Joel Sutton Music

Learning about Dimension Pro

2009-06-29T13:47:00.006+10:00

Over the last couple of weeks I've been spending a lot of time getting to know the Dimension Pro virtual synthesizer (by Cakewalk). I purchased it a few months ago after being very impressed with the copy of Dimension LE which I received with the Proteus 2000 sound library I purchased off of Digital Sound Factory.

It's an excellent sample playback machine with some extensive modulation capabilities. It's also arranged somewhat similarly to earlier Roland digital synths so I fell right at home (having cut my teeth making patches on the JV-80). It has some really interesting single cycle waveform handling abilities and it has extensive support for the sfz multisample format. That kind of makes up for the fact that you have no interface to mapping, looping, and manipulating samples. For old school patch making that isn't really a limitation at all. It's just like working on any digital synth. Plus you get a big sound library on DVD when you purchase the Pro edition.

My little project with Dimension was basically to get all my purchased soundfonts into it. Over many episodes of the Crystal Dreams Podcast I'd been slowly driven mad by the SFZ player's instability on my dual core Intel processor. Even the commercial version (SFZ+) has the sample problem. Ableton's Sampler product doesn't fully support soundfont imports so Dimension was my only non-financial choice.

I was lucky enough to find the free edition of Chicken Systems Translator which would do about 75% of the job of converting the soundfont to the sfz file format (which is Dimension's main multisample format). There are a few errors in translation which I ended up writing a little Perl script to correct (the thought of hand editing 500 odd sfz text files was too much to bare!). So all that's left it to make the .prog files which Dimension needs for it's patch browser. It's a fairly tedious process of dropping an sfz into an empty patch and which then gets saved into the appropriate directory. For the sake of completeness I will also check the patches against the original soundfonts just to make sure no parameters have missed.

It would have been nice to have the process being completely automatic I suppose but I'm starting to realise that fully automatic sample format conversion is something that just doesn't exist. There's always something to tweak.

BUT it's a great way to get familiar with the sound libraries I'm converting. There are literally hundreds of instruments in these libraries and I almost missed a few good ones the first time around!

Creative Commons and the Crystal Dreams Project

2009-05-22T12:00:00.001+10:00

Over the last few weeks I've been spending time researching music distribution. In particular I'm interested in the legalities of sharing MP3 music files and podcasts. Fortunately the people at Creative Commons have done most of the hard work for me. They've created a group of licenses which are specifically designed to handle the sharing of digital content across the globe. They have all sorts of variations which include simply sharing MP3 files for private listening, releasing content into the public domain, and allowing your music to be used for commercial purposes while you still get the credit for it. These licenses can be applied to physical CD's too.

For the Crystal Dreams project I chose the Attribution License. This gives everyone the right to share and/or remix any episode for commercial or non-commercial purposes provided that they acknowledge me as the author. That's a perfect choice because one of the main goals of the project is to make people aware of the ambient/new age music that I've been working on.

What do I mean by sharing? That covers things like giving your friends copies of the MP3 files from the podcast, burning CD's of the podcast to give friends/family/customers, and putting copies of the files on your web site. If you wanted to include an episode in your podcast or film/video then that's covered too. You can even sell episodes on CD to your clients if you want. Maximum flexibility for YOU provided you mention ME :)

So please so go ahead and share the Crystal Dreams Podcast with everyone. Probably the easiest way to do that is to subscribe via iTunes and then use its built in CD burning functionality. If you're not happy with an iTunes generated cover then you can download the Official Crystal Dreams CD Cover from here which has all the necessary acknowledgments ready to go.

Happy "legal and guilt free" sharing.

Relocating the Crystal Dreams Podcast

2009-04-29T20:43:00.002+10:00

Due to some technical issues at mypodcast.com I've decided to move the Crystal Dreams Podcast (CDP) to podbean.com. My apologies if you'd already set up your iTunes subscription or bookmarks but the service at mypodcast.com has simply been too unreliable.

Podbean seems to run a great service which is largely devoid of advertising. Right now I'm set up on the free service but I'm seriously considering moving to the paid service as I've been so impressed. It's got a great set of features for any would-be-podcasters or musicians out there. I encourage you to check it out for yourselves.

The response to the latest CDP episodes has been absolutely fantastic. Thanks for listening and and my extra special thanks to all of you who taken the time to write me an email or leave a comment. It is appreciated and it inspires me to continue on.

If you haven't heard the CDP yet then please do visit http://crystaldreams.podbean.com/ and check it out for yourself. You can, of course, listen to the last 4 episodes straight from the website OR you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (and several other feed collectors).

Track Preview - Sea of Tranquility

2009-04-14T23:19:00.002+10:00

Sea of Tranquility by joelsuttonmusic

Here's the last of the full track previews from the "Passing Days" demo tape. I'll be getting these into the computer very soon to start re-working them.

Track Preview - Far Away

2009-04-09T21:46:00.002+10:00

Far Away by joelsuttonmusic

Another full track from the "Passing Days" demo tape. Hope you enjoy it too. Thanks to everyone who posted comments on the last preview.

Crystal Dreams Podcast is online!

2009-04-08T20:32:00.001+10:00

Last week one of my long lost ideas came into being; a podcast called Crystal Dreams. It's taken a few months to get it online and there's still more work to do but it's up and running. Boy it feels good :)

The idea behind Crystal Dreams is to have an online destination when anyone can listen to the ambient/relaxation music that I've been working on. These tracks are basically improvisations and will be different each time even though some of the episodes may contain common elements. Regardless of that it will be music to chill out to with a fresh cup of tea (or whatever you drink). Nothing too demanding on the brain so that the mind is free to wonder.

Episode 1 has been created entirely in Ableton Live 7 with most of the analog style sound effects come from Ableton Operator. I must say I'm really getting into Operator and having a great time. Mapping the on-screen dials to the knobs on my Behringer UMX-25 midi controller makes building patches a breeze! Maybe one day I'll make a live pack of patches for everyone to download. But until then you'll have to keep your ears tuned to this podcast to see what I come up with.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Track Preview - Solitary Man

2008-11-12T19:56:00.002+11:00

Sea of Tranquility by joelsuttonmusic

Track 1 from my unreleased "Passing Days" Ambient/New Age demo tape. I'm thinking about re-working this album (in the long term) for a more serious release. Would love to hear your opinion.

ASIO4ALL 2.9 has just been released

2008-11-07T13:00:00.000+11:00

Yes it's another official release of ASIO4ALL by Michael Tippach and it's working better than ever on Windows Vista! As I mentioned in a previous blog I use this with Ableton Live when on the move. Works really well. Perhaps not quite the same sound quality as my Lexicon Alpha but that's not ASIO4ALL's fault. That's the limitations of my built in sound interface in my laptop.

To give you a bit more of an idea of what ASIO4ALL does (or indeed any ASIO driver) it's all to do with latency. That is, the time it takes for the computer to a) work out that you've pressed a key on your MIDI keyboard, b) work out what sort of sound to send to the speakers, and c) actually get the sound to the speakers. Because computers are general purpose devices it can take a while for all this to happen. When I say a while I'm talking about milliseconds and although that sounds small it is quite noticeable when you're actually playing a virtual instrument. So what we need to do is to get that delay time to be as small as possible without overloading the computer. That's what ASIO drivers a for... they're specially optimised bits of software that keep those computer audio latencies as "under control" as possible. Until ASIO4ALL came along one would have to buy special audio hardware to get the low latencies.

Traditional MIDI keyboards/synths have latencies that are so small that we can't notice them. So if you're not using audio (including the metronome) in your sequencing software (only MIDI messages to your keyboard) then you generally don't need to worry about all this latency stuff. All the sound will be coming from your keyboard.

So that's a little bit about latencies to celebrate ASIO4ALL's new release. You can download it from the ASIO4ALL web site.

Beta Testing Ableton Live and ASIO4ALL

2008-11-03T08:15:00.001+11:00

Yes... I am still here :D I've been very busy with a recent trip to Melbourne and lots of work happening in my day job. Over the last few days I've been devoting most of my music time to testing the new Beta versions of Ableton Live and ASIO4ALL.

Live is, of course, my primary work horse for music and ASIO4ALL is an excellent addition to my set up. What it does is allow me to use my laptop sound card as a low latency audio device. This is particularly handy when I'm making music on the move because it means that I don't have to lug around my full USB audio interface. Space in my laptop bag is only part of the problem... my Lexicon Alpha is USB powered and it's an unwanted drain on the battery when I'm out and about.

The updated version of Live is also looking pretty good in my humble opinion. It's mainly bug fixes and I'm very happy that they've been able to fix one of my two main issues (at the moment). The resolved issue is the moving of clips in between tracks which contain the new External Instrument plug-in. When this is wired to a multi-timbral VST plug-in it crashes the non-beta version of Live every time. So I'm very excited about this fix making its way into the stable version because I'd like to make use of this feature more in the future.

Anyways, back to it. Lots to do today :)

Multi-Directional Drag & Drop in Live 7

2008-10-15T08:11:00.001+11:00

Yet another great tip from Huston at Ableton Inc. Seems to work particularly well for audio clips. Although be sure to use the control key (not the Alt key) if you're a PC user:

Atmosphere - The new album from Synth.nl

2008-10-13T10:30:00.001+11:00

During the weekend one of my favourite electronic music artists Synth.nl (aka Michel van Ossenbrugen) released his latest album Atmosphere. I really enjoyed his last album (AeroDynamics) so I've been getting rather excited about this new release. I can't wait to get my hands on my own copy.

Thanks to the magic of ReverbNation you can listen to some tracks from both albums via the widget below. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did :)

Live 7 Automation Lanes

2008-10-11T20:33:00.001+11:00

Here's a cool feature that I didn't even know about. Looks like it will be a rather useful one too. I keep forgetting about automation cause I've spent so many years working with hardware that only responds to MIDI controller messages which were always difficult to work with on my old sequencer:

Oxygene Part 2 - Jean Michel Jarre

2008-10-11T06:53:00.001+11:00

I just couldn't resist posting this video here especially since this is one of the songs that started it all off for me. Below is Jean Michel playing a slightly more modern version live in Poland somewhere. Looks like I need to find the DVD that this video came from ;)

Overview of Live 7's Audio Effect Rack

2008-10-10T20:31:00.000+11:00

Another great video from the Ableton channel on YouTube:

The History of the Roland Corporation

2008-10-09T20:36:00.000+11:00

I've just read this very interesting series of articles on The History of Roland Corporation on the Sound on Sound magazine web site. It's definitely worth a look if you're interested in this kind of technology.

I was particularly interested to read about how all those classic instruments came about. Plus I feel really lucky to have been able to play with some of them (such as the Roland Space Echo). I'm sure we'll be seeing more great stuff from Roland in the future.

My latest track from Eternity 2008 is online

2008-10-08T17:30:00.005+11:00

Eternity 2008 is still a work in progress but now you can listen to it via the magic of ReverbNation. Can either visit my blog (you may already be here) and click on the play button, or you can visit my ReverbNation Profile.

This is my first polished piece in Ableton Live. Most of this track was done using Live 6 LE but I've since upgraded to Ableton 7 Suite. So I'm no longer limited in the number of tracks or plug-ins I can use. Since this is a piece that I'd already written I started construction in the arrangement view:

The Synth1 and SuperwaveP8 VSTi plug-ins can be heard doing the analogue string parts. Everything else is Simpler with Impulse providing the electronic percussion.

Working around Live 7's SoundFont problems

2008-10-07T20:32:00.026+11:00

Recently I brought this very excellent bundle of Emax SoundFonts from the Digital Sound Factory. This is a great little collection of classic sounds from the original Emax sample library and when I say little I mean HUGE (800+)!! More on that library later.

If you've worked with SoundFonts before in Live 7 then I've probably struck fear into your heart already. Unfortunately there are some compatibility issues with Ableton Sampler. The good news is that, with the help of the VSTSynthFont plug in, we have a work-around.

This video shows what I'm talking about. I've set up VSTSynthFont and Sampler in two pairs. Each pair has the same instruments from the same SoundFont file. I chose one of the files from the Emax Bundle and the General MIDI file from SynthFont web site. The MIDI clips are also identical. Here's what happens:

Urk! The sample loop problems are probably the most obvious. Sampler's minimum loop length seems to be much bigger that the average loop in some of the smaller SoundFonts that you can download. Also the amplitude envelope is missing as well as a few other important settings like vibrato. For a small number of instruments it's not a big deal. For more than 800 then we've got a problem.

Well why don't we all just switch over to VSTSynthFont I hear you ask? Well unfortunately there are a few compatibility issues there too. Especially with Windows Vista. Dragging MIDI clips around can be quite disastrous:

But we can work around that too by removing the plug in BEFORE we rearrange our Live Set:

So with VSTSynthFont I can get going on those great classic sounds. It's not 100% bullet proof but it works if you treat it right AND the plug in can route audio to individual outputs! When you're trying to take advantage of Live's real power then this is a must have.

Track/Project Preview - Lynx

2008-10-05T20:30:00.004+11:00

Here's a video of an unreleased track I'm about to start re-creating using Ableton's Operator instrument. This original version was produced back in the 90's using my collection of hardware synths:

Visualisations by iTunes which were captured with Cam Studio.

Converting my old sample library (Part 3)

2008-10-02T20:28:00.011+10:00

It's been a long day. So what better way to chill out than by listening to Groove Unlimited's Dreamscape weekly electronic music podcast. Add to that a little sample conversion for that dose of productivity ;) I'm slowly working my way through my old library:

This will give me a large number of WAV sound files which are just right for importing into Ableton Sampler. Later on I'll use the S-10 Manager to extract information about key splits and loop points. For now it's the mindless driving of the mouse.

Thank goodness I've got the podcast to keep me going :)

Converting my old sample library (Part 2)

2008-09-27T21:41:00.013+10:00

It's been a very busy week at this end but (at last) I've found some more time to work on converting my sample library. After the successful conversion of all the Quick Disks to System Exclusive (SysEx) dumps I was inspired to attempt the conversion of some of the sample dumps hidden inside of the 80+ MOTU Performer 4 files I have sitting on my Power Mac's hard drive.

Unfortunately there seemed to be some kind of problem sending SysEx data directly from Performer so I decided to investigate saving each sequence as a Standard MIDI File. This worked well and I was able to FTP the converted file to my laptop and then send the dump safely back to the sampler with a MIDI file player. A quick search of the internet revealed a command line utility (called getsysex) for extracting the SysEx data directly from the converted file. With all my samples in SysEx format I'll be able to easily extract the raw WAV files for importing into Ableton Sampler.

This video shows the steps I'm going to have to follow, on both the Mac and PC, to convert each file:

I stopped the recording once the sample dump had started as it takes a few minutes and is rather boring to watch. In this case the dump arrived safely.

So that's 1 file down and only 79 more to go :D

Ableton Orchestral Instrument Collection

2008-09-23T21:30:00.012+10:00

For years I've had an interest in making what I call "Orchestral Music" using samplers or sample based synths. When I saw this video recently, on the Ableton web site, it became an obsession!!!

I haven't managed to get my hands on this product yet. To be honest I had been similarly impressed with the Vienna Symphonic Library. Especially since I heard that most of the incidental music for the first season of the new Doctor Who series was done with the VSL using Apple's Logic. I had no idea and had assumed that they used a real orchestra!

It's astounding how far they've come with this sampling technology and both Ableton's and VSL's products look seriously amazing. However I think I've decided to go with the Orchestral Instrument Collection (oic).

It's not because I'm an "Ableton Boy"... it's got to do with work flow. Since I don't have the opportunity to work on my music full time I really have to be organised. The major appeal of Live is that I can sit down and start working straight away. Make a few MIDI tracks, drag in a few instruments, and I'm composing. Similarly if I'm in sound design mode I can make up a new instrument rack and drop in some virtual instruments, samples, effects and I'm on the way. My music time is limited and this makes effective use of that time. Back when I had a full synth rig I could spend up to an hour configuring the synths and then saving the setup data so I could continue working the next day. No wonder things went so slowly. The oic integrates directly into what they call the "Ableton Work Flow". Essentially the oic is just another bunch of instruments and that really appeals.

For now I shall have to be content to drool but I'm really looking forward to the day when I can start trying to compose in this "orchestral mode". It's going to be a real challenge but I'm sure the results will make it worth while.

Can one ever have too many synths?

2008-09-22T14:24:00.003+10:00

This guy obviously doesn't think so. Check out this amazing collection of gear in action:

I found this video in Synth.nl's favourite list on YouTube (thanks Michel).

Converting my old sample library (Part 1)

2008-09-21T22:10:00.002+10:00

Well the Quick Disk drive is all fixed and I've got a brand new MIDI interface for my Windows Vista laptop. Now the real work begins...

The first step was to get System Exclusive (SysEx) dumps of all of my discs onto my laptop hard drive. That way I'm covered if the drive should fail again. Transferring samples via the MIDI cable is quite simple (if somewhat slow) and I decided to use the S-10 Manager software to handle this job. Besides being compatible with the S-220 it has the ability to trigger a sample dump remotely. So this meant less wear and tear on the aged S-220 buttons. The software is a few years old now, and it's a bit quirky in places, but it managed to keep itself together for the whole operation.

Processing all of the non-factory discs went very smoothly. Only one disc error occurred and simply reinserting it solved that issue. Strangely the Roland supplied library discs all failed on side B. I still can't quite work out why this happened as reloading some of the other discs (either side) worked just fine. Either the discs must have degraded (they're 20 years old now!) or I haven't quite put the drive back together properly (i.e. something is out of alignment). This isn't too much of an issue as the SysEx dumps for these discs are available on the Li'l Chips Web Site.

Just for good luck, I decided to test all of the new dump files by sending them back to the S-220 using MIDI-OX (an excellent utility which one can think of as the MIDI Swiss army knife on the Windows platform). Getting the SysEx configuration right took a fair bit of trial and error but I finally settled on these settings:

All of the SysEx dumps reloaded perfectly so that's all of the Quick Disks processed - Wahooo!!!

If you're wondering why I didn't use the S-10 Manager software to reload the samples it's because it doesn't support an external MIDI keyboard. It's a real necessity when you're working with a rack mount module as there is no other easy way to test your sounds. This was probably never written into the application because the Roland S-10 (picture below sourced from vintagesynth.com) has its own keyboard built in.

Now it's onto the task of extracting the sample dumps I've got stored on one of my old Macintosh computers. Even back in the 1990's Quick Disks were relatively rare so I made the conscious decision to avoid using them as much as possible. As a consequence a large percentage of my library is locked up in Performer 4 files. Hopefully it won't be too much of a drama to get those dumps into standard SysEx files on my laptop.

More soon... :)

Fixing my Roland S-220 sampler floppy drive

2008-09-19T23:55:00.000+10:00

This lovely piece of gear (circa 1987) was my very first sampler. I purchased it second hand in 1992 so it was borderline "vintage gear" even back then. Alas its 30KHz at 4 sec maximum sampling capacity was no match for the crisp sounds in my Roland JV-80 but it was fantastic to learn sampling on. It also taught me just how much of a difference having your own sounds can make on a track.

So you can imagine my utter horror when I turned it on recently (after many years of sitting in a rack case in storage) and heard this horrible continuous grinding noise. And I hadn't even plugged it into the mixer!!! Just between you and me this baby is one of my prized possessions so it was quite a tough decision to get out the screwdriver. Especially since I have a history of not being able to put stuff back together.

After a little research I discovered that the floppy drive is usually the first thing to go in equipment of this age group. Mainly because the drives were belt driven. This was the case for my sampler but with a twist! The belt had managed to fuse itself to just about anything it could find. In the picture above you can see that it's melted all over the main fly wheel.

With a little patience and a bunch of cotton tips I managed to clean the remains of the belt off ok. The next trick was finding a suitable replacement for the belt. Working out exactly what to use has been a little difficult but I'd read that video player belts make good replacements in the drives of other synths (such as the Yamaha SY-85). Unfortunately I haven't been able to track one down yet so I've put this orange rubber-band in as a temporary measure.

Amazingly it's working really well now. All of my quick discs load without a glitch so I've finally able to get all my old samples onto my laptop in SysEx format. Converting them to wav files should be a simple matter of using one of the utilities from the Roland S-10 Manager software package. I'm hoping that I can use that package to copy and paste settings, like loops points and key assignments, into Ableton Sampler.

My old sample library will be revived in all it's awesome lo-fi-ness! This time, however, it'll get the star treatment with Live 7's awesome effects! Can't wait! Will let you know how it goes.

Eternity 96 - The making of the Demo

2008-04-06T15:09:00.000+10:00

Parts 1 to 5 of this series of compositions were originally put to tape way back in 1990. Just between you and me (:-D) they are some of my earliest work and therefore not as complex or perhaps compelling as some of my more recent pieces. Maybe I’m just sentimental but over the years I found myself regularly listening to these tracks because they are (I realised) some of my all time favourites.

In 1996 I decided to reconstruct the collection to see if I could transform them, with a whole swag of new equipment, into something more acceptable to the "new age" genre. A decision which I look back on, questioning my sanity (no disrespect to "new age"). It was around this time that Part 6 was added to the collection - hence the slight difference in style. In the end I was never 100% happy with the results so the collection never progressed past what I called the "demo stage".

Earlier this year I decided that I really wanted to finalise the "Eternity Project". Rather than starting from scratch on a completely new version I decided that I would put the original 1996 demo online for others to scrutinise first. For better or worse.

I dug up my original master tapes, digitised them, chopped them up into individual tracks, and got them ready for upload. After some research I chose the Garage Band web site as my primary home for the demo but, after seeing how well MySpace can work for finding new music, I decided to go with both.

So this is where you come in. I’d really love to get your feedback on these pieces. Hopefully you’ll like at least one of them, maybe you’ll like them all, or maybe you can’t stand them. Regardless I’d still love to hear from you.