The ScoreCleaner Notes app for iOS ($0.99) can turn any recorded monophonic melody into written musical notation. ScoreCleaner Notes, one of the best-selling apps in Sweden for the last few months, was developed by Sven Emtell at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, along with Sven Ahlbäck, a professor at the Music University of Stockholm.

ScoreCleaner Notes Main Features

• Musically intelligent interpretation (pitch, time signature, rhythm & meter, tempo) from monophonic material.
• Displays recordings in Standard Western Notation.
• Recordings are stored in the cloud.
• Works with a wide range of musical instruments.
• Playback with MIDI piano sound or the original recording.
• Share your song with your friends by email, Twitter or Facebook (requires iOS 6).
• Save up to four songs in your Song Archive. You’ll have to sign up for a ScoreCleaner Cloud account to save more.
• A ScoreCleaner Cloud account lets you synchronize your songs with ScoreCleaner Desktop for further editing.

ScoreCleaner Notes Screenshots

Some shots of ScoreCleaner Notes’ main screens, and the webpage that’s accessible after sharing via email:

I whistled the melody you can see above. If reading a score is one of your traits, you can see that not every note got picked up correctly. I’m convinced that my whistling skills were to blame, not the software that analyzed it. Apparently, I whistled all over the place, mixing major and minor scales like a genuine idiot. Playing it on a piano worked out much better.

More info:

KTH, iTunes Preview.

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Daniel Sierra, a digital artist from New York City, just recently put his thesis animation done at the MFA Computer Art program in the School of Visual Arts on Vimeo. The audio-visual experience visualizes waveform patterns that evolve from fundamental sine waves to more complex patterns. It is now officially a Vimeo Staff Pick.

Daniel Sierra, who also made the music, with Reason:

The concept of universal building blocks that can be assembled to form complex structures is something I find very exciting and alluring. Sound follows this concept in that any sound, for example a snare drum or a human voice, can be deconstructed as the summation of varying sine waves; hence making sine waves the building blocks of sound so to speak. This concept, which comes from the Fourier Series (named after Joseph Fourier) was the inspiration for my thesis, “Oscillate”.

For more of Daniel Sierra’s work and info, and downloadable ZIP’s of hi-res stills, visit his website.

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On a good day, somewhere in Pennsylvania in the early nineties, I bought a Roland TR-909 on Ebay. The deal closed at $900 – I paid $909. There’s nothing like the real thing – a good old 16th note snareroll (remember those?) coming from this box is still one of the hardest things to reproduce with samples. The trick is to have a lot of samples, and program patiently.

So thumbs up for Samplephonics for releasing a new TR 909 sample pack, consisting of over 4000 24 Bit Wav samples, available in 44.1 and 96 Khz and sampled through two inputs: one clean, one through a Thermionic Culture ‘Culture Vulture’ for an extra analogue touch. The TR 909 sample pack comes with sampler instruments for Ableton, Reason, Logic Pro, Garageband and Kontakt 4.2 and 5.

Kontakt 5 would be the best host for this sample library – you’ll need the full version – because of its scripting features and to be able to use Samplephonics’ custom TR-909 sequencer.

Price: £49.00 – or roughly $77.00

Samplephonics website.

(via SonicScoop)

Affiliate link:

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German plugin developer Hofa, known for some remarkable free metering plugins, just introduced the IQ Reverb, a convolution reverb plugin with innovative editing capabilities, most notably a 3D interface and reverb times that are adjustable in multiple frequency ranges.

According to Hofa, the IQ-Reverb plugin will be:

• faster: Intuitive 3D User Interface
• more creative: Reverberation time adjustable in 3 frequency ranges
• more accurate: Positioning of sound sources in virtual space (positioner)
• more exciting: Modulation for vibrant reverb structures
• more post-modern: Gated Reverb & Reverse Reverb
• more perfect: True Stereo capable
• more extensive: Huge IR Library (Vintage & High-End studio gear, “real” spaces)

Hofa IQ Reverb will be available from Juli 1st 2013 for PC and Mac – VST/VST3/AU/RTAS/AAX.

Price: 149,90 €, Pre-Sale until Juli 1st 99,90 €.

More info on the Hofa website.

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News from Native Instruments: Solid Dynamics, Solid EQ, and Solid Bus Comp have been improved with new interfaces. All plugins – part of the Solid Mix Series Bundle -now run as self-contained plug-ins in any DAW.

From Native Instruments:

The road to high-end sound just got shorter with the redesigned Solid Mix Series. Solid Dynamics, Solid EQ, and Solid Bus Comp now run as self-contained plug-ins, streamlining your access to pro-level effects. All three effects sport new, further-optimized user interfaces but the sound remains the same: Platinum sound with a pro-studio shine.

The Solid Mix Series is available now at the NI Online Shop, priced at $99 / 99€ for each single effect.
The Solid Mix Series bundle will set you back $199 / 199€.

More info on the bundle, individual plugins and downloadable demos here.

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Wouter Janssen and Sjoerd Janssen, also known as Dutch EDM act “Showtek”, join Dave Pensado on the 112th episode of Pensado’s Place.

The post Pensado’s Place Episode 112 appeared first on Danski's Logic Pro Blog.

Must see video: Full Sail Recording Arts graduate/Hall of Fame inductee Phil Tan walks you through his mix session for Rihanna’s chart-topping hit single, “Diamonds,” talks about his career, and answers questions about his mixing techniques. Runtime: almost an hour.

As a Graduate of Full Sail’s Recording Arts program in 1990, Phil earned some of his first engineering credits working with Kriss Kross, Run DMC and Toni Braxton. Since those early years, Phil has also served as a solid member of Rapper / Producer / Songwriter / Record Mogul Jermaine Dupri’s camp in Atlanta. Phil’s studio work includes Mix Engineer credits on GRAMMY Nominated releases by TLC, Will Smith, Brandy, Usher, Lil Kim, Aretha Franklin, Alicia Keys, Anthony Hamilton, Snoop Dogg & Pharrell, Omarion, Nelly, Destiny’s Child, Gwen Stefani, and Mariah Carey to name a few. Phil has also served as a Trustee for the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. Phil has been awarded three GRAMMYs for his work with Rihanna, Mariah Carey and Ludacris.

(Thanks, Niels!)

The post Watch how Phil Tan Mixed Rihanna’s “Diamonds” appeared first on Danski's Logic Pro Blog.

This just in my inbox: Waves just introduced the GEQ 30 band Graphic Equalizer, a full-featured graphic equalizer with both Classic and Modern mono and stereo components, featuring 30 ISO bands plus high and low pass filters, a high precision floating parametric EQ bell filter, and a real-time analyzer.

From Waves:

GEQ Classic components use traditional proportional Q filters inspired by the renowned DN series 1/3 octave equalizers, which narrow the filter width as you increase a band’s gain; GEQ Modern components utilize special Flat-Top filters which eliminate the artifacts associated with band interaction, and provide perfect plateau and stair-stepped responses. Set band gains one-by-one, or draw your curve via touch-screen or mouse. Finally, GEQ’s integrated real-time analyzer lets you compare the difference between two sources. Created for live sound but equally useful in the studio as well, GEQ is powerful proof that all equalizers are not created equal.

Regular price $200, special introductory price $99.

More images, video, features overview here.

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These are the Sunday Reads for April 21, 2013.

• Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Diplo and Other Top Names in Music Honored at 30th Annual ASCAP Pop Music Awards (ASCAP)
• The Music of ‘Flow’ (NYT)
• Surgeon prescribes Brian Eno to patients (Guardian)
• Daft Punk Explain ‘Random Access Memories (Spin)
• A Bronx Genre Gone Global (NYT)
• First listen: Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ (LATimes)
• This Was 1993: 20 Years Ago I Heard The Perfect Rap Song (NPR)
• For Those About To Rock, We Salute Your Ears (NPR)
• Coachella Festival Coverage (RollingStone)
• Voxengo Intros Shinechilla Harmonic Generator For Mac & Windows (Synthopia)
• SSL Debuts Sigma – Remote Controlled Analog Mixing and Summing Engine (SonicScoop)
• Beyond the Basics: Harmonic Motion and the Root of All Music (SonicScoop)

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This EQ tip comes from Fabfilter, the plugin company that added ‘plugins’ to the list of products the Netherlands have been famous/notorious for. In this video, Dan Worrall uses the Fabfilter Pro Q EQ plugin to explain when and how to use linear phase EQ and (normal) minimum phase EQ. The same information applies to using Logic Pro’s Channel EQ plugin vs the Linear Phase EQ plugin, so don’t miss this.

After briefly discussing the general concept of phase, Dan shows some real-life mixing examples where the difference between linear- and minimum phase processing becomes apparent. Using full-range speakers or headphones while watching this video is recommended, as most artifacts will be in low frequency content when using linear phase EQ. So, no macbooks, and no earbuds, mmmkay?

Linear Phase EQ vs Minimum Phase EQ

Dan Worrall’s homepage has more free tutorials for using:

• Reaktor
• Camel Audio Camelspace, Camelphat, and Alchemy
• Fabfilter ‘Pro’ and ‘Creative’ plugins
• Tone2 ElectraX
• U-He MFM2
• Sonic Charge MicroTonic

Have fun/good weekend.

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If you’re struggling with music theory, or want to force yourself to recall what you’ve already learned, have a look at the Better Ears Beginner app in the App Store. It’s a very decent looking app for both keyboard and guitar players that will help you recognize intervals, scales, chords and chord progressions, pitch, tempo, key signatures and music reading. The app’s Preferences section offers many options to fine-tune each exercise, and the app offers both MIDI In and Out.

Better Ears Beginner is free, and has a built-in Wiki in multiple languages that will keep you learning for hours. Whenever you’re hungry for more music theory, the app’s bigger brother – Better Ears – costs $24.99, and is available in the App Store.

Better Ears Beginner
Better Ears
(Source: TUAW)

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Here’s a fun fact: of all the records that are in today’s Billboard Hot 100, roughly 20 % of those tracks were built on top of an 808 kick – see the 808 kick Spotify playlist I made below. Though it’s specific to certain genres, that’s a solid foundation – considered the fact that The Roland TR-808 drumcomputer was introduced in 1980.

However simple that sound may be from a technical standpoint (it’s basically a sine wave) it’s probably one of the hardest sounds to get right. No way it’s going to blend in straight out of the box. After more than three decades, nailing the sound of the 808 kick has been raised to an art form. Cue this article on The Pro Audio Files website: How to Make 808s Kick HARD.

This is a nice write-up by Matthew Weiss about what processing techniques he uses to blend the 808 into a mix. Saturation, Bit-Crushing, Distortion, Multi Band Compression, Layering and Enhancers – all techniques are briefly discussed, with downloadable audio examples (mono, 24-bit WAV) as a bonus.

Solid.

Playlist: 808 Kicks on Billboard

As I mentioned above, this playlist contains songs from the current Billboard Hot 100 that feature an 808 kick. I’ve made it collaborative, so add to it if you’ve got Spotify – as long as the tracks you’re adding actually ever made it to that particular Billboard chart. Let’s make it extensive!

Have fun.

The post Booooooom: On Nailing the 808 Kick appeared first on Danski's Logic Pro Blog.

A Daft Punk / Skrillex Remix Launchpad video to kick-start your day.

https://www.facebook.com/JackConteMusic

The post Daft Punk Skrillex Remix – Conte appeared first on Danski's Logic Pro Blog.

Now this looks interesting as much as it looks daunting. Hummingbird is an attempt to make the traditional form of music notation “easier to learn, faster to read, and simpler for even the trickiest music”. By removing the need to count lines, making bass and treble clefs the same, have notes display their actual lengths and making accidentals appear every time they occur, this new form of music notation should be more inviting, according to its creators.

Hummingbird – Basics

An overview of Hummingbird’s music notation system:

Hummingbird – Basics

It’s not a complete overhaul: notes are on staff lines in the same position as in traditional notation, though pitch symbols are the same for all clefs and octaves. Symbols for articulations and ornaments such as Staccato, Marcato, Trills and Slur remain the same. See the full guide here.

Video:

Visit the Hummingbird website for example songs and feedback.

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One second = 1/2 Measure. From 1943 until now.

By Jean Brochefort.

The post 120 BPM appeared first on Danski's Logic Pro Blog.