NaSoAlMo: What it is and why we like it

This month, or November actually, I plan on participating in NaSoAlMo, other wise known as National Solo Album Month.. This is a thing where various musician / sound artistic types.. decided to participate in a challenge to create a solo album in a months time..  Basically.. it’s an excuse to get serious.. for a month.

Last year, as long times followers would know, I created ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures.. for NaSoAlMo….  This, I must tell you, was one hell of an adventure. There’s nothing like working your ass off on something, if you want to grow by leaps and bounds… and at the end of last years National Solo Album Month’s thing..  I felt like I had made a giant jump in my music production / etc skills..  And so now, we embark on the next adventure…

On the Stategery and tactics of taking on such a challenge

Generally speaking.. if I’m working in my conventional ways.. and didn’t have a lot of other stuff to contend myself with.. was very focused.. I could maybe spit out about a track a week.. which might be around.. oh lets say an average of about 6 minutes a pop…. which comes out to what, like 24 minutes of music? Well.. the challenge is to make an album of at least 29:09 minutes.. so that’s not quite going to cut it.. and seeing as I have other things to deal with in life.. and seeing as last year I only found out about this about half way through the month… one must develop alternative strategies and tactics.. which is perhaps another interesting thing to deal with… 

So, lets take a look at last years strategies.. and this years strategies.

ZarMattAThustra’s Deep Space Adventures Production Strategy 

I found out, as I said before, about this challenge, about half way through the month.. but had already begun work on a few tracks.. so figured I could still make a go of it.. If I tried something radicle.

My radical process started with.. working with different types of sound generating type programs.. where you improvise via tweaking various parameters and record the results. This instantly creates a whole lot of music.. but then you have the question of “is this interesting music?” So the next challenge is “how do we make this interesting music?” This became the jumping off point for an experimental sonic adventure. For the most part, this involved the following approaches:

1. Lets Process the crap out of these audio files.
2. Lets mix stuff together different versions of processed audio into a kind of composite audio file.
3. Lets slice up the audio file into discreet loops n stuff
4. Lets sequence the loops
5. Lets integrate this with our usual way of working 

 Well, that’s the broad outline anyway.. 

Tools Used

1. Ableton Live
2. Arturia Storm
3. Native Instruments Komplete (mostly Reaktor)
4. A Wimpy G4 Mac
5. Reason
6. A guitar
7. A Zoom H4 field recorder 

Ok, so that’s the basic broad brush stroke outline of it.. You can read more of my writings related to this project here…  That would be the full list.. The writings where I wrote during the production are as follows: Off In Reaktor Land, Red Rum Re Drumed, and finally Gonzo adventures in music production.

Should you like to hear the album in it’s entirety, you can find it on over here at mattsearles.com/music. 

At the time I created it.. I wasn’t real sure of it.. but since then I’ve gotten a lot of good reviews from people.. and now figure.. well, it’s probably a pretty good album.

The New Production Adventure

Tools likely to be used:

1. The Bad Ass 8 Core Mac Pro
2. This here new MacBook (2GHz Due)
3. Komplete 5
4. Kore
5. Ableton Live
6. Reason
7. ReCycle
8. A Tascam 16 channel Mixer as a MIDI controller
9. An M-Audio DJ like MIDI controller
10. A Guitar
11. A Slide Bass
12. Digital Performer
13. Liquid Mix 16
14. Couple of budget Condenser Microphones
15. Zoom H4

In addition to all that madness..  I’m looking to add VirSyns Cantor Vocal Synth and… VirSyns “Take Five FX bundle” which includes Bark, Matrix, Reflect, TDesign, and VTape. Indulge me as I talk about these a little, won’t you?

1. Bark is a pretty interesting looking  27 band filter / EQ and compressor
2. VTape is a set of analog tape emulation plugs that emulate tape based saturation, delay, and flange. I’m very much in need of a tape delay type effect.. and very much wanting some sort of analog tape emulation warmth.. 
3. Reflect is an Algorithmic Convolution Reverb. Even in the current version of Digital Performer, I’m not feeling like my reverb bases are covered quite enough.. and I expect Reflect to really help out along these lines.. and the integration of Algorithmic and Convolution technologies into a single reverb unit is a quite attractive thing.
4. TDesign is a Transient former.. I don’t know too much about this sorta effect.. but it does give you control over your dynamics / transience.. and there are quite a few production folks out there whom are very into such things
5. Matrix is a Vocoder, and according to a recent issue of Sound On Sound, a very impressive Vocoder.

 So… as you can no doubt see.. We’re talking about a massive upgrade from last year’s project.. studio wise anyway, so, what of the plan off attack?

Plan of Attack

I have lots of music ideas, and I’m pretty sure this project isn’t going to be able to explore them all.. but, we’ll certainly see how far we can make it.

• The first thing I want to do is.. See if I can’t jam out some stuff using Kore to control various Reaktor beatboxes, sequenced instruments, and sound generators..  This will effectively create one box full of building blocks.
• Next I want to experiment with a somewhat traditional-ish approach to sequencing.. where you play around on a keyboard, quantize stuff, and put together stuff that way..
• I want to use ReCycle to create REX files out of some of the results.. to use as building blocks that way.
• A rather central thing I want to explore is.. vocals. These vocals will probably be ether.. me speaking into microphones and vocoding the hell out of it.. / Melodying the hell of it.. or Cantor stuff.. somehow creatively mixed into the music.
• I’m actually thinking of the possibility that this album project could feature some sort of a narrative / lyrical whatever.. that might sit at the center of the album.. which would be a really huge jump for me to take.
• I see a part in the process where I jam away on guitar and bass to construct.. well… something or other.
• I imagine a part of the process where I have all kinds of content loaded up into Ableton Live.. and use the MIDI controllers / Mixers to kinda improvise out something…

 Of course, in the end, all this stuff must me integrated into one giant process… so, wish me luck…

In this episode I share my last sorta finished bit of music.. that I’ve been meaning to post forever.. I’m not sure what I think of it.. maybe you can leave your comments to help me think this through.. At the moment I’m thinking the mix could be fixed up a bit.. with respect to the base end.. That’s my chief issue.

I wrote a lot about this little project.. and so.. well, I should leave some links to said posts.

• Music to Freak Out Stoners: Music Production in the Deep End 
• MTFS Revisited: New Sonic Adventures

After this, we get a few posts that.. Kinda go into the depths.. and these are sorta subtextual, at least, stuff on this production.

• From Linguistics and music, to depth  psychology, psychedelics, mysticism, philosophy.. and Aesthetic as it relates to my musical art project
• Notes from a rad mad Electroacoustic creative music production process
• Some Jolly Lyrics.. to the music I’m making
• Must post something….. News from the front: Music Production blah blah blah’s

So I guess that’s it.. after that the blog kinda goes off into sound synthesis… which may sorta form the basis of what I show in the next podcast episode.. so till then hope you dig it.

I should add that should you want to subscribe to this via iTunes, this be the link. 

 

 Music to Freak Out Stoners Revisited [6:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After quite a hassle.. Digital Performer 6 is finally running on my system. The first thing you noticed about DP6, versus 5, is you got a new interface.. This new interface has 3 main implications:

1. How do you make a wheel again?: You have a new interface to learn… you must learn new ways of doing whatever it was you were doing before.. 
2. There is a Psycho Acoustic principle via which software with new shiny interfaces always sounds better then the old ugly ones: More then anyone ever wants to admit.. our perception of audio is influenced by suggestion.. and so it is that if the software you’re using looks pretty.. well you think it sounds a whole lot better. From the point of view of someone producing music.. this is a nice feature.. as it inspires you on your adventure..
3. Stuff is Streamlines, or at least that’s what MOTU would have you believe: For the period in which you can’t figure out how to do what you used to take for granted.. stuff isn’t streamlined…. But I must say.. there’s a lot of stuff about Digital Performer that I really thought was.. well ways in which DP wasn’t exactly making sense in a modern production context.. and what do you know.. they’ve worked out much of that.

Beyond this grooviness.. we got other new grooviness.. but none of this is what’s really striking me at the moment.

Matt, what is really striking you? 

What’s really striking me is a sense of Awe of what I’m able to do in my studio now. On the sonic software side of things we got Digital Performer 6, Ableton Live, Reason, Native Instruments Komplete, Kore 2, and Liquid Mix 16… plus a couple other odds and ends. There are gaps that still need filling, which I could go on about ad nauseam… some of which I’m looking to rectify in the short term, others more long term.. but however you want to slice it.. there’s a lot of power under the hood.

Why are you struck by this now?

This is a complex topic but.. There is this sense that “software tools are not as good as hardware tools,” or at least that would be a simple way of putting it. It’s quite a bit like some people feeling that vinyl records are better then CDs… That vinyl is somehow “warmer” then CDs. This is a complex topic that can go into subjects of sample rates, ramifications of particular mastering issues for vinyl… and on and on and on. In the world of music production technology the topic is even more complex as that the technology of production is much less static then the issues of Vinyl and CDs.. which, lets face it.. people are choosing low quality MP3s anyway…  so what does it really matter?

My production tools acquisition process has always been one where issues of “price versus performance” plays the key roll.. If hardware tools are 1o% better then software tools, but cost 40% more.. I’m probably going with the software.. But in the world of serious sound engineering.. it’s the finally 10 or 5 percent that separates the men from the boys.. Most of what makes a good record are the people making it, not the tools.. but tools are very important.. and if you don’t have the right tools.. you’re probably not going to get there.. 

All of this talk is somewhat abstract.. until you actually start listening to the gear… In the last few months I’ve been going through a few years of Sound on Sound magazine.. reading reviews, interviews, and whatever.. trying to get a better picture of what gear is out there.. production techniques.. and all sorts of related things.. as well as scouring the internet.. and listening to all kinds of samples of all sorts of tools.

Somewhere in this process I began to think “hmm, maybe my tools aren’t so great?” But then DP6’s new look and feel came to the rescue.. and I started to perceive differently.. and started to discover how amazing some of the tools I have really are.

So I mean it was a kind of subjective shift that brought a new perspective.

Where the Artist Plays

As I tried to get to before.. the most important thing is not your tools.. it’s you. And it’s not even really your skills so much as your spirit.. for it is, after all, the spirit who employs said skills.. and even said tools!

There is something to be said for habit.. I find myself approaching my music making in more or less the same way as I always have.. In the last 9 months or so.. I’ve gone on all manner of fun little experimental adventures.. exploration of process alternatives.. and what not… But even with all that.. as I approach the music making today.. I do so in the hum drum of habit.

Habit?

For many, habit is a state inside of which growth doesn’t really happen. However.. if there is sufficient anarchy in your habits.. that anarchy is always going to be putting you in varying positions which you will have to wrestle your way out of.. and that’s often where the interest in my work comes. Or that’s one way of putting it.

Still.. I’m not without desire to get out of my usual habits.. it’s just that.. such ambitions are not really the most important thing.. the most important thing is getting the damn ball rolling.. and if that means playing to your preexistent strengths, so bit it. 

Getting the ball rolling? 

Yeah.. getting the ball rolling is the most important thing. As we speak the ball is in motion.. Wether I’m working a way on music, screwing around with photography, working with video, computer graphics, web design, whatever.. at the very least.. each day.. I do something.

The end goal is to have as much of your energy as possible pouring into this work.  The more of you you can put into it.. the better the work will be… By which I don’t necessarily mean that you should “be in your work” but.. well thats complicated.

Next Day Sometime

My work is a strange beast!  In someways, going about what I’m going about.. I feel like I’m working on Indra’s Net version 2.. Indra’s Net was a project I worked on sometime in 2004… and at the time the laptop I was using.. well the screen was freaking small.. which effected things in a number of ways.. the processor, even for the time.. was very much on the budget side.. I never had enough RAM.. some of my software wouldn’t even run! And we didn’t even have enough hard disk room to save what we were doing in anything other then MP3 files!

Now of course.. we’re using 2 24″ HD displays.. We only have about 2GB of RAM but that hasn’t been a real issue in the music production department.. We have software that’s 2 generations beyond what I was using on Indra’s Net.. We have ridiculous amounts of processing power…  and we have more disk space then we’d ever use for music production. Finally, instead of Cubase we are now using Digital Performer.

Beyond all that we are 4 years in the future.. 4 Years more mature.. whatever I’ve learned about music production since then.. and 4 years evolution in my work. 

So.. The implications of all this.. are actually kind of big.

Implications on habit

I don’t think I spoke elegantly about this last night.. and now that I’m a little further along in my production.. new things are growing clear.

Habit, in a certain way.. is like a path you’re walking down.. habit being an act that keeps you on that path.. and so it is that we see our selves evolving further down a path.. There are certain things we add to our bag of tricks.. certain things that change things a little bit.. lets explore in the context of the current production.

New to the new studio.. is a lot of new Reverbs. Digital Performer gives us a convolution Reverb.. and Kore 2 gives us a whole number of other sorts of new reverbs.. besides new reverbs there is, for me.. new ways of thinking about how to use reverbs.. varying .. and how I might EQ them… all of which has to do with creating a sense of space inside of which our music is happening.

My music, of course, is about space.. moving through space.. more psychic space then real space.. and music production in general.. creating a sense of space is important..

project specifics 

I think of the music as something like a buddhist meditation.. it is something like thoughts flowing through consciousness.. consciousness is our stage.

The use of Reverb and delay, and how I’m mixing stuff.. can transform.. or contextualize something that would normally be thought of as aggressive or rocking.. into something more ambient.. something we don’t think of as aggressive or rocking.. and in a fluid sorta evolving mix.. with respect to our sense of space.. the context can give us different shades.. where the aggressive bits can be more like textures.. to being.. something to rock out to.

This production is very much like this.. about this..  We have this rather industrial type percussion.. which rises in intensity over several measures.. and also moves from very far away to closer.. It repeats.. with gaps between repeats.. and it isn’t until it’s second repeat that it ever gets close enough to us that we feel it as heavy in anyway.

The sound elements that start off far away, and move in closer to us.. are all simply repeating the same lines.. no variations at this point.. accept in how they play against the other repeating parts.. and with respect to there location in the mix.

Everything has this ambient like feeling to it.. Until part way through.. We have a rather lead synth sound.. it repeats twice.. but then.. when it might repeat.. in comes a church organ.. which though it does start of a little ways away from us.. it doesn’t start off in audible.. and it’s repetitions are variations.. and it becomes as if the repetitions of the different instruments are now kind of.. playing against each other in a new kind of way.

It’s during this stage of the music’s evolution that I’m now bringing in a string section. The string section will not be playing a repetitive part.. but will instead be playing in ways the plays off the harmonic ecology of the mix.. repetitions we do find in it.. will be to echo other instruments.. and to create a move clear coherence.. in the material.

For now the music is moving into a place where it could be quite a bit more aggressive.. to be heavy and rocking.. but where we are at now is still a bit of a dream. 

How this Compares to Indra’s Net 

What I failed to mention about the Indra’s Net Project was that.. I had just bought Komplete 2.. (5 is my current version).. and I was really just started to explore the tools.. and a new version of Cubase.. Now I actually know the tools..

What we are seeing now is subtleties.. between the new reverbs, the larger sound pallets… and the mix has a much greater kind of.. quality to it.

I seem to be inside of strange place where instead of actually producing music I’m… kinda like designing the building blocks of music production projects…. Or I’m programing synthesizers anyway.

I’m in Absynth 4.. Seems like the last time I sat around programing Absynth.. it must have been a couple versions back.. In any event, I find myself digging down deeper.

Because all my programing is now “Synthesizer X + Kore” there’s a kind of.. strangely different way of thinking about synthesizers. I’m a software synth guy, you must understand.. so I’m not used to having a lot of hardware controls via which I can get expressive with a synthesizer.. So I’ve never programmed a synth with the notion of “if you move these 8 knobs, and 8 buttons you’ll find this groovy expressive potential in this sound.”

Absynth.. Is interesting in that.. It’s one of the first synthesizers I ever kind of fell in love with programming. Absynth’s expressive potential for ambient music.. for evolving sound scapes.. is just awesome. And there’s something about programming it that gets my imagination going like no other..  It’s all a bit more like creating a sonic puppet then a conventional synth patch.. In the sense that you’re going in and finding different ways it could be expressive.. as a part of how you program it.

Latter that night

The patch I’m currently working on, as I write this post, is one that I’m not real sure if it’s usefulness as an instrument.. I mean I have no idea how it could fit into my work.. but I will say.. its fun as hell playing with… perhaps I can take a swing at trying to express what I mean by this….

Conventionally.. I don’t really use compressors or EQs.. or I didn’t until recently.. and I’m still at an early stage of learning how to integrate them into my work. Now conventionally EQs and Compressors are… well like the most important tools of mix engineers. EQs and compressors help you to shape various aspects of your mix.. But how I usually do it is.. in the choice of what instruments I use.. Another words.. how I shape the things EQ and Compressors shape.. I shape by things like what instruments I use.. which is.. in a lot of ways.. kinda better.   

A day or so latter:

You used to be able to just embed these.. but I can’t work out how to do that since they changed last.fm a little bit.. in any event.. here’s a direct link to a track called A Short Trip To Another Day. (clicking on it will open it in a new window.) The reason I link to this track is.. is it’s an example of something created based off.. well the same sorta spirit I’m working in now..  

I’m jumping around in this post a little.. so try and bare with me..

A Short Trip To Another Day was one of my first attempts at programming Absynth.. The program I created was.. one that I didn’t really know how I would be expressive with it.. or how it would work in my music.. So the process of creating A Short Trip to Another Day was one of exploring how it might fit into my work..

Working in this sorta way.. I think it pushes you in different directions then you might other wise work in.. which can result in more interesting work.. and I have to say that this might be one of my favorite tracks.. and so it illustrates what I’m talking about in this entry. 

Ok.. so…  

As I was saying before.. I never used to use EQs or Compressors in my productions.. and um.. EQs and Compressors are tools via which to craft a mix.. and they indeed are tools that I could use in order to exert some control over the sounds created by my synth programs..

So.. looking forward from where I’m at at this moment.. I see growth potential in my music, along a few different lines..  

1. There’s the process of learning to program various synthesizers and the power of custom sound libraries.. and all there implications… This isn’t a totally new concept.. but we are learning to program new synths / new versions of synths.. ad exploring new possibilities along these lines.
2. There is the issue of the hardware / software control.. thinking about sounds as puppets.. with various ways of getting expressive with our sounds.. that are much more complex in how they might be expressive.. then normally found in my work.
3. There is the subject of how to use EQs and Compressors in my work.. where they might make my work better, or perhaps make my work not soo much better.. but it is about the exploration of what there roll can be.. which is in large measure a more artistic thing then a conventional technical thing of.. the way things are conventionally done by people.
4. There is the possibility of using Kore 2 for “Super Instruments,” which is to say.. You create a patch.. that combines any number or synthesizers and effects into one giant “super instrument” and what that could bring to the table.

In talking about these possible directions..  for growth.. We are talking about how this work could become enriched. 

Latter that night, over tired (after a synth programing catastrophe)  

I started in on a new Absynth program today. What happened is.. I figured out how to have the.. well performance sliders, lets call them.. things I’d probably control via the Kore 2 controller.. modify envelopes. This would be a fairly simple thing.. but it’s enough to get me excited… With envelopes you can create rhythms… and you know.. these rhythms could evolve over time.. but also you could have different parts of your synth program playing different rhythms of different lengths.. that loop.. So its like.. well lets just say that’s pretty cool for the way I like to work..  (though I don’t normally use synth patches that include rhythms)… but the polymeric possibilities are very exciting to me..   

Anyway…..  So you can take one of these rhythms.. and you can make it so that one or another performance control alters the tempo of the rhythms… and in one patch.. you could have a lot of rhythms… So what I wanted to do is build in some way of controlling the relative amplitude of different rhythms, as well as there tempos… and also just kind of throw some fun stuff on the fire. Now.. .

Ok, groovy enough.. But allow me to attempt to explain what’s exciting to me about this..  out side of just the usual “and these are the reasons polymeric stuff is good for ambient music styles.” We’re actually not just talking poly-metric… where talking poly-tempi…  Another words.. we’re have multiple tempos going on inside of a single synth patch… I guess it’s like you have the main tempo.. that’s the tempo of the project  your working on.. and everything is synched to that tempo.. and you can shift that tempo around if you like.. but that’s like “the conductor tempo.” But.. you could have.. various instruments that… while being able to start out with an obvious relationship to that tempo.. can go off the rails in one way or another.

The difference between music and noise is probably your ability to recognize a pattern… And for patterns to be interesting.. they probably need to reach an optimal state between simple and complex, with respect to ones ability to recognize them… 

A few days latter 

Ok, I’m going to leave it off right here.. without finishing this, cause other wise it probably wont get posted.. but at least its an interesting look at what I’m up to. 

So, Cantor has a.. I’m a little confused about this.. but it seems to be a 30 day or 20 hour trial.. seems I’ve been stuck with the 20 hour one! In any event.. I’ve downloaded and installed said software.. and started playing around with it.  So allow me to talk about it….

In the instructions it explains that Cantor is not meant to be a ‘vocalist replacement,’ but a means for the exploration of vocal synthesis.. which is interesting..

Err, I should slow down to explain the back story.. or at least kinda what I’m talking about here…  Cantor is a vocal synthesizer. You can find a video demonstration of an older version of Cantor here.. to see for your self. What a vocal synthesizer is is… well.. it creates vocals for you.. the old “singing computer” trick. I’m interested in it.. because I can’t sing.. and the notion of putting vocals in my music is kind of exciting.

How the first steps feel

When you first jump into this here Cantor and its new fangalled vocal synthesis..  once you kinda figure you’re way around the program a little bit (I’m still in the middle of that process) you realize that its time to learn something totally new.. which is to say vocal synthesis. Well.. maybe that’s over stating it a little bit.. but you are jumping into the world of “how do I program a vocal performance.”

The work flow goes something like this:

1. Program you’re melody line
2. Type in the words you want it to sing
3. Arrange “Phonemes” for desired result
4. Screw around with volume levels over time.. for each note
5. Screw around with “tension levels” for each note over time
6. Screw around with pitch bend and vibrato of each note over time
7. Screw around with a few other parameters over time  
8. Concern you self with other elements of the production

That’s more or less how it works.. . I mean if you were to actually achieve a realistic vocal.. it would be via how you program these performance parameters. This basically means you need to start paying attention to the human voice a whole lot more.. and sorta develop your ears.. and go from there. So long story short.. my work features some robotic type singing.

Ok, so what else is there to know about this subject? 

Some of you might be wondering what “Phenomes” are. Well.. if you take a look at all languages.. the component sounds are “Phenomes.” When animators go about animating mouths.. they’ll often look at the Phenomes.. So, when you “arrange the phenomes” you’re basically saying.. over a long sustained word sung.. when the vocal should move from one word sound to the next.. got it?

There’s other features in here to.. like the ability to create you’re own voices.. and other stuff I haven’t quite gotten to figuring out.

Ok, what’s it like in practice? 

For starters I’m feeling a little like it might be time for them to release a new version.. cause this version has not only been around for a while.. it appears a little clumsy to use. Now I say this without yet fully understanding it.. which isn’t fare.. but so far it’s a bit of a pain in the ass..

You spent a lot of time crafting your vocal.. a phrase or two.. then you want to move on to the next phrase or two.. and it’s just.. kinda clumsy in how you move around..

Still.. it’s way better then what I’ve been messing with thus far..  (all of which has been free tools)… It’s relatively clear that it should integrate with my usual productions pretty well..  much better then the other process I’ve been trying out.. which are all horribly time consuming…  And there is something terribly cool about programing a vocal performance.. My verdict on it comes down to.. “I think I’m going to have to play with this a bit more.. and see how it goes.” At the end of this time period.. I should have a better sense of how well it fits into my work.. my process.. and if what I’m now perceiving as flaws.. really are flaws. 

After that its just a matter of looking at other similar programs. 

[Editor’s note: Matt doesn’t know what the hell his problem is..  yes he reads folks like Chris Brogan and has some appreciation for the value of writing brief entries.. and though Matt would argue that long can be good to.. if at least well written… surely this entry must fall short on both fronts!!!] 

[Editor’s Note part 2: This blog entry was originally written about 3 months ago… and thus represents a now out moded point of view.] 

So I just bought DP 6… well actually I haven’t bought it, but before I finish this blog entry I will have… as we speak I’m going through the feature list on motu’s website. This is an exciting development.

I’ve been doing a lot of research into sound studio type tools. The trouble, of course, is that these tools are expensive.. There’s a lot of questions around this stuff and the best… at least conceptual solution I’ve got.. seems to be to try to move forward organically.

Latter:

Let me see if I can explain the problem:

There’s a whole variety of “tools” one needs when on tries to do what I’m trying to do. For the purposes of this blog entry, we are talking about “plug-in effects related to mix engineering applications.” In the magical land of DAWs.. which is to say “Digital Audio Work Stations” there are.. market forces at work that would seem to have big long term implications to DAW developers. 

I’m thinking of Apple’s Logic. Assuming I’m not miss remembering anything..  the current Logic costs about $500 or $600… and is really the most complete DAW, right out of the box, in terms of digital instruments, effects, and sample / loop libraries. If I were to advise someone on what DAW to get.. for most folks, I’d say Logic.

This is not to say there aren’t pros and cons to all software of this type and class.. from my understanding of the subject, there are many ways you could argue that Digital Performer is a superior product to Logic (and perhaps vice versa)… but from the stand point I’m talking here.. I probably wouldn’t be thinking of spending as much money on effects if I was starting from Logic, as a pose to DP.

Digital Performer actually has a pretty good library of effects, with respect to the mix engineering job. DP has a great EQ… but.. beyond that really.. you kind of have a range of stuff that’s.. really old technology that doesn’t really stand up to modern scrutiny…  or I should say that some of the stuff in that range is in need of updates. The new DP doesn’t solve this problem, but it does take us a few steps forward.

Ok, let me back peddle a little… The instruments and effects I’m looking at are.. of a very high quality. Logic may ship with tools that cover many of the bases of the tools I’m looking at.. but do they do so at as high of a level of quality? There are areas of subjectivity in here.. but I think you’d have to come down on the side of no… even though I’m largely speaking out of my butt on this one…. do to not being a Logic user… But.. come on.. there’s no DAW that ships with EQs and compressors as nice as Liquid Mix.. and no DAW which ships with a convolution reverb half good as Altiverb… 

I seem to be getting side tracked by complicated philosophical topics.. Let me come out of this rathole with just one line of thought: Generally speaking, you don’t want to use the sounds “directly out of the box,” if we are talking about effects, synth or sampler patches, loops, whatever.. The reason being is that everyone else who has those tools has the very same sounds you’ve got so you’re probably not going to be all that distinctive in your sound.. if you just go with what’s in the box. The more you’re box of tools is comprised of tools from different places..  different companies, different whatever.. the more distinctive your sound will likely be..  So there’s something to be said for the path I’m on… not to mention that we all have different needs, and building a tool set custom to your needs is, of course, a huge advantage.

Of course I must confess that I’m lazy and often do use the sounds straight out of the box.. with little to no tweaking..  but as soon to be released blog entries will show.. this is a trend I’m looking to curve.

Back to a more direct rout into the idea of an organic studio evolution:

There’s a kind of question as to if you should invest in tools in bundles, or piece meal individually. My shtick on using tools from different companies, and what not, supports the piece meal path… but often when you buy a bundle you get more for less.. however you don’t really get a lot of say in what’s in that bundle.. and if some of what that bundle offers is something you don’t need.. well that’ll effect you’re calculous.

The big new effect in Digital Performer is a convolution reverb. DP has sucked for reverb.. and now it looks like it might just rock… The thing of it  is that there are two bundles I’m looking at that have convolution reverbs in them… so the question I have is.. is the DP convolution reverb “good enough” so that I might not want to go spend a lot on Altiverb? Or perhaps might not need to? It’s impossible to tell till you get to go play with it.

What I will say is that DPs new convolution reverb does look… interesting. As near as I can tell it’s a long way from Altiverb, but it does have some very nice things going for it… lets explore:

•  Surround Sound! For the bundles I’ve been looking at.. the included convolution reverbs do not support surround sound… or, as in the case of Altiverb, you have to pay a lot more for surround sound.. 
• Dynamic ducking? I frankly don’t understand why it would have a feature like this but.. basically as the dry signal gets louder, the amount of reverb applied to the signal lessons… the result of this would be that quieter sounds will sound further away.. which you may or may not actually want.. but it’s not a bad feature to have.. at least not from the stand point of my production style.
• It looks like you can make you’re own convolution samples.. or load samples from other libraries?

The Down Sides:

MOTU’s site raves “includes dozens of preset acoustic spaces.” If they had said “over 100,” well, I’d be digging it…  I should say that convolution reverb is to other types of reverb what a sampler is to a synthesizer… and though there are samplers that will in some ways behave like synthesizers in how they can modify a sound.. generally you get what you get.. which is true of convolution reverb to.. that there’s not really much you can do to modify a sound..  

It might also be worth pointing out that convolution reverb isn’t really the end all be all of reverb effects..  In part because you can’t really modify sounds all that much.. you end up loosing some control of your ability to place sounds in space. This is not to say that convolution isn’t great… just that it has it’s pros and cons.

Ok.. lets step to the side here.. One of the bundles I’ve been looking at is from Waves. There Natives Power Pack is… strangely enough… both very powerful for the cost, and very well tailored towards my interests and needs.

This Natives Power Pack bundle includes a convolution reverb that is in many ways better then DPs.. the “over 100 presets” immediately comes to mind… though waves’s IR-1 does look a little neutered when compared to the ‘fuller version,’ which even then doesn’t support surround sound…What makes comparisons down right impossible.. from just reading stats is.. what makes a convolution reverb sound good has to do with the quality of there samples..

In any event.. of the sorta mix needs I have.. having a good convolution reverb fits very high.. and is currently my most pressing need… Much of my excitement about the new DP comes down it’s inclusion.. and the feeling that it will, if nothing else, lesson that need.. which in tern allows me to spend more time plotting an organic studio upgrade map. We will, after all, see if Motu’s ProVerb is indeed good enough…

All of this said, as near as I can tell, the Atliverb looks like its by far the best convolution reverb going.

[Editor’s note: Matt Should have ended this entry around here, don’t cha think?] 

I do feel the need to wind things up here.. but..  DP comes with yet one other new effect.. Masterworks Leveler. Perhaps it’s my design / arts background, but I hate the interfaces on a lot of DP’s effects.. which causes me, if nothing else, to further think they aren’t all that great.. well, the Leveler’s interface looks pretty darn cool.

As near as I can tell the Leveler is a kind of automatic limiter / compressor… and it looks like it’s pretty sweet at that.

The compressors DP has ships with.. I’m not a big fan of, though I’m not really all that big on compression anyway.. and the limiter DP has shipped with.. well I think it’s pretty good.

As far as compressors goes.. my eye is now on liquid mix 16, or Liquid Mix. Liquid Mix, as near as I can tell, is really the ultimate place to go to for EQs and Compressors.. which are the most important tools for anyone doing mix engineering type work.. though where Liquid mix starts to break down is in the area of fast attack times.. as compressors with fast attack times.. well, those are limiters, aren’t they? But its something to do with using convolution to sample a compressor.. that when you get short attack times.. things start to not go so well.

The last downside to Liquid Mix, at least from my point of view, is that it runs off of hardware.. which sets limits on how many instances you get.. In Liquid Mix you get 32, and in Liquid Mix 16 you get.. yup, you guessed it, 16. These numbers represent “mono” instances.. if you’re applying this to a stereo channel.. you get half the count.. and if you increase the sample rate, you also get a cut in your instance count.

Another problem you get with Liquid Mix is latency: You play a note on an instrument.. and latency is the time between when you play it and when you hear played back to you through you’re speakers / headphones. Liquid Mix must send the signal out from your computer via firewire, to its hardware DSP processors, then back to the computer via Firewire.. all of which adds a lot of time to your latency… The result is you wouldn’t want to use Liquid Mix in any situation where hearing things back in real time is important.  

With software based effects running on your processor.. you get as many instances as you like.. limited only by you’re computers horse power… So for someone on a Mac Pro with 8 processor cores.. do I really need software running on special hardware? Further.. you probably want EQ on every channel in your mix! (I don’t currently do this, but trust me, I’m moving in this direction).. 

Summing up the effects:

In practice DP 6 sorta makes “making do” more viable.. but that’s about it.

That was a quick summing up, wasn’t it?

But Wait, there’s more!

(God Help Us!)

1. New Interface: Um.. in someways DP’s old interface felt a little like we were living in the dark ages, compared with other software of this type.. and from what I can see… things look pretty good this way. 
2. Final Cut Integration: One of the areas where DP is very strong in is when it comes to scoring film and video. Today, among independent film makers, Final Cut is kind of the standard… and it’s big all around. Indeed, I own Final Cut Studio.. so the integration features look rather nice to me.
3. Burn to Disk: Just as the CD format goes down the drain.. MOTU decides to make CD Mastering that much easier…  go MOTU? Here’s the deal: You can export to CD, with markers and all that, directly.. which is pretty awesome actually…
4. There’s other stuff.. indeed this old blog entry feels like a little bit of an echo of this entry.. So read that if you still want more…

To sum up my feeling of the over all situation: 

I used to feel like getting a big waves bundle.. like say Gold, Platinum, or Diamond, would really cover all my basics. Mind you.. the price for Gold is..  $975, Platinum is $1,575, and Diamond is $2,850. Now when I look over there product lines I see… that they do indeed cover all the bases.. but not quite well enough for me. They do have software that is.. similar to Melodyne.. which has the virtue of being simpler to use.. but the vice of less depth.. they do have software that would cover some of my vocal processing bases.. they do cover the reverb bases and many others… blah blah blah.. but.

Well I will say that they have a lot of different bundles, and if I were to go that way, at this point, I’d probably be looking at ether the Power Pack or the Renaissance Maxx bundles.. both under $500… (I now lean towards the latter)… 

I guess the thing is.. if I’m going to spend $1000 or more on plugins.. I really want to feel like I’m both getting a lot for my money and covering all my basic bases. If not that I want to feel like I’m kicking serious ass in a few departments to such an extent that its worth not having all my bases covered.

So for instance, a bundle with Altiverb, Speakerphone, and a couple other do-dads.. You feel like you’re getting the best of breed Altiverb.. Speakerphone is such a unique sound design type tool with so many different applications.. I feel like they set the bar in what I should expect, and Waves, at there best, doesn’t really come close enough… and the same holds true when we compare waves to liquid mix. While Waves does offer some tools to compete with Melodyne…. If, as I’m starting to suspect, Melodyne will start to play a central roll in my productions.. that’s just not an area where I can skimp.

Out side of the world of these expensive tools.. there are lots of “little things” to look at.. 

So, a we bit ago.. I was.. well doing my blog entry.. Part 1 of programming Native Instruments Massive Synthesizer.. And it was after publishing that that a fair reader made a suggestion to me… that I do a screen cast… that this kind of information would be better communicated via a screen cast.. and so I set about doing such a thing.

Thanks to Mac Heist.. I now own Snapz Pro.. which is a pretty groovy screen capture program, or so I’m told.. But then Mr. Greg Bond, of Consumer2Business.com, suggested I try a program called Screenflow. And while screen flow looked super awesome.. particularly for what I is up to.. As I explained to Mr. Bond, I indeed am a very cheap person and.. well long story short I haven’t gotten a chance to check out Screenflow.. in terms of actually using it.. but clearly it’s feature set is..  kinda, probably, better for what I is trying to do.. not that I’ve used Snapz enough to have a clue.

I want to say it was Steve Albanese of Tutorial Depot whom turned me on to Snapz.. Tutorial Depot, at least at the moment, focuses in on creating video cast tutorials for various music technology stuff.. I was going to do stuff with Steve on Reason.. till I fell horribly off the… dependability wagon.. which wasn’t helped by my mom’s passing.. 

 A few latter (after doing some grocery shopping):

In any event.. I’ve wanted to do screen casting / make tutorials for.. well probably for more then a decade…  And so this project represents my first experimental swing in that direction.

Unreliable Narration 

If I were to start a company to do this.. it would probably be called something, something, something, unreliable narrations. There’s a few reasons for this:

I value the art more then the technical… consequently the.. lets call it the creative / aesthetic / philosophical / whatever.. part of my work is uber advanced.. where as the technical is.. Well its not even that my work isn’t technically sophisticated.. err, this is probably complex to try and explain but.. well the evolution of my technical sophistication is subordinated to the creative / aesthetic / philosophical.. meaning it drives it.. the “shape” of the technical evolution, in terms of the lines that articulate where we find sophistication versus where we don’t.. is driven by this.. which is different then approaching a tool and seeking a technical mastery as your primary objective?

This gets into a very complex idea in my philosophical system… which I used to call “the order of revelation,” which is an expressive of.. your particular moral order.. in the Nietzschian sense.. Which is to say a kind of hierarchy of wills.. expresses an influence over where our attention is directed.. this has to do with.. the limits of the human mind.. in essence we could say the “order of revelation” is defined by the underlying questions that are driving us.. to put it a certain way.. that is our awareness is driven by these questions.. consciously or not.

The order of revelation is what constructs our awareness of reality.. our framework for understanding reality.. for interacting with reality.. It has lots of psycho-social dynamic implications.. has a huge influence over social hierarchies..

That’s a kind of quick overview of the subject.. what this means in terms of how I approach art making.. and a host of other things is.. the lines that articulate what I view as “the area of stuff I must master” is very individualistic to me… and radically so. So radical that.. from conventional view points.. you could say I’m “ass backwards.” So, if I do a tutorial on sound synthesis with Massive..

Latter that day:

On the Subject of Experimentation

Experimentation is a good way to explore stuff.. It’s often a matter of.. we are more interested in developing our ability to do something, then in making that something great. It’s not quite a total madness of experimentation, it’s experimentation subordinated to goals:

I have a primary goal of.. what sorta screen casts I might like to make.. Here are some basic things:

• Good production values: Screen casts, even by great folks, are sorta notorious for not having groovy production values.. Now just what constitutes “groovy production values” in an interesting subject.. and around this subject I want to experiment.
• Personality: So often screen cast tutorials are.. without personality..  ”You aren’t excited to be here, are you?” you want to say the the person doing it.. Even if there personality is.. if not great, at least not boring you to death… there’s the question of “would I want to be like the person giving the tutorial? I think this is a key nexus point between personal branding and.. well the tutorial.. I mean.. wouldn’t you like to learn from someone who’s coming from some place interesting? Wouldn’t you like to learn X, Y, or Z from someone who’s brilliant on the subject? 

Unreliable Narration revisited

Ok.. allow me to kinda break this up here… Didn’t Matt just say, only a few paragraphs back.. well he was talking about this notion of the “unreliable narrator,” right? A premise of the tutorial I’m doing is “I don’t actually know what I’m doing, and yet I’m making a tutorial on it.” Why in hell would you want to learn from someone who doesn’t know what your teaching? This is not someone who is brilliant at X, Y, and Z!!! Or is he?

Hopefully.. you’d dig me as a sound artist.. you listen to my music..  and you’re like “holy shit, this is amazing.” Even if you don’t actually think my music is amazing.. if you at least respect it enough to go “yeah, that dude is the real thing” then.. I’m not in the category of “those who can’t: teach.” This onto its self puts me on another level. 

What you’re getting in the tutorial is.. “how that crazy guy makes that music.” A part of what you learn from the tutorial is “It’s ok to not know what the hell you’re doing,” and “not knowing what you’re doing does not necessarily have to keep you from making great work.” All of which brings us to a complicated series of philosophical points that.. we wont talk about here today.

Beyond this.. as much as I say “I don’t know what I’m doing” there is, I hope, a sense that you’re still dealing with a heavy weight. The guy doing the tutorial.. he’s like.. an interesting cat..  and though he doesn’t know what he’s doing in the sense that.. the particular technical issues of whatever it is that he’s doing is a mystery to him.. he does know what he’s doing on a number of other levels.. and even if he’s a total… and even if he’s tell you “how to do it the wrong way” we find that this somehow is an adventure worth doing.

Ok, so on with our Goals of experimentation:

• There is the basic question of “how do we make a great screen cast.” I mean what constitutes one? What are the craft issues I need to develop? I have a certain idea about these sorts of things.. but those ideas versus.. what’s it take for me to achieve it.. is another matter.. 
• I want to create something where.. we get both the creative and the technical together.. because this just doesn’t happen enough…   

Next Morning Sometime

Ok, lets end on this:

Business Cases and Potential Implications

As I sit here typing this out I’m hyped on this project. I’m very smart on this social media stuff, and yet at least up until this current moment, haven’t really felt like I’ve quite done anything that would show this…  The screen cast project is text book social media strategy stuff..  I wont go far into this but.. A typical value of creating a blog or a podcast, for the creator, is that it helps establish the creator as an expert. One route to the monetization of social media has to do with leveraging the value of expert status. So if I go out and create a lot of screen casts tutorials.. I could develop a reputation along these lines.

An odd thing about my screen casts is that.. they are all about Matt doing things “his way.” In a certain essential kind of way.. These screen casts a part of showing you how I work.. how I make the stuff I make. In this sense they have a public relations kinda value.. They are all about my work, after all.. and by going through them you’d gain a special appreciation for my work. These screen casts are a kind of advertisement for my work: People will very often go to some place like Youtube to learn how to do X. If I make content that’s valuable to a person wanting to know how to do X.. They then, kinda sorta, meet me and my personal brand. This person is a person who’s perhaps more likely to appreciate my work since they are.. at least in some sense.. a kind of peer in the field.. they are kinda close to a target demographic.. This person, as a part of learning whatever.. learns how I do it.. and about what I do.. and my work.. 

Why I’m feeling excited 

I’ve really only started what’s likely to be a long process of producing my first screen cast.. but already there are a few things becoming obvious to me.

1. I’m very good at teaching.. I’m very good at breaking down complex ideas into simple ideas.. helping you digest stuff.
2. I’m really passionate about what I do.
3. I really want to empower my audience to greatness.. 
4. There is some sense that.. as crazy as I may or may not be.. and as much as I might not even know what I’m doing.. there really is a kind of weight to these presentations.. something you feel.. something kinda brilliant
5. The casts are very much off the cuff.. kinda stream of consciousness stuff.. so there’s a real realness to them.. an energy.. a humanity.. 
6. A lot of the stuff you find for music production.. the screen casts are like “look how cool I am.” They seem, at least to me, to be arrogant dicks.. and you’re like “dude, you’re really not that great, you just understand a particular basic thing.” The casts I make are humble and without pretensions.. they are all about wanting to empower you.. and share passion with you.. They want to show you amazing things.. 
7. In the end, assuming I actually follow through on this project, the casts will cover a lot of territory.. everything from music production to video to animation to interactive to social media to whatever.. Err, I’ll have to dig deeper into this one..

I’ll end on this:

I never know how to describe what I do.. because I do so many different things.. and that’s probably what’s most impressive about me. What I seek to do is to empower you to do something remarkable… which has to do with how I’m re-conceptualizing the future of the arts and media.. business wise. This is the organizing principle, or a significant one.. behind my skill sets.. and what I could likely teach.. if I do so.. it could be revolutionary as a program.. I may blog more on this latter… 

Latter that night 

Im tired… must sleep, will post this as is… not sure how I feel about it, but what the hell

I’ve spoken about the subject of sound software running on your computer versus on accelerator cards else where in this blog.. and my general view about the subject… and the faster computers have gotten, the less the value of the accelerator cards.

A few years back, when Universal Audio first came out with there UAD cards.. there cards where many times more powerful then the computers you’d put them in.. This allowed for effects plugs, and what not, to be of a substantially higher quality then what you could other wise get.. thus rise of UAD… but now our computers are many times more powerful then the cards…  

So.. finally.. Universal Audio releases the UAD 2 cards… which makes the cards now a whole lot more powerful.. which is nice…. they have a trailer that explains the cards here. So this is kind of big news…  

Matt’s Reservations

Theoretically one ought to buy a new computer every 2 years or so.. and when you do this.. software that runs off that computer gets an upgrade every two years.. I think the sort of person who’s attracted to UAD cards.. is often the sort of person who upgrades there computer less frequently…. you see this among a lot of music production folks.. people running Protools rigs and what not.. but for me.. I have a lot of other things that I do on my computer that demand power, out side of music production.. so at least for me I think it makes less sense.

Software that runs on a UAD.. the development cost associated with this, versus running of your computer.. makes UAD type software more expensive.

If you buy a UAD.. the software needs that UAD card to run.. so.. if you have both a desktop and a laptop… wherever you might use the laptop.. for me as a part of an out bound type studio.. well you loose much of your studio.

I’m not sure of this, but it seems like there might be some latency issues relative to UAD. 

UAD 2 cards are now  runing anywhere between $500 and $2000…  You can get a UAD  card.. for $700.. that comes with the Neve console sound, so to speak, of which you can run 32 instances off the card.. This and it comes with what we might call the UAD bread and butter stuff.

I think if you look at the market in general, this is actually a quite reasonable price.. particularly as you get a voucher towards more effects..

I already have good emulations of the Neve compressors and EQs.. via liquid mix.. although I could benefit from more instances.. If I were to invest in more EQs and compressors.. I tend to want to make sure they could run on my out board studio… and I’d very much like to not have the problem limited instances.

So.. I mean if I where to drop $700 on something like UAD2 Nirvana 32… what I really want is to come out the other end with a well rounded studio..  

So… for anyone whom works in some sorta studio.. and perhaps particularly for the electronic sound artist, planning out your studio is a pretty important thing.. and has a huge effect on what sorta work you produce.. and for this reason, perhaps among others, I find myself forever obsessing over this sorta thing….

The latest refinements to my thoughts on the studio thing is..   well complicated, but I don’t want to get into that complexity here.. To sorta keep it simple: I’m now thinking short and long term. The short term is.. within the next 2 years, the long term is 2 or more years out.. These time frames are subject to change.. and kinda sorta represent a way of thinking about both my economic and creative situation.. and kinda sorta.. where I think I ought to be going.

As regular readers would know.. I’ve been thinking of investing a good deal of money into sound studio tools.. I’m not sure what the last figures I was thinking of… where they stood..  but it was fairly substantial…  now I’ve decided to limit myself to two programs… and anything beyond that is like… well if I discover I need to go that route…  

The Tools in Question

Breverb

There’s a reasonably good review on the online edition of EQ magazine..  of Breverb that you can find here. 

Breverb is an algorithmic reverb plug in.. The advantage of algorithmic reverbs, relative to convolution reverbs, mainly comes down to tweak ability… Algorithmic reverb is to convolution reverb what a synthesizer is to a sampler.. 

Reverb effects are super important to me in the style of music I find myself trying to invent: They are important in creating a sense of space inside of which sounds inhabit.. Space, in my work, is something that dynamically evolves as the sounds move through space.. and algorithmic reverb’s “tweak ability” has important advantages over convolution for this kind of thing…

The final note is that Breverb is, as these sorts of things go, not all that expensive at around $370 

Cantor

Here we is talking about a vocal synthesizer… I’ve talked about both Breverb and Cantor in previous entries.. Cantor in the larger subject of bringing vocals / words to my projects.. The approach of using a vocal synth.. has certain drawbacks relative to using an actual human.. but.. to really get the actual singing.. particularly if I’m doing the singing.. and of course I can’t sing.. requires a pretty substantial investment in software and hardware.. 

Beyond the tool investment issue with real human vocals, we have the issue of work flow.. with respect to composition and production… and with this various other issues and challenges. While these are all things I’m excited to take on.. there is a feeling that.. there is probably an optimal challenge level to be taken on at anyone point: If you do the same old same old too much.. it’s boring.. and if you push the challenges too hard.. things get frustrating.. so you want to find the sweet spot.. and given all I’m trying to do right now.. I think it makes sense to not go too far out there.. at least in the short term.

So that’s about it…   

[Editors Note: This would seem to be the first part in a two part series on sound synthesis with Massive and Kore… here we go over some of the 101s of sound synthesis, and what’s up with Massive and Kore 2. ] 

I think I talked about this just recently, didn’t I?: The subject of the feeling like I want to make electronic music that’s expressive in new ways…. or in different ways then my music is often expressive…  and to start the process of exploring the possibilities.. and sorta like.. creating the stuff..  I’ve started programming with Native Instruments Massive and Kore 2. Kore 2 gives you a hardware interface into your software…  You get 4 rotary controls you can use to control whatever parameters of the sound / patch program you’re creating you like…

To give you an overview.. wish it was a bit quicker.. here’s a Native Instruments infomercial for Kore 2.. I don’t want to get too bogged down with this stuff.. and if you’re not familiar with this kind of technology.. this maybe way over your head.. don’t worry.. This isn’t what this entry is to be about…

[editor’s note: oh no?] 

 So.. the point is.. you can control all kinds of aspects of your sound via the controller.. all of which is automobile… which is the strategy for getting to that expressivity I was talking about..

I thought I might as well… well through another infomercial at you that might go into massive a bit.. but then I found this infomercial with the keyboard player from Korn talking about it.. and figured that would be pretty groovy…  

Ok.. so that’s a good little overview of something or other, right? Ok, enough of this foolishness.. onto the adventures.

Sound Synthesis in Massive

I’m no sound synthesis master.. I’m more of a.. fumble around.. finding things I like.. and hopefully something interesting happens. My knowledge of how to program synths / there architecture.. what the elements of any given sound synthesis engine are.. these kinds of core concepts..  I’m not totally ignorant in these areas.. I mean I have been working on learning this stuff for years.. but… I do tend to feel fairly clueless..

Given my clue impoverishment, one of the things that’s been impressing me about Massive is how approachable and user friendly the experience of learning it has proven to be..  which is particularly nice given how piss poor Native Instruments manuals tend to be..  

A Massive Basic Overview  

With Massive you basically have 3 main oscillators, a noise generator, a modulation oscillator.. we have 4 LFOs, 4 envelops, a couple of filters, 2 insert effects slots.. with a number of effects choices.. 2 sorta global effects.. plus EQ, the ability to control routing.. and a few other odds and ends.

It’s hard to talk about this process without explaining what all that means.. and I’m not sure how far I’ll go into this but…

Oscillators and Sound Sources 

You’re 3 main oscillators… well.. an oscillator is a sound source.. it creates the sound.. and other stuff modifies the sound.. anyway.. In massive.. these 3 main oscillators are “wavetable oscillators.” 

Wavetables are.. well it’s like you have an audio file.. and you have a parameter by which you can sweep through different locations in that audio file.. or perhaps table..  So when programming a wave table synthesizer, modulating the oscillator’s wavetable position.. is pretty standard stuff.

Now the next sound source we have is a noise generator.. Noise generators are.. I want to say something you tend to use creatively… Or I do anyway. These are often used for programming percussive sound.. your average synthesized snare sound.. starts with a noise generator.

The only parameter our noise generator has, outside of amp or volume, is color..  which, as you might imagine “colors the noise” it generates.. basically.

Filters In Massive

In Massive we have 2 filter slots.. for each we have a choice of 12 filter types. Basically a filter… well it filters the sound.. it modifies it.. taking out various frequencies.. perhaps amplifies some frequencies.. 

Modulation Fun

Modulation is really the heart of our programming adventures. We basically have 2 ways of modulating stuff..  via LFOs and envelops.. beyond this.. we can use key velocity.. or how hard we hit the keyboard.. and.. we have “macro control” which.. is sorta an obvious thing to control via your Kore controller.. via turning the knobs on your Kore controller.. and that’s really the heart of what I’m doing…

LFO

An LFO is a low frequency oscillator.. not really a sound source so much as a modulation source.. think of it as the second hand on a clock.. it oscillates around the clock face slowly.. . We can control our LFO’s rate of oscillation.. The LFO modulates / controls other parameters..  like say how much of a filter is going..  making them change slowly over time.. or at whatever rate you set the LFO rate to.

To make things more interesting.. you have different wave form options.. which is like turning your circular clock into a triangle.. or any other shape you would like..

Envelops

I haven’t bothered to dig into the Massive manual.. which isn’t terribly massive.. but my understanding is that you have.. what do you call them, multi state envelopes? Native instruments pioneered this idea with Absynth..  which is one of my favorite synths ever to program.. 

Ok, we’re getting ahead of our selves here. You want to know what an envelope is, don’t cha? Imagine, if you will, a grid. On our grid, our horizontal line represents time and hour vertical line represents….  lets say amplitude. Basically.. you could say an envelop is like.. a little drawing you make that represents the volume of your sound over time… kinda sorta.

Vanilla, in the world of envelopes and sound synthesis, is the ADSR envelope. ADSR = Attack, Decay, Sustain, Release. Attack is the time.. between when you pluck a string on your guitar, and reaches its maximum amplitude / volume.. Attack is also “well just how how loud are we talking anyway? Or.. what’s the path of the.. lets call it “amplitude acceleration” (don’t you love how I invent new terminology just to complexify a subject we are barley following in the first place? Well I suppose, if you know what I’m talking about, you’re entertained by my fumbling attempts at articulation but..) that the amplitude of your sound follows from being no sound at all.. to its maximum level. You follow?

Ok.. groovy..  So decay is both our volume path.. and the time.. between that maximum level and.. a sustain level..  

Ok.. so Sustain..  you hit a key on your keyboard..  a sound goes through the attack and decay envelope stages.. and then reaches the sustain level..  this is the level… or perhaps the place.. that the volume will stay at for as long as you’re holding down that key… 

Release is.. the path the sound takes from letting go that key, and the volume finally reaching zero.

So that should give you a basic understanding of the adsr envelope.. it’s one of the most important synth program building blocks going.. Now in a modular synthesizer architecture… an envelope, be it of an adsr, or a less vanilla variety, can be used to modulate other parameters then just volume.

Is your brain bleeding yet? That’s the problem.. I’m not really looking to teach you this stuff here.. just to give you a basic framework for understanding this stuff… enough so that I can explain what I’m doing.. such are the challenges of my life… I probably need to build a wiki for my site.. or something, so that I can just link to the terms.. but oh well.. 

So.. for our next entry…   the fun with modulation madness… coming soon to this here RSS feed.

And so, here’s an note to leave you on: