Cheaper music making?

I've been fairly active in my music making hobbies since 2004 primarily on my iMac or iPad. On the iMac, I started with Garageband and eventually moved on to Logic Express 9 and now Logic Pro X. Somewhere during that time, the iPad happened and I also have roughly a hundred music making apps of one kind and another on the tablet.

Anyone knowing me has seen me go through an endless stream of gadgets during my life from early PCs to handheld devices, Linux servers, netbooks etc. I'm a techie and proud of it :). I've had cheap laptops, netbooks and more recently have become enamored with chromebooks.

Cheap is the operative word in most cases excepting my Apple devices. Another thing about me is that over time, I have soured almost completely on Windows. I have to use a Windows PC professionally (though its mostly Oracle and Java stuff) and that is more than enough. As a techie, I've been the de-facto family "consultant" for cleaning, de-virusing and configuring countless PCs and it sickens me how much care and feeding Windows machines require. Yeah, if you know what you're doing, you should be fine. But my elderly aunts, in-laws and neighbors invariably have the machine slowed down to a crawl within a year. Windows is NOT consumer friendly.

Until recently, I recommended the "cheapest" Apple options to relatives - the Mac Mini or a MacBook of one kind or another. The up front few hundred dollars is worth it for the long term pain savings - and overall that is still true. Thankfully, though, there are now far cheaper alternatives that are even easier to maintain - Google Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.

If you've checked them out, you know that they are easy, fast and work well for basic internet type activities and light office work provided you are mostly connected to the internet at all times. For great aunts and moms, its a no-brainer. The only catch so far is no Skype, but Google Hangouts works just as well and at about $200 a pop, you can drop and mangle 5 of these suckers for the price of ONE Macbook Air. Even if you need the full computer for something, as a second computer, these are almost at the disposable price point.

In my personal case, I wanted to take a $200 chrome book and use it as a software development laptop and now as a music laptop. That's a bit crazy! But as I'll show, not terribly hard to pull off if you're patient (and cheap, like me).

So I hope to blog a bit about the process of converting a cheap laptop into a portable music studio and find out if its even worth doing! A short spoiler - I do have things running fairly well at this point so things look promising. I haven't stress tested anything and the open source DAWs do take some getting used to. Stay tuned!

MIDI Madness on an iPad

As I post often, my music is mostly created with MIDI tracks from either soft synths, MIDI controllers or sequenced MIDI patterns. MIDI makes it easy for me to correct any errors or mistakes. MIDI lets me swap in and out different samples, synths or instruments without having to rerecord anything. Its the best thing going in modern music in my opinion!

On the desktop, I use Logic X and normally create many MIDI tracks that I eventually bounce down into finished songs (or long sequences of annoying noise depending on your point of view). On the iPad as I write often, I want the same easy experience I have on Logic X with MIDI and sadly, that is not yet possible.

Many DAWs on the iPad support MIDI and some also support Virtual MIDI to control other apps running at the same time but none of them do so as seamlessly as VSTs or AUs on the desktop. The "gold standard" and closest candidate for me is Cubasis.

I've posted a few times about using MIDI with Cubasis with InterApp Audio and Virtual MIDI but to be honest, doing this is very crash-prone and I've been experimenting quite a bit with simplifying the process. I recently found a pretty good workflow for working with MIDI and I'll step through one method that works pretty well for me.

Recently I posted the piece below using Cubasis, Korg Module Synthology piano and Noatikl:




This piece required getting 3 iOS apps to "play nice" together - Cubasis, Noatikl and Korg Module. I decided to minimize my variables by only using InterApp Audio when necessary and only a few sounds. This is a piano piece and I want the left and right hands to sound "real" and produce a credible piano solo. Virtual MIDI by itself is a challenge, so I defer using IAA and bouncing until I get the basic sounds working and then recorded.




The composition tool for me (as is often the case) is Noatikl. Rather than go into its details, I'll describe what I used it to accomplish (see my tutorial if you want to dig deeper into Noatikl).

I loaded up Korg Module with one of the Synthology piano samples. Unfortunately Korg Module does not let you specify what MIDI channels it listens to but it does support Virtual MIDI in Omni mode (meaning that all MIDI being fed will trigger notes). On this piece, I'll use that to my advantage.

With Korg Module loaded (and background audio enabled from its setup menus), I next load Intermorphic's Noatikl which I will use to "program" the music for this piece. I want to define 2 "voices" in Noatikl which will emit MIDI notes and events. One voice will the the "left hand" of the piano, the other will be the "right hand".

At first the main order of business is to create something that sounds good - so I picked a Lydian scale and 7/4 time (to be weird) in Noatikl and programmed a chord pattern derived from a classic 2-5-1 sequence (2nd note of scale, 5th note, a few others, then back to 1st note). By giving Noatikl an octave range and a rhythm pattern to follow, it plays those notes across a few octaves in order. Now for the "magic", I ask Noatikl to generate diatonic chords for those notes using 3rds for some chords and 4th for others. For the chords I program the voice to randomly use between 3 and 5 notes (or "fingers').

For the "right hand" I program a simple pattern of eighth notes in the scale, ask it to "auto harmonize" with the other voice, and ask it to run the patter 50% of the time and then a random sequence of quarter, eighth and half notes also harmonized the other 50% of the time. A bit of tweaking and parameter setting in Noatikl and I have a piece that sound pretty good to me. The velocities are lightly randomized, the chord timings are slightly delayed to give a human feel and voila, the sound is  ready to be recorded (which is the hard part!).

The sound from Noatikl over virtual MIDI into Korg Module is good but not perfect! At times, the maximum polyphony is exceeded and I hear a distinct "plunk" sound. This is probably a short-coming of Korg Module that I've read documented elsewhere where lots of sustaining notes are playing at once (I did tweak Noatikl to use the sustain pedal and release it on each bar). This will have to be corrected after recording.

To record the piece, I want to use Cubasis. This is where things get tricky with Virtual MIDI as to who drives what. Korg Module is already "listening" to all MIDI channels coming out of Noatikl and I don't want Cubasis feeding it as well. So in Cubasis, I create 2 MIDI tracks, and set the instrument to "None". I just want the MIDI notes recorded. For the MIDI source, I select each Noatikl track number and MIDI channel. So track one is listening to MIDI track 1 in Noatikl and track 2 is listening to track 2 in Noatikl. I make sure that both tracks have MIDI output as None - remember, Korg Module is already playing the MIDI from Noatikl - don't want to feed it twice!




So in theory, we hit "record" in Cubasis, start Noatikl playing the tune and away it goes. Bad news though - when Cubasis first gets MIDI notes from Noatikl, it crashes and restarts (ah the wonder of iPads!). So as a work-around, we start Noatikl playing first, open Cubasis (crash/restart), and then press record - it will pick up with what is currently playing.

We let this go to the end of the song, press stop and we should have good MIDI notes in two tracks in Cubasis. If this worked out OK, we are done with Noatikl. To save memory, I close Noatikl, go back to the two tracks in Cubasis and set their output to "Virtual MIDI". Now Cubasis will "drive" Korg Module.

Playing it back at this point sounds good with a few "plunks" here and there. There are two culprits. One I mentioned is the Korg Module polyphony limit and a few others seem to be MIDI generation bugs either in Noatikl or Cubasis. The "bugs" in MIDI sound like "plunks" too and are visible in the MIDI notes as extremely short notes. I find these and either delete them or lengthen them in the Cubasis editor.

The second "plunks" are harder. You have to listen for them, find the measure and delete a few concurrent notes until they sound right. MIDI makes the editing so much easier than working with Audio files!

Now that it all sounds ok, it comes time to "bounce the tracks". I don't use the MIDI/Inter App Audio in Cubasis since I need to record two tracks at once and IAA only allows one instance of an instrument at a time. The easier way is to create an IAA Audio track in Cubasis, set it to listen to Korg Module, arm it to record, disarm the 2 MIDI channels and play the piece. Cubasis will route the MIDI through Korg Module and record the resulting audio into the Audio track.




Having done this, I then mute the two MIDI tracks and export the track to Soundcloud. If this sounds like more work than a desktop DAW, well, it is! But I've found this workflow to be a bit better than what I've done in past tracks requiring multiple passes. Hope this helps someone!

Ethical use of Korg Module and another birthday

This month I celebrated another birthday and with a birthday in January, I often take a reflective look on my life. I combine New Year resolutions with another year on earth and see how my life is affecting the world I live in.

Loving music as I do, I also try to be ethical and cause no harm to the world other than aural abuse (I suffer for my music so its only fair that my listeners have their turn!). Very recently I downloaded Korg Module and the Synthology Ivory piano add-ons without really thinking of the implications. Spoiler alert - the Synthology Ivory pianos sound incredible but that is not what has me soul searching and this is not to be a review nor an endorsement - far from it my friends!

Giving it a little thought, I looked into the Synthology pianos. These are virtual pianos, of course with rich sampling and sounds. These can be played by external keyboards but also via virtual keys which are pretty small in Module. It stands to reason, that these small virtual keyboards are made of virtual ivory! I realize most of you probably knew that being the astute musicians that you are, but to me this was a revelation.

Taking my thought processes further, it stands to reason that virtual ivory must come from virtual tusks which in turn come from virtual elephants! In all my web browsing and computer usage, I don't recall seeing more than a very few virtual elephants. "Why might this be?", I asked myself and came to the same conclusion that you no doubt have also reached - they are nearly extinct!

In fact, now that I think of it, I have read of domain poaching related to the internet and this is probably where the virtual ivory comes from. I think I'm going to have to either come to terms with the ethical implications of using Module or delete it from my iPad.

In all honesty, I have been accused of tree-huggery in my past. I have had my shares of embarrassments. My Nauga preserve in the 1980s went nowhere. Likewise my clay pigeon preserve. Added to the list, my attempt to revive the North American Faux (they are extremely popular for their fur and for leather, a peculiar animal that makes no noise - what does the faux say?) and don't even ask about my mule-breeding experiment.

In any event, I may have to avoid Synthology despite the sound quality or compromise my personal code of ethics. Thanks for reading.

Twiddling the littleBits Korg

Since my first playing around with the littleBits, I've got the arduino configured so I can use my Akai MPK mini keyboard to control the littleBits synth. Hardware synths are new to me and one challenge is tuning the oscillators! They do have some drift and interesting interactions together. The MIDI program for the arduino has built into it some nice features to mimic an LFO by modulating the pitch with CC1 events and it supports portamento as well as pitch bending. This is much better than using the provided "mini keyboard" which basically is an array of switches:

With the arduino setup, I also can use my iPad to control pitches with any of its MIDI apps which I'll be doing more of as I go on. The piece above was with just the MPK mini on 2 tracks - one bass looped and the other sort a distorted guitar. The distortion interestingly enough was all from the modules in the little bits - no post processing bit crushers or digital noise added. The synth setup for this piece, I call a "mess-20" since it is sort of the MS-20 Korg configuration. 2 analog oscillators, an envelope into the filter that is triggered by note-ons and a simple delay module. 

The post processing was limited to some EQ, compression and a stereo-spread module to give the mono synth some sense of space. 

So after a few more days of tweaking, I still thing this is an incredible modular setup for very little money! I did add some modules to the bass Synth kit - specifically some wires, mixers, splitters and an additional envelope and oscillator. It is important to remember that these are Korg modules and it IS a mono synth, so no polyphony or stereo in the hardware itself is supported. Likewise, these modules are not inherently velocity sensitive, so any volume adjustments are limited to playing with the volume know (or much easier) done with automation on the track post recording. 

I usually record the audio into Logic and there I can add space with the stereo spreader or manipulate the recorded audio in any other ways. I'm sure this is old news to you audio gurus but for a  MIDI guy like me, there is a learning curve here. It took me awhile to get the levels right for recording and as of now I am still going through the iMac mic-in port which probably is not the cleanest. 

For patch preset saving I resort to the camera on my phone so I can remember the convoluted lego-like layouts of my synth modules for future use :). 

Modular Synthesizer at last!

My earliest synth memory was seeing a film featuring Wendy (then Walter) Carlos and Bob Moog operating the modular Moog synth in the 1960s (old blog post about it here). For just a few decades, any idea of owning or playing my own synth remained a pipe-dream.

Years later, I got into music making and synthesis via Computer and "virtual synthesizers" and have until recently only ever used software synthesizers. I haven't bought any self-contained synths or other hardware but have collected countless software modules on my desktop (iMac) and more recently on the iPad.

My interests in modular synthesis stayed and I purchased the excellent movie - I Dream of Wires when it came out. Modern modular equipment is a pricey proposition and requires a great deal of assembly and electronic knowledge. Eurorack systems are popular and I've always toyed with the idea of getting into them but these too are costly and laborious to configure and change. Many of my more interesting software synths emulate modular systems such as the Arturia Modular V, iVCS3 and more low-level options such as Reaktor and Adulus.

One reason I tend to prefer the software options is that it is so fast to prototype, mock-up and change any music making ideas I have without having to resort to screw drivers or soldering irons. Nonetheless, the lure of analog and tinkering has remained.

This Christmas, my wonderful wife (at the advice of my older son) bought me the littleBits Synth kit and suddenly, I have a modular system at my fingertips that I can configure/reconfigure in seconds with its brilliant magnetic connection system and self-contained modules. Korg collaborated with littleBits and produced some excellent oscillators, sequencers, keyboards, filters and envelopes in a very simple, lego-like configuration. This kit is extremely easy to use, is cheap (compared to other modular setups) and quite powerful.

All by itself, the kit provides enough to put together a two oscillator synth with basic envelope, sequencing and filtering. The keyboard isn't going to produce too much with switches for each note, but you can put int basic notes and run through the sequencer to get some synth rhythms. I bought a few extra modules (splitter, mixer, mounting boards and another oscillator) and put together a basic piece in just a few hours of tinkering. I used the filter in its self-oscillating mode to get a sine wave to mix with the simple saw or square that the Korg oscillator provides.


One thing I have to get used to is recording analog audio! Up until now with mostly MIDI synthesizers or my iConnectMIDI2, the input comes through USB cables or via the iConnectMIDI. The analog synth goes into my somewhat noisy microphone jack on my iMac. I might need to consider an audio interface at some point.

Another work in-progress for me is connecting the modular synthesizer into my music-making via MIDI. There is a module "in the works" for MIDI control but some littleBits users have already solved this by using a littleBits Arduino module to plug into the kit. I bought the littleBits arduino and am working on the MIDI integration.

There are a few projects already outlining how to do this here and here. The second link has a much richer MIDI sketch and is probably the one I will adapt. For my needs, I am more interested in a MIDI solution to integrate with external sequencers and MIDI controllers in my studio rather than for live performance. An added bonus is that I get to do some programming as well :).

I've put the arduino beta programming environment onto my iMac and have got the basics working so stay tuned and I'll update my progress as it goes.

2014 reflections and the year ahead

I've been reading many posts on the excellent iPad Musician Facebook page and year-end wrap-ups from other sites and decided that I should sum up a bit about what I've acquired this year and where I think 2015 might take me musically.

Again, the philosophy of this blog and my perspective is one of an amateur, so much of what I do reflects the "hobby" aspect of my music making (i.e. I buy way too many apps and master way too few of them), but that is for me, part of the fun!

As technology goes, I tend to be an early adopter and with iOS8, I rolled the dice and forged ahead - no regrets here. Lots of stuff doesn't work (of course), but I love challenges and finding ways to make music work despite them. There are many passionate, and angry debates about Apple's rollout of iOS8 which are probably justified to some extent. Apple's iOS environment, though, really pushes free upgrades for life and more or less is a one-way trip. Once you do upgrade, there is little going back. So, if parts of my music arsenal break in the process, I simply move on to other tools that work and wait for the rest to catch up. Wasting time on blaming who broke what is, for me, a useless endeavor.

This year, some of that has pushed me to abandon some tools I used to rely on and to rediscover mixing my music making with the iPad and Logic X on the desktop. The best DAW I have is still on my iMac no matter what Cubasis or Auria manage to accomplish! One major purchase that I made this year and use more and more is the iConnectMIDI2. This has allowed me to merge my iPad into my music making as a MIDI device. I can pass audio and MIDI in either direction and use the best tool for each job.

For me, I don't do anything with audio. I don't sing. I don't play guitar. I don't record live sounds so MIDI is my medium. I don't own a "classic" MIDI synth. I don't have a single traditional MIDI cable. I use USB MIDI exclusively. So 2 of the ports on my iConnectMIDI2 go unused (those large ugly circa 1985 MIDI ports). My one and only iPad is connected to the USB port via the iPad 30 pin cable and an ugly 30-pin to lightning adapter. My iPad, for the record, is an iPad Air (1st gen).

So some of the major apps that I used in this setup are MIDI sequencers. I've been using Noatikl on the desktop for years and continue to use it on the iPad. On the iPad, it crashes - a lot! Might be Apple, might be iOS8, might be the developer....but I still use it because, frankly, there isn't a single app out there that comes close in functionality for generative music that still gives me control over the composing and rules. Believe me I've looked! Despite the iOS stability issues, I use this app more than anything when trying to control other sound sources. The interface is weird. The pattern language is very unfriendly to enter on an iPad keyboard but, again, there is nothing close to this in pure power - nada! No ping-pong or "game of life" randomizers are in the same league. So if you can put up with the learning curve, this app is a must-have.



For more simple MIDI needs, however, there are many very good apps I added to my iPad this year around MIDI sequencing. Xynthesizr is one such app that lets me sequence multiple MIDI channels and make a few of them random, a few less random and then build on what it creates. I've also added StepPolyArp and ChordPolyPad to help with chording and step sequencing. Both on the iPad alone and with Logic X, these sequencers have added quite a bit to my music making. Other additions this year for sequencing include Thesys, Gestrument and Arpeggionome Pro.

With my increasing investment in MIDI sequencers, I also needed to have some better sound targets for the MIDI events. This year, I expanded some of my sampled sounds by adding the CMP Grand Piano and iSymphonic modules along with the excellent Ruckers 1628 harpsichord and many SampleTank expansions (Miroslav, Moog, etc). These apps, while pricey, sound fantastic on the iPad and at times take the place of my desktop samples when creating music on the go.

In the percussion arena, I discovered DrumPerfect which really is the closest I've come to a "live feel" for my drums on the iPad. The left/right hand samples, humanize functionality and other features make this the best "real drum" sounding app I have and rivals what I can do on my desktop as well.

Other sampling I am less impressed with include the iFretless collection. I can only assume that guitar players love being able to play mediocre saxes and crappy-sounding brass with a guitar based interface. I do like their bass samples and some of the guitars, but the other sounds, well.....I go back to the desktop for those. I only ever use iFretless with MIDI sequencers or Noatikl. I absolutely HATE figuring out guitar fingerings for non-guitar instruments! There are no good saxes or brass on the iPad as of yet. I enjoy using my Akai EWI to play sax or trumpet parts on the desktop and have over $600 invested in SampleModeling instruments. On the iPad, the samples aren't that good and breath control is still a major PITA.

Like almost everyone, I did get Korg Gadget this year but unlike most, I've only used it sparingly so far. I find the environment a bit lacking in effects. The synths are great but the mixing is a bit limited. I will probably make more use of this in the coming year. I've passed so far on the Module expansion they offer - we'll see how long that lasts!

Another thing that happened this year - my 64GB iPad filled up. I had to jettison some of my non-music apps such as large games that I rarely play and more stressful for me, I had to get rid of some music making apps that I rarely use.  This will continue into the new year I think. Music Studio bit the dust for me - its large, sample based and in my opinion, not up to snuff with other sample libraries anymore. I still have NanoStudio out of sheer nostalgia but rarely use it and Beatmaker 2 is hanging in there for no good reason whatsoever. I don't use it, hate its interface (more phone based than iPad based) and will probably lose it in the new year. One huge space taker is my back issues of computer music magazine and the "special edition" version that was discontinued. Sadly, if I delete the "discontinued" issues from the special edition versions, I can't get them back. In some ways, virtual magazines still suck!

As for my iPad, I tend to follow a rule of skipping generations. I had an original iPad, skipped the 2, bought the retina, skipped the 4, bought the Air, skipped the Air 2.

This year, for the first time ever, I acquired some analog gear - specifically the littleBits Korg synthesizer kit. Already I'm buying up modules and playing with an albeit simple modular system. I look to add this into my music this year via MIDI (probably the Arduino module). Since I'm getting more and more into modular hardware, I think I'll probably start using Adulus this year along with Tera. On the desktop, I may finally put Reaktor to good use.

I have tons of other synths I acquired such as iProphet, Laplace, the excellent iVCS3 and others but I have yet to really put them through their paces. Maybe in the coming year! On the desktop, I've really slowed down and rarely buy plugins. I do continue to make use of the great Computer Magazine freebies nonetheless. I'm sure 2015 will be an interesting year.

Hybrid iPad Music

Making music on the iPad usually requires just a bit of patience with inter-app audio or audio sharing, communicating and crashing. That is just the "state of the art" at the moment with iPad music creation. I make a great deal of music on my tablet but to do so requires unique workflows, frequent saving and a bit of luck!

Recently while experimenting with the excellent MIDI instrument, Gestrument, I rapidly found my iPad misbehaving in various ways and decided a compromise was in order. Using my iConnect MIDI 2, I can send and receive either audio or MIDI to and from my iPad. I decided that I wanted to create a piece using the Gestrument instrument but with desktop samples (which are STILL head and shoulders above any sampled instruments on the iPad).

Gestrument is very expressive and with multi-touch gestures will send MIDI notes, velocities and varied pitches, etc. It can control multiple MIDI channels all at once and is capable of making some very unique sounds.

I wanted to make a jazz piece and use some Native Instruments Kontakt samples. I chose the MM Bass and the MKII electric piano for the background of the piece (both part of the Komplete bundle from Native Instruments). I wanted to use gestrument to send chords which is not something it does easily. Rather than wrestle with multiple voices on Gestrument, I sent one instrument into a "Track Stack" in Logic X and then sent the notes to the Bass on one track, a MIDI chorded piano on a second and a syncopated arpeggiated piano on the 3rd track. This set up the basic bass and piano rhythms in the piece very nicely. By playing the notes and articulations on the iPad, I recorded the resulting MIDI into the track stack which played back on the 3 sub-tracks in Logic.

For jazz drums, I find the drum tracks a bit lacking in Logic, so I resorted to some excellent Jazz looped drums.

Once this was all done, I set up a few saxophone tracks and played various rhythms in the same key (Eb minor blues) as the rhythm and then mixed, tweaked and mastered on Logic from there on out.

Say what you will about Cubasis or Auris, Logic X is still worlds easier to work with multiple MIDI channels with or without the iPad.