in my life. I will straddle the line of the safe and the unsafe and grab for that brass ring.

I'll miss you Matt. We all will.

Gear Review: REAPER v.3.01 now available!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:20:00 +0000

REAPER has now released version 3.01, and there are some nice changes to it. There is so much new about it, it's hard to know where to start. REAPER's website (http://www.reaper.fm) also has been given a very slick overhaul that now screams "I am a serious contender!". They also appear to have raised the prices slightly (now $225 for full commercial and $60 for discounted) and gotten away from the previously confusing "commercial" vs. "non-commercial" terminology. Basically, if you use it for yourself only, as a business with less than $20K annual income, or are a educational or non-profit, you qualify for discounted pricing. And they still adamantly refuse to engage in any strange copy protection schemes. It's the honor system, folks!

My favorite new features are probably the addition of Automation lanes and the ability to have multiple MIDI items in the editor at the same time. However, there's a lot of other goodness packed into version 3. I'll try to give my take on some of the features here. The full feature list for version 3 is at http://www.reaper.fm/whatsnew-300.txt.

Automation Lanes
Automation lanes are a really nice feature that already exist in a lot of other major DAWs, so seeing REAPER add them is a great step forward to full equality. In prior versions, you could see your automation lines as overlays over the track itself. If you were trying to automate a lot of parameters on the same track, it got rather messy and I was always either having to memorize exactly where I was shifting other parameters, or when I displayed multiple lines at the same time (for reference) I was always grabbing the wrong line (i.e. changing the wrong setting). Now with Automation lanes, the automation parameter lines appear as separate sub-track "lanes" that you can display, hide, or bypass on an individual basis. With all of the parameter-heavy VSTs and VSTis out there, this is a great thing.

Edit Multiple MIDI Items
It's sometimes hard to keep track of what is going on between different MIDI tracks. Previously, to edit multiple MIDI tracks, you had to open separate MIDI windows and fiddle with the window sizes so you could get everything on screen at the same time. As of version 3, you now have options in the "Options" menu of the MIDI window named "Reuse MIDI editor for multiple items" and "Reuse MIDI editor for multiple items, keeping items as secondary". The first will just reuse the window. No big surprise there. The second one - wow. It will shade the notes and parameter settings (like velocity) for any items in the window that are not currently active. The really nice thing about this is that all MIDI items are shown in proper time-context. In other words, all notes are exactly where they should be in relation to one another. This is great for trying to harmonize different synths together - you can actually see what you're doing without a lot of trial and error. You can switch between which MIDI item is active in the window by either using the "Filter" button in the top left, or by simply clicking on a note from the item you want to edit. The clicking on a note can be problematic in a couple of ways - you can't directly write a note over the top of another MIDI item's note, since it will select that track instead of putting down a note - and you can't always see the other item's notes if the current track overlaps. But really, these are spatial issues, not UI issues. I'm loving it!

Multiple Tabbed Projects
Another exciting improvement is the ability to have multiple projects loaded at the same time. This is handled beautifully by the addition of a simple tab control at the top of the screen. Obviously, this adds load on your system as you add more simultaneous projects, but the flexibility this allows is so much better than the prior one-at-a-time design.

A Lot More...
There are so many improvements, many behind the scenes performance upgrades, it is an exhausting list to read. There are a lot of MIDI enhancements (MIDI sysex is now fully supported, for example). Ther are also quite a few general performance enhancements to make REAPER play nicer with some potentially unruly plug-ins. And a lot of memory management improvements. Bottom line: you need this upgrade. If you're not a current REAPER user, now is the perfect time to jump in and try it out. The trial version is NOT time limited or crippled in any way. You've got nothing to lose, and version 3 continues the trend of growing stronger and more powerful with each release.

Improving Your Drum Track, Part 1: Getting Started With Independence Free

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:15:00 +0000

In a home studio, it is easy to make electronica, techno, and dance tracks. There is an expected level of machine-like precision to the music. Perfectly accurate precision and artificial drum beats are readily acceptable. (Let me go on record with a disclaimer: making those forms in a home studio are easy. Making good or great tracks is another story. I am not trying to downplay the level of artistry involved. I saw Aphex Twin spin live in the mid 90's, so I can appreciate the level of complexity of the art form.)

Where it becomes much more of a challenge in the home studio is when you're trying to sound like a traditional band (guitars, bass, drums, vocals). There is some level of trickery that is required to achieve your desired sound for all of these instruments. Right now I want to focus on the difficulty of drummers. Much like Spinal Tap, I have always had a hard time keeping a drummer on call. And then you have the acoustic issues of sound isolation, excess mic bleed, having enough mics and inputs to record the whole kit, complaints from the neighbors, etc. As usual, I will be focusing on use of this within REAPER.

My Dream Drums, For Now
Years ago, I had a Yamaha RY-30 Drum Machine. Bought it used for $330 in about 1993. Like an idiot, I sold it around 1998. Now they're hard to find, but it had very sweet sounding drum kits. Their natural kits were extremely beautiful, using 16 bit samples at a time where the average home user was rocking out to 8 bit. Listening to old recordings I did with that drum machine make me once again regret having parted with it. I have been working to try to achieve the "is that a real drummer?" sound and feel using only free tools.

This is the first part of an ongoing series of posts that will be focused on the best tools I have found to "fake a drummer" and how to tweak your drum tracks to get the "real" drum feel.

Yellow Tools Independence Free
One of the best all-in-one packages I have found so far is Yellow Tools' Independence Free 2.0. As the name implies, this is the free version of their very robust sampler tool. There's a couple features disabled in this version, and the bundled sample library is "only" 2 GB of data. The "Basic" version ships with 12 GB of samples, and the "Pro" version ships with a whopping 70 GB sample library!

My initial goal is to have one or two good "natural" kits. Included in the free 2 GB library are 6 acoustic drum kits, so there are plenty of options. The kits have multiple velocity samples for each sound, so there's more detail than your average single-sample kit.

So What's Missing?
The Free version lacks a couple of major items. The most notable is the lack of ability to import your own samples. The other is the lack of ability to import 3rd party VSTs. Of course, if you're hosting this in your own DAW (like REAPER), that's not really a problem. You can add your VSTs to the chain after Independence Free, and have as many add-ons as you want. Lacking the ability to import your own samples is more of a concern if you want to branch out into custom kits. Later in this series I will tackle this issue with another tool.

How Do I Start?
You can start by going to Yellow Tools' website at http://yellowtools.com. Under their "Products" section, you can find Independence FREE. You'll have to register on their site to download it, but registration is free. All of this is detailed on the page. (Alternately, you can pick up a copy of the UK magazine "Computer Music", which comes with a DVD that includes the "Independence Free CM Edition". Same thing, with an extra logo on the UI. You will still have to register on the site & download the instrument files separately, however.)

When you install it, the installation location is for the standalone app only. It will prompt you separately for the location for the VST. Either install in with your other VSTs, or add a path in REAPER's VST configuration screen to find it. Either way, the next time you boot REAPER, you should see a new entry in FX "VSTi: Independence Free (Yellow Tools) (24 out)"

Starting Simple
To start a simple track in REAPER, open a new project. Insert Independence Free as a VST, and then open it. Your first view is probably going to be overwhelming. This is a very complex and sophisticated interface. Since we're starting simple, look for the layer controls. There will be a highlighted item that says "01 click here to load instrument". When you click on it, you will get a popup menu. Select "Load Layer". When the standard file requestor opens, navigate to the "Independence Free - Instruments" folder, and then into "01 Acoustic & Electronic Drum Kits". The .ytil files are the ones you care about. Select "Acoustic Drum Kit 1.ytil", and click "Open". Now your Drum Kit is ready for you on MIDI channel 1.

If you want to hear the sounds in this "layer", click on the "Mapping" button at the top of the VST's display. You will get a piano key layout, with colored bars representing the samples. If there are breaks in the line, that represents different samples used for different velocity ranges. As you can see in this kit, there are 11 velocities for B1 and C1, which are your kick drums. You can play the samples on the keyboard by clicking on them, but it is not going to be easy to trigger at varying velocities that way. It's easier using REAPER to control it.

Close the FX chain window and insert a "New MIDI Item" in the track where you set up Independence Free. Hit some notes, and you'll hear your new drum kit. How simple is that?

Ummm....What Happened To My Octave?
The first thing you might notice when you compare Independence Free to REAPER's piano roll is that the octave notations don't match. What Independence Free calls C1, REAPER calls C2. This is a common problem across music apps, because of differences in opinion on what octave is considered to contain middle C. You have 2 options: make a mental note of this difference, or reconfigure REAPER to honor the offset.

To reset REAPER to use the same notation as Independence Free, go to Options->Preferences->Media->MIDI. The option "MIDI octave name display offset: 0 octaves". Change the value to -1. Now REAPER will call the notes the same as Independence Free. This change only affects the labeling in REAPER's piano roll. The same/correct MIDI note numbers will be used regardless of this setting.

What Now?
Start experimenting with the kits available and see how good the samples are. Be sure to vary the velocities, so you can get the full impact of the multi-sampled drums. So far I've been quite happy with the kits in Independence Free. Keep in mind that this is a sampler tool, NOT a drum machine. Look at all the other instruments that come bundled with it. They are of equally high quality and very useful in their own right.

Up Next...
In Part 2, we will go into more features and uses of Independence Free as a drum machine, including adding effects, using multiple ins and outs to minimize CPU usage, and some other random tweaks.

Site Review: Tank-FX.com

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 02:25:00 +0000

In any reasonably priced studio (home or pro), one of the elusive sounds is reverb. Sure, there are any number of free reverb effects available, both software and hardware, but they all fall a little short of the ideal mark: real echoes in a real environment. Sure, you can get those echoes by recording vocals in a bathroom (a la Jim Morrison), but that is really impractical for most reverb needs. Some effects are getting closer (like convolution reverb) but there is a lot of CPU power you'll eat in a hurry when you use one.

I have recently found a German site that is a really fresh take on the problem of reverb. Tank-FX (http://www.tank-fx.com) is a site with a unique claim - they will play your sample in a concrete water tank and record the resulting sound. As their subtitle says, it is "Non-Virtual Reverb".

The Tank
My apologies if I get any of these details wrong - the details on the site are only in German, and I'm at the mercy of a semi-garbled translation by Babelfish. The tank itself is part of the Oberhausener train station, built in 1932, and was originally built to hold water that was used to refill steam locomotives. This tank is massive - 11 meters (36 feet) tall, 7m (23 feet) in diameter. Look around the site (especially the tab "aufbau", which translates as "structure") for pictures of the tank that they're using. Massive. Somehow, the operators of the site were able to get the permission to install speakers on the bottom of the tank and suspend microphones in the top of the tank. This is all wired to a Unix server, and suddenly you have a new FREE reverb toy online.

How To Use It?
This is really simple to use. Click the red "Record Sample" button at the top of the screen, and you get a clever rack-mount style interface. Samples are by default Normalized, but you can skip this with the "Bypass Normalize" button. Output format is selectable as MP3, FLAC, or Ogg-Vorbis formats. You also select you Wet/Dry mix.

When you hit the "Record" button, you are taken to another screen where you Browse to select your upload file. Uploaded files must be WAV files. This seems odd, since you can't get the output back as a WAV file, but we can still work with it. In a non-user friendly move, the "Do It" button is instead labeled "Submit Query". Then you wait for it to do its job and it gives you a file back that you can do a "Save as..." to save locally.

My Experiences So Far
I've been playing with Tank-FX for a couple days, and the results are pretty good, with a few words of caution. First, I have had mixed results when using any wet/dry mix. It seems that even a 50/50 mix causes the dry to seriously overpower the wet. I think the much lower levels of the wet sound are not properly compensated for in their mixing routines.

I have also found that as of this writing, the right channel is basically dead. You get a wash of static and only a faint trace of the sound. This was done with 100% wet signal, so you can hear the tank by itself. It's fairly simple to pull the MP3 output into Audacity and split the channels (and discard the right channel), and the sound really jumps out at you.

My recommendation is to run everything at 100% wet, strip the right channel, and mix it back to the original either in Audacity or within your DAW.

I have also seem on their comments board some people have gotten unwelcome environmental sounds back in their samples. Mostly banging, most likely from construction or other heavy equipment in the general area. This seems to be more of a problem if you're running sounds during the daytime (in Germany) and not a problem if you're running during German night hours. Do a little time research, and you should be fine.

Limitations
The limitations on the Tank-FX site are fairly few. You have to upload in WAV only. The file cannot be more than 60 seconds. Output in MP3, FLAC, or Ogg-Vorbis only. The space is a single defined BIG space, so you're only getting BIG reverb.

Yet, it would seem that all of these limitations still beat the heck out of digital fake-reverb if you're going for the big hall reverb sound. Of course, this is not the type of reverb you'd want to put your whole track through, but for enhancing a specific instrument, voice, or sound bite, this is a great option.

Wrap-up
I honestly think Tank-FX is one of the coolest net freebies I have ever come across. The limitations are really a lot less than your average free VST's limitations. And there is no "this is nice, but how about pay for more options" angle that we have all grown so accustomed to seeing. Check it out and give them praise on their board. This is one site that deserves to get some positive credit.

Sell Your Childhood, Buy Your Future

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 04:37:00 +0000

As I have worked on building my home studio, the one question I have kept coming back to is the ultimate issue of cost. As long-time readers know by now, my desire is to get the best studio for as little money as possible. I think most (if not all) aspiring musicians start with the same basic idea: I will invest money now, and make my money back when my album is released and sells a million copies (or a hundred copies, for those who set their sights more realistically.) The main problem is that it doesn't always work that way. We spend a little. And then a little more. Eventually, we have a studio that cost as much as a car, and we still haven't made a dime on the album we are still working on. I'm there with you, brothers and sisters. Recently I've been on a budgeted buying binge. (I apologize for the excessive alliteration there. It couldn't be helped.)

Sell First...
So what is my advice? Sell Your Stuff. I don't mean sell your studio gear - that will be worth its weight in gold when you finally release your album on iTunes. But we all have various and sundry things we have been collecting (intentionally or otherwise) over the years, and we don't really need it all, do we?

In the modern age, when we talk about selling, we are inevitably talking about two places: eBay or craigslist. I'm personally not a fan of the whole free-for-all that is craigslist, so I avoid it. But eBay is a great place to sell your extra stuff. Look around your home. I'm sure you can find any number of things you wouldn't miss if they were to find a new home. Outdated video games you haven't touched in years. Old, out of print books. CDs, especially boxed sets. Old computer hardware. Seriously, there's a market for everything on eBay.

Since I began trying to tip the financial scales toward breaking even (in the last month), I have sold enough items to almost completely pay for my current studio gear. And there's not a single item I've sold that I will ever miss. The biggest question to ask yourself is which is more important: making the best music you can, or holding on to that Playstation 1 game that hasn't been played in 8 years? I can't answer for you, but for me the answer is a resounding MUSIC!

...Then Buy
Of course, it's not just about getting people to pay way too much for your old junk. It's also a great way to get the gear you want cheaply. You need to be a little smart about what you buy, but you can find some great deals. For example, I got a great deal on a new Canvas Bass Guitar for $71.00 (with free shipping) recently. Even buying a entry-level Bass from a traditional retailer will set you back twice that. (Side note: I'm loving the Canvas Bass, model CTFB10. I'm not really a bassist, but it plays exceptionally well and the pickups have a great tone. But I digress.)

Buyer Cautions
There's a few things to keep in mind if you're buying music gear on eBay, or from any second-hand establishment for that matter.

1) Beware Fakes - If you can buy a $1,000.00 guitar for $50.00, it's a fake. There is no way you're getting a real 70's Gibson Les Paul for under a grand. Period. If you're not sure, Google it and compare photos to see if anything looks wrong - especially detail like logos and designs on the headstock. That's where a lot of the fakes get the visible details wrong.

2) Buy economy - Buying lesser known brands is often better, since there is almost no profit margin in making fake versions of $200.00 guitars.

3) Beware Used Software - If you're buying gear than includes software, make sure it isn't something that requires a registered serial number with the maker, or you might be SOL. Used gear tends to be already registered to the prior owner. So if you buy a Line 6 UX1, for example, you must be the owner registered with Line 6, or you may be prevented from downloading Pod Farm (or GearBox) software. Personally, these are items I will only buy new in box because the headache isn't worth saving $20 on an already reasonably priced piece of gear.

4) Make Sure It's Compatible - If it's recording hardware, you can get screaming deals - just make sure it's compatible. A good example is the wonderful MOTU hardware. The older, non-Firewire hardware is still great gear. But it needs a PCI card interface. Many of the auctions I've seen on eBay include the MOTU PCI-324 card, which runs on a different voltage level than most modern PCI slots, so it won't work. You'll need the PCI-424 card, which if you are the registered owner, you can buy direct from MOTU for $295. Or buy one on eBay for slightly less than that. So a screaming deal on an original MOTU-2048 is dampened considerably if you have to shell out another $300. to make it work on your system. You MUST do your homework to avoid getting the shaft on these "good deals".

5) Buy From Established Sellers - If a seller has a lower feedback rating, I'm always a little nervous, even if it is all positive. You never know how serious they are. Now, if they have a 100+ feedback score, you know that is a much more serious seller, and more likely to be treating their transactions as a business.

6) Does it pass the Sniff Test? This goes back to #1 above. If the deal is too good to be true, it might be. If something feels wrong about the seller, move on. (I made that mistake once - and 3 weeks later I'm still in limbo as to whether I'm ever going to get the item.)

Bottom Line
Yes, I know this post is probably coming across as an eBay advocacy lesson. Probably so, since I'm spending a lot of free time working with eBay, and I'm getting sucked into its vortex more each day. But at the end of the day, I know that auctions are short-term commitments. If you lose your motivation to sell, and want to get focused back on music, you can be free and clear within a week, with no lingering after-effects like other "make money now" schemes.

As all of us struggling to get our music made properly in our home studios know, there is almost always someone who is keeping tally of how much we're spending on our gear. Wife, mother, husband, child, landlord, collection agency, etc. The only way we can dig ourselves out of the bottomless pit that is our home studio is to offset the expenses with an income. And I, for one, am willing to sell my childhood for a new pair of reference monitors. I'll keep selling until I get what I need. Of course, if you have a spare set of KRK Rokits that you'd care to donate to the Troll Cave, drop me a line. I'm always open to donations.

POD Farm supports REAPER...finally

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:15:00 +0000

The music-makers have finally been heard! As of the Pod Farm 1.03 update, the POD Farm plugin now works in hosts that use a 64-bit VST engine. This includes REAPER. So now we not only can skip the whole "VST wrapper" annoyance, it also means we can now access the Automation parameters in Pod Farm. Yes, we can finally "knob twiddle" POD Farm from within REAPER.

There is a big learning curve on the automation, however. I say this because every possible parameter appears in REAPER, whether it is in the current effects chain or not. Since POD Farm allows you to have 2 effects paths at the same time, this means there is also 2 of everything. Users with lower screen resolutions might have some difficulty in REAPER, since they all appear in a single window.

Even so, this update means that POD Farm users can finally get the full power while using REAPER. You can get the update by using the Line 6 Monkey to update your software.

Gear Review: Line 6 Pod Studio UX1

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:25:00 +0000

If you've been reading here for a while, you know that my previous guitar recording interface, the Lightsnake, had some serious limitations and generally left me pretty unhappy with the results. I can say now that the Lightsnake has been retired, and has been replaced with a Line 6 POD Studio UX1. After playing with it for about a week, I think I've seen enough to give it a proper review.

The Hardware
To kick things off, let's look at the box itself. The UX1 connects via USB, and all power is handled through the USB cable - no additional power supply needed. On the front of the box, there are 3 ports; one XLR jack, one 1/4" unbalanced instrument input, and a 1/4" headphone jack. On top of the box are a power light and 2 knobs: Mic Gain and Output. No big surprises in the function of each of those items. The back of the unit has jacks for two 1/4" analog outputs, two 1/4" Line Inputs, one 1/4" Stereo Monitor line in, as well as the USB socket.

As you might imagine, you can record from any of the inputs, except the Stereo Monitor line in - that acts as a pass-through for anything you want to show up in the mix but not be part of the "recordable" input.

Sound Card
Oh, did I mention it functions as a complete sound interface, including output? That's right. It comes with its own ASIO driver which you can easily tap into with most any audio software that supports ASIO. When I connected REAPER to the "ASIO UX1", then ALL of my audio output from REAPER was directed at the UX1. I have read where this can be confusing if you don't think about what you're doing, but it's a good thing. In my case, I have a moderately cheap sound card in my PC. With this, I don't really have to worry about upgrading that card, since I'm bypassing it for my audio work.

Latency? We Don't Need No Steenking Latency...
One admirable trait of the UX1 is that it is able to pass through the input audio to the output WITHOUT waiting for the PC to handle it directly. This gives you effectively zero latency in the monitors, even if you have a relatively high latency setting in the ASIO driver itself.
From my testing on an existing project, I have reduced the slips and stutters in my system from being a frequent occurrence to flawless audio by incorporating the UX1 into my setup.

Is It Clean?
If you read my review of the Lightsnake, you'll know it was a dirty, dirty interface, with odd pulses of interference and general noise. The UX1 suffers from NONE of those problems. Line 6 boasts a greater than 100 dB signal to noise ratio, and I believe it. Running the same spectrographs on the signal from the UX1 yielded a much cleaner signal, with a slight noise level in the lowest extremes of the graph, but nothing audible and it was a steady baseline, so it essentially vanishes when you record.

Bundled Software
The POD Studio UX1 comes bundled with 3 programs: Riffworks T4, Ableton Live Lite 7 Line 6 Edition, and POD Farm. I haven't played with Riffworks yet, and I already know that Ableton is a very cut-down version of that program, supposedly tailored to the hardware bundled with it. Considering this is stripped even further than the LE version, I'm not too interested in it. POD Farm is where the real second stage fun comes in.

POD Farm
POD Farm replaces the former Gearbox software that used to be bundled with Line 6 interfaces. The idea and many of the features are the same, but POD Farm has a much slicker interface. POD Farm includes a stunning array of software models of amps, effects, and cabinets that you plug together in a very obvious signal chain on screen. These are mostly based on real gear, including Marshall's JCM-800, Fender's Deluxe Reverb, and even the Orange AD30TC. They give cute names in the program, but they are very forthcoming on what the sounds are modeled after on their web site. Anyway, you have pretty much the gauntlet of gear to work with - certainly more than the home studio could ever hold much less afford - and there are additional model packs available to buy from Line 6 in case you are craving more gear. While more options are always better, I'm sure what I have will more than meet my tonal needs for quite some time to come. POD Farm also allows you to break your signal into dual signal chains, so you can get some really powerful and wild sounds going.

Playing Standalone
POD Farm works great as a standalone program. It gives you some nice options - like sending not only the fully processed signal out (to your DAW), but also sending the unprocessed/raw signal out (to your DAW) at the same time. So you can record the completely dry signal at the same time you record it fully effected, and also be pushing the signal out to your studio monitors via the 1/4" outputs in back. I'm loving it!

Playing As A Plug-in
Pod Farm as a plug-in needs a little work at this point. As of this writing, POD Farm 1.02 is the current version, and it has a problem in about half of the major DAWs on the market. Apparently, if your DAW has a 64-bit plug-in host (and no 32-bit host as a fall-back), then POD Farm will crash. Yes, REAPER is one of those affected. The workaround to this is to use a VST Wrapper to act as a middle-man between REAPER and POD Farm. I've been using ACON's EffectChainer, and it works OK, but you are left with the inability to use any Automation ("knob twiddling") on anything inside POD Farm, since the DAW can only see the EffectChainer, not POD Farm itself. Line 6 has posted in their forums that this issue has been logged and is on the "to do" list. Hopefully this problem is resolved soon, since "knob twiddling" is often needed.

Standalone and Plug-in Together
I like to use both versions together. I record through the standalone version into REAPER (monitoring the processed signal and recording the dry signal) and having a plugin on the recorded track with the plug-in version of POD Farm replicating what I was doing with the standalone version. This gives me the flexibility to change the sound after recording, but not having to rely on just hearing the dry tone while playing. In this fashion I can also record the wet signal at the same time, so it gives you a lot of configuration possibilities.

Tone Port vs. POD Studio
If you've looked around, there is a TonePort UX1 as well as a POD Studio UX1. The hardware is exactly the same, except the TonePort has a red faceplace and the POD Studio has a black faceplate. The only real difference is in the bundled software. If you have a TonePort, it comes bundled with the standalone version of GearBox, you can upgrade for free to the standalone version of POD Farm, but you'll have to buy the plug-in version of POD Farm. Both versions (standalone and plug-in) of POD Farm come bundled with the POD Studio. To save yourself time, I'd suggest the POD Studio UX1 over the TonePort UX1, not only because it will save you some time, but also because the black faceplate looks much cooler than the red.

Bottom Line
The bottom line is that you owe it to yourself to buy a POD Studio UX1 (or the big brothers UX2 and UX8). The Line 6 POD Studio UX1 is a simple box with a simple purpose - which is does amazingly well. It sells new for around $149.99 at most shops, and it is fabulous. The hardware is solid and very clean, and the software so thoroughly exceeds my expectations that I am becoming inspired by the wide variety of tonal possibilities. The only difficulty I've found at this point is that POD Farm offers so many options, I'm spending more time fiddling with new sounds and not enough actual work on recording. If you need to record audio, you need one of these. Trust me.

Welcome to 2009, it's nicer here.

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:26:00 +0000

The Troll Cave fell into a lull in December, in case you missed me. Between a lingering illness and the general insanity of the Thanksgiving through New Year's holiday season, there hasn't been much time for music. That should change in the coming weeks, as I have some new gear on its way, including a Line 6 POD Studio UX1 interface. I'll be posting a thorough review of it soon.

Also in the works for the months ahead are VST reviews/recommendations, a ReaMote tutorial (slaving other computers to take some of the load off REAPER), and how to wrap a cranky plugin to work where it doesn't want to.

Thanks for keeping up with me - drop me a line (send an e-mail, post a comment, etc) if there are other topics you want me to cover. I'll give it my best shot!

Gear/Site Review: Hobnox AudioTool

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 05:47:00 +0000

I'm not really sure if this is technically gear to be reviewed or a web site with a cool app. I think it's a little of both. What I'm talking about is an online app that gives you the look, feel, and control of old school electronic music making. What I'm talking about is the Hobnox AudioTool.

Who are they?
Hobnox is a site that focuses on collaboration between artists and is very much centered on the collaborative spirit of the whole "Web 2.0" thing. There's a lot of content on their site, and it ranges from simple to inspiring to a plain waste of bandwidth.

What is it?
The Hobnox AudioTool is a simple point and click interface that simulates a number of major electronic instruments - the TB-303 bass synth, the TR-808 drum machine, and the TR-909 drum machine. You also have a host of other effects pedals to use - everything from compressors, flangers, delays, gates, EQs, Reverb - all standard stomp box effects are here. You also have a 16 channel mixer, a master output control, and signal splitters and mergers. That's a lot of gear to play with.

How do you use it?
The Hobnox AudioTool is extremely simple to use to get started. You connect up wires in the signal paths you want, and let the machines run. Sound simple? It is...if you know the machines. For those of us spoiled by the current style of DAWs to put our music together, this is going to be a completely alien experience. There is no central handler for the patterns in any of these machines. (Yes, you can make the 303 trigger from an external source, but it's still not "true" control, is it?) You build each pattern in each machine, and control them by turning the correct knob. The machines seem to be fairly accurate simulations of the originals, though the 808 doesn't have that unholy deep subsonic bass that the original was notoriously famous for.

No, Really, How Do I Use It?
If you really want to be serious about how to make something "real" with it, you will probably want to Google for programming guides for the TR-808, TR-303, and TR-909. These machines are so popular that there are a wealth of resources on how to use them. I'm not that old school, so I prefer the "what happens when I do this" school of thought. Nothing comes out planned, but it always comes out fresh.

What Can I Do Besides Play Around?
The Hobnox AudioTool includes a recorder function that allows you to record your "performance". It is saved under your Hobnox account (a clever way to encourage you to register on their site). So if you want to get all "old school" with your music, you can build your fantasy machine here, record it, and merge it into another project later on. The files are compressed with a Vorbis encoder, so you may need to convert the output file to another format, depending on your project needs.

Final Thoughts
According to the news on the site, this latest version (which is still listed as a BETA) has a lot of under the hood enhancements that will allow them to (in the future) give users the ability to create new synthesizers and effects. This sounds promising, but it also sounds like they are trying to get people sucked into the vortex of building add-ons for this toy/tool/thing. While I'm all in favor if user-developed content, it seems a little silly to have everything built from scratch for this system. Now what would be really great is if they would develop a VST host into the site, so users could plug in their freeware VSTs. That would give the Hobnox AudioTool a lot more flexibility and value.

As it is, Hobnox AudioTool is a cool toy. It is definitely one of the most advanced audio toys built on a Flash platform to date. It is definitely worth playing with at least once.

Check it out at:
http://www.hobnox.com/audiotool.1046.en.html

Happy Thanksgiving!

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:00:00 +0000

While I was getting ready for the Thanksgiving Day feast, it dawned on me that of all the holidays in the United States, Thanksgiving is the only major holiday without its own soundtrack. I don't know why this is, but it seems odd to me.

Christmas Music is a genre unto itself. Valentine's Day has any romantic songs as an appropriate soundtrack. St. Patrick's Day is the traditional stomping ground of any bawdy singalongs. New Year's Eve is filled with songs of reminisce, with "Auld Lang Syne" as the benchmark against which all others are judged. Even Independence Day, Veteran's Day, and Memorial Day have the canvas of patriotic songs that have been deemed "correct".

Yet Thanksgiving only has a few odd novelty songs that really don't do it justice, like Adam Sandler's "Thanksgiving Song". Why haven't we ever found a voice for Thanksgiving? Perhaps it has become so overshadowed by Christmas that nobody cares much about the spirit of Thanksgiving being expressed in song. We gorge ourselves on food, watch some TV, and get up before dawn the next day to fight the crowds and start our Christmas shopping in unison like so many lemmings racing off a cliff, leaving Thanksgiving as a faint memory of having extra time off work.

So what should Thanksgiving sound like? How do you express overeating, football, and the sneak preview of the family stress to come at Christmas? What suits it? Intimately happy songs like Christmas carols? Songs of gluttony and excess? Teen pop? Today the Jonas Brothers performed at a halftime show, which was strikingly odd - they were playing while surrounded by the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders. It was jarring, but was it Thanksgiving music?

We need to find a voice for Thanksgiving. What does it sound like to you?

Gear Review: Make Your Own Noise With SynthEdit

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 17:00:00 +0000

There is one major reason for the explosion of freeware VSTs available on the web: SynthEdit. If you've never heard of SynthEdit, you've no doubt been the beneficiary of the program. There are a huge number of plug-ins available that were designed with this program, many without any evidence that they were built in SynthEdit. And it's fairly easy to make it work.

What Is It?
SynthEdit, developed by Jeff McClintock, is labeled a "Modular Synthesizer" for Windows. Using a graphic interface, with a "connect the wires" interface, you can create pretty much any plug-in you desire, from a synth to an effects unit, or any sort of hybrid thing you can imagine. It also includes a Save-As-VST function that allows you to use anything you built in any VST host (pretty much any DAW).

How Does It Work?
Written in C++, SynthEdit comes with a battery of component types, ranging from oscillators, filters, math functions, MIDI controllers, memory functions, as well as a host of sliders, knobs, and other control objects. Every object has inputs and/or outputs, color-coded by the type of connection it needs. By connecting up wires between components, you are essentially doing the same thing on-screen that you would be doing with wires and solder if you were building a machine in the physical world. Except here you don't have to worry about causing damage from connecting the wrong bits together.

Is It Really That Easy?
Yes and No. First, it takes some time to figure out what the various pieces and parts do, and how to control them. Thankfully, there are a few examples (and links to more on the SynthEdit web site) to help get you started. I took a stab at following the instructions for the 3-Oscillator Synth posted under "Building Tips" on the web site. It was a good starter tutorial that let you start building simply, and then adding pieces one section at a time.

I say it is also NOT that easy, because there is such a range of options available with the initial download that it wasn't immediately obvious what they did and/or how to use them. (To be honest, some of them are still so foreign to me I haven't the foggiest idea how to use them) I would be willing to bet if you know something more advanced that I do about audio electric design, you'll probably be able to get more use out of it that I have so far.

Help! How do I...
The included Help files are absolutely wonderful. It gives straightforward answers to how to use the program and the features, though in some cases you might need to do some web searching to figure out the theory behind the uses. For the most part, if you are patient and read thoroughly in the help files you can get the explanations you need.

The SynthEdit Community
SynthEdit appears to have a very good community following. Their Yahoo Group has activity pretty much every day, with bug reports and feature requests usually answered within a few hours or so by Jeff McClintock himself. It is always a good sign when the developer is actively interacting with the users, which is something that a lot of the "big box" companies lack.

There is also a lot of sharing going on. Users post new bits of code and new modules they are working on all the time. Chances are fairly good that you can find extra pieces or examples of things you can learn from by looking at the files posted on the Yahoo Group.

For The Hardcore...
If you are a C++ programmer and want to design your own modules for SynthEdit, there is an SDK available on the site. This allows you to "roll your own" to enhance and expand SynthEdit to whatever level you want to take it. This add-on functionality really enhances the option, especially with the active user community.

Alas, It Is Not Free...
Keep in mind, though, that SynthEdit is not a free program. It is shareware. The trial version has some limits (number of patches allowed, only 2 outputs, etc) and has "SynthEdit" plastered all over it. (The registered version will let you remove all traces of SynthEdit, and even let you add your own nag screen to your plug-ins) The registration fee, currently a modest $50, is very reasonable for a program of this quality. The trial is not time limited, so you can give it a good test drive before you decide to buy it.

Bottom Line
Between the quality of the program, the depth of options, the sheer quantity of user-created modules you can use to enhance the program, the great developer support, and the ability to make your own VSTs, it would be hard to argue against this program being a great value. The true deciding factor is how much time and dedication you want to spend on learning to build your own machines. It could be pretty consuming, but the end result is probably worth your while.

You can get it from the official site at http://www.synthedit.com.

Where is My Cowbell? (a.k.a. General MIDI Drum Assignments)

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:00:00 +0000

When you are first beginning to use Drum VSTs, it sometimes comes as a shock when try to actually find the notes that trigger the sounds. This is primarily because drums are attached to individual notes (unlike a synth that you can play up and down the range). It is also because not all Kits are created equal. Most freeware drum VSTs only offer support for a standard 8 drum kit, sometimes more, sometimes less. This makes the game of "find my drum triggers!" even harder, if you're just hunting and pecking.

General MIDI standards
Fortunately for us, this has been a problem from the early days of MIDI music. The General MIDI standard was developed in 1991, and expanded in 1999. In a nutshell, the General MIDI standard included several pieces, most notably the assignments of specific instrument assignments to specific bank slots. So, for example, instrument 10 is always a Glockenspiel on an instrument that adheres to the General MIDI standard.

Drum Standards
For the mostly software-based home studio, most of the General MIDI standard doesn't impact too much, since we are more likely to have pieces that are custom-written specialized for out gear. The portion that I think is more important is the General MIDI Drum Standards. According to the standard, Drums should always be on MIDI Channel 10 (and 11 if you have 2 kits in use at the same time). Even more useful is that specific drum sounds are identified by specific note numbers. Notes 35 to 81 are identified as very specific sounds.

Why Should We Care?
Simply put, it allows you to swap out full drum kits without having to tweak your music. If we didn't follow a common standard, that means to change from one drum VST to another might require you to re-write all the drum parts to connect the entered notes in your DAW to the actual notes the new VST wants. By using General MIDI Drum Assignments, everything is much more portable. And easier to find the sounds you're looking for. (In the piano roll in most DAWs, you should have the option to see "named notes" or "note numbers", so you can see exactly where these sounds should trigger from.)

General MIDI Drum Note Assignments
35 Bass Drum 2
36 Bass Drum 1
37 Side Stick
38 Snare Drum 1
39 Hand Clap
40 Snare Drum 2
41 Low Tom 2
42 Closed Hi-hat
43 Low Tom 1
44 Pedal Hi-hat
45 Mid Tom 2
46 Open Hi-hat
47 Mid Tom 1
48 High Tom 2
49 Crash Cymbal 1
50 High Tom 1
51 Ride Cymbal 1
52 Chinese Cymbal
53 Ride Bell
54 Tambourine
55 Splash Cymbal
56 Cowbell
57 Crash Cymbal 2
58 Vibra Slap
59 Ride Cymbal 2
60 High Bongo
61 Low Bongo
62 Mute High Conga
63 Open High Conga
64 Low Conga
65 High Timbale
66 Low Timbale
67 High Agogo
68 Low Agogo
69 Cabasa
70 Maracas
71 Short Whistle
72 Long Whistle
73 Short Guiro
74 Long Guiro
75 Claves
76 High Wood Block
77 Low Wood Block
78 Mute Cuica
79 Open Cuica
80 Mute Triangle
81 Open Triangle

Closing Thoughts
These are only applicable to instruments that adhere to the GM Standard. Not everyone honors the standard, and there are variations created by plug-in makers who are apparently blissfully unaware that they are making something completely incompatible with any existing drum standard. There are also a number of other accepted formats (mostly pricey "pro" kits) that don't necessarily adhere to the GM Standard. Keep an eye for GM Standards-compliant packages while building your discount studio. It will make transitions a lot easier, and you will always know where your cowbell is. (It's note 56, in case you missed it.)

REAPER Tutorial: Multi-Out Drum Tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Paul) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 05:02:00 +0000

One of the hardest parts of a home studio to "get right" is the drums (unless you happen to really be a drummer). In a world of free and/or cheap tools it is hard to find a good virtual drum kit that gives you the options needed to get a solid drum sound and have the ability to mix the drums off into separate channels.

With most free drum VST instruments, if you want to be able to treat each drum separately (i.e. if you wanted to do something like add some extra reverb to ONLY the bass drum), you would be forced to use multiple instances of a standard drum VST, and program each drum sound as a separate instrument. This causes 2 problems: it increases your processing overhead by running 8 or more versions of the same VST (eating your CPU power like candy), and it is really hard to lock in your drum pattern when you're dealing with so many separate MIDI tracks feeding the sound of your drums. Notice I said "most free drum VST instruments"?

GTG Drum Sampler I
GTG makes some absolutely wonderful drum sampler VSTs (and some pretty good synths, too). Most of them feature a stereo out, but the GTG_DrumSampler I features a total of 9 outputs; 1 main output and 8 individual outputs for each piece of the drum kit. The UI has a nice picture of a Drum Kit, and the drums vibrate when they are played, which is a frill, but it's a nice touch.
Configure Your Outputs
First we want to configure the track itself for the drums. Since we know GTG Drum Sampler I has a total of 9 outputs (8 for individual drums), we will need to reconfigure our track for 8 channels. On the track where you want the drums, click on the "io" button on the left of the track panel. This will open the routing window for that track. There is a field in the top left labeled "Track Channels". This usually defaults to 2. Change that to 8.

Configure the Drums
Now that we've expanded the channels that this track will control, let's go to the UI of the DrumSampler I. In the top right of the window, there is a button labeled "9 Outputs". Click this to get the routing matrix for the drum kit. You will get REAPER's attempt to do what you want, which is a stair-step appearance, and completely useless as it is. It is useless because as is you will ONLY hear the bass drum. Here is where the labels take some getting used to. If you just want to hear all the drums together, you need to fill in the boxes for outputs 2 through 9 across the top row (Channel 1). This will play all the sounds through the left channel.

For our purposes, we want all the drums isolated. So instead, let's make the routings in this order: 2->Channel 1; 3->Channel 2; 4->Channel 3;etc. Your routing diagram should look like the one shown here:

This configuration means that the first drum (bass drum) will be output on channel 1, the second instrument (snare drum) will be output on channel 2, and so forth. To see a complete list of the outputs, click on the INFO text in the to middle of the Drum Sampler interface, and it will change to a drum assignment listing. With the way it interfaces with REAPER, these numbers are 1 below the way the output is numbered in REAPER. (BD = 1 actually comes out on output 2, according to REAPER's routing).

Make the Targets
Now we need to make the target tracks for all the drums to go to. We will need 8, and you should probably name them according to the drum to avoid confusion later on. In order, they are: Bass Drum, Snare Drum, HiHat, Tom High, Tom Mid, Tom Low, Cymbal Crash, Cymbal Ride. These new tracks will be IN ADDITION to the track that you have the drum kit installed on.

Lock The Feeds
Now that we have the channels isolated, and somewhere to send them to, we need to enable the sends. Go back to your original Drum pattern track, and click the "io" button again. The first thing we want to do is disconnect this track from the master. We do this because we only care about the drums coming through the individual channels, not from this pattern directly. Disconnect this by removing the check mark from the "Master/Parent Send" option in the top left of the window.

Now click on the drop-down "Add New Send", and select the track you named "Bass Drum". This will create a new block in the window about the send to the track named "Bass Drum". Below the sliders are a couple of drop-downs labeled "1/2 => 1/2". These are channel numbers, and it defaults to paired sends. "1/2=> 1/2" means "send channels 1 and 2 from this track to tracks 1 and 2 on the track I'm sending it to". In our case, we know that the Bass Drum is on Channel 1, since that's what we set up on the Output Routing in the VST. So change the FIRST "1/2" to "1". We will leave the target as "1/2", because that will put the drum as a stereo track in the target track. That's all we need to configure this send.

Now go back to the drop-down "Add New Send", and select the next track, "Snare Drum". Go to the new section it created, and change the send to "2=>1/2" so we send channel 2 to the Snare Drum track. Repeat this process for each of the drums.

Try It Out
That's it! Now insert a new "Empty MIDI Item" on your original drum track, and build a drum pattern. As it plays, you will notice that the mixer controls will show that the levels are coming from the individual drums as they are hit. Build a pattern with all the drums, and play it in a loop. Now you can start playing with adjusting the levels on each drum individually, as well as adding "fx" to individual drums (like the reverb on the bass drum example).

This is a fairly simple example, but by using simple track sends, you can also simulate mic bleed between drums (by adding a send between the drum tracks, with very low volume), among other ideas.

Other Notes
I should also mention that this wonderful drum kit comes with a pretty decent single kit of drum sounds. As far as a standard drum kit, they drum samples that come pre-loaded are pretty solid and will work great for quick drums without the need to sift through samples to build a kit. If you don't like the sounds, you can still load your own through the interface.

Also, the one drawback to using this drum VST is that you are limited to an 8 piece traditional setup. So if you want a double-bass kit, heavy cymbals, extra toms, etc., then you'll need to either use multiple instances of this VST with alternate drums, or upgrade to more serious software. But for simple drum tracks, it's still a great place to start.