Sonic State video reviews Novation Nocturn Control
February 4, 2008
I haven’t heard much about Novation recently, but here’s a video from Sonic State’s Rob Jones, who does a 6+ minute practical review of the Nocturn Control, a nifty little device making it easy to control plug-in parameters and other effects.
Arranging a pop song in 60 minutes
April 12, 2007
Pianologist has written an excellent post titled “How to complete full pop song music arrangement in 60 minutes” which covers how to arrange music using a sequencer.
Of course there are prerequisites, like knowing how your software of choice works, setting up templates which can be used for new projects, and ensuring that the song is already completely written.
Sixty minutes might not seem much, and it may well not be enough to get a completely polished version, but following this advice it could get you well on the way to a complete track.
Correcting permissions on Mac OS X
April 9, 2007
Analog Industries sets out very clearly how to repair permissions in Mac OS X.
That doesn’t sound like it has any relevance to music or synthesisers, but they note that “A side effect of a customer’s permissions being screwed is that Audio Damage plugins can’t read their copy protection files, and thus won’t work.”
It also covers some interesting anomalies with Logic.
If you’re a Mac user not familiar with permissions (believe me, you need to be) head over and take a look.
MultiControl lets you use game controllers for MIDI/OSC
May 28, 2006
MultiControlFeatures
- Easy to choose any general Human Interface Device (HID)
- Automatically detects buttons, sliders, etc in use
- Automatic scaling to 0.-1. (OSC) or 0-127 (MIDI)
- Easy to choose desired output scaling
- Optional data smoothing
- Can output data using either Open Sound Control (OSC) or MIDI
- Store presets to xml-files
It’s only available as a Mac download at present. Could be fun to play around with. I don’t know how it interfaces with other applications.
Garageband 3 Know It All! Training course released
April 29, 2006
Digital Music Doctor has released a new video training course: Garageband 3 - Know it All!
It covers the major aspects of audio and MIDI recording, editing, and mixing using Garageband 3.
- Read the press release
- Visit the website: Digital Music Doctor
Citizen publishing: musicians and Garageband
April 29, 2006
Tom Hespos has written an interesting article entitled Low Barriers To Entry Fuel Citizen Publishing in which he mentions Apple’s contribution to consumer music generation by Garageband.
An application called GarageBand typically comes along with the purchase of a new Apple Mac. A deceptively simple application, GarageBand doesn’t come with a manual to explain how to use it. For many, the application is intuitive and easy to use. And the guy who wrote the unofficial manual for the application describes GarageBand as “unfair” in terms of what it is able to do, as compared to what the equipment professional recording engineers can do. Home users can easily create professional-sounding recordings, and folks like me who spent tens of thousands on their way to this point in technological development are kicking themselves.
I don’t mean to give Apple all the credit for ushering in revolutions in content production. I’m oversimplifying for the sake of illustration here. What’s important is that not only did we go through the desktop publishing era in the area of printed materials, but we’re also going through the desktop publishing era in audio recording and production.
Read the full article: Low Barriers To Entry Fuel Citizen Publishing
New music software: Dimension Pro / Acid Pro 6
April 18, 2006
Tablet PCs for musicians
April 1, 2006
Hugh Sung has written a useful series of posts about Putting a Tablet PC System together for Musicians - a hi-tech replacement for printed sheet music.
He covers hardware, software, scanning music, music readers and annotators, and maintenance.
(Via the Collaborative Piano Blog)
Logic Pro 7.2 on a MacBook Pro. Drool.
April 1, 2006
Apple PR: Hi Bob. How would you like to be the first on your block to play with our new MacBook Pro?
Me: When can I have it and how long can I keep it?
Apple PR: We can have it on your desk tomorrow and you can keep it for at least a month.
Me: Sounds good to me. Send it on down and I’ll give it a try.
Apple PR: There is one last thing… Would you like a copy of Logic Pro 7.2, our first Pro application to go Universal?
Me: I don’t know… I’m not sure I’m qualified to review a thousand dollar professional audio production package…
Apple PR: Then don’t review it. Just check it out on the MacBook Pro. We think you’ll be impressed.
Me: O.K., if you insist…
Why don’t I get calls like this?
Actually, someone from Apple did call for me a few weeks back but I couldn’t take the call and she never phoned back. It was probably just a sales call…
Anyway, the article goes on to describe Bob “Dr. Mac” LeVitus’ experiences with Logic Pro 7.2 and a MacBook Pro.
If nothing else it proves that the MacBook Pro is blazingly fast, particularly on optimised applications.
Let me talk for a moment about performance. Here’s the deal… the program ships with a bunch of sample songs, some of which are labeled “for G5 only.” These “G5 only” songs bring my PowerBook G4 1.25GHz to its knees; its poor processor just can’t keep up. And while the “G5 only” songs play properly on my Power Mac G5 (with two processors), they use every resource available and still hiccup occasionally as shown in Figure 1.
On the MacBook Pro, however, a “G5 only” song not only played smoothly, but it didn’t even come close to swamping both processor cores
Oh yes, and on Logic?
Well, I think he’s droolin’…
- Guitar Amp Pro
- Sculpture ‘Component Modelling Synthesiser’
- Ultrabeat Plugin
- ES1 virtual analog synth
- EVP88 piano synth
Read the full article: Pretzel Logic with a MacBook Pro…
Cakewalk releases Music Creator 3 for Windows
April 1, 2006
The entry-level music software from Cakewalk has had an upgrade to version 3.
It’s features include:
- Creation of music with up to 32 audio tracks and 128 MIDI tracks.
- Play/record using thousands of included Virtual Sound Canvas and Dreamstation instruments.
- Integrated notation tools.
- Scrolling lyrics window.
- ACID-format loop library for backing-track creation.
- Create podcasts and soundtracks.
- Built-in metronome and tuner.
- Detailed editing views including Arrange, Console, Loop Construction, and Piano Roll with Drum Editor
- On-screen mixer.
- 13 studio effects including EQ, Delay, Chorus and Reverb.
- Accompanying tutorial CD.
Read the full press release
Visit Cakewalk site.
