New DAW (for me)

With the universal version of NanoStudio coming up, I took another look around at what other DAWs were doing and finally took the plunge on Xewton's Music Studio 2. I had looked hard at this before purchasing NanoStudio a year ago and at that time, it was lacking many needed features (audio copy/paste, audio file support etc).

I'm happy to see that almost everything has been added and this is a very nice DAW to compose in. For my first humble effort, I used only instruments native to the app but it is an easy thing to record parts in other synths and then paste them in as full audio files - which I will be taking advantage of soon!

The price is a bit higher than some - $15 for the app and $15 for additional instruments but I think I will get tons of use out of this. It surpasses NanoStudio in its support for Audio files but is behind in its lack of built-in synths and somewhat limited effects processing options and mixing. It will be more complementary to my other apps rather than replacing them.

Here is a quick example - a short melodic piece using all native instruments. 

Some Days are Like that by oldlibmike

More on iPad music workflow

ReBirth Audio track with GB tracks added (iPad)

Its been awhile since I posted so I thought I might put a few new thoughts together again on musical workflows involving the iPad. I have put several songs together in recent weeks here, and have used many different methods to combine and produce finished works. Also there have been many new synths and updates to existing ones that make life slightly easier!
One gap on my huge list of iPad apps is an audio-file based DAW (or as SmiteMatter likes to term it - and iDaw). I have looked with interest at MultiTrack DAW, Meteor MultiTrack recorder, and most recently Music Studio. These all have their pros and cons. The first two would let me combine audio files together into tracks, apply effects, panning etc and master on the iPad. Cool idea but only half the solution - limited Midi and both a bit expensive in iPad terms ($15 and $20 respectively with additional in-app costs to extend them further). Music Studio is a bit more robust with software instruments, audio files and lots of tracks - and might be in my future.

For now, though, having so many other options, I find enough ways to edit audio, combine audio and midi and put together songs entirely (or nearly entirely) on the iPad. I am not a purist that will not export off the iPad before publishing - I love the interface of the iPad for creating and playing tracks but will take advantage of my iMac for mastering and converting formats.

I continually come back to NanoStudio as an iDAW and often find it entirely sufficient with its own Eden synths and TRG pads. When I want to add shortish snippets from other synths, it is fairly easy to use Audio Copy/Paste (ACP) to pop samples onto TRG pads. NanoStudio's powerful effects engines and mixer are probably my favorite option I have on the iPad. The incredible Animoog synth works very well with NanoStudio since it can only record small samples. All of these fit easily into TRG pads. Its worth reminding you that NanoStudio is an iPhone/iPod app currently. I prefer it scaled up on the iPad and there is a native version in the works but don't let the fact that its not iPad native put you off - it is extremely usable!

My other favorite iDAW (well much more than that) is of course Garageband which is now both iPad and iPhone/iPod compatible. Besides being an incredible musical DAW on its own, recent releases have added um...1/2 of ACP. You can paste audio into Garageband but can't copy it out (sort of a musical Roach Motel!). Indeed SmiteMatter passes on the app since you can't really produce a finished result without uploading to a computer - more on that in a bit. In my piece Running Sacred, I used another favorite of mine, ReBirth to do a techno track and then added some sampled voices and synths to it with Garageband. ReBirth also recently added audio copy to their app (GarageBand only pastes, ReBirth only copies - very symbiotic!).

Garageband is limited to 8 tracks so if you have many audio tracks, you probably want to combine them or "bounce" them before putting them into Garageband. My solution there is Hokusai audio editor, which lets me paste in multiple tracks, apply any number of effects or edits and then combine them and copy them back to the ACP clipboard. This reminds me of the early days of Garageband on my underpowered G4 iMac where I would bounce or lock many tracks since the CPU wasn't that robust. Of course I can't copy the tracks out of Garageband so the solution is to paste them out of the original apps, combine them and then paste the resulting combination back to Garageband.

There are some postings on how to bounce tracks from Garageband itself but this is a very bad idea. Garageband does let you export and email a file but it first mixes it down to a 128 kbs m4a file which is very lossy. Not a good way to move around audio!

I think Garageband is a much better fit for folks with Apple computers than Windows fans. Garageband does make it easy to upload your project file to Garageband on the Mac or Logic 9 (I use the latter). Once on the full DAW, you can do almost anything! I tend to clean up the mix, add any automations, fades or midi edits needed and then publish the song.

One point sometimes brought up about iPad synths is keyboard support. If I need to use the camera connection kit, a USB chord and compact keyboard on the iPad I really lose interest. Once the portability factor is gone, I may as well use my desktop DAW with a keyboard - way more powerful! But I do like the iPad keyboard for some things. You should check out all of the cool options in Animoog for keys. I have read many critiques saying that keyboards on the iPad feel unnatural. One area where I distinctly prefer the iPad is for portamento or glide parts. It is far easier to slide over smooth surface for these sort of sounds than carefully playing legato on a traditional keyboard.

Whew...well this post is all over the place - I welcome your comments or ideas on how you work with iPads or iPad/computer combinations. I haven't even touched on using the iPad as a wireless MIDI controller for Logic - maybe another time.

No Static at all.....more on Mixtikl

After viewing some videos and playing around with Mixtikl, I was enamored with the FM DSynth in Mixtikl - predominantly because I was a bit frustrated with the Partikl synth. The FM synth is predominantly used for drum sounds in Mixtikl but does let you put together some nice bell-like tones as this piece hopefully demonstrates.

Mixtikl brings up the question on what a performance or recording is. This software is geared towards "Generative Music" as popularized by Brian Eno quite some time ago. So was this effort creative or just music engineering? The process to make the piece involved programming a rhythm pattern, then putting in rules on just how that pattern evolved - how frequent a rest versus a note - what scale to follow - what probabilities for each note - which voices should follow other voices in the mix - should a track be leading or harmonizing with others etc. etc.

In many ways this is a programming project which is probably what I love about this tool. In other ways, such as the creation of every synth patch, the effort is somewhat creative and musical. Defining the rhythms is definitely more music than programs even if it is shown as a sequence of durations, velocities and pitches.

So art or science? Or just another annoying etude of mine? :)

In any case, I like the outcome and hope to do much more with Mixtikl in the future. Here is the piece:

No Static at all

Pushing those buttons!

Brief Stop on the Median by oldlibmike

While I've been distracted by several cool new iPad tools, I finally got around to recording a piece I was working on in Aurora Sound Studio HD. I bought the tool when it reduced its price from $39 to $14 though it is still on the high side.

Aurora is very similar to the TNR-I (Tenori-On) app, but it tries to be a bit more of a full DAW with exporting, sequencing etc rather than a performance instrument like the TNR-I. I say "tries" because once I had painstakingly sequenced in my patterns, I exported the file to WAV format and was disappointed to see that Aurora distorted two of my patterns where a smooth sweep became a staccato mess. This prevented me from putting up the piece for so long that I finally gave up, put the headphone jack into the mic-in and recorded it via audio.

The audio output of the headphone jack on the iPad is quite noisy so I used a noise-gate in Logic-9 to clean up the resulting audio and I think it came out ok. I may use this technique for other synths that make recording difficult (such as the TNR-I and the excellent but hard to record AniMoog).

Using the 16x16 grids for sequencing is a novel approach and in some instances I like it better than banging on fake piano keyboards but it can be very time consuming to get a full piece put together. I think as far as push button sequencing goes, I like the TNR-I a bit better but Aurora does provide more functionality - if only it would work properly!

Well, its been awhile since I posted and I was going to put up a post about the cool Korg M1 plug-in that I'm using with Logic 9 or the new work I've done in NanoStudio or the Korg iMS-20 still being so powerful on the iPad but....Moog went ahead and put out an iPad synthesizer called Animoog that rivals anything I have and they are charging a whopping 99 cents for it.

If you don't download it immediately, why in god's name are you reading this blog???

I could review it in depth but check out the review in Wired magazine. 

This is a phenomenal synthesizer at a ridiculous price - they claim it will jump up to $30 after 30 days. I spent $300 for two soft Moog plugins for my desktop so I didn't agonize over this purchase all that much. This joins their already excellent Filtatron app and I look forward to more in the software arena from Moog.

Obligatory Tribute :)

Well, so much has happened in the iPad music world and the Apple world in general. I suppose every Apple fan has to comment on the sad news so...

I think Steve Jobs was the perfectionist that took the genius of the other Steve (Woz) and made it palatable to humans. He transformed the geekiness of the Apple I/II/Mac to something consumer friendly and with a fanatical sense of taste, eschewed commercial success, ceded dominance to the mass-marketing PC industry and ultimately took back almost everything with a maniacal sense of style.

From a music perspective, he duped the Beatles into releasing their corporate name and then reshaped the entire music industry (and managed to settle it all in court). It is heartening to see how much Apple did and does love music and music creation - exactly how many companies would pump so much into products like GarageBand and effectively give it away?

For me, the Apple and GarageBand got me back into making music (albeit with my own amateurish slant) and for that I will always be grateful. Now with Logic on the high end and tons of products on the iPad and iPod, I can be creative where ever and whenever I want.

For me that is something incredible. I was not a "forever fan" of Apple but got in late in the game when Apple embraced Unix and could multitask effectively. There was always that sense of style, but before OSX, I didn't trust the tech behind it.

I think the company is on a good track and will continue to produce amazing products that stand out from the cookie-cutter PCs and cheap laptops that started to dominate at the start of this century.

I also think that we will see much more competition in all areas as the product lines mature and that will no doubt benefit everyone.

Back to tracks!

Analog Drip by oldlibmike

I have been looking at many new song tools and lately have put several pieces together with the Korg iMS-20 (still such a favorite!). I keep asking myself, however, why I don't do more with NanoStudio and I think the reasons are more aesthetic than logical. It is extremely powerful but the interface does involve a lot of navigation.

Nonetheless, I did dust it off and put together a sort of retro-cheesy synth piece above. I used the TRG pads for the drum beats (909 samples) which I put through a band-pass filter to play with the timbre. The lead is the Eden synth tweaked to sound a bit Moogish and the other melodies are my lousy voice sampled into NanoStudio, heavily effected (you're welcome!) and played on the keyboard.

This is still the most powerful DAW I have on my iPad and I hope to do a lot more with it - anxiously awaiting the native iPad release of the app!

Other toys I picked up and hope to use more soon are the cool TNR-i (Yamaha Tenori-On) which is a full blown implementation of the hardware version and I finally sprang for Aurora Sound Studio HD - very similar to the TNR-i which lets you make music with pattern-based sequencing - it finally had a price drop. Hopefully I will post something from Aurora soon. The TNR-i doesn't give you many options to save files out of it aside from raw MIDI.