Category Archives: Music Software

How Identity Came Together (A Personal Account)

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Identity is now streaming everywhere and on Bandcamp. This is how it was made.

While doing an annual year‑end review of 2024 and planning for 2025, I started jotting down ideas on my whiteboard for a new music project – things that might be fun and interesting to try.

My initial brain dump

Some ideas were based on tools I wanted to use and/or get more familiar with (Spitfire Audio’s Fragile String Evolutions, Abbey Road Strings, Abbey Road Percussion, Universal Audio’s Luna and mixing plugins, Tone Master, Superior Drummer, Omnisphere, and Dorico). Others were genres I wanted to explore (Texas guitar, Motown‑ish funk bass, gospel chords & changes, a Nine Inch Nails‑style synth piece, an acoustic piece, a Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden song, a guitar texture looping piece, and a long textural orchestral composition).

I started by creating an abstraction of how I imagined the album starting and finishing, with some artist references to draw from.

Initial ideas for the album contour abstraction

I then fleshed out the abstraction to get an even clearer picture of what happened in between.

Filled out the abstraction by defining each piece from start to finish.

The working title was Harvest. I gave myself three months (June 1 to August 31, 2025) to finish it. (Spoiler: that didn’t happen.) For the most part, I stayed true to these abstractions and musical sketches I put together in that first week. 

The album became Identity – nine tracks that start small and elemental (a cappella) and end huge, bombastic, ornate, and broad, with everything in between. To prepare, I listened to and studied artists I’ve long admired: Todd Rundgren’s “Pretending to Care” (for the a cappella piece); Aretha Franklin’s “Amazing Grace” (gospel); Ry Cooder, Jedd Hughes, and Lyle Lovett (that lonesome Texas guitar feeling); Joe Dart’s playing on Vulfpeck’s “Dean Town” and James Jamerson for Motown funk; Robert Fripp’s Frippertronics (guitar looping); Nine Inch Nails’ Tension 2013 tour (Pino Palladino on “Sanctified”) and their collaboration with David Bowie (“I’m Afraid of Americans”) for a hard‑hitting synth piece; Ligeti and Penderecki (aleatoric and textural ideas); and Peter Gabriel’s New Blood Orchestra versions of “Signal to Noise” and “Rhythm of the Heat” (which informed my approach to the orchestral piece).

Again, my initial timeline was more than a little optimistic – “Vantage”, the orchestral piece, took on a life of its own. It grew from the Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden rock song into a large symphonic piece with a notated score and full orchestral instrumentation. It had so many challenges: compositionally (many metric modulations & meter changes), technically (maxed out rendering memory in Luna), and emotionally (it seemed to never end). It was a massive undertaking.

I created numerous spreadsheets to handle project planning, tracking, and observations along the way – things to remember next time. They were invaluable in helping me to get my thoughts clarified and progress tracked. Here are some screenshots of a few of them.

Songwriting status spreadsheet

Pre-Production tracker

Chigiana-styled composition planning spreadsheet for the orchestral piece, Vantage

Production tracker for all songs

Mixing and mastering prep tracker

Below is the monthly summary of how the whole thing unfolded – the good, the bad, and the metric modulation.

2025

May – Planning & Listening Parties
I spent the first week just listening and imagining. A cappella, Texas guitar, gospel, looped/texture guitar, funk, acoustic guitar, NIN‑style synth, Radiohead‑meets‑Soundgarden, orchestral – I wanted nine distinct genres that would somehow feel like one album. The working title was Harvest. I felt inspired.

June – Songwriting Drill Downs
Structured writing sessions, daily acoustic rehearsals, and “Cafe Show & Tell” (CST) performances for my wife. The Open D piece (I-40) started to feel real.

July – A Slow Month
I dove into the ThinkSpace BBCSO course as well as an InsideTheScore composing challenge. Little direct album progress, but my skills improved.

August – Intensive Writing & Research
Deep dives into Todd Rundgren, Aretha Franklin, Robert Fripp, Ry Cooder, Jedd Hughes, Lyle Lovett, Joe Dart & Vulfpeck, Robert Fripp, Nine Inch Nails, Radio Head, Sound Garden, Peter Gabriel & New Blood Orchestra, as well as the composers Holst, Ligeti and Penderecki. Daily work on all songs in rotation. By the end of the month, I had most song structures as well as full lyrics for the Gospel and NIN pieces. “Yes!!”

September – Daily Rehearsals & Charts
Wrapped up writing of structures and lyrics. Rehearsed all songs six or seven days a week. Started doing deep‑focus rehearsals: Angel section by section for 50 minutes, Fields and Gospel for 30 each, etc.. Lead sheets in Dorico underway.

October – Charts, CST & Logic Templates
Finished charts for Angel, Gospel, and RadioGarden. Restrung all guitars. Created Logic template files for every song – tempo, meters, markers, chord track. Continued performing at CSTs.

November – Production Begins
Recorded scratch tracks, primary guitar parts, and vocals. Re‑amped Fields through my pedalboard – “sounds amazing!” Also added more Spitfire libraries, UAD plugins, and Superior Drummer SDX to my system.

December – Vantage Takes Over
Everything came to a halt due to metric modulation and orchestration issues for Vantage. Eventually figured it out, after losing a lot of momentum. Then completed notation of Vantage – 2nd verse, chorus, strings, bridge, outro, transition. “Made significant progress – feeling good about the piece again.” 

2026

January – Orchestral Scoring & Logic Transition
Exported Dorico MIDI to Logic. Assigned articulations for every instrument. Fixed tempo errors where “.500” had gone missing. Discovered that Horns 1‑4 share samples (legato nightmare). Used Tim Davies’ approaches for string and woodwind arrangements – spread out arpeggios became a lifesaver.

February – Articulation Hell → Breakthrough
Created SHORTS and LONGS track stacks. Then the workflow adjustment that saved me: Humanisation → Quantisation (40%) → Copy to SHORTS → Re‑assign articulation → Delay offset. Applied to every instrument. The result? “Can’t express how relieved I feel … sounds so much better.” I rendered virtual instruments to audio and never looked back.

March – Vocals, Melodyne & First Luna Mix
Learned Melodyne (YouTube and Groove3). Started mixing in Luna, with “The Gospel” being the first song. Discovered clipping before the second chorus – a poorly edited comp region. But then: hardware Manley Voxbox on lead vocal. Huge difference. My vocal recipe became: clip gain → Melodyne → Voxbox → parallel Distressor → Shadow Hills + Pultec. Blackbox on the master bus – “sounds amazing”.

April – Album‑Wide Mix Prep
Mixed Angel, Fields, X9, Us, I‑40, Freedom, and Disintegration in Luna. Built a repeatable template. Added to my plug‑in cheat sheet: AMS doubling, Cooper Delay (default for widening), Oceanway in reverb mode.

May – Vantage Deep Mix, Mastering & Burnout
DeepSeek helped me generate tables for tape machines, console emulations, summing, reverbs, and delays. Then I created a Mix Processing Bus – all submasters → processing bus → trim bus. This let me keep my tone while hitting -6dB peak for mastering. Vantage went through multiple iterations. I was exhausted. I made a Plan B (only Adaptive Limiter) and a Plan A (full Ozone processing). Plan A sounded better. 

June – Submission & Release
June 1st: Submitted the audio files to CDBaby. June 5‑8: I went back and updated Vantage Dorico score with timpani, bass drum, piatti, tubular bells, tam tams. June 9: CDBaby passed inspection – album appeared on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Spotify and other streaming services. June 11: Set up Bandcamp release. Announced album release on my website.

Things I Want to Remember for Next Time

  • Abstractions for everything! – for albums, songs, lyrics, arrangements, mixes, mastering.
  • Parallel processing – work on all songs in rotation. Prevents getting stuck.
  • Keeping a project log was super helpful. Often I lost track of what I did and/or when I did something and having the log helped to put things in perspective.
  • Whiteboard word dumps – adjectives and emotional arcs before writing lyrics.
  • Modeling after other songs (e.g. Afraid of Americans) was super useful
  • Songwriting Status Table before notation, huge help!
  • Created Chigiana-like spreadsheet to identify everything I might want to do in Vantage. Definitely helped to give clarity.
  • While notating challenging parts, determine rhythms first then add pitches
  • Having a piano reduction for Vantage was key, particularly for the arpeggios in the WWs.
  • Having the Chord Track in Logic was super helpful, even just for reference while playing parts in live.
  • Rehearsals: 1) Extended focus (repeat one section at a time until locked) 2) Going over all songs for a couple of months was huge
  • Remembering Confidence on opening line is everything
  • Performing @ CST (Cafe Show & Tell) – weekly creative sharing. Uncovered every blind spot.
  • Re-Amping with two amps rules (Tone Master + Landau = Amazing)
  • Stereo pair mic’ing for room tones worked beautifully (watch for positioning and phase coherence)
  • Tim Davies approaches – string & woodwind arrangements, spread out arpeggios.
  • Shorts/Longs + delay offset – essential for realistic sample orchestras.
  • Remember to keep original MIDI tracks with Virtual Instruments removed after bouncing to audio. Hide, but keep them around.
  • Clip gain to -18dB RMS on all audio tracks.
  • Melodyne – superior to FlexPitch. Sibilant tool is a lifesaver.
  • Hardware Voxbox – massively better than software. Use it.
  • Parallel compression on acoustic guitar is awesome! Loved the Fairchild 770 on Us (Time Constant set to 5, cranked the input gain and the threshold so that -10dB of compression was applied.
  • Using different Studer A800 machines and tape formulations/setting per instrumentation group made a huge difference to create space EQ wise. See project log for specific settings.
  • DeepSeek was invaluable in figuring out which tape machines, tape, & settings to use in Vantage (orchestra & rock instrumentation). Also gave really helpful guidance in delays and reverbs to use on all instruments other than the vocals (see project log for specific settings). Really great.
  • Blackbox HG-2: “Mix bus 1” preset is pretty excellent on just about anything
  • Other plug-in mentions: AMS vocal doubling, Cooper Delay (default) for widening and giving presence particularly synth bass, and Oceanway in reverb mode on a send
  • Mix Processing Bus – submasters → processing bus → trim bus to -6dB. Decouples tone from delivery level.
  • Plan A / Plan B – always have a safety net. Saved me multiple times.
  • 96kHz workflow – record/mix at 96kHz, then convert: 24/96 → 24/44.1 → 16/44.1 with POW‑r #2 dithering.
  • The making/creating is the prize/goal. I’ll never be this intimate with these songs again.

What to Avoid (or Do Better)

  • Never skip the metronome during rehearsals – even if not recording to click. My timing suffered.
  • AI isn’t always great at doing musical analysis and often makes mistakes on advanced usage of music and audio apps.
  • Need a way to circle back to/review original intentions – e.g., The Gospel drifted from its original meaning. A one‑page abstraction for the lyrics might have caught it.
  • Create a tempo track before layered recording – I‑40 drifted because I had no click.
  • Need to remember to voice lead better when writing on guitar and transferring to other instruments
  • Practice in the recording setup – outside noise and unfamiliar mic position ruined takes.
  • Hit a roadblock w/ orchestrating Vantage. I think I was making it too important.
  • Don’t let burnout drive decisions – when exhausted, make a Plan B, rest, then do Plan A properly.

Identity is now available on all streaming platforms (such as Spotify), or you can also listen to it on Bandcamp.

Revisiting Colossus—Building a Full Orchestral Score and Template

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This past spring, I dove into the Spitfire Audio Colossus Re-Scoring Competition with an approach that started simple: a piano reduction in Dorico, then a MIDI export to Logic Pro, where I fleshed out the arrangement using Spitfire’s Contemporary Drama Toolkit, Abbey Road One, Ólafur Arnalds Cells, and Omnisphere 2. For a full breakdown of that process, see my post here.

After the competition, I decided to take things further by creating a full orchestral score in Dorico and building a new Logic Pro template based on Spitfire’s BBC SO and Abbey Road Orchestra. My goal was not only to improve the sound, but also to test a workflow I could use for future orchestral projects.

The Good: Dorico’s Notation Power

Writing the expanded score in Dorico was a pleasure—everything felt intuitive and efficient, especially compared to Finale. But when it came time to export MIDI for Logic, I hit a few snags.

The Not-So-Good: MIDI Export Challenges

Depending on the expression map you are using, Dorico exports a lot of extra MIDI data, and there’s no way to turn it off. The expression and modulation information didn’t translate well to Logic, so I ended up deleting everything but the notes and velocities and redoing all the expressive details by hand. The BBC SO expression maps from Dorico’s website didn’t help much either.

I get that Dorico can’t know how I want velocities mapped to my sample libraries, but it still made the process more tedious than I’d hoped.

Mixing & Template Insights

Spitfire’s plugins have multiple volume controls, which can get confusing. I found that using Logic’s mixer for overall volume, and plugin controls for expression/modulation, made things much easier. Other key takeaways:

  • Logic’s velocity values didn’t always match Dorico’s (fff = 100 instead of 120–127).
  • Short articulations need careful velocity/expression; long ones depend on modulation.
  • Map divided parts (like Flute 1 & 2) across solo instrument/leader and section instruments.
  • Quantizing and humanizing MIDI in Logic helped restore a natural performance.

Mixing Approach

For this version, I used the AMEK 9099 on group buses (details here), and my usual mix bus chain: SSL G Bus Compressor, Fairchild 670, and ATR-102.

Downloads & Links

  • My updated 2025 Orchestral Template for Logic Pro:
Orchestral Template 2025.logicxDownload
  • This is the final audio master of the piece:
  • You can view and download the Full Score here:
Schoonmaker Spitfire Colossus Trailer – Full ScoreDownload
  • This is the final version of the video:

Conclusion

Upgrading my competition entry was a valuable learning experience. Dorico is a fantastic notation tool, but exporting to Logic for detailed mockups still takes some manual work. The payoff: a more expressive, nuanced orchestral sound—plus a workflow I’ll use again.

Dorico

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Towards the end of last year I decided to try out a demo version of Steinberg’s Dorico Notation Software, as I had heard great things about it from some of my friends at Chigiana. I loved it so much that I bought a full version once the demo expired. How I wish that I had been able to use it while I was in Berklee’s program. It’s so much more enjoyable to work with than Finale, on so many levels. 

While I found some great tutorials on YouTube and Groove3, it wasn’t the same as doing a real project, from start to finish. For this I chose to create a project that would combine a few things I had been wanting to do for a while. 

First, notate a full orchestral score in Dorico, while using Note Performer (which I hadn’t really used yet). Secondly, analyze and recreate some of the scores in composer Ryan Lynch’s “10 ESSENTIAL Orchestral Scores You Need To Study” list. For this project I chose to focus on Mozart’s Symphony No 40 in G minor.  

Based on the original score found on IMSLP, here is the version that I created (first five minutes of the piece):

Mozarts-Symphony-No.-40-in-G-minor-FULL-SCOREDownload

And here is the audio via Note Performer (and some processing in Logic using UAD’s Studer A800, SSL G Bus Compressor, Fairchild 770, and Ozone 9): 

Below is the analysis that I put together, based on Ryan Lynch’s template:

Overall, I really enjoyed this project as it helped me to get more familiar with Dorico while giving me an even deeper appreciation of just how great Mozart’s music is. Just amazing!

Freeze!

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I was working on putting together a new orchestral template last night and realized that I was maxing out my system’s CPU and RAM. This file was bringing my entire system to a crawl. It was late so I decided to go to sleep and come back to it the next day.

After waking up, I still felt a bit defeated and bummed out that I wouldn’t be able to use all the cool things that I put into this new template. I started to think of how I could salvage the work I had done in the way of alternative workflows. I enlisted my wife in an impromptu brainstorming session and she started asking me questions about the need for this type of template and what it would provide. I then described the time it would save and how I might consider having different versions of the template for different phases of production (e.g. a version with ensemble patches for general writing, fuller version with individual instrument parts & limited articulations and another version for mixing).

Then something that I had completely forgot about occurred to me: Freeze Tracks. I wasn’t sure if my plug-in supported this functionality so I rushed to my computer and opened the massive file to find out. To my relief and astonishment, it worked!

I’m so stoked as this will most likely be my go-to file for the next year or more. Should be a huge time saver, allowing me to get right to work on ideas, not having to build a project file up every time that I want to do something with orchestral instrumentation in it.

Thanks for being awesome (again), Logic/Apple!

For anyone interested, here’s the template file that I put together:

BBCSO-Pro.logicx

Is This Thing Live?

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I had been wanting to get more familiar with Ableton Live for quite a while and the 2019 Spring Concert was the perfect opportunity to do just that. While I love Logic Pro X for writing and production, I was intrigued by the idea of the scene based approach Live has for performance and wanted to see what I could do with it. 

Fortunately I found this excellent tutorial on Groove3: https://www.groove3.com/tutorials/Ableton-Live-10-Explained. It got me up to speed really quickly and before I knew it I was putting together the entire concert in Live.

I found Live to be a pretty straight forward (but deep) and well thought out application. It’s feels “fluid” in it’s workflow and very robust. I am looking forward to using it more in the future, particularly for coordinating music with visuals. Thanks Ableton!  

Logical

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I’ve been a Logic Pro X user for a few years now. Previously, I was a sworn Pro Tools devotee for years (in large part due to the amazing time I had working at Digidesign in the late 90’s). While the earlier versions of Logic felt anything but logical to me, I have really come to love the latest versions of Logic Pro X. I feel it’s a fantastic app for writing and production.

I love the layout, signal flow/routing, EQs, compressors, virtual instruments (especially Drummer), arrangement tracks, comp tracks, extensive MIDI and audio editing tools, Flex editing and (for the most part) Smart Tempo.

Now, I still have a few pet peeve’s here and there. One being that Smart Tempo doesn’t always do what you think it should with odd time signatures. Try to get the session time signature of 6/8 onto newly recorded tracks… Smart Tempo defaults to 4/4 and converting & getting everything to sync up can be a chore. Aside from that, most issues I’ve had were easily solved with a quick Google search.

I recently realized how much I enjoy working with Logic Pro X as I was preparing for the 2019 Spring Equinox Concert and album. Thanks Apple!

Omnipotent

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Absolutely love the sounds I can get out of Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere. Fat synth basses, warm pads, beautiful textures, fantastic rhythms from it’s arpeggiator, extensive synthesis editing and signal processing. With over 14,000 built-in sounds, audio import/processing, 500+ synth oscillator waveforms, wavetable synthesis, granular synthesis, 57 effect processors, FM/Ring modulation, 34 filter algorithms, performance mode (stacked or layering), 20 oscillators and 8 LFOs per patch, 12 envelopes and substantial HW synth integration it really does feel pretty limitless.

That being said, Omnisphere seems like a bit of a memory hog. It crashed a number of times when using it within Logic Pro X (crash logs submitted). It’s a bummer when it happens but to be fair it appears to be due to switching between Logic files that have a lot of other plug-ins instantiated as well.

I found a really useful course on Lynda.com that helped me get up to speed using it just in time for the Spring Equinox concert and album: Learning Omnisphere 2.

If you want to add an amazing sounding software synth to your set up then this is it!

Battery

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I’ve owned Native Instruments’ Battery for a few years now and hadn’t done much with it until recently. Partially because it was bundled with NI Komplete and I wasn’t really sure how it worked. But also due to the preconception I had that it was mainly for electronic/dance music and wouldn’t suit what I was trying to do. Then I stumbled onto this course on Lynda.com: Learning Battery 4 and it made perfect sense to me. I began to think about how I could use it on my songs.

It’s a fantastic plug-in that allows you create custom kits either using your own samples or from a large built-in library of instruments. It also has extensive editing, routing and processing options.

I ended up using Battery on a couple of the tracks for the Equinox Album – “Dew Drop” and “Frost”. One thing I loved doing was taking Drum MIDI files from Superior Drummer and pumping them into one of the kit presets in Battery like “Telefon Tel Aviv Kit”. This gave a humanistic style of playing to a drum machine sounding kit. Really great!

Superiority Complex

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I’ve had Superior Drummer for about 10 months now and I have to say it’s quite an impressive piece of software. Actually, it feels like the type of virtual instrument/drum library that I imagined having way back in 1999. That being said, it’s a deep and powerful program that can be intimidating at first, making it hard to feel comfortable with.

While I used it on a few projects (“On and On”, “Lost Thoughts”, “Nets”) it wasn’t until the the Spring Equinox Album that I really got to know it well. This is in large part due to a fantastic tutorial on Groove 3 that Luke Oswald put together: “Superior Drummer 3 Explained”.

The course is very thorough, clear and well produced. It not only helped me to understand the ins & outs of the software but to also appreciate how superior it truly is when compared to other virtual instruments I’ve worked with in the past.

It has fantastically recorded samples of a wide variety of kits with close/overhead/room/ambient/bleed/surround mic options. Extensive editing power for custom tailored sound design, getting instruments just the way you want them. A great groove library with excellent search and “Tap 2 Find” functionality (which I love) with a powerful grid editor. It’s fully extensible for additional sample and/or drum MIDI libraries. Has a built in mixer with extensive routing options, great sounding effects and excellent sounding presets (personal favorite is “Ludwig Classic Default”). All this makes it super easy to bring up a great sounding drum track rather quickly.

Even though I don’t see myself using Superior Drummer on everything I do I’m really glad to have it available to me.

Thanks Luke Oswald, Toontrack and Groove3!

Guitar Toolkit

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I really like this app. I’ve had it on my phone for years and work with it almost every day. It’s well thought out and pretty extensive in it’s feature set (tuner, metronome, chord/scale/arpeggio libraries).

While I mainly use it as a metronome I love the chord finder functionality. Just select the notes of the chord you are playing on the virtual fretboard and the app will tell you the chord name(s) that it can be. This was something that I had wanted for a long time and it’s now on my phone. Super useful!