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!
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!
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.
In the past, I was pretty much an “all or nothing” type of person when it came to studying, writing, recording or performing. Meaning, I would exclusively focus on one area, say studying, for an extended period of time, at the expense of the other areas that are important to me. The great thing about that is you get really focused on a particular subject. The bad thing is all forward motion in any other areas stops completely.
For a long while, I had been wanting to divide my time between study and production. Ideally studying early on in the day with some sort of production later.
So one of my main goals for the first quarter of this year was to do exactly that. Once I got a workable schedule in place, I loved it. It was tremendously rewarding to see progress being made in so many different areas that interest me.
I think the key to allowing all of that to happen was to limit how much time I gave any one area of focus. That made space for everything else.
For my studies I continued with my 5 minutes per subject approach for a variety of subjects: ear training, guitar studies (music reading and chords/rhythm parts), bass, keyboards (scales and chords), songwriting/chord progressions, notation and vocal exercises.
I also began alternating days of focus. One day of new material, with the next being review of what I had already done. This kept everything very manageable and enjoyable. So much so that I looked forward to studying every day.
For songwriting/production I would do something similar by only allowing 30 minutes per song per day. This helped keep the songs new and interesting throughout the process. It also helped get me “unstuck” when I felt blocked. As soon as the timer went off I would move on to the next song and get positive momentum going again. By the time I came back to the song I was having an issue with I was in a different space and usually found a solution within minutes.
There were a number of things that I took away from the 2019 Spring Concert, but perhaps the biggest thing I learned was the importance of rehearsing with the full system set up for more than one day. I think the ideal amount of time would have been about a week.
I did rehearse every day over the last month and a half, but always sitting down, without microphones/PA and playing at lower volume levels. Also, it wasn’t until the day before the concert that I had Ableton Live completely configured (audio files, MIDI mappings, sound patches, virtual instruments, etc). Up until then I was practicing with Logic Pro X – the app that I did all the production in.
Use audio stems instead of “minus 1” tracks next time. Would be nice to have more isolation of tracks in the future (particularly synth basses and drums).
Should coordinate visuals better. This time was more like a proof of concept. Going forward I’d like to have them tailored to each song in Final Cut Pro and then triggered in Live, which could take a considerable amount of time to do. Need to allot for that. Perhaps 2 weeks or more?
Would be great to have extra time with everything set up to get extra footage for song videos (e.g. multiple passes of each song during the rehearsals, close ups of the gear/lighting, abstract images, etc.)
Clip for one of mics I planned on using was missing. Ended up using a condenser mic with a mic pre, which sounded totally different.
Both mic stands kept drifting downward when positioned over the keyboard. Need to repair or replace them.
Performing with mic stand positions (especially when singing while playing keyboards) was awkward at times.
Disable notifications on my laptop!
Most importantly, having the extra time to rehearse will make it easier for me to get into the flow of the music.
Things that worked:
Practicing the songs regularly was a win for being prepared musically.
Using Ableton Live worked pretty much the way that I hoped it would.
The equipment set up and layout of the room was really good.
The contour of the concert provided a nice variety of styles.
Visuals added a lot of depth and dimension to the feeling of the space.
Using Guitar Rig for performance worked really well for maintaining balance of volume between instruments (vs using an external guitar amp).
Here’s a beautiful painting of the layout of the room that my wife made. I think it’s fantastic!
I’m a true believer in “starting with the end in mind” as it can make all the difference in whether a project is completed or not. So when it came time to identify what I wanted to do for the 2019 Spring Concert I had a brainstorming session with my whiteboard:
For those that can’t read my scribbles, here’s what it says:
Spring Concert 2019 Location: Home Living Room
Duration: 30 – 60 Minutes
Theme: Spring, new life, budding, becoming, cycles
Genres: Acoustic and electric
Prep for live performance:
Bounce tracks to RC 500 or to use in Ableton Live?
Determine live rig
Determine visual projection system & how to sync to music
Looking back I pretty much did everything listed on the board. Granted I ended up creating various spreadsheets to go into greater detail:
I also created an outline of how I would like the contour of the concert/album to be:
Here’s the translation:
Contour of Concert (Songs/Album) • String Piece ( string quartet -> symphony)
• African Drums Piece
• Spacey Lead Guitar Piece (using the Dark Side and Freqout pedals) <- use “Thaw” for the inspiration and title?
• Piano Piece
• Electronic Piece (“Crushing Minimalism”?)
• Acoustic Guitar Piece (“Tempest”)
• Tibetan Bell and Bowl (perhaps to begin and end with or to use in the middle
All of which ended up being what I did for the concert and album. The String piece became “Enchantment”, the African Drums piece became part of the middle section in “Signs of Life”, the Spacey Lead Guitar piece became “The Thaw”, the Piano piece became “Frost”, the Electronic piece became “Signs of Life”, the Acoustic Guitar piece is “Tempest” and I used the Tibetan Bowl for the beginning of the concert.
One of the things that I was hoping to do during the first quarter of this year was to continue my studies while making an album (and preparing to perform said album) for our 2019 Spring Equinox Concert. I estimated all the timelines needed for studies, pre-production, production, editing, mixing, concert prep and setup. I thought I had a reasonable plan.
I had a good run for most of the quarter, maintaining a daily study schedule of ~4 hours a day with ~4-5 hours of production/prep all throughout January and February. It felt really good to be making progress in so many areas on a daily basis.
That was until the beginning of March when I realized that I had exceeded the amount of time that I had allotted for pre-production and production. I was supposed to be editing and mixing when a majority of the songs were nowhere near being ready. I had a strong feeling that I could get everything done if I abandoned the study regimen.
So that’s what I did. Throughout March, I focused 100% on the production/editing/mixing of the songs with some concert prep along the way. This went on until the _very_ early morning of the Spring Equinox (3/23). I met my deadline, all the songs were finished but at the cost of not meeting my goals for other areas of development.
Looking to the future, I hope to return to my days of studies _and_ production. This time allowing more leeway for production either in the number of songs or as to when I expect them to be done. Perhaps I will spread things out over two quarters. One being dedicated to writing and pre-production of the songs with a concert of the stripped down/basic versions. The other being focused on production/editing/mixing and concert of the fully arranged songs. As of now this approach seems reasonable, then again I thought the plan for this past quarter was reasonable… We’ll have to try and see what happens!
Before even meeting my collaborator for Beatcamp @ RealWorld 2018 we received an assignment from the camp director Marc Langsman: select an image from the National Geographic archive that would serve as the basis of inspiration for the song that we would produce during the workshop.
At first this felt a bit daunting, as there are well over 9.3 million images in the archive, but I held the attitude that I was going to find it quickly and that I’d know it when I saw it. Within 10 minutes I came across this fantastic photograph taken by Oliver Apicella:
To me, it said everything about what we would be doing for the project: casting our nets, hoping to catch the big fish – inspiration.
Fortunately my collaborator, Patrick Hill, agreed and suddenly we were working together in the same direction. (Great idea, Marc!) We also agreed to create a completely new song, just for the camp and that everything would be done from scratch.
From there the song came together rather quickly. We had the chord progressions, riffs, melodies, lyrics, arrangement and drums all done on the first day of the camp. The next day we built the song up by tracking bass, guitars, piano and vocals. The final day of the camp we recorded a violin solo, edited the tracks, mixed it all down and gave it the name “Nets”.
Aside from having a dream come true (getting to make music at Real World) the camp taught and reminded me of quite a few things:
1) To stay focused on the goal and feel as if it is already done. I’ve been doing this with great success for a couple years now and it helped a number of times during the camp. Particularly given the time constraints and the ever-present temptation to try too many things.
2) Strive to hear my inner voice even in the midst of chaos/activity all around, as well as differing opinions. This doesn’t mean “ignore everyone else”, it simply means don’t forsake my own intuition/vision just because of what’s going on around me.
3) Go with the path of least resistance. E.g. don’t insist that I do something myself if someone else can do it better/quicker. Early on in the camp I made a conscious decision to involve the studio musicians as much as possible. Normally I would opt to do everything myself but here we had a small army of professional musicians/engineers/producers ready and willing to help out. I realized that I should make the most of this opportunity, particularly if I wanted the track to be finished on time.
4) Be open to seeing how someone else might do something. Originally my plan for mixing was to do a first pass myself and then get feedback as to what should be fixed. Then I had the thought “I pretty much know what I am going to do and how it will sound, why not see how a pro would do it”. So I asked the Head Engineer Oli Jacobs if he wouldn’t mind handling it while I looked over his shoulder and he said “sure”. Turns out that this was one of the highlights of the entire camp for me. It was fantastic being able to see his workflow, his choices/decisions and being able to ask him questions as to why. He was super helpful, responsive and kind throughout the process.
Thanks again to everyone involved in making “Nets” a reality. Here are the credits:
Glenn Schoonmaker (Composer), Patrick Hill (Composer), Nicole Fermie (Vocals), AD Chivers (Vocals), Howard Gill (Drums), Paul Whalley (Bass), Graham Kearns (Guitar), Jonathan Page (Piano), TiiT Kikas (Violin), Oli Middleton (Recording Engineer), Oli Jacobs (Mix Engineer), Tim Oliver (Mastering Engineer), Marc Langsman (BeatCamp Director), Rena Biring (Beatcamp Organizer)
Man, what can I say? I am a lucky so and so. I just got back from an amazing time doing a 3 day music production workshop focused on collaboration at Peter Gabriel’s “Real World” recording studios. I have fantasized about making music at this studio since I first read about it in the early 90’s.
“Beatcamp at Real World” is a fantastic experience and I recommend it to anyone that wants to work in one of the world’s finest recording studios with consummate engineers, musicians and producers who are ready and willing to help you make your creative vision a reality. My thanks goes out to everyone involved in making it an incredible weekend that I won’t soon forget.
I thought it might be cool to take what I’ve been learning about compression and EQ and practice with previous music sketches. I decided to start with the very first music sketch that I posted, “Vancouver”. It now feels like a completely new song to me.
In fairness, the original focus of the Music Sketches project was to create simple new song ideas, quickly. That being said it inspires me to know that I can take old ideas and make them feel new again.
To celebrate the new audio mix I did a video with new visuals as well.
