Keeping The Beat Down

Basically, what you do is mix two versions of the drum track together – one track being treated with quite severe compression, and the other being uncompressed. The compressed track brings up the ‘oomph’ whilst the original ensures that the dynamic interest of the beat is maintained.

Of course, this technique is not exclusively for drums – it can be very effective on vocals too, or any other instrument that needs to be tightly controlled.

Ableton’s Audio Effect Rack

You can perform parallel compression in any DAW, but Ableton Live’s audio effect rack makes it extremely simple to employ (presuming you have a copy of Live, that is).

Find the effect rack in Live’s device browser on the left, and drag an instance of it onto your drum track.

Next, you need to select a compressor device from the browser – once you have one that suits your purposes, drag it into the effect rack.

Now, you can drag another compressor into the same effect rack – this will create a new effect chain below the first. In my example here, I have the first compressor set with a compression ratio of 8, an attack of 17.9ms and a release of 45.3ms.

The second compressor is actually applying no compression at all, so the overall output of the effect rack is a mix of the compressed signal and the dry (dynamic) signal.

As usual with compressors, you must adjust your settings to suit the feel of your track. You should also bring down the levels of the two chains within the effect rack – to avoid clipping the channel.

Set the relative levels of the two chains so that you have a good mix of compressed and uncompressed signals – and that’s a quick start for parallel compression…

Introducing The Glass Harmonica

Generally speaking, any instrument which produces sound through its own vibration (without the use of tautened strings or membranes) is known as an idiophone. Such instruments which are played by applying friction are called, appropriately enough, friction idiophones.

In a further bound of nomenclature, the glass harmonica may also be referred to as a crystallophone because its vibrating body is composed of glass.

Safe From Harmonica

The glass harmonica largely disappeared from public performances by the 1820s, amidst claims that the instrument provoked illness, distress and even insanity in those who played or heard it.

There is little evidence that this is in fact the case, and it is probable that the instrument simply was not loud enough for the increasingly large music venues being constructed at this time.

However, some theorists argue that because the instrument’s frequency range was approximately 1kHz to 4kHz, the human auditory mechanism has difficulty pinpointing spatial cues regarding the source of the notes, which could create a disorientating effect.

It is true that humans cannot easily identify the source of low frequency signals – which is why it doesn’t really matter where you place your subwoofer in your home theatre – but this is unlikely to induce discomfort unless you’re listening to some really loud dub music.

But why not decide for yourself if the glasses lead to madness (pun intended – however, it’s unlikely that lead in 18th century glass was present in sufficient quantities to cause dementia). Here’s a video of a glass harmonica performance…if you dare.

Setting The Tone For Mobile Sound

If you want to put some different sounds on your phone, feel free to avail of these short clips. They were not designed as mobile sounds per se, but were actually composed as audio logos for last year’s Sennheiser sound design competition – the brief being to create a signature sound no longer than eight seconds.

• Podcomplex Sound One
• Podcomplex Sound Two
• Podcomplex Sound Three
• Podcomplex Sound Four
• Podcomplex Sound Five

The Short Sounds Of Eno

The exercise of creating a piece of sound (or music) within such severe limitations is surprisingly liberating, and can actually lead to new techniques or developments in one’s style of composition.

Probably the most famous exponent of micromusic is Brian Eno’s Microsoft sound for Windows 95. According to the man himself, he was charged with creating “a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional…and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long”.

He states that this project unblocked a logjam in his own creativity, and I must say that the Sennheiser logo exercise was similarly enlightening for me.

I’m not sure how Eno feels about mobile music in general, but he seems to be fond of recording in different spaces. In one interview, he stated that his ideal studio would in fact be one that he could pack up and bring with him – so, instead of capturing an entirely dry recording and then attempting to create a space with convolution reverbs in post-production, he could simply record the space he was in. Music Thing has some more interesting Eno snippets for your delectation.

Mobile Sound As A Concept

Taking mobile sound at a more conceptual level opens up a whole new world of audio adventure.

The mobile sound blog involves the artistic realm of sound in the environment, and deals with alternative approaches to the experience and design of auditory experience on the move.

One interesting project flagged there is the idea of lonely velcro sound, which was not originally intended as a mobile sound exercise, but could certainly be categorised as one – velcro does have its own sonic signature, after all.

The idea is that people wear velcro jackets as a means of interacting with people they meet – as you brush against people on the street, you literally become engaged with them on a physical level.

The premise is interesting, but if implemented on a large scale, I’m sure that several levels of chaos would ensue…!

Seen And Heard

Last year I covered the topic of synaesthesia in relation to an experimental hardware system that aims to help blind people to see with their ears – you can catch up on that sound and vision post here.

Although participants are obviously not required to have synaesthesia to utilize the device, one wonders whether this would in fact be an advantage.

Translating audio input into a visual plane for the purposes of environmental orientation is not exactly intuitive – seeing sounds as colours is one thing, but using such colours to perform spatial navigation is another.

More Than The Eye Can Hear

At any rate, the video entitled ‘Synesthesia’ by Terri Timely is a very well developed study of this topic, in the form of an entertaining (but quite brief) music/word/vegetable video.

It is only available on their site as a Quicktime movie, but the quality is higher than your average YouTube embed…!

Pro Tools 8 Facelift

There has been a lot of commentary about the cosmetic improvements to Pro Tools 8, but for me this turned out to be actually fairly insignificant. There are more colours, and the interface is generally better in quite subtle ways, but it still looks very much like Pro Tools. Most things are in the same place, and I found I could get down to work straight away without too much readjustment.

Pro Tools 8 Templates

The first change you’ll notice (apart from the splash screen) is that upon opening the program you are presented with a menu that allows you to choose to open a session (recent or otherwise), start a new session or load a template.

If you prefer, you can set this menu not to appear, but beginners will certainly find the pre-designed templates very useful – and for me they served as a useful reminder that I should update my own session templates. They can be a great way of speeding up workflow, as most people tend to use the same routing and techniques for most tracks – the templates can provide some ideas in this regard.

PT8 Now With Added Inserts

Although using aux channels for effects can be easier on your CPU, it is handy to have a few extra slots for insert effects too – particularly when you are very close to getting that perfect sound and don’t want to muck around with creating another bus.

In version 7.4, I was limited to five inserts, but this has now been doubled to ten. In other expansion news, Pro Tools 8 has also upped the number of tracks available for simultaneous playback from 32 to 48.

Pro Tools 8 Plugin Bundle

This is where the PT8 upgrade really begins to justify its price tag. As well as a bunch of very tasty effects (perfect for filling those extra insert slots) you get five new instruments – a grand piano, an organ, Xpand2, a drum machine and a monosynth.

If you open the Hip-Hop template, for example, you get a variety of tracks ready to rock – the first of which contains an instance of the new drum machine, Boom, and a basic beat laid down in its MIDI channel.

Boom is of the classic old-skool design, and will be very easy to use for anyone who is familiar with other hardware or software versions of programmable beat generators.

The analog synth is called Vacuum, and is almost Soviet in its design – it looks like it might be right at home in a cold war submarine. However, its sound quality is of the typically high standard you expect from AIR, and it has plenty of controls for all you, er, control freaks – modulation, arpeggiation, ADSR envelope knobs, and so on.

Pro Tools 8 – Made For MIDI

Another highlight of the upgrade package is the new MIDI editor window, which really makes the previously irritating MIDI functionality of 7.4 look entirely outmoded.

Of course, the other major DAWs have long had far superior MIDI capabilities, so this is more of a case of getting up to speed with industry standards for Pro Tools – but it is a more than welcome change.

Now that Pro Tools 8 has its own MIDI editor window, things are looking much better. A double click on any MIDI region opens the editor, where you have the notes displayed along a traditional piano-roll view, with any other modulation parameters given their own individual tracks beneath. This speeds up the process of MIDI editing enormously, and brings PT into line with the competition.