FREE drum library from Chocolate Audio for the first 9000 readers! www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com MARCH 2008 - VOL. 4 NO. 2
Apple Mainstage the Very Deep Clinic
Ableton
Live 7
expanding its role as a complete music production system
REVIEWS: USA $5.99 CANADA $5.99
BassVI Anthony Jackson Contrabass library Galaxy II Grand Piano Collection Image-Line Morphine Kirk Hunter Ruby orchestra library Vir2 Syntax Waves Guitar Tool Rack 3 Zero-G/EastWest Carnival Drums Spirit of Brazil
From the
Editor
W
elcome to the 16th issue of VI, and welcome to the NAMM Show if you picked up the magazine in Anaheim. I’d like to call your attention to the center of the first 9000 copies of this issue. There you’ll find a card with an activation number for a free drum library from Chocolate Audio. In case you were wondering, this is a real product, not junk, and Chocolate Audio is an excellent developer (the same people responsible for Scarbee Imperial Drums). It’s promotional, sure, but I’d definitely encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity. By the way, if you’re one of our few hundred international download-only subscribers, we’re working on a solution (but we can’t actually promise one yet). Please watch our www.VImag.net forum for announcements, in fact everyone might want stop by there for announcements and industry news in general. You can reach the forum through our website (www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com) as well.
Speaking of the center of this issue, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve launched a new division: VI Products. Our first product is the VI Composer’s Desk, and we have a couple more things up our sleeves under development. The concept is simple: cool products that there’s a need for and that aren’t available anywhere else. It’s just another way to help support the magazine. Finally, we’d like to encourage you to write to us, either through the VImag.net forum or by email. Please feel free to give us feedback, tell us what you’d like to see covered, comment on the state of our universe, just ask technical questions, or anything else. We do read everything and value your input. Enjoy the issue. -NB
Editor/publisher: Nick Batzdorf Art director: Lachlan Westfall/Quiet Earth Design Advertising/Marketing manager: Laurie Marans Web designer: Denise Young/DMY Studios Contributors: Jim Aikin, Jason Scott Alexander, Thomas J. Bergersen, Peter Buick, David Das, Bob DeMaa, Peter Dines, Doyle Donehoo, Gary Eskow, Jerry Gerber, Paul Gilreath, David
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Govett, Jean-Stephane Guitton, Ashif “King Idiot” Hakik, Mattias Henningson, Mark Jenkins, Hilgrove Kenrick, Michael Marans, Monte McGuire, Orren Merton, Chris Meyer, Dave Moulton, Zack Price, Frederick Russ, Bruce Richardson, Craig Sharmat, Lee Sherman, Dietz Tinhof, Jesse White, George Whitty. Advertising contact: Laurie Marans 818/590-0018.
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March 2008
V4.N2
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Letters
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DEEP
CLINIC:
iZotope Ozone Launch
By Bob DeMaa
Introductions, updates, news
Tips on mastering V.I.-based compositions using this highly capable suite of tools.
Mockup 48 MIDI Microscope by Frederick Russ
In this installment of our series on composers and how they did their MIDI programming, composer/sample developer Alex Pfeffer discusses two of his cues.
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Apple Mainstage By Jean-Stephane Guitton
This live performance host comes with Logic 8 as part of the Logic Studio suite of programs. It’s a surprisingly capable tool.
64 Trends: Predictions What to watch for this year
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contents VI
March 2008
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Ableton Live 7 Suite
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by Jason Scott Alexander
Live expands its role as a complete music production station.
Galaxy II Grand Piano Collection, Zero G Carnival Drums The Spirit of Brazil, and Vir2 Syntax
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by Nick Batzdorf
Three Bass Plug-Ins By Jim Aikin
Kirk Hunter Diamond Orchestra Library By Nick Batzdorf
A massive 6-string bass library featuring one of New York’s best jazz and session players
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Big Products, Little Reviews
by Chris Meyer
Bass VI The Anthony Jackson Contrabass Guitar library
V4.N2
This orchestra is designed to provide a good “out of box” experience with very little fuss. It succeeds.
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Image-Line Morphine By Peter Dines
An interesting additive synth from the developers of FL Studio.
30
Waves GTR3 by Craig Sharmat
Is this really the best sounding virtual guitar amp effects software in the world?
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Letters Please send your questions and comments to
[email protected]
Logic 8 I had a couple of questions about your Logic 8 article in the November 07 issue. 1. How did you get the System Performance window? Is it renamed? I only see a small readout in the new Transport. 2. What do you mean by “keyswitch” (“You can now keep keyswitch notes out of the score display”)? Thanks for packing so much into that tiny preview. Steven Smith Jacksonville, FL
Thanks Steven. 1. Yes, the System Performance window isn’t in the instructions, in fact I admit to calling up and asking writer Orren Merton,
Fig. 1: The CPU window in Logic 8 (fka System Performance in Logic 7) is opened by double-clicking on the miniature CPU indicator on the transport (enclosed in the orange box—and that’s our box, not Logic’s). That’s not in the manual.
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who wrote a book on Logic (Logic 7 Power). The answer is…double-click on the CPU indication in the transport. See Fig. 1. 2. Keyswitches are on-the-fly program changes triggered from an unused part of the keyboard (usually the top or bottom octave). Sample libraries use them to switch between articulations, for example—a very simple example—you might have short, medium, and long piccolo articulations loaded, and then you’d keyswitch to bring up the right one as you’re playing. Well, you probably don’t want a bunch of low C-1s showing up in the score for your piccolo part. Logic 8 lets you filter these notes out, a feature that every program should really have at this point, given that keyswitches are now so common. Furthermore, it would be great if sequencers made it easy to edit keyswitch notes. They should be in some sort of editing lane like other controllers.
Symphonic set-up You and the folks at VI are doing fantastic work. I’ve introduced a number of fellow professionals to VI and eagerly anticipate each issue. I have spent the last year building a project studio based on Ableton Live (currently V6.x) controlled via a Tascam FW-1884 interface/controller and an array of computers used to support numerous plug-ins. If it weren’t for your article series, “First DAW,” along with the article, “Lay of the LAN” in the second issue, I’d be scratching my head for months trying to figure out how to get started and why I was getting “pops” and “drop-outs” once I got going. I suppose there’s a way I could have determined that my machine was overburdened, but since it was a fairly hefty dual-core processor with 4GB of memory, I was quite surprised how everything cleaned up when I
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with Live or Sibelius. If I’ve missed an article that details this, forgive me—I just don’t recall seeing this kind of detail. Thanks again and keep up the great work!? Joe Heary New Jersey
setup a Giga-LAN as described and shared plug-ins located on another server. I realize this feedback is long overdue, but better late than never, right?? I’ve been waiting for an article or series on working in a symphonic setup (if I can call it that). As I tend to write larger works using Sibelius I would value something that walks me through a setup for Sibelius to take advantage of the array of five machines I have ready to serve up a full symphony of sounds. I envision setting one server up for strings, one for brass, one for woodwinds, one for percussion, one for my DAW, and an extra for miscellaneous work, but maybe that’s the wrong approach. I realize that much depends upon the size of the library I choose as well as the capability of my servers (to name a few variables), but the experience of someone who’s done this already or the appropriateness of one setup over another could be very helpful. I have yet to buy a full symphonic sample set like (Konkat, etc) because I’m not sure if there are limitations in the way they work
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Thanks for the good words, Joe. We appreciate it. Whether to dedicate one machine to each orchestral section is an open question. I know composers who do it that way and others who are more free-form in their approach. Probably the main reason not to do that would be if one section uses more computer than another. You’re likely to use more strings than percussion, for example, so your string computer could be choking while the percussion machine is under-utilized. Another reason not to do it that way would be if you have more than one library. If the libraries are copy-protected by a USB dongle, you might not even be able to split them up. But of course that approach does keep things organized, so it makes sense if you’re able to do that. Another possibility would be to assign a consistent pair of outputs to each section as much as possible, for example outputs 1&2 could be strings on all your machines, 3&4 winds, 5&6 brass, etc. That could make it easier to keep track of what’s coming out where. The truth is that you have to figure out your own system. And of course there’s nothing to say that your set-up has to be constant. VI
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Launch
Introductions, updates, news Magic Vox Musicrow Magic Vox ($99) is an effects processing plug-in that uses sampled guitar harmonics as the basis for its sounds. It can produce a wide variety of sounds and has its own synthesis engine, but it also includes effects such as rotator, granular effect, chorus, delay, reverb, etc. www.mcrow.net
Puremagnetik Technosphere This “sound design toolbox” includes over 100 sonic textures and composer effects, made out of live field recordings, studio instruments, and intensive effects processing. The sounds are categorized into “Creaturely,” “Environments,” “Swells,” and Slams.” Puremagnetik.com is a subscription download site. www.Puremagketik.com
Jazzmutant Dual Mode Jazzmutant makes two multitouch controllers, one (the Lemur) that can be configured freely to send any message you want, another (the Dexter) preset for mixing on all the popular DAW programs. Well, they have new Dual Mode software for Dexter that includes the Lemur software, so you can start up the device in either mode. The update is free for Dexter, and EUR390 for Lemur users. www.jazzmutant.com
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VSL Appassionata Strings II VSL’s second volume in this large string section library ($515) features large muted string ensembles. It includes almost all the articulations in the first volume, only played “con sordino.” These instruments are intended to provide a “broad cinematic sound for a variety of musical styles, from pop environments to symphonic arrangements, from heart-tugging ballads to films, from pure string beds to complete orchestral scores.” In addition to Legato Performances, ASII includes accented interval notes, spiccatos, staccatos, Repetition Performances, trills, and more. www.VSL.co.at
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Spectrasonics RMX Expanded
Samplebase instruments Samplebase.com has tree new Instrument Sets that you download and use in their free player instrument. These libraries are from remixer Def Jef, who has remixed and produced for Mary J Blige among others. The first hip-hop “poppin’ beat library” is called Deuces— Beats and Basslines ($39). This collection has “funtified, vinylistic drums and bass loops.” Second, Vingate Drum Kits—Rock, Pop, Prog ($39) is a package of three drum kits. And Nu Urban Bass Budz ($29) contains a variety of nu dubstep-synth bass loops “ready to roll out the low end.” www.Samplebase.com
This new $399 package from Spectrasonics includes their famous Stylux RMX Realtime Groove Module and adds all five S.A.G.E. Expander libraries: Backbeat, Retro Funk, Metamorphosis, Burning Grooves, and Liquid Grooves. The 7.4GB remix-oriented addition features several top session drummers (Abe Laboriel Jr., Gregg Bissonette, and others). www.Ilio.com
Notion Composition Contest Notion Music, creators of the eponymous composition and performance software, has started their second annual Realize Music Challenge. Composers submit a piece realized in Notion, and the winner gets a recording session with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios. The deadline is May 31, 2008. www.notionmusic.com/contest
Propellerhead Jason McGerr Sessions ReFill The Jason McGer Sessions ReFill for Propellerhead Reason ($49) is “a versatile collection of acoustic drum loops and hyper-sampled kits designed for flexible and creative music production...” These drum kits and REX format loops cover a wide range of styles, but all with an alternative feel. The library includes 450 REX loop variations, 2000+ individual drum samples, three different mic positions, MIDI files, and lots of patches for Reason instruments. www.propellerheads.se/creatorseries
SFX Machine RT The Sound Guy has new Mac OS X updates of their SFX Machine RT, SFX Machine Pro ($150), and Backwards Machine ($35) plug-ins. Their interesting plug-ins now work with Pro Tools using FXpansion’s VST-to-RTAS adapter. SFX Machine does lots of wild stuff between its 300 presets, and Backwards Machine plays audio backwards in real time. www.sfxmachine.com
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Ableton Live 7 Suite by Chris Meyer
Live expands its role as a complete music production station.
www.ableton.com
Ableton Live 7 Program: $499 download version; $599 boxed version.
Ableton Live 7 Suite: $799 download version; $999 boxed version (note that the download version does not include the Essential Instrument Collection or Session Drums).
Upgrades start at $199, depending on age of prior version.
Analog, Electric, and Tension are $159 each; included with Live Suite.
Drum Machines is $79; included with Live Suite.
Session Drums is $179; included with boxed version of Live Suite.
Minimum system requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9, G4 CPU, 512 MB of RAM, QuickTime 6.5, DVD-ROM drive; Windows XP or Vista, 1.5 GHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM, QuickTime 6.5, DVD-ROM drive, Windows-compatible sound card.
Licensed to run one copy at a time; may install on two different computers.
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bleton has been in the habit of releasing a major upgrade to Live every year, and Live 7 is no exception. In addition to numerous enhancements to the program itself (such as tempo nudging, programmed time signature changes, and interfacing with external effects and instruments), Ableton has also released two new sample libraries as well as three new virtual instruments. These are available either as add-ons to the basic program, or as part of the new Live Suite bundle, which includes all of the above plus their previously-released Operator and Sampler instruments and an updated version of the Essential Instrument Collection library. Don’t install this lightly— the boxed version of the suite comes on four multilayer DVDs and consumes roughly 40GB of disk space once decompressed! Fortunately, the core program itself remains small, and the add-ons can be installed on a separate hard drive.
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r e v i e w VI Impulse, which is more streamlined than using a copy of Simpler plus effects per sound. That said, beyond drumming I am intrigued by the possibility of using Drum Racks to trigger all manner of one-shot (rather than looped) sound effects and vocal drops without consuming multiple tracks or clips. Figure 1: Drum Racks allow you to assign a virtual instrument (typically an instance of Live’s Simpler sample playback engine) and effects chain to each one of up to 128 virtual pads.
Let’s dive into some of the major new features in Live 7: Drum Racks For a few versions now, Live has supported Racks: MIDI processors, virtual instruments, and/or audio effects that can be assigned to each track in a Live session. Audio-based tracks play their sample clips through audio effects in the rack; MIDIbased tracks contain MIDI sequence clips that play virtual instruments in a rack (which can then go through additional processing). Leave a MIDI track in “record” mode, and you can play the VIs in it live from an external keyboard. A rack can be quite complex, with parallel chains: for example, you can set up a MIDI processor that acts as a note splitter, which then sends notes to two or more different virtual instruments, each of which is followed by its own audio effects. Fortunately, you can also set up macro controls to make it easier to manipulate selected parameters inside the rack without having to hunt around.
the such. A submixer allows you to set volume and pan for each pad’s chain as well as set up effect sends and returns before they all get mixed down to the rack’s final output. Drum Racks can be played live or driven by a MIDI sequence, where each note number triggers a different pad. A very cool feature is the ability to drag an individual pad out onto a new MIDI track, which will extract just that pad’s note(s) in the sequence as well as its instrument
chain from the rack to create a new solo pad and chain. Note that I did have some trouble getting this feature to behave; the documentation does not match how version 7.0.1 actually works (corrections are promised for version 7.0.2). In the meantime, make sure you drag out your soloed pad from the rack mixer in order to get the MIDI sequence as well. Drum Racks are extremely powerful, but
Leave a MIDI track in "record" and you can play the V.I.s in it live from an external keyboard. New in Live 7 is the concept of the Drum Rack (see Figure 1). The front end of a Drum Rack consists of 128 virtual pads, which can be accessed as a sliding group of 4 x 4 pads (which aligns with the wealth of MIDI controller surfaces that contain a grid of 16 pads). Each pad then triggers a virtual instrument, which can be as simple as Ableton’s own Simpler sample player. Simpler comes bundled with the base version of Live. “Choke groups” may be set up where triggering one instrument cuts off another for accurate closed hi-hat simulations and
with this power comes a cost: you’d better have a fast computer if you plan to exploit them fully. A single rack (which may contain numerous instances of Simpler plus audio effects) often consumes 10-30% of the CPU resources of my rapidly-becoming-ancient dual 1.8 GHz G5. As there is so much information involved, a rack can take several seconds to load, temporarily halting playback in the process, so changing racks during the middle of a song is not recommended. Live still includes Ableton’s drum machine-inspired virtual instrument
Drum Machines and Session Drums Arriving hand in hand with Drum Racks are the new Drum Machines and Session Drums sample libraries from Ableton. These are add-ons to the base version of Lve, and they also come bundled with the full Suite. Drum Machines—created by Puremagnetik—contains 540 megs of 24bit 96kHz samples of classic analog drum
Figure 2: Extensive use of effects plus a rack’s Macro Controls takes the Drum Machines presets far beyond a simple sample library.
machines, including the CR-78, DR-55, 606, 707, 808, 909, DMX, Linndrum, and Drumtracks (we’re going to assume they got sample clearance for the ROM-based instruments they re-sampled). After installation, they may be found in the Live 7 Library > Instruments > Drum Rack folder, where you will uncover racks loaded with either individual classes of sounds (such as snares) or with kits that employ different combinations and processings of sounds. Macro controls are already programmed in each of the racks to provide quick tonal variations (Figure 2). Along with the sample library and racks comes a set of related MIDI pattern sequences, which may be found in the Live 7 Library > Clips > Drums > Electronic folder. If you prefer something a bit more realistic, then prepare to be overwhelmed by Ableton’s Session Drums library (created in collaboration with Chocolate Audio, they of Imperial Drums fame). We’re talking 28 Gigs of 24-bit multisampled drums compressed onto two dual-layer DVDs, meaning it’s only available in “boxed” rather than download form. The samples are lovely and long, with loads of natural decay.
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r e v i e w VI [Be sure to download the free Chocolate Audio drum library, as detailed on the card in the middle of this issue.] As with Drum Machines, you can load Drum Racks of individual drums or prearranged kits. Most are presented in stereo;
melodic than percussive instruments. (I know Live has become a full-blown music production workstation, but being a user since version 1, I continue to cling onto its rhythmic roots.) The release of Drum Machines and Session Drums more than
Figure 3: Session Drums include multimic kits where you can blend together different mics on each drum to taste; twirl open the track’s mixer then the submixer for the individual drum sounds to access this.
answers this perceived deficiency. I do wish these two libraries sorted into separate folders when installed—currently both sets of kits and individual sounds are lumped together, creating some very long lists to scroll through—but at this point I’m complaining about receiving too much of a good thing, so I’ll just shut up.
some are also presented with multiple mics per drum where you can then edit the mix between mics to taste—once you know to reveal the nested rack mixers for them (shown in Figure 3). Games of hide and go seek aside, it’s an awesome library. Ableton also provides MIDI patterns to go with Session Drums (performed by ace session drummer Shawn Pelton). These include 17 songs, each with a handful of song parts arranged as MIDI clips. Unfortunately, they are not included in the installation; you need to download them from the Ableton web site (www.ableton.com/session-drumsgrooves). You can load an entire Live set of each song, which includes the corresponding clips plus the Drum Racks with sounds and post-processing, or just the clips themselves to drive other rack chains. There is some degree of standardization between the Session Drums and Drum Machines grooves so you can carry out a few fun experiments in genetic splicing, but generally you’ll be happier if you align the suggested Drum Racks and with the corresponding clips. Last year, I complained in my review of Live 6 that the then-new Essential Instrument Collection contained far more
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REX and Slice A new feature in Live 7 that I’ve person-
ally been looking forward to for years is support for REX2 files. These are loops that have slice point markers already placed at the start of each individual drum hit or note (Figure 4). You can load REX files into a Live clip slot just like any other loop, and can vary their tempo in sync with other clips. Unlike a normal Live clip in which you have your choice of “warp” playback algorithms, REX files only offer a REX warp option where each slice is played back at its original speed, and is either truncated or padded with silence to make up the difference in timing as you vary the tempo. You cannot edit the placement of a REX
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file’s slice markers inside of Live; Propellerhead’s ReCycle is required for that. Depending on the timing of the original performance, these slice markers might be placed at points that don’t align with strict timing divisions inside a bar in order to retain their original feel. I’m all for feel, but unfortunately, as of Live 7 you cannot use its normal Warp Markers to bend these slices to fit a strict tempo grid if so desired. Of course you can always “freeze” (dub down or re-record) a clip, and then treat the result as a normal Live clip. My initial disappointment with the REX implementation was washed away by the addition of the Slice to New MIDI Track feature. This takes your clip, slices it into individual samples, loads each sample into its own Simpler playback instrument, and then loads all of these Simplers into a Drum Rack assigning one pad per slice. Additionally, a MIDI file is created and loaded into a Clip on that track, which will play the Drum Rack in a pattern that reconstructs the original loop. If you slice a REX file, the REX slice markers are used to cut up the sample; if you slice a normal clip, you have the option to slice by Warp Markers (make sure you place them carefully beforehand!) or rhythmic divisions from whole bars to 1/32 notes. There are four slicing presets available. These are not explained in the manual; they are in essence different Drum Rack presets. The most complex is Chord & Stutter, which adds the Live MIDI proces-
Figure 4: REX2 files may be loaded as a normal loop clip; the REX slices can be seen—but not edited—in the Clip Overview window.
sors Arpeggiator, Note Length, and Chord in front of each Simpler, and the Dynamic Tube audio processor afterward. A set of shared macro controls allows you to set the amount of audio destruction (although I wish the Stutter Amount were linked to tempo-locked rhythmic divisions, rather than straight milliseconds of delay between repeats). The idea of providing CONTINUED ON PAGE 56
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BassVI The Anthony Jackson Contrabass Guitar library A massive 6-string bass library featuring one of New York’s best jazz and session players
Review by Nick Batzdorf
Bass VI The Anthony Jackson Contrabass Guitar library, $400/425 EXS24/Tascam GVI. Personally signed versions in a laser engraved wood box $25 extra.
www.BassSix.com
Formats: Apple EX24 (Mac, Logic Pro only) or Tascam GVI player (Windows only, but a Mac version of the GVI player is dangerously close to release…)
Copy protection: GVI version uses Syncrosoft USB dongle
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he concept of “signature” libraries featuring famous players certainly isn’t new. Submersible Drumcore certainly does that with their drummer packs, Spectrasonics’ Bass Legends library from years ago featured some…yes, legends, there was a Will Lee bass library, to name just a few… But given that the most important aspect of any sample library is the performance, it’s surprising that the practice isn’t more widespread.
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Bass VI is a new developer who appears to agree. Their first product is the Anthony Jackson Contrabass Guitar library, a massive 38GB set of very high quality samples of the great bass player. AJCG is available in Emagic EXS24 format, but we worked with the version that comes embedded in an OEM TASCAM GVI player. For this review we used a custom 2.8GHz Pentium 4 PC from VisionDAW, which being three years old is only just up to spec—but it performed just fine.
r e v i e w VI Fig. 1: Bass VI isn’t using the Tascam GVI player’s convolution processing, but you can set an amplitude and pitch envelope and also use its basic built-in effects (which aren’t shown on this screen). The harmonics, a highlight of the library, can benefit from the chorus program.
Anthony Jackson This library succeeds in capturing the sound of Anthony Jackson. If you haven’t heard of Anthony Jackson...well, to use the cliché, you’ve certainly heard his playing. He’s been of the top NY jazz and most recorded session players for years; probably his most famous part is the phased hook on The O’Jays “For the Love of Money.” Most significantly for this library, Jackson is a very innovative bassist. He played guitar before switching to bass, and that led him to push the concept of the instrument into a more chordal direction and change its role. In turn that led him to conceive of an electric 6-string bass, or Contrabass Guitar; it’s just a lower guitar in other words. Some 30 years later, the current version is the custom 6-string Fodora Contrabass Guitar in this library, which of course has an extended range—from A-1 to E4 (that’s the A 3-1/4 octaves below middle C up to the E a 10th above middle C). The instrument is tuned in fourths starting at B, but the bottom string was tuned down. The library All these notes were sampled at as many as five velocity layers, and like most modern disk-streaming libraries they’re fulllength, unlooped, and recorded at every note. Both DI and amped versions of the performances are included in parallel programs. As expected, the amped sound is a thicker and a little less transient than the DI, yet it’s still very clean (Meyer Sound CQ-1 15” speakers) and you can easily “reamp” it through a bass amp plug-in if you need a more hirsute sound. The library includes both fingered and picked standard notes in three positions on the bass. One set of programs lets you switch between the positions using the modwheel, a great addition. This adds considerable reality to the performance, although you don’t actually have to think about how a real bass works to make good
use of this feature—the lower notes are simply thicker and you can just use it for creative control. AJCG also includes fingered and picked muted notes, available in four string positions rather than three for the regular notes. Bass VI tells us they’re working on our most urgent suggestion: a program with keyswitches between the regular and muted notes. You can create that yourself in the EXS version very easily, but the GVI version is locked down. Finally, the library includes picked and fingered harmonics. Just gorgeous, and the Contrabass Guitar’s extended range makes them especially useful. They sound fabulous as is, or you can run them through a good chorus plug-in for some motion and density (the Roland Dimension D in Universal Audio’s UAD-1 card happens to work really well). The GVI player has a built-in chorus that’s okay too (some of the editing parameters, which you probably won’t use, are shown in Fig. 1). AJCG has an auto-randomization feature that cycles between ten samples per note: five velocity layers and two versions of each. This works very well for both the “just play” programs and the above-mentioned “mw” ones that add the ability to switch between strings. Should you want to layer the DI and amped sounds, there are also fixed High,
Medium, and Low programs that don’t auto-randomize. The layered sound is very nice, but I personally didn’t find the benefit worth giving up the randomized samples; better to run the DI sound through a good bass amp plug-in or live with the out-ofsync round-robin. Despite the size, detailed recordings, and under-the-hood programming complexity, this is actually a very simple library from the musician’s point of view. It doesn’t have release samples, but that’s not obvious in a track. You don’t need to do anything other than play, giving only passing thought to the string position if you want to be absolutely realistic. And? The Anthony Jackson Contrabass Guitar library is a great go-to electric bass library. Especially with the addition of a good bass amp plug-in, it’s versatile enough to cover a very wide variety of playing styles. It’s not intended to do everything—slapping and playing slides aren’t Jackson’s thing; for that you grab one of the basses you undoubtedly already have. But between the fingered and picked programs, the extended range of the 6string instrument, and especially those drop-dead gorgeous harmonics, this instrument is a great one to have in any arsenal. VI
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Apple Mainstage This live performance host comes with Logic 8 as part of the Logic Studio suite of programs. It’s a surprisingly capable tool. by Jean-Stephane Guitton
he main program in Logic Studio is of course Logic Pro 8, reviewed in the previous issue. But it also includes a suite of other programs, including the powerful Mainstage live performance V.I. host. That’s the subject of this clinic. Mainstage is a live musician’s dream, something I’d love to have had when I was on the road. Carrying a Kurzweil K2500X, a Yamaha SY-99, an Oberheim OB3Squared, a mic and its boom stand, a keyboard stand, and twelve rack units…that’s hardly the same thing as showing up with
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a laptop and a controller keyboard. And a keyboard stand. …Not to mention the ability to use exactly the same software sounds and FX combinations on stage that you use in your studio. Mainstage is so easy to use that it allows you to concentrate on what’s most important: the music. Meet Mainstage In case you’re not familiar with Mainstage, here’s a brief overview to help point you in the right direction when you
v e r y first start poking around the program. The first thing to do is create a Channel Strip and open the settings you saved in Logic. This works with third-party effect and instrument plug-ins. Assigning MIDI controllers is very easy. You into Layout mode and drag & drop whatever controls you need, then have them learn your physical MIDI controllers by selecting one and wiggling the knob, fader, or whatever you want to control it. Then in Edit mode assign the controls to a MIDI channel, effect, or any of the available “action” parameters provided. All the available parameters are shown in the lower window. You’re ready to go to the Perfom page to…perform. If you’re using several keyboards, you can create soft stacks, layers, and splits, all independent and each with its own external MIDI hardware. Imagine the ultimate pad synth with up to 20 layers, each with its own MIDI filtering, key range, set of controllers, and velocity response. Since each layer is a full Channel Strip, it has its own effects path, bus sends, and so on. Mainstage can be the ultimate live “synth.” After that you can change your presets on the fly. If a note is sounding, it continues to play while you change presets.
In order to play audiofiles directly from the Mainstage, maybe things could be easier if Apple could do something with its AUAudioFilePlayer, usable as an AU instrument. This little player with playlist, loop function, start/stop, Autoplay and useful function to create new regions on the fly, can’t be used in Mainstage ; indeed, the only assignable parameter is the Bypass. All you can do with it is to keep it open, and launch files with the mouse, clicking on the transport commands. Too bad.
timbral in the sense that you open different programs in one instance of the instrument and address them on separate MIDI channels. So let’s say you open a Native Instruments Kontakt-series sampler—which is multitimbral—and open one program on channel 1 and another on channel 2. First, do not create a Keyboard. If your
soft stacks, layers, and splits, all independent and each with its own external MIDI hardware.
Multitimbral instruments None of the Logic instruments is multi-
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An AUAudioFilePlayer —What for?
If you're using several keyboards, you can create
You can open as many Channel Strips as you need, the limit being the computer’s power and RAM. Be aware that you’re managing live performances and you’ll want to set very low latencies, which puts more weight on the computer’s back. Mainstage probably wants a good sound card, plenty of RAM (which you want for running V.I.s anyway), and a good quality audio interface. Finally, here’s a quick reminder of the terminology. Patches (an ensemble of settings) are grouped in Sets, which are grouped in a Concert. For example: Your Favorite Rhodes (a Patch) in Electric Pianos (a Set) in Keyboards (a Concert).
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master keyboard is set to channels 1 and 2, you can play both sounds. Now you can add buttons in Layout and have them learn physical controllers on multiple keyboards if you want. (If you have 16 keyboards, you can play them all.) The only problem is that the Kontakt controls are numbered rather than named, which makes them hard to identify. Another example would be if you open a Logic evb3 organ (again without creating a Keyboard), you can play the upper and lower manuals from different MIDI keyboards. You can also create controllers to add the missing ninth drawbar. The main thing to avoid in this particular sitation is creating a Keyboard, since two keyboard sources can’t be assigned to the same instrument as soon as you have
assigned one in Mainstage. But faders and other controls can. When you don’t create Keyboards, Mainstage accepts all incoming MIDI events and routes them by default to the Channel Strips. If you have a master controller keyboard that allows splits or velocity sending on different MIDI channels, then create a Keyboard, make it recognize your controller, and change the Channel to All…then if you open a Kontakt on a Channel Strip, each MIDI part on the hardware keyboard will play the appropriate channel in Kontakt. Play a sequence Even if Mainstage is really complete, it can’t directly play MIDI or audio sequences. There are some scripts to launch iTunes in response to a specified MIDI message, but it is not as flexible as we’d like in order to manage sequences. This works (almost) fine if you just need to play an audio file straight through from beginning to end without interrupting. But sometimes script behaviors can be a little risky. Start/Pause, for example: there’s no way to pause. For MIDI sequences, however, it’s another story. If you absolutely need a flexible tempo, and if you’re kind of a reckless musician, you could always try to launch a Logic sequence in the background. But be careful with incoming MIDI messages—they could easily go where they were not intended to. That’s especially true since Logic is not scriptable (while Soundtrack Pro is, iTunes is, etc. So you’ll
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Figure 1.
Figure 2.
we’ll see what we can do with what’s in the box. Trick 1: Play an audio file If you only need to play an audio sequence straight through, you use the exs24 sampler built into Logic. As there are 128 MIDI notes (0 to 127), even if you use an 88 note keyboard you have plenty of notes available not being used for playing. The idea is to create an exs instance dedicated to playing audio sequences that can be launched by your external controller’s knobs, buttons, and faders. Or you could dedicate an otherwise unused octave of your controller keyboard if you prefer. We’re going to use use knobs and buttons. The first step is to create an exs program that will host your audio file(s). We’ll use just use one, but the procedure remains the same if you want to add several more. You’ll have to open Logic, because exs24mkII edit functions are disabled in Mainstage. Once an exs24 is inserted on a software instrument track, click on the Edit button. If you have updated to 8.0.1, this will open the editor and automatically create a new instrument. Then drag’n’drop your audio file onto a low key, C-1 in our example. Check that the file is on One-Shot mode, which is one of the available means of playing the file straight to the end. Also verify Pitch settings to make sure the file doesn’t get transposed, and adjust if necessary. (See Fig. 1)
Imagine the ultimate pad synth with up to 20 layers, each with its own MIDI filtering, key range, set of controllers, and velocity response.
Figure 3.
have to jump from one program to another. Don’t be fooled by the “iTunes - Go to Logicsongs” script in Mainstage. This opens the Logicsongs playlist in iTunes—but only if you have created one with this name. And it only plays whatever audio you’ve put in there. For the purposes of this clinic we’re only going to use the included plug-ins and instruments. There are many third-party ones, but
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One thing to be aware of in OneShot mode: each time you hit a note (even the same note) it triggers a new note that adds to the files already playing. So in our example the best thing to do is to lower the polyphony to 1 and/or put the exs in Mono mode so the exs can only play one note at a time. If you add a blank audio file on an adjacent note, you’ve got an immediate “Kill all Notes” function. This can also be done with Groups and Mutes, but that’s another story… (See Fig. 2) But you might say: “So what if I need different audio sequences in one Concert?” First, you can spread and assign your files in a way that you won’t risk launching two at the same time (unless you want it to). There’s another way: exs is very, very low on CPU. So open as many instances as you need. Save your new exs instrument, give it a name like MyAudioSequence1Shot. (See Fig. 3) Then launch Mainstage and open the Starter Concert. Create a software instrument track, insert an exs24, and load your MyAudioSequence1Shot.exs program. Go to the Mainstage Layout page, and drag’n’drop a Drum Pad in the window. In Hardware Assignment, click Learn, press a button on your external MIDI controller, and de-click Learn. Add a Text box, write in it “Sequence Start,” adjust Font size and Color (press the Font... button) and drag the Text box next to the Drum Pad. If you want to implement your “Kill all Notes,” just create another Drum Pad
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Figure 4.
Always be precise when naming your presets, Channel Strip Settings, etc. Something like 132BPM-BassLine in A.exs is the best way to always be sure to select the good file. And as Mainstage effects can be tempo synchronized, it’s a child play to affect the good tempo to the whole Concert you’re using. First, it can be done by default, then easily recall when loading the Concert. Then, you can modify tempo in live situation. Right-click in the upper toolbar, add the Tap Tempo icon if it’s missing. If you tap on this icon some regular intervals, it will change the global tempo. A Button or Drum Pad can also be assigned to that function (see in Parameter Mapping, the Actions folder). You can also modify it in the Patch Inspector, dragging up an down the numbers or typing them directly. Thus you’ll always be sure to have your temporal effects in sync with the tune’s tempo. Nice, isn’t it ?
Figure 5.
ter set to a very low Cutoff, then open it to the max. (See Fig. 5) Just create a Knob, Learn one of your external controllers, and assign it to the exs filter or to the Cutoff of a plug-in. In Fig. 6 we’ve selected the frequency of an 8th order hi-cut filter. And voilà, immediate techno filter effect. (See Fig. 6) Of course you can now add Channel Strips and play your favorite keyboards, apply reverb to your voice, etc., while the audio background is playing. This is one of the simpliest ways of playing a full orchestral arrangement live, if your aim is simply to play or sing over a complete musical background while benefitting from superior audio treatments inside one and only one app.
Figure 6.
mapped to the corresponding MIDI note. (See Fig. 4) Go to the Edit page, highlight the Drum Pad, and in Parameter Mapping, you’ll see Inst 1. That’s our exs Channel Strip. Click on it, and choose C-1 in the MIDI notes list. Now when you click on your external button, it launches your audio sequence. You can add effects or whatever you want to your audio sequence, which would have been impossible with the iTunes scripts. One current trick, for example, is to start the file with a fil-
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Play sequences We’ve seen how to play audiofiles, but how do you trigger MIDI files? Or to be precise, how do you get the flexibility of MIDI sequences without having a MIDI player? The answer is Ultrabeat. This extremely powerful drum synth has been enhanced in the Logic 8 release. Without describing all its functions, we’ll just point out three that we’ll use in this clinic: the ability to import samples and/or exs24 programs, kind a piano-roll editor, and a pattern Mode. Just a detail: we won’t pretend to replace a complete MIDI sequencer playing 20 tracks with 240 notes of polyphony. But we’ll see how to play simple sequences, even ones some sophisticated programming. (See Fig. 7) Create a new Concert, a software instrument track, and insert an Ultrabeat. Maybe you didn’t realize that Ultrabeat is a 25-note drum synth, and each note has its own complete synth. If the first 24 notes are mono sounds, the 25th is a polyphonic synth. But if you play chords, from C3 to the highest note of your keyboard (or highest MIDI note), you can’t program them. (See Fig. 8) CONTINUED ON PAGE 58
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Three Bass Plug-Ins: Spectrasonics Trilogy, Bornemark Broomstick Bass, and Steinberg Virtual Bassist review by Jim Aikin
few weeks ago I had the good fortune to hear Michael Manring play a two-hour set in a small room with great acoustics. Without meaning any disrespect to Michael’s virtuoso bass work, I think it’s fair to say that most bass parts tend to be strictly functional. The bass anchors the harmony and keeps the rhythm moving forward, and often not much else. So it may be perfectly feasible to use a V.I. for the bass track in a mix, even when some or all of the rest of the band is played using fingers, sticks, picks, metal tubes with reeds clamped to one end, and so forth. There are at least three “strictly bass” plug-ins on the market. In this round-up I’ll
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a few bass patches (or a lot of them). Some of these bass sounds are excellent, but there are so many products that including them in the round-up wouldn’t be practical. If you’re an accomplished arranger or a bass player yourself, you may prefer a V.I. that lets you write and record your own MIDI bass tracks one note at a time. The leading program for this purpose is Spectrasonics Trilogy (www.spectrasonics.net). Alternatively, you may want a program that comes with a bunch of realistic bass patterns in various musical styles already installed, allowing you to lay down a plausible-sounding part with a minimum of effort and little or no knowledge of bass playing. If so, Steinberg Virtual Bassist (www.steinberg.net) will interest you. Bornemark Broomstick Bass (www.bornemark.se) can be used in either mode.
Trilogy ($349)
Figure 1. Spectrasonics Trilogy has a wide collection of sampled basses, and the sounds can be customized using an array of synth voicing parameters.
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take a look at them, with the caveat that this magazine is going to be at the Winter NAMM Convention and there are rumors about new products that may render this a little out of date. Many synth plug-ins offer
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If you need acoustic, electric, and synth bass for various projects, Trilogy would be an excellent choice (see Figure 1). As you’d expect from Spectrasonics, all of the sounds in the 3GB library are superb. There are no bass patterns, but the acoustic and electric basses include a variety of pops, slides, squeaks, taps, and trills. These are in separate presets, so the way to use them is to load a second instance of Trilogy and put the performance sounds on a separate track. Some of the acoustic and electric basses have “true staccato” presets, in which the top two octaves contain short notes with hand muting built into the sample. With some of the picked electric basses, the
r e v i e w VI Figure 2. In Bornemark Broomstick Bass you choose a style and variation on the left and an instrument on the right. The gray octave on the keyboard shows which keys can be used for switching variations.
upper octaves play an up pick stroke while the lower octaves play a down stroke; by alternating the two, you can sequence a more realistic performance. Many presets have a release sound as a separate layer, so you can hold a note for a while and still hear a nice little pop at the end of the note. The loudness of the release layer can be controlled using MIDI CC 82. Trilogy has no built-in effects, so you’ll need to add your own chorus, distortion, and so forth using other plug-ins. Its voicing is fairly simple—each of the two layers has two ADSR envelopes, a simple pitch envelope, dual filters in series, four LFOs, four modulation routings, velocity control over the envelopes, and a few other basic necessities. Trilogy’s dual-layer voicing makes it easy to design your own patches using the lavish menu of synth waveforms. These were sampled from classics like the Minimoog, the Roland Juno-106, the Yamaha CS-80, and the ARP Odyssey. The palette of electric basses includes five categories: fingered, fretless, muted, picked, and slapped. Within the fingered category, you’ll find groups of presets: 4string Modern,” “4-string Old School,” “4string Rock-n-Roll Overdrive,” “5-string Fingered,” “6-string Ballad,” and “6-string Heavy.” As the name “Rock-n-Roll Overdrive” might suggest, Trilogy’s sounds are produced, not raw. The acoustic bass, for instance, includes both miked presets (using a U47 tube mic) and the same notes recorded through a pickup and a DI box. Choose the preset that has both, and you can use the layer loudness controls to create your own blend. Versatility and sound quality are the hallmarks of this instrument.
Broomstick Bass (99EU) The selection of basses in Broomstick Bass (see Figure 2) includes acoustic, elec-
tric, and synth. The acoustic category has both plucked and bowed presets, not to mention an actual broomstick bass (a homebrew contraption consisting of a metal bucket, a broomstick, and one string). The electric category serves up some classic basses—Fender Precision and Jazz, Gibson Thunderbird, and Chapman Stick, among others. The Keyboard category includes a small but useful assortment of Minimoog, ARP 2600, and other samples, and even pipe organ pedals. However, Broomstick Bass lacks Trilogy’s synth voicing features, so the synth sounds produce only full-on sustained tones. Including two downloadable “gift packs,” the library is close to 1GB. If you play a single note over and over at the same velocity, you’ll discover that Broomstick Bass alternates randomly between two or more samples. This adds somewhat to the realism. The separate release samples are too long and buzzy, however, making them more a sonic annoyance than anything else. Fortunately, it’s easy to lower the volume of the release layer. Upwards of 120 styles are included in Broomstick Bass. Categories like Jazz, Rockabilly, Pop, Blues, Reggae, and Prog Rock offer anywhere from four to 25 styles each. Each style includes eight variations. In performance you can switch variations using
one octave of a MIDI keyboard and choose the root of the chord using the rest of the keyboard. Broomstick Bass recognizes major and minor chords and dominant 7ths when they’re played on the keyboard, but not major 7ths, which is unfortunate, as many of the patterns include a flat 7th note. Broomstick Bass has some basic effects— EQ, a pitch-shifter for sub-octaves, compression, chorusing, and overdrive. There’s a swing amount knob in the style section, and half/double-time buttons, which are sometimes extremely useful. Even more useful: you can transmit the pattern playback data, record it onto a MIDI track, and then edit it to suit your song. Some editing will be required, as this feature transmits extra high-pitched notes that don’t belong in the pattern. Nonetheless, it does work. This program is a good compromise between Trilogy and Virtual Bassist: it’s less expensive, and it’s the only one of the three that can be used in either single-note or pattern-play mode.
Virtual Bassist ($299.99) If your primary interest is in mainstream pop music styles and preset bass lines, Virtual Bassist is the program for you (see Figure 3). This plug-in’s panel shows a Fender-like solid body bass, and that’s what you get. It features only 28 styles (not nearly as many as Broomstick Bass), but the included styles are the ones pop musicians will use most often, and each of them has more patterns than BB’s styles,
Figure 3. Steinberg Virtual Bassist features a highly controllable bass guitar (left) and a menu of styles (right).
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r e v i e w VI including half a dozen fills that segue back automatically to the most recently selected pattern. You can customize Virtual Bassist’s sound in a variety of ways. One is to move the pickup closer to the bridge or further away. You can adjust the amount of string damping or roll off the treble with a tone knob. And Virtual Bassist includes a “rack” of bass-type effects—amp and speaker models, a wah-wah “pedal,” fuzztone, compression, tremolo, and an octave divider (see Figure 4). As a bonus, this FX rack can be used as an insert in any audio track. Randomly alternating samples make repeated notes more realistic. It’s possible to sequence your own bass parts to a very limited extent—Virtual Bassist has a manually playable range of 12 half-steps, which can be extended to 15 half-steps by switching the range with a MIDI CC message. This is enough range that you can program walk-ups from one chord root to another or lay down a pulse with your own rhythm, but doing a bass part that moves up to the G string is not possible. A few pattern editing features are included, but this area of the program feels
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unfinished. (VB is still at 1.0. There has never been an upgrade.) The sound and the styles in Virtual Bassist are excellent, but it is limited to the grooves that come with it. Basses loaded Because I played bass in a club band for several years when I was (much) younger, I know what I want from a bass track. So Trilogy is my personal fave as a bass plug-in: it lets me lay down my own parts. But both Broomstick and Virtual Bassist have definite strengths, and each of them will be the right choice for some musicians. There’s still no substitute for a dynamic, tasteful track recorded by a real bass player—but at
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Figure 4. The Virtual Bassist effects rack can also be used as an insert on any audio track in your DAW.
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Waves GTR3 Is this really the best sounding virtual guitar amp effects software in the world? by Craig Sharmat
Waves GTR3, $500 with PRS interface, $600 TDM; software only, $380, TDM $480. Also available as part of Waves bundles.
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Formats: RTAS, AudioSuite, stand-alone; PC VST, DirectX; Mac Audio Units, MAS, VST; also TDM version (Pro Tools HD/Accel).
System requirements: Mac Core Duo 1.83GHz faster, or 2x2.5GHz G5, OS X 10.4.9; Win XP 32-bit SP2, Penium 4 2.8GHz/AMD Athlon XP 3400.
Copy protection: Uses iLok dongle
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he days when there were only a few products with guitar amp models are long gone. Today there’s a plethora of hardware and software applications on the market; amp modeling plug-ins even come with some sequencers (MOTU Digital Performer, for example—or Apple GarageBand for that matter). With so many choices available it makes deciding more difficult, but the competition has produced many options. Israeli plug-in developer Waves has recently introduced their latest modeling software, GTR3 (Guitar Tool Rack 3). Waves has a reputation among many composers and engineers for producing high-end but very high quality plug-ins, so it’s hard to ignore them when they claim to have the best sounding virtual guitar amp effects software in the world. GTR3 is priced competively with similarly targeted products. It also comes with an optional guitar interface, designed with the
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Fig. 1: Dual Amp set-up
assistance of renowned guitar maker Paul Reed Smith. The interface is designed to transform impedance and, possibly most importantly, provide an improved feel over the standard fare. Many people have complained that modelers don’t feel like you’re playing through a real amp, which makes playing through them a more difficult process. I tested GTR3 using an 8-core Mac Pro with 8GB of RAM running on OSX 10.4 and Apple Logic 8. Most platforms on Mac and PC are supported. GTRe comes as three plug-ins: Amps; Stomps, which are pedals that come in different configurations; and The Tool Rack, which allows you to combine, route, and configure the stomps and amps in just about any configuration you want. The Tool Rack is limited to six stomps and a
r e v i e w VI to-stereo cab configuration, or a discrete stereo amp and cab combination. Setting these up is very simple, and finding tones is a quick and painless process. Having a huge stereo amp set-up is so intuitive and fast that I can easily see it becoming the normal set-up for many users of GTR3.
Fig. 2: Stomp 2
mono or stereo amp, but if for some reason you needed more stomps you could add another rack as a plug-in. Amps Please see Fig. 1. Like most modeling software these days, GTR3 comes with a plentiful supply of traditional, boutique, and custom amps. Some of the traditional amps include models of Fenders, Marshalls, Ampeg, Vox, and Mesa, etc. While the graphics look terrific, unlike most modeling software there is no visual reference whether you’re getting a 64 Blackface Super Reverb or a Marshall Stack. Instead things are organized in order of clean to gain strength. The manuals do explain what many of the models are, but some are labeled “based on a boutique amp from Paul Reed Smith’s private collection.” While I was curious which amps those are, in the end the sound derived from an amp is what fits most comfortably with how you play, so knowing the names may be a good starting point but not always necessary. If you’re after a certain boutique amp and know its characteristics, however, it would be helpful to know if it’s in the collection. The Amp set-ups are extremely flexible. You can have a simple mono amp, mono-
Cabinets and microphones There is a large array of cabinets and mics in GTR3: many different 4X12 cabs are available, two 2X12s, closed and open back 12s, some 10-inch configs, and even a 15 and 8-inch option. Also included are six bass cabs, as GTR3 is a full-featured plug in for bass as well as guitar. There are seven mic options for guitar and six for bass. If that isn’t enough, the mics can be placed on- and or off-axis. You can also set the delay for the mics, as if moving them away from the. The only minor thing is that the mics available for bass aren’t available for guitar. The bass has a Royer 122, a well known guitar-mik-
ing favorite, but it isn’t available for guitar. That said, Waves supplies two other ribbon mics that should do quite nicely: an AEA R84 and an RCA44. Stomps GTR3 comes with a plethora of stomp box options, shown in Figs. 2 and 3. To go over all of them would take too long, but a sampling includes five different distortion boxes, flanger, octaver, chorus gate, and compression. All these are of high quality, like other Waves plug-ins, so they can be used well beyond the scope of guitar effects. All stomps can be configured easily in the plug-in called GTR Stomp, which comes in 2-, 4-, and 6-stomp configurations. If you’re wondering why so many, who knows, but from an organizational standpoint using two stomps in a 2-stomp configuration instead of a 6-stomp configuration looks cleaner. But you can also open 2- and 4-stomp configurations in a 6stomp area. The Tool Rack If you want to stick all your options together in one place, the Tool Rack, shown in Fig. 4, is the place to do that. Routing is flexible and easy. The graphics are simple and effective— you can view routing cables with a simple touch of a button. If you don’t like where an effect is placed in the chain, simply drag it to where you want it. You can have par-
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Fig. 3: Stomp 4
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Are you playing speakers at perfect distance (not in your face) and 5' apart
clearance so papers, etc. on your desk won’t get knocked off when desk slides in
lip so pencils don’t roll off when the desktop moves
extra heavy-duty Knape & Vogt 8900 drawer slides rated for 10,000 travels (underneath desktop)
glides effortlessly
space under desk for a quiet computer box (under development) and/or subwoofer
writing position Equipment not included. Duh.
desktop between playing and writing positions - goes all the way forward and back (2' of travel)
with a full desk? monitor on stand attached to shelf—stays put when you slide the desktop
space for racks (under development—they’re gorgeous) on either side of monitor
traditional edge cutting shown; also available with simpler edge for a more modern look
French polish finish - not a substance but an old-world hand process in which many thin layers are built up gradually
beautifully handcrafted that’s a half-blind dovetail joint at the rear
keyboard height 29-1/2'', just like a piano
frame and bridge shelf solid red oak (desktop high-grade oak ply)
The VI Composer’s Desk www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com/composersdesk 818/905-9101
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Fig. 4: Tool Rack
allel routing or have the effects cascade. There’s also a well thought out tuner in the rack (Fig. 5). You can tune your guitar to many types of tuning presets, and the graphic is generous. One thing to consider is you that you can’t save stomp box configurations and load them into the Tool Rack. You can, however, save individual stomp box settings and load those into Tool Rack. Sound and feel All of this means very little if the models don’t sound and feel great, so here goes. Again, there’s a problem with many a modeler: feel—meaning that the feel of a
Fig. 5: Tuner
sound isn’t always what you would expect from the feel of a guitar and a real amp. The “PRS Guitar Interface” addresses this issue. Feel of course is a personal thing, so some people may find this an important consideration while others won’t care as much.
well-stocked guitar store with his current inventory of vintage and boutique guitars, amps, and pedals. We connected the PRS box, which comes with two batteries, or it has an input for an optional 12VDC adapter input (not included). Indeed, the first thing we both noticed was the feel of GTR3. There is no question effort has been put here, and the feel to both of us was improved over any software-based modeler plug-in we’ve played. Same with the sounds. The cleans went from sparkly to dark and everything in between. On some of the more mondo rock patches the depth was not quite right, and when I was able to add the right frequencies other parts of the tone took a hit. Still, the mondo rock stuff is state-of-the-art for a software plug-in. Where GTR3 really shines is in natural distortion overdrive sounds, suited to anything from blues to alternative to heavy rock. Conclusion If I were limited to one software-based modeler program I could happily choose
It's hard to ignore them when they claim to have the best sounding virtual guitar amp effect software in the world.
I brought guitarist Tim Torrance over to my studio to help with the listening tests. Tim like myself has played on numerous TV and movie scores. He also has had a major label recording deal, and could open a
GTR3. Does it replace real amplifiers? Absolutely. Is it as good as the amplifiers it replicates? Well, no, not quite in my opinion. But GTR3 is so versatile and easy to use that I would have no trouble choosing it over any amplifier just because of that, the ease of use, and its great sound. If you you’re in the market for a software guitar system, I highly suggest trying out the GTR3 demo from Waves.com. There’s a very good chance you’ll want it after spending some time playing and listening to it. VI
As a guitarist, Craig Sharmat’s (www.scoredog.tv) credits include Ronnie Laws (for whom he served as musical director), the Pointer Sisters, and Randy Crawford. His list of scoring credits spans dozens of live action and animated TV shows, films, trailers, commercials, and most recently several Playstation games. Craig also arranged and programmed on Rick Braun’s latest album ‘Yours Truly.’
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iZotope Ozone by Bob DeMaa
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Mastering can be the most difficult and destructive part of the production process. It can also lift muddy, lifeless pulp to new heights, and turn an average sounding demo into a polished, professional sounding idea that really gets your point across.
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Typical tools for the job can consist of limiters, expanders, equalization, Mid/Side encoding and decoding, multiband processing, dithering, and sample rate conversion. The order in which any of these processes are or are not applied can have a dramatic effect. Thousands of dollars can go into the analog and digital equipment necessary to pull off a good mastering job, and I would never have imagined doing it all in a single plug-in…until I discovered iZotope Ozone 3.
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v e r y Short of having a mastering engineer show up to your doorstep with a rack of gear in tow, Ozone 3 sets out to provide just about everything most people would need to create an excellent sounding master. This is accomplished, in part, by not diluting any of the control. Everything from start to finish is designed for maximum versatility and quality, and it manages to make what could be an incredibly complicated process fairly straightforward and relatively easy to understand. The Goal of this clinic is to take you step by step through a process of mastering your mix, focusing on key areas within Ozone 3 which you can hopefully apply to any style of music.
tracks from the audio CDs you pulled out. Avoid using mp3s, as there is typically a brick wall filter at about 15kHz that will interfere with our matching EQ results. Place your mix onto a track in the session, and insert Ozone 3 on the Master Fader (Fig. 1). Load the preset called “Default” to reset the plug-in, and turn off all the modules. Or you could load the VIMag_bobdemaa preset and use it to follow along and make tweaks with your song as we go.
Set up the session Create a new session and import your mixes into it. Picking a sample rate might be a little tricky depending on the sample
Ozone 3 set-up We’re going to re-order the modules first. Push the Graph button to open the Filter Graph. Move the Multiband section to the far left. Be sure to re-order the modules within the Multi-band section so that the Stereo imaging is first, followed by the exciter and then the Dynamics. Next place the EQ after the Dynamics module, followed by the Reverb and the Loudness Maximizer. Leave the Channel Ops, Spectrum analyzer, and Phase Meter on the right side. (Fig. 2) I’ll explain why I chose this routing as we move on. Let’s take a quick run through of the Options Module. Click the Options button and select the spectrum tab. Change the Spectrum Type from Linear to Critical. (This is one of those brilliant “why hasn’t anyone done this before” type things that make you go ahhhh…) Click OK. Select the Multiband Stereo Imaging Module and play your track to see what I mean. The Spectrum Analyzer at the top of the page now displays the audio in bands that correspond to how we hear and differ-
digital equipment necessary to pull off a good mastering job, and I would never have imagined doing it all in a single plug-in...
Getting started…with the mix Different people work different ways, but when I mix a song, I focus on making it sound as good as possible without using corrective EQ or dynamics processing on the master fader. When I do use plug-ins on the master fader, I print two versions of the mix—one version with plug-ins, and a second version without. One reason for this is so I can go back and master the song later with fresh ears. Another reason is to be able to master the music in context to other tracks it will wind up next to on a CD. Having an unprocessed stereo mix will also make it easier to control dynamics and use equalization without worrying too much about the bad distortion or clipping that can occur when working with music that may have already been over-compressed or equalized for the room as opposed to the mix. Ozone 3 can be very processor-intensive—that’s usually the price of quality processing—and for this clinic we will be using it to its fullest, which might not sit very well in a session with a lot of plug-ins and audio already placing demands on the
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CPU. For that reason it’s a good idea to bounce your song out first. I’ll be using Logic Pro 8, but Ozone 3 supports VST, AU, RTAS, MAS & Direct X. Regardless of your DAW or platform, you’ll be able to do everything in this clinic. Before we get started, pull out a few CDs of music that you would consider to be in the sonic ballpark of where you want your mixes to be. We’re going to be taking advantage of the Matching EQ feature a little later.
Thousands of dollars can go into the analog and
Please go to www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com and click on More Online to access a few presets and examples of what the different stages sound like.
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rate of the original mix or mixes you are working on. As a general rule, don’t convert down to master, but converting up is fine. For example, if you have two mixes at 44.1k or 48k and another at 96k, create the mastering session at 96k and let anything that doesn’t match convert up to 96k. Working at higher sampling rates tends to reveal a smoother, more natural sound at higher frequencies. Take a moment now to bring in any
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entiate between sounds that are considered “similar” frequencies (Fig. 3). Click on the options module again. Select the EQ/Reverb/XOver tab. This is where some of that processor-intensive stuff I was talking about comes in. Set the Digital EQ size to the max amount, 16384. Also change the Crossover type to Digital. We are setting up Ozone to be as Transparent as possible. Don’t worry if you’re looking for color; there’s plenty of time for introducing additional character to your mix. The last part of our set-up is going to be changing the crossover points. This is done in the spectrum analyzer section we were just looking at. Click OK and be sure you’re still on the Multiband Stereo Imaging page. I’ve set the crossovers occur at 96Hz, 347 Hz, and 2.18Khz (Fig. 3 again). Just click on the line separating the Bands in the Spectrum View and drag to change. Multiband Stereo Imaging Check out Fig. 4. Let’s start by focusing on the stereo imaging of your mix. In many cases a mix can be given a greater sense of depth and be made to sound more exciting by widening the upper mids and high end of Band 3 and Band 4. A little bit can go a long way here and it’s important not to overdo it, because the wider you make the image the less monocompatible it will be. You can use the Channel ops to test mono compatibility by clicking on the Show Channel Ops box. (Jumping to Fig. 12) Activate the Module and move the Band 1 fader all the way down to -1. This will make everything below 96Hz mono. It is a great way to tighten up the low end of a mix, particularly if real mics were used on a drum kit (which happens occasionally even though this is VI mag…). Next move the Band 3 and Band 4 faders up until you start to hear the effect and then back off. If this gets set too high it can really take the meat out of your mix, but just the right amount will add some separation from the middle to the sides in a really pleasant way. I’ve set Band 3 to .2 and Band 4 to .3. Note here that having
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this kind of mid/side control for each of the 4 bands is no trivial trick, and could just as easily have been a stand-alone plugin unto itself. The ability to do what we have just done is awesome and puts a modern twist on what I expect out of mid/side control. The last thing to notice here is the Delay faders for each band across the bottom of the window. These will shift the left or right side of the band by a small amount of time, which can adjust where certain instruments (frequencies) sound like they are coming from in the mix. In my example, I’ve delayed the low mids of Band 2’s left side by 1ms, and Band 3 on the right side by 1ms. These are very subtle adjustments that continue to widen the image of the mix without making it sound hollow or losing punch. Use the Bypass button to hear the difference—you can also alt/control-click the Mute button in an individual band (this works in all the multiband processors)—and don’t be surprised that the heavens haven’t
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Multiband Harmonic Exciter Please see Fig. 5. Exciters are often used to add or create additional harmonics and or distortion in musical amounts to make audio sound brighter or… more exciting. Ozone gives a few flavors of excitement in this module: a Tube setting that will provide an emulation for the effect of saturating tubes to generate even order harmonics (Dynamic, Transient, clean sounding); and Tape, which is a slightly more aggressive sound, generating more odd harmonics (saturated sounding). This module also features a phase delay for offsetting phase in the bands relative to one another. Be sure to activate the Multiband Harmonic Exciter Module and set the mode to Tape. Turn the Amount fader of Band 1 up until the effect is a little much. Now adjust the delay amount until you hear the low end tighten up bit. Now back down the Amount fader quite a bit. Do the same thing for Band 2. You should notice that some instruments in the low mids start to reveal some detail. It will depend on the mix, but oftentimes this is true. Go back to Band 1 and check that it still sounds right relative to Band 2. Leave the phase delay settings for Bands 3 and 4 alone for now.
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Getting the amount and the Mix levels right will be tricky, and you’ll probably wind up coming back to these settings once we start dialing in the Multiband Dynamics. Keep in mind that by the time we add compression, expansion, and limiting, a little bit is going to go a long way. It’s going to be easy to overdo it at first. See Fig. 5 for the settings I’m using today. Notice how I’ve dialed the mix to certain levels for each band? This is because I don’t want to alter the character I’ve achieved with the Amount faders, but I do want to lessen the influence in the overall mix. Bands 3 and 4 are going to be really noticeable if they are too loud and can become annoying and tiring over time. Keep checking your work with the Bypass Button. At this point the overall mix will probably not sound radically different, but it should sound like it is gaining clarity and definition. If it is wildly brighter or bottom heavy, you’ve gone too far with the adjustments. Multiband Dynamics Please see Fig. 6. This is probably the most complex module Ozone 3 has to offer in terms of the sheer number of controls. Each band has controls for Limiting, Expansion, and Compression with adjustments possible for Threshold, Ratio, Attack, Release, and overall Gain of the band. I’m going to ignore the limiting in this section today and focus on the compressor
and the often-misunderstood expander. The way Expansion works in Ozone 3 is by bringing up the low-level signals of your mix. It’s the inverse of what we do with a compressor in that everything below the threshold is going to come up in volume. Start by setting your session to loop through a softer section of your song.
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Enable the Multiband Dynamics Module and go to Band 4’s Ratio: Exp fader. Slide it to the left (negative values will show in parentheses). You should immediately hear the mix get brighter. The Threshold: Exp setting is next, and it’s going to play a role in determining what level of signal will be boosted. It also relates to the compression threshold since they will not overlap. Before getting to compression, though, let’s set our expansion ratios for Bands 4, 3, and 1 while looping through the quiet section of the song. It’s important to note that when using negative ratios, the attack and release must be set to zero or you will hear some nasty pops as the circuit kicks in. You can do this by pushing the Show button under the Range Graph to reveal the attack and release settings. In general, setting the ratio between -1 and -3 is plenty, and the threshold may lie somewhere between -10 to -50. Once the expansion is setting’s good, move your session loop to play over the loudest section of your piece to begin working with the compressor. If there were a battle cry for this part of the process it would be “Nice and easy.” Squashing the bejeezus out of our mix in an effort to make it as loud as possible is not what we’re after today. What we are going to do though is add some punch and level control further refining the details in the mix.
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To see what I mean, set the Ratio: Comp settings between 1.1 and 2.3. Then bring the Thresh : Comp down between -11 and -30, just enough to start seeing anywhere from 1 – 4dB of compression in each of the bands. Finally, use the Band Gain Fader to adjust the balance of the bands to one another. We still have EQ to look at, so try to not adjust the band gain by radical amounts. Instead, focus on changing the level just enough to compensate for any of the compression that may be happening now. All these little changes should start sounding like they are adding up and you should hear a more pronounced difference when bypassing now. Paragraphic Equalizer
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Fig. 8
Now please look at Fig. 7. As mentioned earlier, we’re going to take advantage of the matching EQ. I prefer to place the EQ after the Multi-band section, and here’s why: the songs you’ve loaded in off your favorite CDs have already been processed, so the idea is to apply some processing of our own first; that way our snapshots will be more like comparing apples to apples. Before we begin taking snapshots we’ll need to change the Spectrum Analyzer setting. Click the Options button and select the Spectrum tab. Change the Spectrum type to Linear, the Average Time to infinite, and click on the Window Size until it reads 8192. Click OK to save your changes and close the Options window. Do not activate the Paragraphic Equalizer module yet. Select it for editing and push the Solo button at the bottom of the panel to bypass all the modules. Since our first snapshot is going to be one of the tracks you’ve pulled from a CD, we don’t want it to be affected by any of the previous modules. The default EQ type is Analog. Click on the Analog button until it reads Matching. Now open the Snapshots window by clicking on the Snapshots Button. Ozone 3 allows us to take as
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many as eight snapshots at a time, in addition to importing and exporting them for later use. Put a CD track you pulled onto a track and play for about 15 seconds. While it is still playing, click on the purple A. Click the Show button under Snapshot A to see it in the analyzer. If you want to take any more snapshots of other tracks you pulled in, now is a good time. Be sure to write down which snapshots belong to which songs so you don’t forget like I always do; you could even save the snapshots for future use. Finally, make one of these the Target by clicking the Target button. Now we’re ready to take our Source Snapshot. First, turn off the Solo switch. You should notice the active lights for the Multiband modules going green. Leave the EQ in bypass mode for the moment and play the piece we’re mastering. Create a snapshot for and mark it as the Source. To keep things simple for now, we’ll set a conservative matching amount to about 20% and the smoothing to .5. Feel free to play with these if you want to adjust the amount and precision of the matching EQ Curve. When working in Ozone’s EQ, control- or alt-clicking at a point will temporarily boost frequencies at that point to aid in setting the EQ. You should be seeing something similar to Fig. 10. The Red line represents the actual EQ curve being applied. Take the module out of bypass mode and you should now be hearing quite a bit of difference. If you don’t believe the tiny adjustments we’ve made in the dynamics modules are doing anything, just solo the EQ. The difference with and without the Dynamics should be quite striking. This is a
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good point to go back and make any tweaks to the dynamics sections if you overdid anything. It’s worth mentioning that there is still a 10-node parametric EQ available on top of the matching EQ. If you needed to pull any annoying frequencies out, this is a good time to tweak. Each of the little up down green arrows represents a node, and if you click on show info, a table with the EQ type, Gain, Freq, and Q becomes available (Fig. 11). Mastering Reverb Please see Fig. 8. You may be wondering if and when you would ever bother to use Reverb in a mastering situation, especially when dealing with virtual instruments that haven’t been bounced to disk. Well I’m here to tell you (again) that a little bit goes a long way. Activate the Mastering Reverb Module. I find it helpful to solo the reverb and dial in something that sounds “right.” My settings here are Room Size .5, Room Width 2.0, Room Dampening .8 and Predelay 9.1. Set the wet amount up to 10.5% Unless your song was already awash in reverb, you should hear some very nice, subtle space having been added to the mix. This won’t work in all situations. Loud, compressed rock that already has plenty of compressed room in it is one example of when this tool doesn’t have the desired effect, but most of the “bedroom studio” mixes I’ve mastered have benefited from a dash of this reverb. The first few times I heard this I was really amazed its usefulness. Loudness Maximizer
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Please see Fig. 9. “Now can we make it Loud? Pleeeeease!” Yes. This is where you can lower the threshold and get an equal amount of loudness right back at ya. I’m going to make a couple of recommendations for today, though, to send you on a continued path of transparency. I see mastering as a way of extending the original idea into new realms of clarity, NOT bludgeoning it to death with as many compressors as possible. The other reason I stress transparency today is so you have a starting point of reference with little extra color. As you get familiar with all the components of Ozone 3 it will become easier to distinguish the various options throughout. Activate the Loudeness Maximizer. Set the Margin to .3 to prevent any clipping on the output. Below the Margin fader is the Character. Start with it at Transparent. Enable the Prevent inter-sample Clips—an amazing feature that makes sure that no distortion is introduced when the audio finally reaches the D/A converter. Set the Mode to Intelligent, which again is the most transparent model. Now adjust the threshold down to bring the level of the track up. I usually go for Fig. 12 between 1
and 4 db of limiting on the peaks. Now is the fun part: bypassing the entire plug-in. Take a minute and see what you’ve done. Bypass the different sections and notice the effect it has on the rest of the chain. The very last step of our process is preparing to bounce for CD or mp3 by addressing the Dithering. Turn the DC Offset Filter On, Set the Dithering type to MBIT+, Noise Shaping to Ultra, Bit Depth to 16, and Dither amount to Normal. Whew! You are now prepared to bounce your CD-quality mastered piece. When exporting, if you are presented with options to Dither, be sure it is disabled, and bounce to 44.1k 16 bit to be prepared for CD. Or if you’re delivering music for video, use 48kHz. It’s important to note that no other plug-ins should be inserted after Ozone 3. You may also want to consider bouncing twice: one version with the Dithering options on, and another at 24 bits with no dither, in case you or someone else needs to edit it for something in the future. The Ozone Hopefully this will encourage you to use some of Ozone’s more powerful and lessused functions, like Expansion and Matching EQ, as well as giving you an understanding of the different possible uses for the Spectrogram. Honestly, I’m amazed all this great work is done at such a high quality in a single plug-in. Ozone 3 has definitely stormed to the top of my list of favorite tools. VI
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Little Reviews
Big Products,
Galaxy II Grand Piano Collection, Zero G Carnival Drums The Spirit of Brazil, and Vir2 Syntax
by Jason Scott Alexander
Galaxy Instruments Galaxy II Grand Piano Collection $285 www.galaxypianos.com US distributor EastWest: www.soundsonline.com Format: Kontakt Player 2, standalone and plug-in works in all Mac and Windows formats (AU, VST, RTAS, DXi). his long awaited successor to the 2004 release of Galaxy Steinway 5.1 adds two more world class pianos: the Bösendorfer 290 Imperial and a super-
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rare Blüthner Model 150 to the original Steinway Model D 270. But what makes Galaxy II so great is its unprecedented level of realistic playing control and creative sound design. This 30GB library comes on five DVDs and uses a Native Instruments Kontakt 2 Player. It contains more than 6,000 24bit samples, chromatically recorded and mapped in up to 13 velocity zones with sustain, resonance, and release samples at multiple velocities and timing. Sympathetic string resonance (with real overtones), adjustable hammer, pedal, damper and string noises, sostenuto, and redamper samples have also been captured and incorporated using advanced custom Kontakt scripting. The main menu displays a condensed view of more commonly used parameters pulled from the five sub-menus. There are some pleasant surprises behind these tabs. The Tone menu, for example, appears to have familiar controls: color, resonance, warmth, loudness, etc. Based on other products we’ve seen, one would expect these to be variants of simple EQs and filters. Instead, the Color knob actually maps between softer and harder samples, the benefit being that you lose none of the dynamics you would to EQ, and the volume remains constant between soft and
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hard settings. Similarly, the Reso control lets you blend in samples of sympathetic string resonance that have been captured with the damper pedal down, but separately from the dry tone. In this way you can alter the piano’s liveliness quite convincingly. Very cool. I also appreciate the Low Keys parameter, allowing you to scale back or emphasize a piano’s raw bass intensity around certain musical arrangements. You can even select from playing sample sets captured with the piano lid closed, half-closed, or fully open. And, of all things, a compressor control is located under the tone menu. Galaxy’s reasoning is that piano compression is as much about changing the sound’s shape as it is controlling dynamics. Without the typical ratio, attack, release, or threshold parameters to worry about, this arbitrarily marked control requires some experimentation with others such as color and punch, but is a very nice inclusion. The Anatomy menu provides controls over stereo width and listening position (player or audience), basic pitch and various tuning systems, keyboard transposition, dynamics with editable velocity curve, and more. Then the Noises menu allows you to adjust the volume or “off’ state of release samples, plus hammer, damper, pedal and string noises, and to sculpt the mechanical character of the piano to suit your taste. It’s great that damper and string noises have been sampled a couple of times per note so that you trigger them randomly.
The Space menu provides a convolution reverb unit with over 20 stereo impulse responses from halls, studios, cathedrals (including IRs captured in surround for the Steinway 5.1) to plates, springs, and even famous Lexicon 960L presets, all with reverb length and predelay controls. To save CPU power there’s also a traditional ECO Verb unit with several digital algorithms. But the Warp section is perhaps the biggest surprise of all, for a piano library. Here you have access to five FX Machines that you can activate separately (stacking in predefined series) and edit through preset/contextual pop-up menus. The Pad Machine is a basic sample player preloaded with 20 synth atmos and string keymaps specially designed for layering with piano. Next, the Degrader provides very deep programmable tools for distorting, bit-crushing, sample rate shaping and otherwise decimating of signal. The Spiritualizer is a modulatable multimode filter with potential of cool resonant flanging effect, but it was the Ghost Mode button that gave me the greatest kick.
German Baby Grand, Galaxy Steinway Stereo, and Galaxy Steinway 5.1. Within each folder are upward of only four instrument preset choices. The Vienna Grand Imperial, for instance—based on the Bösendorfer, which features an extra low octave—has been recorded with real una corda samples (soft pedal). Therefore it offers the ability to load 88-key and 97-key “basic” versions without soft pedal samples, or an “all samples” version, including the synth pads. In this manner you simply pick a piano model of choice—loading all relevant samples into the DFD (Direct From Disk) buffer RAM only once—then edit or switch among dozens of style or effects presets at the global level, without the delay of reloading samples. This is fast and friendly. The Vienna Grand Imperial samples are powerful, dark, and full-bodied, thanks to the 290’s robust soundboard and extended keyboard. Just as on the original, whenever the damper pedal is depressed, the rest of the notes along the keyboard take on a fuller, more resonant tone resulting from the extended octave vibrating sympathetically. Though the lower octave was often hidden under a small hinged lid on the original, with Vienna Grand they are playable—
Sympathetic string resonance (with real overtones), adjustable hammer, pedal, damper and string noises, sostenuto, and redamper samples have also been captured and incorporated using custom Kontakt scripting. Clicking on it deactivates all of the piano’s dry samples, allowing you to play only the resonance samples, resulting in phantomlike orbs and atmospheric sounds. Finally, the Alterizer provides one-click IR body morphing (Steinway chimes, anyone?) and Time Traveller, a powerful delay and time modulation unit. Producer Uli Baronowsky has done a marvelous job of keeping Galaxy II streamlined and fast to use. For one, there are no confusing channel multis to wrap your head around in mid-session; the way interface is designed, you have access to all the sounds and controls via top-level instrument presets. For example, there are four instrument folders: Vienna Grand Imperial, 1929
although mostly for effect, as they lack a musically pleasant pitch. I found the dynamic range and velocity transitions to sound extremely natural with all three pianos, but the additional microphones used to capture the lower register of the 290 add a lot of energy that if you’re using a good sub-frequency monitoring set-up. The mid and top registers, though well defined, aren’t as bright as, say, Synthogy’s Ivory Grand. While that suits my taste, if brightness is what you want, a twist of the Color knob will give it to you. The 1929 German Baby Grand offers a distinctly cozier, more vintage sound with an intimate, singing tone. This is due to Blüthner’s addition of a fourth, sympathetic aliquot string to each trichord group in the
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r e v i e w VI treble, richening the piano’s overtone spectrum considerably. Early Blüthner pianos were favored by Brahms, Bartok, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner. Even The Beatles used a later model on “Let It Be” and “The Long and Winding Road.” The Styles presets reflect this versatility quite well: from “Baby Grand Compressed Pop” featuring a hard attack and bright color setting that really cuts through modern production while remaining romantic; and “Baby Grand Vintage Pop,” which uses gentle limiting rather than compression, making use of half-closed lid samples for a rounder sound and slightly reduced stereo width; to the glorious recital sound of “Baby Grand In A Hall,” which uses a chamber music hall impulse response and a soundfield configured to the audience’s perspective. By far the purest sounding tone comes from the stereo-compatible Galaxy Steinway 5.1. Recorded in a 3,440-squarefoot hall with 26-foot ceilings at Galaxy Studios in Belgium, the Model D 270 was sampled direct to Pro Tools HD through a Neve Capricorn console. Five vintage Brüel & Kjær mics were used close-up, and Neumann room mics captured the ambi-
Zero-G Carnival Drums $159.95 Distributed by www.soundsonline.com Formats: Acid-WAV, Apple Loops, REX2; NNXT/Kontakt/EXS24/HALion programs.
he Brazilian Samba Baterias is a group of vibrant percussionists who play at the Rio Carnival every summer. Developer Zero-G gathered ten of the ensemble’s best players and recorded them in a large, lively sounding theater using close mics, stereo overheads, and distant room mics to capture every angle of their “street” feel. At its roots the collection features the Bateria’s main drums, as developed in the Samba Schools of Rio De Janeiro in the
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ence of the hall. The end product is a magnificent virtual piano that dazzles in any musical style, but is particularly well suited to pop, jazz, and highly compressed contemporary/urban music. It is an ultra realistic playing experience to sit at each of these sampled gems. All three are absolutely gorgeous sounding, with not a single bum sample to be found. The global presets walk you through dozens of conventional piano styles, layered synth pad pianos, and “warped” pianos that exercise the imagination. As much about creative sound design as absolute authenticity, Galaxy II Grand Piano Collection is a must-have for anyone looking to fill a niche or to top their current arsenal.
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early 20th century. These include: surdos (high, mid, and low bass drums), caixa (pronounced “kay-sha,” a type of snare drum worn on a shoulder strap), repinique (tom-tom), tamborim (small frame drum), pandeiro (crisp, tunable tambourine), timbale, and agogô. Totaling 4GB, the DVD consists of both loops (Rex2, Acidized Wavs, and AIFF Apple Loops) and multi-layered sample hits taken from the same sessions and mic set-ups. This means you can augment the performance loops with one-shots that are assured to blend naturally, both in tone and space. For maximum usability the loops have been organized in a very clever manner. Of the “construction kit” variety, there are 24 ensemble performances with all parts of the Samba drum orchestra playing together, completely mixed down to stereo. Separate folders contain recordings from
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each of the different mic positions; this lets you pick and choose or create your own mixes by stacking up different mic channel loops of the same rhythm. What I found really cool for remixing was to take a distant room mic recording and stutter/chop it up (using something like Elastic Time in Pro Tools 7.4) beneath its close-mic counterpart for a head-twisting sliding windows effect. If you don’t need this level of detail, there’s a whole set of ready-to-go percussion ensemble mixes as well. Here the nearly 200 loops offer greater rhythmic variation and part arrangement possibilities than the stems. At the cost of mix flexibility, this is useful in projects needing a little spice dropped in, but where ambient control is not of concern. It’s also great that Zero-G has included a folder of individual drum parts (e.g. caixa only or pandeiro only), again in mic stem and full mix composites, allowing you to construct your own parts from across various styles, as minimal or dense as you wish. All but the “ready to go” rhythms were captured as 2-drummer and 10-drummer ensembles. Despite the variety, Carnival Drums is built on just 12 core rhythm types. Samba Reggae, Maxixe (Brazilian tango), and Samba Rock are three downtempo rhythm types with a laid-back groove. They’re typical of Salvador and Bahia, in the country’s northeast region. The others are all faster (up to 140 BPM) and typical of Rio de Janeiro. Several of the rhythms are typified as Torcida, which translates roughly to “audience participation.” A loop denoted as “Samba Torcida Break,” for example,
r e v i e w VI would be the moment in the carnival that the rhythm breaks down and draws the audience to cheer and clap along. Their sound is amazingly powerful and exhilarating, to say the least. The overhead mic tracks extract spaciousness and enormous energy from instruments such as the Surdo de Primeira—the largest of the bass drums, the basis of the samba rhythm and primary beat the listener concentrates on. But if a wide soundstage is what you’re after, boosting the room track recordings can add a reverb-like dimension the will shake any lazy spirits loose. Mixing in the close-mic channels brings your ear closer to the intimacy of hand drumming and reveals just how crisp and accurate the attack transients are in this library. Conversely, the wall of shuffling white noise that a handful of caixa loops
Vir2 Instruments syntAX $199.95 www.vir2.com Format: Native Instrument Kontakt Player 2, stand-alone and plug-in works in all Mac and Windows formats (AU, VST, RTAS, DXi).
here’s certainly no shortage of do-itall sample playback instruments on the market, but syntAX falls interestingly askew of the curve. Featuring custom
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I never would have thought to include both 10- and 2-drummer versions of all the loops and hits, though it's amazing how realistic alternating between the two variations can sound. can set up is downright invigorating. Keeping polyrhythms moving, the timbal tracks are vibrant and provide deeper, more forceful thuds than your typical conga line. Played with the hand rather than sticks, the pandeiro has a deep chantlike rattling sound that melds extremely well with punch and shape offered by unison tamborim loops. Provided in Reason NN-XT, Kontakt, EXS24 and KALion formats, there are a couple of bonus percussion kit programs to load into your sampler: “Samba Big” and “Samba Dry.” The former has ten drummers on every hit, while the latter has only two. Not being of the samba school, I never would have thought to include both 10and 2-drummer versions of all the loops and hits, though it’s amazing how realistic alternating between the two variations can sound. And because each of the ten drummers plays in unison, mixing loops with, say, 15 different drum parts can have the sonic force of 150 carnival drummers. That’s a street party!
time-base morphing tools, this instrument does cover the standard areas: basses, leads, strings, pads, drums, etc. However, its sounds are 100% synthetic or electronically sourced. Running under a Native Instruments Kontakt Player 2, the 3.6 GB collection was conceived and produced by Sigmund
In a word, Droid’s programming skills are amazing. Unless you pay special attention while the sample files of each preset load, you’d never know that the mountain of patches is actually based on a much more limited sample pool. The SyntOrchestra folder, for example, draws from the same dozen or so keymaps to fuel well over 120 programs. Here you have a full assortment of orchestral string- and brass-type programs, each with a distinctly synthy feel. You’ll find everything from slow and resonant cello-like swells, haunting solo and ensemble violins, powerful trumpet and majestic flugelhorns to clear staccatos and spiky plucks. As an indication of the level of diversity, there’s even a modern sounding Mellotronesque string section, complete with faux
In a word, Droid's programing skills are amazing. You'd never know that the mountain of patches is actually based on a much more limited sample pool. Droid of harcore Bunker 8 Digital Labs fame. Subjectively, the tone is a little dark, quite twisted, and often filled with angst. Over 2000 complex synthesis patches are spread across a wide variety of folders. The folders are given unique names, but as with other instruments containing scads of synthetic sounds, it’s hard to distinguish between “Pads,” “Atmospheres,” “Phat and Filtered,” “Textures,” and so on; you just have to browse and identify sounds you like.
take-up on release; and a wonderful woodwind lead patch that mimics “A Thousand Moogs,” each with their square oscillators detuned slightly. Gorgeous stuff. Other folders include perky sounding attack transients intended for arpeggiator use, tonal and sub-basses, harsh mechanical and electro distortions, leads, FX and hits, blips and more. But it’s that hodge-podge of unusual textures and atmospheres that will keep
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r e v i e w VI you auditioning sounds for hours on end. On one program, you listen as chips of analog and digital color toss and tumble like an aural kaleidoscope. Another program revisits the early 80s with pseudoFairlight glassy textures that feature sharp harmonics and brittle pressure modulation. Thick Solina soundscapes bring Jean
ple set has been purpose-built to sound hybrid for flexibility’s sake, nearly all of the cool motion and timbral characteristics that make these presets stand out are programed at the patch level. This allows, for example, a simple synth string keymap to sound like a razor sharp skate blade etching pirouettes on a sheet of ice in slow
Thick Solina soundscapes bring Jean Michel Jarre compositions right into 2008, while ghostly voices that sound as though they're emanating from a 1930s radio will get your spook on. Michel Jarre compositions right into 2008, while ghostly voices that sound as though they’re emanating from a 1930s radio will get your spook on. Are you looking for hollow pads, vacuous space-sucks, sparkling interplanetary transmissions, trashed circuits, steaming bogs of mysterious rising vapor, extra-terrestrial garden insects, or hundreds of ethereal, more euphoric textures? The crazy thing is that because the sam-
motion. While the KP2 interface doesn’t allow for digging in and editing any of these advanced parameters, users of the Kontakt 2 or 3 full version can load syntAX instruments and combinations with full tweaking privileges. However, syntAX does provide two very cool custom effects engines. Collectively referred to as scatterFX, they can function independently or in unison to provide real-
time manipulation and sound morphing controls. The first component is the scatFX engine, which generates a type of rhythmic stutter from a pattern graph. You have control over the stutter interval (from whole note to 64th triplet) as well as the release or duration of each bar in the graph. A gate knob determines, by percentage, the overall depth of the stutter effect—between maximum volume and silence. The second component is the stepFX engine, an advanced pattern-based modulator that lets you apply melodies or arpeggiations of up to 64 steps. Both engines lock to tempo and can be controlled by external controllers. The scatterFX are far more than icing on the syntAX cake. They can become as integral to the synth’s identity as vector paths and sequence lists were to the Korg Wavestation. If sound design is your game, and you prefer inspiration handed to you on a silver platter, syntAX delivers all the sound of complex synthesis with very little effort. VI
f e a t u r e VI M I D I
by Frederick Russ
M O C K U P
In this installment of our series on composers and how they did their MIDI programming, composer/sample developer Alex Pfeffer discusses two of his cues. Download them cues at “http://www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com” and follow along.
Composer Alex Pfeffer has been working as composer in Hamburg, Germany, where his projects included trailer scores for the motion picture blockbuster “Last King of Scotland” (Forest Whitaker) and the film “Catch a Fire” (Tim Robbins). Alex also worked on music for the gaming industry including John Woo’s “Stranglehold” (Midway), and “Sacred 2—Fallen Angel” (Ascaron /Take 2). With a background as a lead guitar player for the touring rock-pop band “Reinvented” (signed by BMG), Alex went on to found “The Cellar Room” (project studio) and later created “Distorted” (Sample Library of rock power chords and extras for NI Kontakt 2). In 2005 Alex joined Dynamedion, Germany’s leading sound design company for video games.
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Can you tell us something about your background and influences? My parents listened to a lot of music so I grew up with rock bands like Deep Purple; The Eagles; The Beatles; Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young; and others. I always watched MTV Headbanger’s Ball and then one day at the age of 14 I decided to learn and play guitar like Steve Vai, Satriani, and all those famous rock guitar virtuosos. I worked for my first guitar, finally got a real crap and cheap one, took my first lessons, and then I got completely lost in music. Sometimes I practiced like ten hours a day, and soon, after three years, I played in my first rock band at the age of 17. Funny thing is, we had more poser photo albums than gigs! After several bands and guitar lessons I had the chance to study at the Los Angeles Music Academy (LAMA). I was really lucky to have teachers such as Frank Gambale (Chick Corea Band), Joey Basu (Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Lopez), Bill Fowler
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Fig. 1: Alex’s IR settings
(Pointer Sisters), and being able to watch Joe Porcaro playing drums and visit clinics of Simon Phillips Band. This was probably the best and most intensive year of my life in terms of music. When I came back to Germany in 1998 I literally got sucked into the world of computers, sequencers, and plug-ins, and after all this confrontation in L.A. with Jazz, Pop, Fusion, Rock, and Blues I also got interested in orchestral music. Besides touring with my rock-pop band “Reinvented” and being a gamer since ever, I started to find work as a freelance composer and sound designer for video games mainly. After all these years listening to several bands, movie scores, and other music projects, my main influences are definitely Sting, Yes, Dream Theater, Meshuggah, Allan Holdsworth, Hans Zimmer, Don Davis, and John Williams. A weird mix, I know! Please tell us about your studio rig. You would probably laugh when you come to my studio, because in terms of hardware, all you would find is a MOTU 828 Mk1, two monitors, a Rode NT1000 mic, a CME UF6 keyboard, a stereo/surround amp, and some cheap JBL boxes. The only highlights would be my IntelMAC Pro 8-core and 8GB of RAM, and of course a bunch of acoustic and electric guitars and other instruments like Xiao, Duduk, and others. I am working on Cubase for about ten years now since version 3.65, and this is
probably the main reason why I am still on it. I am convinced that one is able to produce good music with every sequencer out there, so it is just a matter of being comfortable with the stuff you use. I know my shortcuts and got used to the environment over the time, so I am able to work fast and intuitively. I also tested a lot of other sequencers, but always came back to Cubase, since I love its flexibility and stability. In terms of the operating system, I worked on Windows for over ten years and finally got my Mac a few months ago, and now working on OSX 10.5. I think this was the best decision, because now I feel that I probably learned too much about working with PCs which has nothing to do with music! And last but not least there is a whole bunch of sample libraries and plug-in software, such as Vienna Symphonic Library, EastWest Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra, Project SAM, Westgate, Spectrasonics, Native Instruments, Waves, and many others. I first heard some of your music on demos for East West Quantum Leap. Those were very good, but your mock-ups have improved over time. What are you doing differently now? Thanks a lot, but honestly I really don’t know. I think it is just a matter of evolving. I hate to stagnate so I always listen to a lot of music, learning my libraries, spend nights comparing EQs, compressors, and other plug-ins, read books, and slowly moved onward.
During the time on LAMA I had a teacher who always said that if you just learned five percent of a guitar solo, it is better than three or four percent. I decided to use this approach on everything I do. If you gain three percent of experience by doing something, it is better than nothing and so you slowly paint your own “skill picture.” Getting to your action track Defcon Six: how many tracks are you using? Currently I work with a template I created in Steinberg Cubase, which contains 135 tracks including groups and busses. Not all tracks are playing at the same time, of course, so in Defcon Six there are around 50 tracks playing all in all. Between 0:01 to 0:26, what stands out for me in particular are your trombone splats. What are you using there? Basically I should say that my samples change all the time, depending on the track and the atmosphere I want to create, but on this track I used the EWQLSO Gold XP Trombones. I simply like the smack-y inyour-face sound and most of the time I like to layer them with the Project SAM Tuba! ? Your mix here is nice and punchy. What’s your mastering approach? Again my mastering set-up changes as much as I change my sample libraries and templates, but this time I didn’t do that much. First I run the track through the Waves API 550B EQ plug-in to get a little bit of lights at around 10 and 20KHz. Then I did a little bit of multi-band compression and multi-band limiting. As a multi-band compressor I used the LinMB and for the limiting the L316 of Waves. Last but not least the whole processed track is being sent through the Sonnox Inflator.? Do you use convolution processors Yes, personally I think IR engines are the best you could use for orchestral stuff, but this is just a matter of taste again; I also got good results with Rayspace, which is a very low priced synthesis reverb.?I hope that Audio Ease Altiverb will be ready for Intel Mac and Cubase soon, since this is
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f e a t u r e VI Fig. 2: Potpourri of Alex’s favorite plug-ins. Alex is also a beta tester for Waves.
ate patterns or rhythmic motifs—not create music that has to fit in, e.g. 4/4. Another very important thing is to prepare the following part. Sometimes you hear pieces that simply consist of a part A, B, and C. Then the tune goes from A to B, back to A and C twice. I prefer to put elements of the upcoming part into the previous one. So you get prepared for what comes along. By doing this you can “connect” nearly every part.? Between 0:46 and 1:04 secs: the trumpets sound great. Your writing is very good here. Which library? I used the EWQLSO XP 2 trumpet patches on this one. Also I recognized that I get better results by layering the staccato with the repetition patches. It gives a more natural feeling…at least I think it does!
my main reverb plug-in. Currently I use the IR1 of Waves, which also has a lot of awesome IRs and adjustments. I end up layering quite a few reverb instances for each section. Just loading up a room or a hall doesn’t do it for me.? Between 0:27 and 0:45 seconds in: cool progressions and set-up for the next part. What’s happening here?? Key-wise, for this part we move from e minor to an f# minor “something” to bring up a little bit of tension. I write “something” because it isn’t just plain, melodic, or harmonic minor, but basically minor and including a lot of chromatic and dim 5ths. To be honest, most of the time I go by ear. Of course I am familiar with lots of harmony and theory, but sometimes I don’t like to stay in the “cage of theoretic laws,” which means moving in a certain progression or staying in one key (of course it depends on the project you are working on). Personally I think someone should learn theory and harmony so that your mind and your ears finally completely adapt what you have learned. Like driving a car— you don’t tell yourself to hit the brake in order to driver slower, you just do it.
In terms of rhythm I like to use several patterns to create a whole rhythmic motif instead of just using plain 3/4 or 4/4. On this track I did 9/4, 4/4, 12/4. Not to sound complicated or important, but I felt the motif needed it. I think the most natural is (of course it again depends on the job you do) to always use measures to cre-
Fig. 3: Steinberg CuBase mixer—heavy VSL Contrabass EQ cut settings using Waves Q10 based on SvK’s EQ settings from VI-Control.net.
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At 1:05 to 1:13, nice string figure here. What violins are you using?? These are simply the VSL violin runs. I use them in a specific way in order to create live-ish parts. A little trick is to do a wide overlap when going from one to the next MIDI event. By doing this it doesn’t sound just like samples.? Between 1:14 to 1:33, great end-
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f e a t u r e thing that I didn’t expect but does sound very cool! It can be very interesting by jumping in the river and letting yourself float. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel here, but a lot of good and unique things have been discovered by simply experimenting around.? Are you playing in these parts live, scoring them in, or using one of Cubase’s MIDI editors? That varies a lot. Basically I play and record trumpet or horn lines by hand, while programming fast staccato parts in the piano roll while “humanizing” and tweaking them later.?
Fig. 4: Alex Pfeffer.
ing! I like your sense of placement for the symphonic instrument groups. Also you have a nice, clean and punchy mix. How did arrive here sonically—any tips?? Most of the time I treat the different ensembles like single expressive instruments. I like to layer e.g. violin staccato lines with the snare drum, while using the timpani for the low cello and bass. You simply make something rounder, thicker, sharper, and not get lost in 29 melody and rhythmic parts! Also I like to treat instruments by simply layering them an octave apart. A simple example would be layering cellos with double basses or tubas and trombones. ? Are you studying now?? I am glad hearing this from you, thanks Frederick! I started to study EIS (Equal Interval System—www.equalinterval.com) with Craig Sharmat a while ago, currently don’t have time to continue, but definitely want to catch up soon! At the moment I simply listen to a lot of music while driving in the car or doing office stuff. A good approach to hear music is to just concentrate on one instrument at a time. Listen to a track by just paying attention to e.g. the snare or the cellos. By doing this you hear the song from every player and what the composer thought by creating certain parts. Basically I create music by ear. I hear a certain part in my head and sometimes know exactly what I want, sometimes I fool around until it sounds good…and sometimes I simply end up discovering some-
Let’s briefly touch upon your piece “Burst in Flames.” You’ve overcome the challenges of combing rock band with orchestra. The rhythm section is mixed pretty dry, in your face, while you’re achieving depth by adding reverb to the orchestra surrounding them. Yes, right, but I always had a lot of problems by getting orchestra and a full rock ensemble together and I think it is not easy to find the right mixture. A very big help was the “Matrix Reloaded” soundtrack, especially the track “Burly Brawl,” which I simply love. The rock band is very tightly compressed and with almost no reverb, while the orchestra has a very wide, big, and epic sound. Of course on “Burst in Flames” the rock band plays a bigger role than on “Burly Brawl,” so I mixed it a bit more to the front to have both sections more equal. Nice guitar sounds and playing. I played my Gibson Epiphone LP-Custom with 11 to 70 GHS strings (these are nearly bridge ropes!) and run everything through Native Instruments Guitar Rig 2. A lot of times I like to run the signal through the Renaissance Axx of Waves, because it adds a bit of “something” to the recorded guitar track. Synth? Access Virus or Rob Papen Blue perhaps?? All the way Virus. Definitely THE synth who cuts through everything. I can’t describe it, but the sounds simply cut through while other synth signals desperately drown. The TC Powercore version?? Yes, it is the TC Powercore version I own. In my opinion a very cool and cheaper alternative to the real hardware Virus, but not less in sound quality.
Do you find yourself using a lot of samples from your Distorted Lib library?? To be honest, almost never. Not because I don’t like the sound or so, but I am simply a guitar player and we all know that live played stuff always sounds better than samples. But yes, if it just has to be one chord or it has to go fast, I tend to load it up, rather than plug my guitar, tune it, and start recording. I created this lib to simply give other composers the possibility to add some easy but brutal brick wall guitars to their tracks. So it was created with the thought to have a unique sound element rather than having another guitar library. ? What drum kit are you using here? I like the sound from the double bass drum with bass and chunky power chords.? The drum set is the Sonor kit of Toontracks Drumkits from Hell with a lot of tweaking and processing. The DFH library has a very rough and brutal sound, since one of the recorded players is the drummer of Meshuggah. I like it a lot and use it whenever there is “blood” involved. :)? From 0:40 to 0:51, couldn’t the violins be any faster here? Sounds like Paganini on steroids!? Hahaha, right, yes it’s very fast. But to be serious, most of the time I try to play the parts on my guitar and if this works out at only 80%, I know that a very good string section could play this while watching TV. If you see top string players violating their violins I won’t even know how much steroids they really had for breakfast! 1:05 to 1:15: here is that same figure with the rhythm section. The guitar chords sound almost impossible to play live; are you using samples perchance?? Well, with a lot of practicing and training rhythm figures along with the metronome, you can get very tight, so most of the time I try to not do anything to the recorded parts and even go a step farther and double them to pan the left and right in order to get a broad sound. But I have no problem to say, that most of the time I record part by part and if a few notes fall out of the pattern I end up editing or re-recording that certain spot instead of playing the whole part again.? VI
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Kirk Hunter Diamond Orchestra Library This orchestra is designed to provide a good “out of box” experience with very little fuss. It succeeds. by Nick Batzdorf
Kirk Hunter Diamond Orchestra Library, $699 (comes on a bus-powered USB drive)
www.KirkHunterStudios.com
Format: Native Instruments Kontakt 2.3+; Apple EXS24 version under development.
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irk Hunter Diamond is the top-of the-line library in a series of orchestras. At $699 list Diamond is priced in the lower midrange of massive orchestral libraries, but Hunter has versions going all the way down to $99. We’ll look at that one in the near future. Diamond takes up roughly 66GB on a hard drive, and it comes on a bus-powered USB hard drive so you don’t have to swap DVDs for hours—just plug it in and copy. As far as we know, that’s a first: a sample library that comes on a hard drive.
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Details Bucking the trend toward embedding copy-protected libraries in OEM players, Diamond is a Native Instruments Kontakt 2 or 3-format library—you need Kontakt 2.2.3 or later to use it. An EXS24 version is in the works too, which means anyone who has Apple Logic Pro will run the library as well, although the EXS24 doesn’t have the same scripting features this library puts to such interesting use. The library covers all the standard orchestral instruments, with very large “Concert” string sections (36 titti vlns, 18
r e v i e w VI first vlns, 8 2nds, 10 vlas, 9 vlcs, 6 CB), large “Symphonic” strings (24 tutti, 10 first vlns, 10 2nds, 16 vlas, 12 vls, 6 CBs), smaller “Studio” string sections (9-9-6-53), and both chamber and solo strings. Similarly, the brass is available in Concert ensembles (4 trumpets, horns, and trombones; 3 bass trombones; and 2 tubas;), Symphonic ensembles (6 tpts, 6 hns, 5 trbs, 3 bass trbs, and 2 tubas), and also Studio brass; two each trumpets, horns, and tenor trombones, and tuba; and solo instruments.
more subtly it just adds a realistic transition between two notes. The farther you move the pitch wheel, the louder the transition effect. You can also dial the amount of bend up or down using onscreen controls. Another programming feature in Diamond is the gradual pitch correction (which they call Human Pitch Correction). The notes start a little out and then gradually adjust, simulating what real players do. You can control the amount of this effect— a good thing, because the default setting
As far as we know, that's a first: a sample library that comes on a hard drive.
Both muted and unmuted versions of the strings and brass are included. The winds—including alto flute and contrabassoon—are available in solos and/or duets. Finally, there’s orchestral percussion, celesta, harpsichord, and a piano. The library uses a consistent set of keyswitches across all the instrument families, and it relies extensively on programming. If you load the full-on Concert cello section, for example, you’ll find keyswitches for velocity-sensitive marcato, marcato, legato, adagio, detaché, sforzando, pizz, trills, tremolo, and more. If you load the full violin 1 section, you’ll find the same keyswitched articulations available as for the cellos. A similar scheme is available across the whole library. As far as computer impact, Diamond is equivalent to any modern streaming sample library. The full solo viola program, for example, uses about 96MB of memory at the default Kontakt streaming settings. You can also load lighter versions of all the instruments, and individual articulations are available. Finally, there are ensemble programs—all the strings on one keyboard, for example. Rather than having you load up all the instruments and use up lots of polyphony for these programs, there are sets of “Bonus” programs made up of combined sections that have been merged into one set of samples. Diamond has an interesting programming feature called IntervaLive™ that’s used for connected notes. Raising or lowering the pitch wheel triggers manufactured release samples that bend up or down to lead into the target note. This takes a little practice, but it’s not too difficult. Used fullbore, the effect is almost portmento; used
can be a little too much in some cases (solo violin for example); turning it down adds a lot of realism. Playing it Kirk Hunter touts the out-of-the-box playability of his libraries, and indeed that’s definitely their strength. You don’t have to learn a lot of articulations and figure out which ones to load—at the top of the list under every category is a big enchilada program with all of the articulations. Then the keyswitches are all labeled very clearly on the Kontakt 2 (or 3) interface; if you want to tweak the attacks, basic controls are provided. The mod wheel always controls volume, unless it’s set up to control vibrato; between that, velocity, and the
need them to, in fact the articulations tend to cover a lot of ground; I found myself keyswitching less than I’m accustomed to doing in other libraries. Sound Now we get to the subjective part of this review. In general I like that this library doesn’t sound artificially clean—an effect that Hunter has cultivated very carefully. Even the included custom convolution impulses add an intangible and really nice “grit” to the sound. Frankly, I was very pleasantly surprised by Diamond’s overall sound. The transitions between sample layers are smooth, and it’s been programmed and mapped to the keyboard very well. If I had to pick highlights, I’d start with the solo strings. That takes nothing away from the ensemble strings, which don’t sound synthy even at the top of the violins, but I found the violin and cello especially highly addictive. The brass and woodwinds are just fine, recorded in a way that makes them work well for ensemble writing. I’d have to say that the percussion and harp aren’t consistently sampled at the same level of detail as the strings, but they’re okay for basic parts. However, there are some standouts here too. The muted glock program is excellent, for example, and it’s not an easy instrument to record well at all. Thus This is an easy, good-sounding orchestra that would work very well as an only orchestra library or as an additional one to
IntervaLive™: raising or lowering the pitch wheel triggers manufactured release samples that bend up or down to lead into the target note.
pitch wheel-controlled transitions, this is a very playable orchestra. It auto-alternates between samples without user intervention. Obviously, this kind of (relative) simplicity means that you don’t have the same kinds of specialized articulation choices as in the mega orchestral libraries, but then Diamond isn’t priced at the same level either. However, you do have a lot of string section choices, and the included articulations can do pretty much everything you’d
layer with others. It has some effective programming features, it’s—especially when you factor in the USB drive it comes on— priced fairly…and it has solo violin and cello programs to die for. Check out the demos. VI
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Image-Line Morphine An interesting additive synth from the developers of FL Studio
by Peter Dines
Image-Line Morphine,
www.Image-Line.com
Formats: FL Studio plug-in, stand-alone. Windows VST. Mac OS X VST, AU.
System requirements: 2GHz Pentium 3, compatible CPU with full SSE support; Mac Intel CPU or G4 PowerPC with Altivec; 512MB RAM, 130MB disk space.
s your plug-in folder swamped with subtractive synths? Today is opposite day and we’re taking a look at an additive synth—Morphine, from Image Line, the developers behind FL Studio. If you’re not familiar with additive synthesis, here’s a quick summary: while subtractive synthesis begins with a harmonical-
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ly rich waveform like a square or saw and sculpts it with a filter to remove harmonic content, additive synthesis starts with partials—pure sine waves at different pitches— and adds them together to create sonic complexity. The more high frequency partials in a note, the clearer and crisper it will sound; turning them down and emphasizing lower partials yields a mellower, rounder tone. Layout Morphine has 128 partials and four generators per program to manipulate them. Let’s look at one of the generator screens, because that’s where most of the action happens. (Fig. 1) morphine001.bmp At the bottom is a keyboard zone layout, similar to what you’d see in a sampler. Each key zone holds a spectrum, which can be an analyzed sample, or a sound created from scratch with the mouse. The next row up shows the spectrum’s breakpoints. Each breakpoint represents a cross-section of the sound in a timeline. As well as controlling the timbre over time,
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the spectrum defines a volume envelope; the height of each breakpoint represents its volume. By adding, deleting, and moving breakpoints, you create an optionally tempo-syncable envelope. This is also where you define a sustaining loop in the sound, which can run forwards, backwards or back and forth. The top third of the generator screen is an editor for the harmonic content of each breakpoint. This brings us back to the heart of additive synthesis, the partials. Each vertical column represents the volume of a partial. The thickest, leftmost partial is the root pitch, and the partials increase in frequency to the right. This is where that basic timbre of the breakpoint is defined. The first 16 partials are the most important in shaping the tone, with the higher ones adding subtle coloration that becomes more evident when a program is played lower on the keyboard. You can also detune and pan the partials for a richer sound. A feature I like is the ability to choose whether the cursor edits individual
r e v i e w VI partials, only odd or even ones, thirds, fourths, fifths, or varying size clusters. One of the main tricks up Morphine’s sleeve is resynthesis. As well as allowing you to create sounds from scratch, it can import samples, analyze how they change over time, and create a spectrum representing the original sound. The resynthesis section on the left allows you to load a sample, tune it, and send the results to one or more of the generators. You use the resolution control to define how many breakpoints are populated in the spectrum. It’s a tradeoff between computer resources and faithfulness to the original sample. Fewer breakpoints don’t necessarily sound worse—Morphine morphs smoothly between them which can open up creative potential. And creative morphing is what Morphine’s all about. Let’s look at the morph / mix screen. (Fig. 2) morphine002.bmp This defines a 2-dimensional path that morphs between the four generators. Morphine treats this path as an envelope that can have its own loop points and can also be tempo synced. The morph / mix page includes a noise generator that can load custom noise samples. Since the analysis of a sample into a spectrum sometimes leaves out characteristic noise in the attack, here’s where you can put it back. The remaining controls are straightforward. A modulation page gives you comprehensive sources, destinations, and four free-form loopable envelopes that double as LFOs. There’s a master ADSR envelope that affects all four generators, and chorus, delay, reverb, drive and master EQ effects. Proof of pudding So how does it all sound together? When you start up Morphine for the first time it comes up in a bank of pads. Browsing through the pads, words like crystalline, airy, shimmery, and billowing come to mind. The second program in this bank, “addworld,” is a good example of how a sound can morph across the timeline of its spectrum. Clicking from one breakpoint to the next, notice how the amplitude and panning of the partials constantly changes from moment to moment (I’m assuming you’ve downloaded the demo by now!). This gives the sound flow and liveliness from a single generator without even invoking the rest of Morphine’s ability to morph. I especially liked Morphine’s keyboard and bass banks. There are many usable sounds in there that cut through and make
themselves heard in a busy mix. There are also some surprisingly realistic flute, clarinet, and electric guitar sounds that reminded me of what you’d find in a decent rompler. The factory library is not huge, but Image-Line evidently put some care into developing it, particularly with the multisampled patches. On the negative side, some of the patches are heavily laden with effects, and sounded better when I backed off on the delay and reverb. Most of the programs in the SFX bank are merely looped wavs from the noise generator plus some effects. Hm. I’d like to see a more adventurous bank along with the usual suspects like strings and keys. The programs make good raw material, though—a quick bit of fun is to save generators from different programs, load them up in the four slots in a new blank program, and define an envelope that fades between them. This is not just crossfading sounds—it’s morphing the blend of partials from one generator to the next, which has a distinctive sonic character. Nitpick: I wish the generators were stored separately already, to facilitate mixing and matching. Programming Creating new sounds from scratch is fairly easy once you’ve spent a short time with the instrument, and the manual includes a tutorial on the subject. The GUI is uncluttered by tiny knobs and switches—one of my pet peeves in other instruments—and has large areas like the partial, panning, and detune tabs of the breakpoint editor that allow you to change a sound radically a few gestures.
However, the start and end loop markers could be made larger and easier to grab. I’d also like to see an editing mode for the spectrum in which you can sweep the cursor across a large number of breakpoints to create an envelope. Analyzing the spectrum of a .wav or .aiff to create a generator takes only a few clicks, but doing it well takes practice. Much depends on your sample selection and how you adjust its pitch during import. Long, complex samples that change pitch sometimes create a restless shifting effect as the partials are altered and detuned from one breakpoint to the next in an attempt to model the sound. If that’s not what you’re after, it can be reduced or eliminated with the detune range control. Sweeping the detune range manually is fun with a busy sample. The PWM filter controls are good for thickening up a sound and adding motion, especially in conjunction with the onboard chorus effect. For making “normal” instrument sounds, individual note samples work better than phrases, and multisampling an instrument’s range adds to the realism, as with a regular sampler. Samples with a definite pitch give better results than drum hits or noise. Voices work well and sound vocoded. Playing the same vocal sequence in unison a few notes apart is interesting—unlike a sampler the instances play in perfect time. In this way, Morphine can be used to repitch and time-stretch source material with a very different sonic flavor from a sampler. Verdict I like it. Morphine takes a synthesis style that’s underrepresented and mysterious
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r e v i e w VI and makes it approachable. I’d recommend Morphine more for people interested in sound design than those looking for a library-oriented package. CPU usage is moderate—it can get high depending on
polyphony—but is reasonable for an instrument released in 2007. Additive synths have to do a lot of number crunching for all those partials and generally aren’t CPU lightweights.
Morphine ran stably in a variety of hosts on my XP system as well as stand-alone. Priced at $159 USD, It’s available as a VSTi for Windows and as a VSTi and AU for Mac OSX. VI
LIVE 7
quite complex and go beyond what you would expect from a normal “analog” synth. In general, the sound leans more toward the reedy than ballsy end of the scale (think Arp rather than Moog). • Electric (Figure 6) is based on the same technology as AAS’s Lounge Lizard. It physically models the hammer and tine system used by instruments such as the Wurlitzer and Fender Rhodes electric pianos. The control panel gives access to Mallet, Fork, Tone, Damper, and Pickup parameters; Ableton also employs the rack’s macro controls to simplify access to the most common parameters. A Wurlitzer EP-200 was my first keyboard, so I am intimately familiar with its sound; in the supplied presets, I found I needed to increase the macro “Onset” (mallet noise level) plus “Tone” (fork tone level) to get closer to how my own Wurli sounded. The more plentiful and varied Rhodes presets also benefited from a little roughening up; in general, I like more grunt and less tremolo in my pianos than
featured in the presets, but the tine emulations were great. Once you get past the pursuit of realism, the various custom and experimental patches were great fun, with many useful presets. • Tension (Figure 7) is based on the same technology as AAS’s String Studio. The instrument’s engine provides Excitation, Damper, Termination, Pickup, and Body sections to tweak; the provided presets also include the now-expected macro controls plus chains of additional audio effects. Don’t get the impression that this VI lives solely to recreate the perfect Stradivarius or Stratocaster; although it does a reasonable job at guitar, harp, clavinet, and bowed string emulations, its real strength is in creating new sounds based on a plucked, struck, or bowed string emulations that are tweaked outside of their normal boxes. Reinforcing its synthetic intensions, the Filter/Global tab contains synth-like Filter, Envelope, and LFO sections.
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presets beyond the basic Simpler-per-slice is a nice bonus; let’s hope this gets expanded—perhaps with user-savable presets—in the future. After a clip has been sliced, you can replace individual samples, alter which sounds are triggered at what point in a measure, and have all sorts of fun filtering, enveloping, and adding effects to each individual slice. This turns Live into quite a deep loop manipulation tool. Indeed, I have a feeling this feature is about to consume a significant portion of my life as I prepare new Live sets to jam with… New virtual instruments Along with the release of Live 7, Ableton—in conjunction with Applied Acoustics Systems (AAS)—has also introduced three new physical modeling-based virtual instruments: Analog (an analog synth emulation), Electric (an electric piano emulation), and Tension (a strung instrument emulation). Although they work only inside Live, they do not come with the base version; you either need to buy the Live Suite or purchase them separately. These instruments could consume an entire review in their own right; we’ll give a brief summary of each here: • Analog (Figure 5) is based on the same technology as AAS’s Ultra Analog virtual instrument. It has a nice spec, with two oscillators with sine/sawtooth/square wave/noise choices plus a sub oscillator; two multimode 2- or 4-pole resonant filters that may be placed in series or parallel and that also feature a set of “drive” modes for additional harmonics; a pair of amplifier stages; envelopes for each filter and amp (including a looping mode, which helps add motion); two LFOs; and an additional Noise module with a filter to adjust color. Analog comes with a number of presets (hint: most of them are in subfolders inside the Synths folder); many of the sounds are Figures 5-7 (can split up and give each their own caption): The Live 7 Suite ships with three new physical modeling-based virtual instruments: Analog (analog synthesizer), Electric (electric pianos), and Tension (strung instruments).
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r e v i e w VI Again, once you free yourself from the chains that reality imposes, I believe you will have a lot of fun with Tension; it is easily my personal favorite of the new V.I.s. Although these three new virtual instruments are welcome additions to the Live universe, not everything is perfect in toyland. For example, in contrast to use the Simpler-based Drum Rack presets mentioned earlier, all of these instruments felt a bit sluggish on my dual 1.8 GHz G5 with a Uno USB interface. Some of this can be dialed out after recording by altering the Track Delay setting for tracks that use these V.I.s. There were also some gain structure issues, where several of the presets caused clipping at their default volume settings. Most of the presets also under-utilize the mod wheel and ignore aftertouch; Tension was the exception in that it often responded in intelligent, interesting ways to both the mod wheel and varying key velocity. On the plus side, kudos to Ableton for programming useful macro controls and including additional audio processing for each of the patches. And lest we forget… I’ve only discussed a few of the major new features in Live 7. However, there are several other significant additions in this release as well: • There is a new External Audio Effect plug-in, which allows you to insert a hardware device of your choosing into the middle of an effect chain on any Live channel. This plug-in allows you to pick the audio outputs (sends) and inputs (returns) to use on your audio interface, plus it has settings for send and return gain, wet/dry mix, and phase inversion. You can also enter the suspected latency
Figure 8: Also included in Live 7 is Spectrum, a frequency analysis tool that can be inserted into any audio chain as an “effect.”
of the external device (if it happens to be digital), and Live will back-time the track to compensate. Even though the title of this magazine is Virtual Instruments, there are still a few pieces of hardware I won’t let go of (like my Warp 9 analog filter); it’s great to be able to so easily integrate them. • There is also a new External Instrument plug-in, which is a routing device that sends MIDI out a specified pipeline—be it a hardware MIDI interface, ReWire slave, or multitimbral plug-in. The return is then audio from the hardware interface, ReWire device, or plug-in. Again, you can dial in the device’s latency as well (which helps tackle MIDI response delays in hardware synths as well as normal computer processing delays). In short, it allows you to treat a device external to Live as if it were a virtual instrument plug-in inside Live, assigned to a track and being fed by MIDI clips on that track. I am happy to say these two new “external” plug-ins receive thorough descriptions in the manual (including a discussion of latency issues), unlike the terse descriptions several of the other new features received. • Live has added a Spectrum effect (Figure 8) that provides a real-time frequency analysis at the point you insert it in a track’s chain. You can place it on the Master track as well, but by the nature of the shared user interface slots in Live, it will disappear as soon as you select another track (say, to trigger a new clip). I do wish it had manual control on when to freeze or clear the display; currently it freezes on the last valid time slice when the audio has been stopped, which can be disconcerting if you’re using it as a signal presence indicator. Some users have reported on the forums that Spectrum consumes a lot of CPU resources, but I experienced bumps of only 1% or so in CPU utilization when enabled. It’s a very useful diagnostic tool— plus hypnotic to watch.
• Live includes the ability to import video to aid scoring to picture; in version 7 you can now export the video. If you’ve time stretched or compressed the video, frames in the source will be repeated or dropped as needed, keeping the frame rate
MIDI and Audio Fidelity When using Live, I’ve always accepted a certain amount of sound degradation as a tradeoff for the magic of time warping and tempo alignment, and I never viewed Live as a MIDI sequencer—heck, it didn’t even support MIDI clips initially! But as Live becomes more things to more people, it has come under increasing scrutiny on issues such as sound quality and timing accuracy. Ableton has tackled these issues head-on in Live 7; they have even released “white papers” explaining how audio and MIDI work inside Live. Their MIDI Fact Sheet explains the issues of latency (constant delay) and jitter (random variations), how Live timestamps MIDI events internally, and shares the results of several timing tests including what combinations of sample rate and sample buffer resulted in high amounts of jitter (hint: anything over about 6 msec is starting to get pretty bad). There is a substantial difference in performance depending on which MIDI interface you are using with Live; unfortunately, they did not publish which interfaces gave which results. In general, Windows tended to offer better performance than running on a Mac. Their Audio Fact Sheet goes into considerable detail discussion about which operations alter the original sample, and which leave it unmolested. It also discusses what bit depths are used at what points inside the program (32 bits in most cases; 64 bits at mixing sum points). In concert with this emphasis on sound quality, their EQ Eight plug-in now has a 64-bit high-quality mode; high-quality modes have also been added to the Operator virtual instrument as well as the Dynamic Tube and Saturator audio effects.
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r e v i e w VI of the video (the duration of each frame) the same. This is what most video editing applications will expect. However, I would like to see an option in the future where durations of the frames are altered instead, which would result in smoother motion and fewer dropped frames if you simply plan to play back the warped video later. • Live now has the ability to switch time signatures on the fly, although a touch of premeditation is required. In the Arrangement view, you may now add Time Signature markers; in the Session viewer, changes are performed by including the time signature in the name of a Scene Launch button in the Master track, and then clicking the corresponding button. • The Live interface now sports a pair of Tempo Nudge buttons to the right of the Tempo entry box. Clicking on these temporarily slows down or speeds up the tempo; releasing the mouse returns to the original tempo. This is useful in a live performance situation where you have the correct tempo to sync with another sound source (such as a turntable), but need to advance or delay playback to align the beats. Live also now
sports coarse and fine tempo controls for external MIDI manipulation. • In addition to the quality improvements for some effects mentioned elsewhere, there have been other tweaks such as the creation of a new Compressor plugin. More significant is the addition of sidechain audio routings for this new Compressor in addition to Gate and Auto Filter. In my performance rack, I often use rhythm tracks to modulate other tracks, so this is a very welcome addition. Now who can I bribe to add a vocoder in the next release of Live? • Hurray! We can now view multiple mixer automation “lanes” at the same time for each track in the Arrangement view. Conclusion Live 7 is a massive update to what is becoming a massive music production system. The core program has several new features—such as Drum Racks, REX support, and Slice to New MIDI Track—that I love, while the new Suite bundle contains a growing assortment of virtual instruments and huge sample libraries.
As thrilled as I am, I can’t help but feel that with this rapid growth has come a few signs of growing pains: the documentation for many of the new features is lacking, the organization of the presets and clips for the new drum sample libraries is a little confusing, and users are reporting a few more bugs and crashes than I recall from prior versions. To counter this, Ableton has already released one update with another on the way, and I’ve personally received very good tech support from the company. Given that Live has already carved out a pretty significant niche for itself, I personally wouldn’t mind if they slowed down for a year, improved the documentation, tightened up a few features here and there, and then resumed their dizzying pace of development. I also wouldn’t mind having an extra year to master all of the great new features introduced in the last two versions! But please don’t think I’m viewing the glass as half empty; Live 7 is a great update to an already-great program—one that is going to have an immediate impact on how I use it in my own music. VI
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Figure 7.
That is, unless you use this little trick: program the sound you like on note 25 with the synth parameters (which are very complete), and/or load a sample in oscillator 2 (by a simple drag’n’drop) and tweak it, then copy the sound on note 24, 23,and 22. Thus you have four mono synth sounds, and all you have to do is to adjust the pitch of the oscillators to create chromatic notes. Of course you’ve now learned how to create a 25-note synth, with nearly full parameter automation and a Step Sequencer. And
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Figure 8.
you can widen its range by automating the pitches of the oscillators in Step mode. But as this is not an Ultrabeat clinic we won’t develop this further. Please go to the Full View, which is easier to program. The Step Sequencer allows you to program 4- to 16-measure patterns, depending on the resolution (1/8 to 1/32). (See Fig. 9) First select a note in the pattern menu, then start your programming, placing events where you want them (don’t forget to save
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c l i n i c on a regular basis). (See Fig. 10) You can apply lots of subtle synth automations using the Step mode. When all programming is done, put the Sequencer in Pattern mode, with Toggle option, and save the Ultrabeat’s settings. (See Fig. 11) In the Mainstage Layout page, create a keyboard, make it Learn your external controller, reduce the Key Range (Ultrabeat’s pattern range is from C-1 to B0), and Transpose. You should hear your sequence. As you are in Toggle mode, each time you hit a ke, it stops the current Pattern to play the new one (or it repeats the current one). (See Fig. 12) If you repeat the procedure, you can create up to 24 different Patterns using Ultrabeat Settings. In our example, a keyboard remote-controls the Pattern, but it could just as well be a Drum Pad or a Button. (See Fig. 13)
Figure 9.
Figure 12.
Figure 10.
Figure 13.
Figure 11.
Figure 14.
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focus VI
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v e r y VI
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c l i n i c Don’t forget to create a Tap Tempo remote button. This way your Patterns will match each live tempo change perfectly, because you will always be able to follow them. (See Fig. 14)
Some import ideas
Once you’ll have some practice with our tricks in Ultrabeat, you should try to import complete exs24mkII program (a drag’n’drop in the voice part). Best results are when you import prepared programs, with a mapping corresponding to the Mainstage one, without KeySwitches, and a reasonable number of layers. One way to playback sophisticate audio sequences is to import your audio bounce in ReCycle. There you will slice it, trying to not exceed 24 slices (that’s comfortable, for example it means a 6/4 measure with sixteenth notes division). Then transform the Rex file in exs24 program, and import it in Ultrabeat. You will have your 24 slices in the 24 slots of Ultrabeat. Then program the Step Sequencer as seen. Of course, tempo changes are still taken into account, but as you manage here audio slices, beware of silence appearing between them when you’ll slow down the tempo.
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down in the near future. Wouldn’t that be interesting. As far as actual V.I.s, we see things moving in two directions: bigger and smaller. Bigger in the sense that most the major
Mainstage So that’s all for this clinic. Remember that we have only looked at a very small part of Mainstage, and it has a lot of capabilities we haven’t mentioned. For instance, it’s really simple to create an effects channel for a voice, with various bus sends (reverb, tempo synced delays, etc.), as many virtual instruments tracks as you need, with lots of direct controls (playing V.I.s with more controls than you’d find on a hardware synth...), prepare a virtual drum machine for a drummer playing an electronic drum kit, etc. Regarding files and sequences playing in Mainstage, you should also try to use third-party plug-ins and V.I.s or build some complex environments in Plogue Bidule or another host (see last issue). But that could be the matter of another clinic. VI
that concept. If you get in the mood for a great marimba at 3:00 in the morning, there you go. Another trend may be a partial response to Apple having lowered the price of Logic so far: little versions. DrumCore, Toontracks, Chocolate Audio, of course VSL…those are three examples of compa-
We would never mention something as base as a mere rumor in these hallowed pages.
developers have all-in-one products, such as EastWest Colossus and SONiVOX Muse. Expect to see more of those. And smaller in the sense that there seems to be a growing market for downloadable single instruments. SONiVOX and Ilio (U.S. distributor of VSL and Spectrasonics, among others) have both recently introduced online stores following
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nies that started with big instruments but are now also offering little ones that are for real. Also, it probably goes without saying that sampled instruments are becoming more and more playable in real time. The art of MIDI programming is still very much alive—in fact the bar is rising all the time— but between advanced programming and
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some other techniques, we’re able to do more and more playing in real time without having to program as much. That’s a good thing. Moving to sounds themselves, VI writer Craig Sharmat pointed out that there’s a lot of interest in a new category of sounddesign/music plug-ins, best described as “physics.” Troels Folmann mentioned two in the MIDI Mockup Microscope column last issue: the free plug-in Dblue Glitch, and Timefreezer. These are weird (in a good way), ambient, audio-manipulating plug-ins that sound different from anything we’ve heard before. Look for more activity in this area. And finally, expect to see more great sampled instruments and softsnths that use technology we already have! It’s easy to forget how far things have advanced already. This issue is being released at the NAMM Show. Maybe we won’t even have to wait a year to look silly… VI
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Predictions What to watch for this year by Nick Batzdorf
as VI finally lost it? Making predictions about our industry right before the Winter NAMM Show? The answer is probably yes, but we don’t mind looking silly. Since we discussed 2007 in our last issue, it’s only fitting that we take a look forward. We’ll read at this column a year from now and either pat ourselves on the back or else have a good laugh at ourselves.
H
The first thing to look for concerns sampling. You know how we’re constantly going on about how we really need much more RAM access in order to be able to load large, streaming sample libraries and have them cued up to play? Well, that problem is finally disappearing, as we mentioned in the last issue. 64-bit memory access is eliminating the issue; so far EastWest, VSL, and Apple have released sample players that can access all the memory you have installed in a machine, and others will almost certainly follow. But this year we may see another way around the problem: static RAM. Static RAM is the type you find in memory cards and USB memory sticks. It delivers data almost as fast as standard memory; what if you could use it in place of a hard drive? If you could use it for storing sample streaming libraries, our samplers wouldn’t have to use nearly as large a RAM buffer, which means far less memory access would be required. So far USB memory sticks have been way too small for that; 4GB is a waste of time when you’re looking at a 50GB sample library. But if we could afford to stick a couple or few 32GB ones on our machines, then we’d be talking. Sony already has laptops that use static RAM in place of hard drives, and they’re just “on”—there’s no start-up time. Rumors abound about static RAM-based Apple products about to be introduced as well. While we would never mention something as base as a mere rumor in these hallowed pages, it does seem reasonable to expect large static RAM “drives” to come way (CONTINUED ON PAGE 62)
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