Virtual Instruments Magazine May 2008

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M A Y 2 0 0 8 - V O L . 4 N O . 3

Scoring to Video in Pro ToolsHANDS ON the Euphonix MC Mix controller

MOTUMachFIVE 2

REVIEWS:Brainworx Media bx_digital loops

Euphonix MC Mix controller

Overloud Breverb

Sample Logic The Elements

Submersible DrumCore libraries

TrackStar Radio Waves loops

VSL Appassionata Strings

Wave Machine Labs Drumagog 4

MOTUMachFIVE 2 THE UNIVERSAL

SAMPLER

Scoring to Video in Pro Tools

THE UNIVERSAL

SAMPLER

a DrumCore Deluxe - gigs upon gigs of grooves!

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V I R T U A L I N S T R U M E N T S 5

From the

Virtual Instruments is published bi-monthly for $16.95/year, $26.95/twoyears by Virtual Instruments, Inc., 3849 Ventura Canyon, Sherman

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Editor/publisher: Nick Batzdorf

Art director: Lachlan Westfall/Quiet Earth Design

Advertising/Marketing manager: Laurie Marans

Web designer: Denise Young/DMY Studios

Contributors: Contributors: Jim Aikin, Jason Scott Alexander,

Thomas J. Bergersen, Peter Buick, David Das, Bob DeMaa,

Peter Dines, Doyle Donehoo, Gary Eskow, Jerry Gerber,

Paul Gilreath, David Govett, Jean-Stephane Guitton,

Ashif “King Idiot” Hakik, Mattias Henningson, Mark Jenkins,

Hilgrove Kenrick, Michael Marans, Monte McGuire, Orren

Merton, Chris Meyer, Dave Moulton, Zack Price, Frederick Russ,

Bruce Richardson, Marc Schonbrun, Craig Sharmat,

Lee Sherman, Dietz Tinhof, Rich Tozzoli, Jesse White,

George Whitty.

Advertising contact: Laurie Marans 818/590-0018.

[email protected]

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T hese days you don’t expect any total bombshell products to beintroduced when you go to trade shows. There are often very

exciting products, of course, but music and audio technology is soadvanced that it doesn’t seem possible for there to be any morecomplete breakthroughs.

But there was one at the Musikmesse in Frankfurt this year:Celemony Melodyne, an extremely clever pitch manipulating pro-gram that treats audio like MIDI on a piano roll editor, can nowedit polyphonic audio. That means you can transpose individualnotes in a guitar or piano chord, tune a guitar after it’s been

recorded, of course fix mistakes…it’s quite amazing.Direct Note Access, as the feature is called, won’t be released

until later this year. But it’s a bona fide breakthrough, and the wayit’s implemented is really slick. Everyone broke into applause at thepress conference where inventor Peter Neubäcker demoed thenotes exploding into their positions on the piano roll grid.

The other impressive product demoed at Musikmesse was VSL’sMIR—Multi Impulse Response mixing and reverberation engine.

Distributor: Rider Circulation Services, 3700 Eagle Rock Blvd.,

Los Angeles, CA 90065.

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Standard disclaimer: Virtual Instruments Magazine and its staff can’t be held

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articles and graphics submitted. Reasonable care is taken to ensure

accuracy. All trademarks belong to their owners. Everything in here is

subject to international copyright protection, and you may not copy or imitate

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© 2008 Virtual Instruments, Inc.

This convolution-based system is still under development, but thebasic idea is that it uses lots of separate IR samples to positioninstruments on the stage rather than just one.

In order to get it to run in real time at the show, they limited thedemo to about 14 impulses—which is still a lot but not something

like 100 of them, which is the idea. Still, they were moving instru-ments around, even pointing their bells in different directions, withpretty remarkable results just in the headphones on the show floor.

MIR will allow instruments that aren’t VSL libraries too, but fromwhat they say that will have some limitations. It relies on things itknows about VSL’s own samples.

Exciting stuff. I for one am really looking forward to both prod-ucts.

mailto:[email protected]
















6 V I R T U AL I N ST R UM E NT S

34 V E R Y D E E P C L I N I C :

A Winning Scorewith SibeliusBy Jim Aikin

Adventures creating a publication-standard score and parts inthe popular notation program

V E R Y D E E P C L I N I C :

Scoring to Picture inPro ToolsBy Rich Tozzoli

Some basic pointers about scoring to video in Pro Tools

Letters

Launch

Introductions, updates, news

8

18

12

April 2008

V4.N3

Euphonix MC Mixcontrollerby Bob DeMaa

A new sleek controller that communicates over ethernet rais-es several bars for affordable DAW controllers

64

44MIDI Mockup

MicroscopeBy Frederick Russ

In this installment of our series on composers and how theydid their MIDI programming, composer/mixer Gabriel Shadiddiscusses one of his cues. Download the cues atwww.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com and follow along.

14

Trends:My Field Trip to theGrammies RehearsalBy Nick Batzdorf





VI V I R T U A L I N S T R U M E N T S 7

VIcontents April 2008

V4.N3

24 50

56

28

40

Submersible

Music DrumCore

DrumerPacksBy Chris Meyer

Is this the next best thing to havinga famous drummer on your tracks? Alook at ten add-on rhythm looplibraries for the popular

librarian/player

MOTU

MachFive 2By Marc Schonbrun

The “universal sampler” (meaningthat imports practically all formats)gets a big upgrade

Sample Logic

The Elements

sample libraryBy Nick Batzdorf

An electronica toolkit of interestingprocessed sounds

Overloud

Breverb reverbBy Nick Batzdorf

Why there’s still a place in the uni-verse for a really good algorithmicreverb plug-in.

Big Products,

Little ReviewsBy Jason Scott Alexander

Wave Machine Labs Drumagog 4.1,Brainworx Media bx_digital master-ing plug-in, and TrackStar Radio Waves contemporary beat and vocalconstruction kits

Vienna

Symphonic

Library

Appassionata

Strings I and IIBy Nick Batzdorf

Gigantic string sections from VSL

42

VIreviews



8 V I R T U AL I N ST R UM E NT S

can be accessed freely for editing, pitch or time shifting etc. to be able to customize agiven library to their tastes. The currenttrend seems to go more toward librarieswhere the user can’t edit the samples any-more and only a limited editing is possible

like the VSL or EWQLSO Play engine etc.The advantage of the new developments

seem to be the increase in playability, usingclever ways to switch between articulationsin real time, like VSL’s speed and perform-ance control, or the legato transitions andtrills etc. Libraries that can be edited usesamplers like EXS and Giga etc. and thoseseem to be lacking these increased clever options for articulation switching aside from the old key switching or mod wheelapproach.

I have been wondering where this trendwill end up and whether it will be possible

in open samplers to have the moreadvanced options of the closed systems. Will it be possible to have my great projectSAM brass library as playable as the Viennainstruments? Or will we have to use com-plex programming for many years to cometo get a musical line perfect?

Best regards and keep up the goodwork!

Jitse PruiksmaThe Netherlands

Thanks Jitse.1. It sounds like you have a good handle

on using the three mic positions the instru-

ments in the EWQLSO orchestra come in. The

main thing is to listen to how the front-to-

back positioning changes as you alter the

balance; that and the amount of ambience

should be the guide. Also, a suggestion in the

manual is to bring the close positions up sub-

tly to accentuate important entrances and

then move them back a little.

You well may want to EQ the mic positions

differently, especially the close ones that pro-

vide the most definition. EQ will let you bring

out or subdue different aspects of the sound of the instruments. Just make sure you don’t

get phasing between the one you’re EQ-ing

and the other two mic positions. Linear phase

EQ, if you have a plug-in that does it, tends

to work better on strings than standard EQ

due to the lack of phase shift.

Blending in other sample libraries that only

have one mic position is not a problem in my

experience. Just use reverb; while you want to

try to match the halls (or other spaces) and

especially the reverb times, the ear is very

VIl e t t e r s

Letters

Please send your questions

and comments to

[email protected]

Multiple positions

Thanks for making a great magazine!Fantastic to be able to download pastissues and find so many things to learn.The MIDI Mockup Microscope series in

particular I find very interesting.On the topic of digital orchestration I’m

still left with a couple of puzzling questionsthat I hope you could give some attentionto in a future issue:

1. Several sample libraries come withmultiple microphone positions (like close,stage, far) and I have been looking for some tips on how to mix these to get thebest out of the sound. I have noticed thatto obtain a sound equal to some filmscores I had to use all three positions andcreate a mix of all. Sometimes I get theimpression that using a different panning

on them or some EQ creates a fuller sound.But I suppose insettings other than film typescores it mightnot be the bestoption. So I’mkind of looking for a logicalapproach to itall, especiallysince some sam-ple librariesdon’t have mul-

tiple mic posi-tions and howwould one beable to get thesame full sound?I would appreci-ate some ideason how andwhen to use

multiple mic position recordings.2. In several articles I have read about

that some pros prefer to use samples that

Fig. 1: As in many onscreen mixers, the

Direction Mixer plug-in in Logic Pro has both

width and position controls.







1 0 V I R T U AL I N S T R UM E NT S

VIl e t t e r s

good at

accepting

multiple spaces on a

recording.

Whether you

get as full a

sound

depends on

the reverb

processing

and how its

programmed, but you can get a full sound

out of any orchestral sample library.

It would be quite unusual to pan the three

EWQLSO mic positions in different places

from one another, since the whole point is to get a single composite sound with a precise

image rather than three unrelated recordings

mooshed together. But if panning them dif-

ferently produces a wider sound that you like,

then by all means do what sounds good to

you.

Or is the reason you’re getting a fuller

sound when you pan things around simply

that you’re balancing or filling in the sound-

field? For example, the sound will be right-

heavy in

the stan-

dard

orchestral seating

when, say,

just trum-

pets and

cellos are

playing.

You’d prob-

ably want to even them out in a piece for

trumpets and cellos. The players wouldn’t sit

in their normal orchestral positions for a per-

formance of that piece either. And you’d cer-

tainly want to do that in a pop context,

because most pop recordings aren’t trying to

emulate a concert hall.Note that the “pan” controls in Tascam

GigaStudio, VSL’s Vienna Ensemble host, and

many other onscreen mixers incorporate both

pan and width (also know by other names).

Check out the screen dump of Logic’s

Direction Mixer plug-in in Fig. 1—it’s self-

explanatory. Using that instead of just the

pan control is a good idea.

Audio Ease Altiverb has an even more

sophisticated method of positioning instru-

ments. See Fig. 2.

Yet another method of panning instru-

ments shown in Fig. 3 makes use of the Haas

Precedence Effect: hard-panning a signal left and right but delaying one side by an incre-

ment of .1 milliseconds up to 1 millisecond—

in other words by the time you get to 1mS

the image has shifted all the way over to the

earlier side. Delay-based panning results in a

very solid image that doesn’t shift when you

move your head a fraction of an inch (as

standard amplitude-based panning does),

but it’s not mono-compatible and should

only be used for stereo playback.

In any case, spacial balance is something

composers and orchestrators often take into

account. Furthermore, the space itself can be

an important element in compositions these days. An example of that is Essa Pekka

Salonen’s “Wing on Wing,” a piece he wrote

about (and performed in) Los Angeles’ Disney

Hall. He has snippets of architect Frank

Gehry’s voice coming from speakers all over

the hall, soprano singers in the balconies,

and the orchestra on the stage.

You need surround sound with overhead

speakers to get anywhere near close to that

with a virtual orchestra, but it might be an

interesting avenue to explore.

2. You also have a good handle on the

advantages and disadvantages of integrated

players. One thing you didn’t mention is copy protection: so far there doesn’t seem to be a

way of locking down libraries with samples

that can been edited freely, and that’s one of

the reasons for the players.

And of course for developers, the market is

limited to musicians who own the sampler

they’re developing for if they don’t include a

player. Plus in some cases, such as

Spectrasonics Stylus RMX, they can develop

players with the unique features they need.

Where will it end up? I think it’s already

ended up. Full-featured samplers like

GigaStudio and Native Instruments Kontakt

certainly have a place, in fact you can often open up libraries that use players in the full

sampler from which the players are deriva-

tive. And it’s not true that one is inherently

more playable in real time than the other, it’s

that some of the proprietary players that are

designed for real-time playing only work with

embedded libraries.

But we’re well past the writing on the wall

stage. Players are here to stay.—NB

Fig. 2: Audio Ease’s Altiverb convolution proces-

sor lets you drag around speakers to position

sounds front-to-back and laterally. The set-up

shown here might be good for first violins.

Fig. 3: Delaying one side of a hard-panned

stereo signal in increments less than 1 millisecond

shifts the image toward the earlier side. Here the

left channel is delayed by .48mS, which positions

the signal about half way to the right; by the

time you get to 1mS it travels all the way over.

This is only for stereo playback—in mono it will phase and sound just awful.






LaunchIntroductions, updates, news

VIl a u n c h

RME MADIface for laptops

RME MADIface is an ExpressCardMADI interface that works on laptops.This package consists of a card and a

breakout(plus mixing software) andruns up to 64 low latency audio tracksin each direction over a single wire atup to 192kHz sampling rates. MADI isan interesting solution for higher-endstudios with multiple machines, and thisparticular system includes a MIDI portwithin the driver.

The MADIface works on Windowsand Mac. Price TBA.

www.rme-audio.de

MOTU Digital Performer 6, 828MK3FireWire Audio Interface, ElectricKeys

When MOTU’s flagshipaudio sequencer DigitalPerformer goes up a num-ber, it’s a major upgrade.DP 6 features include: a

complete interfaceredesign; improved effi-ciency when running V.I.s,as well as better AU sup-port (including sample-accurate timing); XML fileinterchange with AppleFinal Cut Pro; punches, flutters, and streamers direct to DV output from within thesequencer (a feature that would have caused composers and music editors to swoonback in the day); native support for interleaved and floating point audio files; direct CDburning (just like bouncing audio); new track comping features that make it easier toselect the desired parts of takes; a new ProVerb convolution reverb and MasterWorksLeveler (LA-2A emulation) plug-ins; and improved support for Pro Tools HD systems.

In addition to an onboard digital mixer with built-in effects (reverb, parametric EQ,

compression/limiting), the 828MK3 FireWire interface features a total of 28 inputs and30 outputs in a 1U box; eight balanced 24-bit analog I/Os, two XLR main outs, and twotwo preamp inputs operate at up to 192kHz, and two 8-channel ADAT I/Os work at upto 96kHz. Other features include a DSP-driven phase lock engine for low jitter, digitallycontrolled analog input trim, and a new V-Limit hardware limiter. The unit works on Windows XP/Vista and Mac, and it comes with MOTU’s AudioDesk audio recording/edit-ing software for Mac.

MOTU’s new Electric Keys V.I. ($295) for Mac and Windows is a 40GB library of 50classic and rare electric keyboards in a player, with models from Fender, Yamaha, Korg,Roland, Hammond, Wurlitzer, Hohner, Elka, Farfisa, Mellotron, Moog, RMI, Arp, andothers. It has a separate FX rack, and most models can be played at 24-bit/96kHz (or standard) resolution.

www.MOTU.com

Free NativeInstrumentsKORE Player

NI’s KORE is a stand-alone or plug-inhost/librarian with an optional con-troller/interface, and the free player ver-sion is designed to play their line of KORE Soundpack libraries. This freeplayer is available from NI’s website,

and it includes a free “get started”library with usable sounds.

NI also shipped four new KORESoundpacks ($79/EUR 69 each): MAS-SIVE Expansion Vol 1; Best of Absynth;Pop Drums; and Kontakt Sax & Brass, alibrary by Chris Hein designed or jazz, funk, and R&B.

www.native-instruments.com

VSL Special Edition Downloads Vienna Symphonic Library has announced seven Extended and PLUS Libraries that com-

plement their Vienna Special Edition download products. PLUS and Extended libraries areavailable for strings, woodwinds, brass, and per-cussion (Extended only for percussion).

The PLUS libraries add additional articulations(short détache, harmonics, etc.) while theExtended libraries add additional instruments.Please visit their web shop for pricing.

www.VSL.co.at

http://www.rme-audio.de/

http://www.motu.com/

http://www.native-instruments.com/

http://www.vsl.co.at/


http://www.native-instruments.com/


http://www.rme-audio.de/



V I R T U A L I N S T R U M E N T S 1 3

VIl a u n c h

Spectrasonics OmnisphereSpectrasonics previewed what they’ve been working on at the

NAMM show in January: the suc-cessor to their popular Atmosphere instrument.Omnisphere ($499), due for

release September 15, is beingpresented as [paraphrasing] “aPower Synth that combines awide variety of hybrid real-timesynthesis techniques, an epiclibrary of ‘psychoacoustic’sounds, and many unique fea-tures.” Omnisphere will bebased on a proprietary underly-ing synthesis engine they call STEAM, and the sampling wasdone with a new Composite Morphing Technique that morphsthe harmonic characteristics of one instrument to another.

The control capabilities in the STEAM engine listed bySpectrasonics include: Variable Waveshaping DSP synthesis,

Granular synthesis, Timbre Shifting, FM synthesis, polyphonicring modulation, sample playback, Harmonia, Dual MultimodeFilter structure, Chaos Envelopes, a Unison mode, and a Flex-Mod routing system. While we don’t know what every one of those words means, the idea is that there’s a lot of real-timecontrol and a lot of new technology being used.

Part of the core library will feature “best of” Spectrasonicssounds that can then be processed by the STEAM engine. Butthe new sample that got the most attention was a burningpiano. Yes, a piano that’s on fire.

www.Spectrasonics.net

Digidesign Hybrid andStrike upgrades, PT|HD 7.4news

Version 1.5 of Digidesign’s popular Hybrid synthesizer for Pro Tools starts

by adding 330 new sounds andreprogramming the old ones to takeadvantage of the new features. Those features consist of a new VCF vintage filter for “classic retro sounds of the70s and 80s,” plus five new filter sat-uration modes: Distort, Hard Clip, Rectify, Bit Crush, andResample.

Digidesign also announced a Strike Content Expansion for their virtual drummer plug-in for Pro Tools. This expansion addsover 300MB of classic drum samples, as well as 100 new Stylesettings that affect how the instrument plays patterns.

Both upgrades are $19.95.Meanwhile Pro Tools HD 7.4.1 is now compatible with Mac

OS X 10.5.1 on 8-core Mac Pro computers with IntelHarpertown processors; “expanded” OS X 10.5 support, includ-ing native (LE and M-Powered) versions of Pro Tools, is stillunder development.

www.Digidesign.com

Toontrack EZplayer proEZplayer pro is an expanded version of Toontrack Music’s

EZplayer FREE. This plug-in MIDI engine organizes all the MIDIon your hard drive, letting you assemble and audition percus-sion MIDI clips from anywhere and then drag them into your sequencer. Tracks and sub-tracks can also be triggered by ahardware controller.

EZplayer pro will be included with the upcoming Superior Drummer 2.0 as its MIDI engine, and it is available as a down-load or boxed version for $49.

www.toontrack.com

Peavey ReValver MkIIIThis $299 plug-in offers 15 amp models (including seven

from Peavey itself), using an alorithm that analyzes the interac-tions of the components in the circuit level, based on the origi-nal schematics. You can then combine the amps to come upwith custom ones.

The plug-in features a 64-bit oversampling HQ mode, FFT-based convolution reverb (included sampled spring reverb, and150+ speakers).

www.peavey.com

Applied Acoustics Strum Acoustic GS-1

Strum Acoustic GS-1 is a modeled guitar synthesizer based on AAS’ physical modeling. The $279 instrument for Mac and PC

includes a collection of nylon and steel acousticguitars. Its features includeautomatic guitar voicing from keyboard chords; andstrumming and pickingactions are reproduced byan auto-strum function,special strumming keys, or MIDI loops. EQ, multief- fects, and reverb modulesare also included.

www.applied-acoustics.com

http://www.spectrasonics.net/

http://www.digidesign.com/

http://www.toontrack.com/

http://www.peavey.com/

http://www.applied-acoustics.com/

http://www.peavey.com/

http://www.toontrack.com/

http://www.spectrasonics.net/

http://www.digidesign.com/

http://www.applied-acoustics.com/



VIr e v i e w


T he first thing you notice about theEuphonix MC Mix controller is thatits footprint is so small, which makes

it very ergonomic to use in a real-worldset-up. While you can put it anywhere, it fits perfectly between your computer key-board and monitor; it’s not necessary to re-think your entire set-up to integrate it con-veniently.

This new 8-fader motorized control surface communicates with a Macintosh com-puter (full Windows support is expected to follow) over Ethernet using either its ownEuCon protocol, or if your applicationdoesn’t support it yet, the venerable HUI or Mackie Control standards. That makes itcompatible with pretty much every Macaudio program.

The next thing you notice is that this is areally sexy looking piece of gear. Gone arethe backlit LCD scribble strips of yesteryear,

Euphonix MC Mix controller

Euphonix MC Mix, $1399 list.

Compatibility (as of publica-

tion):

Direct support of EuCon pro-

tocol under Mac OS X: Apple

Logic Pro, Steinberg Cubase

and Nuendo; direct support

coming: MOTU Digital

Performer and Apogee

Maestro.

HUI and/or Mackie Controlsupport: Ableton Live, Apple

Final Cut Pro and Soundtrack,

Digidesign Pro Tools, MOTU

Digital Performer,

Propellerheads Reason.

EuCon Professional software

allows Windows slaves to

work.

A new sleek controller thatcommunicates over ethernet raises

several bars for affordable DAW controllers

Review by Bob DeMaa

replaced by eight much nicer, high resolu-tion 128 x 64 pixel OLED displays. Thisprovides more information at a much bet-ter resolution.

In addition to being compact (17” x9.5” deep), the MC Mix has a low pro- file:1-1/2” thick, just about right to sit in front of and clear the new thin Apple key-board. If you’re using a standard keyboard,

Euphonix includes optional riser bracketsthat slope the unit about 1” in the frontand 2” in the rear. You can also use up to four units, in which case you remove theside panels and attach them to one anoth-er, saving an inch of space on each con-nection.

As of this review you need a Mac on thenetwork, but we were able to get it towork with a Windows machine using abeta set-up with Euphonix software fromone of their house-priced controllers.




Setup & installation

For this review we used two Macs, bothrunning OS X 10.4.11: a dual 2.7GHz G5with 6.5GB RAM, and a MacBook Pro 2.16

GHz Intel Core 2 duo with 3GB RAM. Bothare connected to a gigabit ethernet switch.

We had MC Mix review units connectedto a 100 Base T switch, and both switchesrun into a Linksys Router. The MC Mix firmware was 1.0.1; as of this writingthey’re on version 1.0.3.

It’s simple to install the software, includ-ing authorizing Nuendo’s or Cubase’sSyncrosoft dongle to use it. (It’s not neces-sary to authorize it for Logic or other pro-grams.) You also have to set up HUI or Mackie Control applications, and a virtualEuphonix MIDI Interface is automatically

built in the Audio MIDI setup applicationso that the HUI and Mackie ControlProtocols can be assigned correctly.

It’s not actually necessary to plug theMC Mix into the computer—it just has tobe on the same network. You can let the IPaddress be configured automatically usingDHCP, or if you have multiple computers, you can assign a permanent fixed addressmanually. (IP address = each device on anetwork has its own number.)

EuControl software

The EuControl Settings application is

launched automatically when you start thecomputer, and any MC Mix surfaces on thenetwork are connected and ready for useimmediately (Fig. 1).

Think of EuControl as the traffic cop for the MC Mix. EuControl will recognize surfaces on the network, it can be used to tai-lor some of the behavior, and it recognizesadditional computers on the network.

That feature is definitely of interest to VIreaders running multiple machines, asmany of you are (Fig. 2). Let’s say you’re

running Logic or Digital Performer on onecomputer as your main DAW for compos-ing, and no a second computer you havePro Tools or Nuendo for printing stems or

setting up the mix.The EuControl software sees all the com-

puters on the network—Windows or Mac

(only the main one has to be Mac)—andprovided that the correct drivers have beeninstalled on each machine, it lets you

switch control from to one system to theother with a click. This is awesome! I oftenrun Logic and Pro Tools side by side, andbeing able to mix on one machine whilemonitoring the other is really convenient.

Or if you have multiple MC Mixes, youcan split them up between workstations.

Operation

In addition to the eight touch-sensitivemotorized faders, the MC Mix has eighttouch-sensitive rotary encoders that can bepushed like buttons as well as being twist-ed. Above the encoders is the OLEDDisplay that defaults to showing the tracknumber, an abbreviation of the track

name, pan location, track automationmode, and meters for the signal level. (Youcan turn off the track number to makemore room). Each fader also has a largekey for On/Mute/Solo.

All the faders and knobs have two func-tion keys (modifiers) to access several func-tions—selecting channels, record-enabling

them, selecting the automation mode (mynew favorite feature), and assigning. The Assign function is used to set the fader toone function, for example making it alwaysbe the master fader even when you bankthrough all the faders in your session. (SeeFig. 3.)

Along the left side of the surface are but-tons to determine what the encoders arecontrolling. Pan handles both stereo andsurround, there are controls for bus or auxsend levels, EQ (accesses the built-in EQ inCubase or the Channel EQ in Logic),inserts (for editing assigning plug-ins), and

a Channel Mode control assigns the entiredisplay to one channel to view multipleparameters.

If you press Shift, these buttons accesssecondary functions: Mix (output assign-ments), Group (assigning channels to

groups), Dynamics, Input Assignment, and finally Flip, which swaps the faders andencoders globally.

If the plug-in you’re controlling hasmore than eight knobs, you use the Page

up and down keys to scroll through all theparameters. Hitting both Page keys simul-taneously switches into Configurationmode. This is a rather ingenious method of assigning busses or plug-ins to a channelusing all the knobs to select the plug-inslot, then the plug-in folder, and finally theplug-in. If you’re familiar with other surfaces that require you to scroll endlesslythrough huge lists of plug-ins, then you’lllove this—you can get to a plug-in at the

VIr e v i e w

It's not necessary to re-think your entire set-up

to integrate the MC Mix.




bottom of the list in seconds.Transport controls are Shift-modified

functions of the Solo/On keys above thesecond four faders, but you can lock theShift on simply by pressing both the leftand right Shift keys. That prevents you from having to hold down Shift if youwant to use the MC Mix to control RTZ,Prev, Next, Rew, FF, Stop, Play, or Rec.

As with all control surfaces, you aren’tlimited to eight channels—Bank andNudge keys scroll the MC Mix’s eight faders in banks of eight or one at a time.

These keys also do double duty with theShift key, opening and closing the Mix win-dow or closing the session.

In use

It took no time to start using many of the console’s controls to access send levels,plug-in assignment, plug-in parameters,bus assignment, and my new most favoritecontrol parameter ever: switching theautomaton type. While the session is play-ing, you can put a channel into touchmode, adjust it, and then put it back intoRead mode all without looking at the

screen. In fact I found myself getting usedto not looking at the screen as oftenbecause of how well the parameters andpages are laid out across the knobs.

Another nice feature is that all the keyshave obvious but not overbearing lights onthem, so there’s never ever wonderingwhat mode you’re in. However, I do thatthe black print on the background hard toread in the dark. The same goes for theTransport controls, I find hard to see at aglance.

This is a new and fairly complicatedproduct, and while it worked very welloverall, there were still some bugs thatneeded ironing out. None of this is a dealbreaker—the MC Mix didn’t crash the hostDAW once—but it did fall off the networka couple of times. Strange behavior would

result until it was rebooted and set upagain in EuControl.

Also, I experienced some fader calibra-tion issues. Their positions can be off a fewmillimeters from where they’re supposedto be, and they can be a little jumpy andunpredictable when you touch them.Euphonix is hard at work on this issue; firmware updates are planned, so it will beeasy to take advantage of the improve-

ments and fixes.If you’re a Logic user, you’ll be able to

call up the parameters of many VIs.(Cubase users don’t have access to this fea-ture…yet.) It’s impressive to see all thelabeled parameters from various virtualinstruments appear on the controls when you call them up. I tried this with NativeInstruments Massive, Absynth, Pro 53, andB4II; Cakewalk Dimension Pro; Zebra 2;and several of the native instruments thatcome with Logic.

You can automate these controls, andafter trying this feature I saw that it’sabsolutely for real (Fig. 4). Currently there’sno way to reorder the controls, however,so you’re stuck with the parameters in theorder they’re presented. In reality mostcontrols are grouped together logically andhave a useful layout, but some scrolling is

inevitable.Euphonix tells us that they’d like to add

a custom knobset feature, so maybe we’llsee that in the future. That would be useful, since the MC Control would make agood controller for riding MIDI Expression(CC11) or volume (CC7) while sequencing.

Mackie the knife

The Mackie Control and HUI protocolsare fine, but they’re a few years old andhave some limitations compared to theEuCon protocol. While the Mackie proto-cols work fine, a fair percentage of the fea-

tures disappear—for example you won’tget any VI control or be able to access sur-round panning. That’s to be expected.

The Eucon-aware applications get themost from the MC Mix: Logic 8, Cubase 4,and Nuendo 4, and indeed I personallylove using it in Logic and Nuendo; every-thing I need is literally a few key pushes

away, and most of the features are nowintegrated into my workflow.

The gavel

The MC Mix has a lot of excellent fea-tures, and its sleek and compact design—coupled with its easy set-up—lets you putit to use streamlining your workflow rightaway. Combine that with a historically rep-utable and competent company with

excellent human tech support, and youend up with a very appealing product. VI

Full disclosure: Bob DeMaa was on the MC

Mix beta team (because among many other

professional musical activities he provides

tech support for Obedia).

VIr e v i e w

You can put a channel into Touch mode, adjust it,

and then put it back into Read mode without

looking at the screen.





VI v e r y d e e p c l i n i c


By Rich Tozzoli

more

onlinewww.virtualinstrumentsmag.com

Scoring to Picture in Pro ToolsSome basic pointers about scoring

to video in Pro Tools


W orking with video in Pro Tools issurprisingly simple and inexpen-sive these days. Until a few years

ago you needed a high-end Pro Tools TDMsystem to work with video, but today host-based Pro Tools LE systems are available,and you can access almost all the same features without a major investment.

TDM is Digidesign’s high-end mixing andprocessing environment, which uses its own

hardware to augment the host computer’spower (or really v.v.—the host is used toaugment the hardware, and it behaves like a“remote control” for the TDM hardware);Pro Tools HD systems are the current incar-nation. While there are definite advantagesto Pro Tools HD, a lot of composers—evenones who use other DAWs for composing—are adding inexpensive LE systems to their rigs just for compatibility.





video (just like an audio region) and groupit along with audio. There won’t be anySMPTE Time Code Feet + Frame functions,and you can’t import OMF (Open MediaFramework), AAF (Advanced AuthoringFormat), or MXF (Material ExchangeFormat) files.

While $1300 for the DVToolkit2 may

seem like a lot, you will then be able to doall of the above and more, as it alsoincludes several useful plug-ins like Synchro

Arts VocAlign Project for synchronizing dia-log to video and tightening Foley, andDINR LE for noise reduction. It will alsoincrease your track count to 48. And finally

DigiTranslator 2.0, which lets you convert andexchange OMF, AAF and MXF files, is included.Pro Tools HDusers will needDigiTranslator 2.0 for file

exchange, and itruns $495.

QuickTime

or Windows

Media

Pro Tools can handle Windows Media files, but there are some irregularities andlimitations that make QuickTime the better choice of formats. If you go to Preferences> Operation Tab, you’ll notice under the Video subsection that there are threeQuickTime Playback Priorities: Normal (no

extra priority over screen tasks); Medium(gives the movie a higher priority), andHighest (gives the highest priority and dis-ables screen activity, requiring you to usethe spacebar to stop playback). (See Fig. 2)

When you check High QualityQuickTime Image, Pro Tools will decom-press the interlaced video frames and give

you the highest possible resolution. I’vepersonally found Normal mode to workbest in most situations, however, especially

on my HD/Intel Mac rig.

Rating isn’t overrated

The first thing to establish is what framerate your client is using; get this wrong,and your contributions to the project willbe out of sync. The frame rate is in theSession window under Time Code Rate,and it must be entered when you first cre-ate the session.

Confirm that you can play back the typeof media they are delivering, and if youcan, request a “video burn-in” (sometimescalled a “window burn”), meaning there’s

superimposed timecode in the video win-dow. But note that while it’s good to have,we’ll see that timecode is not always essen-tial.

The import of importing

The first obvious thing is to get thevideo into your session. Go toFile>Import>Video and select your clip.(See Fig. 3)

You can also pressCommand+Control+Shift+I on the Mac or Alt+Control+Shift+I in Windows. A Video

It’s common to see these systems beingused on separate machines just to hostvideo and also to act as a mixdownmachine for stems to be delivered in thepopular Pro Tools format (see sidebar: ProTools LE as a stand-alone host). But a lot of musicians use Pro Tools on their mainDAWs too, since the system itself has a lot

to offer even if for people who use other DAWs.

What Pro Tools does with video is let you import either QuickTime or WindowsMedia video files and extract any audiothat comes with them. The imported videocan then be viewed either inside the Viewwindow (Control+9 for Windows,Command+9 for Mac) or can be sent to anexternal monitor through a FireWire con-verter box such as the ones made byCanopus.

Once you’ve imported the video file intoPro Tools, you can scrub it along with the

audio, lock it down so it doesn’t move andwhen finished, and create a QuickTime or Windows Media bounce with embeddedaudio. (See Fig. 1)

More about LE

Note that you’ll want a Pro Tools LE sys-tem for working with video, most likely notan M Audio M-Powered one. M-Poweredsystems aren’t capable of locking to time-code that starts at any time other than

1:00:00:00.Using a Digidesign LE system you can

score to picture out of the box—the soft-ware it will chase timecode starting at anylocation even though there’s no timecoderuler. But there are some missing features from the TDM Pro Tools software thatrequire you to add the DVToolkit2 option(and Pro Tools 7.1+).

Without it you won’t be able to importmultiple video files and access multipleplaylists on them, nor can you edit the

VIr e v i e w

Figure 1. Locked Video

Figure 2. Playback Priorities

A lot of composers—even ones who use other

DAWS—are adding inexpensive Pro Tools LE

systems to their rigs just for compatibility.



2 0 V I RT U A L I N S TR U ME N TS

Import Options dialog box will appear, from which you choose where you wantthe video to be placed (Main Video Track,New Track, Region List).

The Location pop-up menu providesoptions of Session Start, Selection, Spot or Song Start. The Gaps Between Selectionoption is there in case you want to importmore than one video to a track and create

space between them. You can also chooseImport Audio From File, Remove Existing Video Tracks/Regions or Clear Destination

Video Track Playlist (if you have one).

You’ll probably want

to select New Track,Session Start, and usual-ly you’ll want to importthe audio. The audio isoften a dialog track or

existing music or sound effects. A new Video track will appear onscreen, alongwith a new Audio track (if selected).

In Example 4 you’ll notice a smallQuickTime icon next to the Video Trackname. If you imported an Avid video file(available in Pro Tools HD only) therewould be an A, and a Windows Media filewould display that icon (in Vista only).

You’ll also notice the Video Engine Rateof 29.97 fps (in this instance), just belowthe View Options pop-up menu. Pro

Tools can handle Time Code Rates of 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, 29.97 Drop, 30,and 30 Drop FPS. The Lock icon signifies

that the video track was locked in place,and the Video online button next to itlets you switch the video track online(blue) or offline (gray).

When Frames is selected in the VideoTrack window, Pro Tools will display themovie as pictures in the video track (Frame View). While it looks cool and can help inspotting, it tends to bog down your processor. If you notice that happening,choose Block View instead, which willreplace the video frames with coloredblocks and lighten the load.

Many editors will give you a video with

the “industry standard” session start timeof 01:00:00:00 (hours, minutes, seconds, frames). If you’re using a drop frame time-

Figure 3. Import Video

Matt O’Connor, who began his career as a Pro Tools editor

at Gizmo Enterprises in New York, switched over to video

production and editing several years ago. Here he answers

some questions about our reference video for the HDTV film

“A View From Below.”

Q: Do you always send out window burn on your

QuickTimes?A: For film work I would always give viz-code (visual time-

code), but for television work I usually make a QuickTime of

the entire section, or show, and just give it to the composer

without.

I gave you an OMF with a QuickTime of the entire film with

temp music and the dialog tracks on it. This was to help you

out scoring wise, so you would know when to back off and

when to not step on the dialog.

Q: You had us work in 29.97 drop frame.

A: We shot it in HD, so the frame rate is 60i (interlaced),

which really comes out to be 59.94 fps. That is actually the

same exact frame rate as 29.97 in standard definition NTSC. If

you work in Pro Tools at 29.97 drop frame, it’s the same thing

as my 59.94. But for editing purposes, we worked at standard

definition, which is your 29.97.

Q: We often delivered you QuickTimes back with our music

on it, aside of the separate 24bit/48kHz music tracks.

A: That was a big help for us, because there would be timeswhere we were already past the scene in the movie, and it

would help refresh us. It also let us give you feedback on

moving forward or tweaking something.

Q: How did you compress the QuickTime for us to view?

A: We found that Apple’s H264 codec gave you the best pic-

ture quality. I used to use Sorenson 3, because it was one of

the better compressors out there. The downside of H264 is

that it takes longer to export, whereas Sorenson 3 is faster.

But we were delivering you low-resolution files to begin with,

so we always tried to give you that H264 codec so it looked

good on your screen.—RT

Reference Video

Figure 4. Main Video Track






code, you’ll notice a semicolon just beforethe frame numbers instead of a colon.

If your video starts at 01:00:00;00, youcan either choose Session Start whenimporting, or use Spot mode to type in thecorrect timecode address after the fact.

Note that you can also type these numberson the Transport window if you have TimeCode selected.

Make sure to go to Setup>Session andenter 01:00:00;00 in the Session Start time,and once again confirm the Time CodeRate. Next, by opening the floating Videowindow and pressing Play, you will be ableto see that the timecode is locked by watch-

ing it along with your transport window.Now comes the easy part: creating the

music or sound design to the video. If you find it frustrating to work with a smallvideo window, simply just resize it. ByRight-clicking (Windows or Mac) or Control-clicking (Mac) on the actual win-dow, you can choose from Half Size, ActualSize, Double Size, or Fit Screen. You canalso click in the corners or sides to make itany size you prefer—a most welcomedrecent feature in Pro Tools.

Case study

Co-composer Scott Mooreand I recentlyworked on a TV project for pro-ducer/editors

Matt O’Connor and PaulDiNatale (seesidebar), and wecame up with agood workingmethod in ProTools. This showrequired a lot of music, most of it scored to pic-ture. As one would

expect, we started

by creating a master cue sheet in spottingmeetings, where we determined wheremusic went, along with its direction and feel. Then we were given a single OMF fileof the entire show. All 82 minutes came ina single QuickTime file with window burn.

Two stereoaudio trackswere included:one dialogand produc-tion sounds,one withsome tempmusic cues.

While youcould load theentire cue intoPro Tools andscore frombeginning toend, we prefer to create sep-arate Sessions for each cue.To do that, once you’ve imported thevideo and audio into Pro Tools, first group

the main video track along with the twoaudio tracks. Then select the video clip for each scene, create markers for the In andOut points, and separate the region(Edit>Separate Region> At Selection).

Next make a QuickTime bounce withthe dialog included (mute the tempmusic). If you need it, make that exact

bounce of the temp music, exporting bothto a new folder for each cue.

From there you can create a new ProTools session for each cue, and import theQuickTime and dialog. Sometimes we’dalso import the temp music as well for direction.

Creating separate Sessions keeps thingsclearly organized for when the inevitablechanges occur. Also, by keeping the videoinside the session and the separated videoclips inside each master session folder,there was never any hunting around.Instant total recall.

The next step is to decide upon thetempo for the cue. Every composer knowsthat the first In point in every scene is criti-cal. Since you can now edit QuickTimevideo in Pro Tools just like audio, simply find that In point and cut right on it withthe Trim Tool. Then use Grid Mode andplace that hit point at the beginning of measure 2. (Grid Mode constrains regionsto whatever grid you’re working at,whether it’s quarter notes or any other value.)

To help you “ramp” into the scene, gointo Slip Mode (which turns off the Grid

mode constraining) and slide the Videotrack with the audio dialog track back in thetimeline. Now roll the scene from the top,and you’ll have a perfect 4-beat count-off into the scene intro at measure 2.

Figure 5. Block View

Figure 7. Trim Tool and Grid Mode

Figure 6. Drop Frame Timecode





As with most every function in Pro Tools,there are several approaches to every task.Hopefully these ideas will help you figureout yours. VI

Producer/engineer/composer Rich Tozzoli

(Richtozzoli.com) has worked with artists

ranging from Al DiMeola to Ace Frehley. His

music can be heard on channels such as VH-

As mentioned in the article, a lot of composers are hosting

their reference video in Pro Tools LE systems on slave comput-

ers in order to free up their main machines for V.I.s and plug-

ins—to say nothing of being able to use the Pro Tools soft-ware, which is great for audio production. How does that

work?

It’s actually very simple. To keep the machines moving at

the same speed, from the audio interface on your main

machine you send either word clock or S/PDIF digital depend-

ing on the Digidesign hardware you’re using. The Pro Tools

machine has to be set to digital sync (not internal sync).

Then you send MIDI Time Code (MTC) from your main

machine to the Pro Tools machine, which you put “online”

(command/;). Obviously you have to tell your DAW to send

MTC out the MIDI port you have going to the Pro Toolsmachine. If you want to be able to scrub the video you can

also send MIDI Machine Control, but that’s optional.

So the MTC triggers Pro Tools to start playing at the

address it specifies, while the digital sync keeps it locked at

the same speed as the main machine. You can also send audio

to Pro Tools to print stem mixes.—NB

Reference Video in Pro Tools LE on a Separate Machine

1, Discovery Channel, and National

Geographic.





VIr e v i e w


Submersible Music

DrumCore DrumerPacksIs this the next best thing to having a famous

drummer on your tracks? A look at ten add-on

rhythm loop libraries for the popular librarian/player.

review by Chris Meyer

Submersible Music recently sent us aset of ten DrummerPack rhythmloop libraries that work with their

DrumCore virtual instrument. We’ve cov-ered this instrument before, starting with areview in the premiere issue of this maga-zine.

If you aren’t familiar with whatDrumCore is, it’s a stand-alone ReWire- friendly librarian and player for drum (or any other) loops that also includes a MIDIpattern player and partner MIDI sample

player. The output of both can also beexported for use in other systems.Submersible’s libraries for DrumCore therefore can contain a combination of loops,MIDI patterns, and one-shot samples typi-cally arranged as MIDI drum kits.

Each DrummerPack is themed around aparticular drummer or style. They contain anumber of drum sets, with each set typical-ly featuring a couple of dozen componentloops, usually presented as choruses, vers-es, breakdowns, fills, and so forth. This

DrumCore DrummerPacks

$49.99-79.99 each

www.submersiblemusic.com

Platform: add-ons for

Submersible Music’s DrumCore

or DrumCore LT virtual instru-ment; some available for other

playback engines.

License: Free to use one copy

to create or perform your own

works as long as the samples

are not distributed or publicly

performed on a standalone

basis.

http://www.submersiblemusic.com/

http://www.submersiblemusic.com/




allows the construction of songs that dis-play a lot of variety and evolution. Myenthusiasm for having some many varia-tions has been muted in the past by therelatively short length of those loops (typi-cally 2 bars); happily, many of the new col-lections feature longer loops.

Even though DrumCore can time-stretch

and -compress loops, many of the compo-nents have been recorded at different tem-pos as well, with the performance chang-ing to match the feel of the new tempo. When you request a tempo, the player picks the nearest matching loop. Some of the newer collections also individual loops for the ride cymbal, high hat, snare, rim,and kick for a handful of the base loops.

Submersible records all of their collec-tions at 24-bit 48 kHz quality. The acousticsounds tend to have a lot of headroomwith low average levels but no clipping,while the more processed or drum-

machine-like sounds tend to be subjectivelylouder and more compressed. The “sound”changes from kit to kit, often in anticipa-tion of how you might use it in a mix:some are big, bold, and in your face; oth-ers are more muted and veiled to act asbacking tracks.

I was particularly impressed with thesound of the new MIDI kits; whereas Ithought the kits paled next to the full

loops in the original version of DrumCore,these new DrummerPacks have some greatsounds. As a result, I often found myself having as much fun with the MIDI patterns(especially when played back through

alternate kits) as the audio loops.Most of these collections are sold as

add-ons to Submersible Music’s sampleand MIDI pattern player DrumCore, whichis $249 bundled with loops and songs from ten top drummers. If you want alower-cost vessel, Submersible offers astripped-down, less-expensive player calledDrumCore LT. The Upbeat & Aggressive,Blues & Boogie, and Jazz & Latin collec-tions are also available in formats for other software from DrumsOnDemand.com at

the same price as the DrumCore versions. And now the collections.

Upbeat & Aggressive

This collection is aimed at those creatingrock, metal, and alternative tracks. It fea-tures a gigabyte of audio loops plus over 280 meg of multi-velocity samples from

which 26 MIDI drum kits have been craft-ed. There are 25 songs (including one eachin 12/8 and 6/8 time) featuring an averageof 45 loops per song, including individuallayers for some of the patterns.

The sound is big and compressed with alot of cymbal noise and a mean kick,although overall it was a touch veiled for my personal taste. My favorite set in thecollection was “Offbeat,” where the cym-bals were given a rest to allow a very mus-

cular beat to come through more clearly.

TempestaPack I

Keeping the metal theme, this collectionwas played by John Tempesta, who has

worked with the likes of Rob Zombie,Exodus, Testament, and Helmet. It contains1.26 gigs of audio loops plus 265 meg of samples for the five kits that support a gen-erous helping of MIDI patterns. Althoughthe collection features only eight sets,some contain dozens of support loops. Thedesignation “I” can only lead us to believethat another collection is on the way, andindeed, Submersible is scheduled to releaseTempestaPack II this April.

The main hook presented here is

Tempesta’s double kick work, and the kickis indeed up front in the mix among thesemuscular grooves. The sound is more onthe small room and intimate side, rather than stadium-size power rock.

Sk8PuNKbeAtz

This fun collection from Chuck Treece

(he of Bad Brains, Urge Overkill, and ses-sion work from Billy Joel to G. Love) showsthere is more than one kind of “punk.”Rather than a frenetic thrash, the grooveshere owe a lot more to the tight, skittering,

off-beat feel of modern ska or evendrums&bass (Submersible calls it a combi-nation of “punk, hip-hop and other stylesto forge a cool, new, urban hybrid”).

As it contains only 647 meg of audioloops (plus 154 meg of hits arranged asthree MIDI kits), it is being sold at a bar-gain price of $49.99 and features ten setsleaning toward the higher end of thetempo spectrum. Treece’s sound is tight,

while one of the MIDI kits was supplied byZoro Nawlins and features a contrastingbig-ambi vibe.

Blues & Boogie

This is aimed as being a songwriter’stoolbox of over 20 sets with styles in theblues, shuffle (with four 12/8 songs), andcountry domains. There are just under 1gig of audio loops at a wide variety of tem-pos plus 103 meg of samples arranged asthree MIDI kits (two blues & boogie woo-gie, one country), although there are noMIDI patterns provided; use these with

your own programmed grooves or patterns from other collections.

In keeping with the stated backing tracknature of this collection, the snare is moremuffled, and the ride is very low in themix. In general, the feeling is relaxed andswinging.

pureDrums 1

Continuing with the drum-loops-for-songwriters theme, next we haveureDrums 1 from the combination of ses-

VIr e v i e w

Even though DrumCore can time-stretch and -

compress loops, many of the components have

been recorded at different tempos as well, with

the performance hanging to match the feel of the

new tempo.

Each DrummerPack contains a number of drum

sets, each typically featuring a couple of dozen

component loops, usually presented as chorses,

verses, breakdowns, fills, and so forth.




VIr e v i e w

sion drummer Graham Hawthorne andproducer FAB (whose credits includeJennifer Lopez, Queen Latifa, DJ Colette,Toots and the Maytals, DJ Mark Ronson,Bon Jovi, Babyface, Isaac Hayes, and oth-ers). This library contains two collections:The Basics (nine sets), and The Rock (15sets, including one in 6/8). It totals over 2

gigs of loops and hits, plus more than 150meg of additional samples arranged as four

MIDI kits (including a brush kit).This is one of the collections that fea-

tures longer individual loops, often extend-ing out to 4 or 8 bars. This allows room for additional details that really adds to theoverall feel. The drum sound is solid, lean-ing more toward sit-in-the-mix than in- your-face, although I have to say I love thelow toms that occasionally boom through.

pureDrums 2

The second library from the team of Hawthorne and Dupont helps broaden therange of pureDrums 1, providing collec-

tions titled The Bounce (12 sets in the funkand disco style) and Vintage Classic (tensets in older pop, rock, and folk styles). Itweighs in at an additional 1.85 gig of audio loops and hits plus 165 meg for four more MIDI kits. Overall, the playing is atouch more sparse than Pure Drums 1,although the drum sound is bolder.

Urban GT

And now for something different: an all-MIDI-pattern library programmed by Gary“GT” Thompson. It too contains two col-lections: Hip Hop Classics and Hip

Hop/R&B. Hip Hop Classics is a collectionof nearly 200 patterns divided by temporanges into four folders, weighted towardthe slower end of the scale. There are somesmall families of related loops, but this isprimarily a large grab-bag. In contrast,HH/R&B (as it is identified insideDrumCore) contains over 30 song-like sets,each typically featuring about ten patternsper song.

Although GT’s resume contains somedecidedly non-hop names (Robbie

Robertson, Dave Stewart, Everclear, Ann Wilson), the programming tends to be old-school hip-hop, shading toward the sparser side. The real fun comes in mixing andmatching the patterns with the two dozenMIDI kits provided. These contain a mix-ture of acoustic plus electronic sounds(weighing in at only 114 meg), leaning

toward the pumpin’ compressed/saturatedside with a nice attitude. At only $49.99,

it’s one of the bargains of these ten collec-tions.

Jazz & Latin

Speaking of old school, how about a col-lection of old-school big band, jazz, andLatin grooves including swing, blues, bossanova, shuffle, and other styles? There are18 sets played with brushes as well as 15

played with sticks at tempos ranging from65 to 222 bpm. This set includes a gener-ous number of loops per song (adding upto just under 900 megs), including someindividual snare, hat, and ride cymbal lay-ers. Although no MIDI patterns are provid-

ed, there are three MIDI kits: a stick andbrush kit each sampled from a vintageGretsch kit, plus an Alt Country kit provid-ed by Lonnie Wilson. The feeling overall isnice and relaxed, with a very clean acousticsound.

LuisPack I

Luis Conte is one of those few musiciansthat can be identified by only his firstname, he’s so well known and respected.Madonna, Ray Charles, Phil Collins,

Santana, Shakira, Jackson Browne, andSergio Mendes are just a few of the artistshe has played with. This first collectioncontains one drum song plus 16 sets bro-ken down by instrument (such as triangles,shakers, djembes, et cetera), style (such asChaCha, Salsa, Samba, and so forth), or song-like designations such as “Sympathy.”

Many of these contain a full mix as well asindividual instrument breakdowns at awide range of tempos, adding up to justunder 600 megs of loops.

The MIDI side of this collection is partic-ularly strong, including half a dozen verywell recorded kits. Aside from the fact thatLuisPack I contains a goodly number of MIDI patterns of its own, one of mybiggest guilty pleasures while working onthis review was playing GT’s hip-hop pat-terns through Luis’ innovative percussionkits.

LuisPack IIThis add-on collection contains another

12 sets of loops divided by style, includinga driving Cajon folder plus the most slam-min’ set of udu loops I’ve ever heard. Although short on songs, there are a lot of nice layers here to add into your other work. This collection also contains another nine MIDI kits.

I have to admit I’m a little disappointedthat Submersible didn’t combine these intoone collection; $79.99 each for relatively few samples compared to their other col-lections (LuisPack II contains under 300meg of loops) is a touch steep—but Luis

Conte’s playing helps make up for it. VI

The "sound" changes from kit to kit, often in

anticipation of how your might use it in a mix:

some are big, bold, and in your face; others are

more muted and veiled to act as backing tracks.

I often found myself having as much fun with the

MIDI patterns (especially when played back

through alternate kits) as with the audio loops.





VIr e v i e w


The “universal sampler” (meaning that it importspractically all formats) gets a big upgrade

by Mark Schonbrun

Mark of the Unicorn (MOTU) hasrolled out a huge upgrade to their flagship sampling product.

MachFive 2 adds some important features

to an already robust product.Machfive is a universal sampler that

ships for all major plug-in formats on Mac(Universal Binary RTAS, VST, AU, MAS) andPC (VST, RTAS and DXi) so you can inte-grate it into whatever DAW you like.MachFive 2 comes with an impressive32GB of sample content, ranging fromloops to surround instruments, pianos, anda section of the 16-bit VSL (ViennaSymphonic Library) MachFive edition.

If you own content in other sampler for-

mats, MachFive boasts “universal” samplelibrary import. That’s always going to besubject to limitations due to different fea-tures in different samplers, but the idea is

that no matter what format you own(Giga, Akai, and more) MachFive can serveas your central sampler.

In addition to the improvements withinthe sample editor itself, including somevery impressive Photoshop-like layers,MachFive 2’s effects section has beenbeefed up to include a full mixer, and con-volution based impulse response reverbs. All in all it’s an impressive update. Let’sbreak it down piece by piece.

MOTU MachFive 2

MOTU MacFive 2, $495;

upgrades from previous ver-

sions, $195.

HYPERLINK

“http://www.MOTU.com”

www.MOTU.com

System requirements: Mac—

1GHz G4 minimum, OS X

10.3.9; G5 or Intel-based Mac

running OS X 10.4+ recom-

mended. Windows—Penium 4

1GHz minimum, multiple

processors/cores highly rec-

ommended; XP, XP X64, or

Vista (32- or 64-bit); Open

GL-compatible video card

that supports v.1.2, preferably

1.5 or 2.0.

License: uses iLok USB key.

Figure 1.

http://www.motu.xn--com-9o0a/







GUI intuitionGraphical User Interface, or GUI for short

is your portal to any software plug-in, and inmy mind is almost as important as theysound of the instrument—if you can’t find your way around, no one will want to use it. What MachFive does is take the idea of a sin-gle window interface to a whole newextreme, providing a myriad of features, andviews in a single, compact interface (Fig. 1).

Each section of the interface is labeledby section, so you know where you are. Allin all I found it very easy to get around thesoftware—everything is basically where it

seems it should be, and subjectively theergonomics of the software are likeable.Since MOTU uses the UVI plug-in engineused by other products on the market,many of you will feel right at home.

In truth, some of the white text on agun metal grey background can be a littlehard on the eyes, and some of the knobsare small. But it’s great that you can

extend the size of the sample editor with asingle click to take up the whole entirescreen (Fig. 2). If you edit samples often,having a larger display really helps out.

Efficiency

On the most important points to con-sider when looking at a sampler is howefficient it is, especially if your projectsget large. Indeed, MachFive does quickwork on sample load and is able to recall

large projects with relative ease. It alsohelps that the browser makes it dead easyto find sounds spread across the vast32GB library.

This review was done on a MacBook Prowith a Firewire800 drive dedicated to sam-ples; the 32GB sample library needs to beon a fast drive like this to load and perform

smoothly when it’s being played. Some of the effects (which we’ll get into shortly) arepretty demanding of the computer, butthat’s to be expected—long convolutionsamples especially take a lot of processingpower.

Streaming

MachFive boats some impressive options for disk streaming vs. RAM-based sampleplayback. Each instance of MachFive canload up as many parts (or sounds) as youneed, crushing the barrier of 16 MIDIchannels that some other plug-ins face.

Within each part a button lets you canchoose disk streaming (useful for largeinstruments like pianos) or opt for RAM-based storage for shorter sounds (see Fig.3). The flexibility of being able to assignsounds to streaming or RAM on the fly iswonderful, and it allows you to manage your precious resources as you see fit. This feature adds to the MachFive’s overall effi-ciency.

VIr e v i e w

MachFive comes with

32GB of sample

content, ranging from

loops to surround

instruments, pianos,

and a section of the

16-bit VSL orchestra.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.




Import

MachFive boasts the claim of “universal”sound library support, a lofty goal. You canimport just about anything into MachFive,including: Giga, Akai, Kontakt, Kurzweil,EMU, and more (a full listing is available at

HYPERLINK “http://www.motu.com”www.motu.com). MachFive will convert thesounds, keeping all the layers intact, alongwith many other performance details.

This is tricky business, as any of the sam-ple formats have proprietary elements. Totest this I threw a few files at MacFive: the free NS natural kit (Giga format),Spectrasonics Symphony of Voices in Akai format, and the Take 6 vocal library inKurzweil format.

Importing is handled by simply dragging

and dropping into the interface, or in thecase of CD-based sample libraries, such asKurzweil that many computers won’t even

read when you insert the media, youaccess them through the integrated brows-er (see Fig. 4).

Amazingly, each of the three formats Ithrew at MachFive worked absolutely perfectly.

Pre-built library

MachFive 2’s 32GB library comes on four DVDs. Disc one contains the basic libraryof bread and butter instruments: a nicemix of loops, traditional instruments,drums, and synthesis sounds.

Disc 2 contains the large, multi-sampledpianos, which vary from classical to honky-tonk pianos. Disc 3 is reserved for “premi-um” sounds such as 96k and 192k sam-pled guitars and drum kits, along with abank of surround-sampled orchestralsounds, loops, and a church organ. Disk 4contains the VSL MachFive edition, a 16-bitversion of the acclaimed VSL.

What this comes down to is a very goodstarter library. All the instruments soundgood and will fit into most mixes withease. The pianos are very good for anincluded library, as is the very hypnotic sur-round organ. Subjectively the loops wereprobably the weakest link in the library,both in breadth of styles and quality. Butloops are so abundant these days that thisis not going to be a deal breaker.

The VSL library sounds very, very nice,

VIr e v i e w

You can import just

about anything into

MachFive: Giga, Akai,

Kontakt, Kurzweil,

E-mu, and more.

Figure 4.

Figure 5.








and if this your first taste of VSL, you’re in for a nice smile when you bring up thestring sections (the flute is a winner too).In general MachFive’s library is a great start for a sample library, which is what it’sintended to be. You can fill in more

detailed libraries as the need comes up.

Effects

What sampler wouldn’t be completewithout some high-quality effects?MachFive ships with all the staples: EQ,reverb, compression, delay, chorus, modu-lation, distortion and many more (see Fig.5). You can apply effects on one of four effects busses, or if you access the newmixer (see Fig. 6) you can add four addi-tional effects per part.

A big upgrade for previous MachFiveusers is the addition of the convolution-

based reverbs. Convolution reverbs useactual samples of spaces, and when it’sdone right you feel like you’re really there.The convolution that ships with MachFiveis surprisingly good when you consider that convolution is only as good as therooms you sample, and MOTU clearly didsome legwork to get such nice samples inthe program. Once loaded up, you’ll seethe convolution sample listed, and you cantweak elements such as the time, dampen-ing, and width (see Fig. 7).

In addition to the convolution, the other effects were more than serviceable, eventhough I found the compression a bit

aggressive and some of the EQs harsher onthe ears than we’ve come to expect withplug-ins. You could easily produce a wholemix in MachFive and have it sound good,but the reason there are so many third-party plug-ins on the market is that dedi-cated processors almost always offer morethan basic stock ones.

Conclusions

MachFive 2 is an impressive update. It’seasy to adapt to, the included library isrecorded nicely and has a good variety, and you’ll be very surprised by the convolutionreverb if you haven’t heard them before.

With a stand-alone version that doesn’trequire a host, this could be a boon for livemusicians. And with all the built-in process-ing plus the ability to load as many parts as you need, it would work well as big part of anyone’s studio production environment.This is a sampler that’s well worth checking

out. VI

Marc Schonbrun is an active educator,

writer, and performer on the East Coast, with

a scope spanning classical guitar concerts to

jazz trios to rock concerts. He is an experi-

enced writer and author on music technolo-

gy, as well as a lecturer who educates musi-

cians and teachers, and also a professional

training specialist for Native Instruments,

Korg USA, Sibelius, Digidesign, and M-Audio.

Figure 6.

Figure 7.

VIr e v i e w



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3 4 V I RT U A L I N S TR U ME N TS V I R T U A L I N S T R U M E N T S 3 4



by Jim Aikin

more

onlinewww.virtualinstrumentsmag.com

A Winning Score with Sibelius

I discovered this recently when I washired to enter a medium-sized orchestralscore for the Livermore-Amador Symphony.This local group had commissioned a com-poser (my friend Tom Darter) to write aspecial piece to celebrate the opening of Livermore’s new performing arts center. Iwas working on a deadline, and while Isometimes use Sibelius for lead sheets, Ihad never prepared a full orchestral scorewith it. So I was frankly unprepared for some of the issues I ran into.

Other Sibelius users might come up withentirely different sets of tips. The program

is deep, and there were many features Ididn’t touch. You may want to keep an eyepeeled for Marc Schonbrun’s upcomingbook on Sibelius, which will be soon pub-lished by Cengage. In the meantime thelessons I learned along the way may help you if you’re handed a similar project.

May the forum be with you.

Your first step after reading the entiremanual (the Sibelius manual is far morereadable than most, but yeah, I’m joking)

Preparing sheet music for publication is

one of the more complex tasks that

software is called on to perform. Sibelius

has become the standard in sheet music

publishing because it’s both powerful

and easy to use. But while basic noteentry is very quick, and while Sibelius

handles many of the thorny aspects of

score layout automatically, there are still

a few snags that can trip the unwary.

Adventures creating a publication-standard score

and parts in the popular notation program





should be to register at Sibelius.com so you can post questions to the user forum.Each time I hit a stumbling block in myscoring project, I posted a question on the forum and got an accurate answer byemail within hours.Ergonomics.

Set your workstation up in such a waythat (somehow) you can reach the MIDIkeyboard while looking at the screen andalso the manuscript from which you’reworking. If you have to twist your backand stretch to reach things, you may getbackaches. A keyboard with octave switch-

ing buttons is very handy in this regard, asit allows you to input exclusively from thenear end of the keyboard (the left end, if the keyboard is on your right).

Take breaks often. The medical conditionknown as “mouse hand” is a real possibili-ty, if not during data entry then during theediting process, when dragging thingsaround by small increments is often neces-sary.

Sibelius implements “sticky dragging,”which means an object will initially resist

when you click it with the mouse and tryto drag. This is arguably a good thing, as itprevents small accidental changes in spac-ing. But it adds to the “mouse hand” prob-lem.

When adjusting the precise positions of objects in order to avoid collisions withother objects, select the object using themouse, and then move it using the arrowkeys.

Around the block.

In orchestral scores it’s common to have

two parts on separate staves that play thesame rhythm for a number of bars, but different pitches (see Fig. 1). Enter the firstpart in the normal way, and then block-

copy it to the second part. Click on the first note and hit Ctrl-Shift-I (Mac: Cmd-Shift-I). This puts you in Re-input Pitchesmode (the cursor becomes a dotted line),so you can play the new pitches on thekeyboard while stepping through the exist-ing rhythms automatically.

The composer finished making a full

pencil score and asked if I wanted to startwork immediately or wait until he addedthe dynamics, phrasings, bowings, etc.Since we had a deadline, I said, “Sure, giveit to me and I’ll get started.”

This decision ended up costing me anextra hour or two of work. If I had beenadding the dynamics as I went along,whenever I block-copied a few bars theslurs and dynamics would have beenincluded. So if it’s practical to do so, I rec-ommend insisting that you get a complete-ly edited score at the very beginning of your work.

On the other hand, there’s something tobe said for going through the whole scoretwice. While adding dynamics, I foundmissing timpani notes, two places where Ihad simply forgotten to input a few bars of woodwind notes, numerous missingdynamics markings, and so on.

If you’ve entered the notes first and areadding articulations and dynamics later, you may be stymied at first when you try

to copy multiple objects in one operationin order to paste them from one part intoanother. Holding the shift key while select-ing a second dynamics object will alsoselect the notes between them, which youprobably don’t want to copy and paste.

Fig. 2. The dynamics objects have been select-ed by Ctrl-clicking. The blue color shows they’re

selected. They can now be copied and pasted as a

group.


Fig. 1. Here the two flutes (top staves) share a

rhythm, as do the two oboes (middle) and the

two clarinets (bottom). The note pitches for the

second part can be entered in each case using Re-

input Pitches mode. Note the bar number above

each bar. This type of numbering is one of

Sibelius’ options.Phoning the client about every single missing tie

that you spot will not earn you any good will, butarbitrarily making changes without alerting the

client wold be even worse.




other file. Subsequent errors need to becorrected in two files, of course.”

I’m a little leery of the phrase “youcan’t” in the description above. There areoften several ways to accomplish tasks in

Sibelius, and very few users are intimatelyacquainted with all of the possibilities.

A different approach, suggested in themanual, would be to create a single master file containing all of the staves you’ll need.This might include, for instance, a pianoreduction (for vocal accompaniment) thatwill not appear in the conductor’s score.

In the case of parts such as Trombone 3and Tuba, which are combined on a singlestaff in a standard conductor’s score, createboth a combined staff and individual staves

The secret key combination is Ctrl-click(Mac: cmd-click). This lets you add objectsto your selected group one at a time (seeFig. 2).

It’s also possible to select only thedynamics and slurs in a region withoutselecting the notes, and then block-copyand paste them to another part. Select the

passage containing the objects you wantto copy, then go to the Edit > Filter > Advanced Filter dialog box. By default, thisbox selects notes and chords, but nothingelse. Click the Deselect button. This willdeselect the notes and chords in the pas-sage, while leaving the dynamics and slursselected. You can then copy and pastethem as a block.

When pasting, select the first note in thedestination passage to which you want oneof these objects to attach. Unfortunately,articulation marks, ties, and graphic objectssuch as downbow marks can’t be selected

and copied in this manner.

The zen of oops.

As you work with even a single largescore by a composer (to say nothing of several scores by the same composer over a period of time), you’ll start to develop aninstinct for which problems—if any—youcan fix without consulting the composer.This depends on several factors: the per-sonality of the client, the style and repeti-tiveness of the music, and how tight the

deadline is. Phoning the client about everysingle missing tie that you spot will notearn you any good will, but arbitrarily mak-ing changes without alerting the clientwould be even worse.

My method, which seems to work well,is to keep a bright red Sharpie on the desk. When I spot an obvious or suspected error,I circle it on the photocopied manuscript from which I’m working. That way, theclient will have a complete checklist of thechanges I’ve made. Obvious slips of thepencil, such as ties that are present in onepart but missing in a parallel part, I fixwhen I notice them. If the music uses con-ventional tonality, missing accidentals arealso a good bet for quick fixes. But care

and musical sensibility are always required.Proofing the score is good, but looking

at individual parts line by line after you’veprinted them out will reveal things youmight never notice in a busy score, such asmissing “pizz.” indications in the strings.

Parting of the ways.

The composer whose work I wasinputting had given me a manuscript inwhich the clarinets, trumpets, and Frenchhorns were notated correctly—that is,transposed rather than at concert pitch.Inputting from this type of manuscriptcould be awkward if you had to transposein your head in order to play the handwrit-ten notes on a MIDI keyboard. In File >Preferences > Note Input, you’ll find ahandy radio button. Click on TransposingStaves > Input written pitches. Now youcan sight-read the transposed part off thehandwritten score and it will be entered

correctly.Extracting parts for printout can pose

some challenges (see below under “Makeit nice”). Sibelius’s implementation of “dynamic parts” allows the parts to remainin the same file as the score, which can behandy because you only need to fix wrongnotes in one place: note changes in thescore will automatically be reflected in thepart, or vice-versa.

But there’s a downside to dynamic partsas well. Here are some tips from the forum,

provided by professional engraver JeremyHughes, who uses Sibelius:

“I don’t use dynamic parts much for publication-quality scores, as you can’t getthe mix of combined and solo staves (e.g.

in winds and brass) that my employers ask for, and also have usable parts. Instead of extracting all the parts [i.e. printing theparts from the same file as the score], wetend to use a second score just for parts. Apossible workflow:

“(1) Make the parts score (one staff per instrument throughout) with no work onlayout. (2) Proofread and correct content.(3) Create a copy of the file for the scoreand work on layout, combining staves asnecessary. (4) Do the layout of parts in the


Fig. 3. When you select a ditto mark in the

Properties box, it can replace a whole-rest in a

measure.

There are often several ways to accomplish tasks

in Sibelius, and very few users are intimately

acquainted with all of the possibilities.




in your master file. Then generate the con-ductor’s score as a separate “part” thatincludes most but not all of the staves inthe master file.

Combining two staves into one is notdifficult, but it requires a little forethought.First, if you know you’re going to combinetwo staves, enter the music for the second

staff as Voice 2. When finished, select thisentire part (by double-clicking) and use themenu command Edit > Filter > Voice 1Only. This will select only the whole rests in

Voice 1 (since there’s nothing else in thatpart that’s in Voice 1). A quick Shift-Ctrl-Hhides the rests.

Select the entire staff again, filter for Voice 2 Only, and copy the data. Now youcan paste it into the staff where the firstvoice has been entered, and Sibelius willcombine the two staves, using correct stemdirections. In passages where both partsplay the same rhythms, you may need togo back through and change Voice 2 notesto Voice 1 so that the stems will be com-bined, allowing the conductor to read

them more easily.Under Plug-ins > Composing Tools you’ll

find a plug-in called Reduce, which willcombine two staves onto one new staff automatically, thus bypassing the processdescribed above. In version 5.0, the check-box in this plug-in for ignoring cues didn’twork. This bug was fixed in 5.1, but I found that even when I checked the “Useminimum number of voices” button, gracenotes that were the same in Voice 1 and Voice 2 were duplicated when the partswere combined. As usual with Sibelius,there are plenty of power tools for han-

dling complex chores, but you’ll still needto proof the results and check for glitches.

Play it again.

Ditto marks are easy for orchestral playersto read—but at first I was having troubleinserting a bunch of them in the score atonce. You can hide (Shift-Ctrl-H) a whole-rest in a bar and paste in a ditto mark fromthe Symbols palette, but there’s no way toblock-copy a bar you’ve created in this man-ner. If you try it, you’ll find that among

other problems, the hidden status of the whole rest is not copied.

Fortunately, there’s an easy short-cut: don’t use the Symbols palette atall. Instead, click on an empty bar (or a whole bunch of them at once) toselect them. Then open the Bars sec-tion of the Properties window. At the

bottom (see Fig. 3) you’ll see a drop-down that, by default, shows awhole rest. Click the drop-down and you’ll see a ditto mark as an option.

Select it, and it will magically replacethe whole-rests in all of your selectedbars. (They won’t play back duringaudio proofing, however.)

There’s a keyboard shortcut for this: select the empty bars contain-ing whole rests and press shift-hyphen. Hitting this key combinationrepeatedly will cycle you through theoptions for the appearance of empty bars.

Make it nice.

Adjusting the positions of objects so that

an orchestral score looks good is quite like-ly to make the parts look like crap. For instance, you might want to drag a boxedrehearsal letter slightly to the left in order to make room for a new tempo indication(such as “Andante con moto”). This willcause the rehearsal letter to anchor to theprevious bar.

In the score, this won’t be a problem—but when you look at the parts, you may find that in a particular part, the bar beforethe bar that has the tempo change andrehearsal letter is the last bar in a givenstaff. In that case, the rehearsal letter will

now be at the end of one staff when itought to be at the beginning of the nextstaff. At this point, moving it in the partcan cause unusual problems.

One solution, as noted above, is to final-ize the appearance of the score in one fileand the appearance of the parts in a differ-ent file. This will “break” Sibelius’s handylinkage between the score and parts, butthat may be the lesser of two evils.

Before starting to tidy up the full score,go into House Style > Engraving Rules >

Staves and decide how you want to set the

parameter “Justify staves when page is atleast xx% full.” Sibelius experts recom-mend against ever setting this to 100%,but if you always want to have white spaceat the bottoms of your pages (rather thanbetween systems), a high value would begood.

You definitely don’t want to fiddle withthis parameter after you’ve started adjust-ing the vertical spacing of single staveswithin systems, because changing theparameter will cause Sibelius to readjustthe entire score. For instance, if youchange it from 80% to 90% (in order to

prevent an almost-full page from jumpingto full height), another system that hadbeen vertically justified may shrink, causingobjects to collide with one another visually.

To adjust the vertical position of a singlestaff within a single system only, click onany measure and shift-drag it up or down.Shift-dragging will move only that staff,while non-shift-dragging will affect the ver-tical spacing of the entire page.

When entering hairpins (crescendi anddescrescendi), trill lines, and similar objects


Fig. 4. The Parts box. To print a part, select it

here and then click the printer icon in the lower

left corner.

When setting a fee, ask whether the client

wants “publication quality” or just “clearly

readable.” Getting a score ready for actual

publication is a huge slug of extra work.




within parts in a score, keep the objectwithin a single bar unless it should extendwell into the next bar. If you should hap-pen to drag an object’s right end so that itextends only slightly over the bar line, andif that bar line happens to fall at the end of a staff in the individual part, Sibelius willput a little bit of the object at the start of

the next staff. While this is standard prac-tice with crescendi, it may not be what youintended. Getting rid of these ugly littlegraphic bits is time-consuming.

Sibelius can handle bar numbering inone manner in the score and in a differentmanner in the parts—for instance, at thetop center of every bar in the score (whichconductors like) and at the beginning of each staff in the parts. Set the type of numbering you want for the score in theHouse Style > Engraving Rules box.

For the parts, open the Parts box (Alt-Ctrl-R), select one or more parts, and then

click the button at the bottom of the Partsbox that looks like a page with a starburstin one corner (see Fig. 4). This opens the

Multiple Part Appearance box, in whichthe House Style tab will open a pagewhere you can set the bar numbering type.

Before starting to edit the graphicappearance of the parts, take a few min-utes to go through the score looking for places where it would be courteous to theplayers to add cues. Sibelius handles cuesvery nicely; it even inserts clef changesautomatically before and after the cue if needed. All you have to do is copy a cou-ple of bars from the part that will be play-

ing the cue, select the destination bar inthe score, and use Paste as Cue (Ctrl-Shift- Alt-V). They show up in the score onlywhen you’ve selected View > HiddenObjects (see Fig. 5).

Be careful of cues that cross into a bar where the entering instrument will be play-ing. Pasting into a bar where there are realnotes will overwrite the real notes.

Also, watch out for cue parts that havetheir own internal clef changes. I neededto paste a cue from the piano’s right

hand (which was so low that it was writ-ten in bass clef right up to the last note,which switched back to treble clef) into atrombone part. The switch to treble clef caused the trombone to be switched totreble clef clear to the end of the piece.

Deleting the clef change from the cuesolved the problem.

Feeling a draft.

Trying to print an orchestral score on 8-1/2 x 11 paper is silly, unless you plan toproof it with a magnifying glass. But mosthome office printers don’t have 11 x 17capability.

The solution is to create a PDF file that you can take to a print shop. On the Mac, you can use Print > PDF to create this file.

Windows users may want to grab a pro-gram called PrimoPDF. This free appletinstalls in your system and appears (toother apps) to be a printer. When you’reready to print out the full score, selectPrimoPDF as the destination device. Gointo its Advanced Properties box and select11 x 17 “paper.” Be sure to choose thePDF option for print rather than for screen.

Then tell Sibelius to print. It will save aPDF file instead of sending the pages to your printer.

Fees.

If you’re new at creating publication-qual-ity scores, start by estimating how long thejob will take you and then add a sizeablechunk to your requested fee. The job willtake longer than you think, because therewill be lots of details (mainly adjusting theparts to look good) that you may not have factored into your original estimate.

When setting a fee, ask whether theclient wants “publication quality” or just

“clearly readable.” Getting a score ready for actual publication is a huge slug of extra work, primarily because hundreds of graphic objects need to be aligned so thatthey look esthetically pleasing. You’ve cre-ated a “clearly readable” score and parts

when there are no collisions (overlaps that

make it impossible to read certain symbols)and when it’s visually clear which objectsare intended to be grouped together.

If the client wants “publication quality,”I’d suggest asking in advance for a copy of a score and parts that meet the standardshe or she has in mind. The minutiae of page layout can soak up extra hours or days! It could be very useful, if the clientstarts making unreasonable requests for minuscule refinements in the appearanceof the page, to be able to say, “But lookhow they did it in the score you providedas an example.”

I didn’t have this particular politicalproblem in my project, thank goodness.But when I started cleaning up the parts, itquickly became clear that sufferers fromobsessive/compulsive disorder should prob-ably avoid Sibelius. It offers far too muchcontrol over fine details, and it has its ownopinions about those details, which oftenhave to be overridden by dragging oneobject at a time.

All for note.

If you’re tight with a composer or arranger who has a budget and regularly

needs printed scores, Sibelius will mostlikely meet or exceed your expectations inevery area. If you need to do a large scoreonly once in a blue moon, be prepared towrestle with some of the features.Hopefully the tips in this article will helpget you off on the right foot. VI


Fig. 5. Ghost notes? No, this is a cue from the

oboe part that has been pasted into the flute

part using the Paste As Cue command. The cue

appears in the score only when View > Hidden

Objects is switched on, but it visible in the part

by default.

It quickly became clear that sufferers

from obsessive/compulsive disorder should

probably avoid Sibelius. It offers far too much

control over fine details.






W e reviewedSampleLogic’s first

library, AmbienceImpacts Rhythms(AIR), back in the11/06 issue. Thatlibrary started life as agraduate studentproject, but then itturned out so well

that they developed itinto a successful com-mercial product. Their second library, TheElements, continuesin the same electroni-ca vein but on a larg-er scale.

In addition to Ambience ImpactsRhythms, The Elements includes instru-ments and loops classified as Bass,Harmony, and Melody—combining into

what they consider the six elements of music. The Elements is 13.5GB, over twicethe size of their first effort (which is stillavailable and very useful).

Like AIR, this library comes in a Native

VIr e v i e w

The Elements, $299

www.samplelogic.com

Format: Native Instruments

Kontakt Player 2—stand-

alone, VST, AU, RTAS.

Requires Mac OS X 10.4+, G4

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1.66GHz, 1GB Ram; Windows

XP or 32-bit Vista, Penium or

Athlon 1.4GHz, 1GB RAM.

Copy protection: online using

Native Instruments utility.

Sample Logic TheElements sample library An electronica toolkit of

interesting processed sounds

by Nick Batzdorf

http://www.samplelogic.com/

http://www.samplelogic.com/




Instruments Kontakt Player 2, which meansit streams and that it’s available in all thestandard plug-in formats. You’re given con-trol over envelopes, filters, a phaser, reverb,and delay for the programs, along with thestandard NI mixer.

Being able to grab the envelope andmake fast adjustments is important when

you’re trying to fit weird sounds to your music. Plus The Elements’ loops and arpeg-giated programs sync to the host DAW’stempo (or the tempo you set if you’reusing the stand-alone version).

Concept

The Elements has a lot of interestingprocessed sounds. Because of its nature, it’smore like a synthesizer with presets rather than a standard sample library. Butbecause it uses samples in addition tosynths, a lot of the sounds have a complex,organic nature to them—especially in the

Ambience category.In fact several instrumentalists are listed

in the credits: flute, trumpets, vocalists,drums, guitars, sax, viola, and cello. Butnote that “processed” is an importantword to describe this library, because whilethose sounds are based on real instru-ments, you’re not going to play a standard flute part with The Elements.

Instead the idea is that this is sort of anelectronic music construction library. Itsprograms are more like “sound design”effects than instruments. These programsare designed to be treated as...well, ele-

ments in a composition that you layer in. You’d probably use them as parts of agroove or riff in a composition, and mostof them would work very well for scoring.

Now, The Elements does have quite a few instruments that play the notes you hiton the keyboard. But they don’t havevelocity layers or other traditional sampleprogramming that makes them respondlike physical instruments, in fact the pro-grams that even respond to velocity at alldon’t do so over a very wide range.

There are also quite a few programs thatdon’t really sound at the notes you play on

the keyboard, either because they’re effectsthat aren’t pitched in the traditional way or because they’re diads (often fifths) or other chords, i.e. every note is the same chordtransposed. And in some programs the key-board is split into two or three zones withdifferent although usually related sounds.

So if you were to choose, say, a Bassinstrument at random from the list, youalmost certainly won’t get a typical bassthat you’d use to play standard bass parts.Instead you might find yourself playing a

sine wave synthetic-sounding instrumentwith a lot of sub bass and a single velocitylayer, or some rumbly low synthy thingthat’s listed under the Bass categorybecause it’s low. There are some more familiar bass sounds, but they’re all heavilystylized and here again, generally not pro-vided with velocity or other control.

Organization

You’ll see in the screen dump with thisarticle that Sample Logic has all the pro-grams grouped into their six elements andthen in to descriptive sub-lists. The Kontakt

Player 2 makes it easy to browse throughsuccessive programs in a list (you click onarrows to advance to the next or previousone), and most of the programs in thislibrary don’t use a lot of memory andtherefore load very quickly.

But unfortunately there’s no way toavoid the problem of it being time-con-

suming to browse through effects-orientedprograms that essentially defy descriptionand can take on different meanings inevery context. So as with Sample Logic’s AIR library, it makes sense to make “user lists,” i.e. to create your own folder(s)inside the program’s folder and copy inprograms you think you might use.

Sounds

This is the subjective part of this review. Ipersonally find the Ambiences in thislibrary the most consistently interesting,because they’re complex (often combining

samples and synths), they evolve over along time, and above all they really set amood. These programs especially would bevery useful for scoring, and you can usethem to hang your hat on—as the founda-tions of cues. They’re very well done.

Similarly, the Impacts category containsa lot of the same types of sounds, onlyshorter. These programs are swells, littlehits, noises, and so on. My one criticism isthat there’s a dearth of...well, what I’d look for in a category called “impacts”: hard-

hitting sounds that kick you in the chest—Pow! Boof! Bang! Wham! and other ono-matopoeias.

But that’s only a comment about what’snot there; what is in the Impacts categorytends to be very creative. Combined withthe envelope controls in the interface, theycan usually be made to fit the musical con-

text very easily. Not surprisingly, they alsocombine very well with the Ambiences.

Conversely, I personally find the instru-

ments (as distinct from the loops) in theHarmony category the least useful overall,since they’re not very malleable. However,

there’s certainly very useful material to be found here, including some short arpeg-giated ostinatos and fun keyboard set-upswith, say, an interesting percussive soundin 5ths on the bottom and little harpstrums on the top. Somewhere sometime you’ll find a use for some of these pro-grams, or maybe they’ll inspire a piece.

The loops in the Harmony category areanother matter. While I’m personally notinto loops that write the cue for you(example: a 2-bar riff pattern of I min/bVIMaj/bIII Maj/bVII Maj triads), a lot of peo-ple will find the loops here to be very highquality.

It’s nice that unlike some Kontakt Player w libraries, you can open The Elements inthe full version of Kontakt 2 (or nowKontakt 3) for further editing. But it would-n’t particularly bother me if more perform-ance control (beyond host-based automa-tion and limited velocity response) had

been programmed into the sounds…actu-ally in general, not just in the Harmonycategory. For that reason I would be moreinclined to take the easy path and gravitateto a sample-based synthesizer such asNative Instruments Absynth for the sort of complex, processed musical sounds in theHarmony category.

That would also apply to a lesser degree to the instruments Bass category,

VIr e v i e w

The idea is that this is sort of an electronic music

construction library. Its programs are more like

"sound design" effects than instruments. These

programs are designed to be treated as, well,elements in a composition that you layer in.

(CONTINUED ON PAGE 62)




VIr e v i e w

Overloud Breverb, $399

www.Ilio.com (U.S. distributor),

www.Overloud.com

Formats: AU, VST, RTAS

(Mac/Win)

System requirements: (mini-

mum) ?Mac—Intel Core Solo

1.5GHz with 512MB of RAM,

Mac OS X 10.4.4 or later,

1024x768 video, or 866MHz

Power Macintosh G4 with

512MB of RAM, Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, 1024x768

video;?Windows—Pentium III

1GHz / Athlon XP 1GHz with

512MB of RAM, Windows XP,

1024x768 screen.

License: uses PACE iLok USB

dongle (not included).

the reverb plug-ins found in peoples’ plug-in folders are still barely at the level of atypical budget outboard unit from 15 yearsago. In stark contrast, the one we’rereviewing here, Breverb, would make avery respectable studio hardware unit—only it has all the additional advantages of being a plug-in.

OverloudBreverb reverb

Why there’s still a place in the universe fora really good algorithmic reverb plug-in.

by Nick Batzdorf

T hese days most of the interest inreverb is centered around convolu-tion processing, because it sounds so

stunningly realistic that it’s revolutionizedthe field. All the major soft samplers andsample players now have convolution builtin, and it’s being used to place instrumentsin sampled spaces—or to run themthrough anything else you can record

(amps, instrument bodies, what have you).Meanwhile the standard “algorithmic”

types of reverbs we’ve been using for atleast 30 years are still absolutely valid andhave their own advantages. The mainproblem has been that until not very longago the ones that existed in software wererather poor; reverb usually takes a lot of computer processing power, and that usedto be in short supply.

Today’s computers have a huge amountof processing power, but frankly many of

Overloud Breverb, a leading candidate for the

Best Plug-in Algorithmic Reverb crown. These

reverb units still have a legitimate place in the

world even though we now have convolution

processors.

The pop-up menu at the right is assigning a

parameter to one of the host-automatable faders

on the pull-out drawer to the right; conveniently

this provides a list of all the available parameters

and also what’s lurking beneath each of the tabs at the bottom of the main unit.

http://www.ilio.com/

http://www.overloud.com/

http://www.overloud.com/

http://www.ilio.com/




VIr e v i e w

Breverb is developed by a new Italiancompany called Overloud, and it has somewell respected people in our industryattached to it. It turns out that’s for goodreason, because this is a very interestingproduct.

Performance

Right off the bat, the conventional prob-lem with algorithmic reverb plug-ins is anon-issue: Breverb is amazingly efficient. Astereo hall reverb program took up just

10% of one processor on the test dual

2.5GHz PowerMac G5 used for this review;Overloud’s claim of running 80 instances of an unspecified program on a 3GHzPentium 4 seems quite reasonable.

So it’s hard to imagine that any comput-er from the past several years couldn’t han-dle all the Breverbs you need for a mix.

Raison d’etre

The main advantage to algorithmicreverbs is that they’re so programmable,and you can hear the results of your adjust-ments immediately—a characteristic that initself makes them more programmable.

While you can make basic and very usefuladjustments to the reverb time and EQ inconvolution processors, it’s not the samething as having a whole slew of parametersto adjust with fine resolution.

Now, prominent individual instrumentsin a pop mix, such as lead vocal or snare,need a reverb program that sticks to thesound; the reverb is very much a part of the instrument. You only have to imaginehow bad a snare drum with a thin, spreadout reverb that rings into the next beatwould sound to understand why theseinstruments normally get their own dedi-

cated reverb processor with a carefullytweaked program.

Convolution reverbs work really well for overall spaces, among other things, butalgorithmic reverbs can shine in thesekinds of role-playing applications. Andindeed, the bulk of the presets in Breverbare quite specific; within each of its four algorithms (hall, plate, room, and inverse) you f ind a lot of tailored programs:Female Lead Plate, Jazz Guitar Chords,and so on.

RT15?!

An example of the precise control youhave in Breverb is what I consider its mostinteresting parameter: the Shape control.Shape affects how quickly the telltale initialpart of the reverb builds up, from “tchup”to “shhhhhup.” This works in conjunctionwith two other parameters, Size and

Spread, which scale its effect.Breverb’s approach to early reflections is

different from the way they’re handled inother units, including convolution proces-

sors—they’re not really treated as a sepa-

rate sound. Rather than dealing only withRT60 (the time it takes reverb to decay60dB), Overloud points to recent researchshowing that after RT15 the reverb is per-ceived as separate from the instrument it’sattached to; it’s the part before that they’remost concerned with.

Because you can’t isolate the early reflec-tions and the tail independently, this sys-tem of control over the initial part of thereverb requires some minor rethinking if

you like to use individual early reflectionreverb plug-ins for positioning and thenshare a single tail between multiple instru-ments—something you probably don’tneed to do with a plug-in this efficient.

However, Breverb sounds very convincing,and Shape/Size/Spread make it really quickto dial in the overall sound you’re after.

The other distinguishing feature thatsome algorithmic reverbs have is that theyaren’t static. Lexicon reverbs have long hada Spin parameter, an internal chorus that’sused to animate and smooth out the tail.Breverb has an adjustable Motion parame-ter that’s a little different from that, but itdoes provide some subtle animation to thesound.

Alla brèverb

Beyond that it’s actually very easy toprogram Breverb, both because of the self-explanatory controls and because of theinterface. You can see the basic layout inthe screen dump with this article.Onscreen knobs that control up to sixparameters, usually fewer, are grouped log-

ically behind tabs labeled General, Pre,Freq, EQ (2-band parametric), and Gate.

It’s not necessary to slog through all of Breverb’s parameters in this review, sincewe’ve already discussed what’s very differ-ent about it. Suffice it to say that anyonewho’s used a reverb before should have notrouble getting it to sound the way youwant in no time.

There’s a “pull-out” set of six faders thatcan be assigned to pretty much anyBreverb parameters, and you can automatethese faders in the host DAW. This is agreat feature of software reverbs; while

MIDI control over reverb parameters is atleast 20 years old, most musicians didn’tbother using it; having it this easy shouldencourage people to use the feature.

And automating reverb is an especiallygood thing to do on individual instru-ments. Simple things like lowering thereverb level and shortening the time as akeyboard part gets louder can add a lot of clarity to a mix. Also, Breverb’s delays aresynced to the host sequencer’s clock and

you can select things like predelay usingmusical values.

Chirping in the morning?

This reverb is intended to recreate the

sound of “classic studio reverbs.” And aglance at the onscreen faders controllingreverb parameters leads the mind in onlyone direction: the Lexicon LARC remotecontroller sitting on every studio’s consoleback in the day.

So—with special thanks—we checkedout Breverb next to composer AndrewKeresztes’ (see MIDI Mockup Microscope inthe 3/07 issue) Lexicon PCM90, a well

Frankly many of the reverb plug-ins found in

people’s menus are still barely at the level of a

typical budget outboard unit from 15 years ago.

The main advantage to algorithmic reverbs is that

they’re so programmable, and you can hear the

results of your adjustments immediately—a

characteristic that itself makes them more

programmable.




VI f e a t u r e

by Frederick Russ


M I D I M O C K U P M I C R O S C O P E

In this installment of our series on composers and how they

did their MIDI programming, composer/mixer Gabriel Shadid

discusses one of his cues. Download the cues at

www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com and follow along.

Gabriel Shadid ended up full time in the music industry, buthe didn’t start there. His career in the entertainment

industry started unglamorously answering phones in a

one-room post house—part time. From there, he learned

about music libraries, advertising agencies, television

shows, post supervisors, line producers, editing audio,

mixing, studio equipment, sound design, and more

Gabe later took this knowledge toanother studio where he still answeredphones on the night shift. After nine

months he was given a chance to be apost mixer. He jumped on this opportunityand essentially turned it into a full-timecareer. Along the way he’s mixed the show America’s Most Wanted , Behind The Music ,shows for Discovery Channel, NationalGeographic, MTV and VH-1, presidentialpolitical campaigns, commercials for McDonalds, Mobil, promo for ABC, Disney,Discovery, NBC, WB, FOX, HBO, and more.

Epic Score’s credit list spans many typesof media. A recent one they’re particularlyproud of is a NASCAR spot that aired twicein the 2008 Super Bowl. They’ve licensed

their music into trailers for Harry Potter,Transformers, Fantastic 4, Eragon, Pirates of the Caribbean, 10,000 BC, and others. EpicScore’s music was used as the theme toDiscovery Channel’s Planet Earth and hasbeen busy with such video game trailers for Spiderman 3, Transformers, andUltimate Alliance. Their music is licensedinto promos for ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, USA,SciFi, Showtime, and others.

Epic Score is now one of three compa-nies that Gabe owns with different part-ners. He’s recently started two newendeavors—a custom music company and

a sound design company.

Since your background is as a

mixer, let’s start with a look at your

DAW and studio.

Well, my main DAW is a Mac Pro 3.0GHz 8-core with 5GB of RAM and four hard drives. I use a Metric Halo MobileIO+DSP interface and Genelec 1030 moni-tors with a Genelec 1092A sub. For opticaldigital input on Mac I use two MOTU2408mkIIIs.

Gabe in front of the

historic Crest Theatre in

Westwood Village, CA.






Then I have two slave Windows XP ProPCs made by VisionDAW, one for NativeInstruments Kontakt 2 hosted insideSteinberg VStack, one for TASCAM Giga 3.Each PC has an RME HDSP 9652 soundcard. Each card is capable of three opticalouts, so that works nicely with the2408mkIIIs, because each one has threeoptical inputs. That gives me 12 stereopairs to work with from each PC.

I like to keep things split as much as pos-

sible coming into DP [MOTU DigitalPerformer] and process in DP. My goal isnever to sum audio in the PCs. I want tomake all those decisions in DP on the Mac.If I add more PCs, I can simply add more2408mkIIIs.

I use Remote Desktop Connection toview the PCs via ethernet. I have two mon-itors on the Mac: a 30” Apple monitor anda 20” Formac.

My controllers: Kurzweil PC88mx, KorgKarma, and Kurzweil K2000. (I have an oldKorg 01/Wfd hooked in, but leaningagainst the wall.) I use a Presonus

FaderPort—nice faders, and the transport isvery convenient for when DP is in thebackground and the spacebar doesn’tstart/stop the sequence. For example,when I’m working on a PC window and DPis in the background and I want to play theDP sequence, the FaderPort is very handy.

Which sequencer?

I use MOTU Digital Performer 5.13 for composing. I was an old Opcode Studio Vision guy—hehe—I actually beta tested italmost 12 years ago. DP was the closestthing to it when Opcode went away. The

flow in DP works well for me and it’sbecome a very powerful app. I saw DP6 atthe NAMM show and it looks very promis-ing.

I created a large DP trailer music tem-plate I always start with. It’s constantlyevolving. Right now it’s about 250 MIDIchannels, 24 stereo aux inputs coming from the two PCs, there’s a dozen stereoaudio tracks, four Kontakt 2 instances withall types of sounds, Spectrasonics StylusRMX, Vanguard, several Altiverbs, and a

fair amount of DSP plug-ins already inplace with settings that have been tweakedover time.

Additionally, there are templates in eachPC that correspond to the DP template set-tings. It took quite a while to set up thetemplate, but the effort has resulted in a

streamlined workflow that allows me towork quickly—strings, brass, percussion,choir, synths, grooves, and more are allpreloaded, panned, processed, ’verbed,and ready to go.

Are you using Pro Tools TDM?

VI f e a t u r e

Picture 1: “I always bounce a final mix live. I

never bounce a final mix offline. I like to hear it as

it plays. I think it comes from all my time in post

houses where you always monitored your work

during the final mixdown pass. Everything is

bussed out 17 & 18 and sent to the “Mix

Bounce” audio track at the bottom. DP has a very

flexible audio routing system that works well for

my taste. It’s very analog in terms of thinking.”




I was a post mixer for 13 years. I mixedshows, promos, commercials, etc. Pro Toolswas the standard in that world during thelast eight years I mixed, so I’m totally upon Pro Tools. In my studio I have an MBox2 with PT 7.4LE and DV Toolkit 2. With an

8-core MacPro, it’s actually a very powerfulset-up.

But I don’t write music with it. However I still find myself needing to mix and editnon-music projects, and Pro Tools is mymain axe for those things. For straight edit-

ing, Pro Tools is the DAW for me. Any timeI need to cut a demo like the one for ES008 (discussed below), I do it in ProTools. And I usually master in Pro Tools.Sometimes I’ll master in DP, but there are a few plug-ins that are only available for ProTools, so I find myself in there a fair amount.

Okay, now about your music. I’ve

noticed that these tracks seem to use

quite a bit of compression and limit-

ing for punch. What signal process-ing are you using to achieve that?

All mixing of my tracks is done in DP.Many of these decisions are made duringthe writing process and then make it to the final mix. The 8-core MacPro is powerfulenough that more than 90% of the mix isall live and not bounced or frozen tracks.For me, it’s so much more flexible to makelast minute changes without having toworry about frozen/bounced audio. I use Waves (I beta test for Waves so I have alltheir stuff), Sony, and Izotope mainly.

Which convolution reverb do wehear on your symphonic work?

I’m a fan of Audioease’s Altiverb. It hasan organic quality that works for me.Usually there are several instances doingdifferent tasks—orchestra, choir, etc.

What library are you using for

choir?

Several years ago I found myself needingaccess to choral sounds for trailer work, soI captured my own samples. I combinevowels and consonants to make gibberishthat sounds like Latin. People often ask me

what they’re saying. They’re saying noth-ing—it just sounds like something—I hope.

Choral samples definitely require a lot of patience to get a good result. In Epic ScoreI’m the “choir guy” (laughs). Tobias[Marberger, the subject of a previousMMM column] hates creating choir lines,so it usually lands on me. But that’s okay—Ilike doing it.

Both my parents sang in choirs, so I defi-nitely have the sound in my head. Apparently, when I was an infant, I would

VI f e a t u r ePicture 2: “I love DP’s track folder feature. I

nest folders inside folders. It really helps tame

hundreds of tracks in a meaningful way. For the

slave PCs I think in terms of MIDI ports. At a

glance it’s easy to look at a folder and know that

a particular sound is on Vstack Port 3. From there

it’s quick to open the third instance of Kontakt 2

on the Vstack computer and tweak the sound.”




be in the choir loft with my parents and Iused to snooze right through the loudest

parts of the Tchaikovsky mass with theentire choir singing at the tops of their lungs.

Percussion: I not familiar with the

percussion libraries you’re using

here. Perhaps a large part of that is

the use of processing on them?

The beauty of being in business withTobias Marberger is that he’s a percussioncrazy man. 95% of the percussion I usecomes from him. We’ve done our own per-cussion recording sessions that have nettedsome great sounds. Plus we use many of

the percussion software products available.The trick comes in the layering of all

these various sounds. Often times I create arough percussion track that demonstratesthe feel I’m looking for and then hand it toTobias. He’ll come back with a track thatkicks butt. At the end of the day, I thinkour tracks have a unique percussion soundbecause of the efforts of Tobias.

Before Epic Score existed, I wanted tostart a music company of my own. But Iwas convinced that I couldn’t do it myself.

I looked around at several other thrivingcompanies, and most of them were twopeople. After a long search I teamed upwith Tobias, and when I talk about himbeing the percussion guy and me beingthe choir guy, it illustrates that both of usbring different sensibilities to the table andthat it would be harder to do this stuff solo.

Plus, when you do library music you’renot writing to anything in particular, so ithelps to gain perspective from someoneelse who understands what you’re trying todo with the music.

What about synths?

Yes, I use synths—most are V.I.s now. Ihave Stylus RMX, Atmosphere, Trilogy (for the record I beta test for Spectrasonics,and wrote the user manual for StylusRMX); Native Instruments Komplete 5 andKore 2; Synthogy Ivory Grand; Vanguard;East West Quantum Leap SymphonicOrchestra and Symphonic Choirs;

Quantum Leap RA, StormDrum; SampleLogic A.I.R. and The Elements [reviewed inthis issue], and Epic Score owns an Access Virus Ti Polar, but Tobias has it in Swedenright now boohoo. The arpeggiator in theKorg Karma is amazing, and I find plentyof uses for it to trigger sounds in V.I.s.

Now for your cue. 0:01-0:09—Niceintro, dense mix. Are you playing these inon the keyboard?

I play all my parts in on my PC88mx. I’ma piano player, so whatever notes I hear inmy head I can play on the keyboard. For me, I find this helps with the realism and

feel of the part.

Which trumpets and horns are you

using?

It’s really a very typical set of instrumentshere—no surprises: full strings, horns,

VI f e a t u r e

Picture 3: “Microsoft’s Remote DesktopConnection is a great way to view the PCs with-

out needing a KVM switch or separate monitor,

keyboard, and mouse. Version 2 of RDC allows

you to have windows of multiple PCs open at the

same time…very cool. Plus it’s free. This mess of

windows is when the FaderPort’s transport comes

in so handy. Regardless of what window is active,

I can always play the DP sequence using the

FaderPort’s transport.” Picture 4: “The 30” Apple monitor is my cen-

tral workspace. It hangs on an Ergotron monitor

arm. I love the Ergotrons because they allow

monitors to hang right in front of your face,

instead of having the monitor four feet away and

squinting.”




trumpets, choir, and tons of percussion. What is more significant is that there’s a lotof layering of different patches to make

one sound. For instance, I layer six violinand viola staccato patches from differentsources to get the sound I want for thehigh string staccatos. And I constantlyadjust the layering of these sounds. I feellike I learn a little more about how to layer them better each time I write a new track.

The brass is largely custom recordings. And the choir is custom. Staccato passeslike that take a fair amount of time to getto sound right.

Generally how much editing do you

do to achieve the best results?

Well, I play all the parts in to get the ideadown. Once they’re in, I do quite a bit of editing with velocities and timings, plus Iend up changing a lot of notes. For me it’s avery fluid process, and that’s why I resist freezing/bouncing tracks as much as possi-ble. As these tracks climax into huge end-ings, I find myself experimenting a LOT, try-ing to find more tension and insanity.

Usually people shake their heads whenthey listen to this music, then they look atme and start to wonder what’s wrong withme—and is it really safe to be in the roomwith me? Because a guy that writes thismusic can’t be sane, right? RIGHT?

0:10-0:34, a different shift. The

choir staccatos sound great—naturalsyllable transitions. Is the ambience

on them in the recording?

No. Because I wanted to put staccatosounds together, I decided to record in aspace with minimal ambience. Altiverb isproviding the space on the choir. It’salways a debate of natural versus convolu-tion ambience. In this case I felt convolu-tion would be more flexible.

This brings up a point: I would urge any-one reading this article to go sample some-thing for themselves. It doesn’t matter what it is. You don’t even need nice gear.

What matters is the process. I think it’sHUGELY valuable to sit there with a micro-phone and make decisions about how you’re going to record a sound source. Itreally opens up your eyes to what a devel-oper is facing when they set out to samplesomething.

I think most people would be surprisedat how cool the result is. In the end I think you can use samples better when youunderstand the approach behind them.

How do you approach routing to

the reverb? Different verbs for dif-

Pictures 5 and 6: “I have quite a bit of acoustic

foam in the room. I used Auralex foam and it

works well for me. I covered around 90% of the

surfaces in my room. [Note that muffling the

sides is a controversial approach to room treat-

ment that doesn’t necessarily reflect the opin-

ion of the VI Editorial Committee… :-) —Ed.] I

like a fairly dry environment when I’m mixing.

Picture 6 shows the diffusers directly behind my

head. I also have diffusers over my head above

the mix position. I cannot stress enough the

importance of a good listening environment. You could spend a zillion dollars on speakers, but if

you have a bad, boomy, mushy acoustic environ-

ment, you’ll have no idea what your mix really

sounds like. Also, many people ignore the ceiling

when considering small studio acoustic treatment.

As it turns out, the ceiling is one of the biggest

problems areas and you really need to address

it.”

VI f e a t u r e




ferent instrument/choir sections?

Yeah, I use multiple Altiverbs. In the pastI had to be so wary of available CPU that Iran more things than I wanted throughsome of the same verbs, and to somedegree it’s still that way because I haven’tchanged yet to reflect having more power in the 8-core.

I don’t usually verb via aux sends. Mostof the time I route the whole signal into an Altiverb and then adjust wet/dry to taste.For me there are no hard and fast rules. Ijust approach it with a sound in my headand keep tweaking until hopefully I arriveat what I want to hear. I find that I con-stantly adjust the verb on the choir to fit inbetter with a particular track.

0:39-0:53—the cue shifts. Which

audio wave editor do you use?

For editing demos like this on, I do allthat in Pro Tools LE 7.4. Since Pro Tools

was my daily DAW in television for somany years, I’m very comfortable workingquickly with it.

For finishing cues that are going to bepressed to an audio CD master, I use PeakPro 5. I’ve used it since version 1 and likehow it works with individual files. And Imake my CD masters inside Peak. Their claim is that Peak burns 100% Red Bookstandard compliant CDs, which they claimis not the case of other burning programs.Given that our CDs are distributed all over the world, I want to ensure that any CDplayer will play them.

Do you use live instruments at all?

Some of the percussion is live playing,but as far as orchestral musical instru-ments, no. Music-wise everything you hear in this demo was programmed in DP witha lot of custom recorded samples. We planon moving into the live realm in the future.

What percentage of your samples

are Giga compared to Kontakt?

NI Kontakt 2 and 3 is my main sampleplayer inside DP and in VStack on one of thePCs. The streaming engine in Kontakt 2/3

works very well on the 8-core MacPro. I alsohave to give credit to the Kontakt 2/3 team for creating such a powerful MIDI scripting feature. There seems to be endless uses for the scripting feature. Plus there’s a vibrantbase of users that freely create scripts for other users…very very cool. In fact, the VI-Control.net forum is a great place to findthat community of people.

I also own MOTU MachFive 2. The origi-nal MachFive was very useful in bringingmy old Kurzweil, Roland, Akai, etc. samples

into the soft sampler age. Plus it was very

easy to program a sound in MachFive.Now with v2, they have a viable streamingengine and a ton of new features.

I have a PC dedicated to Giga 3. I havemany custom recordings that were pro-grammed in Giga, so I use it quite a bit.I’ve considered trying to reprogram fromGiga to Kontakt, but the task is daunting. And I have to say that my Giga computer is very stable. It can run for months with

no crashes, and the Giga streaming engineis amazing.

Basically, if you do this stuff for a living,it’s good to have access to all formats.None of these tools are that expensive if this is your living. Of course, there is thelearning curve for each one…

Are you relying upon the convert-

ers of your digital audio box or a

master clock?

I use the clock inside the Mobile IO asmy master clock. The rest of my studiosyncs to that.

How do you keep very dense mixes

from sounding like mush?

With tracks like these, it can be challeng-ing—there’s just so much going on; somany elements fighting for the samespace. You can spend a ton of time balanc-ing all the nuances in the percussion, andthen later all the percussion gets buried bysomething else. And to add to the fun, you find that something that was okay whenthe percussion was soloed is not okay later

in a full mix and you have to adjust. Andthen what happened to the low strings? Ican’t hear them anymore!

So then you push them up, but then thelow brass gets drowned out, so you raisethem—darn—now the high strings areburied—great—raise those up, but now

the high brass sounds weak, so you gottaraise them—and you’re pretty much rightwhere you started but the whole thing islouder, which is no good because now it’stoo loud and it’s clipping. So you have tolower the whole thing—hmmm back tosquare one.

This illustrates that volume can’t be theonly thing—it’s EQ and spatial placementtoo. These things allow different elementsto be more prominent without volumebeing the only factor.

A trap that’s easy to fall into is workingtoo loud right from the start. I’m not talk-

ing about the volume coming from thespeakers; I’m talking about how muchheadroom you have in your DAW. If youstart too loud, you have nowhere else togo but down. Starting all the elementssofter allows you more flexibility in the mixlater. You still have room to punch an ele-ment up via volume or EQ or some other way without slamming into ceilings.

Personally I’m a fan of wide mixes.

Gabe Shadid and Tobias Marberger (the sub-

ject of a previous column) in Los Angeles.


VI f e a t u r e




VIr e v i e w

Big Products,

Little Reviews Wave Machine Labs Drumagog 4.1, Brainworx Media

bx_digital mastering plug-in, and TrackStar Radio Waves

contemporary beat and vocal construction kits

Wave Machine Labs

Drumagog 4.1 DrumReplacement Plug-in

Drumagog 4.1 Pro, $289;

Platinum (with BFD support),

$379.

www.drumagog.com

Formats: Audio Units, RTAS, VST.

Windows XP/Mac OS X 10.4+.

Despite the appearance of some strongcompetition, Drumagog is still the goldstandard for drum replacement plug-ins. What makes this all the more impressive isthat until Version 4, Drumagog was onlyavailable as a DirectX plug-in. With addedsupport for all the most popular formats,

easily exchanged with others online. In fact, some of the best sounding GOGs are from users on the Drumagog forums.

Getting up and running is simply a mat-ter of inserting the plug-in onto a drumtrack and selecting a replacement sample.Drumagog can literally do the rest. But you’ll probably want to tweak a few

parameters on the main page to makethings really fit in tightly.

The new visual triggering mode allows you to view incoming audio as a scrollingwaveform, with the triggering controls(sensitivity, resolution) superimposed ontop as a set of crosshairs. This provides anintuitive method of selecting exactly whichincoming hits will trigger Drumagog, asonly those impulses reaching above thehorizontal threshold line will actually sounda sample.

by Jason Scott Alexander

many refinements to itstransient detection algo-rithm, and a ton of remix-er-friendly features—plus agrowing library of drumsounds available—it’s quitea program.

Drumagog is a real-timeplug-in that’s designed to

fix and enhance less thanideally recorded drumtracks, or ones where apoor drum choice wasmade. It does this by auto-matically replacing anyaudio that exceeds a definable thresholdwith your choice of other samples. WaveMachine Labs demos it at trade showsusing a kit made up of household items—pots and pans, etc.—implying that you canplay drum parts in using anything youhave around. That could be a very interest-ing way of sequencing drum parts.

A huge library of acoustic and electronickicks, snares, toms, hi-hats, and cymbals inboth stick and brushed varieties is includ-ed. Incorporating up to 48 velocity andpositional multisamples each, the layers of these proprietary .gog files are played backin L/R round-robin fashion. You can alsoimport and arrange WAV, AIF, SDII, andGIG samples to create custom GOGs.

What’s very cool about this format isthat it allows you to arrange and save your own sample sets within a single file that’s

http://www.drumagog.com/

http://www.drumagog.com/




You can teach Drumagog very quicklyhow to follow impulses that occur veryclose to one another (i.e. drum rolls and flamming), or conversely to ignore ghostnotes, by setting the vertical resolutionwindow in ms to seconds. Any incomingaudio that scores a “hit” is displayed as awhite dot on the display, making it easy to

see a history of which impulses causedDrumagog to trigger.

Quite often drum tracks contain exces-sive kit bleed, so a highly versatile pre-trig-ger filter is provided to combat false trig-gering, by cutting out unwanted sonicmaterial before it enters the analysis stage. You have the choice of high, low,notch/bandstop, and bandpass filters withadjustable frequency, Q, and input level. An audition button lets you hear exactlyhow much of the source signal is makingits way through to the triggering engine, avery nice feature.

Most engineers would argue that keep-ing a little bleed intact is integral to thenatural sound of a well recorded kit. To testthe program, however, I used a prettyextreme case with lackluster soundingtoms only being picked up by the over-heads; I wanted to replace the toms with-

out jeapardizing the feel of the overheadcontent in any way.

Drumagog’s new Stealth mode was anindispensable tool for this. Using the filterswith sharp Q settings, I first tuned multipleinstances of Drumagog into each tom’s

pitch. Stealth mode then allowed all of theoriginal material to pass through (in thiscase the crashes and cymbals), crossfadequickly into the replaced tom sampleswhen a respective trigger event occurred,then crossfade back into the cymbals

again. I found myself totally impressed bythe seamless and completely naturalsounding results.

Another song called for a replacementsnare, but you could still hear it on theoverheads. This is where the handy auto-ducking feature comes in. I placed an

instance of Drumagog on both the originalsnare track (with ducking set to send) andeach of the L/R overhead tracks (receive).Every time the snare played, the two over-head instances would automatically duckthe audio by the amount dialed in, result-

ing in a flawless blend when combinedback in with the replacement snare sample.

In my urban production and mixingwork I often get asked to mutate snares,put some fuzz on claps, and replace wonkybass drums with killer kicks. Sometimes an

acoustic kick drum has the perfect tonalquality for this application, but it lacks theballs to punch through a heavy electronicarrangement. Drumagog’s Synth section isa wonderful solution to this problem, as itallows you to blend in the support of apure waveform (sine, square, sawtooth,

VIr e v i e w

At trade shows they demo it using a kit made upof household items—pots and pans etc—implying

that you can play drum parts in using anything you

have around.




three types of triangle, and noise), tune itslevel, frequency, attack, decay, and mix itinto the original signal.

Beyond multitracked drums, Drumagogis really quite useful on full mixes as well.Using the combination of resonant filter section and visual trigger display, I wasable to pinpoint an individual percussion

instrument in a submix or loop and replaceor contort it in real time. Such a time saver.Being able to choose the playing positionof a replacement sample (i.e., middle of snare head, off-center, rimshot, sidetick,bell of ride, etc.), adjust its phase andmatch its pitch to the original are all great features.

And then you get to the Advancedpage, where you fine tune the triggeringengine even more. Three transient detec-tion algorithms are available to pick from.Simple detection has adjustable qualityand latency (1ms to 30ms) and is recom-

mended if minimizing CPU usage is a pri-ority. Live detection provides absolutelyzero latency, but at the expense of slight-ly reduced triggering quality; it is recom-mended when using Drumagog as aninsert on the main console in a live con-cert performance, or as a “drum brain” for drum trigger pads.

The Advanced detection algorithm has alatency of 73.22ms, but it offers the high-est triggering quality and is therefore rec-ommended for mixing. An auto-align con-trol allows you to pick whether it uses psy-choacoustic or actual peaks, and provides

controls to optimize response for either bass drums or snare.

I did experience one performance issuein Pro Tools 7.4 HD. Regardless of whether I was using the special ‘fixed latency’ ver-sion (designed for hosts with automaticdelay compensation) or standard variable-latency version of the RTAS plug-in, theoverall generated delay was still enough tomake it impossible to audition replace-ments against the rest of the kit. So, once you’re happy with the replacement,bouncing down is a must. On the sametoken, what I really love about Drumagog,

because it is real time, is that you can audi-tion your favorite sounds on the fly, leaving you the flexibility of changing things later that session, another day, or during mix-down several months later. And everyparameter can be automated in the hostjust like any other plug-in.

Bottom line, Drumagog is an incrediblywell thought out tool. It’s available in threeversions, starting with Drumagog Basic at$199; though this lacks so many great fea-tures that you’d probably want to step up

to Drumagog Pro (reviewed here) for theextra 90 bucks.

If you own a copy of FXpansion’s BFD,Drumagog Platinum adds the ability totrigger BFD samples directly, without MIDIor complicated routing setups. Handsdown, if you do any extensive mixing of drum tracks or want to experiment with

remixing older ones, Drumagog needs tobe in your plug-in folder.

Brainworx Mediabx_digital masteringplug-in

?698 TDM; ?398 Native, Scope

(all prices are for download ver-

sions from the Brainworx WebShop)

Formats: TDM, Audio Units, RTAS,

VST, Scope

www.brainworx-music.de

Brainworx is a German company knownmostly to elite mastering houses, butthey’ve spent the past couple of years port-

ing over emulations of their ultra high-endhardware processors into software. Basedon their bx-1 Modus Equalizer and bx-2Image Shifter/De-esser outboard, bx_digitalcombines the technologies into a singlemulti-layered plug-in.

Most intriguing is that it works in up tothree modes on any stereo signal. One of

these is a highly sophisticated M/S master-ing matrix for applying level and EQchanges separately to middle and side (aka“sum and difference”) signals.

M/S processing opens up a whole new

world of opportunities, whether you’rerecording samples (since this is VI mag),working with loops, or mastering. One of thou could use bx_digital to EQ the sides of a mix completely independently of the mid-dle. For example, you could use it to bringout the bite in stereo-spread guitars withoutover-emphasizing the midrange in whatev-

er’s in the middle. The plug-in can also func-tion as a standard stereo/dual-mono EQ,and as a recording processor for convertingand equalizing M/S microphone signals intomono-compatible stereo.

After you select the mode you wish towork in from the centrally located Modusswitch, signals enter the bx1 section. Thisis comprised of a 5-band parametric EQ for each channel; the TDM version adds high-and low-pass 12dB/octave filters with over-lapping ranges of 20-20kHz.

VIr e v i e w

http://www.brainworx-music.de/

http://www.brainworx-music.de/




In all versions the LF and HF EQ bandscover 20Hz-1kHz and 400-20kHz, plusthere are shelving options. There are alsowide overlapping LMF, MF, and HMF bandsand separate Input Gain controls for leftand right channels to help balance mixesthat aren’t quite centered. All bands havea maximum cut/boost of 12dB and a Q

range of 0.3 to 15. A handful of Link but-tons tie individual bands of one channel totheir counterparts on the other channel,while individual M and S output gain con-trols allow you to balance the stereo widthof your mix.

The bx2 section features a so-calledImage Shifter, consisting of “intelligent”bass and presence controls. Each is a sin-gle-function knob that boosts at one fre-quency (63Hz for bass; 12kHz for pres-ence) while simultaneously cutting at anadjacent frequency (315 Hz for bass; 6kHz for presence). This is extremely effective for

scalloping big bottom lows and airy highswithout sounding muddy or excessivelysibilant. Cutting essentially inverts theboost/cut peaks, making it possible tobuild up the low midrange of piano or gui-tar, for example, without introducing low-end boom. When used in conjunction withthe bx-1 EQs, these shifters behave morelike gentle contours, giving you incrediblydetailed yet quick and highly musicalsounding control over the entire frequencyspectrum in one swoop.

There’s also a special de-esser for eachchannel with adjustable center frequency

(4.5kHz to 20kHz), threshold (0 to -60db)and individual solo buttons to monitor the

side chain so that you can hear what isbeing removed. Gain reduction meters tell

the story visually.Finally, the unique Mono Maker control

allows you to dial in how much of the low frequency content you wish to take out of the side channel, turn to mono, and forceinto the middle channel. This is a greatway to tighten up the low end of a mix. And if you happen to be in the mood tomaster for vinyl, this feature is essential.

bx_digital’s ability to audition middleand side signals separately is a big advan-tage during both mixing and mastering.

Pressing the phase-corrected SOLO buttonsallows you to hear only the M or S compo-nents of your mix (L/R in stereo/dual-monomode) so you can work on these two sig-nals independently.

Auto Solo is another novel feature. With itenabled, touching any control solos that sec-tion’s channel. In M/S mode, for example,

adjusting the side EQ will solo the side chan-nel so that it’s easier to hear changes beingmade. As soon as you let go of the controlswith your mouse the signal automatically

returns to full stereo output. Of course this

also works for the L and R channels in stan-dard stereo or dual-mono modes.

It’s also very satisfying to use this plug-inwith a control surface. I had great successusing the Euphonix MC Mix [reviewedelsewhere in this issue] within Pro Tools 7.4and Logic Pro 8. And bx_digital’s surfaceimplementation works well with allDigidesign controllers, allowing for touch-sensitive Auto Solo and tight integrationwith ICON EQ (TDM only). The on-screenmetering is also intuitive, with solo-sensi-tive behavior juggling between displayingpre-EQ (L/R input), post-EQ (M/S matrix),

and final L/R output levels. The SCOPE ver-sion includes four insert slots for external

dynamic processing, with a promise fromBrainworx that they’ll provide updates to

all versions with inserts as soon as the hoststandards allow for this feature.

The interface to bx_digital is rather large, taking up a screen real estate of 1024 x 882—nearly an entire typical 19-inch LCD! Thankfully the window panes for bx1, bx2 and the graphical EQ display maybe switched individually betweenshow/hide-view to preserve space.

Taking the advice of Brainworx, I startedoff by using bx_digital as a standard stereoEQ to get a feel for the power of each

equalizer band and the de-esser. Withoutquestion, you can do some serious carvingusing this plug-in, so I preferred to get anydeep tonal shaping out of the way in LRmode before switching over to M/S mode,which is appropriate for more delicatestereo imaging treatments.

As a stereo EQ on individual instrument

tracks, bx_digital’s dimensional channelsare great for pulling distant or narrowlyrecorded instruments and vocals right upclose while at the same time spreading

them out. If that sounds counterintuitive,

just imagine raising the level of the middlechannel as a whole (making it sound drier and closer) while lowering the sides (thusreducing ambience), then boosting onlycertain frequencies of side channels for width

It was great how this fattened up thebuilt-in stereo chorus on a Roland Juno 106synth, made acoustic pianos and strings sitwithin a virtually larger room, and createdtrippier psychedelic space around phasedMellotron samples and flanged GForce Virtual String Machine patches. This sound-ed completely natural, not like an effect.

Of course, it’s easy to overdo stereowidening at the track level. I found that byapplying M/S processing to a primary vocalor instrument only, it separated other instruments as a byproduct and gave themix much more clarity.

Similarly, recording with microphonesset up in M/S pairings and runningthrough bx_digital’s conversion matrix pro-duces gracious, ambient tracks. You thenhave complete control over the center image and side ambience—not just withlevels, but also for EQing, de-essing, andbussing to apply independent compres-

sion, effects, and so on.But, the application where bx_digital

shines most brightly is mastering. The cre-ativity and ease with which you canrepair/augment background vocals burieddeep within a final stereo mix, for example,is uniue. With the side channel soloed, youcan really hear what’s going on and grabhold of the appropriate frequencies, boost-ing presence and adding air without affect-ing the lead. Folded back in with monosignal, the result is huge.

VIr e v i e w

You could use bx_digital to EQ the sides of a mix

completely independently of the middle.

M/S processing opens up a whole new world of

opportunities, whether you're recording samples,

working with loops, or mastering.




You obviously couldn’t do that with atypical stereo EQ, because you’d also beboosting the same frequencies in the leadvocal and anything else in that frequencyspace. Likewise, having de-essers in boththe M and S channels is a godsend. I wasable to control the sibilants on a centrallypaned lead vocal while leaving background

vocals and shimmering cymbal overheadsmaterial unscathed.

I frequently found myself running out of headroom when boosting frequencies inbx_digital, and that’s when I discoveredthat the left and right channels can’t belinked. That means you have to carefullynotch each input by exactly the sameamount, and with the rather small size of the input control knobs, this isn’t an easytask. However you can command-drag (onMac) for more precision control, or youcan just enter numeric values.

I can’t remember the last time I found so

many uses for or become quite so enam-ored with a plug-in. M/S processing andEQ can breathe life into less than perfectrecordings or mediocre mixes by allowing you to refocus the listener’s attention tothe frequency elements that really matter. And short of remixing a record, there’s noeasier way to fix heavy-handed reverbtreatments and stereo effects.

And on top of all that, bx_digital soundsas smooth as silk; it just blows my mindevery time I use it. Serious stuff for the seri-ous professional.

TrackStar Radio Waves contemporary beat and vocal con-struction kits

Radio Waves, $99.95

Distributed by Big Fish Audio:

www.BigFishAudio.com

Formats: Apple Loops, REX, WAV,

Spectrasonics Stylus RMX.

From the same team that brought ussuch titles as Hip Hop Exotica,Reggaeton, and Punk & Indie Rock comesa decidedly more mainstream collection.Comprised of 50 construction kits in 24-bit WAV (1.6 GB), Apple Loops, REX2,and RMX formats, the emphasis is oncatchy instrumental and vocal hooks that

are well suited for commercial pop, hip-hop, and R&B.

Under the musical direction of executiveproducer Josquin de Pres, Radio Wavesblends his West Coast recording experi-ence, southern French origins, and great

affinity for ethnic instrumentation to createa library that has a more worldly and cut-

ting-edge vibe than the many others circu-lating on the market today. While similar toHip Hop Exotica, it has infusions of Arabicscales and Middle Eastern melodies, butinstead of using authentic ethnic instru-ments (à la Pharrell Williams/TheNeptunes) the arrangements are madeusing synths that have been tweaked toprovide a modern spin on old world tones.

Stylistically the mixture’s just as fresh.Clearly inspired by—but not blatantly imi-tating—some of the greatest producersaround, Radio Waves runs the gamut fromsexy and happy to dark and menacing

with deep synth chords, gothic organs,

and the like. There are a few club bangers,but their energy’s kept in check so as to

VIr e v i e wremain appealing to mass CHR/Rhythmicradio.

Trying out both the Apple Loops andREX2 formats, I was pleased to discover that the samples had obviously undergonesuperior care during preparation. Every file

looped and stretched smoothly withoutany complications or tell-tale skips. Users of

Spectrasonics Stylus RMX will find installers for both Mac and PC that will place theRMX files in the correct directories and cre-ate the RMX suites for use in the user libraries area.

Regardless of format, each kit contains akey-labeled full mix “audition” track, amain drum loop, one or two alt beats, andtypically three or four instrument loopsplus vocal phrases (sometimes offered asHigh, Mid, and Low to create harmonies).Tempos range from 72 to 136 BPM.

A separate Drum Tracks folder gives youaccess to the individual parts of the main

beat to recreate or mix and match betweendifferent parts of the drums. You could takethe snare loop from one kit and match itwith the drums and hi-hat from another kit, for instance. There’s also a folder of single-hits per kit for augmenting beats or creating your own fills and transitions.

It might seem surprising just how sparseand breezy the drum parts are in thislibrary. There are a few real kickers hereand there but, for the most part, therhythm tracks follow the current hip-hoptrend of minimalist beat production. Theseare mostly 4-bar patterns.

You’ll often find No-kick patterns featur-ing syncopated hi-hat with tuned ethnicpercussion, hand claps, and scattered tam-bourine set on the offbeat. These get rein- forced in their alternate drum loops bybooming timpani, muted box kicks, stomp-ing drumline-style bass or rubbery sub-kicks featuring a wobbly, ringing decay.

This sounds similar to the old engineer’strick of bouncing a basketball off the con-

The bx2 section features an Image Shifter,

consisting of "intelligent" bass and presence

controls—extremely effective for scalloping big

bottom lows and airy highs without sounding

muddy or excessively sibilant.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 60

http://www.bigfishaudio.com/

http://www.bigfishaudio.com/



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VIr e v i e w

Vienna Symphonic Library

Appassionata Strings I and IIGigantic string sections from VSL

by Nick Batzdorf

V SL has not so quietly been releasinga whole series of new librariesrecorded in their Silent Stage record-

ing studio. They’ve also been packagingtheir famous orchestra in different ways,including the Special Edition orchestra thatwe hope to cover next issue, and they’ve

even offering individual instruments that you can download from their website.

But in this review we’re going to look attheir attempt to do something that so far hasn’t worked really well in samplelibraries: giant string sections. It’s hard tosay why attempts to sample larger string

VSL Appassionata Strings I:

Standard set $645, Extended

set $575, Full set (both) $1220;

Appassionata Strings II:

Standard set $515, Extended

set $185, Full set $700.

www.VSL.co.at

Copy protection: uses a

Syncrosoft dongle, sold sepa-

rately as the Vienna Key.

System requirements: PC

Intel/AMD with Windows

XP/VISTA 32 and 64 bit ver-

sions (Core 2 Duo/Xeon rec-

ommended); Apple G4 (G5 or

Intel Core 2 Duo/Xeon proces-

sor recommended) with Mac

OS X 10.4 or higher; 1 GB RAM

(2 GB or more recommended)

Fig. 1: The Vienna Instruments player with the 20-piece Appassionata violin section loaded. This is

Universal preset Matrix (Vl-20 Perf-Universal), which loads a lot of articulations for you and sets them up.

Each of the nine cells at the middle left holds an articulation; the one in 3B, marcato with two velocity

layers, is currently active.

In this Matrix, cells along the horizontal axis—cells 1, 2, and 3—are selected by the Speed control,

which detects how fast you’re playing (currently the fastest of the three speed settings, as you can see at

the upper right). Then you select the vertical articulation—A, B, or C—with CC1, the modwheel, which is

currently in the center of its range, hence cell 3B is selected.

There are more sets of programs (articulations) loaded under seven keyswitches, shown at the lower left…and there’s more to it. But it’s very flexible, an it’s very easy to set up your own Matrixes by drag-

ging articulations into cells and selecting how you want to switch between them.






sections haven’t been as successful as thesmaller sections, but there’s a tendency for them to (in my opinion) sound synthy.That’s especially so as you get higher up inthe registers.

VSL has had three sizes of strings in itsrepertoire for a while: Solo Strings,Chamber Strings (6-4-3-2 [VSL has found it

unnecessary to record separate second vio-lins]), and Orchestral Strings (10-4-8-6,with vlns/vlas in the I library and vlcs/cbsin part II). Now with Appassionata Strings Iand II they’re going for the warm, lush,smooth, sweeping string sound you onlyget with huge sections: 20-14-12-10.

Details

Like all current VSL libraries, Appassionata Strings I (about 18GB, com-pressed to about 2/3 that on disk) and II(about 10.7B) run in the included ViennaInstruments player (Fig. 1). We first wrote

about this very clever player in the January06 issue, but in a nutshell its main purposeis to manage the huge number of articula-tions in every VSL library. It lets you play asmany articulations as you want from onesequencer track, and often you can play apart in real time.

To facilitate that, the VE player has a cus-tomizable matrix onto which you drag thearticulations you need. Then you switchbetween the articulations using keyswitch-es, velocity, various controllers, or a uniqueSpeed control that senses how fast you’replaying.

This matrix is presented as a series of cells that hold articulations. Cells areplaced along the horizontal and vertical

axes, so that different articulations canhave their own set of other articulations toswitch to depending on the situation. It’svery flexible, plus there are preset Matrixesthat let you load and play.

Please see Fig. 2. VSL recently came outwith a host, Vienna Ensemble (VE), for the Vienna Instruments player and for third-party processing plug-ins (but unfortunate-ly not third-party instrument plug-ins— V.I.s). The Windows version has 64-bitmemory access so you can load VSL sam-

ples into asmuch RAM as you haveinstalled.

Meanwhilethe 64-bit Macversion is forth-coming, but

you can stillget a whole lotof mileage(roughly5.5GB) out of the current 32-bit version byrunning about3GB in thestand-alone VEplus an addi-tional 2.5GB—minus anythingelse you’re run-

ning—in the plug-in inside a hostsequencer. The audio is streamed into your DAW’s mixer through a plug-in (Fig. 3)— you don’t need to worry about routing it.

Also, VSL showed built-in audio- andMIDI-over-ethernet working in VE at theNAMM Show in January—meaning that you don’t need audio and MIDI interfaceswhen using multiple machines to run VSL.That version, which works on both Macand PC, will carry a nominal fee.

Appassionata I has regular strings and Appassionata II has the same articulationsin sordino (muted) strings. Both come with

the standard library plus an Extendedlibrary of additional articulations that’stime-bombed, the hope being that you’ll

end up buying it (for about 90% the priceof the standard set).

You can see a list of what articulationsare included under the Products tab on VSL’s website; in general the instruments follow VSL’s concept of recording the sameset of articulations for every instrument,although that’s not 100% consistent. For example the only “harsh” articulations in Appassionata are in the violins Extendedset, and the contra bass has fewer articula-tions.

VSL’s approach

VSL’s studio, the Silent Stage, was

designed to sound like the stage in a con-cert hall, but without the hall’s long reverbtail. It isn’t a dead room and the instru-ments aren’t close-miked, but VSL record-ings have a short reverb. The idea is tomake their recorded legato interval transi-tions work—you don’t want source notesreverbing away while the transition sampleis sounding—and also to allow maximum flexibility. So you must add reverb to VSLinstruments to make them sound good.

Now, it’s well established that VSL is atop-notch sampled orchestra, but everylibrary has its relative strengths. Subjectively,

VLS’s recording technique works especiallywell for woodwinds. But in my experience you need to tweak the reverb carefully anduse as many articulations as possible tomake the higher registers of their stringssound the best they can.

Why is that? Who knows. But its sets theplot for the Appassionata Strings.

Heat of appassion

Appassionata Strings could function asthe only string library in your repertoire,

Fig. 2: The Vienna Ensemble player hosts VSLinstruments and third-party effects (see inserts in

the channel strips). Note the panning and width

controls. The Windows version has 64-bit memory

access, so you can load up as much RAM as you

have installed; the Mac version is on its way

there. But you can still load 2.5GB of VSL in the

Mac plug-in version, plus another 3GB in the

stand-alone version, which streams into the

DAW’s mixer (see Fig. 3).

The Appassionata Strings really do sound radically

different from VSL’s Orchestral Strings,

which really do sound different from their

Chamber Strings.

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and it can work in pretty much any style.But I personally would want to have anoth-er string library for a more intimate sound

and for more biting string parts; chancesare good that I’m not alone.

The Standard set is good at playing soar-ing, lush string parts. Of course it has someshort articulations and you can play stan-dard string parts with it, but its mainstrength is being…appassionate.

Then the Extended set adds some inter-esting material in addition to the morecommon articulations. I especially like itssus_tune articulations, which start off without of tune attacks, and then the playersarrive together in tune over the course of about a second; a few of those notes

thrown in strategically add a lot of realismand life to a part.

In addition to a greater variety of shortattacks, especially in the violins, the Extendedset includes half-step clusters, grace notes,and random pizz. It also has some recordeddynamic swells and diminuendos of differentlengths, which can be very effective if youtake the time to use them.

Different sound

If you were wondering, the Appassionata

Strings really dosound radicallydifferent from VSL’s OrchestralStrings, whichreally do sounddifferent fromtheir Chamber

Strings. Theymay be record-ed in the samestudio, but thedifferencebetween for example 6, 10,and 20 violins isimmediatelyobvious; all thelibraries have alegitimate rolein the world.

The sound of

56 players going in Appassionata Strings Iis quite arresting, and the sordinos in Appassionata II sound really nice. Thesestrings are lush—smoother and darker thanthe others (which actually want to be fil-tered a little to remove some brightness),and due to their nature they have less rosinand therefore less bite. Their sound is, well,as intended: rich, warm, and round.

With so many players, even the top of the violin register doesn’t get harsh. Oneof the pitfalls that can make the smaller

VSL string sections and especially the solostrings sound synthy is using too much of the same articulation; the vibrato tends tomatch too closely. But with the big sec-tions you don’t hear the individual instru-ments’ vibrato, so that’s not really an issue. Yet you do still want to use as many articu-lations as possible to get the most out of the library, because it is still capable of

sounding synthy if you don’t pick the rightone for the moment.

One thing that can tip your hand thatthese are sampled strings is that the releas-es are all synchronized very tighly, so youreally want to give Appassionata Strings ahealthy dose of reverb. You’ll also probablywant to ride the strings’ expression with aMIDI fader or other control. That’s some-thing most musicians are going to do any-way, but it’s really important here, becausewith so many players the sound is more

homogenous and it doesn’t evolve the waysmaller sections do; that makes the soundespecially synthy if you just sit on a notewithout doing anything.

Combos?

An obvious question is whether combi-nations of other sized VSL string sections

can do the same thing as the AppassionataStrings, and the answer is Not really. Solostrings layered low on top of the Appassionata strings with a short trackdelay do add some bite to the sound, butit’s probably better to use Orchestral or Chamber strings when you want morebite, if you have them available.

However, the Appassionata violins espe-cially aren’t widely spread out, both left-right and front-back, than one mightexpect—or perhaps it’s more accurate tosay that out of the box, they don’t havethe exaggerated stereo effect that often

accompanies huge string sections. So whilelayered combinations of the Chamber andOrchestral strings aren’t quite appassion-ate, you can get two sections to float inspace a little more by positioning themstrategically.

Interestingly, it’s often possible to getaway with switching between Orchestraland Appassionata strings for differentphrases, especially if you need more biting,rosiny, short articulations from the smaller section recordings; the transition isn’t usu-

ally obvious at all. And divisi passages aregoing to be more realistic if you switch from Appassionatas to Orchestral strings todivide the sections into smaller ones.

So

There really isn’t anything else quite likethese two libraries on the market, especial-ly the sordino strings in Appassionata II.

The sound of ten double basses is reallysomething, and the high violins don’t getnasty even at the top (D6—three octavesabove middle D).

VSL has succeeded in capturing the lushstring sound of a gigantic section, and aswith all their libraries they’ve sampled itmethodically and in great detail. These arepretty spectacular libraries. VI

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Fig. 3: The Vienna Ensemble plug-in streams the output of the stand-alone VE host into the

DAW mixer. Until the 64-bit version is available,

each program in Mac OS X can access a maxi-

mum of about 3GB of memory; by making the VE

host a separate program from the DAW, VSL was

able to give it its own 3GB of memory access.

Then you can load an additional 2.5GB in the

plug-in version.

The sound of ten double basses isreally something.






trol room window. In other words, thissome lovely and atypical stuff. While hav-ing a little reverb burned into snare or claps can be fun on the main drum mixloops for effortless arranging in Garage

Band, I would have appreciated the parted-out drum loops being left dry and void of compression in order to leave those deci-sions for mix time.

The instrument phrases are very inspir-ing, going far beyond the tired pizzicatostring and thinned piano hooks of other hip-hop libraries. There are several kits fea-turing big piano, synthetic or altered-sam-ples of orchestral and brass hits, acousticand electric guitars (i.e. the growingly pop-ular rock-hip-hop format), but the hookline is almost always performed by a signa-ture synth sound.

Whether a high-energy hollow squarewave lead with lots of tasty squizzle in itsmodulation or the syncopated delay line of synth steel drums ringing out a beautifulmelody with ethereal vocal washes in thebackground, the phrase loops are whatmake this library radio-friendly. One partic-ularly inventive program (Touch) uses

phrases of telephone-like tones and beepsalternating in time to create a highlyengaging melodic and polyrhythmic bedbeneath minimal 808-style drums, claps,and finger snap percussion, while tubbytubas bellow out heavily reverberatedaccents. Another uses what sounds like itmight be physical modeling synthesis to

emulate an Eastern brasswind instrumentor possibly e’raqyeh oboe.

Not every kit contains vocals, but proba-bly nine out of ten do. All parts are report-ed as being performed by the same femalevocalist, though some takes have beenpitched and formant processed to alter her timbre slightly.

About half are solo vox with the rest fea-turing her in completely natural soundingchorus, à la Destiny’s Child. Her voice is acontemporary one: sexy and playful at times,other times haunting, soulful, and demure.

The vocals aren’t overly wet, but are

processed to fit the theme of each kit.These are often no longer than a bar or two in length. Their lyrical extent is kept fairly minimal with phrases such as “Callmy name,” “Voila, la la la, voila,”“Everytime you look at me,” “Get up onme,” and “You keepin’ it real.”

There’s only a minimum of vocal runs,

and some hooks are catchier than others,but none are stinkers or overly cheesy. I seethem being used mostly to back up rap-pers, as any vocalist-heavy project wouldlikely call for customized parts that you’dmake yourself.

While it doesn’t necessarily bring any-thing totally new to the artform, this library

has to be commended for not copying theoverworked production styles that are outthere (Timbaland, Swizz Beats, Just Blaze,Scott Storch, etc.).No top-tier producer would use essentially complete tracks from aconstruction library, but Radio Waves’ professional sounding results might make thedeed a little too hard to resist, for some.

Whether you’re a DJ heading into aremix, a television or video game compos-er who needs contemporary soundingmusic, or a songwriter/artist looking to roll your own radio-ready tracks on the cheap, you’ll have a killer tune built in no time.

Literally, all you have to do with thesetracks is add your own melody, lyric, or rhyme, and perhaps mash up vocal hooks from different kits to make things evenmore interesting. Up-and-coming produc-ers should also get great mileage by usingthese tracks as jumping-off points for developing their own style. VI

LITTLE REVIEWS

(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 54)

Down the center mono-ish mixes are bor-

ing. However, I’m not a fan of hardpanned elements—that just doesn’t soundnatural with orchestral material.

The mastering process is where youshould concern yourself with ultimate loud-ness of a track. That’s where you punch itup and decide the final character of themusic. The process usually takes a couplerounds of experimentation to settle on thesound we want. It’s actually very fun. It’sthat exciting final step that brings all your effort to fruition.

Hehe…there really is nothing subtleabout high-impact trailer music. Sometimes

it’s less art and more of a science experimentto see how loud you can make somethingand keep it sounding good.

What made you start your own

production house?

I’ve been involved with music libraries for almost 15 years—as a client, as a com-poser, and now as an owner. Over the years I had composed several work-for-hirelibrary projects that were successful, and itmade me think….I compose the music,

produce it, mix it, master it, I name thecues, suggest track orders for the CDs, andprovide disc artwork. The only thing I was-n’t doing was retaining ownership of it.

So Epic Score was the result of wantingto control the intellectual property as well.The big problem, as most musicians know,is distribution. You could own the intellec-tual property of the best music on earth,but if no one is distributing it, you’re stuck.My years dealing with many large librarydistributors were instrumental in securingsolid distribution for Epic Score. Plus thedistributors were excited about the music,so I was hopeful that it would receive theattention it needed to gain traction. Let’s face it—the world of music is a crowdedmarketplace. It’s not easy gaining name

recognition these days. Another serious consideration for me

was markets outside the USA. Since I hadwritten music for international libraries, Isaw the value there too. I’ve set up distri-bution for Epic Score in more than 25countries, and the list continues to grow.Of course, the USA is the single most lucra-tive market. But the rest of the world com-bined can also add significantly to the bot-tom line. The key to all of this though, ispatience—especially overseas.

Where did you study music?

I started piano lessons when I was 4 years old and took lessons for 14 years.Basically, I don’t remember learning how

to play the piano, just like I don’t remem-ber learning how to speak English.

I listened mostly to classical music grow-ing up, so it’s always been in the back of my head. As I was ending my piano les-sons, I found myself not really wanting toplay the notes on the page anymore. Iheard stuff in my head that I didn’t haveenough hands to play, so I finally got an 8-track midi sequencer (QX-21) and a RolandD-10 and wrote some really awful music.Boy I had no idea what I was doing backthen.

But all that exposure to classical music

has been really helpful now that I composemusic. Listening to all that live musicmakes me critical of my samples. I alwaystry to work within the abilities of the sam-ples I have. Often times you hear peoplepushing samples into passages they can’thandle. That always makes me cringe. Itends up sounding cheesy. And if it’s cheesyit’s out. VI

SHADID


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Premier issue sold out. International shipping/handling by quote.

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except that some of the sounds are sogreat. Sounds like the Zawinul-esqueIllogic 1 from the Distorted Bass sub-cate-

gory just make you go “ooh that’s nice.”There’s also a collection of bass loops for those so inclined; in general these loopsare more flexible than the Harmony ones(which makes sense since a bass notedoesn’t dictate the entire chord structureabove it).

Then the Melody category has a lot of interesting sounds and loops, and these aresome fresh sounds in this group. Theseguys at Sample Logic are obviously verytalented developers.

And finally we get to the Rhythms.These are divided into Rhythmic Kits andLoops. There are a few drum sets, butthese are mostly percussion kits made outof interesting instruments created bysmacking stuff and then sampling and pro-

cessing it. As in the Impacts, these kits and loops

tend to have lighter sounds—there aren’tany solid thuds—which generally lendsthem toward playing auxiliary roles rather than being the fundamental groove.That’s not a dis, however, because there’snot shortage of excellent groove librariesand heavy percussion instruments on themarket. And it’s not like these are justshakers and triangles—the Rhythms con-tain things that sound like brake drums,

ELEMENTS


big wooden objects, scraped things, andon and on.

Thus

The Elements is a huge library of fresh,current sounds that would be right at

home in any contemporary scoring projector song. It’s one of those collections that you can play around with for hours andhours without getting bored—it’s constant-ly inspiring new ideas.

Sample Logic’s first library, AIR, is so useful that around these parts it’s become ago-to library for knick-knack processedsounds. Given that The Elements continuesin the same vein, I expect it to fill the samerole. VI

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TRENDS


BREVERB


known $2k+ hardware unit. Andrew hasbeen tweaking his main hall program for years, so we neither expected to get nor actually got quite as refined a sound rightaway.

Well, both our first impressions were thatthere’s not a lot of difference between thetwo reverbs. Both our second impressions

were that the Lexicon is a little more roundand dense, and it has a nice bloom—three

attributes Lexicons (and some wines) areknown for. But Breverb still sounded verycredible, and it’s certainly realistic.

While I’d have to stop close but slightlyshort of calling Breverb a high-end Lexiconon the cheap, both Andrew and I felt that

someone who wasn’t really into reverbwould be likely not to notice or perhapsnot to care about the difference. Breverb’sconvenience could easily sway someone inits direction; again, it would be perfectly athome as a studio hardware unit.

The other thing is that when you makecomparisons like this there’s a tendency to

treat the reference product as being “cor-rect” and anything else “incorrect,” whichisn’t necessarily the best way to evaluate

anything. Breverb passes all the standardreverb tests easily: the ability to do small

spaces with a fast reverb build-up; asmooth tail without grain; lack of nastyhigh end metallic sparkles in the sound;lack of metallic sound, especially when yourun loud pianos or brass through it…

And then there are obvious intangible

questions: does it sound good/pleasant,and does it stick to the sounds being runthrough it? How good are the factory pro-grams (after all, a lot of us rely on presets alot more than we care to admit)? Is it ver-satile—does it work on a lot of differentthings?

Breverb acquits itself very well in all

those areas. After working with it for a fewweeks, this reverb has become a standardpart of the sequencer templates aroundhere (alongside the convolution reverbs).One would also have to call it a goodvalue, but you can download a 14-daydemo and confirm that yourself.

So

If there was still any doubt, Breverb putsa firm end to the idea that reverb plug-insaren’t as good as hardware units. This is anexcellent sounding, studio-grade, flexible,processor-efficient reverb that works well

on everything we ran through it. VI

Breverb puts a firm end to the idea that reverb

plug-ins aren't as good as hardware units.

Their athleticism and energy are trulyinspiring, and you don’t quite get that from watching them on a TV screen.

An equal amount of choreography isinvolved in running this show. Inside thearena are two mixers. One handles thesound of the bands for the arena, the other guy combines the audio feeds from variousplaces, including the music mix. It alsoincludes the output from a station with ahuge Pro Tools set-up in the arena’s base-ment, dedicated to playing backing tracks.That’s manned by a few people. Elsewhere,just the intercom set-up is huge, to saynothing of the wireless mics—another sta-tion.

Then there are lots of trailers outside for

all kinds of things. One is for the announc-er (“this is So-and-so’s second nominationand her first award…”). Another two trail-ers house identical mixing rooms, which iswhere the Waves plug-ins are used.

These very well designed mobile studioshave Digidesign Icon consoles and themothers of all Pro Tools rigs. They’re ableto do quick and not all that dirty mixesthere for release; the reason for the tworooms is that it’s too much music for oneguy to handle.

Remember, we’ve only beentalking about the audio. There’sa whole lot more going on for television.

After seeing all this, wereporters were led into a room

where heavyweight record pro-ducer Phil Ramone, who wasthe musical director for theGrammys, answered questionspatiently and diplomatically. Iasked him a question justbecause I was interested to hear what he’d say; at the time itwasn’t intended for an article:

Now that the album as an art form isalmost dead, how do you approach work-ing with artists differently?

His answer was that he just concentrateson the individual songs, just as he did

before the album was invented. He held uphis iPhone and said that he’d been througha few format changes; this was just whatpeople were listening to now. And it was apositive thing, not a negative.

Well, I guess that’s what a working pro-ducer would have to say (not to doubt hissincerity). But I still think it’s sad, becauseindividual songs don’t tell a larger storythat can be told in an album—any morethan an individual movement is the sameas a symphony.

So what does all this have to do with vir-tual instruments? Not very much.

Except that one of the trailers we visitedwas where all 35 or so audience mics aremixed. There’s an engineer, Klaus

Landesberg, whose entire job is mixingaudience reactions; this is obviously takenvery seriously, because it’s quite importantto the broadcast.

And now comes the tie-in to VI mag youwere waiting for so desperately: KlausLandesberg was using Ableton Live torecord surround mixes of the ambience for sweetening. So never let it be said thatthere’s no music software at the Grammys. VI

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And I’m glad, because it turned out tobe very interesting indeed. So on a fineSaturday afternoon the day before the

Grammies, I drove down to Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, normally hometo the Lakers, Clippers, and Kings.

The first thing to strike you when youenter the underbelly of the arena is justhow major this event is. It’s quite over-whelming.

Every act has its own riser all set upready to go onto one of the four or fivestages they had set up. The drums andamps are miked, everything is in position,and everything feeds a single multi-con-nector plug. There’s no time to start set-ting up drums in the middle of a live TV

show, of course, so they just wheel it out.The massive crew had already been

inside the arena for four days, and theplace was fully decked out. In addition tothe sets, they’d put up some absorptionaround the entire arena, and of coursethey had the place wired. There were bigbanana speaker arrays, subwoofers…itsounded amazing, actually.

One of the songs was a duo with singer Fergie being accompanied by John Legendon an undersized grand piano; hopefully itwasn’t a digital piano and I haven’t been fooled. He played the heck out of that

piano—very musical, and he really got theinstrument ringing. And the sound systemreproduced the piano in incredible detail,complete with hammer thuds and all theintimate subtleties you wouldn’t expect tohear from an instrument 40 yards away.

Just before that Rihanna had runthrough her performance, with Jimmy Jamand Terry Lewis leading into it. She’s anabsolutely effortless performer, but whatreally stood out was the hip-hop dancers.

VI t r e n d s

My Field Trip to the Grammies Rehearsal


T he phone rang: would VI be interest-ed in joining a crew of paparazzi at arehearsal for the Grammy Awards

Show.(But what on earth does that have to do

with virtual instruments?!) “Do you think itwould be appropriate for VI mag?” I asked.

“They’re using lots of Waves plug-ins!”was the answer.

(OMG...THE Waves plug-ins?) “I see…”“And you’ll have an opportunity to inter-

view the engineers!”(He-llo-oh. Like I totally want to bother

someone who’s in the middle of working…)

“Won’t they be a little busy?”“You’re very sweet to be so concerned,

but they encourage people like you tocome by and ask questions!”

And that actually turned out to be trueof almost all of them—not that I had anyquestions that were appropriate for thismagazine, but they were very personable. Yes, the unnamed PR person (PR peoplelike to stay out of stories about things theypromote) had been so enthusiastic thatresistance was futile.

by Nick Batzdorf





Documents

Virtual Instruments Magazine May 2008