Damon here. I am very pleased to let you know that I have begun a new teaching position at Western Carolina University in their Commercial and Electronic Music program. I am teaching classes in audio editing, sequencing and advanced midi applications as well as directing the Technology Ensemble. Our recording studio, including a digital SSL console and world class microphone closet, is really first rate–you can check it out in an article here– and exists in combination with the broadcast production rooms in the Center for Applied Technology.

Our degree program is a bachelor of music, which includes training in music theory, listening (aural) skills, composition, orchestration and applied music (instrument or voice lessons). The program director is Dr. Bruce Frazier, and we maintain around 55 students in the program at any given time.

Look for more from me and my new students here at The Studio Files in the upcoming weeks. One quick story that I can share is about Brandon Chapman, who graduated from Western Carolina last spring. He is the trumpet playing talent behind the new, very affordable, sample library from Embertone called Chapman Trumpet. It’s been getting a little bit of buzz on VI-Control and is worth checking out.

More soon! Keep making it happen.

–Damon
The Studio Files

In this article I will cover how to use Logic Pro to compose music for film. I’ve been using Logic for over 2 years now and recently I was asked to help write music for a short film.  Naturally my program of choice was Logic (I’m still on version 8 but this article should apply to 9 as well).  So here I would like to share my experience and provide an intro tutorial for working with video in Logic.

First, we need to get the video into Logic. This can be done easily by navigating to Options – Movie – Open Movie.

The video I used was a .mov file (about 4 minutes long) but I’ve also imported just about every other kind of video file into Logic without any issues. After Logic does its thing and imports the video in you will have a small “Movie” window in the upper left corner like so:

When you double click the movie window it will detach from the sidebar and expand for full viewing.  If you’re lucky enough to have a second monitor you can detach and drag this window onto it for a much easier viewing experience.

The next thing I would highly recommend you do is go back to the Options – Movie menu and select Create Scene Marker – Entire Movie. This will create handy scene markers underneath the bar markers.

I found this to be extremely helpful when I wanted to line up crucial hits and cues to the movie.  The scene markers are also displayed in all editing windows such as the Piano Roll, so you can fine tune everything.

Believe it or not that’s pretty much the gist of getting a video into Logic.  It’s an easy process and once I had everything set up in this fashion I found it very intuitive working with the Logic interface on one screen and watching the results on another.

One thing I should note here *** Working with a video in Logic (especially an HD video) was very resource intensive on my February 2008 Macbook Pro with 2GB of RAM.  The final project had about 35 channels and the computer was not able to handle it without frequent playback errors.  So if you are thinking about scoring a feature film you want to make sure you have a lot of RAM and enough processing power to get the job done. ***

Ready to see the results? Here is the final version of the short film Alderwood Ch.2 which was selected as a Top 5 video in a nationwide contest by Canon and Vimeo.  It is now up to voters to select a winner.

Alderwood – Chapter 2 from Kenny Mosher on Vimeo.

If you have a moment please vote for Alderwood Ch.2 by clicking below:
http://vimeo.com/groups/beyondthestill

-PJ

OK. This looks pretty cool. I haven’t had a chance to check it out thoroughly yet, but I would be interested to know if there are any Studio Files Users out there who would like to do a project with me to check it out together. What do you say?

Indaba is an on-line music creation/collaboration site with a browser format mixing environment. So I would lay down a beat on my end, you add a vocal or other overdubs, or vice versa. Heck, we could make a whole Studio Files album this summer! But we’d have to call it something better than “The Studio Files Album”

I’ll suggest this “Nothing in the Way”

Damon
The Studio Files

www.icompositions.com

This is definitely one of my new favorite websites.  I stumbled upon it one day whilst googling “place to share garageband songs” and found just that.  The main music area is very active with about 50-100 songs uploaded a day or you can sort it out by your genre of choice.  Add in the slick comments and ratings system and you have an excellent site where you can get instant feedback on your tunes or just listen to other users’ original music.

The site was redesigned in October giving it a new look and much faster upload speeds for songs.  The upload form, which is one of the big reasons I like the site so much, lets you upload MP3 and/or AAC, title songs, write a description, select a genre, select the program it was created with and other miscellaneous details on how to handle comments and song rights.

Creating an account gives you access to the Backstage area where you can manage your profile, song library and favorite songs and artists lists.  To give you a better idea of what the profile page looks like, here is mine:

http://www.icompositions.com/artists/pjATthestudiofiles

EDIT 12/30:  Heres a couple artist profiles I would recommend checking out also.  I’m a big fan of these guys and even collaborated with Waleed on track (more to come!) 

http://www.icompositions.com/artists/Waleed

http://www.icompositions.com/artists/FEAHM

In addition to the tunage, iComp also has an active forum and live chat.  All this makes icompositions.com a winner in my book and I recommend that any audio enthusiast or hobbyist give it a whirl.

Have a website that you would like featured on the Studio Files?  Know of a site that you’re just dying to tell people about?  Send us an email or drop us a comment below!

-PJ

A great resource: Virtual Instruments Magazine

Examples are Garageband instruments, Spectrasonic Triology Bass instrument, NI-Kontakt (sampler), or Play (from East West Soundsonline). Yours truly has too many of these to count. If you are in the market, ask a question and I’ll be glad to help.

Damon
The Studio Files

(Being the tale of one NYC kid’s musical adventures in the Wild West)
by Miles Hankins
Part 1: The Westward Expansion

Two things happened to me today:

1. After considerable time plucking away at fruitless Google searches, I finally found the secret recipe for Fuddruckers hamburger seasoning.

2. My friend and yours, studio guru Damon Sink, shot me a gentle reminder to submit an entry on StudioFiles.com detailing some of my run-ins with the law as an aspiring film composer coming out to LA.

With a fresh 100% USDA ground chuck patty simmering on the skillet and a good 12 minutes til chow time, I sit down at my Macbook to pen what I can only assume will prove to be…a rather pedestrian experience. Nevertheless, it is the decided opinion of Mr. Sink (and my earnest hope) that some of the accounts detailed herein will serve as a small source of enlightenment to those, like myself, trying to break into this crazy biz.

In 2006 I was living in Manhattan, sitting at a desk on the JPMorgan trading floor wondering what the hell to do with my life. I had graduated from University of Miami’s School of music a few years prior, and had always dreamed of scoring films, but aside from a few indy shorts, a couple commercial gigs, and a brief stint headlining a jazz act on one curiously large cruise vessel, I hadn’t had much luck bringing home the bacon with music. I would sit at my day job searching the web for scoring competitions, “composer wanted” ads, and blogging my heart out on music forums. I found out about the (now defunct, unfortunately) TCM Young Composer’s Competition, and spent my nights fastidiously crafting an entry. To my utter surprise, it got me into the finalist round and out to LA! I didn’t take home the gold that night, but I did meet some very talented composers who have since become friends.

Maybe it was getting to meet Hans Zimmer in his “studio of thunder,” or maybe it was getting picked up at the airport in a stretch limo and bombing out on free gin and tonics all the way to the hotel, but something about LA gave me “the Bug.” After touching back down at JFK I resolved then and there to set the wheels in motion for a little Manifest Destiny- a proper westward expansion.

The plan was to move out to Arizona, where my folks had an unoccupied house, and use that as a launchpad to LA. After giving my day job the peace sign, my girlfriend Becky and I loaded up a rental minivan and headed West into oblivion.

If you’ve never done the cross-country road trip, I highly recommend it. Apart from scores of ludicrous tourist attractions and diners, it’s chock full of salt of the earth human experience. Driving through the heartland and tasting of it’s fruits is, flat out, a must do, at least once, especially for urban rats like myself who so easily forget that there’s a world of raw American culture just down I-70.

Things were going well til just outside of St. Louis. It was midday and traffic was heating up something fierce. I was cruising in the left lane, doing the limit as the law abiding citizen that I am…and then I saw him. Creeping up on the horizon, coming over the freeway from the right side..yep, it was definitely a wild turkey. Correction my brothers, a HUGE wild turkey, doing all he could to fly over the highway. He was just getting airborne when I first saw him. I thought, “there’s no way this guy is going to go for it. He’ll never make it.” Well, he went for it my friends; he went the distance. As I approached that awkward visage, clumsily loping his way through the air, trying desperately to gain altitude, I tried to gauge the timing. I looked right: huge Mac truck. Checked my 6: huge Mac Truck. This is worse than I thought. I can’t slow down, I can’t change lanes and I’m pretty sure this bird is going to be “locked on target “in about five seconds. I looked at my girlfriend, looked back at the avian behemoth, and knew I had no choice but to white knuckle it. “Come on pal, you can do it. Lift! Lift that feathered thorax and FLY!” As I came within range he started to gain vertical thrust. I couldn’t believe it! “He’s going to make it! The crazy dude is actually going to… ”

WHAMM!!!

Windshield; dead center. The whole thing shattered in on our laps. In a fleeting moment of clarity I hit the hazards and lumbered over to the left shoulder. I ran out and looked at what remained of our windshield: a single feather embeded in the glass, wafting gently in the breeze. We were devastated. I trucked back up the median and couldn’t find him anywhere. Maybe he survived it? Once more at the windshield…nope, he’s gone. The next few hours were marked by waiting for a replacement vehicle to arrive and listening intently as the highway patrolman called in the “Vehicle vs. Turkey” report. We finally reached a hotel a few miles out of St. Louis and pulled in for the night. We had light meal (no foul of any kind I assure you), observed a moment of silence for the departed, and headed straight to bed.

After a long night’s sleep and two days of uncharacteristically defensive driving, we pulled into Scottsdale rather worse for the wear.

AZ was a welcomed respite for both of us–the gorgeous red-rocked horizons, the larger than life Saguaro cacti (almost purple at sunset), the vivid celestial viewing after dark, the nightly under-the-pillow scorpion checks. It was a dream come true for two city slickers like ourselves. I quickly set up the studio and spent days writing while Becky worked on her screenplay. The plan was to spend about four months relaxing, writing, and looking for work in LA, and we both needed the break to be sure. I started checking in to the Film Music World jobwire on a daily basis, and sent out a few query letters for various composer assistant gigs. As we are all well aware, a career in film scoring, unlike neurosurgery or campaigning for the US Presidency, is rather difficult work. Unfortunately, there’s no set pathway to success; in fact, there’s no set pathway to mediocre obscurity as far as I know. Most of the A-listers we all revere either fell into it ass-backwards or came straight from the loins of tried and true Hollywood royalty, but very few came out to LA and said “I want to be a film composer, let’s have at it.” The only thing that even resembles a possible means to an end is to apprentice with someone more established than yourself, gain some experience in their studio and, hopefully, some credits.

About a month into my time in AZ I was really starting to get a writing flow going (and my tan wasn’t doing too bad either). It was right at this time, just as I was starting to think, “man, I could really go for extending this desert getaway another good six months,” that I got an email from one of the composers I had queried. It was Michael Picton, a gent I had met the year prior at the TCM scoring competition. Michael had actually won the competition’s grand prize in 2004 and was attending the event as a guest judge. He had several films and theatrical productions under his belt, as well as an original show for Ringling Brothers, and was now gearing up to score his first network TV series, “Flash Gordon.” He was impressed with my submission but was a bit concerned that most of the music I sent him with the query letter was orchestral, even a bit “concerty” in presentation and wanted to make sure I could produce some stuff with a more contemporary sensibility. I put together a new package with everything from techno/trance to jazz and even spent the night writing a fresh orchestral cue, a no-holds-barred action joint, pure 2007. With this second offering, he gave me the green light.

I was thrilled beyond measure. I took Becky out for a righteous feast to celebrate. We had booked a trip to Vegas for the upcoming weekend and were excited that we now had a proper justification for the celebratory vacation. I figured we had about a month to pack up and move out, take some time to get a place squared away and settle into LA at a comfortable pace. Boy did I have it wrong. A phone call the next morning revealed that I would be needed in the studio later that week! That gave us one day to pack, one day to drive out to LA, and about four days to find an apartment. Vegas would have to wait! I jumped onto my faithful music forums and put out the feelers for good neighborhood recommendations in LA. Being an East-coaster my whole life, I barely knew the difference between Beverly Hills and Compton, let alone Los Feliz and Echo Park.

Two days later we pulled into Hollywood. We had some friends in Silver Lake who graciously agreed to put us up until we could find a place (with the clear understanding that it wouldn’t be more than a couple days given the shotgun schedule we were under), but the first stop for me was straight to the studio to unload my gear. Michael had recently moved into a new space in West Hollywood and was in possession of two adjacent suites. Studio A, his main composing den, and Studio B, the tracking room, which is where I was to set up my rig. Walking into his studio was like stepping aboard the Starship Enterprise. I hadn’t seen so many flashing lights since Christmas. I was overwhelmed to say the least, and that combined with the fact that I was literally gushing with perspiration from having just unloaded my rig in the June heat, right after a seven hour drive, made, I’m sure, quite an interesting impression on my new employer. We went for coffee and talked shop for about an hour and then it was off to find a place to call home.

For those who don’t know, LA is massive. Unlike NY, where everything is stacked on top of itself, Los Angeles is a sprawling expanse from shoreline to mountaintop. Driving is essential and something of a nightmare, especially if, like me, you’re coming out of a subway culture. The city is divided into neighborhoods that cover everything from the West side to the East side to the Valley. We opted for the latter because of it’s reasonable prices and generally “nicer” atmosphere as compared to say, Hollywood, which is sort of the equivalent of getting an apartment in Times Square (shutter). After a couple days of searching we found a great place in Studio City, just a few minutes drive from work, we got approved, and moved our boxes right in.

Reality check: three days after leaving Scottsdale we were moving into a new apartment in LA. That’s gotta be some kind of record. We thanked our lucky stars, enjoyed a nice bottle of red wine and settled in to bed. As I drifted off to sleep that night my head was spinning. I knew that tomorrow morning I would start the first day of the first job I ever really wanted! I had no idea what to expect (and no idea what fate had in store for me), but I was excited to the point of giddiness. After an hour or so of tossing and turning I finally escaped into a deep sleep, dreaming of millions of flashing lights…

Well friends, this double with cheese ain’t gonna eat itself, and, as Mary Pickford used to say, “A burger untasted is a burger wasted.” We’ll catch you next time, my brothers, with musical annecdotes aplenty!

NEXT WEEK:

Part 2: Guerilla Composition, Red Bull Addiction, and the Scoring Stage

After giving most of them a test drive, I can say that this collection is refreshing, especially if you have grown tired of the GarageBand sound set. The samples sound great and each instrument has a decent amount of customization options. As I mentioned in the first post, I really like the ability to combine instruments together in the menu and have them in the mixer as the same channel. One of the most impressive and highly touted new features of Mixcraft 4 is the ability to use VST, VSTi and Direct X plugins. This is one area where Mixcraft trumps its Mac counterpart, GarageBand. This is a benefit to beginning users or even Pro Tools users who already have a large collection of VST’s and want to use Mixcraft as a scratch pad for ideas before going into Pro Tools. Another useful feature is the ability to use Acid or Apple Loops with Mixcraft. This would be particularly useful for a Intel Mac user that has Windows installed. I have personally tested Mixcraft 4 on a Mac with Windows XP installed via Boot Camp and I can verify that the program runs without a hitch.  So far Mixcraft is looking like a viable alternative to GarageBand for Windows users. Keep an eye out for more Mixcraft related posts in the future. If you have any questions about Mixcraft or GarageBand, leave a comment below or email me.

PJ

The Studio Files

In the meantime, you can still create some great tunes in GarageBand by using just the keys on your keyboard. This is called Musical Typing. To get started, open GarageBand and click on Window – Musical Typing or use the shortcut Shift+Command+K. You will be greeted by this window:

Now your keyboard is mapped to the corresponding keys on screen. In addition to keyboard keys, you also have some other handy controls at your disposal. The 1-2 numbers keys perform a pitch-bend and numbers 3-8 control the modulation value. Holding down the tab key simulates a sustain pedal. The Z and X keys change the octave range you are playing and you can see exactly where you are on an 88-key represented by the highlight blue area at the top of the window. Lastly, you can change your note velocity by using the C and V keys. If you have any questions or comments regarding Musical Typing or GarageBand in general, leave a comment below or email me.

PJ

The Studio Files

The real question behind these polite, superficial questions is, “Will I, as a performer, find it rewarding to spend the time necessary to learn and perform your new piece?”

This is a really good question. If your art form is painting or sculpture, then you can produce new works on your own, fully formed, without ever really relying on the assistance of anyone else during the creative process. When you are finished, you have produced the thing: it exists exactly as you imagined and created it. If you are a composer who writes a piece for orchestra, you have a written score and maybe a set of parts. You still don’t have the thing: your work has not yet been performed. You are totally reliant on getting a group of talented performers to play your new piece and make this musical idea that you have so carefully sculpted into a reality.

A student of mine (Chad Latta, 19) was recently part of a packed house audience at the world premiere of his orchestra piece, Contentions, performed by the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Neal Gittleman. The piece, which is influenced by Lutoslawski and Corigliano, is substantial and more than a little bit difficult in places. The DPO offered an outstanding performance, and Chad was obviously thrilled with the event.

Contentions was programmed for this concert over a year ago. Lead times like that are typical (sometimes much longer) for professional orchestra performances. Chad submitted the score to Maestro Gittleman along with a “mockup” that he and I did together using East West Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra (I have the “Platinum ProXP” version, but Gold would have worked just as well for this application).

When the piece was complete, we exported a MIDI file which was written with Human Playback enabled. Then we opened that file in Digital Performer to do some MIDI editing and add in performances of the aleatoric (random) parts. These were notated as pitch groups in boxes (like in Corigliano’s Of Rage And Remembrance) so Finale wasn’t able to “perform” them as Chad wanted. He went through and sequenced these parts individually, which took most of an afternoon. We also had to do some patch changes and keyswitches to get correct articulations and techniques like ponticello and tremolo. It was also necessary to do some editing and reassigning of MIDI controller data, but the end result was pretty good. Not a version that would have been good enough for an application where a real orchestra would be expected, but the conductor was actually quite impressed. Gittleman is a long time Finale user, and he told Chad that his demo recording sounded much better than most of the MIDI files that he listens to. I, for one, am completely convinced that the quality of the sample library (East West) had a lot to do with getting the conductor’s attention and demonstrating Chad’s unrealized vision for Contentions. The result was the supreme accomplishment of winning a premiere by a major, professional orchestra–something that a composer never forgets.

If you have questions about how we did the mockup, or about studying composition, post a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

DS
The Studio Files

For many years this sort of functionality was the province of external hardware synthesizers or the synthesizers built in to a MIDI keyboard. You would record or notate the MIDI notes into the computer and then send that MIDI information back out to a synthesizer which would then play back the sound on that channel. The switch to virtual instruments just means that your computer is now the synthesizer; so instead of investing in external hardware, now we can buy instruments and install them on our workstations and integrate them with notation or sequencing software. Virtual instruments can be programmed to emulate the sound of real instruments, or they can be virtual synthesizers that generate electronic sounds. Check the blogroll for a link to a great post listing some great and inexpensive software synths.

In another post, I wrote about using the Kontakt 2 sampler as a virtual instrument inside of Finale. The “patches” (a term that is a holdover from the days when you used to program synths by making connections with patch cables) were software instruments from the Vienna Horizon Series Solo Strings. Each instrument is sampled (recorded) playing the notes of the whole range of the instruments using different techniques (pizzicato, tremolo, arco) and different dynamics and sustains. In this example, think of Kontakt 2 as the virtual equivalent of a hardware synth module and the string patches as the sounds that are loaded into it. Now I can use Finale as a way to create the right sequence of MIDI messages to play back those samples in real time and hear my composition in a fairly realistic form. Carefully programmed MIDI files intended to co-create the sound of a live ensemble are often called “mockups.” Composers use these mockups to demonstrate the music that they are composing for a film (for example) to a director or music supervisor. It is increasingly necessary for film and tv composers to be able to do realistic sounding mockups of their work. Lots of music (for television especially) is produced entirely with virtual instruments these days.

The second way to compile a list of MIDI messages which will play back sounds through a virtual instrument is with a program like Garage Band, Cubase, Digital Performer, or Sonar, called a sequencer. In this environment you play the performance in via a MIDI controller (usually a keyboard) which the computer records as MIDI data (note on, volume, etc.). It is possible to create very detailed performances in this way without ever using notation, and many composers work primarily in this realm, especially if they are responsible for accomplishing the finished music themselves and aren’t going to be recording the music with a live orchestra or ensemble.

Because I am a classically trained composer, I tend to gravitate to the realm of notation first. I like the functionality of seeing the score and hearing it played back to me by convincing sounding instruments. I have been thrilled to embrace this technology, which was only in the fledgling stages when I started out. If you want to learn to compose music, be sure to pursue training in music theory and notation as well as investment in technology. There is no substitute for the powerful combination of your musical intuition and imagination PLUS the knowledge of melody, harmony and counterpoint that comes through the study of music theory. I will be developing some theory teaching materials on this site over the next few months that use some popular video game music cues as starting points for understanding music theory. Look for those and post comments about specific music that you would like to know more about. Your feedback and questions are always welcome.

Damon
The Studio Files

Well, not exactly. But I am getting started writing a piece for piano quintet that I am going to talk about here. Maybe even post snippets. The main thing is to go through the process of using a notation program to create a piece for live musicians to play. For me, this is where music technology started… way back in 1993 when I got my first computer. It was a Centris 650 (Macintosh) with 8 Meg of RAM and a 25 MHz clock, and it cost me about $1700. I was working on several pieces that would be performed on my Master’s recital and I knew I needed to learn this program called Finale. It was only available for the Mac back then (v. 2.6.9). So with the help of my dad and a student loan, I got the computer, a black & white monitor ($399) a Roland JV-90 keyboard ($1500) and a 300 dpi laser printer ($899). I had already learned a lot about Finale by investing in some lessons from a fellow student (Thanks Mark, wherever you are!), and I dove in.

Finale has come a long way since then. Competition from other software like Sibelius has enriched the feature set and made it a much easier program to learn and use than when I first started. In the last couple of years, Finale has also implemented Native Instruments VI (virtual instrument) hosting within the application which allows you to load up a custom template of instruments from your own library. The Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO) version that also now comes with Finale is a great start for anyone who wants to start composing with sample libraries.

My usual compositional work flow for large orchestra pieces or smaller chamber works is to start with paper and pencil and begin sketching ideas at the piano. Pretty soon I start to develop ideas that are specific to a particular instrument and that takes me to Finale, where I start working things out in more detail. Finale lets me work on several ideas independently that will later be molded into the form of the piece as a whole; there is nothing greater than the flexibility that computer notation gives you to extend a section within the middle of a work, delete measures to tighten up pacing, etc. It also means that I work on a piece differently, and in some senses in a less disciplined way, than pencil and paper composers did. I can dive in without planning and fix it all later, which was a luxury that my teachers and their teachers didn’t really have without the necessity of recopying large swaths of a score.

Personally, I like it better this way!

So, as I said I am just getting started. I am setting up my instrument template (two violins, viola, violoncello, and piano) with the Native Instruments (NI) plug in within Finale. I have used NI (Kontakt especially) with Finale in the past, but it has been with the notation program communicating through Interapplication MIDI. For large scores I have orchestral sounds (East West Quantum Leap Platinum Pro XP) installed on two external Windows PCs that handle the large numbers of notes happening at once (polyphony). But for this piece, I can load all of the articulations that I want inside of Finale–I think.

Here is a picture of the articulations that I have loaded for the viola. You will see that some of the patches are marked TKT. These I have edited using a special technique that alternates different samples when the same note is triggered in succession. Kontakt allows a lot of flexibility and scripting possibilities that let you detail the performance of your sample patches in useful ways. I learned to modify patches in this way by following a tutorial found at kevintweedy.net (Thanks Kevin! and Theodore Krueger who codified this)

I will use patch change messages in Finale to change articulations as the score plays back. Some sounds have keyswitch patch changes (triggered by MIDI notes outside the range of the instrument). If I use these, I put the keyswitches in a lower layer in Finale and then tell Finale to hide that layer. It works pretty well, but I think I am moving towards instrument banks and patch changes more permanently. More on that in an upcoming post.

So once I have the instrument banks loaded, I’ll be ready to start sketching. I’ll keep you posted.

In the mean time, you might like to listen to a couple of orchestral sketches that started life in Finale and then got detailed programming in Digital Performer:

http://damonsink.com/mp3/Arches_sketch2.mp3

http://damonsink.com/mp3/Arches_sketch3.mp3

These are almost all East West Platinum ProXP sounds

Damon
The Studio Files Team