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.