Woodwinds!

Been studying woodwinds lately, having played the sax and flute helps a little, but now properly learning to orchestrate for a woodwind in pairs or for quartets, it's a very different beast altogether.

For one, I never really knew the ranges of the other winds - the clarinet is one very impressive instrument! Bassoons too. Mixing all the different timbres together has been quite interesting.

Basically following one of the exercises from the Kent Kennan book: The Technique of Orchestration. Putting up 8 bars of one of Bach's masterpiece chorales, and layering the with those notes.

Really fast feedback in Finale, and with the new GPO4 setup, I think sounds great! I am, thinking of loading up VE Pro and letting the vsl instruments come through though. We'll see.

Finale Printmusic + GPO4

I have had GPO4 since forever, but only last night found a FAQ how to use Finale Printmusic together with GPO4. After installing the files as indicated, I setup another string orchestra score, switching the playback device from the softsyth to the GPO4 libraries in the setup screen.

It actually didn't do anything, but after I removed the original instruments in the setup page and replaced them with the proper GPO4 instruments from the list e.g. KS Violins 1 (keyswitched violins 1) they worked right off the bat.

I only tried simple stuff like staccatos and legato lines, and they seemed to work. Good stuff, as I was really jealous of my teacher's fantastic sounding samples in Sibelius XD Not that GPO brings it up to that level, but at least now I have at least _some_ kind of sampled orchestra with individual patches not a generic "string ensemble" patch to be used for all the string sections.

Spring Snow

A short piece I wrote for my orchestration class :)

Harmonies of Snow

This piece took forever to sequence and mix. I need pancakes.

The First Noel

This arrangement took far longer than I wanted. I actually started started and finished writing the arrangement in Finale on Christmas eve. On the 25th, I took a hour or so to record the parts.

The tin whistle recording went generally quite smoothly. The D whistle a more difficult whistle to play compared to the larger whistles; I find it more difficult to maintain a proper stream of air without it doing doing unwanted broken chirps. On the flip side, playing the high notes on the D takes far less air and is so much easier.

My saxophone embouchure has weakened horribly. No surprise, it's been a half year since I touched my alto properly. While I can still hit the overtones and _somewhat_ play in tune, my embouchure got very tired very rapidly. I think I only recorded the sax parts 3 times, and that's with maybe 2-3 practice runs prior. I stopped as I knew I would not be able to maintain it. Which is sad, as I know the sax part is not as good as it could be.

The supporting harmony is also questionable. It kind of works, but I was experimenting with using minors instead of majors, and I think I got lost part of the way, trying to be too smart with the harmony. I think this is mainly being split between the strict classical harmony and ignoring the counterpoint rules all-together. I must make a decision :P Some modern scores I read have open harmony, no thirds, so I need to get my act together.

Not much to say about the virtual instruments, I used vsl flute, piccolo, chamber strings, lithophone and triangle. The sleigh bells was from Nine Volt Audio.

Mix wise, I think the start of the piece felt really empty. I did want to go for a feel of it slowly cresending into the full string orchestra, and on a part I think I succeeded, but it could be done better for sure. Perhaps the strings should come in from the very first bar, but at a super super low level.

Well, on to the next piece!

The South Wind

Woo! Wrote this arrangement a few weeks back. I actually recorded it several weeks ago, but I recorded the whistle first, in the hopes of playing the piano part to the whistle, but it was nigh impossible. Today, I played the piano part, then played the whistle on top. Seemed to work fine.

Sonata for Harpsichord, Flute and Oboe

Short piece I wrote last weekend, and sequenced with DP8. After lots of consideration, it's likely I will just move to Logic Pro X, mainly for cost reasons. From the viewpoint of a hobbyist, the crossgrade price for DP8 is (at the time of this writing) $395, versus 199 for Logic Pro X.

DP8's features, which are just simply awesome like the score and midi editing tools. The reshape tool is a thing of beauty. The sad fact of the matter is also this: I'm not a professional. The various tools are really well designed for the professional composer, and it's really overkill for me.

In addition, LPX _should_ be much easier to manage and use, and I do really miss some Logic plugins :)

Maybe if things change one day I'll definitely revisit DP8.

As a side note, I had mucho help from Patrick Woo for his critique of my mix. I'll be sure to include your comments into more mixes in the future!

More DP thoughts

Testing out the DP demo tonight, created a 4 track midi piece. I really miss the effects plugins in Logic, or rather, I miss knowing how to use the many midi plugins in Logic. For example, for the final mixdown I had _no_ idea how to check in mono >.>

Also, with Logic all the music is usually routed to the master bus for output, in DP I haven't properly been properly acquainted with the workflow and it seems like every Vi simply outputs to the soundcard. I wanted to route all the tracks together for final comp and limiting, and tried the Master Fader track but I couldn't seem to find how to route the other tracks to it, so instead I created an aux track and routed everything there.

Argh.... really conflicted. On one hand you got Logic which I already know pretty well AND is cheaper, but there is DP which has lovely midi tools and I think the routing is easier, if I can figure out how it works properly.

The plus side out of this exercise is that as I don't actually use any of Logic's instruments, but mostly 3rd party plugins, moving to a new DAW (or OS, for that matter) should be straightforward, as all the tools I bought exist for both OSX and Windows.

Oh well. Going to sequence another piece in DP, and see how that goes!

DP8 Day 2

I think the interface and amount of "hidden" controls is supremely intimidating. I'm also missing the concept of regions in Logic; I have this feeling of unease that my midi data is not contained in a container, and it could disperse into the wind at a wrong keystroke.

Also, I've run into stuff like trying to move audio "soundbites" to the cursor's position, it's a right click affair in Logic, but I can't seem to find the answer for that in the manual, so I've posted in forums for help.

The thing that really blew my head was the midi editing tools. Damn, they are good! I can for example resculpt velocity data on a per note basis, or I can draw a curve, and depending on the setting, the velocity data will snap to the curve, be scaled by it, be added to it etc.

Similarly for other kinds of midi CCs (or even tempo!!!), I just drew in the curve.

I still need to figure out automation for plugins.

Overall though, I can see lots of promise and would really like to make this my primary daw.

Thinking of moving to Digital Performer 8

Moved to OSX 10.8 a while back, and my Logic has been plagued with the dreaded GUI lags - it takes forever to stop a playback, even just a simple midi track!!! GRRRR. I am thinking that it may be the time to move on from Logic to a different DAW.

Protools is out, Cubase is very enticing, but expensive. More choices on Windows, but I don't run windows >.> That leaves upgrading to Logic X or getting Digital Performer 8. (There's Reason, but I want native au support, and ableton which just doesn't appeal to me)

DP is interesting as my teacher and other friends use it. From what I experienced watching them mix my stuff, it seems way more complicated but they have been doing music for decades. Me? Not even 3 years.

DP's full price is a definite no, but there is a crossgrade offer, of which Logic qualifies. That brings the price down to the "ouch, I can afford this but I'll be eating toast for lunch", with Logic X much cheaper, only slightly more than half of DP8's crossgrade.

One thing that I found nice about motu is that when I sent an email asking about the crossgrade, I got a reply the very next morning. That's something I really appreciate.

I've got the demo running at the moment, I must say it is quite overwhelming. So far, I've figured out how to record audio, some _really_ basic audio routing, and it's got a convention, unlike logic, where midi tracks are separate from the instrument (VI) tracks. You'll need to... route? The midi output over to the instrument track. Needs a bit of getting used to.

That said, it makes using a Kontakt multi instrument a breeze, unlike Logic's workflow. All I need to do in DP on each midi track is to target the correct instrument track with kontakt loaded, and select the correct midi channel.

Routing the audio for say, NY compression is still a mystery I hope to solve shortly. Will I get DP8? Who knows. It's very likely, but I want to check it out more before putting down the cash.

Sonata for Harpsichord and Flute

Haven't been sequencing stuff as I've been working on short exercises. Here's a culmination of my efforts :3

Quiet Steps

A piece for string quartet :)

A Short Diversion: Presto

Very pleased with the outcome of this section, learned lots. I am moving on to study a quartet piece by Hadyn next.

A Short Diversion: Andante

Continued studies on Mozart's Divertimento in F, K138, Andante Section.

A Short Diversion: Allegro

Updated this piece to include stronger harmony - there were many open fifths or just all 4 players playing the same note.

Also rewrote the last 8 bars of the piece. The original was an attempt to utilize secondary dominants, but I find it very difficult to work in a rigid pre-laid out harmony. Instead, with the update I write something more melodic and allowed the harmony to follow through.

The mix has also been altered to reflect a smaller hall, using the Schubertsaal impulses in Vienna Suite.

A Short Diversion

A short piece, which took almost 2 weeks to complete, spending over an hour a day.

This is thanks to the book I'm currently reading, "Music in the Eighteenth Century" by John Rice. Inside was some discussion about the learned style vs galant style, so I've decided to explore it.

The piece is a study of Mozart's Divertimento In F, K138. I've borrowed lots of elements from the Allegro section.

VSL Solo Strings, VI Pro and Vienna Suite seem to be really good!

Villian on my desk. Waldorf Blofeld.

Recently I was introduced to electronic ambient, specifically, Carbon Based Lifeforms and have been so inspired by them.... and using that as an excuse, I got a hardware synth :D Honestly, I'm not exactly sure why I did this, though part of it was being excited at being excited at music, as well as wanting to understand what the hype was about hardware synths.

The Waldorf Blofeld is a hardware synth, but from what I understand, it's a DSP synth, which probably uses some kind of dsp chip, and not like the analog synths of old which use good old resistors and capacitors, et al.

I had looked up some hardware synths, but the Blofeld seems to fit well to me:
a) Price is just right, and I got an open box synth with an extra discount!
b) Poly, not mono synth
c) Size is perfect for my desktop.

I'd actually tried the Blofeld Keyboard for a good long time at Moog Audio, and really enjoyed it there. The keys on the keyboard version felt really good, way better than the Keyrig 49 I'm using but we're comparing apples to durians here.

Sound wise - please note that my ears are horrible - I really can't tell the difference between the Blofeld and the softsynths I've used. I'd like to say the Blofeld is warmer, more alive, all that jazz, but no, it sounds like a synth, definitely not like one of those old analog synths or even the u-he Diva softsynth. THAT I can hear the difference! Perhaps the Blofeld can, with custom patches but those I've demo'd so far, I don't think I can tell the diff between the Blofeld or say, Zebra 2 or the ES2!

Hooking up the synth was very straightforward on OSX. It has a power input, and I opted to use USB as I was given a USB cable, and the two unbalanced outputs go to my Focusrite 2i4's recording jacks. The 2i4's inputs needed to be switched over to inst mode for it to be picked up. Some forum members mention how soft the patches are, but I found that some patches are really loud, redlining the preamps, whilst some patches could do with some volume boosting, either on the synth's volume control, or the pres.

I decided to just leave the synth's volume at about 60 and got the pre-amps at a good level, so I had leeways to go louder or softer all on the synth and not touch the audio interface.

With Logic, there were several ways of getting live audio - using a software instrument track with the External Instrument instrument, or using a external midi track, and having a second audio track with software monitoring, OR bringing up the environment panel and adding another mixer channel.

Testing the multi-timbral mode of the blofeld on a short track went swimmingly well, though individual tracks may need to be bounced for mixing.

Fiddling around with the blofeld, I found the interface very well structured. Personally, I wish the endless rotary encoders could be replaced with discreet click-stops. I found that I sometimes would overshoot what I wanted to change. Of course, I would then complain about the clicks being too loud. What can I say.

The interface to the synth itself is pretty well thought out, and surprisingly easily to make adjustments with.

One nice touch I thought was that the power adapter is universal, and came with the different prongs to work globally.

Gotta figure out how it all works and make some music!

Valse des Renards

A short waltz for string quartet. VSL Solo Strings here, with Vienna Suite and TB Barricade+Reelbus.

Strangers In The Night

Like yay! Took forever to get this out, as I shipped my sample drive on the ship to Montreal. Also my first mix with the MSP5s, I think they worked well to tell me what the bass is like. Will need loads of mixes to learn this monitors though, I think I felt more comfortable with headphones as that's what I've used for years.

My headphone mixes on the studio monitors

I went through some of my soundcloud mixes and after hearing them on the MSP5s, I think on the whole, I liked them, though all of the mixes with a bass instrument in them had the bass frequencies overemphasized.

Comparing what I've mixed with what I used for testing - Miles Davis's "So what" from his album, Kind of Blue - the upright bass in So What's mix was clearly audible on the MSP5s, but much more subtle.

Similarly, I pulled up Zanarkand from the Distant Worlds II CD, and the double bass in there is also audible, but sublime. Whereas my mixes they stood out very clearly, top and center.

So, I guess the VRM Box and AKG240MKIIs did a pretty good job considering.

Another aspect I felt is that my limiting and compression may be overly aggressive for some tracks, as they are a quite a bit loud compared to the commercial albums.

Gotta get my sample drive up!