Well.. I’ve gotten rather into this sound project, and it seems to involve learning Kontakt 3 in at least some depth. So far the experience of this is mildly painful.. One thing Native Instruments sucks at is user experience.. making things simple.. thinking about the experience of trying to learn this stuff and making it “just work.” Excuse my Apple prejudices.

Examples of obvious problems: You have this manuel… printed, which is nice. In my instance I’m saying “I want to set things ups so that I have a convolution reverb that I can send all the instruments in my kontakt Instance into and automate. One would think this would be fairly straight ahead and obvious.. I mean how many production environments have I used before? But no.. this is stuff you gotta go to the manual for.

I wouldn’t mind if going to the manual was something you needed to do to get a complex piece of technology working… It’s that the manual is designed all wrong. What you want to do is figure out how to do one thing.. you go to that section of the manual and you realize that it’s description of how to do that one thing presumes you understand 5 other things.. and it doesn’t tell you where in the manual those 5 other things are located.

Eventually it seems to come down to trial and error… the manuel gives you some clues.. and you fiddle around and if you’re lucky you work it out.

The production I’m working with starts out, of course.. with a quarter tone tuned piano.. and what I want to do is create a string section that.. is more atmosphere then anything.. It’s something going on in the background. I don’t really want you’re attention to be called to it to much..

The way I’m working at the moment.. well I have a limited understanding of some of Native Instruments tools.. so this is all a learning exercise.. at any rate Kontakt 3 includes stuff from the VSL library. The VSL library is one of the top libraries you’d go to if you wanted to emulate real orchestral music on your computer.. Its the kinda stuff they use in Hollywood films if they can’t afford to hirer and orchestra.. and perhaps even if they can.. (so you can give the director / editors / whatever.. a kind of demo-ized version of your score prior to bringing in the orchestra.. and its a good way to work stuff out to, right?)

The VSL library you get with Kontakt, of course, is limited compared to the full VSL library.. but it’s still the best stuff I’ve got. So I start out by loading up a Violin Section. By default you can control.. would you call it the intensity or volume or? Well you can control it via you’re modulation wheel.. and it’s roughly the equivalent of “how hard the violin player is bowing the string.”So.. what I do is.. inside Digital Performer.. as I’m programing out the violin section.. I’m sorta making the violin swell a little bit.. It all ends up being somewhat complicated as I’m controlling key velocity, modulation, and pitch bend…. so far.

Tuning was, and still is, a big question mark for me. Ideally I might like to make the string section set out in quarter tone tuning.. but its not quite clear to me how to go about this, or what the implications might be. It might very well turn out that it’s a real workflow issue.

Lets explore the problem conceptually.. you have these things called “sample maps.” The sample map tell the sampler what samples to play depending on what note you play and how hard you play it.. So in our case all the notes of a violin are set up in that sample map. If you want to make that quarter tones.. do you have to do something along the lines of.. making it so that as you go up the keyboard… it only goes up a quarter tone per key.. and does that mean you have to radically change the sample map? If so, if you’re dealing with a complex sample map… that’s a task that could take a while to achieve.. and if it’s not really clear… all the details of how you do this.. you could very easily make a mess for your self.

Consequently I’ve decided to skip trying to deal with the tuning issue. A number of Native Instruments instruments are actually amazingly good on this front.. but its not clear to me how Kontakt works.. so screw it!

Now I’ve spoken a little about microtonalism.. and its implications.. in this blog.. as well as the implications for how I’m taking on this project. What I’ve decided to do is go with the usual tuning and just pitch bend stuff around. Trouble is.. for who knows what reason.. #1 Pitch bend is not enabled by default and #2 once I figured out how to make Pitch bending happen.. it wasn’t really clear to me how much pitch bending I was setting up..

Ok, let me explain. On you’re keyboard you might have a bitch wheel.. in your sampler you have a pitch wheel range.. You could make the pitch wheel range one semi tone.. which would mean if you move the pitch wheel on your keyboard all the way up while playing a note.. it will be the equivalent of playing the next note up on the keyboard. If you set the pitch bend wheel to an octave.. you’re going to get a pitch that is 12 keys up..

So.. the problem is.. it’s not clear what I’m setting the pitch bend range to.. so again.. I’m force to fly blind folded.. or lets say it’s as if the readouts in my cockpit are giving me information in a foreign system.. the equivalent to driving a car where you don’t get MPH, you get it in the metric system, while the speed limits signs on the highway are all based on MPH… and now you gotta try and do math in your head.. if you’re lucky enough to know the metric system and conversion rates.. but imagine you don’t even have that.. because you really don’t know what the hell is going on.. .

So the results:

The piano part.. I wasn’t sure if I was 100% happy with.. as far as I’ve written it. Some of it sounds a little flaky.. or.. I’m not sure exactly. However, there’s a lot to love in the piano part: It has the very emotional kind of feeling.. a kind of ambience to it.. it’s own sorta impressionistic quality.. Once the strings are added, the parts of the piano that sounded flaky to me.. well they no longer sound flaky. It’s as if, the flaky of it,now sounds as if it has something to do with it’s interaction with the strings.. so now the flaky has been transmuted into interesting. Yup, that’s how we like to roll… But.. the problem is that the strings are calling too much attention to them selves.. It seems that we are not quite getting enough control over them via simply programing there performance.. it’s sounding like what we need to do is control them via mixing.. which brings us back to the earlier issue of how do I automate aux send effects in Kontakt.

I haven’t worked this all out yet. I really want to avoid making it sound like what you are listening to is the result of a lot of mix engineering…. I don’t want it to sound like my music normally sounds like…  At least not at this point in the production. I want it to sound like you’re listening to a group of instruments play..

To achieve these results.. my plan is as follows:  

<editors note, I’m now writing from the perspective of a couple days latter in the production:>

When doing the mix engineer roll you’ll more or less start by creating a “virtual stage.” What this means is you define where various instruments are in space. How far an instrument seems to be from you is largely defined by the ratio of a dry signal, to that signals sound going through some sort of a reverb.. So to make an instrument sound more distant you both pull down it’s level and add to how much of that channel’s audio is going into the the reverb.

The problem was.. I could never figure out how to automate this in Kontakt.. I can set it easy enough, but automation is a bitch…  and then there are the work flow issues related to how you go about this:

Kontakt is a pretty complicated program… You can set the pan position of an instrument in multiple places.. which is to say how much of it’s sound is going to the left versus right speaker:

You can set this on the level of sample maps so.. lets say you have a sample map with percussion sounds.. you might like to make it so that every percussive instrument has a slightly different pan position.. which will give your mix a little more interest.. you do that here.

I’m not totally clear on how this works but.. you can set up an instrument so that it’ll receive MIDI data that will set it’s pan position..  which is easy enough to set up..   you can set the pan position for the instrument in it’s editor.. and you can set in on the total instrument.. (I know these distinctions aren’t totally clear)

As if all this were not enough.. you can give all you’re instruments in Kontakt there own audio out.. and give them all there own mixer channel in you’re DAW (where you can again set pan positions).

So lets talk about some of the pros and cons of various approaches this presents us with:

I started going down this route with the idea that I wanted to use Kontakts internal audio engine to mix it’s instruments. The main reason for this is that Kontakt has a convolution reverb effect.. that’s more realistic then the reverb effects I have in Digital Performer. Of course the problem is that I was never able to figure out how to automate aux sends…

In this sorta set up.. what you want to do is set the pan position of the instrument prior to the aux send.. generally.. that way the sound of the instruments stereo position in the aux send will be the same as the dry signal. There’s reasons why you might not want to do it this way.. but doing it this way will help reinforce the spacial sense of your mix.

Doing it this way means you pretty much need to control the mix via MIDI. This creates a couple problems for you. The first problem is that MIDI only has 128 increments..  meaning you’ve just limited the resolution of your pan positions…. Kind of a minor issue.. and Kontakt even has ways of dealing with this.. but still an issue.. that becomes more serious for other sorts of parameters, like aux sends, that you might want to control.

The other issue with this approach is that you have to control it via midi channels in your DAW…. as a pose to by audio channels. The MIDI channels would probably be the same channels where you are programming the performance of the instrument in question… and the way DP’s editors work.. its not always easy / obvious.. what’s going on with all the parameters of a given channel.. 

The final problem is.. One of the things you want to do is make it so that all the instruments in the mix sound like they are in the same space.. you do this by putting at least a little bit of the same reverb on all the instruments.. so the convolution reverb you’re using inside of Kontakt is not something you can put on instruments out side of Kontakt… so.. you’ll at the very least have to put some reverb on the master out of Kontakt. The trouble is.. for various reasons, you really want a more fine grain control over how much of that reverb goes on what instruments.

What I eventually settled on was giving each Kontakt its own channel.. and mixing via audio channels in DP.. which gave me my better work flow..

It turns out that nearly every instrument in Kontakt.. and even on my piano, have the same convolution reverb effect on it… so they are all rather consistent..  Normally the problem with going this kind of a route is that convolution reverb is a processor hungry effect.. but seeing as I’m working on a Mac Pro with 8 cores.. this would seem to pose no problems at all.

A few Days Latter: 

I actually like the resulting sound better…  and there’s a couple of things worth talking about here: First of all, one thing you want to do in any mix, 99% of the time, is have some reverb effects that go on ALL the instruments.. to various degrees. This unify the mix, making it sound as if everything in your mix is more or less happening inside the same space. The second thing is that we are now working with a reverb that isn’t terribly realistic.. but it doesn’t really call attention to its self as “super unrealistic,” or at least it doesn’t when its stacked on top the individual instrument’s uber realistic convolution reverb.

This brings us into a complicated subject of the aesthetics of reverb.. It’s complicated because there is a history of reverb in music production that.. influences the aesthetic implications of a reverb. The reverb in DP is a reverb that is.. well lets call it “historic.” Basically the reverb effect..

I don’t know the dates of it.. but digital reverb has been with us for a long time now.. prior to which echo chambers where what you’d probably use.. and you would really have to go to greater lengths to get that sound..  And it was also a period where certain studios had an incredible amount of value because of there unique sound characteristics… the dawn of the digital reverb marked the start of a movement out of all that. Reverb is merely..  Well all materials reflect and absorb sound.. and they’ll reflect and absorb different frequencies differently. So… to model that realistically was not at all possible in early digital reverbs.. and I dare say the actual issues are a little more complex then what I’m pointing to now.

Digital reverbs have a more simplistic sound then do real acoustic spaces. In my philosophical point of view I think of this as Plato versus Buddhism: With Plato you have the ideal that gets degraded when it gets into earth.. in Buddhism everything is ideal, its just a question of your psychological attitude towards it. In a sense the simplified digital reverb I think of as plato’s ideal.. and convolution is more like a Buddhist ideal..  

I’ll end this conversation more or less here.. without digging much more deeply into the matter..  and just going so far as to say that the simple digital reverb really does add something to the convolution reverb.. making the sound sound that much better.

In any event, I’d be interested in knowing you’re reaction to all this: Have you played with mixing? Have you played with Kontakt? What’s your experience been like? Hell, do you have your own solutions to my problems? 

One of my first complaints about Digital Performer 5, after spending a little bit of time with it, was the lack of a good reverb. DP’s reverbs seemed.. seemed very out of date, and my feeling was that I really needed to look to effects bundles…  and of course most of the bundles I was looking at were quite expensive. Expensive because I really need to be looking for tools that will cover a whole lot of bases.. In order to really be able to take my sound work to the next level.

Of course when you first start working with new tools, your perception of what they are capable of is very different from when your seasoned on them.. So it seemed to make sense to wait till I had spent some serious time with DP, and my other new tools, before I get to serious about looking to expand my studio..

Further, not all of my studio is even installed! Some stuff is installed but not working.. So just what this sound studio is really capable of.. it’s still a bit of a mystery….

Digital Performer 6 

Well… DP 6 isn’t out yet.. I had thought, before I had seen the feature list, that I’d probably skip this upgrade… and maybe upgrade Cubase so it would work on this system.. that that would probably be the better choice.. that is upgrade to Cubase the next time Cubase comes out with something new. Well.. the feature list of DP has me thinking otherwise. And there are two basic things that really have my attention.

#1 Convolution reverb with parameters you can automate as it plays. Convolution reverb is… well I’m not comfortable with terms like “best” as music production is like.. it’s like you’re talking about different colors you can paint with, or something like that.. and you can’t really say “oh, this is the greatest color ever,” as the value of the color has more to do with the context of the project then the color onto its self…  accept that.. well, there are qualitative differences between tools.. and Convolution is the latest greatest in the reverb world.. all be it the latest greatest as of a few years ago!

Convolution basically “samples space,” the space you would put a sound into. The results of this is.. well you can really have the best reverbs in the world.. you could put your mixes in the best acoustic spaces ever…  In my search for effects bundles.. strangely, not a lot of them had convolution reverbs, which is something I’ve REALLY wanted. Of course I should maybe add that I’ve been rethinking what bundles I should take seriously.. but we’ll get to that latter.

In any event, for me, the convolution reverb is enough to have me thinking seriously about the DP upgrade.

#2 Pre rendering of virtual instruments. I maybe not be using the right terms here.. I don’t really know how DP is implementing this.. but I’ll give you my sense of how it might be…  

You load a software instrument into you a channel.. and you give it something to play. Software instruments can use up a hell of a lot of processing power…. So how powerful your computer is limits how much you can have going on at anyone time.

Different software instruments consume different amounts of power.. and you’ll often find your self in a position where your choice of instruments has much to do with how much power they will consume, not on how good they sound.

The deal with DP is, when your computer isn’t busy doing lots of stuff that requires a lot of processing power, DP will actually render those instruments.. So that the result is.. when you hit the play button, if stuff is rendered, the only processor load you have is the load to stream channels from disk.. which..  is not much power at all.

Now, the part I’m not sure about is… It could be that it also renders whatever insert effects you might put on that instrument.. wether or not it does this as well.. is sorta mute for me.. since I’m largely working with instruments inside of Kore.. which means I can put the insert effects in Kore, and DP will render them…. although there could be issues with plug in formats at that point.

Ok, so lets bring this back home to what this means for me:

Not much actually. See this computer that I’m running on is a monster, and I have no need of more power.. at least not so far. So far, everything I’ve thrown at it…. doesn’t challenge it at all. This is a sort of mind blower to me… but, when I get my studio working right, this could change.

Reaktor is one of the most processor demanding programs in my library.. and its a tool via which you can make your own instruments and effects. It’s  very cool.. there’s online libraries of user generated devices.. some of which are some of the coolest things I’ve ever heard..

So you hear me bitching and moaning about.. not having a particular effects in my library.. So the truth is that I could just get Reaktor working.. and use Reaktor to fill in those gaps.. The trouble is.. that there’s a huge difference between a Reaktor version of an instrument or effect, and a version of that instrument and effect that was actually optimized…  the power consumption can be brutal… 

I don’t know how well this computer will handle Reaktor, and we are talking about lots and lots of instances of Reaktor.. but if the instruments in my library are rendered to disk as I go a long.. in such a way where I don’t feel like I’m managing it at all.. It’s a little bit as if this computer suddenly got twice as fast… which means I have less need to look to those other software libraries. (Not that we aren’t looking to them still.)

Ok, other stuff.

To give an example of how much convolution reverb costs.. and in particular Altiverb, which has my eye, take a look at this review of Altiverb 6 from Keyboard magazine. 

From the same company we have a product known as Speakerphone. Do check out this video on Speakerphone, it really shows you around.

Speakerphone uses said convolution technology, and emulates various types of speakers… It includes cell phones, guitar amp speakers, and just about everything else you can imagine.. It’s the bomb!  

It’s actually pretty incredible.. It’s more then just amazing speaker emulations of all kinds.. you do have some convolution reverb patches, you’ve got a whole lot of effects of different sorts.. huge ambient sound sample library.. 

Speakerphone has obvious applications for sound design.. say for film work and whatnot.

Next day sometime:

So Speakerphone costs a little more then $500.  For me, $500 is a lot of money… The kind of money that you really have to evaluate priorities when you think about.. So why should I be drawn to Speakerphone? This brings us into the deeper topic of what my sound work is about.

Somewhere along the line my music went ambient… but even from the start, my electronic music was at least in part about creating a kind of cinematic experience. In my work we move through space.. as the listener, and the instruments them selves move through space.

So you got this sound work that is fundamentally about space.. and in deeper ways then I’m describing here.. I don’t know.. I just see these kind of amazing possibilities here…

Bigger Picture 

There is the bigger picture of the studio… and the bases that need covering. As things stand, it’s really the mix engineer bases that probably need the most covering.

Earlier I talked about reevaluating my take on what I probably need.. mainly this comes down to “all effects ought to be native” aka “not run on some sort of DSP sorta thing.. which is to say they run directly on your computer… not on some special hardware card, or whatever. The reasons are two fold #1 I have all the power I need, at least for a little while (particularly with where DP 6 is going), and #2 effects that run on hardware cards are generally more expensive because of the extra work that goes into developing software to run on those cards.

Waves Native Power Pack 5 

I’m now looking at Native Power Pack from Waves. It sells for about $375, and at least where I’m at now, looks like a really good deal. Most of the bundles I’ve been thinking about are more like $1000… but there’s a part of me that would rather not buy a big bundle, but would rather get bits and pieces from different companies.. particularly as investing in software is investing in a relationship with a company, and the question is.. do you really want to be too locked into a relationship with any one company?

Waves has kind of a bad reputation.. for more or less forcing upgrades, and for there anti piracy schemes.. which I must say.. is the sorta thing I’m sick of dealing with.. Of course the trouble is that Waves makes some of the best stuff  going.. so…

So the Native Pack includes:

True Verb: From what I can gather True Verb is a very good reverb, probably significantly better then anything in my current effects library. It offers a good deal of flexibility “for all your reverb needs,” more or less… or kinda sorta? If you conceptualize it as one part of a larger pallet of reverbs.. I think it looks very good.

Super Tap 2: We are talking about an emulation of an analog tape delay. I LOVE analog tape delay effects….  Though I’ve never really had a good one.. and currently I don’t even have one.. this stuff is great for ambient music styles… So I’m loving this.

IR-L: Here we have a convolution reverb… From what I understand it’s very good.. perhaps a little limited in selections.. From what I understand Waves’s IR-1, of which  the IR-L is the light version, allows you to download more spaces / a broader selection.. from the Waves’s website.. which you can’t do with IR-1..  but it still looks good.

L1 Ultramaximizer:  My understanding is that the L1 is something of an old standard maximizer.. Though its now a little out of date..  So… still very cool.

C1 Compandor: The C1, is  a compressor… with gate, eq, filter.. It’s not real clear to me what it’s all about from what I’ve gotten a chance to look at.. as far as how its side chaining works.. and if its basically a multi band compressor at that point.. but it sounds like its very nice anyway.

Doubler: This is not the sort of thing I’d normally be all that interested in.. but I find myself interested in it anyway… you through a sound into it and it “doubles it.” For instance if you were doing vocals.. now you can have up to 4 “doubles” and for each one you can control things like pan, delay, feedback, pitch, modulation, and what not.. 

I actually think this is an effect I’ve been hearing on a number of recordings, for the last couple of years, that I’ve really wanted to put in my work.. so… 

Q10 Paragraphic EQ: I guess we are talking about a 10 band parametric EQ.. I don’t really get what the “Paragraphic” thing means.. but from what I understand this is a very good EQ.

S1 Stereo Imager: I could be a little off base on this.. but my impression is it uses certain phase techniques.. lets call it psychoacoustic mojo, to achieve what I would call “special effects” with respect to your stereo field.

What did I just say? Well conventionally you have two speakers, and the sound sounds like it comes somewhere between those two speakers.. but now you can make it sound like its coming from the left of the left speaker.. Idk if the S1 does this.. but I think it might.. and there’s something for mixing on headphones.. or for headphones… that can be a thing.. and there are binaural things that could be a part of it.. so probably, maybe, some cool stuff. (How’s that for unreliable information?)

DeEsser: This is an effect I don’t really care so much about.. it reduces sibilance.. which is generally something you worry about when recording the human voice, which I don’t really do all that much of.. but you know.. I might in the future?

Renaissance Axx: Here we got a compressor especially designed for guitar. I think this is a base I probably have well covered with Guitar Rig.. but you know.. perhaps this could add something.

conclusions? 

The power pack seems like a lot of punch for not a lot of money… Where it’s a little limited, one could go with other brands and packages to overcome..  but for the money it’s probably good enough for me in the short term. Also.. it does have an upgrade to Waves’s Gold Bundle.. which is the $1K bundle I’ve had my eye on for a long time.. 

While writing this I read some interesting reviews from guys who “really get this stuff.” Here’s one from Ted Spencer, who using the Platinum bundle doing the score for one of my favorite movies.. American Splendor. Which, of course, was extra cool for having a little Joe Maneri in it… Another good one was from Frederick Bashour, using the Gold Bundle.

I should say that there are many things pulling me to the Gold bundle, but we’ll skip that subject for today.

Other Stuff: 

Ok, this entry is getting long, but lets see if we can’t do something quick.I’ve been talking about liquid mix for a while now.. It is a hardware based system that gives convolution EQs and Compressors. If you think about this in relationship to the above mentioned items.. I would imagine that Liquid Mix would probably eliminate any need for EQ or compression…  Or at least I anticipate Liquid Mix meeting all my needs in this area.. the only trouble being, really.. that Liquid Mix has limited instances, that go down as you start working with higher bit sizes and faster sample rates.. which is a bit of a downer… so maybe something to fill in the spaces has some value in here.Out side of all that’s mentioned here.. I’m thinking about orchestral sample libraries, synthesizers that actually emulate the sound of a human singing.. and inexpensive electronic drum set, and a cheap electric bass..So to just sorta conclude here.. It sounds sorta like I could be a fairly happy camper for about $2K worth of upgrades… Maybe 2.5K would be ideal. My feeling is..  Outside of maybe a DP upgrade and the Natives Power Bundle, I could easily wait a good year or so before I really felt a big need to upgrade any of this… And maybe by that time something like Nebula 3 might come to the Mac, making the cost of what I want to do a little less.Budget wise.. I’m still not in a position where.. I really know what’s up.. And the possible variations are enough that.. at best, this stuff could be covered.. and worst.. they maybe could be covered.  

 

[ editors note: I believe this blog entry was started yesterday, but I was to tired to finish it last night, so here it is now ] 

I’m still sick mind you, which roughly translates into barely capable of doing much of anything, but.. sitting at a computer isn’t always one of those things you can’t quite do.. I suppose it depends on the cognitive demands it places on you.. actually.. its about 6 30 PM, as I write, and I’m feeling about ready to just collapse… so maybe I’m pushing it a little by writing this.

So… I wont go into all of it.. but I got Digital Performer going on this computer.. The first challenge was just getting it to work right. You would think this would be pretty straight forward.. but it proved its self more difficult then that.

I’ve been using DP for a number of years now, though never as my primary DAW, and I must confess that it still represents something of challenge to me.. Though I feel up to the challenge, it’s pretty clear that I’m in the early stages of meeting that challenge. If the size of the manuel is any indication of the level of complexity we are dealing with, the Digital Performer manuel comes out to well over 1000 pages. Fortunately ones doesn’t have to read quite all of that to get up and running. 

The complexity level is made worse by the fact that I have the full Komplete bundle to worry about.. and for the moment, without the benefit of Kore. I’m feeling, as I scratch Komplete 5’s surface, the need Kore addresses… which is to say.. how do you manage / navigate your way through the thousands (is it 7,500?) of instruments and sounds you now have on call?

At the moment I’m lucky if I can figure out how to load the instrument up into DP, let alone edit it’s MIDI sequence.. I’ve set up some mixer routing stuff.. which DP is a little more sophisticated then the versions of Cubase I’ve used in the past.. though I understand the latest version of Cubase has moved some steps forward on this front.

Basically.. in approaching these kinds of projects you ask questions like.. well first you select your sound pallets.. which is to say what instruments you want to use (which has something to do with what sounds might go well together), and possibly which effects.. and go about a little mixing, and a little sequencing, and in a short space of time.. it starts writing its self. But.. when you’re in a position where you have thousands of new sounds to choose from.. and you’re not entirely sure what’s up with the effects you have to choose from.. it’s a little harder to move forward…

As much as I’ve read great things about DP’s effects, new effects that have some since last I used it, I must confess that I’m feeling a little underwhelmed..  now mind you I say this as someone who hasn’t spent more then 15 minutes trying to come up with a decent reverb sound… so please take this with a grain of salt.. but my impression is that the effects bundled with Digital Performer are.. perhaps good enough to get you started, but probably not enough to get you all the way there.. to put it a certain sorta way.

All of which is enough to give me a moment of depression..  if not for the fact.. and this is funny as they don’t really emphasize this too much, that Kore comes with 32 different effects.. including a number of reverb and delays sounds! So it may not mean that I have to go out there and look at effects packages just yet. 

In truth, however, I don’t think you can normally expect to buy a DAW and have all your bases covered, right out of the Box. I guess I was hoping that the need would be less pressing.. I have, as I may have mentioned in recent blog entires, been at least taking a look at various effects bundles that might add something to where I’m at.. It’s just that.. 

Latter that night: 

Moving from Cubase to Digital Performer 

Perhaps I was over stating how much I have to learn when it comes to DP. The truth is that I’ve simply forgotten a lot, and much of that comes back pretty fast.. Still, I have far to go.. Much of which has to do with knowing the best way to approach certain problems.

It’s often said that a given DAW is like a religion.. they each have there own way of going about things.  I use enough of them so that it’s mostly intuitive for me, picking up a new one.. But what of the DP way versus the Cubase way?

For the moment DP feels a lot more unwieldy to me.. I say for the moment because I’m quite sure that if I knew better… it would be a lot less unwieldy.. It’s like going from a master of one thing to an amateur of another.. you’re a lot more effective as a master. 

To some extent.. I might have said gong from Reason to DP + Komplete, and I’ll explain why.

Without really knowing what instruments are what, without really being orientated to this new world.. I found myself jumping in with certain presumptions. For instance.. when I think of my music production I think of certain categories of instruments.. of sounds, that I would conventionally mix together.. and roughly, based off what I know of the Komplete bundle.. I jump into those instruments which might have sounds that fit that need.. but without any clue as to how the specifics might work out.

So I start with Battery, loading up a rock type drum kit. I don’t bother to figure out anything with regards to how Battery works.. I just want to load it up.. There’s not really that much in the rock category of drum kit, as it turns out.. and the resulting kit I’m not entirely sure how to be expressive with.. This for two reasons.. #1 A certain cluelessness about DPs MIDI sequencing.. and its editors.. and #2 A certain cluelessness about the drum kit its self.

It turns out that DP will generally throw out a default velocity value of 64. Velocity, in MIDI, is a number between 1 and 128. Velocity represents how hard you hit a key on the keyboard. Now in the case of Battery and our Drum kit, this has two significant implications.

#1 How hard you hit a key impacts how load that instrument is going to play.. how sensitive a given instrument is to velocity is something that can generally be programmed into the instrument.. So.. bare this in mind..

#2 Battery has a hell of a lot of velocity layers in its sample maps…Ok.. this is going to take some explanation:  For the purposes of Battery, a sample map has two things to think about.. A, What drum are you hitting.. another words.. what key are you pressing.. depending on what key, that’s going to effect what sample.. is it a bass drum, or is it a snare drum? B, Velocity layers means.. at different velocities.. at different numbers between 1 and 128, different samples will get played.

It is perhaps important to note here that drums are a kind of instrument that are expressive in how hard they are hit, as well as there timing.. so to speak.. or lets say rhythm.. and will sound very different depending on how hard you hit them.. and indeed, on a real acoustic drum kit.. where on the drum head you hit them.. so they really do need to take advantage of velocity layers, right?

Ok.. Digital Performer sends a default value of 64… And I’m used to production environments that send a default value of 100.. that’s point one. Point 2 is we are dealing with an instrument that is deeply expressive relative to how hard you hit the thing.. that’s point two..

Now when I say a “default value” what I mean is.. you’ll open up an editor.. lets say a keyboard type editor.. and you’ll mouse onto a note on the keyboard to hear a sound.. by default you get 64.

If we compare this to Reason for a moment.. Reason is much less expressive then all this. In some cases Reason drums only have 3 velocity layers.. hell, maybe only one.. so if the entire expressive range of an instrument is squashed down to that.. and you’re used to be expressive in that world.. there’s a certain type of leap you need to make to be expressive in this here Digital Performer + Battery world.

Interestingly enough.. if you listen to my music.. you’ll note that an awful lot of what is going on is mixing.. it’s via mixing that I get expressive in how loud or soft sounds are.. generally. Or you might say that’s almost like my default way..

Ok.. I don’t mean to make this drone on forever, but now its time to bring up another thing.. that I think I meant to say in a blog entry sometime ago.. It’s as if I have music production skills that.. lets say were X deep by Y wide.. That depth and width is more then what I can bring into my consciousness in a single day of playing around.. What happens is.. I need to warm up.. and once I’m really warmed up.. why yes, velocity is absolutely something I’m expressive with.. but I’m not generally all that expressive with it when I’m just warming up. 

Arguably.. Digital Performer is set up to be more expressive in terms of velocity, by making 64 the default.  Believe it or not I was using Performer back in the early 90s.. when it was only a sequencer.. and at that time, velocity was the only way I was able to be expressive with volume.. though DP may have had some ability to automate mixes then that I might not have known about.. 

Ok.. so that covers the challenges of Battery, right?

Well next I gotta turn to Massive! 

By no means do I have a clue as to how to work Massive. About all I understand of Massive is that it has “some aggressive applications.” Well ok, I’ve read a little more then this about it.. but basically. 

Well, upon bringing Massive into the mix, the first thing I notice is that Massive overshadows all the other instruments in the mix.. or at least the patch I selected did. This is what we call in the biz “a problem.”

Mind you at this point we are just throwing paint on the wall.. eventually we will react to that paint, and develop something out of what we see in the wall.. so facilitating process is important.. and by Massive having this sort of effect.. well, that means we need to figure out how to approach process again…

Ok.. so the reason Massive is over shadowing all the other instruments is because it is a frequency hog! The job of the Mix engineer is to isolate the various instruments into there own frequency spaces.. so you can hear everything.. and Massive wants to be in everyone’s frequency space. The answer to this problem is simple, we call it EQ.

Or is it so simple? For starters DP offers us two EQs.. a parametric EQ and a “Master Works EQ,” which, as it turns out.. is a kind of parametric EQ.  Ok ok ok.. I know,  your asking “what the hell is a parametric eq anyway?”

Basically, all sound are fluctuations of amplitude across a frequency spectrum. Amplitude being loudness to softness.. frequency being something similar to pitch. With a parametric EQ, you first select what frequency you want to effect, you then choose how much you want to turn up or down that frequency, and then you decide how broadly you want the effect to happen.. the sort of curve if you will, around your target frequency. Make sense?

In Cubase you have 4 bands of parametric EQ as a default part of every channel in your mix… In DP you have to actually add plugs into to your channel to get your parametric EQ. In DP the Parametric EQ can have 2, 4, 0r 8 bands. The Master Works EQ in Digital Performer is a 5 band EQ, but its much more complex then just that.. enough so that it takes up 7 pages in the manuel.. and I haven’t gotten around to reading it all just yet.

Basically.. when you’re creating a mix, when your job is to isolate different parts of the mix into there own frequency space.. what you would conventionally do is throw a parametric EQ on each channel (or sub group, but I wont explain that here as that would only make this all too complex, not that it isn’t already).. and you would turn up the frequency that instrument was basically taking place in, and turn down the other frequency.. doing this with all the instruments.. taking instrument that occupied overlapping frequencies and putting them on opposite ends of the stereo field..

The trouble with my music is it’s “kinetic” which is my way of saying.. things move around.. and I like to have the freedom to move things around.. what this means is that if I’m to throw a parametric EQ on any channel.. I have to then automate that in a way that makes sense for what the content of that channel is doing at any particular moment.. which at the very least is an extra layer of labor for me.. which will impact process negatively.. at least until such time as I get warmed up..

A little latter:

I haven’t really gotten to the heart of the Reason VS DP + Komplete thing, have I? Or what I wanted to get to here. The best I can do, for tonight, is to say this is all but once small nuance. What I had wanted to get to talking about is working with REX files (a kind of loop technology) in Reason versus in Kontakt.. which will use REX, as I understand it.. but Kontakt is a very different sort of loop player then Dr. REX, as we find in Reason.

There’s a lot more going on in my production, that seems worth mentioning.. but alas I am too tired..

Right now my brain is turning towards.. well.. You know I hope you don’t take any of this as me putting down Reason.. Reason’s simplicity is what makes it great.. but what makes DP + Komplete + X great is its unbridled power.  This probably doesn’t make any sense as a way to assess these things.. but one way is to look at price tags.. my off the cuff statements here could be off by $100 here or there.. but you’ll get my drift.

Reason costs around $400 or $500. Digital Performer’s list price is around $800, or was last time I checked.. and Komplete’s was somewhere between $1500 and $1000… and probably a substantial savings at that. If We were to throw the mixing effects into the bag.. add another grand to that.. so how’s a $400 or $500 environment to compare with a $3000 environment?A little more if we were to add Kore to our equations?  My experience has been that the cost of software often has a certain relationship to it’s complexity.. and I must say that I feel like I’m jumping back into the deep end.

So far, and I haven’t scratched the surface.. I have to say that its “un fucking believable.” Massive, the more I listen to it.. and just that one patch I’m using.. It’s just amazing sounding. I mean it has all the richness of.. well lets say a guitar sound.. in a lot of ways.. I mean it has a lot of the character of it.. you could see it being in Marilyn Manson’s studio, or something..

And the drum kit I’m using.. gosh it just sounds so organic.. I find myself wanting to make the kinds of mixing decisions that I normally hear grammy award winning mix engineers talking about.. which is such a subtle craft.. I often wonder what the hell they are talking about.. but now I feel like I’m in a world where it all makes sense.. ahh but if only I had the money to get some good studio monitors and some acoustic treatment for my studio.. then I could really be in a position to make those kinds of critical judgements..  well I guess that’ll just have to wait for gainful employment or.. budget revaluations of what kind or another..