August 8th: Multiple MIDI Controllers in Reason

We were assigned a whole new project to work on this past weekend. Jordan and I, the computer science people, worked on wiring multiple MIDI controllers in Reason most of the time today.

Step 1: Connect the controllers, keyboards in our case, to the computer.

Step 2: Edit -> References -> Keyboards and Control Surfaces -> Add: Select the Manufacturer and Model, then name individual devices. (Here is one problem: Reason can't tell 2 controllers of the same model apart.)

Step 3: Edit -> References -> Advanced Control: Distribute each device to the Bus we want.

Step 4: Go to the top of the rack and click on ADV. MIDI DEVICE: assign the specific MIDI device to the Bus and Channel we need.

We can play each device on a different keyboard now! ~^_________^~

(I'm the lord of keyboards~~~)

So I tried this morning to work more on my Wake Forest Soundmap, and made a discovery that makes the process harder. I think the fact that sending samplers from Reason id so clunky could be a real hindrance to the speed of the course. When I send the sampler files to another computer, Reason can't seem to find them. Anqi explained this to me, but fixing it is a pain. What I think I will do is work on the original computer until my piece is finished, but this is an issue that needs to be figured out if the project is going to be portable.

We got a good drum roll! That means that our Wake Forest soundmap is essentially finished. This week we'll be analyzing classical pieces and creating virtual instrument versions. This could prove to be kind of a big project, and will keep us from coming up with a live performance version of our Wake Forest piece. That said, working on well known classical pieces could prove to be really exciting! We'll be splitting up partners, but I imagine the whole group will be working more or less together- the small size of the group allows for a lot more fluid workspace in terms of who is working with whom.

Drum Roll in Reason?

Right now, Beth and I are working on finding out how to make an authentic-sounding drum roll in Reason. This has proven to be more difficult than we thought... This might be a good thing to examine with Jason next week, since this is a crucial part of the WFU fight song.

August 5th

The instrumental tracks for "Unfaithful" are finally finished! YAY!!

Now Anqi and I just need to record the vocals, experiment more with the cello virtual instrument, mix everything together, and we'll have a completed project! Our goal is to have everything completed on Monday and then complete another piece featuring our second virtual instrument (vocal) by the end of the week. We're going to try and finish as many projects as possible before our research ends on Friday something that's definitely difficult for me- but possible with a lot of self-discipline from Anqi :)

August 3

We are solidly into our project of developing a piece of music that outlines a typical Friday at Wake Forest. I spent the day fiddling with speakers, trying desperately to get the sound to work... somewhere... anywhere... arrrghh.

This afternoon I worked on putting in the sounds we had recorded into the piece. I think the grooves are really cool, and I'm excited to get all the pieces put together. I'm interested to see what ideas we come up with to perform this piece live... there are a lot of options, and I want to talk to the group tomorrow to see what they think about some aspects of the performance.

August 2nd: Programming Cello Sampler - Anqi

First thanks Jason for making the video tutorials demonstrating how to program sampler instruments. They are definitely the guideline that walks me through the whole process.

- Watching Video Tutorials

The first step, obviously, was watching both of the videos so that I could have some sense about what we’d be doing later. We did not have Sound Forge at that time, so everything was on Audition. I just skimmed through the Sound Forge part and focused on the Audition part. I always feel Audition is the most user friendly software product we have been trying out, so I had watched a bunch of Audition video tutorials beforehand, including some on noise capture and reduction, which I applied later with sample editing since we never had an environment that was quiet enough for recording.

- Recording Samples: First Try

Since Erica plays cello, we automatically chose cello as our sampler. She brought her cello in one afternoon and we recorded some long notes at the end of the day, mostly 3 notes each octave. We tried a couple of times to get the best result. We thought they would be fine to make samples and called it a day.

- Selecting Loop Points: First Try

There remained the problem of making loop points. The next day we realized that the waveform of cello was so uneven that it was really hard to find proper loop points in long notes, especially when we compared it with that of the saxophone that the other group was editing.

Jason came in on that Friday and explained how to make perfect loops by splitting the sample into two parts, switching their positions and mixing down them. I practiced on that on the coming Monday but didn’t get satisfactory result since Audition automatically adjusts the splitting points and thus the loop is never perfect =( So I pretty much gave up on it after a couple days of trying.

- Loading Samples into Reason

Our loops weren’t very good, but still workable. I just went ahead loading the samples in Reason. Here came the problems with bit-depth and sample size. Jordan helped me out on that part. The converting of bit-depth should absolutely be included in the video tutorial since EVERYONE, no exaggeration, has encountered that problem. Even later when we rerecord the notes in 16-bit, we still need to go through the converting after editing the loop points for some reason. Also, some files are too big to load in Reason. So we decided to START OVER!

- Recording Samples: Second Try

To have a better idea on which notes to pick and what the original samples sound like, I opened up Reason and loaded one cello sampler in NN-XT. I went through each of the notes and got to know where the loop points usually are picked. The notes actually are shorter than I thought. I used the cello sampler as a template and planned to take the notes used in it. I realize the notes are actually not evenly taken: fewer samples are taken in higher octaves as those notes are less used in cello performance. Then Erica brought her cello in again on Monday and we recorded some short notes.

- Selecting Loop Points: Second Try

Then on that Tuesday, we finally got Sound Forge in the lab. Jordan was editing their saxophone samples on that computer for the first two days and told me about some problems he encountered. Then on Wednesday Erica and I stayed after work and I started trying out Sound Forge. It is definitely much easier to identify appropriate loop points on Sound Forge than Audition, since you can have a view of both ends of the loop at the same time (=

- Loading Samples into Reason and Playing for the First Time

After edited all the samples with Sound Forge, I loaded them into Reason and had our own first sampler.

I looked up the sheet music of Unfaithful by Rihanna and typed in all (almost) the notes into reason, and played it. It took me a good amount of time but I enjoyed it. It’s already something that I could never do before. The piece sounded alright to me except a couple of notes were quite off tune.

- Tuning

Erica listened to it and she found the notes need to be tuned as well….no need to say.. her ears are much more sensitive than mine. We finished tuning in like 5 minutes, and she played another piece with it. I think our sampler is now finished =)

August 01

Dr. Burg mentioned that she wanted in-depth descriptions of the processes behind the various projects, so I will describe what Anqi and I have been up to for the last few days. After going to the Rihanna concert together on July 16, I can safely say that Anqi and I had both come down with a case of Rihanna fever. We decided to cover her song "Unfaithful" because:

1) it's awesome!

2) we thought it would be a good fit for the virtual cello instrument we were working on

After many failed attempts at recording my cello (a truly frustrating experience,) Anqi began working some serious magic in Adobe Audition and created some truly awesome loops (which is especially impressive, given the sound waves that she had to work with. Finding a looping point was really tough.) Then, behind the scenes, Anqi used the cello virtual instrument to record the melody as well as some arpeggiated chords. I was absolutely blown away because:

1) Anqi learned how to read music incredibly well in approximately six weeks. "Unfaithful" has three flats, making it a difficult key to read in (as well as play.)

2) She typed in everything BY HAND. Jeez.

(to be continued after lunch...)

Summarizing Week 8 - Anqi Zou

Earlier last week I re-edited all the cello samples using SoundForge and after checking with Erica, we think this is the best we can do for now without rerecording the samples again. We have one octave of Erica's vocal recorded, but after listening to Ariella's vocal, I think we need at least to rerecord since it might sound very artificial and robot-like.

I finished all the Sakai assessments except the 3 Max practical exercises in section 3 by Tuesday. Wednesday I was curious how the cello samples sound like when actually played, so I randomly picked a song and keyed in the notes into Reason using my mouse (this is really the best I can do), and played it. It does sound artificial, but not too bad. Meanwhile Beth and Jordan were sorting out the sounds we collected the week before. I am very excited to see how we can put those sounds together.

Also starting on Wednesday I started watching video tutorials for Max again. I have to say one needs really good imagination in order to master Max. However, since we have not done much Max programming in this textbook, these exercises are not easy to finish. They are not difficult in nature, but do require the readers to have a better base. I actually was wondering whether it would be necessary to do these exercises at all or maybe we can add more basic exercises in earlier chapters so the readers would have a better transition.

I did not come in on Friday because I was stuck in Greensboro on Thursday night and couldn't find a ride back until Friday afternoon, so I spent some time over the weekend working on the word document and at the same time reviewing previous chapters. I will wait until later to post them, maybe after Chapter 4 and 6 are completed. As many of us already started reading Chapter 4, I am wondering if I should skim it through as well or wait until the post-test for Chapter 7 and pre-test for Chapter 4 are posted. I really hope I could read the complete version of this textbook in the next 2 weeks to have a better view of the whole structure, even with some chapters being draft.