Well I’ve spent the last 2 or 3 days sick in bed.. the kind of sick where you can barely sit up… where to move your body an inch, one way or another, is like some major engineering feet..  I’m still feeling pretty crappy.. but my mission is to try and make it over to guitar center to pick up some software I had ordered: Komplete 5, and Ableton Live.  I don’t even know that I’m up to the task.. Well the first step has to be making my way into the shower.. get this gross film off my body… 

Hours latter:

So I’m installing Komplete 5……  Komplete 5 is spread out among 10 DVDs 

A few latter: 

Kontakt, that would be the sampler in Komplete, on its own has a sample library 33 GB, Native Instruments has a video where you can kind of see what this is all about, view able here.

Many folks are now saying that Kontakt is the best software sampler on the market today.

Latter:

I apologize for being sick.. sorta limits by ability to blog coherently.. none the less, lets explore this Komplete 5 stuff. Komplete 5 Includes Kontakt 3, Guitar Rig 3, Massive, Reaktor 5, Absynth 4, Battery 4, Akoustic Piano, Elektrik Piano, B4 2, FM8, and Pro 53.

Much latter:

Ahh, the instillation didn’t work totally.. I’m too sick and out of it to deal with it at the moment.. Native Instruments has proven quite a pain, as far as getting there stuff to work.

Well, I suppose the real deal comes when you’re working the Komplete Bundle with DP…. (or similar DAW) Ok, so back to what all this stuff is.

As I was saying.. Kontakt is a software sampler.. though that doesn’t quite do it justice.. It’s a “modular sampler.” …Hmm, you know some of this stuff doesn’t make the most sense to me? See, here’s how I work:

I have a DAW.. (digital audio workstation) and.. in that DAW I program out performances for various instruments…. and I’ll put various effects on those instruments, and create a mix…

With a program like Kontakt.. the part that I don’t totally understand is.. well you have all these effects built in…  Wouldn’t it be better to provide for me stand alone effects units that I could use on any instrument? I don’t have experience with the new Kontakt.. but it looks pretty kick ass.. and I can’t wait to get into it. I’ve owned older versions.. only trouble is that I never had enough computer power to totally take advantage of Kontakt..

Gosh.. I realize I must be pretty incoherent at the moment..  

Guitar Rig 3: Guitar Rig is.. its software that will emulate various amps, effects, microphone placement, and all the rest of it, for guitar and bass. 

Next Day:

Here’s Dwezil Zappa (son of Frank) demoing guitar rig:

 

Here’s a guy from Native Instruments talking, like a year or two ago, showing us FM8:

Here’s our Native Instruments Guy talking about Massive:

Here’s a couple with him talking about Kontakt:

And of course Part 2, I think he does a better job of taking you through this then I.

Here’s a look at Absynth, one of my favs:

Absynth is very cool.. and I should add, not very difficult to learn how to program..

Next is Battery 3, which is a drum sampler:

Here’s a video, made by someone else, on Akoustic Piano:

Might have been nice if the video wasn’t so compressed, ha? Particularly as there isn’t actually that much movement in it, and thus doesn’t need the compression.. 

Native Instruments doesn’t put out this one either.. nothing for Reaktor.. Reaktor is pretty amazing.. you can use it to make your own synths, samplers, effects, beat boxes, and what have you.. Its probably the most powerful tool in Komplete.. and also the one that wants the most power from your computer.. thus it’s the one you’d most want the 8 cores of goodness..

Anyway, so this is a video by a fellow who goes by “maltcus” who’s gives a fair bit of color to the subject of making your own instruments:

The biggest problem with Reaktor is it’s steep learning curve.. It’s not a real easy tool to dig deeply into.. and there really isn’t a lot of good information out there on how to get up to speed.

The second biggest problem is.. because it gives you complete control for designing instruments, effects, and what not.. it’s not as optimized as other soft synths.. thus the need for a beefier machine.. which again, is probably fine for my Mac Pro… Though I have no idea how well optimized it is for multithreading.. which is the technology by which it would be able to take advantage of multi core processors.

Ok, so if you’re keeping track.. you’ll note that we are skipping over much… There’s just not too much in the way of videos for much of this.. *sigh* well ok, so be it.. lets move on to Kore:

This is a trailer for Kore 1.. Kore 2’s controller got rid of the audio interface elements. I purposely bought the Kore 1 controller (with a free upgrade to Kore 2) for the interface.. the reason being that.. well at the time I thought I would be getting a lap top.. and thought Kore might make for a pretty good on the go type audio interface.. and even if not for that.. it offers a higher resolution for recording then my current studio, for the most part, supports. 

Ok, good enough, here’s a video of our Native Instruments guy showing us Kore 2:

Ok… So that’s a reasonable look at Komplete + Kore.. which, besides Digital Performer, is really the the biggest upgrade I’m making to my sound studio at the moment.

Well, here’s a video for DP 6, which isn’t quite out yet:

Feeling burned out yet? Well the Digital Performer video has like.. a couple more parts to it, but I shant subject you to that. Instead let me try and wrap this up a little bit.

So what exactly does all this madness mean for my music?

I think you have multiple dimensions of answers.On the one hand you have a learning curve, via which you would go about learning how to maximize you’re expressive creative.. possibilities.. Some of this is digging deep into the tools, learning to program them all.. and some of it is just asking “ok, so what’s the application for this feature in the larger creative scheme of my work.” 

A big, right off the top, change is a larger sound pallet.. Some of these tools, in one incarnation or another, I’ve been using for years.. but still, as they progress to new versions, we find in them larger libraries of sounds, and new features.. I mean Kontakt, on its own, now gives you something like 33 GB worth of samples.. over 1000 instruments.. That’s freak’n huge! 

One of the more impressive parts of the newly augmented Kontakt Library, and I don’t know how far or deep this goes, is the inclusion of selected parts of the VSL or Vienna Symphonic Library. VSL is an industry standard library if you want to create realistic realizations of symphonic music.. It’s probably as close as you can get to hiring a real orchestra to perform your work. I believe the full VSL runs in the $5K department or so.. and requires multiple computers to run.. so clearly what you get from Kontakt is less then that.. but still, there is at least a taste of that.

In my music I’m interesting in exploring composition and production in ways that are not in anyway mitigated by tradition.. It is a kind of resynthesis of formally disparate elements. Another words, traditions and styles normally contextualize things like.. what instruments your using, what sounds, what style, what whatever.. even production techniques.. What I’m interested in is creating a musical style where I could go in any direction, at any time, for any reason at all.

I’m interested in creating something like a cinematic experience.. a kind of sound painting.. 

So the enlarged library, along with a more powerful computer, goes a hell of a long way along these lines.

So Where does the Studio Go from here? 

I have a lot of different ideas as far as where I’d like to take my studio.. right now I’m in a mode where I need to do a little more research and eventually come to the question of reevaluating my priorities. Arguably the problem is that I’m trying to explore a lot more then just sound.. from video, to animation and motion graphics, the world of 3D, special effects.. and all the rest of it. So the budget has to be distributed broadly between these categories.

From a strictly sound studio perspective, I think what is probably most needed is an investment in the tools of the mix engineer.. reverbs, EQs, Compressors, that kind of thing. The trouble is, at least at the moment, the sorts of tools that have my eye… costs in the thousands of dollars. What I’d really like to be able to do is.. Invest in part of that now, and then more of it latter on.. sorta piece meal my way through it.

There are other issues of course.. I imagine to really get where I want to go would require selling the house.. .

Well anyway, that’s probably enough for one entry. 

Closing Notes:

I’m still feeling terribly sick.. There’s a thing I really wanted to go to this weekend.. It would provide me a more in depth look at Final Cut Studio, Light Rigs, serious Video cameras, and what not.. Including a couple workshops taught by David Times. Thus the challenges to my reevaluations.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 7th, 2008 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Music Production, musical composition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.