Just Add Piano...

A friend of mine in Detroit fired me off a quick .mp3 of a new tune her and her wife had written for a friend's ordination. It was a quick take - vocals, guitar and shaker egg.

For fun, I thought I'd throw down a piano track and mix it with the original take. I decided to use HalionOne's included Yamaha S90ES piano patch, since I don't have my Bosendorfer 290 yet. The signal from this patch is quite dry, so you add reverb to taste as an insert (which I prefer).

There are three hazards in recording over someone else's audio mix.

1) You muddy it. If there's a lot already going on in the tune, more is usually not better. Fortunately, this mix was sparsely done, and the vocals were forward enough that adding another instrument could be done without nuking them.

2) Pitch. They might be tuned to something other than A440. You might need to adjust the pitch of the source track. Hopefully this isn't much of a shift and doesn't wonk up the tone too much. Again, not a problem in this case - bang on concert tuning.

2) Rhythm. An imported audio file doesn't have a natural alignment with the bars and beats in Cubase, so you can't just turn on a click track easily. A pox on folks who don't hold to a beat reasonably firmly, or have long sustained sections without any evident count or cue as to when to come back in.

This particular tune featured a reasonably rhythmic and percussive guitar patch in standard 4/4 time so keeping track of the beat wasn't too tough. The guitar did have several key rhythmic figures that needed to be tight with the piano for the tune to hold together. I wanted to tighten up the hits on a couple of these figures.

I can't use the bar/beat markers as a reference (they aren't aligned to the audio material). What I did instead was use the graphical view of the audio (Sample editor) in one window, the Midi editor on the piano in the other window, both zoomed in. I would then move the current time (vertical line) to the start of the audio hit in the sample editor, which also moved the line in the midi editor.

It was then easy to drag the note starts to the start of the hit and tighten up the timing on those key bits.

Word Files in the Wake of the Storm

It was not a fun time for me this weekend. We can all relate to those internal crises we bring on ourselves that rage away below the surface. I often get great ideas and lyrical images coming at me when that stuff is going on.

Today a bud of mine suffering some romantic heartache sent me a note, and this excerpt stood out:

... its amazing what can be done when I'm in that mood. I found a couple of new progressions which I'd never used before. I'm not going to write it down. It seems inappropriate to do so.

I'm familiar with the creative energy that comes with angst. It's why there are so many poems written in high school. What caught my eye on this was the "I'm not going to write it down. It seems inappropriate to do so."

Why is it inappropriate? I'll weigh in as thinking that when life sends you something and it stimulates a creative response, it's one of the upsides of such times and hold on to it.

Holding On

It's tough to preserve the output from such moments. In my case, I'm hardly in a position to work effectively on lyrics when I'm crashing emotionally.

What I do is open a word file, give the feeling or moment a title and quickly jot down whatever is coming to me. Sometimes it's only the title, which will serve as a reminder that I can use later to pull out the original moment and record it more effectively. A good example of such a work is Shell Shock.

I then save it off to an "ideas" directory to be worked on sooner, later or never again. Output from this weekend are two empty files, titled "Meltdown" and "Death by Introspection."

Word files in the wake of the storm.

Random-oke, Improvisation and Collaboration

On Saturday, I attended a cool table reunion with Dog and Pony Sound, a karaoke service I used to kj (and continue to photograph) for. The "cool table" consists of the some great singers and ultra fun folk from the early days many years ago. I'm happy to report that major fun was had!

The first round of tunes turned out to be a game of random-oke. That's where someone else cracks the book for you and puts their finger down - and you're expected to sing whatever they hit. If you know the tune, you repeat until you're utterly clueless.

I managed to draw the Rolling Stones' "Not Fade Away." I had a bout of anxiety and actually filled in an alternate card on "Jumping Jack Flash," but the sense of fun beat out my insecurities in the end. Up I went to the stage and the mic to sing a tune I'd never heard before.

What's interesting was my knee jerk reaction to hedge the game. It struck me that a barrier to freshness and freedom in music making is the fear of failure and the pursuit of safety. Improvisation on stage in front of a live audience (or even laying down licks on your own in the home studio) requires a measure of abandon and fearlessness to avoid falling back into the familiar.

Improvisation

A couple of days later my in-laws came to visit. My mom-in-law loves to play the piano (she plays from classic music notation). She didn't have her music along, but sat down at the piano to give "Ave Maria" a stab from memory. She'd get into the tune, then bail and start over. It prompted me to sit down and gab about improvising to her briefly, outlining the basic mental processes behind it.

"Don't think in terms of notes as much as the relative motion of the chord progression. Don't think of where your feet are being placed, think of where your steps are taking you."

I started outlining basic triad and seventh chord progressions, the underpinnings of basic harmony. It made me realize that there's a lot of thinking and practice behind getting the instincts worked out.

That wasn't the best place to start. Time to switch gears.

Abandon Expectation. Embrace Exploration.

"Play without music more. Just leave it in the bench. Keep trying ideas until you like what you hear."

Collaboration

One of the things I like about the karaoke crowd at Dog and Pony is the sheer number of good singers there and the diversity of styles they represent. I have a lot of admiration for their music sense, so I'm hoping to warm up some collaborations on the album.

I gabbed with a couple of them Saturday night and mentioned my blog. **waves hello**

Too Much Information on Suspended Chords

I went over to Peter’s place last night to help him work on a friend’s website. While I was there, I was asked by a fellow musician why suspended chords are called “suspended.” I had had a bit too much brandy at the time and didn’t deliver a coherent response. I thought I’d answer that question today.

Suspension

The term "suspension" describes a technique used in counterpoint where a note is carried over from a chord to the next chord. So if I move from an F chord (F,A,C) to a C chord (C,E,G) but still play the F note, I have suspended the F.

A suspended chord is a chord where the third of the chord is replaced by either the fourth (most common) or the second. Csus4 (C,F,G) and Csus2 (C,D,G) are examples. These chords were named suspended chords because they were usually arrived at by using the contrapuntal technique of suspension.

Thus, a Csus4 chord can be arrived at by suspending the F in the movement from IV-I or V7-I while the Csus2 can be arrived at by suspending the D in the movement of V-I, ii-I, or iii7-I.

Antici………. pation!

The opposite of suspension in counterpoint is anticipation. In anticipation you introduce a tone of the chord to follow prior to actually moving to that chord, thus anticipating the chord to come. You can used suspended chords to anticipate – so for example, I – Isus4 – IV (C – Csus4 – F) introduces the F prior to playing the F chord.

I suppose in such circumstances, one might call it an anticipation chord… (C – Cant4 – F), except no-one ever does and “can’t” is such a discouraging word.

Final Thoughts

“sus4” is the most common suspended chord and is often simply written “sus.” Thus, Csus4 and Csus are considered to be the same chord.

Suspended chords are also called “sustained” chords but “sustained” is technically incorrect.

Typically a suspended fourth or second replaces the third of the chord. When this occurs the chord is neither major nor minor.

The suspension can also be played as an added tone chord in which the third is kept and the second or fourth added. This results in a much more dense sound.

Probably one of the most famous uses of the sus4 chord is in the opening of the tune "Pinball Wizard" by the Who.

Bsus - B - Asus - A - Gsus - G - F#sus - F#

The use of suspensions can also be heard in the piano playing of Bruce Hornsby. “Every Little Kiss” is a good example - lots of the chords have added or substituted a fourth or second.

Spectral Analysis - TrueRTA finally sorted.

I've alluded to some complications on the equalization of my room. Here's the tale so far.

I picked up TrueRTA to do the noise generation and spectral analysis end of the job. I also picked up the Behringer ECM8000 measurement microphone to get the audio measurements as flat as possible (TrueRTA ships with a mic calibration file for the response curve on the ECM8000).

I install TrueRTA on my main machine and try to measure audio fed in through the Presonus Firebox. Hmm... no response. Double check that the Presonus inputs are configured in control panel to be the default recording feed. Yes, they are. Use Cubase to verify that the audio is getting fed. Yes it is.

Try the TrueRTA signal generator to feed output out through the Firebox. That's getting out fine.

Hmm. Try other inputs to see if anything is getting into TrueRTA. Ahh. My cheapo USB headphone mic is feeding it fine. Maybe other inputs will work. I rummage through the closet for some adapters and repatch my mixer to feed audio into the 1/8 inch standard mic jack on the computer. No dice.

At this point I fire off a note describing my issues to the support email at True Audio and continue to try stuff. I decide to install TrueRTA on my laptop (good old 32 bit XP versus 64 bit Vista), dig a mic pre-amp out of the basement (the ECM8000 requires phantom power) and lo! The laptop works.

I'm just about resigned to using the laptop to do the equalization when a note comes in from True Audio. Make sure the drivers are WDM and that the sample depth/rate is 16 bit / 44.1 Khz. Back to control panel. Set the drivers up as instructed.

Bingo! (Thanks John)

So now all I need to do is find the 9VAC power adapter for my equalizer (which had been on the shelf for a few years) and I'm ready to level the room.

SQL Server - A long day and a longer night

This isn't music related, this is my software job. I had to uninstall Microsoft SQL Server 2005 yesterday because the default instance became corrupt. Now, I won't get into a lot of detail on it, but suffice to say that if an instance becomes corrupt, the uninstall won't remove it completely, and the re-install won't install over top of it.

You end up in this "you can't get there from here" space.

Well, you can get there. Basically, you have to uninstall as far as you can, and then start crawling through the registry removing references to SQL server, going into the Program Files directory and removing files. The final trick was how to remove a Vista service that doesn't show up in msconfig - and this article should help you should you have such an arcane requirement in the future.

So now I'm back up and running where I was yesterday at noon, only backlogged. I'll be getting to the equalization shortly.

Clear sounding monitors.

I fought Saturday afternoon shopping crowds to get myself off to the local audiophile store and consult the truly snobby regarding sound. They had Puresonic cone stands in stock for getting the monitor speakers up off the shelf (pictured left). It's a good thing the shelf is cheap pine, because those stands are NOT kind to wood.

But - oh my, the clarity in the sound from the speakers now. I'll edit this shortly with an update later in the evening - I'm off to get a mic stand and the measurement mic - time to start fudging connections and get the room equalized.

Headphones, Monitors, Line6 and Guitar Port

My ears don't like using full cup headphones for hours. I switched over to my studio headphones a couple of weeks ago and recently I've noticed my ears are feeling a tad uncomfortable. I don't have the volume cranked. My working theory is that the full cup headphones seal against my head and the vibrating air has nowhere to go but against my ear drum. Over time listening fatigue sets in.

Full cup headphones are great for removing distracting sounds and preventing your monitor mix from spilling out into a mic when recording. I won't want to use them for hours and hours for all my digital playing, though.

I was using the headphones because my studio near field monitors currently sound like crap. They are churning out way too much sustained resonance in the bass and low mid-range frequencies. Everything sounds boomy. The reason for that is where I have them. Audiophiles will cringe. They are currently weight bearing supports between two shelves in a brick and board bookcase. The boards essentially become resonating panels, similar to the wood top of a guitar. (Did I mention I haven't been recording for awhile?)

So I need to get my monitors pumping out pristine sound. Step one will be to decouple them acoustically from the shelves. Space is at a premium, so I'll likely keep them on the shelf but isolate them acoustically from the wood. Things like the Auralex MoPad Monitor Isolators should do the trick nicely.

Spectral Analysis

Once the major boomy stuff is eliminated I can get to work with the equalization of the room. I've loaded up TrueRTA and taken it for a spin. The sound/noise generation gets out through the firebox fine, but the inputs don't seem to feed the spectrum analyzer. Ideally, I'd plug my Behringer measurement mic into the firebox (it needs phantom power) but I might end up routing through the Mackie mixer and using a dual 1/4 inch phono plug to 1/8 inch stereo plug adapter cable I have to feed the PC's mic input. It's sub-optimal but better than nothing. I fired off a tech support question about it to the TrueRTA vendor, but no answer yet.

Line6 Pod Farm

I was crawling around on amp modeling and discovered a forum site where the afficianados hang out... guitarampmodeling.com ... they seem pretty bent on the metal and heavy rock sounds though (as do many amp modeling vendors, at least in their demos).

I was looking for setup ideas on the Carlos Santana sound for a guitar, and caught a mention of Line6, and the fact that they have a Mesa Boogie amp in their model lineup (the amp used to produce that distinctive sound). So I blitzed over to see what they had, and they are launching a new plugin product, Pod Farm, that is Cubase compatible. It's priced the same as Amplitube 2 in the platinum version (the version that includes the Mesa Boogie amp).

They seem to be much broader in their focus than simply metal. They make a whole line of innovative guitars and amps and guitar processing hardware. I was impressed. Their community seems active and they appear to ship regular expansions on their products.



Guitar Port

They also have an affiliated "learn to play guitar" site that I thought was particularly cool. Check out guitarport.com - it's a mix of tips and articles, lessons, tabs and tracks you can jam to that have various guitar parts lifted out. I might join just to practice my virtual guitar chops on the keyboard. It also seems they also have amp model presets engineered around the guitar sounds of specific artists and tunes.

It's been... one week...

... since I wrote. It's been a fun week, a busy week.

The Firebox is working fine. I need a longer fire wire cable to get it up on the shelf with the mixer, but never mind. Following its installation, I got started with Cubase LE 4. I had been working on Wendy's tune on paper, so I decided to get the basic framework of the tune recorded.

I laid down a basic Piano/Strings line to just get the chords outlined and dropped in a tempo change as I moved out of the intro. I'm pretty rusty with Cubase so I was off to the manuals to look stuff up with regularity.

I then used one of the better patches in the included HalionOne sample playback library, a flute, to lay down the melody. Except I wasn't done writing the verse yet - so it just abruptly stopped in the middle of the verse.

Now, I've done this "recording of songs" stuff before. I'm itching to get to something new, so I download the RealStrat demo which also installs Amplitube Duo. Now I've got a Stratocaster with some amp modeling and an overdrive stomp box (all virtual, of course). This is too much fun to be bothered with finishing the verse on the tune. I bring up various songs (Sultans of Swing, anyone?) and jam to them. At first I'm all thumbs, but then I start to relax, throw some modal licks around and generally have fun. The demos are stripped down so there was a lot that couldn't be done - but it was enough to sell me on the virtual guitar idea.

Back to the tune after a couple of days of just goofing around with the virtual strat. It's recorded as MIDI streams which makes it easy to go in and tweak notes. I use Cubase like a word processor, changing timing and melody lines around much as I fine tune wording on the lyrics in Word. I need to finish the verse, so I start playing around with melody ideas. I realize as things progress the lyrics I've written are missing a line. I want to inject an extra phrase. We can rework the lyrics later - in the phrase goes. Now I've got a finished outline, melody and chords, for the intro, chorus and verse (no bridge, but it'll come).

I start wondering about the virtual acoustic guitar so I download the RealGuitar demo and start seeing if I can lay down some acoustic picking and strumming behind the tune. This is harder to get sounding natural than the virtual strat but eventually I've got something half decent. I wish Vir2 offered an Acoustic Legends HD demo so I could try it.

It's time to step up to the real recording software I want to use. I'm already tweaking preferences and such in Cubase LE, which are sure to be lost in the upgrade. Steinberg Canada sells an upgrade to Cubase Studio 4, so it's nip to the webpage and order it! It arrived this morning and is installed and running fine, after some head scratchy moments on the upgrade of HALionOne.

So, now I'm looking through the lists of new features and plug in documentation, trying them out . Some of the effects processors like the included compressor and reverb have come a long way since I last used this software. More reporting on Cubase Studio 4, I'm sure, in the coming weeks.

Barrack Obama

This isn't a political blog, but I can't let Obama's election pass unremarked. You have to admit he has brought back to politics excellence in rhetoric and oratory. It is a wonderful thing to have leadership with the ability to inspire.

We have Liftoff.

I got paid for the wedding! I immediately trundled off to pick up the Presonus Firebox to finally get back online with MIDI and audio recording capability.

Download the drivers, get it talking to the machine. Install Cubase LE. Run Midi In/Outs to my trusty Roland XP-50 keyboard. Record Midi. Play it back.

Now for audio. I run the main outs into a stereo strip on the Mackie. Run the Alt 3/4 outputs from the Mackie into the Firebox inputs. Configure Cubase to understand all the various audio ins and outs. It's a newer version of Cubase than I used before but all the stuff is where I remember it.

Record audio. Play it back. Hmm... nothing coming back. Hunt and peck around. Nothing. Boot the software mixer, press buttons, try routings. Nothing. Check the strip on the Mackie with the keyboard - it's fine. Hmm.

Read the manual. There's a main output volume control on the front panel of the Firebox. Doh! Turn it up. NOW it's working. Who knew?

Play audio back and dub another track. Play back. Insert dynamics, turn on a compressor. Everything is fine.

I've got more work to do, tho. There is a lot of fine tuning to calibrating Cubase audio and midi, a whack of lightweight plug ins to install that came with the Firebox and just general acclimatization to be done.

I also picked up a Behringer ECM 8000 measurement microphone to be used in conjunction with my Alesis M-EQ 230 equalizer and the TrueRTA spectrum analyzer to get my monitoring flat.

I signed up on the Presonus forums. I'm enjoying how the musical community has plugged in to each other on the net. It wasn't nearly so rich back in the late 90s.

Geek speak, I know - but it was a pretty geeky night. ;-)

Interfaces, friends, computers and mortality...

Well, first of all, let me get to mortality. My computer died. There was a loud grinding noise and then it wouldn't boot again. It would get to the bios display splash screen, and never get as far as accessing the system drive to boot Vista. I've got most of everything that matters backed up, but it takes weeks to reconfigure a machine, get all the software installed and upgraded and all that. Talk about a sinking, sinking feeling in the pit of my gut.

An hour on the phone to the manufacturer's phone support, and they're stumped. They want to ship me a box that will get here in a few days, have me ship the computer to them - turn around time 8-14 days. Unacceptable. I say as much - the computer is under warranty, for freak's sake. They tell me I can trundle off to the local Best Buy's service dept, and to give them the case number. Off I go and meet Andrew (after standing in line and stuff like that).

Andrew is a wizard. He pulls his chin a bit and says "I've seen this before - I think I just took it apart and got the battery off the motherboard, let the bios reset itself, and it woke up. We try that, and it boots. Try reconnecting the hard drives now... hmmm... doesn't boot. Try each drive in turn. One boots, one doesn't. Here's the best part - it was my mostly empty, secondary drive. Everything on it is backed up already. I can't say as I've ever been so unaffected by a hard disk crash. Whew.

Interface update

So, I heard back from Presonus. Yes, they have no banannas. That is to say - they don't have a 64 bit driver for the FireStudio firewire interface. Sigh. Well, I looked at alternatives, talked to Wendy, did some soul searching on it. Do I really need the major huge rack when I get everything I need out of their Firebox product?

I think I might have been doing a bit of over-specification on that front, especially when I can feed the Firebox from my Mackie mixer still. Moving to the Firebox does free up $550 that I can start spending on virtual instruments. Hmm. OK, Firebox it is (and yes, it does have 64 bit drivers ;-).

First up will be the SC Electric Guitar, which is actually hard to find in online stores. I tracked it down at audioMidi.com. They have this nifty wish list feature, so I plowed mine in. It's a long (and expensive) list. Ow.

Friends and Feedback

I've been getting some good, thoughtful feedback on my Beauty of the Rain duet reworking. In particular, regarding this bit of a verse:

Original:

But when she gave you more to find
You let her think she'd lost her mind
And that's all on you
Feeling helpless if she asked for help
Or scared you'd have to change yourself

Adaptation: (Gal / Guy )

But when I gave you more to find
You let me think I’d lost my mind
And that's all on me
Feeling helpless when you asked for help
Or scared you'd have to change yourself

Critique:

Definitely liking where you're going with it. My nitpicky critique now is on one line... the "That's all on me" isn't going to sing nearly as nicely as a long vowel - the "all on you" of the original :) What if you gave the first 3 lines to the female character - so the "all on you" hangs as an accusation - leading to the insight of "feeling helpless.. or scared I'd have to change myself"?

I’ve given the matter some thought – first of all, the protracted part of the phrase is actually on “all” not “you.” “Me” IS weaker phonetically, but stronger emotionally (at least to me). What I’m aiming for, the key bit here, is that the guy accepts responsibility but then hedges. He’s trying to be honest but he can’t come the whole way. It’s a “spin” that’s not completely self revealing. The follow up “Or scared you'd have to change yourself” lands the core truth with a frank brutality that strips away the layers of his pretense.

I can see it working either way. Other opinions are welcome, so fire a comment my way!

More Friends

Ashley Armstrong is the daughter of Christine Armstrong, who sang I Give on the currently posted recording. She's using youtube to chronicle her songwriting. I thought it a most interesting idea.

Wedding DVD and a duet

Well, first of all the great news - the final DVD for Jenn's wedding is ready, which means I get paid tomorrow. Here's a shot for your viewing pleasure...

That means I will be trundling off to pick up my longed for Presonus Firestudio Tube audio/midi interface.

Now, a few words on this beastie. It's not just an interface. It's a 16x6 mixer and it's reputed to be zero latency (physically impossible, but I'll take that to mean "imperceptible latency").

It could easily replace my trusty Mackie in the studio setup. I've often wished for a couple of extra output channels on the Mackie. On the other hand, it's handy to have some real physical dials to twiddle, if only to turn the volume down.

The interface also comes with a whack of "light edition software", some of which I know I'll be buying the real deal on. I expect I'll be a week or so blogging on various explorations of bits and pieces before I settle down to do some real stuff.

The other thing I'm going to be eager to do is properly re-EQ this room. Fleet has noise generator / spectral analysis units for rent. I'm hoping I can wheedle a day with one on the house when I buy the interface.

Hmmm... I just did my pre-purchase check list. I've got a sinking feeling I should have done this in the "establish dream phase." The silly thing doesn't have 64 bit drivers. I've fired off an email to their tech support team to see what's up and should hear back in a day or two. A concrete brick in my gut says I might be back to the drawing board. Drat. Triple Drat.

At any rate, I need to get my Countryman wireless mic cable repaired - so I might as well run the mic in when I go to get the interface.

In other news, I've finished draft 1.1 on the adaptation of Dar Williams's Beauty of the Rain as a duet and gotten some initial (positive) feedback. The original is a bit of a solitary lament; re-working it as a duet characterizes it as a dialog. It's a take on the song that highlights a different dimension of tune's theme. I wasn't sure how it would work out but reading it over now, I like it.

Stepping Out

Well, I had an interesting day. There was some dotting i's and crossing t's on the code and a lot of processing final large print versions of Wedding photos for Jenn. The shots look good, and I uploaded some to flickr. More to go tomorrow and I should be finished.

Wendy and I had a lovely outing with Lynn Harrison - she's in town for the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals conference. The conversation ranged all over from personality types and songwriting stories to a bit of history and comparing notes on our future projects.

I took her in on CKCU radio yesterday and was impressed with her radio chops. It emerges tonight that she's got a lot of background in radio (and media) so no surprise there.

The other interesting factoid uncovered from the evening is that an old bud, Peter MacDonald, is now executive director of the OCFF. I had got wind he had gone to work for them, but I hadn't realized he was le grande fromage.

I might get some songwriting in before I turn in - I'm feeling all keen, but I'll let you know tomorrow.

Time to hit the books

I've studied music theory, harmony and counterpoint. It's handy but I find it most useful in choral or ensemble arranging.

I recently stumbled across a pair of books that I think are better suited to providing a theoretical structure to the chord + melody songwriter.

Chord Progressions for Songwriters

Money Chords: A Songwriter's Sourcebook of Popular Chord Progression

Yet another Virtual Guitar... the best yet.

Well, I think I'm going to have to replace RealStrat on my wish list with the Prominy SC Electric Guitar. Doing side by side listens of their demos, and checking out the lists of articulations and chord figures, it is just waaaay better.





They also have an LPC guitar - which is the Gibson double coil Les Paul. You can watch the demo vid here.



It's more expensive, but worth it imho. Part of the expense is picking up the amplifier and effects plug in - the top dog being Amplitube 2.

What's for Dinner?

It's fun that so many people have liked the stew and painting analogies as I've related them to song writing. I'm enjoying the device as well, so I'll be analogically retentive.

What's for dinner? This often evokes a tension between the desire for the familiar and the appeal of something new. Bangers and Mash? or Char Grilled Prawns with Lime & Chili?

Now, an interesting observation I'd make about myself. As I've been running play lists and jamming to them to get all the musical muscles and neurons firing again, the tunes I love have pretty stock chord progressions in them. Bangers and Mash.

Other tunes I think are "cool." They appeal to my intellect and my music sense but they often don't grab me the way the simpler stuff does. Char Grilled Prawns.

Now, I'm hardly going to do an album to re-hash the past. There's a lot to be said, however, for dropping the intellectual posing and writing tunes that really grab me.

I think I've decided the right thing to do is balance the menu. Some stuff that's familiar in it's harmonic structure and some stuff that's a bit more adventurous.

I realized I had other things to balance, like the basic themes. It's easy to lapse into too much happy, sadness, love or anger.

(I'm glad I'm past the time of my life when I had to write every friend and relative that got married a forever commitment love song)

Or tempo - frantic vs. laid back.

Or style - narrative versus lyrical.

Methinks I'm going to need to boot up Excel and plan the menu a bit to make sure it's properly balanced. I don't entirely trust my unguided inclinations.

Wendy's Tune

Some minor progress on Wendy's tune. I was working on the intro and didn't like how my IV-V, IV-V progression was working - the mood was wrong. I wanted it to hold together a bit better but I didn't want to change the progression too much.

I tried it by holding a pedal IV bass through the progression. Perfect. It hangs together but catches the lazy mood I had in mind.

I still have to get the verses and bridge finished up and tighten the lyrics but when you song write 20 minutes at a time, you do it in steps.

Arrangements, Painting Analogies and Stew

Busy, busy weekend. I'm finishing up the details on several photo gigs and that has consumed my arty cycles. Final selections on wedding shots are coming in, discs to ship, proofs to post to my Flickr account.

I do have one little songwriting thing to offer, though. I was out on the porch gabbing with Wendy and I shared a little realization I'd had on my production style on my old recordings versus the new stuff I'm planning.

When I'm writing a tune, I'm primarily concerned with three elements - melody, chords and lyrics. It's got to stand firmly on those three legs. Most of my old tunes fulfill that criteria. I can pick up a guitar at a campfire, play them and they work.

My productions of my past works in the studio have a lot in them though. Layers of instruments on layers of instruments. I've been planning a much more open sound for my upcoming works. I realized why, as I've been fiddling around with my old gear.

The old sounds weren't up to snuff. They couldn't stand on their own.

"Oh," Wendy says, "Your carrots were old, so you made stew."

Exactly.

She went on to remind me of my lectures on the dangers of "over-working" a painting. As you work and re-work with paint, the pigments mix and you get increasingly muddy (more and more grey), losing the vibrancy of the colors.

Yep, yep.

It's interesting how the medium affects you. If paints were dull, I'd be less worried about muddying them up. If my sounds are vibrant and yummy, I'm much less likely to muddy the sound.

She continued on to warn me. "I LIKE how full your pieces are. It's good stew. Don't overcompensate on the minimalism."

Woot! I've got a fan base with expectations of my sound. Who knew?

Good Stew
Ro thinks this should be the title of my retrospective collection. Brilliant!

I Give

No Limits

La Tristesse

Resurrection Now

The Follower

Artist Find - Nina Deli

Nina Deli is a German singer / songwriter with an exceptionally ethereal quality to her, while retaining some earthiness. Enya with edge. I encountered her on the melodyne demos. Her tune, Flow, was the one used in the demo. Worth a link click and a listen.

The Song as a Canvas...

I've been doing a lot of reading on songwriting lately. When I embarked on the journey of songwriting as a teenager in 1977, I didn't have google, MSN, blogs or any number of the current ways to connect with fellow poets and songwriters beyond the high school / college writing club. Thanks to Lynn Harrison for her kind response to my email. Yes, Lynn, I'm reading and I eagerly await your next communication.

It's funny how deciding to blog regularly starts to focus your thoughts. You frame your ideas in terms of the evening's narrative. Today I had an overriding insight punch through my psyche. I'm not a Performer/Songwriter. I'm a Songwriter/Composer. I treat a new song far more like a painting or photograph. I do preliminary studies. I lay it down in layers - I THINK in layers. It's all composition (theme), under paint (rhythm) and details/highlights (counterpoint/fills).

I haven't started recording yet, yet I hit the dilemma head on today. Tech like Celemony's Melodyne could extend my vocal range a half octave in either direction effortlessly (and undetectably). If I need a low E, or a high B to make the phrase work, it is now within reach. I could never sing it on stage. Now more than ever I am confronted with a final parting. The writing of material I can produce but not perform.

I tend toward making the song versus the performance great. I paint cadmium pigment and get a color. I photograph pixels and reproduce a soul. I write and produce a mood, not a performance. The song must go on beyond and ahead of me. A painting is a projection of my eye and few expect it to be reproduced "live." I choose this course. Some silly middle ground is a coward's dithering.

In other news, I spent the day listening through "The Beauty of the Rain" by Dar Williams. That tune has so much potential, methinks it might be my first cover. It helps she's an alto, and I'm a baritone. So many ideas. ;-)

Updated Christmas List

I made a run to Steve's to pick brains and figure out pedal trigger inputs into the Alesis Controlpad. Kick drum triggers, it turns out, are usually pads engineered to be hit by a normal kick pedal. Many are reasonably large, but we did find a slimline version. High-hat controllers, it would appear, consist of two inputs - the surface that is struck by the sticks and the pedal that indicates how "open" the high hat is. It seems likely that if I plug a hi-hat pedal into the control pad and map one of the pads onto the hi-hat, I should be in business.

The upshot of the conversation is that I've added to my Christmas gift list the following:

1) Roland KD-7 Kick Drum Trigger. It's low profile, and won't dislodge too many of the piles on the floor in my office.

2) Pearl P-120P Power Shifter bass drum pedal.

3) Roland FD-8 Hi-Hat Pedal Trigger. I tried it. Smooth.

It's nice to know what you want. À la prochaine!

A Productive Day

Today was primarily a code day, but I did manage to squeeze in a few things that I count as high points on the music side of things.

1) I read through Lynn Harrison's blog, Staying in Tune. Wonderfully reflective, clever and insightful. I also trucked over to her site, lynnharrison.ca which has some sample tracks if you'd like to catch studio versions of her work. Here's a video of her singing "Crossing My Mind."



Lynn Harrison - Crossing My Mind

2) I discovered yet another piece of tech that is going to make my life as a composer and arranger a lot more fun. It's the Melodyne plug-in from Celemony. Holy cow. It brings to audio editing what I've been able to do in MIDI for ages. Writing four part vocal arrangements is going to get waaay more fun. Check out their video demos.

3) Last and not least, I penned another poem, Privilege, inspired by a long, late night conversation with my wife, Wendy. She likes it. It's up on the fridge. Yay.

So, more code again tomorrow and more excursions into the adventure I've embarked on.

Making the Christmas List...

One opportunity / challenge when you're kitting out in the autumn on a hobby project (programming being my career - art is my passionate sideline) is that you can ask for stuff for Christmas. IF you can find stuff that has a gift sized price tag, that is. That IF is the challenge.

The only likely candidate on my wish list is the Alesis Controlpad. To get a couple more things put on the list, I thought I'd look into the fact that the hi-hat and kick pedal triggers can be added to it. I started looking for compatibility specs on hi-hat and kick triggers. There's nothing mentioned on the Alesis site regarding interoperability. I could hope ANY apparently correct trigger might work but I've been around tech for 25 years and I know such an assumption is a dangerous one.

I start looking around to try to find out how electronic drum triggers work, only to discover that such information is not clearly explained on any page I was able to find in 10 minutes of google research. I just got repeats of the same old info from one online vendor after another.

Sigh. This is one time, I think, where I'm going to be trundling off to Steve's music to gab with the guys in the drum room and pick their brains. I might even carve out an hour to sit down in the store, set it up with some of their pedal triggers and try them.

The rest of the day was coding and testing, coding and testing. I'm almost ready to move onto a new chunk of work though, which will be most welcome.

Songwriting and Dire Straits

I got more work done coding on the menu system today, almost finished all the reorganization of various bits into the "new order" of things. Will be nice when it's done - it's much better organized now than it was.

It was a reasonably quiet day, so I made more progress on Wendy's tune. I've worked out the basics of the melody and chords for the Intro, Chorus and about half the verse. I've chosen a chord structure at the level of Wendy's guitar proficiency, so she can play it with me (I think that will happen in private only). She asked about it, so she's obviously happy I'm doing it. Yay.

I like the tune too. I was playing through the bits that I've got roughed in to settle them in place, found some rough edges and took a file to them. I'm counting down the days to when I can get the Personus FireStudio Tube in place and actually record the framework of it.

I'm continuing to get my technique back on the keyboard. I was jamming to Bonnie Raitt and Dire Straits yesterday, just to get more of the bluesy licks back. In the course of it, I encountered the video for Brothers In Arms. This has been a piece that has always had a profound emotional impact on me; this was the first time I've seen the video though.

The song does fill me with a certain fatalistic melancholy mixed with a sense of comradeship. It's probably why I like the tune, as I do enjoy dichotomy.

Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms

And a Bell will Ring

I finished a poem that had been kicking around for a year or so, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

I'm not really a Hemingway fan, but he does have some good ideas, and that's a particularly memorable quote.

I had started the poem (I also have some half done musical ideas on it) after reading The Hydrogen Economy. The opening chapter discussed the history of civilizations and empires as it related to energy and resource requirements, expansion and collapse.

More Songwriting Inspirations

I was gabbing with Ang on MSN about photography, poetry and music. In the course of the discussion I went over to the Vienna Symphonic Library to check out more of their stuff. You can buy their orchestra starter pack (which I most certainly will do) quite reasonably but the full thing weighs in at 10+ grand.

The starter pack is no slouch. Check out this most impressive rendition of Faure's Pavane.



The upside is you can buy the instruments individually. Their flutes rock (they have two soprano flutes, an alto and a bass) and I've long admired how Joni Mitchell had employed the alto flute on the Court and Spark album, so I was making notes as I was listening.

BUT - It was discovering their soprano choir that blew me away. Check out Miserere.



This one voicing got me thinking about how I might approach my hoped for remake of Lord of the Starfields. I started running ideas in my head and on the piano.

I soon realized I needed to write an entirely new song. A working title is "Holy" or "Sacred" at the moment. The basic idea is that we all touch a sense of the divine, regardless of how we describe it. The use of words belittles it, and engages the intellect. Wordless vocalizations might be the way to go. I think it's why chant (and similar folks like Enya) have such a profound emotional impact. Few get the Latin any more but the meditative tone and very slow open feeling evokes a sense of the spiritual.

Mixer Wiring and Photo Resizing

Some months ago I had to tear my studio apart to go play a live gig. I didn't set it back up when I got back from the gig. I put all the gear back in position on the shelves but never did the cable reconnects.

Today, I've been slowly tracking which cables are which and remembering how I had the mixer routing set up. I finally figured out most of it. I still haven't patched in the cassette/cd player nor the DAT unit, but those are old bits of gear that I really only need for pulling over legacy recordings from the old days.

Now I can actually play audio on my computer and jam to it with the keyboard. I've started playing through tunes old and new. By gar, listening to your play lists on proper studio monitoring headphones does wonders for the comfort of your ears (full cup enclosure) and the fidelity of the listening experience.

I still need to re-do the equalization of the room, since my new computer monitors will have changed the audio signature of the place. I'll worry about that when I'm installing the Personus Firewire Tube interface in a few weeks.

In other news, Claudia needed a photo re-sized to wall sized. I did the deed since I've got Genuine Fractals for large scale re-sizes. The photo works out to be 250 Meg in size, so I ran it out to her place on CD. I ad an opportunity to be re-acquainted with her daughter and gave her an impromptu singing and guitar lesson. Fun.

Powerpoint Graphics and a Visit

I started the day thinking it was a code day but I ended up working on adapting the graphics from our creative marketing designer for Powerpoint. That sounds boring, but I like working on Powerpoint, so it was relaxing.

In the middle of all this, cheques are arriving for my shots of Marriage of Figaro. I trundled off to Abby's to pick up her shots on CD since we are shipping discs of all the shots rather than messing around with individual shot downloads.

I stopped on the way and picked up some Kilkenny. We hung out looking at her shots for her next exhibit (I mucked with the crop on two, and she thought they were better) when a friend of hers came in (the production manager of Opera Lyra, it turns out). I gave them a tour of some of the virtual instruments I'm planning to use on my new album. We hung out drinking beer and telling photography, music, stage and theater war stories. Fun.

(Of course, while I was picking up the beer, I walked over to Steve's Music and checked out some of the new musical toys I had picked out. I'm definitely on the right track in my thinking.)

The Wish List

Having taken a look around yesterday at the various bits of music software / hardware available, I've made my wish list for the upgrade of my stuff. In order of upcoming purchase.

Presonus Firewire Tube Audio Interface
My old audio interface board fits in a desktop machine, and never worked so well really - one of the two stereo inputs was attenuated, so I was always panning to get a balanced signal when recording stereo feeds. As well, my old midi interface was separate, and increasingly unreliable. This unit has sixteen audio feeds (as opposed to just stereo, so I can do small ensemble live recordings (I've got the headphone monitoring panel already) to different tracks, and I have enough inputs to manage a complex drum or keyboard mic setup) and it has the MIDI on board. The firewire let's me take it mobile with my laptop, for recording my speaking gigs and/or location recording of performers.

Once I've got the interface gear, I can start recording the outlines of the tunes. I tend to play with a tune in Cubase in the early phases much like a word processor - will throw in a bunch of ideas and start to move them around until I like the basic flow and feel of the whole thing. Once that's done, I re-record everything for production, so it doesn't matter at this point if it sounds a bit campy.

Alesis ControlPad and BFD2
My drums need an upgrade. I've traditionally played the drums by hand using an old Yamaha pad trigger, but I've always wanted more pads and programming than it offers. As well, the velocity sensitivity and acoustic fidelity of BFD2 make it pretty much droolable.

Steinberg Cubase Studio 4
The Presonus comes with Cubase Essentials, but I'll smack against the 48 track limit fast. I can get started there, but the Cubase upgrade will be needed. The outline phase doesn't need many tracks, but once I start doing multiple takes on multiple ideas in the arrangements... ;-)

Music Lab RealStrat
I really want to emphasize a more acoustic guitar and stratocaster lead sound in my next round of work, and as I mentioned earlier, I need to prioritize either keyboard chops or guitar chops. My intention is to use the guitar tracks with the piano, bass and drums as the rhythm section of my "group's" sound, so when I'm putting down the backbone of the tunes, I'll need the guitars.

Vir2 Acoustic Legends HD
I'll use this instrument for the acoustic guitars. It's incredible, really.

Quantum Leap Goliath and Gypsy
This is a basic "across the board" upgrade of my sounds, including a killer Bosendorfer 290 Piano, a great Hammond B3 sound, some great basses and world sounds, orchestra (including the first passable flute I've ever heard) and I'm hoping some good drum kits. The classical guitars and violin in Gypsy are to melt over.

Chris Hein Horns
I can rough in the horns with what I have, but these are simply the most outstanding artificial brass I've ever heard - it's entirely targeted at the jazz and pop brass section sound, and completely kicks butt. I'll be tempted to redo the brass arrangements on No Limits with it. It's so sad that the brass comes at the end of the process - I really want to play with this now. ;-)

... ok, I'm back to doing real work now - I'm going to finish the menu system today. I get to do it while listening to the Goliath demo songs though. :D

Some Darned Amazing Virtual Instruments

I've been out of composing and recording for some time, but I'm beginning to prep to release my first full scale album. Now, I do all my recording and mixing on my computer - playing keyboards and guitars using a mix of digital sounds and acoustic recording.

Since my last batch of recording, which was largely done using the sounds from my Roland music workstation, the world of virtual instrumentation has come a long way. That's where music instruments are sampled and modeled as computer software that responds to keyboard playing.

It takes a lot of work to master a given virtual instrument - it doesn't come for free, but does mean I can work away on my own in the wee hours without paying session musicians heaps of overtime, and experiment with ideas

First stop, Guitars
Now the sad truth is, my guitar and keyboard chops have taken a turn for the worse out of neglect, and I really only have time to work one up. So I started looking into virtual instrumentation on electric and acoustic guitars. I've never learned to play electric, so my first hope was to find a passable electric... ideally a Stratocaster. Some google searching and review reading turned up MusicLab's RealStrat. Wow.

Check out the Rock demo...



as well as a Cleaner sound.



On the acoustic front, Vir2 offers the Acoustic Legends HD series, which I'm likely to ultimately get as well, but I'm also considering RealGuitar, also from Media Lab.

Check out this Pull Off test.



Next stop - Orchestra
Now, you can't replace a great violin player with a bunch of software, but you can sure as heck come close - I'd have never thought it, but once I heard Garritan's Stradivari Violin, well... listen for yourself... For Claire.



...and when the solo violin is used as a concertmaster and mixed with the Garritan Personal Orchestra instrument, you get a reasonable pass at Beethoven's Fifth.



I'll never produce a classical album with this stuff, but for doing "cut above" arrangements behind my middle of the road stuff - I'm all up for that.

I called about the Stradivari Violin, since it couldn't be ordered from their website. It's been discontinued to be re-released in the near-ish future as a chamber ensemble set which will include the violin, but also bring in violoas, cellos and the like.

Another thought on the solo violin (as well as some other great instruments, notably the classical guitar) might be the Quantum Leap Gypsy.



The other instrument I've always thought was completely badly done in keyboards and virtual instrumentation is flute - but check out this demo of the Vienna Symphonic Library's Flute.



The more I cruise the Vienna Symphonic Libraries, the more I'm blown away - but they aren't cheap at all.

... and slide by the Brass Section

Now, brass is actually much more of a mainstay for me - I love a great horn section on a tune - and I've often considered hiring a brass section - but wait... say hello to Chris Hein Horns.

And then there was Goliath

Now, it turns out there are tons and tons of great virtual instruments out there, but for an overall package of great sounds you really can't beat, check out EastWest's Quantum Leap Goliath.





Goliath has has a pretty amazing range of instruments, but the inclusion of the Bösendorfer 290 Concert Grand Piano is jaw dropping. Check out Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.



So, I'm sure I'll track down other cool virtual instruments and the like - and I'm already back to doing the basic songwriting - so we'll see you on here as things develop. :D

Return to Songwriting

Today was a day of music, friendship and optimism. I've managed to start writing a long considered song, and I'm off to a decent start.

I've been feeling the itch to get back to songwriting, and SteveM challenging me to collaborate with him today started me thinking more concretely about it.

A hint that a long promised song was still to be written got me moving on a specific tune. I started by picking a mood. I find I can't begin lyrics or specific music without deciding on the "feeling" of the song. Once I have that, I can express the feeling in words and music. Today song's feeling is a medium slow ballad, affectionate but not gushing. Acoustic primarily - guitar and piano, but with some fill stuff TBD once I get to the arranging of it. Baritone male range (me) with female backup singers.

At the same time I cruised a whole stack of virtual instrument sites. When I stared with virtual instruments about seven years ago, there were only a handful of decent ones. Now there's a plethora of high end virtual instruments. I had thought I was going to have to learn how to play a strat and buy a new acoustic, but not so.

It's a relief - with my limited time, I won't be able to work back my guitar and keyboard chops both (and I played both today, and I've got work to do) Keyboards it is thanks to instruments like Music Lab's RealStrat.

So now I'm saving my pennies to buy a whack of new interface hardware, recording software upgrades and virtual instruments.

It's good to be enthused, and enthused about something with a bit of lasting value. Something that will create joy in others. Of course, I've got photo shoots to book and code to write, so it would appear my schedule is destined to be packed for some time to come.

Hardcore tech, day in and day out

I'm going to have to find a way to write blog stories that don't bore the reader to tears. My days these days are filled with endless hours of code cutting - the last couple of days featuring a re-factoring of all of my program's menu handling code out of individual event handlers that are scattered through dozens of classes into a menu system that allows for dynamically bound menu processors... (and you start to see my point).

I stay sane these days by getting in a bit of work on my photo backlog, searching down old scans of my artwork, and making a list of people I need to visit to photograph old bits of artwork I don't have a decent image of.

... and writing - mainly little bits of verse. I don't have time for epic length stuff.