Final Thoughts

So, i have two main things i want to talk about here; the first is teamwork, and the second is answers to some of the questions that were being asked in class of other groups which i was unable to get to, since i needed to run off to another exam.  That is, i want to talk about what i got out of this course, and where i might use this knowledge in the future.
So, teamwork was an issue for me throughout this project, not because i had any issues with my partners, any fights or major disagreements, or anything of the sort, but instead because when it comes to doing something creative such as creating a synthesizer or a piece of music, i will often get an idea in my head of what i want and what i think will sound good, and i then have trouble accepting others' ideas.  This came up with our original synthesizer, which i honestly did not like the sound of, and a lot of the musical ideas and recorded bits which Logan and Steven made independently.  There was nothing wrong with these things per se, but since they didn't fit what i had in mind, i had trouble in figuring out how to bend my ideas around theirs.  I did try this, and in the end i think i was pretty successful at working with them to create a final product which was ours and not mine.  But i also definitely learned that when it comes to creative projects, i think i probably work best alone, where i have control over everything.
As for what i got out of this course, i think i learned a lot not only about the theory of how sound is processed within a computer, but also practical skills with manipulating that sound to create the music that you want to create.  As a music major and would-be composer, i can of course see myself using programs like Finale in the future, but i have not really settled on what sort of music i want to create, and one of the many areas that interests me is electronic music.  I could very well end up doing a lot of work with computerized sound in the future, and if so, i will now be one step closer to understanding whatever program i end up using.  I would of course love to be able to build my own digital audio workstation now, but that is expensive, so i will likely have to wait until i can save up a good bit of money.  Overall, i really enjoyed this class, and can see what i learned here being very useful in my future, either as a part of my career or as an enjoyable hobby.

Final Product

So, this blog is a little late, but what i'm going to do is explain what we did to finish off our project in this post, and then talk about general things / wrap up in a final post.  So, last week was very busy for me, so the only time i was able to spend on our project was Wednesday afternoon / evening after our normally scheduled class.  Luckily that is when Steven and Logan could stay to work too.  Steven had worked on a second synthesizer, and had also recorded some things with it which i really liked.  He had also added a reverb to the uke which i maybe didn't like as much, but which was ok and i decided to roll with, since at this point we were mostly using the uke for its LFO properties that i had added anyway.  So, we fiddled with our first synth a bit, and got something which sounded less harsh and sharp, and then i sat at the keyboard and helped work out a sort of melody to play with this synth, as well as uke chords to harmonize with various other parts of our piece.  We then moved things around, and after a crash and a 15 minute scare where we thought we had lost everything, we were able to find our file and master it.  After that we all left, and i was unable to do anything else until Friday in class, when we worked on remastering our track and getting it to export properly.

The "Rough Draft"

So, i have a lot to cover here, both the things i did yesterday in class and what i accomplished today with Stephen.  Yesterday, after Jason's presentation on mastering, i worked on getting the MIDI data which i had exported from Finale for the ukulele sampler to play to sound right, since the uke sampler has different samples it plays depending on the velocity, and the velocities from the Finale MIDI were all wrong.  Once i got that sounding right, i started playing around with effects on the uke samples, to see if there was anything interesting i could do.  I still wanted to mainly stick with the basic sound of the ukulele, but i also really like the effects of the LFO, and tried to mess around with the options for the LFO in NN-XT to get some cool ideas.  What i eventually came up with was a delayed LFO effect on the velocity of the uke samples.  This way the sound of the uke in the first part of our piece is unaffected, because of the delay, but then at the end of this first part, when the last chord is held out, the LFO begins to take effect, and this is shown of more in the second part, which also shows off the synthesizer and some of the different pieces that Logan and Stephen have come up with for that.  Stephen and i worked on that today, laying out the different pieces of recorded MIDI so that we will have a rough draft of our piece to show tomorrow, and to showcase our two instruments.  Also, i put the finishing touches on the LFO effects for the sampler.

It's all coming together

So, after getting the looped ukulele samples to work in NN-XT, i spent some time fiddling with the different settings available, and plan to still do so a bit tomorrow, but after consulting with Logan, we both decided that we really liked the original sound of the ukulele, and to not change it much.  The main change that i did make was to slow the release of the notes, so that they would hold over a little after my fingers left the keys, like a real ukulele would.  The other main thing which i did was go into Finale and work out a basic little ukulele tune to show off what the sampler patch i have created is capable of.  I plan to mesh this with the other recordings which  Logan and Stephen have been working on, so that we can have a neat little bit of music which shows off each instrument alone and then together.  The main issue with the MIDI data extracted from Finale is the velocity of the notes.  I did not pay attention to the velocity i was using while composing, but it is actually integral to creating the sound i want, since the ukulele sampler has options for soft and hard plucked notes.  I need to see if i can find a way to go into said MIDI data tomorrow during class and edit these so as to make the sound i want.

Success!

So, the main problem which i left with over Thanksgiving break was that the loops which i had made in Loop Editor on the MacBook Pro weren't being recognzed by NN-XT, and i didn't know what to do.  Well, after watching the video for how to enter recorder samples again, i figured out what i had been doing wrong, and was able to get them to work correctly in the sampler after a minor hitch where NN-XT was reading them as being much lower pitches than they actually are, causing them to be pitch-bended to a silly degree when i tried to play them in the ukulele's standard octave.  The next step is to mess around with the options in NN-XT to create the specific sound which i want.

Making Progress

The first thing i did in the lab today was make sure that i had multiple backup copies of all of my samples at each stage, and then did some additional editing before putting the samples into NN-XT to see what they would sound like without loops.  Once i did this, i noticed that some of the samples were noticeably quieter than the others, which made it really obvious that the notes were coming from different recordings when playing scales.  I went back and normalized everything in Audition, which solved most of the problems.  The only one which still sounds a bit odd is the transition from the C string sample to the E string sample between D sharp and E.  I'll wait and see if i think its a big enough issue to re-record, or if there is something i can do in editing to smooth it out.
After going through all of the samples in Loop Editor on the MacBook, i found that some of the notes actually had very simple and easy to work with patterns, while some were very complicated and hard to match up.  However, when i ported them into NN-XT, they did not seem to have kept their loops.  Either that, or i had done something wrong in saving or entering them, but i don't know what.  I will have to look into that more next time.

Sample Editing

In class on Friday, the main project that I worked on was continuing to edit the ukulele samples.  I moved each sample to its own file, and then transported them over to one of the MacBooks in order to use Loop Editor to set them up as full samples which could be used in NN-XT.  However, It turns out that ukulele samples are particularly hard to find a good loop for, and I am not convinced that it can be done.  Since the wave is constantly decaying over time, the start and end points of any loop need to be fairly close together, so that the amplitude does not change noticeably, and the actual shape of the wave is in constant change due to the decay, meaning that it can be very hard to find a loop where there is not a significant difference in the shape at one end of the loop and the other.  It's now Saturday, and I am about to try again to get these loops to work.  I will see if i can find some which sound decent, and then take one or two test samples over to NN-XT to see how the whole sample sounds, since Loop Editor only plays back the one loop you have selected.  If I cannot find a way to make them have loops which sound ok to me, I may just decide to not include loops in these samples.

Making Progress

So, I've been meaning to write one of these for a while now.  Since my last entry, we have decided a bit more on a direction for our synthesizer, and i have recorded the ukulele samples.  So, last week on Wednesday and Friday, after hearing some of the different things that could be done with the Subtractor Synthesizer in Reason, I had the idea for a sort of "Ukuleles in Space" sound, and Logan and Stephen both liked that idea.  Then, over this weekend I came into the lab and recorded individual notes on the ukulele to use for the synthesizer.  My main project now is going to be to edit these samples down into something that could be used in a sampler patch for NN-XT.  Hopefully i can finish that by the end of the week.

Basic Plan

Ok, so after a few days of working together in the lab with my two partners, here are our ideas so far, and our plan going forward:
Sampler:
Logan and i both separately had the idea to use a ukulele as the basic instrument from which we would collect samples, so we agreed to go with that.  I offered to bring my uke in one weekend to record samples, however i won't have time to do that until next weekend, so for now that project is on hold.  Once i have the samples, either i or one of the other two will work on adding effects and loading the final samples into NNXT.  My personal idea as far as adding effects is that adding a sort of echo, as if the ukulele were being played through a tube could sound pretty interesting, although simply creating a very authentic ukulele sampler would also be nice, since there is none currently in the NNXT sample banks.
Logan and Stephen are going to focus on the synthesizer, and i will mostly just give ideas and feedback about what we might do on that front.
Once both of our instruments have reached a decent amount of completeness, i plan to compose a short piece of music using the two instruments in Finale, then transporting it into Sonar to create a final product.

That is our basic plan going forward.  I will sample the ukulele and help with effects, and compose a piece using our final two instruments.  I will probably end up being a good bit more hands on than that with the other parts of the process, but those are my two responsibilities.

Homework Questions, 27/9/11

1. Personally, I find a lot of value in combining knowledge from multiple fields.  Everyone brings something different to the table, and while a specialist from any one of the fields of art, science and math, and technology could probably use the equipment and software which we have explored so far to create music, by combining their knowledge these experts can use the equipment to its fullest extent by exploring and creating much more than any one of them could do alone.  For example, While a music major could probably use Finale and compose a standard song, by knowing why certain frequencies which sound good together are mathematically related, they could explore new harmonies between different frequencies.  A sound technician who understands the physics of sound can better design a surround sound system, or better align the speakers in a concert hall to produce the best sound.  A scientist who knows the basics of how to manipulate sound with a program like Sonar could play around for a while, but by understanding the principles of traditional western music theory they could begin to write their own music.  The ways which these different fields can positively benefit each other are countless.

2. I have a number of different things which i would really like to explore before the end of this course.  I think that the two main ideas that i wish to act upon are i) I would like to use Finale to compose something of worth in my eyes, either for myself or with the instruments designed by others, and ii) I would like to experiment with frequencies between the standard semitones, and create a MIDI instrument using them that not only allows me to play about with them at length, but also sounds good.