Category: Musicking

Droppin some sick nasties

Phrase of the moment for Music Tech level 2. Allow me to explain.

We start level 2 with a pretty straightforward message of “LEARN ABLETON LIVE NOW OR ELSE”. Honestly, there are usually a few students who are put off by the program; nothing is labeled, the colors are plain and drab, and it honestly looks like some kind of alien interface you’d see in Star Trek.

This all changes, however, as we learn that Ableton Live can unlock some of those “how did they do that?” questions about pop music.

DIRTY BEATS
First off, the drum kits in Ableton are nice. Especially the electronic ones – way out, trippy crazy sounding kits that someone like Andre 3000 or Will.I.Am would be proud to call his own.

Then we get to learning the clip slots. And record quantization. And MIDI effects like arpeggiator and chord. And beat repeat (my favorite).

Then it all starts to come together and the last vestiges of the “but I liked GarageBand better!” crowd begin to disappear and Ableton reigns supreme (at least until we get computers that can run Logic 9).

To sum it up, students are amazed at how much better their drum programming can be in Live versus how it was back in Level 1 with GarageBand. It’s like that scene in the Matrix where he learns how to fly a helicopter just by plugging something into his head. This type of “holy cow that was easy” moment is what I try to exploit in both classes this early in the year.

To commemorate this year, I’ve decided to play off of the fact that Level 2 is a more pro-focused class, with projects decidedly in the “real world” column most of the time. Every project is going to have a real producer that we study to go along with it. We’ll listen to their music, try to use their style as inspiration, and try to deconstruct the tricks of their trade.

This week the producer we’re looking at is Timbaland. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

New gear for 2009

I’m not a buy it all at once guy. I like to build the gear over time, getting intimate with a few pieces of equipment at a time until I’ve got the ideal solution. Plus, it’s nice to know there’s a consistent budget for the MT classes, rather than just big money injections every so many years (if you’re lucky!)

That being said, here’s my gear choices for this year – feel free to chime in via Twitter (@willkuhn) if you have any strong opinions about any of these items.

I needed to solve the following solutions this year: Room sound, Live preamping, and class sound management.

ROOM SOUND: M-AUDIO BX8A’S & BX10 SUBWOOFER
I know these may not be the right tool for the job, but I love the sound and the price. I also like the on/off footswitch for the subwoofer. I ordered monitor pedestals to go along with these, but I may look at wall-mounting them as well. They’ll monitor some during mixing, but the main purpose is to fill my classroom with pure, leveled sound. I haven’t been impressed by the passive systems I’ve heard in this price range (incl. amplification) so I went with nearfields. I tested out the room with my BX5a’s and it didn’t sound narrow or have any obvious dead spots so I think these will do nicely.

PREAMP: AUDIENT MICO
For the preamp, it’s going to do two things: work the live mics (Røde NT5 pair) during auditorium recordings, and enhance vocals & acoustic guitar during Recording Club. I don’t need an 8-channel preamp for drums, as we only use a couple condensers for drums anyway. Thus, a 2-channel solution was best (although this suggestion from Mike Hughes would have been awesome if we had the cashola for it…and if the company weren’t located exclusively in the UK). A couple neat bonuses with the Audient Mico: Variphase adjust knob to ensure no phasing issues, and an ADAT Lightpipe output. I may not even need an interface when we do live recordings with the MacBook, because it has optical inputs!

CLASS SOUND: SENNHEISER HD201 HEADPHONES
It’s time, children. You’re getting proper headphones, and you’re all going to have them every day because I got a pair for each station. As the ancient Romans would say, they’re circumaural (that means they cover your ears all the way), and they’re closed back so they should work well for session recording as well. I also got handsome hooks for storing the cans at each station when not in use.

Overall, I’m excited about the new gear for this year. Now if I can just get my hands on a new set of computers…

A CONTRIBUTION

So I think I’m done with my thesis. It compared the relative effectiveness of traditional notation versus MIDI grid notation. Here’s what I found out.

THE TEST
I gave a simple 10-question test to my classes. I randomly chose whether to give the MIDI quiz or the Trad. quiz. Each question consisted of an audio example with two possible notations- the correct one and a decoy; students were prompted to choose the correct one.

Questions were broken into two criteria for the decoys; they were either decoys that exploited a problem I anticipated with horizontal grouping (i.e. dotted eighth sixteenths) or with vertical spacing (chords, bass/treble clef).

THE RESULT
MIDI won by a longshot. I’ll post the full statistics later, but the overall result was that in the MIDI group, about half of students scored 90% or better, and in the Trad. group, about 20% of students scored 90% or better. Why the big difference?

MY INTERPRETATION
The 20% that did well on the Trad. test made sense to me – that number correlates to the percentage of student who take my class that are in Band or Choir. The number is possibly related, because to do that well on the test, a student would probably have prior experience with that notation style.

Does this mean that half of my students are secret studio engineers and producers though? Why did MIDI do so well? The answer may lie in video games.

According to a recent study, about 97% (read: all) of teens play video games. Of that group, about half report playing rhythm games. Rhythm games include things like Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Taiko Drum Master, and other games of that ilk. But these games aren’t DAW software – they’re simplified, right?

Wrong. Picture the MIDI editing window of your favorite DAW, played at a brisk pace (maybe you’re zoomed in a whole lot). The notes are flying by.

Now turn your head sideways to the left, stand at the far right edge of your computer screen so you can just see them at an extreme perspective. Recognize Guitar Hero now? It’s MIDI turned on its side.

Go ahead an look at the vocal view for Rock Band – it’s basically a MIDI view, with an analog pitch detector laid on top of it.

Picture all the kids you know in band/choir. Now picture all the other kids (in addition to the ones in band/choir) playing rhythm games *for fun* and in their *spare time*. Which notation style do you think the largest number of kids will identify with? Which could be used to easily draw in a new demographic to school performance groups? Which one is basically being ignored by the publishing industry and many music educators?

You got it. Now start redrawing those note games sitting in your closets, everyone. Buy a set of Cuisinaire rods. We’ve got some MIDI’ing to do.

Record

I’ve been messing around with Record, Propellerhead’s latest software foray into the world of DAW’s. I could comment on the sheer visual complexity of the software, but I think that conversation has already occurred with Reason.

With Propellerhead, it’s a matter of philosophy.

PROPELLEROSOPHY
For instance, let’s consider a single track of music. It contains the recorded audio, plus whatever effects you want to add. In a real-world studio (especially of the pre-digital era) a hardware effect like reverb was a box. A big, expensive box. Only an idiot would buy a separate box for each track in the mix – lunacy! Instead, engineers would be resourceful and bus everything through that effect and back. This is why mixers have sends and returns.

But wait – what about now? With Logic, I’ll often say to myself “I should set up the bus for compressing the drums” but I don’t. I just copy the channel strip setting and go. One plugin for each track. On a high-powered computer, who cares right? It makes more visual sense to forget the baggage and see EXACTLY what is affecting a given track (feel free to disagree but I’m sure they invented copy channel strip settings for this specific reason).

Record, Reason, and if you can remember, ReBirth have always thought about software as a bitmapped hardware screen. The mantra must be “make it look real” or something to that effect. Which is fine – they do a great job of mocking up fake real-looking devices. I’ve always felt their plugin design to be matchless.

But Record isn’t a plugin, and I don’t wager most of the users will be running it as a plugs (as many Reason users I know do). Record is supposed to reinvent recording, and humanize the process, which brings me to my evaluation of Beta 6.

THIS IS THE DEMO SONG:



What you see is three separate windows, glued together (from top)
The mixer, which scrolls up and down to reveal many, many controls
The “rack”, which seems to add to Reason’s hardware-based instrument and plugin metaphor
The arrange view, which is pretty much like Reason’s with some nifty time stretching methods for the audio tracks

Almost every DAW is visually complex, but here’s an example of why I feel Propellerhead could streamline this a bit.

In the above shot, the “Git Intro” track is showing three times.




Not only does each have a mute/solo (this is common), but each is geared toward a different use. For instance, I can’t arm the recording from the mixer, nor can I pan from the track view (without adding an automation lane) This means to get the most bang from each window I have to break it apart into three separate screens. Four if you add Reason in.

I like the idea of Record, but it’s pulling in two opposing directions, and I think it will hurt the marketing campaign a bit.

IF YOU WANT RECORD YOU EITHER:
Are a musician first and gearhead second – you want to cut the “BS” and record with a program written for the musician and not the engineer.
A Reason buff that loves to tinker with lots of engineer-specific tools and settings. You probably love to hit that tab key and mess with the plugs too.

See the problem? This is going to be in the same market as a very highly segmented family such as Logic/GarageBand or lightly segmented but popular mainstays as Pro Tools.

I could conceivably see the combination of Reason and Record competing with Ableton Suite but I can’t see people using them for the same tasks. (By the way, both Propellerhead and Ableton are always going to have trouble selling their wares as *recording* software – Ableton has found a niche with DJ’s – it will be interesting to see if a similar niche emerges for Record)

That leaves…Reason people who use ReWire to send Reason stuff into another program. These people prefer Reason instruments, and Reason effects. Guess what? Propellerhead was nice enough to add those audio tracks you’ve been wanting so you don’t have to deal with Pro Tools!

In closing, everyone should check Record out, if nothing else to convince yourself to buy a larger monitor. If you love Reason, you’ll love Record. If you feel indifferent to Reason, this will either cement your hatred for it or convince you to give it a second thought.

Disbanded

Many are aware of the RIAA’s landmark $1.9M judgement against Jammie Thomas this past week, and many are rightfully outraged at the fact this amount of statutory damage was claimed for 24 songs in her upload folder.

I’d say the main issue at hand isn’t the RIAA’s methods or the copyright system on the whole, but the system of statutory damages. These types of damage award money for theoretical, rather than actual losses.

Here’s a couple of examples…
Actual loss: you stole a sandwich from me. I’m hungry now because I don’t have it anymore.
Statutory loss: I sell sandwiches. I see you giving a sandwich away down the block. I assume that person normally would have paid me for a sandwich but you stepped in and messed up my business model. Jerk.

Notice that the latter assumes that person would have paid for the product. Recent data asserts that lost sales only make up a small percentage of those who bootleg music. Were it not available, they would just do without it. But I digress.

Let’s examine what might actually come of this ridiculous judgement:

1) The RIAA tries to collect, meets a supreme court challenge, and gets smacked down for going against precedents for this abuse of the statutory damage system

2) The RIAA decides to “be nice” and only fine Thomas for the ~8K they normally extort. Maybe cover some court costs even to smooth out the bad press.

See the problem? No matter what happens in this case; it’s not going to provide any kind of closure to the music sharing debate. The larger the judgement, the bigger the PR nightmare for the recording industry. I’m guessing they’ll half heartedly attempt option #2 but screw it up somehow, if you want to put some money on it.

Today at a major Music Education panel, the idea was brought up that the RIAA needs to disband. I’ve always known music educators to be particularly careful with copyright issues, but it seems no one is left to defend the RIAA but themselves.