I love that recording music has become easy enough that even beginners can express themselves. Furthermore, I applaud the fearlessness of newbies who grapple with technology, try to make sense out of today’s complex tools, and persevere to record and mix their music.
Yet, it’s still not that easy to obtain a “professional” sound when you’re starting out. Having taught classes, presented workshops, and worked with beginners, I’ve heard some truly original and refreshing music — however, there are often easy-to-avoid mistakes that drag down those bedroom productions. Like uninvited guests at a dinner party, here are 10 common mistakes that keep surfacing and are easy to correct.
Music
There are 37 posts filed in Music (this is page 2 of 4).
Sounds of the 2019 Christmas season
On Christmas Eve, I read a post by Brad Enslen referring to a post from his archive. It was an excerpt from Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. I then found the home page of the Kings College Lessons and Carols site. This year’s performance was broadcast by BBC Radio 4, and can be heard here. A local copy is also here.
Brad also had a link to several Christmas albums created by users of the Garritan Personal Orchestra software, Here are links to the 10th and 11th editions:
Finally, the Christmas Eve service at our church had prelude music in a jazz style by members of the Resurrection Catholic Parish Music Ministry. The group included Marcus Reynolds on piano, Steve Cook on trumpet, Jeff Akin on drums, and Matt Holmes on bass. The set included “The Christmas Song” by Mel Torme, O Christmas Tree, Silent Night, and What Child is This.
Their performance appears above (live and uncut). Enjoy these sounds of this year’s Christmas season – and Brad, thanks for getting this post started!
How can we work together on the open web and on software development
I have been in several conversations in the last week (voice and email) where the concept of “working together” in software development came up, and several threads emerged:
- how the original developer doesn’t/shouldn’t have to do everything – others can contribute (to me, a key concept in open source)
- how interested/engaged users can be an important force in the direction in which a software application or tool goes forward
Dave Winer has written about this many times:
- The magic of working together
- Key concept of the open web: working together
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Working together means this: If someone else has a good-enough way to do something, rather than reinvent what they do, incorporate what they do into what you do.
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- Working together (SOTN 2018)
- Working together in 2019
I have tried to follow that second point in several ways:
- My blog uses WordPress, I did not develop my own blogging tool
- I use River5 as my RSS reader engine
- I use RiverBrowser to display my own rivers of news
- I document and evangelize how to create your own rivers of news
- I document how to use tools like River4 and 1999.io
- I help others set up these tools
I am getting ready to start working in the computer music area again after a long absence, and I am reviewing available tools to see if they fit the areas I am interested in. In that way, I am trying to practice the concepts of working together as I have outlined above.
Anyone want to work together with me? Let me know!
The music matters
The music matters…
When a church choir works to make sure that everyone is singing the same rhythms and notes, it’s because… the music matters…
When vocalists and instrumentalists work on phrasing, dynamics, cutoffs, entrances, it’s because the music matters…
When you feel moved by a song, a symphony, live or recorded, the music matters….
When music makes you cry or evokes happy memories, the music matters…
When the silence of the end of a musical piece affects you, it’s because the music matters…
To musicians everywhere, in every performance that you give, never forget that the music matters….and to give that performance everything you have..because the music matters….
The music matters….
Reaper programming resources
Here are some resources for creating scripts/programs for the Reaper digital audio workstation:
AdmiralBumbleBee.com – ReaScript Tutorial – From total beginner to GUI-based script
ExtremeRaym – Raymond Radet’s website, author of ReaScript tutorial series, package of ReaScripts, and has a Github repo of scripts (also this one)
ReaPack.com – Package manager for Reaper
Cockos Forum – Building a GUI in Lua
Adam T. Croft – Introduction to ReaScript (I did the “Hello World” section, and it worked!)
ReaperBlog – ChordGun tool
SWS Extension – another Reaper tool
Reaper – ReaScript page (also ReaScript API page)
This ought to be enough to get me started! I want to create some functions to do computer-assisted composition…
Taking things one step at a time
Today was the first day I had some spare time to look at the Reaper digital audio workstation software that I am planning to use with my Alesis V49 MIDI controller keyboard. I decided to watch the first video in the series “First MIDI Song in Reaper (1/8) and try to duplicate the steps. The first part involved downloading and installing some plugins for a piano sound and a synth sound. Both of those took a little more time than I thought it would (some of the installation steps had changed, and not all of the steps were given, so I had to do some sleuthing to get the files in the correct directories). The next set of steps were for creating a track, playing a short melody on the MIDI controller, then editing that track. Well, my piano skills are not that good, so THAT took a while (mostly on editing what I entered to match what the video had). The final part was to add two more tracks to add chords and pad sounds. I have not done this last part yet, but I am getting there….one step at a time…with some missteps and backtracking….
MIDI controller debugging for Alesis V49
In an earlier post, I mentioned I bought an Alesis V49 MIDI keyboard controller. However, when I tried to use it with multiple programs, they appeared to recognize it in the settings/preferences area, but would not detect any key-up/key down data. After a lot more experimenting, I figured out that I was selecting the wrong thing in the settings/preferences menu. Here is a screenshot from Reaper:
The upper part of the window deals with inputs, the bottom part deals with outputs. There were two entries for each part (MIDIXX2 (V49) and V49). I did not have any instructions, so I selected the first one (MIDI…). Well, that was INCORRECT! I needed to select the “V49” entry. Once I stumbled onto that key fact, all of the DAW apps were able to detect key input.
The moral: keep trying different options until something works!
Getting started with MIDI controllers
I did buy an Alesis V49 MIDI controller, so the next step was to hook it up. However, the programs I tried (Reaper, LMMS) did not seem to work with the controller. I was able to see the controller as an option in the Preferences/Settings pages for these apps, and was able to select them. However, when I followed the EXACT instructions from web pages and videos from these companies, there was no sound when I would press a key on the keyboard, and no indication that the program was detecting the key presses. I downloaded the MIDI utility program MIDI-OX, which indicated that my Windows 7 laptop was receiving key-on and key-off data, so it seemed like everything was working – but it wasn’t!
I then went to the store (Guitar Center) and talked with the “Pro Tools” employee, who showed me what a working setup should look like (he was using a different controller than mine and a copy of Ableton Live for the Mac). He said it was likely a software problem (what! I AM a software engineer!), and that it took him several months to get the hang of using digital audio workstation (DAW) software.
Frustrated, I decided to download a copy of Ableton Live Lite (since my MIDI controller had a license code for a free copy), and … after a 20 minute download and a 20 minute installation, I was able to use my controller to play some notes in Ableton Live Lite – FINALLY!
Now, what did I want to do with this controller…..?
Some thoughts on first-run experience for software apps
In the past two days, I installed three digital audio workstation applications on my Windows laptop (Ardour, LMMC, Reaper). In each case, I just downloaded the latest version, did the install, then started the app. For Ardour and Reaper, both of them wanted me to select an audio input device (well, I didn’t have one!). I just clicked on something to get to the main app. For Ardour, I had to quit and try again, since the thing I clicked did not meet the app’s expectations. Only LMMC was able to start without some dialog popping up. For all three apps, I was then faced with a screen filled with various subwindows and a menu bar. What to do now?
Now, I will admit that these types of programs are complex, and require the user to know a little something about what they want to do, or how to use them. But when you compare this with many smartphone apps, there are usually some choices you can make from just looking at the screen to get started. Sure, each of the programs has some “getting started” resource (Ardour, LMMC, Reaper), but it might be nice for the app to have some built-in starter setup or task accessible from a menu (or something!). Just my two cents…
Dear Lazyweb: any recommendation for MIDI controllers? I am looking at this one, but open to input from others.