Joseph, Look and See – Premiere Performance

Bandcamp, How I Love Thee

Feedburner Email Subscriptions – Where Are My Photos?

I don’t exactly have the answer to that question yet…  At least definitively.  But I am going to test a few things out with this post.  Yep, more live testing, but it’s the best way to see results…  Good or bad.  So I will try to accomplish two things:

1.  Embed my Logo into the post via Feedburner’s Feed Image Burner and Flickr.

2.  Make the photos you see in the actual post appear in the email.  For this, I have installed a plugin that changes the image URLs to “absolute URLs.”  Appropriately enough, it’s called URL Absolutifier.  Since I am limited on time right now, I’m just going to shoot from the hip and see if it works.  If not, I’ll move on to stage 2:  Actual Research

If this works, there will be a logo in the email subscription email and an image of the MTT Blog Banner.

Feel free to report results…  Also, if you have any suggestions on the best time to have email subscriptions delivered in general, please let me know.  Thanks for reading!

Posted via email from Music Tech Talk on Posterous

Feedburner RSS Feed Changes – File Too Big

Subscribe by Email – An Easier Way to Follow

Gallery of Living Art 2010

Gallery of Living Art, March 2010

A Pleasant Surprise & The Gallery of Living Art 2010

Sonar 8 – Features and First Experiences

It thought about re-titling this post “Why it is Dangerous to Play with DAWs” or “Knowing Just Enough to be Dangerous” or “Don’t Try This at Home” or “How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Brass Quartet,” but since I couldn’t decide between them, I stuck with the original title. After all, this is a re-post of the very first article I wrote for Music Tech Talk, at which time, no one even knew this blog existed. Now that a few more people have run across my ramblings on various musical and technological subjects and I can post to multiple platforms all at once using (you guessed it) Posterous, I will re-introduce the first couple of articles. Besides, I doubt too many people really have time to go back and look at every article on someone’s blog archives. I know I don’t. Read more »

Securing Copyright – What Musicians Need to Know

Securing copyright for any music, recorded, written, midi or otherwise, can be a fairly simple process when artists know the “who,” the “why’s,” the “how’s” and “how-not-to’s” involved with the process.  For example, anyone who creates and original work is entitled to copyrights for that creation.  However, while copyright is automatic, registering that copyright is required in order to establish an official public record.  While copyright registration is a simple concept, not all methods of copyright verification are effective.  It is essential to understand what does and does not work in terms of securing a copyright. Read more »

Joseph, Look and See – SATB & Piano

There’s nothing I love more, musically speaking, than finishing a new piece. Today I finished a new Christmas choral work called Joseph, Look and See. It was composed for friend and director, Chris Latta.

I try to tailor works, as closely as I can, to an ensemble’s needs. JLS turned out very well, even while sticking to certain requirements. In fact, sometimes it is actually easier to write given certain criteria, because it helps to focus the compositional process. I was particularly happy with the interplay between the piano and choral parts. Generally, I try to make both equally interesting and complementary.

The following example uses a string sound in place of the choral MIDI sound, because I find the strings to have more in common with the texture of real voices than most synthetic vocal textures seem to.

Score samples can be found on the Detail Page page or here.

Next, I will move on to my big project… Transcribing the orchestral version of Chorus of Psalms to be performed by organ and chorus. More on that topic later…

A New Look For My Website

Please be patient with my website experimentation, but I always like to try to do things myself… That means a lot of trial and error. The good news is that my home page loads a heck of a lot faster now and I like the new look. The other pages will be changed one-at-a-time as I get to them.

Christmas Choral Music Scores – Package Pricing

ANNOUNCEMENT:

Christmas choral scores now available through D. M. Gardner Music at a package price.

SAVE 20% off retail prices by purchasing as a package!

This full-spectrum choral selection features pieces for all ranges of your choir, highlighting the full range of talent your choir has to offer.

This package includes:

The First Noel (SSAA)
Precious Child (SATB)
Christ My Savior (TTBBBB)

Note: This package contains only a cappella scores.

Visit this link to take advantage of this great collection of Christmas scores or to learn more about these pieces.

Why I Self-Publish

I have only attempted to publish 4 of my works outside of D. M. Gardner Music. Of those 4, all were published successfully. However, I quickly began to have emotional issues with signing away rights to my compositions, as I have invested many hours and potentially shortened my lifespan significantly by writing them. Much more than a product, I wanted to market my music for what it really is… A deeply personal, introspective expression of various aspects of faith, love, family, humor and life in general.

One of the pieces that I think best exemplify this is Annette. I wrote this piece as a gift for J. Roger Wilson’s and his wife, Annette’s, wedding anniversary. It was hard not to be moved by the beautiful words that Roger had penned, making it that much easier to write the music.

I rely on friends, associations, networking and a few good Google searches to get my work out there. Except, of course, for those ensembles I am specifically writing music for, everyone else trips upon my music by word-of-mouth or happenstance. While I sell significantly fewer scores this way, I make significantly more on each sale, allowing me to invest 80+% of profits toward the creation of new music. So, instead of people supporting the welfare of publishing companies, they are supporting only the future of compositions by D. M. Gardner (me).

Pieces like Precious Child have actually received solicitation by publishers and have been very popular overall, receiving numerous performances. Precious Child is the perfect example of the type of music that could potentially sell in much greater numbers through a big publisher. …And though I have not completely ruled out that possibility, I am currently content to sell to those people who happen to come across my site. That way, I am sure they picked this particular piece because they liked it, not because it came in a package deal with a bunch of other scores.

This is probably as close as I will get to becoming a court composer for the wealthy, as that concept seems to be a bit antiquated. It’s a good thing I am not in this for the money. Unless, of course, that means spending it on my passions rather than making it. My philosophy on spending money business-wise is that if I don’t make it, I can’t spend it. Therefore, it is imperative that I see a least a little profit from sales of my music, or I will eventually have to stop marketing my music all together.

The good news is, I will still continue to write music even if I end up broke doing it. That is because my passion for this medium of expression far outweighs any potential gain I might receive from writing it. And as I said, I am still making sales and commissions, so there is hope for further development of my self-publishing concept. In the future, I hope to help others publish their music as well.

Classical Hip-hop

I am always a little puzzled as to why so many people out there don’t seem to like classical music. It is the basis from which pretty much all of the music today is formed. We wouldn’t enjoy most of the movies we can think of without it… Taking a greater interest in the foundation of western music can only serve to enhance one’s musical endeavors.

Recently, I received an email from my kid’s teacher asking for help motivating the students to go to the symphony on a field trip, as they all seemed to think it would be boring. Even I will admit that symphonic concerts are often way over-programmed, but the music is beautiful, exciting and intellectually stimulating none-the-less. Leave at intermission, if you must. I’ve talked to many people who seem to have nothing good to say about classical music, but I wonder how many of them would tell me they actually hated listening to Dvorak’s New World Symphony or Rachmaninov’s Second Piano Concerto. I think people secretly like a lot of classical music (or would if they heard the right selections), they just don’t know or realize it. Maybe no one has the patience for it in this fast-paced society in which we live. It would be a very interesting experiment to take a random group of people and subject them to a selection of great classical music to find out what they really think of it.

Some artists have, of course, already successfully merged various style of music, including classical. Miri Ben-Ari comes to mind as an obvious example of success in this arena. Her classical/jazzy violin style do a lot to add to the texture and enhance the quality of music she is performing. Here’s what Wynton Marsalis has to say about her work:

“Miri’s playing is wonderful, beautiful, exquisite, unpredictable, original and spontaneous. Her creative energy can set a band on fire and it does!” -Wynton Marsalis

Visiting her website, you will no doubt get the impression that she leans a little more toward Hip-hop than classical, at least in wardrobe… One thing for sure in the world of pop music in general is that image is everything. Perhaps the greatest obstacle faced in my case is that I am definitely not the popular image of anyone associated with this kind of music. I’m am certain I could never pull that off. Is there a category of Hip-hop for nerds?

With all that in mind, I embarked on a collaboration with a fellow artist known as Phoenix Jay. He is a Hip-hop artist, and I am obviously a classically trained musician and composer. I wanted to see how much I could manage to fuse his art with mine and still make it work. As mentioned in previous posts, this was a much more difficult task than I had supposed it would be. At first, the two mediums seemed incompatible, but once I learned the standard forms used by the Hip-hop artist, the kinds of sounds and orchestration they require, and what a “beat” is in Hip-hop terminology, I was good to go. I rather enjoyed the challenge and will likely try to compose some more beats in the future. Hopefully, this sort of collaboration will not only yield a fresh, new sound, it will also give those out there with a low opinion of classical music a better perspective on it’s usefulness and validity.

Music Without Technology?

In a way, I am a purist. My favorite music will probably always be the work of the masters. But in another way, I have always been fascinated with technology. Sometimes, I am frustrated with the use of technology in place of musicians, but I like what it does for me in terms of creativity and productivity.

Technology in general is fascinating and ever-changing. I love to acquire new software or equipment, then to learn everything I can about that newly acquired toy. Initially, I probably waste way too much time messing with the software and not enough time composing. So, my future efforts will concentrate on integrating the music with the tech in a compositional, rather than purely practical sense. I started to explore some of these options in projects mentioned in earlier posts, such as Stare Wars, HL2, Thinkin’ of You, etc. These were student projects. However, I now plan to incorporate technology into some of my serious work.

I think that this combination of music and tech in a serious form should be approached with discretion. I don’t think throwing everything my software or hardware will let me do into a “classical” piece will work. My initial thoughts on how to use technology involve scene painting in regard to specific themes, scenes, ideas or emotions. I want to think of my tech voice as another member of the orchestra that adds character to a piece where needed. I want the music to be the focus, not the tech. I want to avoid changing the style of music I compose to fit the tech. It should be the other way around.

A lesson learned in my early experimentation with technology in music revealed at least one universal truth:

Using live, real instruments is ALWAYS the best scenario, but not always the most practical scenario.

Clearly, a midi performance, even with the best technology and mastering, will never fully emulate the nuance, quality and individuality of human performance. A dilemma is presented in my mind when I consider the game music industry and its heavy reliance on synthetic or sampled sounds. I think what they do is great and certainly on a similar talent level, perhaps an even greater creative level than other forms of composition. Even game composers will add at least one live musician when given the chance, and would probably jump at the chance to have their scores performed by a live orchestra. In their case, it comes down to a matter of practicality, rather than an intentional replacement of musicians.

Universal truth amendment #1:

Using live, real instruments is ALWAYS the best scenario, but not always the most practical scenario… Unless the instrument you are using is uniquely synthetic. That is, not a reproduction of something that already exists.

A second dilemma is created in my mind when I consider the impact that gaming music has on a generation that might not otherwise be exposed to this style of music. Some people are almost obsessed with game themes, as they are no doubt reminded of the many engrossing hours spent mastering the game. Games themselves would be empty shells of the virtual without any sense of reality if it were not for the finely crafted scores of game music composers.

This raises yet a third dilemma. Despite all of my concerns with the balance between music and tech, I find myself becoming increasingly interested in creating game music. As I continue to plan the course of my musical endeavors, I am gravitating toward this fascinating musical art form as a perfect combination of interests. I love music. I love technology. After all, those are the same reasons I decided to study music technology in pursuit of a degree.

The solution to these dilemmas (concerning my current plans to integrate technology into my serious compositions) lies in the balance and discretion that I mentioned earlier. Balance, in that the tech does not replace or overshadow the real… Discretion, in that those voices and effects chosen to enhance a musical composition truly add to the composition, help tell the story, or set the proper mood… Preferably these voices and effects will be unique to the world as an utterance of the digital creation of original media. Production, not reproduction. Enhancement, not replacement.

Here is a short summary of rules that I am forming in preparation for my new compositional theories and concepts:

1. The inclusion of technology in classical music should be approached with great discretion

2. Live music and musicians are always the best scenario vs. a simulation of the same

3. Synthetic voices should be used to compliment a score, not dominate

4. The musical form or style should not be slave to the addition of technology

5. The creative process should include the consideration of all available instrumentation, real or digital

6. Digital instrumentation should be limited to those voices that are uniquely technological

7. The same care and attention should be given to the creation of music that involves technology as those that are traditionally conceived

If it isn’t traditionally conceived, then it needs to sound that much better in order to compensate for the lack of realism. Thus, rule 7 was born. I think there is a tendency in my mind to think of music composed using virtual instrumentation as less serious. This is likely because I have been trying to use virtual means to reproduce what is intended to be live music. Here, I am discussing the prospect of using uniquely digital instrumentation to augment traditional orchestration as an actual part of the live performance.

While, in many ways I am a purist, I believe that the inclusion of technology as a part of live performance is a necessary exploration. I do not want to sacrifice the creative process for the conceit that real instrumentation is always better than digital. To fully exploit the added productivity and creativity that technology offers, I must make an attempt to fully integrate music with technology in my future musical endeavors.

Too Much Technology? NEVER!

Is there a such thing as too much technology for your studio? Really, do I have to even ask the question? Of course there isn’t. Having technology available at your fingertips just makes it that much easier to do and create projects exactly as you have imagined them. The real tragedy lies in not having enough technology to accomplish your goals.

Now, my studio is just a few components all mixed together, thus, not really a studio at all. However, I have just made two exciting additions to my setup… A 32″ monitor (using it at 720P via HDMI) and an HK 5.1 surround sound receiver! Overkill you say? Well, first let me explain why I added these components.

It really has to do with the fact that I moved all of my A/V equipment downstairs so I could dedicate the upstairs to living and the downstairs to more recreational affairs. Not only is the room perfect for surround sound and the LCD TV,

The Setup (Relevant Components):

- AMD Athlon 64 PC; 3 GB RAM; 500MB ATI GPU; Windows XP
- 19″ LCD 16×9 Monitor @ 1440×900 + 32″ LCD 16×9 Monitor @ 1280 x 720 (720P) (Extended display)
- Sony DVD-R
- Sony DV Camera
- PSR-3000 Keyboard
- Samson CO1U Studio Condensor Mic
- Yamaha UW10 Audio Interface (16bit)

Note: My system may not seem like the hottest thing on the market, but consider that it seems to take half the amount of RAM to run XP as it does to run Vista. Personally, I see no reason to upgrade right now.

Main Software I Currently Use:

- Finale 2009
- Sonar 8
- Adobe Design Premium CS4
- A bunch of free video and audio editing programs from NCH Software
- Gimp (for image editing)

That’s it really. That’s all the hardware and software I have to work with. Not too exciting, but it does the trick.

New Found Benefits:

- All of my recording and editing can be done in one location, as well as playback

- The audio sounds much better now through the HK receiver. I’m still pumping it through the Yamaha UW10 before it gets to the receiver for now. I could go 5.1 out of the on-board audio. Still need to get some near-field monitors speaker though.

- Everything is 2.5 times larger now.

Note: Keep in mind, the right 2/3 of the above screen shots appear approx 2.5 times larger than the images on the left 1/3. The screen shot eliminates this effect.

- I definitely do not have to strain to see anything
- I can play all my games in High Definition and the field of view is so large that I feel Like I am actually in the game.
- Netflix online videos play very clean and with surprisingly good resolution with no need to change my setup
- I can watch a movie and use the computer at the same time without using a laptop
- Icons are the size of my thumb

- My video frames per second (fps) have tripled! Using the DVI to HDMI cable has apparently lessened the load on my PC overall, presumably by requiring less effort in the conversion process. I watched my fps jump to an amazing 258 fps in some areas using the highest resolution and texture settings in CoD2 (way too much, but cool anyway). Most moderate game play areas hung around about 140 fps. Intense game play hovered between 55 and 90 fps. Needless to say, there was no lag or visible refresh rate. The most amazing thing is that these huge increases were gained by playing the game at a much better resolution… in HD (720p)!

Note: I can play it in 1080i, but lacking the progressive version of 1080, I like the way 720p looks.

– Half-Life 2 can be played at FULL resolution and perfect clarity
- CoD4 looks sharper than ever and almost all of the lag I was previously experiencing has ceased (didn’t check the fps).

Those are just some of the immediate benefits I could think of off the top of my head. There is a very interesting post from a professional game music composer (Breaking In as a Composer, Part II) that basically says you need a minimum of $14,000+ of software and equipment to even get a foothold in the gaming industry. I can’t remember if he mentioned needing a gigantic monitor anywhere, but it certainly can’t hurt. Anyway… As you can see, I am nowhere near that threshold, so I have a lot of catching up to do. Right now I’ll have to just be content to play the games and hope to win the lottery.

So, the moral of the story is…

Sonar 8 – Final Project – PowerPoint-imation

THE CONCEPT

My final project was way too much fun to make, but turned out to be way too much work to fit into 1 week. Unfortunately, this meant that I had to sacrifice a little in the video department and leave out some details. There are one or two pauses that I would have liked to eliminate… A few more tricks that I could have pulled with PowerPoint… For that matter, I really wanted to do the traditional Star Wars scrolling introduction, but knew I would waste a bunch of time searching for the right program to do it. Overall, I am happy with the final product though.

Like the previous project, I started out by writing a little Star Wars themed story, but decided to change it up a little with new character names and settings. I also composed new Star Wars-like theme music and changed the title to play upon a short scene where “Duke” tries to stare down “Lord Fader” using the “Farce.” Why did I change all these little details? Well, a couple of reasons.

First, I wanted to be as original as possible creating my little parody… Not just one of those 50/50 deals where 1/2 of it is new and the other is a recording of John Williams’ soundtrack. Or the other way around… You know what I mean.

Second, I do like to avoid as many issues with copyright as possible, even in an educational setting where I am teaching other students how I made this project. I believe in Fair Use, not over use.

THE ANIMATION

So, with those things in mind, I decided to go as far as creating the minifig-like characters from scratch in paint and Gimp (an awesome free Photoshop-like program that I highly recommend). I wanted a sort of 2-D/South Park animation feel and knew this would work particularly well for my PowerPoint-imation idea. Originally, I made a Paint head for Darth Fader, but thought it looked too hokey. This gave me the idea to just go ahead and use photos of real minifigs and “animate” them in Gimp… Which turned out to be an excellent way to make the star ships as well.

TIP: One thing awesome about Gimp is that is is very easy to use. It allowed me to create an “alpha” channel, deleting the background of any image I needed. This means I was able to paste all of my images into PowerPoint with a CLEAR background. Without this ability and Gimp’s ease-of-use in creating this effect, Stare Wars would never have been a possibility.

One of the first responses I receive from people who view this project for the first time is, “you did this with PowerPoint!?”

Well, yes, I did… And you can too! It’s really not that hard, just extremely time consuming. Specifically, I used PPnt 2007. In fact, there a lot of other effects that I could have created with PPnt, but I just didn’t have the time. Here’s how I did it:

1) I cut off all of the appendages from my characters… Sounds cruel, but this allowed me to move each appendage separately.

2) I used each slide as a frame. By advancing each frame, I created a very simplistic version of stop-motion animation. Obviously, this could have gone on for months, creating a much more fluid motion with 1,000s of slides. But what fun would that be?

3) More spectacular effects were accomplished by assigning various PPnt effects to an object, such as spin, fade-in/out or fly-in. For example, the light sabers retract and extent using entrance effects set at a slow timing. Shaking effects were created using scribbled motion paths.

See, not so hard. Once all the Hollywood CG effects were added, I had to make a couple of Lego-like backgrounds. It turns out that Gimp has this handy little fill texture that happens to look like the surface of a Lego. Very convenient and convincing. Varying transparency allowed me to create various shades of gray. The other elements, such as signs and control pads were actually made in PowerPoint with the shape and text tools. When that wasn’t possible, I went back to Gimp again. NASA is kind enough to provide the American public with lots of photos or concepts of space, so that was handy for this project. And believe it or not, that clip-art feature in PPnt will help you find a lot of graphics that can be used as backgrounds too… Like monkeys, for example.

Due to lessons learned from the previous project, I knew that making a better quality product would require me to complete the video portion of the project first, then match up the audio. Essentially, this would allow me to do voice-overs. But before I was able to record any voices, I had to first turn my PowerPoint slides into a video. How was this accomplished, you ask?

1) REHEARSED TIMINGS – I used a feature in PPnt that allows one to “rehearse timings.” I read the script and advanced the slides manually. Once the rehearsal was complete, I saved the timing. Next time the show was played back, it played automatically for me.

2) RECORD TO VIDEO CAM – The best way to make the PPnt show into video, still preserving the timings, was to use the S-video out on my laptop to the camcorder. S-video feeds analog video and audio out. This is important, because I don’t know of a way to send ieee 1394 (Firewire) out unless the source is already a video.

3) VIDEO CAM BACK TO THE PC – Now all I had to do was play the video camera back into the PC, this time via the Firewire, preserving the full resolution of the recording.

4) IMPORT VIDEO INTO SONAR – Importing the video into Sonar really became the starting point for creating the audio portion of my project.

See the PowerPoint show below for more info on the final video conversion process. It was a huge headache and ate up a lot of time. Had I not attempted to integrate video into my previous project, I am sure that I would have never finished this one on time.

THE AUDIO

Just explaining this whole process takes a while, so you can imagine how much effort it took to create the final product. We’ll look at this portion of the project in 4 phases: Voices, Score, Sound Effects and Post-Editing/Down-Mixing.

Voices:

Again, due to limited resources, I was forced to do most of the voices, but did get a lot of help from my son and daughter. The script was already typed-out, so I just read along with my newly imported video. I used my trusty C01U Studio Condenser Mic for all audio recordings. Like the Star Wars series itself, I made a lot of different characters by simply changing my accent or voice inflection. Some voices required extra creativity, such as Lord Fader. For him I had to speak into a large plastic pickle jar and lower my voice. When I just wanted some more variety, I called in the kids. My son “read” the part of Don Solo, and did a fantastic job, I might say. He also lent his voice for one of the pilots in the space battle scene. My daughter did a couple of lines for Princess Faya, but soon tired of the harsh demands of voice acting… I thought she did a great job with the character though. All other voices were acted by me, some more successfully than others. Believe it or not, I even did an overlay for “Shewy’s” voice.

Score:

The musical score was composed and synced with the action, so-to-speak, as was the case with the opening title and its fade to the background. The instrumentation for the score was entirely from my keyboard. I thought the high quality of sound from the PSR-3000 and the fact that this was a farce made midi and acceptable choice. Not to mention that I don’t have free access to studio musicians… I didn’t write anything out, just sort of winged the score, largely because I had no time to spare. Overall, I was very happy with the way the score turned out, even though I spent dramatically less time on this element than any other in the project.

Sound Effects:

Star Wars (or Stare Wars) just isn’t Star Wars without certain obligatory sound effects. Unlike the previous project, I felt that creating all the effects from scratch would destroy the feel of the piece and opted for the cliched light saber, laser and battle sounds. Some were sampled from live game play (I.e. recorded with a mic as I played an N64 version of Star Wars or my SW Battlefront II). I discovered, however, that there are tons of free Star Wars sound effect downloads out there and found just about everything I needed online.

Post-Editing/Down-Mixing

Suffice it to say, to do any project of this sort, many hours will be spent making the smallest audio edits. I applied everything I had learned up to this point and tried to be as conservative as possible. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of trial and error in this process. Not just for the effects, but for the balance and export of the overall project. If you haven’t tried it a hundred different ways, then you are already an expert or you are not going to get the final product that you really want. For me, it was a time constraint. The hardest part of the whole process was balancing all the different tracks. Each track has a different volume and characteristic, demanding the most meticulous attention to detail when integrating each into the overall sonic environment. To make matters worse, the product you thought you had may not be the same when it is finally exported and burned to a CD. I don’t own monitor speakers, but I hear they are key to eliminating a lot of these sorts of problems. The PowerPoint presentation below will describe a lot more about the little details associated with audio and video editing in general.

Below is a PowerPoint presentation that describes the process of creating this project in Sonar 8 as a whole. It has been converted to video. Each slide is 7 seconds long, so fast-forward or pause as needed.

NOTE: You can play back the actual presentation at the same time as the PowerPoint show to give you a better feel for what the PPnt is talking about.

Sonar 8 – Project Number 3 – Adding Some Video

Project number three was really a test run for project number 4. You see, video was not required, but I wanted to see just how difficult it would be to incorporate it into my final project. It proved to be even more difficult than I had imagined, as I ran into just about every problem you can think of. In fact, I almost didn’t get the project turned in on time.

The first thing I did was finish the audio portion of my project. Since the assignment was audio-related, not video, I felt it would be wise to finish the part I would be graded on first. I decided to really put Sonar to the test and do a project that would allow me to use as many features as possible without ruining my work. That’s where the video game promo idea came in. Now I could make a bunch of sound effects, do voice-overs, and combine midi and live instruments to create Half-Life 2 game environments.

I began with a storyline only loosely based on HL2, adding a few characters and not really making an attempt to integrate the plot into existing HL2 games. In fact, I couldn’t seem to remember everyone’s names correctly and mixed them up a little. Given how little time I had, I didn’t feel it was necessary to fix. My intention was to create a game-based environment and storyline. HL2 was just sort of a model.

Once a story was developed, I recorded the voices and began to manipulate them as needed to simulate alien or foreign characters. I believe the PowerPoint that I will attach describes the kinds of effects that were used to create these characters. Essentially, I experimented with all kinds of reverb and started messing with effects like time/pitch stretch, amps, modulators, and distortions. Time/pitch stretch is particularly effective when trying to change the character of one’s voice. When I just needed something completely different, I brought in the kids to do a little voice acting. For this project, I ended-up only using a very brief portion where my daughter’s voice is made to sound sort of haunting and distant.

While I didn’t use much of the kids’ voice acting for this one, I did use a surprisingly large amount of instrumental and sound effects that they helped create. My daughter played a toy lap harp and a triangle, while my son played the tambourine and the sleigh bells. I played the recorder separately. To my delight, Sonar allowed me to completely manipulate the instrument sounds into train sound effects. Almost all the effects you hear throughout the piece are created in this fashion. Only a few, such as weapons fire and the train-track sound, were generated from my keyboard.

The effect that I am most proud of is the steam-release effect during the train station scene at the beginning. This effect was created by making a recording of my daughter over-blowing a plastic recorder. The clip was then subjected to tons of reverb, but not before time/pitch stretch was applied, raising one layer of the sound up a couple of octaves. Once layered, I added a very long decay to the sound. Finally, I had to add a track “envelope” that allowed me to very precisely change the volume and pan of the sound. Specifically, the initial attack of the over-blown recorder was enough to make your ears bleed. Using the envelope, I was able to even that part out with the rest of the clip, then add a pre-defined decrescendo.

Another reason I chose the video game concept was my determination to find ways that midi generated sounds would actually sound appropriate for the work. I used a distortion guitar from my Yamaha PSR-3000 keyboard and another cool completely digital sound (called Fargo) underneath. Putting the two together seemed like a perfect match for the game, so composing a Euro distortion guitar theme to end the project was effortless. Using my keyboard sequencer again, I added a beat that worked very well with the feel of the piece. Strangely, it was a Salsa…

After the voices, effects and music were all put together, I moved on to the video. Well, a series of slides that were turned into a video using a Creative Labs program called MuveeNow 2.0. It offered some nice transition effects and definitely made the slides more interesting. However, it nearly melted down my PC during the video conversion process. This seemed to be a problem unique to this program, as my other video processing products don’t cause the same problem.

Once my PC cooled down for a bit, I imported the video into Sonar and made sure it was approximately the right length. Sonar does not allow any video editing, so I exported the whole project as a video file, then imported into WinDVD (because that’s what I had on my computer and I couldn’t get Windows Movie Maker to work at the time). Here I was able to crop and match up the video to the audio (just enough to kinda follow the storyline). I imported a few of the stills used to make the original slide show and inserted them where I needed to extend scenes or wanted a high resolution still. Lastly, I added a title and date to the beginning.

Now it was time for a final product. I spent hours and hours perfecting the balance between voices, effects and music, then normalizing and compressing them for extraction.

TIP: If you recorded something at a low level, normalizing will bring all the highs and lows into a normal range, making it a lot easier to hear and work with.

I made several versions of the audio portion, extracting them in sequence (initial bounce, normalized, compressed, normalized and compressed) so I could hear all the different versions. Once I was happy with the version I was going to use, I imported the final audio and video into a freeware program called VideoPad. You can find all kinds of great free software from NCH via this link: http://www.nchsoftware.com/software/index.html

DEFINITION: Bounce – This is a track that is a composite of other tracks. For example, I used over 25 different tracks to create Black Mesa, but you only want one for the final product. The bounced track is the one track made from the 25 original tracks.

TIP: If you have the time, bounce from real-time audio, not a “fast” bounce. This will sometimes yield better results. Also, make sure you have all the tracks that you want bounced selected and that the appropriate tracks are soloed or muted as desired.

Until I discovered VideoPad, I was at a loss concerning the conversion of my video to a .mov format. People in an educational setting love to use Macs, so I was required to make it work for Quicktime. To make it even more complicated, Sonar refused to properly import any .mov videos, though it is supposed to be able to do this. It would not export to .mov either. I recommend exporting in a basic format from Sonar and using another program to convert to the format you really want. VideoPad works very well for this and it does it quickly without over-heating your PC. I also used it to convert videos to an iPod format. Don’t forget, you convert video for other reasons too, like the size of the file. Original raw AVI files can get easily into the GB range. By down-converting, I was able to get a clean 720×480 version at 29.97 FPS that was only 19.7 MB compared to its original 887 MB.

NOTE: Use VideoPad NOT Prism, as Prism only converts the video portion. If you are not careful, you will suddenly discover that your video no longer has audio!

Below is the PowerPoint show that describes the process I used to create this project in Sonar 8. Each slide is 9 seconds long and the original audio portion of the project plays in the background. If you wish to just read the slides, mute the audio and pause/fast-forward as necessary.

Below is the actual final version of the project.

Sonar 8 – Second Project – Live Recording and Midi

Ok, Now that you’ve learned a little about what not to do and just how hard it can be to learn new software in a week, let’s talk about applying those lessons learned to our next project. Honestly, I was so disappointed with project 1, that I felt a recovery was in order. I don’t know if it was the obvious humor the class found in the quality of synth generated brass, or the confused look on the professor’s face in regard to my addition of a hip-hop beat to a brass quartet. In either case, I learned that the creative process involves many failures in order to achieve success. To look at it in a more positive light, I will qoute Thomas Edison (probably somewhat inaccurately):

“I have not failed 10,000 times. I have successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.”

I quickly tried to replace as many of those things that didn’t work, with ones that would. First, I decided to play live as much of the music as I could. That includes vocals, right and left hand of the piano (separately), bass, and trumpet. The piano was actually my Yamaha PSR-3000 keyboard. Its awesome 96KHz sampling offers a very realistic piano sound. The bass and drum set are also from the keyboard. The drum set was the only instrument not played live, but I was able to pre-record a sequence using the sequencer built into the keyboard. The variations offered were actually quite nice, and the professor, a percussionist, actually had to ask me if the drums were real! That’s a pretty convincing argument for the quality of Yamaha’s voice sampling.

I broke down and purchased a Samson CO1U USB Studio Condenser Mic, coincidentally, made to work with Sonar products. It cost me around $90 and was well worth the expense. As the recording will reveal, the mic does a great job of capturing vocals, as well as instruments (although using different methods/distances). The following is a PowerPoint slide show that has been converted to a video format. It better explains the overall process and familiarizes you with the Sonar 8 interface. Each slide is 7 seconds, so pause or fast forward as needed. There is no audio.

Below is the actual recording project: