Virtual instruments v01#01 july aug 2005

JULY/AUGUST 2005 - VOL. 1 NO. 1JULY/AUGUST 2005 - VOL. 1 NO. 1

www.tascamgiga.com

We couldn’t have said it better. For more GigaStudio information, visit www.tascamgiga.com ©2005 TASCAM, a division of TEAC America. All Rights Reserved. All specifi cations are subject to change without notice. GigaStudio is a trademark of TASCAM/TEAC.

Its high-end audio quality, fl exible routing and processing capabilities,

advanced performance features, sophisticated editing tools, powerful search functions, and streamlined user interface make it once again the indisputable gold standard in software samplers.”

Electronic Musician, May 2005

“

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

From the

Welcome to the premiere issue of VirtualInstruments Magazine. It’s extremelyexciting to finally see this project get off

the ground, and we hope you get a lot out of it. Ourgoal is to put out the finest music industry magazineever.

So what is Virtual Instruments all about? If you’rereading this, you probably understand that software-based music creation is the hot new frontier. It’sbecome a huge deal all around the world, withsomething like 750 virtual instruments on the mar-ket. And counting.

There’s now a passionate group of musicians scat-tered all over the planet—myself included—who liveand breathe sample libraries and virtual instruments.

We have a whole new way of creating music, awhole new musical medium, and a whole new set ofcreative possibilities. And along with that, a wholenew set of musical skills and technical challenges.

In short, it’s high time the world of softsynthsand samplers had its own magazine to spearheadthe revolution. Being way into this, and having beenthe editor of a music industry magazine (Recording)for 10-1/2 years—and written for others such as Mixfor several more—I felt like the one to do that.

So I’ve assembled a team of the best, mostknowledgeable writers in our industry, along with avery capable staff to put out the magazine you’reholding in your hands. Our mission is simple: to helpyou get the absolute most out of your software-based musical instrument set-ups, whether you’refirst thinking about taking the plunge or you’re anexperienced pro running huge orchestral libraries onmultiple computers.

What you see here is just one month’s worth ofthat; it’ll take a few issues to expose our full reper-toire. For example, you’ll certainly see reviews ofeffects plug-ins and V.I.-related hardware such assound cards and controllers. Naturally, the articlemix will always depend on what’s new and exciting.

At this point I’d like to thank all the advertiserswho took the leap of faith to support us without

even having seen the first issue. Please rush out andbuy their wares as a reward!

I’d also like to thank the fine writers who con-tributed to this issue. It’s an absolute pleasure work-ing with Jim Aikin, whose articles are even greaternow than they were when I first read them inKeyboard magazine back in the mid-’80s. ChrisMeyer is one of the brightest, most insightful, andcolorful writers and people around. My friend DaveMoulton is the audio gurus’ guru. Dave Govett isThe Guy when it comes to GigaStudio and manyother things, the always articulate Bruce Richardsonwrites from a wealth of real-world experience, andAshif “King Idiot” Hakik is a walking clever idea fac-tory with body piercings. General expert LeeSherman and dashing Frederick Russ (who runswww.VI-Control.net, an excellent discussion forum)are doing a great job for us, and we’re very pleasedto have them.

And three cheers to our lovely and talented corestaff, who have worked their tails off to make thismagazine happen: art director Lachlan Westfall, webdesigner Denise Young, and ad/marketing managerCarl Marinoff. Thanks everyone.

Please email to let us know what you think, whatyou’d like to see, technical questions, tips, “I wish

they’d make…” feature and product ideas…you getthe idea. [email protected].

With your help we’ll have a lively Letters sectionnext issue. And for heaven’s sake, make an honestman or woman out of yourself and subscribe! Notonly is it much less expensive than the newsstand,you’ll be helping us print more pages and more fre-quent issues. To encourage that, we have theMungo Giveaway promotion you’ll find at the centerof this magazine.

Finally, don’t forget the website:www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com. Among otherthings, you won’t want to miss the audio and graphic files that go with some of the articles.

Happy reading.—NB

Editor

ILIO_VSL_6-05-VIMag 5/20/05 1:30 PM Page 1

Composite

C M Y CM MY CY CMY K


EDITOR/PUBLISHER: Nick Batzdorf

ART DIRECTOR: Lachlan Westfall/Quiet Earth Design

AD/MARKETING MANAGER: Carl Marinoff

WEB DESIGNER: Denise Young/DMY Studios

CONTRIBUTORS: Jim Aikin, David Govett, Ashif “King Idiot” Hakik,Chris Meyer, Dave Moulton, Bruce Richardson,

Frederick Russ, Lee Sherman.

PUBLISHING CONSULTANT: Ross Garnick

ADVERTISING CONTACT: Carl Marinoff 818/[email protected]

SUBSCRIPTIONS/ADDRESS CHANGES: 818/905-5434, 1-800/ViMagzn,[email protected]. The best method is to subscribe via our website: www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: [email protected]

WRITING FOR VIRTUAL INSTRUMENTS MAGAZINE: [email protected] or call 818/905-5434

Virtual Instruments Magazine is published bi-monthly by VirtualInstruments, Inc., 3849 Ventura Canyon, Sherman Oaks, CA 91423.818/905-5434, 1-800/ViMagzn. [email protected].

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Standard disclaimer: Virtual Instruments Magazine and its staffcan’t be held legally responsible for the magazine’s contents orguarantee the return of articles and graphics submitted. Reasonable care is taken to ensure accuracy. All trademarks belongto their owners. Everything in here is subject to international copyright protection, and you may not copy or imitate anythingwithout permission.

© 2005 Virtual Instruments, Inc.

The World ofSoftsynths andSamplersby Nick Batzdorf

A big overview of this exciting new musical medium. Gettingstarted—what’s available, the various product categories,what to expect from different computers, and generally howto integrate software-based musical instruments into youruniverse.

6

14 The Age of Reason by Jim Aikin

A Very Deep Clinic on Propellerhead’s popular stand-alonemusic station. Create stereo and filtered delays, become amonster Maelstrom programmer, ReWire tricks, the pleasuresof polyrhythms, and lots more.

Rigors of the Road Rig

by Bruce Richardson

A from-the-trenches report on putting together a VI rig forlive use—everything from what power supply to use in thecomputer to racking it up.

44

Interview: Film Composer Klaus Badelt’sShrinking Studio

The composer of “Constantine” and over 25 other majorHollywood films (“Pirates of the Carribean,” “Catwoman,”“The Recruit”…) discusses his evolution from a wall-lengthrack full of gear to a single Apple G5 running Logic Pro.

38

July/August 2005

Random Tips

Routing with the MOTU PCI-424 card, altering VSL stringruns in Melodyne, and using the mouse wheel in Logic Pro 7.

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

GigaStudio 3 Finesse:Taking the GigaPulse

by David Govett

The man who wrote the manual goes beyond it to examinethe power of the GigaPulse convolution processor in Giga 3.Another Very Deep Clinic.

VI

VI

contentsSampling with KingIdiot. Part 1: Modernfeatures for oldlibraries

by Ashif “King Idiot” Hakik

Older sample libraries and keyboard instruments can be pro-grammed so they work alongside your new libraries. One ofthe world’s most sought-after sample library programmersdetails how to create legato programs, wet and dry samples,and release triggers.

Combining Live andVirtual Instruments

by Dave Moulton

How to create the right space so that instruments recorded incompletely different environments will mesh seamlessly withyour VIs and sample libraries.

Trends Synful’sReconstructive PhraseModeling

by Frederick Russ

This new additive synthesis virtual instrument analyzes theincoming MIDI data and uses a database of phrases to decidewhat note fragments to splice together. Could this technologydethrone sampling?

reviews

24

50

56

64

22, 28, 37

10 Apple GarageBand andJam Pack 4: Orchestra

by Nick Batzdorf

An overview of this important entry-level program, along with the latestadd-on content package. Yes, there real-ly is a $99 orchestral library—withsounds that truly belie the price.

18 East West Quantum Leap Colossus virtualinstrument

by Nick Batzdorf

A self-contained, high quality desertisland library that covers all the basesand then some.

42 Ableton Operator add-onFM synth for Live

by Lee Sherman

Up until now, nobody has figured outhow to put a friendly face on FM programming. This synth is a lot easierthan the DX-7.

20 Cycling ’74 Cycles

by Chris Meyer

Some unique loops to freshen the pallet.These rank high on the don’t-leave-on-your-shelf list.

21 Zero-G Beats Working in Cuba

by Chris Meyer

This is more than a loop library—thisvirtual instrument documents a musicalgenre.

34 Spectrasonics Stylus RMX and SAGEExpanders 1-5

by Nick Batzdorf

Exceptional grooves in a brilliantly-executed virtual instrument bring work-ing with loops to a whole new level.

PREMIERE ISSUE

V1.N1


MIDI sequencers changed the way musicwas composed, and their ability to fix everymistake and play with perfect timing changedthe way we hear music. Drum machines gotsome musicians thinking in patterns, which forbetter and worse laid the groundwork for loop-oriented music.

The synth craze was on. Samplers—whichare technically not synthesizers, since they usedigital recordings as the basis for theirsounds—started becoming affordable a coupleof years later. The music software and sound-ware industries got going in full force.

These were the high-flying keyboard du jourdays, with each model leapfrogging the previ-ous one. That era lasted a few years. A lot ofincredible digital instruments came out, manyof which are still in use today.

These instruments have microprocessors,memory, storage, operating systems, software,

A big overview of this exciting new musical medium. Getting

started—what’s available, the various product categories, what to

expect from different computers, and generally how to integrate

software-based musical instruments into your universe.

We’re in the midst of a second great wave in the

music technology revolution.

The first one came in with the information era. In 1983,

when synthesizers started to come under microprocessor

control, the industry adopted MIDI as the common control

language. Yamaha introduced the famous DX-7 synthesiz-

er, and it brought digital synthesis into the mainstream.

The World ofSoftsynths and

Samplers

By Nick Batzdorf

they waddle and quack…all the elements of apersonal computer. And there’s no ducking thefact that they are computers. But the hardwareis proprietary, which means that the develop-ment was done by companies with the funds ittakes to manufacture hardware.

Meanwhile, standard computers were con-stantly getting more and more powerful.Digital audio workstations (DAWs) began tak-ing over as a recording medium, first with thehelp of add-on hardware acceleration(Digidesign Pro Tools), later with or without it.By the mid-’90s, a cottage industry had materi-alized to take advantage of the DAW migration,writing DSP plug-ins—equalizers, compressors,delays, and so on.

Then at some point before the turn of thecentury, standard personal computers becamepowerful enough to run synthesizers and sam-plers in software. Five years later, they have so

VIf e a t u r e


sampler called GigaSampler. It completely blewthe lid off the pot. (GigaSampler is now calledGigaStudio and NemeSys is owned by TAS-CAM.) Instead of loading samples into RAM,Giga streams them off hard drives. It still needsto load a little bit into a head-start RAM buffer,but the recording time is essentially unlimited.

All of a sudden it became possible to sampleas many variations of an instrument as neces-sary to capture its expressive range. So insteadof having a choice between, say, short and

long string ensemble programs, we now haveprograms with literally dozens of individual vio-lin, viola, etc. playing techniques—known asarticulations. Each one is sampled at several dif-ferent velocity layers, and the programmingdetails go on from there.

Giga injected new life into the field of sam-pling, and it attracted a lot of excellent develop-ers. Sampled sounds have become so much bet-ter that it’s almost like a whole new technology.

Giga started a worldwide craze. “MIDI pro-gramming”—that is, piecing together phrases

using different articulations, rather than justplaying parts in real time (using one-size-fits-allprograms)—has become an important skill ofits own, and not just for orchestral libraries. Awhole new musical medium was born. Theprocess of composition has changed forever.

Sample libraries used to be measured inMegabytes and come on a CD. Now they’remeasured in Gigabytes and come on multipleDVDs.

While there are other excellent orchestralsample libraries, the pinnacle of the whole sam-pling field in many ways is the ViennaSymphony Orchestra, which is currently up to230GB. These people have sampled everyinstrument of the orchestra in impeccabledetail, including the transitions between everytwo notes up to an octave apart; what they’vedone is just incredible.

Today there are several other software sam-plers that feature disk-streaming, including theEXS24 sampler built into Apple Logic Pro,Steinberg Halion, Native Instruments Kontakt,and MOTU MachFive. You’ll also find a lot oflibraries—including some reviewed in thisissue—sold as “virtual instruments,” meaningthat they come attached to an OEM “player”version of one of these samplers. The advan-tage is that you don’t need the sampler to runthe library; the disadvantage is that the abilityto tweak is generally limited.

We refer to large disk-streaming libraries asmodern sample libraries.

much power that software-based musicalinstruments—Virtual Instruments—are oftenmore capable than dedicated hardware ones.

It still takes a lot of skill to develop an instru-ment, but it doesn’t take the huge investmentrequired to build hardware, nor does it take themanpower and time to code an operating sys-tem from scratch. We’re seeing a lot of innova-tion as a result, only now it’s not only comingfrom large companies—some of which didn’tstart out that way—but also from the proverbial1-person shop in some small Eastern Europeanmountain village you’ve never heard of.

The pioneering spirit of the early ’80s is back.This is the second great wave in digital

music technology. It’s more gentle than thefirst one, but it’s having a profound effect onthe way music is created at all levels—and onthe music itself.

The virtual instrument phenomenon hasresulted in some very interesting instruments,and more are coming out all the time. But on apractical level, probably the biggest differencebetween working with hardware synthesizers20 years ago and software synthesizers now isthat we have so many of them at our immedi-ate disposal.

Sampling, on the other hand, has under-gone a major revolution.

Along came GigaThe basic concept of using samples to imi-

tate an instrument—as opposed to doing weirdstuff—is pretty simple: record an instrumentplaying a note, and then assign that to the cor-responding note on a keyboard (or other MIDIcontroller). For added detail, record the instru-ment playing at different levels, and assignthem to that same note to be triggered atappropriate velocities (i.e. the harder you play,the louder the sample you trigger).

There were excellent samples available in theearly ’80s, but they were limited by theamount of memory that was available, whichtranslates to recording time. Samples had to beloaded into RAM for playback, so it wasn’t pos-sible to sample, say, every piano note at 16

velocity levels with their full decay to nothing(which can take over a minute).

To save recording time, the compromiseswere to record a sample every few notes andpitch-shift it, restrict the number of velocity lay-ers, and find a clear section of the wave formto loop repeatedly. While the amount of avail-able RAM grew from kilobytes to Megabytes,this was a limitation of both hardware andearly software samplers.

Then out of nowhere a company calledNemeSys came along with a Windows software

It still takes a lot of skill to develop a software

instrument, but it doesn't take the huge

investment required to build hardware.

The pioneering spirit of the early ’80s is back.

VIf e a t u r e

Taking the plunge is surprisingly easy: all you need is a reasonably late model computer, a controller keyboard, and a sound card for high-quality monitoring.


The entry level: hardwareThe list of hardware you need to get started

isn’t very long: a suitable computer with a basicsound card aka audio interface if you want highquality monitoring, a MIDI keyboard (or othercontroller), and a basic MIDI interface if one isn’tbuilt into the keyboard or sound card.

As to computers, any PC or Mac released inthe past five years—maybe even earlier—iscapable of doing something useful with V.I.s,but the more power and memory (up to themaximum your system can address) you havethe better. Depending on the instruments andplug-ins you’re running, a large-scale arrange-ment can bring any machine to its knees; onthe other hand, it’s remarkable how much youcan get out of a single machine.

Software instruments always spec minimumsystem requirements on their boxes, but ingeneral you’ll constantly be running into theminimum machine’s limits. It’s a good policy tocontact the developer of the software you planon using to find out how much you can expectto eke out of a given computer. You should beable to get a feel for this by reading some ofthe reviews in this issue, for example the EastWest Quantum Leap Colossus review on page18.

For playing V.I.s, one of the important specsis latency: the delay between playing a note onyour keyboard and hearing it come out yourspeakers. Up to a point, performance and thesize of the RAM buffer every sound cardrequires are on opposite sides of a scale. Themore powerful your computer is, the lower abuffer you’ll be able to set without hearingclicks and pops as you start pushing the num-ber of voices (simultaneous notes).

Sound cards come in all shapes and sizes,starting at well under $100 and continuingupwards of $12,000 for a Digidesign Pro ToolsHD system. While it’s not ideal, you can evenmonitor V.I.s through a computer’s built-inaudio card (hopefully through decent head-

phones or a home stereo system for bettersound); Mac G5s have optical digital outputsbuilt in as well as their analog ones, and they’refine if you have a way of converting them toanalog (again, such as with the digital inputson a home stereo).

Any MIDI keyboard will work as a controller,whether it’s a workstation with built-in sounds ofits own or a dedicated controller keyboard. Bearin mind that keyboards with weighted keys thatfeel like a piano are good for keyboard parts, butthey can be hard to control if you’re playingsomething like woodwinds, and vice versa.

Some recent keyboard controllers connect toa USB port on your computer. Others have aMIDI Out port, in which case you’ll need abasic MIDI interface to give your computer aMIDI In. These boxes aren’t expensive.

Taking the plunge: softwareMost virtual instruments are plug-ins, which

by definition means that they’re add-ons to ahost application. These hosts are usually digitalaudio sequencers, which are programs that

record, play, edit, mix, etc. live audio and MIDIside-by-side. The terms “digital audiosequencer” and “digital audio workstation” ormore commonly “DAW” are interchangeable.

The most widely used digital audiosequencers are Apple Logic, MOTU DigitalPerformer, Digidesign Pro Tools, SteinbergCubase, and Cakewalk Sonar; you’ll see all ofthem mentioned a lot in this magazine.

However, there are many other kinds of pro-grams that can host V.I.s., including 2-trackaudio editors; all-in-one environments such asAbleton Live, Propellerhead Reason, Arturio

Storm, FL Studio, Sony ACID; stand-alone hoststhat do nothing else such as Steinberg V-Stack;notation programs with links to V.I.s such asSibelius…and many more we’re leaving out.

Most people are best off with a digital audiosequencer, but for example Ableton Live is agreat all-in-one program if you’re into loopcomposition and performance. PropellerheadReason (see clinic in this issue) is a great all-in-one groove-based composition environmentwith some really interesting synths and effects,and it doesn’t require all that hefty a computer.

Most sound cards and many other programsthese days come with very generous “lite” ver-sion software bundles, and that’s a great wayto get your feet wet before investing heavily insoftware. So is Apple GarageBand, whichcomes with every Mac and is very inexpensiveas part of iLife (see the following article).Garritan Personal Orchestra, all the TASCAMaudio interfaces, Digidesign’s MBox…these allinclude serious software bundles.

A lot of musicians use a variety of programsto take advantage of what each has to offer.ReWire, a protocol developed by Propellerhead,allows two programs running on the samecomputer to be in complete lock-step. You setup a ReWire master and slave, and MIDI, audio,sync, and transport control get handled trans-parently. If you work in Logic and want to treatReason as an external sound generator ratherthan a complete environment, for example,you can just ReWire it into Logic’s mixer.

Without wanting to be grossly obsequious toour advertisers, the best way to see what’s outthere is to go to a major retailer’s website like

“MIDI programming”—that is, piecing together

phrases using different articulations—has become

an important skill of its own, and not just for

orchestral libraries. A whole new

musical medium was born.

At 230GB, the Vienna Symphonic Library represents the pinnacle of sampling. This screen capture fromTascam GigaStudio 3 shows how extensive it is.

VIf e a t u r e


www.Audiomidi.com or www.Sweetwater.comand poke around their software sections. Thengo to developers’ websites and investigate theirdemos.

FormatsThere’s a variety of formats to be aware of,

among them formats for software to communi-cate with audio hardware, plug-in formats, andsampler formats. While they don’t make for avery perky article and we won’t list them here,it’s important to understand the distinction.

It’s the plug-in format that we’re listing atthe top of each review; that tells you whichhosts are compatible with the plug-in beingreviewed.

One machineThose are the three factors that determine

how much you can squeeze out of a computer:processing power, hard disk access, and memo-ry addressing.

Computer processing power is the mostimportant resource for synthesizers and DSPplug-ins—something we haven’t really dis-cussed in this article, but nonetheless an essen-tial part of software-based music creation. Withcertain notable exceptions, however, you prob-ably won’t constantly rub up against the pro-cessing limits of a higher-end computer, suchas a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 or a Mac G5, if you’rejust running synths. We want to be careful notto rule out the possibility, however.

Software samplers don’t use up a lot of pro-cessing horsepower just to stream voices, butsometimes they have DSP built in that doesrequire CPU muscle. The latest trend is for sam-plers to have convolution processors built in,and that really uses processing power. (See thesidebars to the Giga clinic in this issue for moreabout convolution processing.)

The speed at which a computer’s hard disksubsystem is able to deliver audio to the sam-pler determines how many voices—that is,simultaneous notes—you can play. Today’smachines are delivering in excess of 256 stereovoices off standard drives. If you’re playing sus-tained keyboard arpeggios, you can quickly runout of voices; single bass drum hits don’t useup any polyphony worth talking about.

What is a concern for samplers is RAM,even though they’re streaming the bulk ofthe recordings off a hard drive. The reason isthe head-start buffer we discussed earlier—itstill takes memory to load programs; themore samples in a program, the larger thebuffer.

If you’re running modern sample libraries(again, modern means they’re large and andthey stream off disks), you need to try differentarticulations for notes or groups of notes. Youdon’t want to have to stop to unload and loadprograms in the throes of sequencing; thatwould be like putting a violin in its case andpicking up a different one every time youwanted to switch bow directions.

So even if you don’t play all the articulationsyou have loaded—and you won’t—the name ofthe game is to have as many programs cuedup and ready to play as possible. That meansthe sampler must be able to access as muchRAM as possible.

Both GigaStudio and Kontakt can loadapproximately 1 - 1.2GB of samples in aWindows XP machine with 2GB of RAMinstalled; installing more RAM doesn’t changethis. That includes whatever RAM a host pro-gram uses if you’re running these samplersinside one (many people run Gigas on separatemachines with nothing else going).

It’s not possible to say how many programsthat translates to in the real world, because itdepends on the program, but 32 - 40 is a rea-sonable minimum. That figure could easilydouble if all you’re loading is single percussionhits. A G5 Mac with 4.5 to 5GB of RAMinstalled, running OS X Panther or Tiger, isequivalent to about 2-1/2 Windows XPmachines; a G4 with 1.5 or 2GB installed inPanther or Tiger is roughly equivalent to a sin-gle XP machine.

Multiple machines and beyondIn order to load big templates, a lot of musi-

cians who use larger libraries—orchestral orotherwise—run multiple computers. They dothat in part for the additional processing powerand voice count, but mainly for the memoryaccess. If you have an older machine available,you can certainly put it to use just by adding asound card and a MIDI interface.

Don’t get scared, though. You can run aheck of a lot on a single machine.

If you look at the diagram showing a basic2-computer set-up, you’ll see that there are lotsof cables to run. The latest technology that’semerging is to run audio and/or MIDI over anethernet network cable. That reduces the num-ber of cables and is generally convenient, plusit means you don’t need a sound card andMIDI interface on every machine.

Some of the networking products to investi-gate include MIDI Over LAN(www.Musiclab.com); Apple’s Network MIDI(in OS X Tiger); FX Teleport(www.FXMax.com); Yamaha’s mLan; andSteinberg’s VST System Link. Logic Audio Proversion 7 has a feature called Logic Nodes thatoffloads Logic-format DSP plug-ins onto anoth-er Mac on the network. Version 7.1 also has atantalizingly undocumented plug-in calledAUNetSend that sends audio over a network.

BzzThe latest computer industry buzzword is

“64-bit.” What’s important to you and me is64-bit memory addressing, which means virtu-ally unlimited memory access for loading sam-ple starts.

Maybe that will bring us closer to the elusivegoal of being able to run everything we wanton a single machine.

And everything we’ve talked about is whatthis magazine is all about.

VIf e a t u r e

Fig 3: A basic multi-computer set-up. The mixer is optional, and you can share the keyboard and monitorwith a KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) switch.

1 0 V I R T U A L I N S T R U M E N T S

It’s hard to imagine an easier entry into theworld of softsynths and samplers than AppleGarageBand. Even without any of the add-on

Jam Packs we’re starting to review in this issue,this deceptively simple loop-oriented digitalaudio sequencer comes packed with a hulkingselection of everything you need to get started:software instruments, loops, and effects.

So we’ll start with a basic run-down ofGarageBand for those who haven’t tried it.

The first one’s freeApple figures about 50% of all American

households have someone who plays an instru-ment, and they’d like every one of these peo-ple to be making music with Macs. SoGarageBand 2 comes free on every new Mac aspart of their pot-sweetening iLife ’05 collection,along with iDVD, iTunes, iMovie HD, andiPhoto. Or you just buy the entire iLife package(GarageBand included) for $79.

Part of Apple’s imperial design is for you to

start having way too much fun withGarageBand, prompting you to upgrade toLogic Express or preferably Logic Pro, theirmore advanced digital audio sequencers. It’s nocoincidence that you can use GarageBand’sApple Loops and software instruments in theseprograms, and also in Soundtrack Pro—whichin my opinion makes it a no-brainer for everyLogic user to get GarageBand just for its con-tent.

(Actually, you can use the included audioversions of Apple Loops in any audio pro-gram—they’re just AIFF files.)

Toys R’nt usBecause non-musicians can stack up loops to

use GarageBand as the musical equivalent ofpainting by the numbers, it might seem like atoy. It’s not. While the program does lack somebasic features, most notably the ability tochange meters and tempos during the song,it’s a surprisingly capable tool.

GarageBand has two types of tracks: RealInstrument tracks (meaning audio, for placingaudio loops or recording live input) andSoftware Instrument tracks, which contain MIDIloops and recordings to trigger sample play-back instruments. Rather than inserting theSoftware Instruments on a track—which is howyou use them in Logic—they define the trackitself in GarageBand.

(GarageBand can also host AU format plug-ins and virtual instruments, and you can streamaudio into it using the ReWire protocol—see“The World of Softsynths and Samplers” else-where in this issue.)

The interface couldn’t be more friendly. Ifyou drag a MIDI or audio loop fromGarageBand’s loop browser, the program auto-matically creates an appropriate track to playthe loop and matches it to the tempo. There’salso a preference to “convert” MIDI loops toaudio as soon as you drag them onto the play-ing field. (There’s actually no conversion—theaudio version is substituted for the MIDI ver-sion with effects.)

Price: GarageBand, $79;

Jam Pack 4, $99

Company: Apple Computer, 1

Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014.

408/996-1010. www.Apple.com

Platform: Mac G3 600MHz+ (G4 or

G5 strongly recommended for soft-

ware instruments); OS 10.3.4+; Jam

Pack instruments work with Logic,

Logic Express, Soundtrack/Pro, and

GarageBand; loops can be used

with any program.

License: 1 user, 1 machine, royalty-

free use in audio and video projects.

AppleGarageBand and

Jam Pack 4:Symphony OrchestraAn overview of this important entry-level program, along with the latest add-on content pack-age. Yes, there really is a $99 orchestral library—withsounds that truly belie the price.

Review by Nick Batzdorf

VIr e v i e w

Fig. 1: GarageBand’s loop browser makes it easy to find your way through its extensive library of riffs.

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

What’s really handy is that you audition theinstruments with your MIDI keyboard right inthe Open dialog. This would be a brilliant fea-ture for Logic’s integral EXS24 sampler, whichincidentally can open GarageBand SoftwareInstrument programs for more extensive edit-ing than the player provides.

GarageBand has both piano roll and nota-tion-based editing for MIDI regions. You canquantize notes, edit five common controllers,and there are sliders for transposing and adjust-ing the velocities of selected notes.

For audio, there are rather innocuous-lookingsliders that, if you think about it, are prettyamazing. One slider transposes the whole regionover an octave range in either direction, and itdoesn’t sound bad at all. The other two areEnhance Tuning and Enhance Timing. Thisabsurdly inexpensive program can actually auto-correct intonation and quantize audio to a speci-fied grid. And it sounds pretty good, as long asyou don’t push it beyond reason. There’s also aguitar tuner, along with various standard effectslike eq and reverb, and a guitar amp simulator.

I have just two complaints aboutGarageBand. First, it isn’t able to route its audioto specific outputs on MOTU audio hardware—unlike every other program in OS X. Instead,the sound comes out the first two outputs ofthe first interface connected to the PCI-424card, which is absolutely no help if those don’thappen to be the outputs you’re using to mon-itor. (Fixing this could be MOTU’s or Apple’sresponsibility, but that makes no difference tothe user.)

Second, the GarageBand and Jam Packinstallers will only put the content on yourstartup disk. Real men and women put applica-tions on startup partitions and content on sep-arate drives. Aliases to content moved toanother drive will not work. (I actually had toset up a Firewire drive to start up from in orderto do this review, since my startup drive hadnowhere near enough free space.)

In spite of that, it’s almost funny how muchGarageBand has to offer for the price. It’s veryfew features away from being able to cover allthe bases you’d expect from a professionalcomposition tool.

Jam Pack basicsThere are presently four Jam Packs for

GarageBand, each of which runs $99. Whenyou consider that each of these libraries is from3 to 10GB and contains from about 30 to over100 software instruments, along with (I’mtrusting the boxes here) over 2000 loops…well,that’s a silly price.

It appears that Apple licensed some if not allof the content from other developers. In gener-al, the Jam Pack software instruments aresomewhat “lighter” than you’d find in a typicalmodern sample library. They tend to includefewer articulations, or a given program mighthave a couple of velocity layers instead of threeor four.

But that’s not a dis, because the flip side isthat this makes these libraries very manageable.I had no problem getting useful results out ofGarageBand on a G4/500-upgradedPowerBook that’s approaching five years ofage—which is about 100 in computer years.(However, the bulk of this review was done ona dual 2.5GHz G5 and a dual 1GHz G4; see thebox with this article for system requirements.)

Another advantage to these libraries’ rela-tively compact nature is that all the instrumentsare designed to be played in real time. You’llonly be doing minimal articulation-switching inthe Orchestral Jam Pack, and pretty much nonein the others. And the instruments load quickly,since they’re not huge.

Apple struck the right balance between com-plexity and practicality, in my opinion. The JamPacks still have considerable subtlety, for exam-ple some of the programs have release sam-ples, and overall they’re at least as deep as thefactory programs on any keyboard workstationfrom before the modern sampling era.

(Again, please see “The World of Softsynthsand Samplers” earlier in this issue for an expla-nation of how sampling has undergone a majorrevolution over the past five years.)

Jam Pack 4 – SymphonyOrchestra

Software instrumentsHow comprehensive can a $100 orchestral

library be? You’d be surprised. We’ll get to the

VIr e v i e w

Fig. 2: Clicking on the scissors brings up an edit window showing the track selection above. In this case an audio track is selected.


loops later, but Jam Pack 4’s software instru-ments cover every instrument of the orchestra,and the sounds are totally usable—considerablybetter overall than you’d get out of a keyboardmodule. Of course the variety of articulations islimited compared to the next tier of orchestrallibraries, but there’s plenty here for a skilled pro-grammer to produce convincing orchestrations.

Most of the software instrument programs inthis Pack use the pitch wheel to control expres-sion (actually volume). You can also use MIDIcc7, but most people like to reserve that forsetting an overall “trim” level and then usecc11, expression, for “riding” the level. It’smore common to use a slider for expression,since the pitch wheel springs back to its centerwhen you let it go, but it actually works verywell.

This library uses the mod wheel to switchbetween as many as five different articulations.For example, violin Section 1—a very nice sam-pled string section—has medium sustainednotes, staccato, sus tremolo, 1/2 step trills,whole step trills, and pizzicato all up at once.It’s pretty hard move the mod wheel to theright position when there are five articulationsup, but three works great—as in the Frenchhorn section, which switches between longnotes, short notes, and short crescendos.

But it’s not necessary to spend hours practic-ing mod wheel switches—these articulationsare available separately, labeled Xtra. If youown Logic Pro, you can build your own pro-gram switches in the EXS24 editor.

It’s also worth mentioning that Apple chosenot to limit the ranges of the lowest and high-est samples in these software instruments. Youcan play string bass way up the keyboard orglock all the way down, for example.

As a gauge of Symphony Orchestra’s depth,there’s a total of about 38 different string artic-ulations, divided among seven programs.Subjectively, the strings are way better thanthey deserve to be in a $99 library.

In addition to harp, and violins 1 and 2 ( asmaller section), viola, cello, and bass sections,there’s a String Ensemble section. You can usethe ensemble to play the parts before splittingthe MIDI notes to individual section tracks,although it’s not very easy to control wherenotes get pasted in GarageBand.

There are also eleven wonderful churchorgans, a nice celeste, a decent if somewhatbrittle Steinway piano, a harpsichord recordedtoo closely that has excellent release samples, akeyboardful of good orchestral percussion, cro-tales, tubular bells, three different timpani artic-ulations (again, available under the mod wheeland separately), glock, marimiba, and xylo-phone.

As with the strings, there’s a brass ensembleas well as individual sections. Both solo andsection French Horns are included, the tuba issolo, and the trombones and trumpets are sec-tions. These are not cheesy-synthy trumpets—Iwas surprised at how good the 2-layer trumpetsection sounds. The long horn and tromboneprograms both suffer somewhat from swellingarticulations that get “sucked” back into thetrack when you play a new note, but you cancontrol that somewhat with the expression(pitch) wheel.

Jam Pack 4’s woodwinds include solo bas-soon, English horn, oboe, and piccolo, andboth solo and section flute and clarinet. All butthe bassoon, which I’d subjectively rate only

average, sound very nice indeed—as long asyou’re playing the right sorts of lines for thearticulations included.

The woodwinds are where I really noticedthe limited number of articulations in thislibrary. For example, you can play gorgeouslegato phrases with the English horn, but thestaccato articulation is too bright to blend withthe legato one in the middle of a phrase. Thesame applies to the solo flute and clarinet, plusthey also have ”sucking” legato articulations.This is less of a problem with the section clar-inet, but it’s still present.

To be clear, there’s definitely a place forswelling articulations; the problem is when youuse them for successive notes that aren’t long

and sustained. And as long as you “write to thelibrary,” these woodwind programs sound real-ly nice.

Orchestral loopsThe first thing that struck me about the

loops included with this Jam Pack is thatthey’re not the clichés I was expecting. Theseare all short riffs of varying length (1 – 16 bars)that you can build upon, with descriptivenames like “Adversary,” “Escape,” “CinematicTransition.”

With all the audio loops in this collection,you get the entire mix and then “stems” ofindividual parts (broken into high strings, medi-um strings, etc.); the MIDI loops naturally haveeach individual part separated. Full versions ofthe demo songs that the loops were extractedfrom are included on the DVD so you can hearthe entire arrangement.

Most of these riffs loop seamlessly, a fewdon’t—and probably aren’t intended to. TheSymphony Orchestra is not a “construction kit”like the other Jam Packs; its loops, whichalmost certainly come from different com-

posers, aren’t all designed to work togethereven if they’re put in the same key.

On the other hand there are always going tobe some interesting accidents whenever youlayer two pieces of music. This is an old musiceditor’s trick.

In general, I found the loop content interest-ing and worth listening to for ideas. Some peo-ple will undoubtedly score videos with them.But this part of the library is all so subjectivethat it’s best left to your ears to decide whatyou like and don’t like about this collection.

ConclusionThe Symphony Orchestra Jam Pack is one of

the best deals around, even if it is missing acouple of important woodwind and brass artic-ulations. Anyone looking to get his/her feet wetwith orchestral writing would find it an idealstarting point. Just the string programs, whichdon’t sound like cheesy synth strings, are worththe price.

Musicians who already have other librariescould find this Pack useful as part of a laptop-friendly portable writing rig; just add some-thing like a 2-octave M-Audio Oxygen8 MIDIkeyboard and you’re good to go.

Most importantly, though, GarageBand hasthe potential to bring lots of musicians into ourfold, and that can only be a good thing for usall.

Next month: Jam Packs 1, 2, and 3.

VIr e v i e w

Fig. 3: Notation editing for MIDI tracks is a new feature in GarageBand 2. It does a pretty good job of interpreting the rhythms that were played.

This deceptively simple loop-oriented digital audio

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Because Reason’s interface is so clear, thereare almost no hidden features to trip up thenovice. On the other hand, the program iscapable of far more than you may suspect. Inthis clinic we’ll reveal a few of the techniquesbeloved by Reason power users. This is not anintroduction to Reason, nor is it a productreview. I’m going to assume that you have theprogram and have read the manual.

Much of Reason’s power stems from its“rear-panel” connections. You can do far morewith these than connect a sound module tothe mixer. For instance…

Stereo delaysThe DDL-1 delay line is not a stereo delay. Its

left and right inputs and outputs are purely forconvenience in processing stereo signals. If youwant a ping-pong delay (one that bounces thesignal from left to right and back), here’s howto set it up.

Take the output of your chosen synth orRedrum channel and patch it into a SpiderAudio splitter channel. Create two DDL-1s andgive each of them an input from the Spider.Set the delay time and wet/dry mix of the twoDDL-1s to taste (the delay times should not beidentical). Patch the DDL-1 outputs into yourMixer. (This may have been done for you whenyou created them.) Now you can use either theMixer channels’ panpots or the panpots on theDDL-1 panels to pan one delay hard left andthe other hard right.

With this patch, the feedback setting on thelong delay should probably be set lower thanthe feedback on the short delay, so that they’llfade out at about the same time.

For an interesting sonic wrinkle, set both ofthe DDL-1s’ wet/dry knobs fully wet and patchthe Spider Audio splitter to yet another Mixerinput. This will give you a dry signal that hasn’tpassed through the DDL-1s. Now patch a

Secret Techniques of Power Users Exposed!

The so-called “virtual worksta-

tion” has carved a fat niche for

itself in the music world. Being able

to craft a song from start to finish in

one piece of software without ever

having to wrestle with compatibility

conflict is an attractive proposition.

Propellerhead Reason wasn’t the

first virtual workstation program, nor

is it the most feature-laden.

Nevertheless, Reason has become

the big gorilla in this particular cir-

cus. It sounds great, of course, but

the real explanation for its success

lies in its user interface, which emu-

lates rackmount hardware with an

almost obsessive attention to detail.

Not only does this make Reason easy

to learn and use, it gives the experi-

ence of working with the program a

kind of tactile, physical dimension

that musicians find gratifying.

Scream 4 distortion effect between the left out-puts of both DDL-1s and the mixer. Becausethe Scream is a true stereo processor, it cangrind up one DDL’s output in its left channeland the other in its right channel, and pass theresults on to the mixer with hard panning.

This concept is illustrated in the online fileScreamin In Rhythm.rns. This file also uses acouple of Matrix pattern sequencers to modu-late the Scream, as described below in the sec-tion “You scream, I scream.”

Filtered delayThe sound of a filtered delay, in which the

successive echoes get darker as the highs arefiltered out, is a classic. Reason’s DDL-1 lacks afilter circuit, but you can create one for your-self. Here’s how to do it. Note: This patch cancause feedback! Before setting it up, I recom-mend that you turn your monitor system waydown.

The ingredients are as follows: a soundsource (such as a Redrum module), a DDL-1, aPEQ-2 for filtering purposes, two Spider AudioMerger/Splitters, and an extra Mixer 14:2. Theconcept is that the Mixer is going to be used asan attenuator for the feedback loop, so turnthe Feedback knob on the DDL-1 all the waydown and leave its dry/wet knob all the waywet.

For clarity, start by renaming one of theSpiders “Delay Source” and the other “DelayOutput.” Rename the Mixer “Delay Loop.” Toset up the patch, make the following connec-tions:

Output of sound source module to DelaySource splitter.

One output of the Delay Source splitter toyour main mixer. (That’s the dry signal.)

Another output of the Delay Source splitterto the Delay Source merger.

Delay Source merger output to the PEQinput.

PEQ output to DDL input.

DDL output to Delay Output splitter.

One output from Delay Output splitter toyour main mixer. (That’s the wet signalpath.)

Another output of the Delay Output splitterto a channel input on the Delay LoopMixer.

The Age of Reason

by Jim Aikin

VIv e r y d e e p c l i n i c moreonline

www.virtualinstrumentsmag.com

http://www.virtualinstrumentsmag.com

one active oscillator, and while thefilters are both switched on, theoscillator isn’t being routedthrough either of them. Choosesomething other than the sine,square, sawtooth, or triangle wave,turn the motion knob all the wayto the left, and then move theindex slider slowly left and rightwhile holding a note on your MIDIkeyboard. You’ll hear a variety ofwaveforms. When the motion knobisn’t all the way to the left, theoscillator will sweep through thesewaves.

Next, while leaving the motionknob all the way to the left, parkthe index slider at any spot andturn the shift knob up slowly. Thiswill change the timbre of the waveby introducing higher harmonics.Since there are more than 80waves, this experimentation willtake a little time. Once you havean idea what a single Malströmoscillator will do, you’ll be ready totry things like turning on the wave-shaper and modulating the shiftand index from the mod wheel.

On glancing at Malström’s twoMod generators (equivalent toLFOs in other synths), you may think they can’tcontrol too many aspects of the sound—thereare only three output knobs for Mod A andfour for Mod B. But there are some quasi-hid-den modulation possibilities. First, like otherthe velocity and mod wheel inputs on the leftside, the Mod generators have A/both/Bswitches. Using this switch on Mod A, forinstance, you could direct it to modulate only

the pitch, index, or shift of Osc B.But what if you want Mod A to

modulate Filter B at the same time it’smodulating Osc A? Impossible, right?There’s not even a filter knob in ModA. So hit the Tab key and take a lookat the back panel. There’s an outputfor the signal coming from Mod A,and just to the left of it is an input forfilter control. This input has its ownA/both/B switch. So patch Mod A tothe filter input by dragging a patchcord with the mouse, switch the inputto the B destination, adjust theamount of filter modulation to taste,and you’re good to go.

The one limitation of this tech-nique is that your patch cord routingwon’t be saved when you save yournew Malström patch. It will be savedwith the Reason song, however. Andversion 3.0 can save complex patch-es that include rear-panel routings inits new Combinator plug-in. If youdon’t have 3.0, you might want tocreate a little text file containingnotes on your Reason patches.

Another cool resource, before wemove on: the Malström has audio

inputs to its filter section. These can be usedeven if the Malström is not playing notes. Bytriggering the filter envelope from a sequencertrack, however (while leaving both oscillatorsswitched off), you can add rhythmic envelopeor Mod generator sweeps to whatever sound isbeing processed by the Malström. The patchMal as Filter.rns shows what can happen whenthe Malström is pressed into service as anexternal filter for a Subtractor.

You scream, I screamAs good as Reason’s sounds are, the Scream

4 Sound Destruction Unit increases its sonicpalette by a factor of a hundred. Running a ho-hum kick/snare rhythm pattern throughScream will turn it into an industrial monstercovered with radioactive slime.

One approach is to route several drumsthrough different Scream units, but with aslower computer, inserting several of them mayadd too much CPU overhead. On the otherhand, you may not want exactly the same fla-vor of distortion on the kick as on the snare.The solution, as usual with Reason, is to hit theTab key and work with the jacks on the back.Create a Matrix step sequencer, make its pat-tern the same length as your drum loop, andpatch its note and curve outputs into the P1,P2, and/or Damage jacks on the back of theScream. By editing the Matrix steps, you canchange the sound of the Scream from onedrum hit to another.

The file Delay Scream.rns illustrates two ofmy favorite techniques. Running a solo synthtone through a delay line before it reaches theScream distortion causes it to intermodulatewith itself. In addition, cranking up the reso-

Before completing the loop, hit the Tab keyand drastically lower the channel fader onthe Delay Loop Mixer. (If you’ve been fol-lowing instructions, it will be labeledDelay Out.)

The Delay Loop Mixer’s master output backto the Delay Source merger input.

That’s the patch. To use it, start your soundsource, choose a suitable EQ curve on the PEQ,and then raise the level of the channel fader onthe Delay Loop Mixer gradually until youachieve the desired level of delay feedback.With this patch you can use the PEQ to boostselected bands — you aren’t limited to highrolloff. Note, however, that boosting a bandwith the PEQ has a side effect: it increases thefeedback level. The gain knob on the PEQ candrive the patch into runaway feedback, so becareful.

You can download this patch from the VIwebsite. It’s called Filtered Delay.rns.

Dive into the MalströmTo become a demon Malström programmer,

you’ll need to master the oscillator waveformsand the signal flow. The latter is shown plainlyon the front panel; you just have to think a bitabout which buttons are lighted and where thearrows point. (Hint: when the buttons on theright side of the oscillators are not lighted, thatdoesn’t mean the oscillators are switched off. Itjust means their outputs aren’t being processedby the filters.)

The waveforms are not visible, so the bestway to learn them is to experiment. Proceed asfollows:

Start with the Init Patch, which is loadedwhen you create a Malström. This patch has

The easiest way to figure out Malström is to start with its defaultInit patch and check out the waveforms (see text).

The Filtered Delay patch looks like this, but don’t try to trace the patch cords by eye, just follow the step-by-step directions

in this article.



nance of a tone before sending it to a distor-tion effect will cause the pitch to warble andgargle in an unstable way.

ReWire SolutionsUsing Reason as a ReWire slave device is ludi-

crously easy, though the details may differdepending on which host application you’reusing. If you’re using Cubase SX, for instance,you launch Cubase first and then launchReason as usual. With Sonar, however, Reasonis launched from Sonar’s Insert menu. Next,find the dialog box in the host app where youswitch on as many Reason audio channels asyou need.

If you’re planning to use only Reason’seffects for its sounds, route its synths into aMixer module in the normal way, then patchthis to the Hardware Interface. This way you’llneed only one stereo pair of inputs in your hostapp, which will receive the output of theReason Mixer. To process various Reason synthsthrough different plug-ins in your host, simplyactivate more channels in the host and patchthe synths directly to the Hardware Interface,skipping the Mixer.

I normally use Cubase to sequence the tracksthat play individual Reason modules. Reasonbecomes strictly a sound module (more or lessas if it were a VSTi). Knob and fader moves canbe recorded from Reason’s front-panel controls

into the host sequencer; all you have to do isselect the Reason device as the MIDI input forthe track, put the sequencer in record mode,switch to Reason, and move the controls asneeded. (Not all sequencers support this fea-ture, however.)

If you look in the MIDI ImplementationCharts document (installed with Reason) you’llfind the controller assignments for the various

panel controls. Note that Reason’s MIDIRemote Mapping feature, which is supposed toallow you to assign panel controls to the CCnumber and channel of your choice, worksonly with external MIDI arriving from hard-ware, not with MIDI data arriving from aReWire host sequencer.

I recommend saving all the materials for agiven song in the same folder. When saving theReason .rns file for the song, put it in the samefolder with the sequencer files. This way you can

back up the whole project (you do back up afterevery work session, don’t you?) more easily.

When using Reason strictly as a sound mod-ule, routing MIDI correctly requires an extrastep. The trick is to create a track in Reason’ssequencer that isn’t assigned to any of theReason synths. I usually call this the “dufftrack.” When a new Reason synth is created,Reason automatically creates an internal

sequence track for it and assignsthe MIDI input to that track. Thisis not useful in ReWire mode withCubase, because the MIDI datafrom the host will reach the mod-ule directly, while the input fromexternal MIDI hardware will berouted to the track and from thetrack to the module. So after cre-ating a new module, click on theleft end of the duff track to movethe MIDI icon back to it. If youdon’t do this, you’ll hear doublednotes during recording.

The pleasures ofpolyrhythms

Most Reason users recordexclusively in 4/4 time. Nothingwrong with that. By default,Reason’s pattern sequencers(Matrix and Redrum) give you 1616th-notes — that is, one-meas-ure patterns. Extending Matrix to32 steps or Redrum to 32 or 64steps gives you 2-measure or 4-measure patterns, which again

will be fine for many types of dance music. ButReason lets you get much more sophisticated ifyou dare.

If you need a hi-hat pattern that runs intriplets, for instance, create a separate Redrumfor the hats, make its patterns 24 steps long,and set the clock knob to “1/16T.” Missionaccomplished. But it’s possible to get fancier.Since Redrum has a separate gate in and gate

out for each channel, you can trigger thesounds from a single kit using different timingresolutions. This type of patching would be thetool of choice for adding a 32nd-note hi-hatflourish at the end of every other bar, forinstance. Just set the second Redrum to 32nd-note resolution, make its patterns 64 stepslong, enter a couple of notes at the end of thepattern using any channel, and route thatchannel’s gate out to the hi-hat channel’s gatein on the main Redrum.

This technique can also be used to combineduple and triple rhythms in a single Redrum

channel. The file Duple Triple Hat.rns showshow to set it up.

Learn the shortcutsOne of the best ways to become a Reason

power user is to get used to using the handykeyboard shortcuts:

When creating a new module, hold downthe shift key if you don’t want Reason to createsome sort of default patch cord routing.

To shift a Matrix or Redrum pattern one stepat a time to the left or right, use Ctrl-J and Ctrl-K (Mac Command-J and Command-K).

To transpose the pitches in a Matrix patternup or down, use Ctrl/Command-U andCtrl/Command-D.

To program Redrum dynamics quickly, leavethe switch set at Medium. To create a Hardstep, hold shift while clicking the button. For aSoft step, hold Alt (Mac Option) while clickingthe step.

Rock on...In this article I’ve only touched on a few of

the many subtle and complex things you cando with Reason. If you want to go deeper, I canrecommend Kurt Kurasaki’s excellent bookPower Tools for Reason 2.5 (published byBackbeat Books). This is not, strictly speaking, ashameless plug. While it’s true that I edited thebook, I earn no royalties from it. And because Idid edit it, I took the time to try out all of thedozens of slick Reason patches that Kurt includ-ed. They rock. Read the manual, buy the book,get creative, and you’ll rock too.

Jim Aikin is the author of Power Tools forSynthesizer Programming and Chords andHarmony, both from Backbeat Books. Whennot writing about music technology, he playselectric cello. For more about Jim’s varied activi-ties, you can visit him online at www.music-words.net.

The Scream 4 Destruction unit increases Reason's sonic pallet by afactor of a hundred.

VIv e r y d e e p c l i n i c

Because Reason’s interface is so clear, there are

almost no hidden features to trip up the novice.

On the other hand, the program is capable of far

more than you may suspect.


VIr e v i e w


The concept sure makes a lot of sense: ahuge modern sample library that coversall the bases with one product (modern

= it’s big and it streams off hard drives). Andsince Quantum Leap has been releasing high-quality modern sample libraries for a few years,they’re in as good a position as anyone to bethe ones to do that.

Actually, measured strictly by disk space,only half of Colossus’ colossal 32GB of contentcomes from Quantum Leap libraries; producerNick Phoenix sampled a whole lot of newmaterial for this product. But much of the con-tent comes from his well-established and popu-lar libraries: East West Quantum LeapSymphony Orchestra, Stormdrum, HardcoreBass, Voices of the Apocalypse, Ra, and others.

Colossus really is a self-contained desertisland library, with enough range to handlealmost any kind of professional project youcould think of. It has everything:drums/bass/guitar/keys, some rhythm loops,

percussion, all the orchestral instruments,pitched and non-pitched ethnic instruments,synth sounds and drones, choir…and and and.

Workstation du jourColossus comes in a dedicated Native

Instruments (NI) Kompakt Player, an OEMengine derived from their full Kontakt sampler,so you don’t need anything to run it otherthan a host—in fact you can even run it stand-alone for live use. However, you can openColossus instruments in Kontakt or Kontakt 2,which permits more extensive editing.

While the Colossus instrument doesn’t passLogic Audio 7.1’s AU validation test as of thiswriting, it actually works fine in Logic. Most ofthis review was done in Logic on a dual 2.5GHz

G5 Mac running OS X 10.4.1,but I regularly run NI players inDigital Performer and Pro Toolstoo, and also on the Windowsmachines in my studio.

As modern sample libraries go,Colossus isn’t especially demand-ing of the computer it runs on.That’s because its performanceprogramming is relativelyuncomplicated, for examplethere are no keyswitch programsthat eat up oodles of memory,and very few programs withrecorded reverb that use a lot ofpolyphony.

You should have no problemrunning large-scale compositionson a single machine—PC orMac—provided it has enoughRAM installed. As a very roughguideline, a machine with 1.5 -2GB should be able to load fourinstances of the 8-part multitim-bral Colossus instrument, which

of course is 32 instruments; the test G5, whichis overstocked with 5GB of RAM, was able to fillover ten instances inside Logic before the sys-tem became unstable—80+ instruments, whichis really impressive.

Colossus is being presented as a modern-dayequivalent to the keyboard workstations werelied upon for years, and part of that conceptis that its instruments are almost all playable inreal time. So rather than loading, say, eight dif-ferent violin articulations—an entire instance ofthe player just for one instrument—and split-ting notes to program your phrases, you justplay a one-size-fits-all “strings” program in realtime. In many cases that approach exchangessome subtlety for ease of use, but the choicemakes sense given the instrument’s intendedapplication.

Having said that, the programming inColossus takes good advantage of the features

Price: $995

Company: East West

(www.soundsonline.com)

Platforms: Native Instruments

Kontakt player - Windows XP: VST,

RTAS, DXi, ASIO, DirectSound; Mac

OS X 10.2.6+: VST, Audio Units,

RTAS, Core Audio, Core MIDI

(stand-alone)

License: Challenge/response limit-

ed to two installs. Free to use as

part of a musical composition; may

not be resold as another library.

A self-contained, high quality desert island library that covers all the bases

East West QuantumLeap Colossus virtual instrument

(CONTINUED ON PAGE 63)

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Libraries of industrial or unusualelectronic sounds are a bit of aguilty pleasure for many of us:

they’re interesting to listen to, and wethink they’re going to push us to bemore edgy in our own compositions…but atthe end of the day many of them sit on ourshelves, all but unused. I’m happy to say thecycles collections are a pleasure we do not haveto feel guilty about—they are perhaps the mostuseable libraries I’ve encountered in this genreso far.

Some forward thinking has been put intothese libraries. Each has a DVD with 24-bit.wav files, in 44.1 and 48 kHz versions, as wellas a normal audio CD that includes unfaded,untrimmed copies of the samples. All samplescan be looped, even if they are not naturally“loops” themselves (in other words, the linearones have clean fades at the head and tail). Allthe libraries come with nicely-formatted PDFand Excel indexes of the samples, whichinclude (where applicable) tempo, duration inbars, and tonal center.

Okay—but what about the sounds? sustainedencounters features evolving drones, soundenvironments, and “pads” that range fromlush, dark, and mysterious to industrial innature (the latter not necessarily being grat-ing—more like being in a spacecraft’s engineroom or communication center). There areover 100 “events” or loops that range fromseven seconds to a minute, plus 18 longerpieces that range from 40 seconds to over twominutes in length—including several providedas both stereo and 5.1 surround mixes.

cycles vol. 01:

sustained encounters

cycles vol. 02:

unnatural rhythm

cycles vol. 03:

incidental gesture

$99 each

Cycling ‘74 (www.cycling74.com)

379A Clementina Street, San

Francisco, CA 94103. 415/974-1818

platform: DVD-ROM of 24-bit .wav

samples + audio CD, many REX

versions included

license: Free to use as long as

combined with other sounds or not

resold as another library.

Some unique loops to freshen the pallet

Review by Chris Meyer

Cycles

Frankly, given their experimental nature andrelative lack of rhythm or clear tonal center,this is the library that would be hardest toapply to a wide variety of music. I mainly hearthese as bridges or extended intros for darkerpieces.

unnatural rhythm contains roughly 300rhythmic loops, ranging from machines (realand imagined) to interestingly-looped acousticphenomena (such as pennies rolling around ajar) to raw bleeps and hisses from Buchla andSerge synthesizers. Typical tempo range iswide, centering around 70 to 120 bpm; mostof the loops are from one to eight bars inlength, although 23 are presented as “xtend-ed” versions ranging from 16 to 96 (!) bars.

REX versions of many loops are also provid-ed. REX is Propellerhead ReCycle’s format;ReCycled loops have been sliced into individualbeats so they can be played at any tempo. Thishappens automatically in any REX-compatiblehost program.

I’m happy if I find a handful of loops in newlibraries that are promising for my composi-tions; I easily found a couple of dozen here.There aren’t a lot of variations presented, butthe longer loops have nice evolution, meaningyou could cut them into smaller phrases. Hereagain, the tonality is more often lush than jar-ring. Not many composers would use thislibrary for their entire rhythmic beds, but it


This is not just a loop library, it documentsa musical genre. Producers Barry Sageand Gonzalo Lasheras Garcia traveled to

Havana, Cuba where they recorded local pro-fessionals playing examples of “the twelveprime Afro/Hispanic rhythms of the Cubanmusic culture, including: Cha Cha Cha,Danzon, Son Montuno, Bolero, Pilon, SonTraditional, Guajira Son, Guaracha, Mambo,Songo, Timba, Conga Habanera (Carnival), andConga Moderna,” often providing modern(with drum kit) and traditional (sans kit) ver-sions of each.

In addition to over six gigabytes of 24-bitloops, you get an informative HTML file cover-ing details of the players, the instruments, thestyles, the recording process, and the samplesthemselves. There’s even a DVD documentaryincluded!

Performances of each style are broken intoroughly 20 to 60 2- or 4-bar segments (includ-ing an intro and ending, as well as verses, cho-ruses, or just pieces of a linear performance).Numerous mixes of each performance are pro-vided, including a full mix plus each instrument

Beats Working in Cuba

($399.95)

Zero-G (www.zero-g.co.uk;

distributed in US by East West:

www.soundsonline.com)

platform: Mac OS 10.2.6 or

Windows XP; standalone (through

Core Audio, DirectSound, or ASIO)

or as VST, DXi, ASIO, RTAS, or

Audio Units plug-in.

Challenge/response installer limited

to two unique installs.

license: Free to use as part of a

musical composition; may not be

resold as another library.

Review by Chris Meyer

soloed. These are then presented dry, live, andoften in a surround version (provided as twostereo pairs).

The samples are played back through thefamiliar Native Instrument Intakt virtual instru-ment [see sidebar]; where the individual hitscan be isolated, they are sliced using Intakt’sBeat Machine, complete with MIDI files toexport of the pattern for each sliced perform-

ance. Sometimesthese individual hitsare mapped to anIntakt keyboard aswell.

You’ve heard thesaying “presentationis everything”—andwith this many seg-ments and variationsavailable, presentationbecomes quite a chal-lenge. The answerZero-G decided uponwas to present each2- or 4-bar segmentas a folder of discreteIntakt patches. Eachsingle segment thenhas up to two dozenindividual patches.For example, CongaModerna providesseparate patches for

congas dry, congas live, congas LsRs (surroundpair), bells dry, bells live, bells LsRs, kick, snare,hi-hat, cowbell, toms, drum overhead mics,drum front ambient mics, drum LsRs, and a fullstereo mix.

There’s usually one patch per segment thatprovides several useful mixes and breakdownsof that segment, but there are essentially nopatches that make more than one segmentavailable at the same time. This means if youwant to recreate a, say, 30-segment perform-ance in your piece, you need to load 30 patch-es, one at a time (a few patches present threesegments back-to-back; oh, for more ofthose…). If you want to combine two mixes,double that.

Since the segments were cut out of a linearperformance, not all of them loop naturally bythemselves, making it a bit harder to “cheat”by repeating a smaller number of segments.One more detail: a chart is provided, showinghow to offset each loop in time to achieve themost authentic feel. In other words, youshouldn’t just start each loop on the down-beat—and the offset changes per segment.

does provide nice intros, breakdowns, andunusual layers.

incidental gesture is a thoroughly pleasantsurprise. This is the most melodic of theselibraries, containing a number of blown,plucked, and struck acoustic instruments (aswell as some natural sounds and purely elec-

tronic confections) playing meandering lines,then heavily processed to create otherworldlysonic narratives.

Most of the performances are one to twominutes long with listed tempos and tonal cen-ters; the longer performances have also beenedited into phrases. Of course, the problem

with this (and any of the cycles libraries) is thattheir utter uniqueness will make them easier tospot when others use them. But they are so faroff the beaten path, such occurrences willprobably be rare.

But come to think of it, forget you readthis—I’m keeping these libraries to myself.

Beats Working in Cuba sound library

+ virtual instrument

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IntaktOverview

Many higher-end sound libraries nowcome integrated with a virtual instru-

ment sample player. Part of the reason is toprovide a form of copy protection for thesamples residing behind the curtain, butthey can also present cool sound warpageopportunities to extend the originalsounds.

Some of the most popular VIs for thistask are Intakt and Kompakt from NativeInstruments (www.nativeinstruments.com).Intakt is optimized for rhythm looplibraries; both Percussive Adventures andBeats Working in Cuba (reviewed in thisissue) use it. The limitation is that theincluded version can only play the library itcame bundled with; you can upgrade to thefull version of Intakt—which can load anycompatible library—for $129 ($100 off),and to Kontakt—a fuller-featured multitim-bral sampler—for $249 ($200 off).

Intakt works as a stand-alone program ora plug-in; in the latter case, it immediatelypicks up the tempo from the host applica-tion. It contains three different algorithmsto stretch the loop to match the requestedtempo: Sampler, which changes pitch tomatch; Beat Machine, where the loop issliced into individual hits that are then trig-gered at the correct times; and TimeMachine, which time-stretches and com-presses the loop while keeping constantpitch without using discrete slices.

Intakt also features nice subtractive synthengine to feed the samples through. Itincludes a pitch envelope, AHDSR envelope,envelope follower, two LFOs with multiplewaveforms (which can be tempo-synchro-nized), two filters featuring multiple poleand pass configurations, a master filter thatcan also function as a 3-band EQ, and aneffects section that includes a synchroniz-able delay plus lo-fi and distortion sections.

Intakt is easy to use, providing all con-trols in a single window. This window canbe a bit large, especially when trying toview a sequencer or other program behindit, but you can “collapse” sections to con-sume less real estate.

When using one instance of it as a plug-in for the Mac version of Ableton’s Live, Ifound it took up about 7-8% of the CPUload on both a 1.5 GHz PowerBook anddual 1.8 GHz G5; adding a second instancetook up about 30% (!). You can trigger mul-tiple loops in one instance of the plug-in,but you are at the mercy of the librarydeveloper to arrange useful sound bankswith multiple parts in the same patch.Otherwise, you may be better resamplingits output into your compositional applica-tion of choice.

Those familiar with piecing together individ-ual articulations in an orchestral library may becomfortable building a performance this way; amore groove-oriented person like myself maynot. Personally, I would have preferred that asingle patch contain a single mixdown of asmany different segments as possible. Then pro-vide me alternate patches—with the same seg-ment-to-key mapping—that have alternateinstrument breakdowns and mixes. That way,once I had built a MIDI file that played back

Scroll Wheel Support in Logic Pro 7Most people aren’t aware of the mouse/trackpad scroll wheelfunctions in Logic Pro 7. They’re very convenient. Try them—you’ll say, “I didn’t know that!”

modifier

none orshift/command

shift orcommand

option

shift/option orcommand/option

scroll wheel function

scroll screen vertically

scroll screen horizontally

zoom vertically

zoom horizontally

VIr e v i e w

randomtip

the segments in the desired order, I could thenjust load different patches to hear differentbreakdowns and mixes.

If you are looking for a definitive library ofCuban rhythms, Beats Working in Cuba will blowyou away. If you are looking for a way to quicklyadd an Afro/Hispanic flair to a piece, this samelibrary may stop you dead in your tracks. Zero-Gis looking into updating Beats Working in Cubato provide more performance-oriented patches,so all of us can be happy.


The old sample libraries we were happilyusing before end up buried at the bottom of amoving box.

Well, I’m here to tell you non-sample tweak-ers and rookie patch programmers to dust offthose old CDs, Zip drives, and—yes—floppies.Get ready to give your favorite forgottenlibraries new life with some TLC in your DAW.

In this issue we’re going to focus things youcan do to the raw samples themselves outside

the actual sampler, manipulating them in anaudio editor. We’ll detail some options forexporting the samples and then re-importingthe reborn samples.

For this article I’m going to describe how toaccomplish the edits in Native InstrumentsKontakt and Steinberg Wavelab on a PC, butthese techniques work with any sampler andaudio editor. You will have to learn the basicsof your sampler on your own, though, sincethis is a magazine rather than an instructionmanual.

We’ve uploaded some samples and instru-ments generously given to us by the fine folksat Project SAM. These samples are rough testsamples of a trumpet section they used asproof of concept of their sample method, andnot part of their release products, but they’ll beperfect for us here. Download them atwww.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com.

Sanctioned cloningThe first thing you need to do is make a

copy of the instrument you want to workwith—an actual physical copy of the samples.

Part 1: Modern features for old libraries

By Ashif “King Idiot” Hakik

With King Idiot

VIm a s t e r c l a s s

We’ve seen revolutionary advances in the

realm of sample playback over the past

few years. The features in today’s samplers have

opened up a whole new breed of options. There

are expressive features like real-time time-

stretching control, multi-layered crossfades within

a single patch, lots of control over integrated

effects, as well as general options that were avail-

able but weren’t always easy to set up—until now.

Whether they’re in keyboard

instruments or in hardware sam-

plers, older sample libraries lack

many of the advanced features

you find today. Here’s how to

update your favorite sounds so

they can co-exist with your mod-

ern software instruments.

Please go to the downloads

section of

www.Virtualinstrumentsmag.com

and grab the example files.

moreonline


Sampling



old sounds work with your modern libraries,and you don’t want to stop and run just thisone sound through a reverb.

First, open the new set of samples in yourwaveform editor, and apply your preferredreverb settings to each sample. As the focus ofthis article is sample manipulation, I won’t gointo detail about what reverb you should use,or what reverb settings are best—although I’dadvise against using a spring reverb setting ifyou’re trying to emulate a real concert hall!

Wavelab has a batch processing feature thatwill process all the samples with one set ofreverb settings. Batch processors are time-savers, but if you don’t have one, don’t fret—there’s hope in the form of scripting applica-tions like QuicKeys (Fig. 1).

Once the processing is finished, all you needto do is reload the samples into Kontakt (oryour sampler), and the samples will retain allthe tuning info volume information and play-back settings from the original. You canrename the instrument to whatever you wantnow.

It’s also easy to layer the original andprocessed instruments into Kontakt and triggerthem on the same MIDI channel. (See Fig. 2)You can use MIDI to adjust the balancebetween the original and new instruments inreal time.

Many of the older sample libraries thatfocused on live instruments were recorded infairly dry rooms. You may prefer the wet sam-ples to the original.

The headless sampleHave you ever played a string line and found

that some note transitions just don’t happenfast enough, no matter how much you overlapnotes in your MIDI sequencer? You know, thatdreaded note-to-note “sucking” effect that lit-erally sucks you back to reality and remindsyou that your musical cue is being played by amachine with no sense of the music?

What’s causing this effect—and what is miss-ing in the samples—is the natural tendency forthe string players to move the bow slightlyfaster and with slightly more pressure on notesafter the beginning of a phrase.

Along the same lines, a trumpet player doesn’t always re-attack every note with hisbreath—sometimes he closes a valve that causes it to change the pitch. But with sam-

Fig. 1: QuicKeys for Windows. This macro utility from CE Software, also available for Mac, can save a lotof time whenever you’re doing anything repetitive—which happens a lot when you’re doing the same thingto dozens of samples.

Fig. 2: Wet and dry versions of the same program in Kontakt. Both are on MIDI channel 1 so they triggertogether; you adjust the relative balance with the volume controls.

As a rule, it’s a bad idea to burn your bridgesby working on the original samples.

In Kontakt the easiest way to do this is toload an instrument, rename the instrument (forthis example we’ll add the word “edit1” to theend of the name so it becomes “SAM TrptsTEST_VI1_edit1”), and then save it, selecting“patch + samples”.

This will make a complete duplicate of thepatch and the samples with a new file nameand a new sample folder. Then remove theinstrument from your sample player (inKontakt, just reset the Multi).

From here on you’re going to be able to doquite a few things to the samples: add reverb,put the samples through a ring modulator,time stretch/compress, run the samplesthrough a vocoder, even all of the above at thesame time. Or other things.

You can also perform waveform edits acrossall the samples to alter the way they play backin your sampler. For instance, you can changethe attack characteristics of the samples bychanging just the speed of the start of the sam-ple. Or you could add another sample on topof it.

It’s up to you whether you want to createnew or strange sounds, or stick to more tradi-tional effects. We’re going to stick to somemore practical things in this article—one of the

easiest being to add reverb, so let’s start there.

The wetter the betterLet’s make a new set of samples that’s a

completely “wet” version of the trumpets. We’llput them in a big hall with your favorite reverbeffect. You could just run the whole programthrough a reverb unit, but there are advan-tages to applying the reverb directly to the file.Among them: you don’t have to use processingpower later; and you can spend the timematching your samples to others in your collec-tion now so you can just load the programlater. After all, the goal is to make your favorite



ples, a new note starts playing every time youpress a key on your keyboard.

I’m going to outline how to make “legato”variations of the samples and add them back toexisting instruments. There are many differentways to create legato samples, but we’re goingto keep it simple. This article is about workingon reimporting samples rather than audio edit-ing; I’ll save that for a future article just aboutlegato.

Start by making a clone instrument andopening the cloned instrument’s samples inyour audio editor. Select about 200 millisec-onds of audio, starting from the very beginningof the sample. Now delete that portion of thesample, and save it. Do this to every sample inthe cloned instrument’s sample folder. (See Fig.3)

Wavelab has a feature called Auto Split thatcan speed up this process. It can batch-processall the samples to have their “heads” loppedoff, saving the time of opening and editingeach file by hand. But again, QuicKeys canautomate this process if you’re not usingWavelab.

What we’ve done is remove the attack char-acteristic of the sample. This is an old trick thatsome older hardware samplers did internally.It’s simple, but it can be very effective for someinstruments.

We’re through with the waveform editingnow, so open the headless instrument inKontakt or your sampler and save the clonedinstrument under a different name.

Now it’s time to adjust the programming tomake this new instrument work with the exist-ing one. While the actions that need to betaken are actually simple, the descriptions canbe a bit tricky to read, so just take your time

and focus on doing each step correctly. Don’tforget to look at the pretty green pictures!

We’re going to force the instrument to playthe headless samples when the mod wheel isabove a value of 64 (center position), and toplay the normal samples at any value below64. In other words, we’re making the modwheel act as an on/off switch for legato. Youcan use any other MIDI Continuous Controller(cc) if you want, in fact sustain pedal (cc64) isthe most commonly used controller for thistype of programming feature.

The following is Kontakt-centric, but thesteps are similar in all samplers. First, click onthe Edit button of the original instrument, thenclick on Group Start Options in the sourcemodule.

Change the setting from Always to Start OnController. Set the CC# to 1 (mod wheel). Set thevalue range to Between 0 and 64. (See Fig. 4)

Now click on the headless instrument’s Editbutton, and again click on Group Start Optionsin its source module. Change the setting fromAlways to Start On Controller. Again, set theCC# to 1 (mod wheel). But this time set thevalues to Between 65 and 127.

Thats it. Setting both programs to the sameMIDI channel will now force the legato samplesto be played with the mod wheel all the wayup and the standard samples with with it allthe way down.

You’ll need to adjust the attack time of thenew legato group to taste. Usually 30 - 50ms isa good place to start, with varying resultsdepending on the instrument.

While you’re there, try assigning the modwheel to the release time of the instrument, sothe legato programs have a longer release.Tweaking the note endings can really help cre-ate believable melody lines. (See Fig. 5)

Fig. 3: Getting rid of the first 200ms of audio in Wavelab to create a sample with no attack.

Fig. 4: Setting the program to trigger only when the mod wheel (cc#1) is between 0 and 64.


ILIO_RMX_6-05-VIMag 5/20/05 1:41 PM Page 1

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The trick is to start phrases or groups ofnotes to be played in one bow or breath withthe standard instrument, and then switch tothe headless instrument for subsequent notesin the phrase or group.

Release triggersNow let’s try something a bit more complex,

using concepts from both of the above tech-niques. This time we’re going to create releasetriggers for instruments—even ones that don’thave any decay or reverb in the samples tostart with.

Release triggers are samples that play backwhen you release the note, that is when a MIDINote-off message is received by the sampler.These can be instrument resonances, soundsthat occur naturally when you release a key (aswith harpsichords), or they can be naturalambience decays. We’re going to create ambi-ence decays to make it sound like the instru-ment was recorded in a big space.

Start by making a renamed copy of theinstrument you created earlier with wet sam-ples. Load its samples in your waveform editor.We’re going to edit the sample by deleting allthe audio except for the decay/reverb tail.

This isn’t a process that can be done by thenumbers, so it will take some time listening andediting to find the right spot. One trick is that itcan be easier to hear where the decay starts ifyou listen to the samples backwards. So youcould try reversing the sample, cropping the

decay portion (which of course is rising whenreversed), and then reversing it back the rightway, leaving just the decay. Parts of this processcan be scripted in QuicKeys to speed things up.

Once you’re done editing the samples, dothe now-familiar routine. Save the cloned

instrument under a different name, and thenload up the original and cloned instrumentswith the original in the first slot and the newone in the second.

As shown in Fig. 6, click on the release trailinstrument’s Edit button, and click on the RLS.

Fig. 5: Adjust the legato instrument’s attack time. While you’re at it, try assigning the mod wheel to control the release time too.



randomtip

Celemony’s Melodyne allows you to treat monophonic(i.e. single-line, not chords) audio as if it were MIDI

data. It can change the pitch, timing, and formants inde-pendently of each other. It can quantize audio. It can correctpitch, of course. It’s a remarkable creative tool.

One of the many things you can use Melodyne for is tak-ing sampled scale runs—such as the violin section runs inthe Vienna Symphonic Library’s Performance Set—andchanging the scales they play. While VSL comes with a bigselection of standard string runs, it’s not possible for it toinclude every permutation you can imagine.

This graphic shows a C major scale run that’s beenchanged to a diminished whole tone scale (1/2 step, 1 step,1/2 step, 1 step…).

Melodyne has a very hard time separating the notes inthis type of material, since it’s very imprecise by design. Notonly are there 14 violins playing a very fast run, they’re play-ing it legato.

But all that fudginess works in our favor, because the newscale doesn’t have to be very precise either. All you have todo is separate the notes somewhere near where they switch,and nobody can hear the difference; it all slurs right by veryquickly.

You can also time-stretch or –compress the run very easily if itisn’t quite the right tempo. Melodyne also makes it easy to adjustthe levels of individual notes. And so on. The point is that you cancreate your own library of runs to augment the ones that comewith your sample library.

Changing the scales of VSL string runs in Melodyne

This 14-violin diminished whole tone scale run used to be a C major scale before itmet Melodyne.

Several other libraries also have string runs, of course. Even theOrkestra soundbank that comes with Propellerhead Reason hasthem.


Trigger button in the Kontakt Source module.Now adjust the attack envelope in the ADSRmodule so the release sample doesn’t come intoo abruptly; 80ms or so is usually okay. Setthe release envelope high enough to let thesample play out—two seconds should be goodfor an orchestral hall trail.

Adjustments should be made to the attackenvelope of the release trigger instrument aswell as the release time of the original instru-ment. You want to try and make it so that therelease triggers aren’t too abrupt and you get afairly smooth transition between the two. It’s alla matter of taste.

And that’s it. You now have a combinationof instruments that will play back a release trig-ger sample when you release a key on yourkeyboard.

Become an IdiotI suggest spending a little time familiarizing

yourself with your software sampler, even ifyou’re using Kontakt and are able to follow thesteps in this article directly. We’ve skipped a lotof details for the sake of reaching the goal. If

Fig. 6: Adjusting the release trigger.

The tricks in this article assume that you only haveto import the programs from your old libraries intoyour software sampler. But you can also sample theROM sounds from a keyboard or module you own—taking care not to violate any license agreements.

The way to do this is to program MIDI notes in yoursequencer to trigger the keyboard at various velocitylevels, and then record the result. Depending on howcritical you are about the sound, you may not need tosample every half step. But a minor third is about themaximum you’d normally want to go.

After programming this “scale,” set all the velocitiesto the first velocity level you want to sample andrecord the instrument. Then select all the notes andset the velocity to the next level you want. And so on.

If this seems tedious, there’s a great program calledAutoSampler (www.Redmatica.com) that will do allthis and build an instrument automatically for theEXS24 sampler built into Logic. You’re not a Logicuser, you say? Import the EXS program into your sam-pler.

What if your “old sample library” is a keyboard?


you spend time understanding why thingswork the way they do, you can come up withvariations of the techniques that may be moresuited to your needs.

Those of you who are versed in sample edit-ing techniques and are wondering why myway of doing things is different from yours, justwait for future articles in this series. We’ll havea good time getting down and dirty.

Ashif “King Idiot” Hakik is an award-nominat-ed composer whose credits include several majorvideo games. He does sound effects design, he’sorchestrating the upcoming Queensrÿche record,and he’s edited/programmed several samplelibraries you probably use.

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VIr e v i e w


Spectrasonics’ first Stylus release becamewidely popular because of its loops andsounds. Its successor Stylus RMX, which

subsumes “classic” Stylus, is an extremelysophisticated virtual instrument. Stylus RMXadvances the way you can work with rhythmloops to a whole new level.

Just saying that RMX is a RAM-based, multi-timbral sample and loop player with extensiveprocessing, a great effects rack, an intelligentrandomizer, and oodles of great, really well-organized content (plus optional expansioncontent and the ability to import your own)doesn’t tell the whole story. But it is the highconcept.

The lower concept requires some explana-tion.

SlicesWhile the content in RMX is derived from

groove performances, called Suites, its loopsaren’t traditional audio regions. Instead, theperformances are cut up into time slices (usual-

ly spanning an 8th or 16th note) similar to theway Propellerhead’s ReCycle program works.Spectrasonics is very good at this, and they calltheir proprietary slicing method GrooveControl™.

Taken to the extreme, each individual slicecould be independently filtered, pitch-shifted,reversed, panned, etc.—and run through itsown chain of RMX effects units. It can also besent to its own output if the host sequencersupports that, but with all the integrated pro-cessing you may find that unnecessary.

Everything in Stylus RMX can be triggeredby MIDI, which opens up all the hostsequencer’s editing functions to the loops. Thatmeans you can shuffle the order of slices, usethe sequencer’s quantizing functions, and soon. Pretty much every RMX parameter can beautomated in the sequencer or controlled inreal time using the simple “watch and wiggle”MIDI Learn function.

In the default MIDI mode, called Slice Menu,each successive slice in the pattern is assigned

Exceptional grooves in a brilliantly-executed virtual instrument

Spectrasonics StylusRMX and SAGEXpanders


Stylus RMX, $299; SAGE

Xpanders, $99 each.

Spectrasonics

(www.Spectrasonics.net),

distributed by Ilio Entertainments,

P.O. Box 6211, Malibu, CA 90265.

818/707-7222, 800/747-4546.

Platforms: Mac 10.2.6+ AU, RTAS,

VST; Windows 2000, XP VST.

License: Free to use as long as

not made into another library.

Need not be combined with other

sounds.


to the next ascending chromatic note. So play-ing a chromatic scale in rhythm, starting onthe first note in the pattern (usually C1), willplay the pattern.

You audition everything inside RMX itselfwithout using MIDI; while this is reportedly nothow the software actually works internally, theeffect is the same as if the grooves were beingtriggered by Standard MIDI files (SMFs) thatreside inside the virtual instrument, and they’resynced to the host sequencer’s tempo. In sup-porting hosts—including Logic 7, which I usedmost of the time for this review—you do dragactual MIDI files directly from the RMX instru-ment onto sequencer tracks to build rhythmparts; in other programs like Pro Tools you dragthe MIDI files onto the desktop and importthem.

Spectrasonics calls RMX’ innards SAGE:Spectrasonics Advanced Groove Engine. A utilityto convert older Spectrasonics or Ilio (their dis-tributor) Groove Control libraries to SAGE isincluded. You can also use the utility to convertReCycle’s REX files, but the results aren’t guaran-teed; Groove Control libraries are processed real-ly well, so the loops can play at pretty much anytempo and still sound as good as they do at theiroriginal tempo. The MIDI files simply trigger atthe host sequencer’s current tempo, and thismethod has several advantages over time-stretching/compressing unsliced loops.

Several sub-loops, called Elements, areincluded with most of the Suites. These mightbe A and B variations of the main pattern, fills,submixes, a beat without snare or bass, lighterversions of the loop, or maybe just one or twoof the parts in it. Even though the Elements areeither 2-bar or 4-bar patterns, there are manyways of constructing longer phrases and cus-

tomizing the patterns. One is simply to layerElements from different Suites, another is torearrange the slices in a sequencer, and thereare others.

There’s another view in the browser calledGroove Elements, which has loops grouped byinstrument type. This makes it easy to find, say, a16th note tambourine or shaker part withaccents on 2 and 4, or a bongo pattern. GrooveElements contains a vast amount of excellentmaterial, and you can use it on its own or mixand match it with anything else in RMX.

Real timeThere are several ways of performing RMX in

real time.The default RMX MIDI mode is Slice Menu,

but it has an additional MIDI mode calledGroove Menu in which the Elements in a Suiteare triggered by MIDI keys; so rather than trig-gering individual slices, you’re triggering loops.Groove Menu mode makes it easy to string

together patterns in real time just by triggeringthem at the appropriate point (quantized tothe next note or bar, etc., if you want).

Elements play as long as you hold theirassigned keys down; you can layer them byplaying multiple notes, play only a portion ofthem (maybe just the hits on the downbeats),stop and start them, and so on. This allows forreal-time pattern performance.

Another way of playing Stylus RMX is to useKit mode, in which the same samples used tocreate the Suites are mapped to the keyboard

following the General MIDI mappings. Thisturns RMX into a sound module. It doesn’thave the detail you find in modern drum sam-ple libraries—lots of velocity layers, separate leftand right hand samples, and what have you—but the sounds are great. And in this context(mostly processed sounds) you don’t miss that.

RMX has an extremely clever interface fromtop to bottom, but I do have one wish: a closerrelationship between Kit mode and the pattern-based modes. I often found myself wanting toplay my own grooves using the sounds in aSuite I like, but switching to Kit mode givesyou a blank slate rather than sounds from thecurrent suite. (Opening another RMX instanceon a separate track avoids having the Suite dis-appear, but the point is that Kit mode isn’trelated.)

While you can play the slices in a Suite fromthe keyboard without loading them into Kitmode, the time slices often contain more thanone sound, e.g. bass drum and hi-hat. Perhapspreset Kits with the same names as their corre-sponding Suites would be a solution—whichyou could assemble yourself, of course, butthat could be daunting.

RMX is 8-part multitimbral, with each of theeight parts assigned to a separate MIDI chan-nel. A part can contain a standard Element or aSound Menu instrument—which we’ll explainnext—so you can both layer grooves and playalong with them on different MIDI channels. Ifyou need more than eight parts, you simplyopen another RMX on a different track.

Sound MenusWhile Kit mode uses the same samples as

the Suites, there’s a huge additional library inRMX called Sound Menus with its own content.

Just saying that RMX is a RAM-based,

multi-timbral sample and loop player with

extensive processing, a great effects rack, an

intelligent randomizer, and oodles of great, really

well-organized content (plus optional expansion

content and the ability to import your own)

doesn’t tell the whole story.

VIr e v i e w

Stylus' effects rack, here with a Tape Slammer, a Wa-Wah, and a BPM Delay set up.


Spectrasonics says there are over 10,000sounds here, and we’ll have to take their wordfor that.

There are 17 Sound Menu Suites that rangefrom percussion instruments (Suites of claps,hi-hats, snares, toms, etc.) to Cinematic “sounddesign” hits to Retro Hits (big band falls, etc.),Guitar Bits (processed guitar chunkas)…a hugeamount of excellent material. Each of these 17Suites contains several Elements, each of which

brings up a keyboard full of sounds, up to fiveoctaves—i.e. up to 60 sounds.

Some of these sounds are straight, but mostof them are processed and electronic/synthy.The sound content here is great and it covers awide range.

What’s more, you could run every SoundMenu sound through its own independenteffects and processing chain.

EditingIt’s very easy to get around RMX. In addition

to its browser, which is accessible from allscreens, the instrument has four screens: Edit,Chaos (the intelligent randomizer we’ll covershortly), FX, and a Mixer.

In the Edit screen you have control overamplitude, filtering, overall panning, and thepitch. Each of the first three can be controlledwith an LFO that has a choice of eight standardwaveforms. There are also 4-stage envelopesfor amplitude, filtering, and pitch.

RMX has two different filters: a more rudi-mentary Master filter, and a very nice-soundingmultimode Power filter that uses more proces-sor. There’s also a pitch control, along with asample start slider and a Reverse button.Finally, there are handy buttons for doublingand halving the tempo, which you can dorepeatedly in either direction.

While the editing and in fact the whole instru-ment are very easy to understand and use, RMXcomes with a concise series of QuickTime videotutorials by producer Eric Persing to get you upand running. But while Eric is a very charmingand engaging personality, I do admit to wishingfor a printed manual as well, both for speed oflearning and for reference.

[Hold the presses: Version 1.3 due out thissummer will have an integrated reference man-ual that can be printed.]

Rather than separating notes by the instru-

ment in the traditional way, RMX lets youselect the slices you want to work on—mean-ing the slices you want to filter, effect, random-ize, etc.—by creating Edit Groups. You can cre-ate Edit Groups for downbeats, backbeats,every specified note value (for example everyquarter note, or the second 16th note on eachbeat, etc.), just one Element, one MIDI note,every slice…suffice it to say that there’s a wayto catch just what you want 99% of the time.

What’s really useful is that edit groups can besoloed and muted.

All the tweaks in the Edit, Chaos, and (forinsert effects) the FX windows apply only to thecurrent Edit Group. To do something global, yousimply select the Main edit group. Would that alluser interfaces were this easy to deal with.

ChaosRMX’ randomizer has six self-explanatory

sliders that you raise to, as Persing puts it in thetutorials, “increase the probability” of theparameter changing: pattern, repeat, reverse,timing, pitch, and dynamics. This lets you cre-ate endless variations of all the Elements; whenyou find one you like, press the Capture buttonand drag it to a sequencer track (again, if yoursequencer supports this).

You can easily control the amount of disarrayChaos creates. Since it only affects the currentlyselected edit group, you can, say, vary thepitch of just the backbeats, randomize the hi-hat pattern, or vary the timing of a bongo part.Chaos can be weird, subtle, or it can simplyavoid stagnant loops.

You can also use Chaos live on patternsbeing triggered in MIDI Groove mode.

FX and mixerRMX’ effects work very well with rhythm parts.

Please see the graphic showing the available liston page 35; there’s enough there for subtle

tweaks or radical transformations. My favoritesare the crunchy Flame Distortion and nastySpring Verb, but they’re all very usable. While nosubstitute for a great convolution reverb proces-sor, even the PRO-verb sounds fine.

RMX has four shared auxes and a master,plus you can insert effects on each edit group.There are three slots in the “rack” in each ofthese paths. Version 1.2 added both single and3-rack effects presets.

Not just the effects, but the whole instru-ment is very efficient. When it’s just sittingthere idle, it takes up no CPU; the same appliesto inserted effects processors that aren’t pass-ing audio. Playing one Element takes up about4% on the review dual 2.5GHz Mac G5. APRO-verb instance takes up an additional 8%or so, and turning on the Power Filter eats upabout 3%.

The mixer is straightforward: each of theeight parts in Stylus RMX has its own channelstrip. This is where you balance levels, panparts, send them to the four FX auxes, androute them to separate outputs for externalprocessing.

LibrariesThe base library with Stylus RMX, which inci-

dentally stands for “remix,” is about 7GB. Itincludes the “classic” Stylus sounds and thenew RMX library.

With all the Stylus libraries, you get the over-whelming sense that its beats are right on themoney. When you’re looking for a readily iden-tifiable contemporary sound, Stylus has it—regardless of the particular style.

There’s considerable variety in all the RMXlibraries, but the roughly 200 grooves in theclassic Stylus library mostly have a hip-hoppyfeel. This collection contains mainly retro-processed real drum sounds, and almost all thebeats have slightly swung 16ths or 8ths. Theyhave a great feel.

The new RMX library uses a lot of electronicand heavily processed percussion sounds. You’ll

find a wide range of interesting grooves, fromfunny to powerful to danceable to dramaticand in between. Many of the grooves have anelectronic/ethnic percussion ensemble feel.

There are five optional SAGE expanders(“Xpanders”) for Stylus RMX. Each is about1GB in size, so there’s less content than in thecore libraries, but it’s still a heck of a lot. Forexample, the Retro Funk Xpander has 54Suites, 507 Elements, 305 Fills, 44 extras (bon-gos, conga, shaker, tambourines), and 85 Multipatches…a feature we didn’t mention; you cansave the multitimbral state of the instrument asa Multi.

The Chaos designer is an intelligent randomizer with several self-explanatory parameters. You can applyChaos selectively to anything from an individual time slice to backbeats to the entire groove.

Taken to the extreme, each individual time slice

could be independently filtered, pitch-shifted,

reversed, panned, etc.—and run through its own

chain of RMX effects units.

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Each Xpander includes some “bonus con-tent” from Spectrasonics’ Bizarre Guitar,Distorted Reality, Vocal Planet libraries. TheBizarre Guitar material here is mainly scratchywah or otherwise interestingly processed shortlicks—really funky ones—although there are acouple of more ambient Elements. Most of theVocal Planet loops are mouth percussion(processed vocal noises), but there are alsosome really spirited claps, stomps, and exuber-ant noises from a gospel choir. The DistortedReality grooves are stylistically similar to thebase RMX library—electronic percussion—butthe rhythms tend to be simpler. You can layerthem for complexity, of course, and save theresult as a Multi.

It’s worth pointing out that due to the waysome of the drum kits in the Xpanders arerecorded with ambience, a few of them canglitch if you randomize the patterns in the RMXChaos generator. But most of them work fine.

The Metamorphosis SAGE Xpander is in thesame vein as the RMX core library, and pretty

much everything you can say about oneapplies to the other. These grooves areextremely creative, they lead you to ideas, andthey’re unique.

Backbeat is a collection of traditional drumbeats, but they’re really good ones. It has awide selection of grooves on many differenttypes of kits, from standard studio drum sets tounmuffled jazz kits. This library’s content isn’tground-breaking, but it’s really well done; any-one who’s looking for totally appropriate, well-played and recorded drum loops should bevery happy with it.

You could describe Liquid Grooves as theacoustic equivalent of Metamorphosis. Itsgrooves feature percussion, but it’s usuallycombined with a light drum set, in some casesplayed with what sound like nylon brushes.Liquid Grooves is just outstanding.

Burning Grooves features drummer AbeLaboriel, Jr. These beats use standard drum set,but the effects and sounds are all different andall very interesting. Laboriel’s patterns are all

qute original, and due to dynamics, even thereally busy ones groove like crazy. If you neverused it, this Xpander would be worth havingjust as a source for drum programming ideas.

The last Xpander, Retro Funk, takes you rightback to the ‘70s. These beats completely funkout in the Harvey Mason/Mike ClarkHeadhunters East Bay vein. Some of the pat-terns groove so well it drives you crazy! Funkyfunky.

ConclusionIt’s one thing for the content to be excep-

tional, to say nothing of being meticulouslyrecorded, edited, and processed. But the StylusRMX virtual instrument really revolutionizes theway you can work with loops. And on top ofthat it’s quick and easy to use.

As a reformed drummer, I personally neverreally liked working with rhythm loops before.This instrument has changed my mind. StylusRMX is one of the hottest virtual instrumentsaround right now, and deservedly so.

VIr e v i e w

randomtip


MOTU’s popular PCI-424 card featuresan onboard digital monitor mixer that

can be as large as 96 x 96, depending onthe audio interfaces connected to it (MOTUmakes several). This mixer, which has virtu-ally no latency, is controlled by the CueMixConsole software shown here.

There’s some confusion about how theCueMix mixer integrates with third-partyaudio software. If you don’t understand therouting, it’s easy to find yourself monitor-ing a signal with normal computer latency,or to hear two signals that chorus/comb-fil-ter together. The confusion is that thereare really two potential paths to yourspeakers: through the CueMix Consolemonitor mixer on the PCI-424 card, and/orthrough your DAW software. Here’s how itworks.

The physical input signal goes to theMute and Input Trim controls at the top ofthe mixer first; if it’s muted there, you willhear nothing.

After the input Mute and Trim, the signalgets split into two. One path goes on towhatever software is running on the com-puter (whether MOTU’s or someone else’s);the other path goes to the latency-freeCueMix monitor mixer. All the onscreenfaders and knobs on the light grey back-ground control the CueMix monitor mixer.

Your DAW software is blissfully ignorantof the CueMix mixer, so if you have soft-ware monitoring turned on, you’ll hear theinput signal twice: once directly throughthe CueMix mixer, and again coming backout the computer (with added latency).The combination of the two signals is what

causes the chorused sound we don’t want.You must mute the signal here or inyour DAW’s channel strip—pick one.

There are two sets of meters on theCueMix mixer, marked Mix and Out. TheMix meters show the output of the CueMixConsole mixer; the Out meters show what’s

in the Mix meters summed with whatever’scoming from the computer—which includeslocal virtual instrument outputs, recordedtracks, system sounds, and so on. There’sno level control here for the computeraudio, and it would be confusing if therewere; you adjust it in your DAW.

MOTU PCI-424 Card and CueMix ConsoleRouting with Third-party Software

From Computer

InputSignal

To Computer2

1

3


Walk into Badelt’s old studio at the place for-merly known as Media Ventures (he’s sincemoved), and one of the first things you noticeis—without exaggeration—a wall-length, head-height rack full of hardware units. There aremore samplers, effects, and outboard equip-ment than you’ve ever seen.

And not a single one of those boxes hasbeen powered on for a couple of years.

The only unit with lights on is a solitaryMOTU 2408 Mk III audio interface at the very

end of the rack. It’s connected to a PowerMacG5 and five (actually 5.1) speakers.

Without prompting, Badelt traces the evolu-tion of his working set-up.

Badelt: The very first requirement for filmscoring is that you need to be flexible. The filmchanges, opinions change. Your mind changes.You’re always rewriting or polishing until the end.

At the beginning it was tons of E-mu sam-plers—16 E-mus, 18 or 20 Rolands, going into

From wall-sized rack to a single PowerMac G5:one of Hollywood’s hottest young composers

traces the evolution of his workflow.

KlausBadelt

Klaus Badelt is an extremely

busy composer who’s written

music for over 25 major Hollywood

films and counting. His credits

include “Pirates of the Caribbean”

(2003), Werner Herzog’s “Invincible”

(2001), “The Recruit” (2003), “The

Time Machine” (2002), “K-19: The

Widowmaker” (2002), “Ned Kelly”

(2003), “Basic” (2003), The In-laws”

(2003), “Catwoman” (2004), and

most recently “Constantine” (2005).

At the moment he’s working on the

score for “Curious George”…as well

as other films in the mill.

Badelt is equally adept writing for

orchestra and working with soft-

synths and samplers, and he has an

inside reputation for being one of

the best MIDI sequencer program-

mers in the world. His score to “The

Recruit,” for instance, makes exten-

sive and intricate use of loops, and

the “Constantine” score is heavily

electronic. Both are extremely

effective.

VIi n t e r v i e w


a handful of 02Rs (Yamaha digital mixers), andwe could recall that set-up with the O2R. Wethought that was really cool.

The only thing is that you have to defineyour pallet at the beginning of the project. Youcan’t go back and change sounds once they’vebeen recorded as audio, so we had to think inadvance what would be good for the film Andthen we’d load all these sounds.

I had to have so many samplers because Ihad to have all the sounds ready all the time. Itwould take too long to go load another soundfor another cue, and too many errors wouldcreep in. If you had a synthesizer, you had tostore the sounds...

It was a complete nightmare. Whenever youhit Play when the director was there...well, Iwould record it to audio to play for the direc-tor. Too many parameters, too many tracks—the pallet would be 300, 400 tracks.

So it was good but not great.The next generation started when

GigaStudio came out. So there you could getrid of all the samplers, you had much bettersounds, it would all be networked…suddenlyyou were in the computer environment, so youwould not have to look for that E-mu soundfrom that film we did five years ago, we wouldhave the library, we would have storage capa-bility…so that was pretty cool.

At that stage I got rid of all the 02Rs andbought Pro Tools systems to do live mixing.But Pro Tools wasn’t really built to do live mix-ing then, at least not for our purposes.

VI: What were the problems—not enoughinputs?

Badelt: At the beginning we didn’t haveenough inputs, so I used a Creamware Pulsar toact like a recallable patchbay, ADAT lightpipe to

ADAT lightpipe, from 90-something channelsinto 48. So I would save the patch for each cue.

It was a great system at the time, because Icould finally take my tracks I was writing andrecord them dry. I would record my live feed asaudio, go to a mix studio, and be able to notonly mix my stuff but change what I mixedbefore.

To be able to go back one generation, Iwould record each group of tracks of audiowith all the effects wet. You know, you werelocked into what you had. But you could deliv-er all the tracks to the mix studio, including allthe plug-ins and everything.

Still, there were some practical issues. ProTools doesn’t provide a way of mixing live and

then recording that—you’re either mixing liveor recording. In other words, what they callAux Inputs—live inputs—can not be easily con-verted to a track where you can actually recordit. So you’re always working with tracks thatare in Record Enable, and then there’s no

automation in Record Enable. These littlethings then turn into it not being ideal for ourapplication.

You can get around this by bussing, but Imay have 60 cues in a film, and for each cue Iwould have to set this up. And then you stillhad only a limited number of inputs, and eachindividual sound had its input. So we often hadto go back to the writing room and record ifwe wanted to make a hi-hat louder.

And still you have to load your pallet. I wasusing Orion (Synapse Software); you could runall the internal instruments and VST instru-ments as well—it was my VST instrument host.We couldn’t use Steinberg V-Stack because itwasn’t possible to slave delays and other time-

based effects to MIDI TimeCode.

So the next generation. Ijust wanted to be more flexi-ble again. I want to put adelay on just one stringtrack—anything with mixingand writing. One day Emagiccame by, we were workingon “Pirates of theCarribbean,” and they said,“What do you think of ourEXS sampler?”

And I was laughing atthem! I had 14 GigaStudios,each of them had four MIDIports. They said, “You canload 64 samplers.”

That’s not even one Giga!But after they were gone,

we thought about it andanalyzed our tracks a littlebit, and found out that theaverage cue has 40 tracksmaximum. So the actualused instruments at one timeare not that many.

I think “Catwoman” wasthe first project that was

Fig 1: Badelt’s main Logicscreen for “Constantine.”

The very first requirement for film scoring is that

you need to be flexible. The film changes, opinions

change. Your mind changes. You’re always

rewriting or polishing until the end.

VIi n t e r v i e w

done completely in Logic, including mixing theorchestra and delivering the final master.

VI: What sorts of things were you requestingfrom Emagic [as Logic’s developer was knownprior to being purchased by Apple] before theyshowed you EXS?

Badelt: The funny thing was when theycame, I remember we said, “Come have a lookwhat we’re doing here,” and they came to themixing room and saw us working there with afew Logic Controls [MIDI hardware control sur-faces] and mixing the orchestra.

You could see in their faces: whoa! “Youguys are really doing this, right?!” And so theylooked at each other and said, “Oh shit!”because we were pushing the envelope somuch that it would reach the limits.

But it worked.

VI: What was missing?

Badelt: For instance loading up completetrack set-ups—channel strips and data. Youcouldn’t really copy and paste between twoLogic Songs. These things were put in sincethen. They’re still working on being able tocopy parts of Environments.

They’ve now put in the Apple Loops capabil-ity. For our purposes it’s better to have it allintegrated in one. Now loops are just anotheraudio track.

“Constantine” was to a certain degree basedon Apple Loop tracks. We recorded an electriccello player, and we made lots of loops thatcould go in other cues.

VI: How are you able to get by with somany fewer sounds loaded than you had avail-able in Giga?

Badelt: The Giga revolution was great.Sounds were unlimited, and the company wasvery collaborative—developer Jim Van Buskirk

put in a lot of work. We had maybe 100GigaStudios at our place altogether, and I wasusing maybe 14.

But still we had the issue that I couldn’trecall cues; you can’t load 14 samplers, itwould take too long. So after we realized weonly used 40 tracks in a cue, we gave EXS a try.

You never learn if you don’t use it on a proj-ect. So I wrote a small film—there was not thatmuch orchestra, not a big action adventure,and I tried to do it with everything comingfrom a dual G5. I kept a few Gigas running inthe back just in case, but it turned out that itworked amazingly well.

It’s very efficient and integrated with Logic.For example, when you use the same sounds infive cues, EXS doesn’t load the sounds fivetimes, it loads them once. They in memory.

We converted our whole library into EXS—with all our hundreds of thousands of samples.It’s not done yet! But most of it is.

It’s just amazing how your work will changethis way. Okay, I have an idea, next track Ineed…let’s try this guitar. You open a track,plug in the guitar—which can be very fast now.No, let’s try a different instrument, a synthsound. Let’s add some ambience. Then thenext time you use electric guitar with someambience simulation.

And you could do that between each cue,with full recall. And the mixing is in the writingnow. So the fader you have when you write isthe channel strip of the mix.

VI: Do you have a separate person mixingnow?

Badelt: Yes.

VI: You give him or her the Logic file.

Badelt: That’s what we do, right. We havethe same Logic set-up in the mixing room. Heopens the sounds.

And that’s another big key: you don’t startthe mix from scratch, you open what I did.And of course I’ve spent some time with themix already at that point. He can do what anengineer does well—eq and so on—but it’sbased on what I did. It used to take a longtime just to get it the point where I had it.

VI: You normally use about 40 tracks, butyou must have way more than that in yourtemplate loaded up and ready to play.

Badelt: Oh, hundreds. The palette in Logic(in the Environment) is by definition externalinstruments. [See Fig. 2] But now I’m usinginternal instruments and I only load the ones Ineed. The Arrange page before was hundredsof tracks, and only some of them were used.

The cool thing in Logic is that you can con-figure it any way you want. No two Logic usersset it up the same way—if I go to someonewho uses it, they constantly surprise me withwhat they’re doing with it.


Fig 2: Klaus Badelt’s Logic Environment for “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Each of theicons in this sound pallet points to an independent external MIDI port and channel, inthis case on one of about 18 fully-loaded GigaStudio machines. Command/clicking on anicon instantly assigns it to the currently selected track in the Arrange window (not shownhere), making it easy to manage a vast template without pre-assigning every singlesound to a track.

Badelt now uses a single G5 instead, which doesn’t allow you to work this way. Havingeverything on one machine has the advantages Badelt outlines in this interview, and he isable to pull it off for a variety of unique reasons. For example, he only uses a privateorchestral library that loads very quickly; he has programmers on hand converting every-thing to Logic’s EXS24 format; and all his cues get sent to an engineer for mixing, so hedoesn’t need to run a heavy load of processing plug-ins.

But before you try this at home, kids, note that you can only keep a fraction of thenumber of sounds and instruments cued up and ready to play. While you can run a lot ona top-end machine today, many if not most professinoal composers working with largesample libraries and processor-intensive virtual instruments prefer to split the load acrossat least a couple of computers.

VIi n t e r v i e w



O perator is an add-on FM synthesizervirtual instrument for Live, Ableton’sunique and popular Mac and

Windows real-time music production program.It works only within Live, but you can streamLive into other sequencing programs viaReWire (please see “The World of Softsynthsand Samplers” elsewhere in this issue for anexplanation of ReWire).

For those unfamiliar with Live, it is a special-ized MIDI and digital audio sequencer that’s setup for triggering and processing patterns andloops in real time. It can also record.

Operator uses FM—frequency modulation—synthesis, which generates complicated wave-forms by using oscillating sine waves from onesine wave generator to modulate the signalcoming out of another sine wave generator. A“circuit” with two or more sine wave buildingblocks is called an operator, hence the name.

The famous Yamaha DX-7 from 1983 usedFM synthesis, and it was notoriously difficult to

program. Since then we’ve seen severalattempts to make FM easier to program,notably Native Instruments’ FM7, but no onehas really rethought the paradigm while stilldelivering the goods—until now.

Ableton’s implementation is so easy even achild could grasp it. Picture Operator as a DX-7with onscreen knobs that invite you to dive in(as opposed to membrane switches and a cou-ple of sliders that accessed menu upon menu).

FM synthesis is represented graphically witha series of colored building blocks that clearlyindicate which oscillator is modulating theother. Operator takes full advantage of Live’shands-on real-time control, low latency, andenvelope-based automation features.

At its simplest level, Operator hides the com-plexity of FM programming behind a pair ofmacro controls, Time and Tone, that can beimmediately called into play to modify asound’s characteristics in real time. Its straight-forward layout provides controls for the most

add-on FM Sythesizer for Live

Ableton Operator

Price: $149

Company: www.ableton.com.

Distributed in U.S. by M-Audio,

5795 Martin Rd., Irwindale, CA

91706. 626/633-9050.

Platforms: Runs only inside

Ableton Live, on Mac or Windows.

VIr e v i e w

By Lee Sherman


immediate FM parameters up-front, whileallowing single click access to its graphicalenvelope editors.

This synthesizer can produce the full rangeof FM sounds, from percussive to bell-tones,punchy bass, harmonically rich pads, and real-istic electric pianos. It sounds absolutely fantas-tic, and if you just buy it for quick access tosome killer presets within Live, you’ll love it.But that would be missing the point.

Hearing carriersOperator’s voice architecture consists of four

oscillators, labeled A – D, plus a resonant multi-mode filter (multimode means it can function

as a lowpass, bandpass, highpass, or notch fil-ter). There’s a wide variety of waveforms tochoose from, including variations of sine wave-forms that allow it to mimic the “whooshing”aliasing artifacts of hardware FM synthesizers.(The DX-7 had six operators, but it had noalternative waveforms or filtering.)

Instead of trying to minimize aliasing asmost virtual analog synths do, Ableton hasgone to great lengths to harness it so that itcan be used to musical advantage. Perhaps thisis not surprising, given that the software’s con-ceptualist was the experimental musicianRobert Henke, also known as Monolake.Operator even lets you control the level ofaliasing. By assigning this control to a MIDIcontroller, you can go from mellow to nasty atthe turn of a knob.

Operator is primarily an FM synth, but itdoes include the subtractive algorithms andwaveforms (saw, square, triangle, noise) neces-sary to provide a reasonable simulation of ana-log sounds, adding tremendously to the soft-ware’s versatility.

The envelope, pleaseThere’s more secret sauce. Each of the four

oscillators has its own envelope, as do the LFO,filter, and pitch. Interestingly, envelopes cannot only hard-sync to the song’s tempo, theycan be made to loop completely out of sync,repeat individually at their own rate, or repeatat the rate specified, allowing for some incredi-bly complex textures.

It’s great to see Ableton applying some of itsinnovative thinking to instrument design.

We’ve seen several

attempts to make FM

easier to program,

but no one has really

rethought the paradigm

while still delivering the

goods—until now.


SolidarityThe first step in building a dependable rig is

outfitting the computer itself. Few mainstream,off-the-shelf computers are ideal for this. Theyhave far too many convenience features forhome and office that lie at cross-purposes tothe lean, mean, mission-critical systems oneneeds for stage work.

With Windows machines, that leaves us withtwo primary choices: the do-it-yourself route,or purchasing a turnkey machine put togetherby specialists for the purpose. (Please see thesidebars to this article for other alternatives.)

It is of infinite value to know exactly what isin a machine, where these parts can be pur-chased, and how to replace them in a pinch. Ipersonally prefer to put machines togethermyself for that reason. But even if you choose aturnkey machine, knowing what you need andwant is crucial to satisfaction, from the powercord all the way to the audio outputs.

I avoid laptops. Their portability is attractive,but in many ways that convenience is only skindeep. Sample-based systems want fast, hugedisk capacities. There’s no room in a laptop forthat, so external drives tend to be a must.Laptops survive drops poorly. They’re incon-venient to place onstage, since monitor andkeyboard input are fixed to one another. Andby the time you’ve strung the peripherals you’llneed to make a laptop a stageworthy compan-ion, is it really more convenient?

Each cable becomes a potential failure point,not to mention a trip hazard. It’s a personaldecision, but for the purposes of this article Iwill focus on what I consider to be a rig that isidealized for roadability, and that’s a rackmountsystem.

ComponentsSince Macs are sold pre-configured (you

can’t put them together by selecting a case,motherboard, power supply, fans, etc.), mostbut not all of this section applies to Windowsmachines only. Please see the sidebar for moreabout making Macs roadworthy.

Starting with the computer case, I recom-mend a 4-space rackmount. One can get small-er units, even single-space, but the tradeoffsstart to become similar to those associated withlaptops. A 4-space case allows a full comple-ment of mainstream hardware in standardsizes. Unless they’re very deep, smaller casesmay limit choices in one way or another, whichusually equals more expensive parts with lesscapability.

Why rackmount in general? Why not a nicetower case? Rackmounts certainly do costmore, but I have found the cost offset by theconvenience and sturdiness. On the road, arackmount can screw into a caster rack andtransport with ease.

For local gigging I don’t rack my CPU unit,because I use it in the studio as well. Instead, Ihave a flight case for it. In the studio, it lives ina Raxxess Isoraxx on a rack-shelf unit. When Ipack for the gig, I just undo the cabling, slideout the computer, and put it into its flight case.This is convenient for me. I don’t have to

Nothing has had such an enormous impact on music production in

recent years as software synthesis and sampling. These tools are stun-

ning in their scope and sound. Yet this software playground rarely leaves the

studio, and dedicated hardware keyboards continue to reign supreme in live

settings.

In 2005, does this really make any sense? Hardly. Software offers superior

flexibility, configuration, and creative potential on the stage. While the vari-

ables introduced in a computing environment appear staggering compared

to the relative simplicity of a single-purpose synth or sampler, they are not

insurmountable—and more musicians are discovering the pleasures of a com-

puter-based performance rig every day. Digital stagecraft has certainly

arrived.

But how does one get there? How do we set up a rig we can really depend

upon? Surprisingly, it’s not so hard, if we consider the challenges of the stage

when designing our systems.

By Bruce Richardson

Despite the bumrap, software-based musicalinstruments canbe reliable onstage—as long asyou put togethera reliable rig.

Part 1: the computer itself.

Rigors of theRoad Rig

VIf e a t u r e

The engineers at GForce have a passion for one thing—incredibly realistic emulations of vintage keyboards. These software

instruments bring back the synths that defined an era—the Minimoog, ARP Odyssey, Oxford OSCAR and Mellotron. In addition to

being authentic in sound and function, these incredible emulations have the advantage of modern features like memory, additional

modulation and new performance modes the original designers never dreamed of (not to mention staying in perfect tune). Use them

alone or with your favorite host software.

www.m-audio.comrecording interfaces USB keyboards studio monitors microphones preamps sound libraries music software

MSRP: $ 129.95

MSRP: $ 129.95

MSRP: $ 129.95

MSRP: $ 199.95

M-Audio is a trademark of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All product names used here are trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with AvidTechnology, Inc. The trademarks belonging to other manufacturers are used solely to identify the products of those manufacturers, whose sounds and tone were studied during GForce’s sound model development.

includes over 1GB ofadditional tape banks

MA_GFrc1b_VrtInstMyJn05.qxd 6/3/05 11:36 AM Page 1


4. A face but no head: Yet another alternative is Muse Research’s Receptor(www.museresearch.com) is specially-designed Windows computer that replaces the moni-tor and keyboard with an LED screen and front-panel knobs and buttons.

unbolt the computer in and out of a rack, andin practice I have not found a compelling rea-son that it makes a difference on stage.

When I set up, I place the computer on thestage, and the rack either atop it or in closeproximity. It only becomes worth it for me torack the computer when someone else is doingthe lifting and toting. In fact, I have beenknown to forego the flight case on a gig witheasy ins and outs. The rackmount case in andof itself provides easy carrying and good pro-tection.

The biggest dangers in going sans-case arereduced shock protection in the event of abump or drop, and the possibility of damagingrear connectors. My last vehicle was not quitelarge enough to accommodate the CPU’s flightcase along with everything else, but I havesince solved that problem (and must offer the

observation that the Honda Element seems tohave been invented just for musicians). So forextra insurance I now use the case most of thetime.

Moving on to the computer’s stuffing, Ibelieve it is worth spending a little moremoney to buy locally if at all possible.Choosing the guts is all about risk reduction—not to say that the risk of problems is high in awell-tested system. In practice, I have found itto be low. Nevertheless, less risk is better.

The parts likely to be stocked in your localcomputer superstore will be stocked in othercommunities. Some of the more esoteric partsavailable online are not. Should you encounterfailure on the road, or at the eleventh hour in alocal club, being able to dispatch a loyal friendto fetch a part is advantageous. Even if it’ssame-brand-different-part, you increase theodds of quick recovery. The drivers may be sim-ilar, even the same. System impact will likely besimilar.

Power supplies should be beefy and quiet.Don’t skimp, because extra hard drives, audiohardware, etc. all put some load on the system.These days, 400 watts is a reasonable mini-mum. Put a quiet, variable RPM fan in every

hole. This allows you to speed down the fans incool and quiet environments, while providingas much cooling as possible when the heat’son.

Cases with big, grille-covered fan holes coolbetter than the “poked hole” variety. Anythingthat impedes the flow of air reduces coolingefficiency.

I don’t recommend cooling exotica involvingliquids for a road machine, for all the obviousreasons. Heatpipe solutions will work in someenvironments, but forced air works mostdependably. I favor CPU cooling solutionsbased on large fans and large heatsinks, sincethese are usually more dependable than small-er, higher RPM fans (as well as quieter).

Use wire ties to secure all internal cabling toanchor points, taking care not to kink or bindcabling. But in doing so, leave slack in critical

locations. In particular, you’ll want to be ableto get the drive cage out and accessible with-out taking loose a lot of wiring. Secure the bulkof the cabling’s weight so that in cartage,chances of cables shaking loose are minimized.

Always facilitate the maximum airflowthrough the case. Stages can get very hot, ascan outdoor venues, so make certain that theCPU, drives, and other hot-running compo-nents get the maximum airflow possible. Aswith anything else, balance is the key. Tiedown just enough to make things secure andopen, but not enough to prevent quick mainte-nance.

Audio hardwareMy live rack currently contains a power/light

unit, a multieffects hardware unit, a pitch-to-MIDI converter, a 12-channel mixer, and anEcho Layla 20 audio interface.

The choice of the Layla 20 lies partly in itsgood working relationship with my choices ofsoftware for live use (Tascam GigaStudio andNative Instruments Reactor), and partly in thefact that I already own three of them. Because Ihave upgraded the studio systems to newermodels, I am able to keep a Layla 20 in both

the live rack and in the studio. This has beenideal, and it leaves me with two extra PCI-cardsand an extra breakout box in case one goesbad.

Here again, we’re leveraging expenseagainst failure and that equation is personal.The most redundancy one can afford is alwaysthe right answer.

When choosing your audio interface, nomatter what the brand, ask yourself a series ofquestions. Foremost, does it work well withyour choice of software? How many discreteoutputs do you desire from the software you’reusing? Do you want to route audio into thesystem for effects purposes? Do you want it toalso be your MIDI interface? Do you desire anyadditional digital I/O or clocking functions?

I use both of my main performance applica-tions to process microphone input, and I some-times route multiple output pairs, hence mypersonal choice serves me very well. Internetdiscussion groups are a good source for infor-mation about putting together equipmentfrom different manufacturers, since there’s agood chance somebody is using the samecombination.

Keep your video interface simple. No musicsoftware requires particularly cutting edgegraphics performance, and high-performancevideo cards generate lots of heat. Some needfans, and these small, high-RPM fans are veryprone to failure.

The cards of a generation or three back aremore than sufficient. Built-in motherboardvideo is invariably good enough, unless yourun into a problem with some specific manu-facturer vs. your software choices. Again, theinternet is chock-full of discussion on which

Macs on stage: The most common wayto road-proof a Mac is simply to put it ina flight case, wedged into the foam lin-ing and held in place by friction. As longas the front and rear lids are removedwhile it’s on, cooling is not a problem.

If you prefer to rack-mount a Mac,Marathon Computer(www.Marathoncomputer.com) hasattachments for blue and white G3s, G4s,and G5s.

The most redundancy one can afford is always the right answer.

VIf e a t u r e

Open Labs’ Neko incorprates a keyboard, and a computer with proprietary software.

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hardware works well with what. Do yourhomework, and you will be happier. I use olderNVidia-based cards in my machines, and theyhave worked well for me.

MonitorsMy current monitor is a generic 15” LCD.

No need to spend big bucks here, so look forbargains. CRT monitors are cheaper, but theirbulk and weight makes them inconvenient tomove and awkward to place on stage.Anything can happen on the bandstand. Thebigger they are, the harder they fall. And thedorkier they look.

I have a flight case for this monitor, which ishandily enough the same exact case I use totransport the CPU unit. Put directional arrowson the case so that it will be packed properly incase it’s not you doing the packing. Protect theface of the monitor with a piece of foam if youare storing other items in the case that canmove around. LCD screens are not fragile, butthey are vulnerable to pressure and sharp-object injury.

I use an amp stand to hold it up in live use,but one can also get quite creative with custom

VESA mount solutions. There are many nicemounts on the market, and if your appetiteruns to the exotic, any machine shop worth itssalt could manufacture whatever mount youdesire. I am currently investigating a mic standmount.

Consider the possibility of visibility-reducingglare before you actually start gigging withyour new rig. A low-key club date is likely noproblem. But if you work with more elaboratestage lighting, you may need a monitor hood. Ihave been reduced to shrouding my head witha towel in the Texas heat, like a large-formatphotographer, on an outdoor gig where thesun was setting at my back. Anticipate your sit-uation as much as possible. I looked very dorkythat day.

The hoodA great monitor hood can be fashioned out

of corrugated plastic signboard, black beingthe most opaque, but any color will reducedirect glare. Cut a sheet of signboard to thetotal of your monitor’s top, left, and right sidedimensions. Make the cut such that the corru-gations in the signboard are running perpendi-cular to the screen—we’ll use them as bendingguides for good sharp corners. Leave about

12” of signboard in the dimension parallel tothe interior ribs; we’ll trim it later.

Now apply good quality Velcro to the facto-ry edge (the one perpendicular to the ribs).Apply the opposite-sex velcro to those edges ofthe monitor, and starting on the left side,attach the signboard, letting the excess stickstraight up. Bend the signboard carefully onthe corner and stick down the top dimension,then again to attach the right side. When fin-ished, you’ll have a boxy hood.

Now determine the depth you’d like yourhood to be, remove it, and use a straightedgeand a box-knife to trim your hood to thedesired overhang. Angle the sides, if desired,since lighting tends to mostly shine down-wards. You want the least amount of overhangthat will do the job. It’s a cheap solution, so

you can always build a couple. They’ll fold niceand flat in your monitor case.

HeadlessnessAll this said, there are advocates of essential-

ly black-box solutions, sans monitors and eveninput devices like keyboards and mice. One canset up software to autoload, and create amachine that simply turns on and off.

To me, the essence of digital stagecraft isusing every possible tool the medium provides,and the visual component is the primary inter-face of modern software. To deprive myself ofthis would be unthinkable.

The simplest example is the best for this: Iuse a screen-manipulated Theremin emulationin one of my Reaktor setups. It’s great fun, andwithout the visual component, it would be dif-ficult to set up for live use. I want the ability tomanipulate the environment in ways I may nothave pre-conceived. And the thought of flyingblind frightens me.

Keyboard and mouseOn stage, the trackball is a far more useful

input device than a mouse, since it can beVelcroed to a static point. I also Velcro thecomputer’s keyboard to my 88-key controller.This has worked well for me. I have seen peo-ple adapt drawers, etc., to racks or stands.

The important thing is to find a location thatworks for you, and to make it secure for per-formance.

ConclusionsOnce you have a good dependable comput-

er system built and have adapted it to thestage, what’s left is the thoroughly fun part:picking the software tools you’ll use to per-form, and the keyboards and other controllersyou’ll use to make them go.

The great thing about a computer on stageis that there are really no fixed limits on whatyou can hook up as an input device, or howmany input devices you can string up to createyour own personal jungle gym of musicaladventure.

Bruce Richardson is a Dallas-based composer,producer, and performer. He has scored hundredsof productions in television, film, and theater; pro-duced world-class artists; and has appeared as asideman on stages and in arenas all over the world.

Pre-configured com-puters: Several companiesput together Windowscomputers tested and con-figured for musical applica-tions, often with specificsoftware—e.g. GigaStudioor Kontakt—and some-times even specific samplelibraries in mind. The BYCVisionDAW (www.vision-daw.com) is an example ofone we’ve had excellent luck with.

I avoid laptops. Their portability isattractive, but in many ways thatconvenience is only skin deep.

VIf e a t u r e

Muse Research’s Receptor has a proprietary operating system, but it hosts standard VST instruments andplug-ins. You can connect a keyboard and monitor by ethernet when you’re back in the studio.

Distributed by

M-Audio is a registered trademark of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

MA_LiveIns_VrtInstMyJn05.qxd 6/3/05 12:10 PM Page 1



GigaPulse interface

In a nutshell, convolution technology allows environments—or anythingelse that affects sound—to be sampled, and its attributes applied to othersounds or instruments. You can place a dry recorded instrument into anyimpulsed room or hall, and it will sound virtually the same as if it hadactually been recorded in that space.

Convolution processing is not just limited to rooms. GigaPulse comeswith impulses of a variety of microphones, DSP gear, instrument body res-onance, and more. You can also create your own impulses and do allkinds of crazy things (see “Getting giggy with Giga”).

GigaStudio was the first sampler to have an impulse processor built in,but the idea is catching on in other products, and convolution technolo-gy is the cutting edge of sampling. A good example of it is in the upcom-ing GigaViolin. This library will offer one set of samples—dry, body-lessstrings—and a dozen or so violin bodies to choose from.

You can then enable any or all of the microphone models in GigaPulseand even try different pickup patterns and filters. After that, all this can beplaced in a room.

But for this article we’re going to concentrate on the basics of usingGigaPulse for the room and hall environments.

Advance placement

There are two main ways to assign instrument positions in a GigaPulseHall Environment: Point Source, and Stereo Spread - Multiple Position.

Setting up point source

The first thing to do is select an instrument and load it into Giga. For thisexample I’m going to use the new French-style oboe from VSL (ViennaSymphonic Library), included with Giga. These samples were recordedfairly dry to allow for good control over how much ambience you want,but they still have a little bit of air. That allows the sound to breathe a bitand gives it some authentic spacial cues.

We’ll start by loading a mono version of the oboe into Giga on MIDIchannel 1, Port 1, to demonstrate the point source method of using

By Dave Govett

TASCAM GigaStudio:Taking the GigaPulseRouting instruments through GigaPulse, the built-in convolution processor inGigaStudio 3* isn’t as convoluted as it seems. The man who wrote most of theGigaStudio 3 manual explains.

What a timely concept for a music industry magazine! I’m veryglad to be here dishing out info on GigaStudio, a subject dearto my heart.

You could say I’m the first user of Giga technology, since I persuaded theguys at NemeSys (the original developer before TASCAM acquired thecompany) to let me beta test it. They ended up hiring me, and I did afew years of tech support, making training videos, documentation, doingclinics, and I laid out the first couple of dozen Giga-format samplelibraries. Now I do contract work on Giga for TASCAM—especially docu-mentation.

For this article I’m going to go over the fantastic GigaPulse convolutionprocessor included with GigaStudio 3.0, sharing some recommendationsfor getting the best sound and most efficiency out of it. Please be sure tocheck out the audio examples on the Virtual Instruments website(www.VitualInstrumentsmag.com).

Stereo Spread-Multiple Position:Point Source:

moreonline


(*GigaPulse will also be available as a stand-alone VST plug-in in the near future.)



GigaPulse. If you listen to the audio examples on the site, I think you’ll beamazed at how good a mono instrument can sound. Please check outOboe-Mono-Dry.mp3 for reference.

The MIDI Channel output of the oboe is assigned to DSP channels 1 & 2in Giga.

MIDI Channel output assigned to DSP mixer channels 1&2

Go to the DSP Mixer Channel pair 1 & 2 and expand it by clicking on thelittle triangle at the top right corner of the channel.

Use the channel insert to open up the GigaPulse. While te uses more pro-cessing power than sharing the processor, I prefer to use inserts forGigaPulse rooms instead of Auxiliary Sends. This puts 100% of the signalin the room the way it would happen in real life.

Opening a GigaPulse

That brings up the GigaPulse Interface, which should look like this:

The default GigaPulse Interface

For this example, I’m using the “Medium Hall.” I particularly like this hallbecause it’s fairly ambient without getting too reverberant.

Selecting the Medium Hall

Position-8 (Right-Close)osition-2 (Left-Close)

Position-17 (Right-Far)Position-11 (Left-Far)

The Medium Hall program

The hall was sampled with five mics and 18 speakers. You can simplychoose any of the 18 positions on the stage with the mouse.

Be sure to check out the audio examples of various positions on the stageusing the Mono Oboe.

Oboe-Mono-GP-Pos-2.mp3 left up close

Oboe-Mono-GP-Pos-8.mp3 right up close

Oboe-Mono-GP-Pos-11.mp3 left farther Back

Oboe-Mono-GP-Pos-17.mp3 right farther back

The two arcs of positions on the stage give a nice left-to-right spread, aswell as some depth positioning—which is where impulse technology reallyshines compared to traditional reverb. It’s the front-to-back image that really creates the illusion of space, more than the left-to-right position.

Perspective controller

If the front or back positions are too close or far for an instrument, youcan use the Perspective slider to loosen or tighten the sound (up to theextremes of the recorded positions). This is another reason to useGigaPulse as an insert instead of a shared resource on an aux send.

Channel assignments

Now the question comes up about how to assign the various mics to therear or center channels of the system. That is where the “Mic to MixerRouting” matrix comes in.

First, set the drop-down to “7-Channel” mode for sur-round sound.

From top to bottom we have themic positions; from left to rightwe have the channel assign-ments, which are the seven adja-cent channels to the startingchannel.

For example, if we insert a GigaPulse on input channels 1 & 2, then thechannels in this matrix will be channels 1 through 7; insert the GigaPulseon inputs channels 15 & 16, and these channels will be channels 15-21.

Simply click on the lights to theright of the mix positions to assignany mic position to any of theseseven adjacent channels. Thenyou can go to each of those adja-cent channels and assign them toany available physical outputs, oreven to a group channel.

This is done at the bottom of each channel.

Assigning physical outputs

Now we have Mixer channels 1-8 assigned to hard-ware outputs 1-8. This gives us seven discrete physi-cal outputs that can then be routed to the speakers.

If we use a group channel, then that group channel can be assigned to aphysical output as well.

So the signal path starts at the MIDI channel, works its way through themixer, and goes on to the sound card physical outputs, or to group chan-nels first and then the physical outputs.

The MIDI channels are assigned to DSP Mixer Channels in the MIDIChannel & Port Screen.

Mixer channel is assigned tophysical output

Or the Mixer channel isassigned to group channel.

Then the Group is assigned to the physical outputs.

The Perspective controller

Moving the slider to the left tightens and brings the sound closer; movingit right loosens and pushes the sound farther away.

You can start with a close position and make it wetter, or start with a farposition and make it drier using the Perspective slider. Always try bothoptions to see which one works best.

Enabling more mic positions for surround

So far we’ve only dealt with the default 2-mic setup, however these hallshave been “impulsed” in 7-channel surround. To enable any of thesechannels, simply click on the mic position with the mouse.

CPU usage

Keep in mind that each extra channel uses additional CPU processing.However, the Giga engineers are well known for making their programsefficient; GigaPulse is fairly thrifty with the processor considering what it isaccomplishing. On my 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 machine, I find that each micposition in the medium hall adds an extra 3% to the CPU usage. If I wereto dedicate this machine to nothing but GigaPulse, I could get fourinstances of five channels each—and that’s in full 5-speaker surround, allat the same time on a single machine. (80% of the CPU is being used atthat point.)


All 7 Mic positions enabled5 Mic positions enabled

What is convolution and why is it the latest craze?

While there’s still a place for the conventional reverb unitswe’ve been using for the past 25 years, convolution pro-

cessing has brought a new level of realism to reverb and otherkinds of modeling. Convolution actually allows you to sampleanything that has an effect on sound—a room or hall, a guitaramp, mic, musical instrument body…anything.

Until a few years ago, real-time convolution processing wasonly available in very high-end hardware units from Sony andYamaha. Then a few years ago a Dutch company called AudioEase introduced a software unit called Altiverb, so namedbecause it uses the AltiVec coprocessor on the chips in all G4and G5 Macs.

Altiverb is still an extremely viable contender, but now thereare several others as well—in fact Logic Audio Pro even comeswith one (Space Designer). Following Gigapulse’s lead, convolu-tion processing is now finding its way into virtual instruments(Native Instruments Kontakt 2, MOTU’s forthcoming SymphonicInstrument, and others will certainly follow). This is an excitingdevelopment for sampling, not just for reverb but because ofthings like instrument body modeling (see text).



Oboe-Stereo-GP-Close-Center.mp3 shows what this sounds like.To adjust the left right position of the oboe, simply pan it using the MIDIor volume panning.

These examples show what this sounds like:

Oboe-Stereo-GP-Close-Left.mp3

Oboe-Stereo-GP-Close-Right.mp3

The same placement idea appliesto the rear stage positions. To posi-tion the sound farther back, simplyassign the left mic to stage posi-tion 11 and the right mic to stageposition 17.

These examples show what itsounds like farther back with differ-ent panning:

Oboe-Stereo-GP-Far-Center.mp3

Oboe-Stereo-GP-Far-Left.mp3

Oboe-Stereo-GP-Far-Right.mp3

You can widen or narrow the stereo spread by using different stage posi-tions. It’s also possible to be creative and combine left close with far right orany combination. However, a symmetrical setup is right for most situations.

If you play a full-bandwidth, very sharpsound through a speaker in a room (or

through anything else) and sample thereverb decay, you get an impulse responseof the room. In other words, you get arecording of the room’s audio signature—its response to being excited at every fre-quency. Impulses are theoretical, infinitelyshort noise spikes that contain all the audi-ble frequencies.

In reality, sounds that are similar toimpulses (such as starter pistols) are hardfor speakers to reproduce, so for acousticspaces it’s better to to use sine wave sweepsthat are time-compressed back into a singlespike after recording; Audio Ease’s Altiverbconvolution processor actually comes with asweep-generating/recording/processingutility for making your own samples thisway.

There are some differences in the convo-lution playback engines on the market, but

the quality of the impulse response samplesthemselves is by far the greatest factor inthe quality of the sound. Impulse responsesare simply audio files, of course.

Here’s a good way to picture how convo-lution processing works; special thanks toArjen of Audio Ease for his help explainingthis rather difficult concept.

Sampling—digital recording—works bytaking 44,100 “readings” of the source persecond (or 48,000, etc., depending on thesampling rate). Each one of those readings,or samples, represents a voltage; the contin-uous waveform you hear on playback is pro-duced by “drawing a line” to connect eachone of those voltage numbers on an imagi-nary bar graph.

What convolution does is take each oneof the samples in the source recording andscale it—that is, multiply it—relative to thevalue of each successive sample in theimpulse response file. So each sample in

effect gets its own reverb. If the sourcesample is short, it’s repeated to make up forit not being as long as the impulseresponse, or vice versa (it makes no differ-ence because 1x2 is the same as 2x1).

Because each sample has to be processed44,100 times every second (depending onthe sample rate), it’s easy to understandwhy convolution processing requires a lot ofCPU. And the longer the impulse responseis, the more CPU it takes, since there aremore samples to process.

Mathematically, convolution modelsexactly what would happen if you played aninstrument in the room in which yourecorded the impulse response; in theorythere’s no difference in the result. Reality isa little more complicated, but convolutionreverbs are stunningly realistic—and gettingmore so as the technology advances andmore processing power becomes available.

How convolution works:

Stereo spread-multiple position

To really hear a stereo sample sparkle and shine, try the multiple select,stereo spread method. This lets you keep the air and the positional cuesfrom the stereo samples as you place them in the GigaPulse environment.

You can still use the point source method on stereo samples if you wish,but I find that the stereo samples really benefit with this method. This isespecially true of ensemble instruments like a strings, which have a widerstage position than a point-source instrument like a solo woodwind.

First, load up the stereo version of the oboe.

Check out the example: Oboe-Stereo-Dry.mp3 for reference.

Instead of just clicking on the stage positions, this time we’ll use theControl key to lock the pairs of positions to pairs of microphones.Choosing mic positions that are farther apart widens the stereo spread,and conversely closer mics narrow it.

To do this, hold down the Control key and click on the left-front mic posi-tion. Then continue holding down Control and click on stage position 2.Do the same thing for the right mic position and assign it to stage posi-tion 6. The colors of the positions change to show which mic is assignedto which stage position.

Now when we play the oboe ithas a more live stereo sound inthe center.

Close & Far Spread:Narrow Spread:



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Sample libraries have come a long waysince the days when they really wantedto be hidden in a mix. You either had to

mix them in low or disguise them with somelive instruments in the foreground.

Yet while that’s no longer true, live instru-ments can breathe a lot of life and expressioninto a piece, in fact even a small percussionpart can add a lot. And there are still timeswhen you want to layer real instruments ontop of sampled ones to create an ensemble, forexample if you’re creating a pop brass ensem-ble. (There are some intriguing big band brasslibraries on the horizon, but as of now nothingavailable is totally satisfactory.)

That sets up what this article is really about:combining live tracks with synth/sampledtracks. Why would we do such a cheesy thing?

(To save money, doh!) Can it possibly work?(Surprisingly well!) How do we approach this?(Very carefully.)

About live sound sourcesIf we’re going to generate the equivalent of

real live sounds, and or integrate synth soundswith live ones, we need to know a little aboutthose live sounds. Here are some verities:

• when we record a live instrument with a

microphone, the instrument and the micro-phone are both in a room, and some distancefrom each other;

• when the microphone is within the “nearfield” of the instrument (i.e. within a distanceequal to the instrument’s largest vibrating orresonating dimension) we don’t “capture” theentire sound of the instrument, and what weget may not be representative of what we thinkthe instrument should really sound like;

• when the microphone is outside the “nearfield” of the instrument it may very well pickup reverberance from the room, particularly ifit is a small room;

• therefore when we capture the “real”sound of an instrument, we often also capturethe sound of the room in which it is recorded,which is often something other than what wewant;

• and finally, we need to keep in mind thatmicrophones perceive sounds in profoundly dif-ferent ways than our ears do, and that a soundwhose quality has been altered by the processof going through a microphone AND a loud-speaker AND another, different room to the lis-tener is without doubt going to sound a lot dif-ferent than the original sound did. Theacoustics and psychoacoustics of the situationrequire it.

When we are struggling with any kind ofproduction that involves combining live soundsand sampling or synthesis (or even if we’re juststruggling with sampling), we need to keepthese verities in mind.

Recording live sourcesWhen we record live sources, particularly in

overdubbing/layering situations, we need todevote considerable care to mic choice andplacement, for the reasons cited above. Again,we are balancing direct versus room soundwhile obsessing about the particular tone quali-ty we’re getting, which may not be (a) what itsounds like to our ears in the studio, or (b)exactly what we had in mind or wanted. Tinychanges in physical setup result in big, oftenillogical changes in sound character.

Sometimes we find we really like the roomambience we hear in the studio and try to cap-ture it by hanging up a stereo pair of roommics, only to be really surprised at how trashyit sounds when we check it out on monitors inthe control room.

My experience is this: when we’re doingmultitrack production, we need to close-micsounds and suppress room tone as much aspossible when we’re tracking and overdubbing,except in very special cases. When we wantroom tone, ambience, or reverberance, wegenerally do best to add it in mixdown or post-production.

When we’re doing live acoustical recording(classical music, some kinds of acoustic music,live club recordings, etc.), we try to capture thelive ambience as part of the recording (via oneof a number of techniques). Here we’re lessconcerned with details of timbre of an individ-ual instrument than we are about the balancebetween instruments and the balance between

By Dave Moulton

Combining Live and Virtual

InstrumentsCreating an ensemble of instruments recorded indifferent spaces presents some problems. Here’show to get around them.

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the instruments and the room tone and/orreverberance.

Orchestration and studioorchestration: the fine art ofmisdirection

It’s worth thinking for a moment about whywe do this stuff. We’re making up music, right? Ifwe are doing it the traditional way, we write dotson a page that musicians play. We usually make

a decision as to who plays what. Sometimes wesay to ourselves something like, “I really wantthis part to be like screaming lead guitar, exceptwith a harmonic doubling a third below.”Welcome to the art of orchestration.

Orchestration is the act of assigning differentsounds to different instruments, as well as mak-ing sure those sounds are playable by thoseinstruments. It’s a wonderful craft, and if you’regood at it, it can be a lot of fun.

Something similar happens in the recordingstudio when we are producing recordingsthere. We combine, double, mix, and otherwisecombine instruments to get different soundsand perspectives (not to mention all the signalprocessing stuff we do when suitably inspired).I call this “studio orchestration.” We are decid-ing how it is going to sound, not by calling upvarious instruments, but by the way we micinstruments, mix instruments together, and/orprocess instruments.

The reason I belabor this is because in multi-track production, we usually do live/synth dou-blings like this for one of several pretty basic rea-sons: (a) we want to make one instrument soundlike a group of instruments (chorusing/doubling,the Moron Block ‘n Tackle Choir, etc.), (b) wewant to add a sense of spaciousness (spreaders,explained later; spread-triple-tracks; room ambi-ence; reverb; etc.), or (c) we want to add someear candy effect to a given musical voice (reallytight live unison doublings in mono, or a reallyinteresting extra coloration on an instrumentalpart). These things are all at the heart of studioorchestration.

Now these doublings and triplings are alltried and true effects that mostly have becomewonderfully effective clichés. Often, however,we can’t use them because we don’t have theresources available (usually either enough play-ers or enough time), so we resort to synths orsamplers to fill in the doublings we want.

Why we need to record dry tracks

At this point it’s clear why we desire drytracks to do this. If the tracks have room tone,that tone is going to become a significant partof the resulting sound, and there is no reason-able way out of it. That’s okay if you really likeand can live with that particular room tone.

Meanwhile, for my kind of tweaky musicproduction work, sampled sounds with room

tone are really a shaky premise—unless I don’tplan on doubling them with anything else,because now we have Sampled Rooms whetherwe want them or not. Uh-oh! Sample librariesoften give you a choice of wet or dry mic posi-tions; my personal preference is to opt for thedriest and add back moisture in mixing.

There’s another way to look at this, though.For a great deal of film and broadcast audioproduction, the quality of the supplied roomtone is just fine, and having it aboard from thebeginning saves at least one step and probablya number of them.

Anyway, when we are tracking and/or col-lecting our own samples, this means a deadstudio and close miking.

Mixing live and sampled or synth tracks

If you’re layering a live track on top of sam-ples in order to create a larger sound, forexample building a pop horn section with onlyone real trumpet, then obviously the live instru-ment has to be the “leader.” We want its live-ness to cover the simplification of the sampledhorns and misdirect the listener’s attentionfrom their essential cheeseball character.

So make it louder and make it brighter(boost EQ in the 2-4kHz range). If the sampledtracks are in unison with the live, make themsofter (say, 2-3dB) and also gently roll off theirtop end. Make sure, also, that the sampledtracks aren’t phase-locked clones of one anoth-

er—changs the sample patch slightly for eachline so they have small but audible differences.

If the tracks are harmonies rather than uni-son, make the live track the top note in thechord, with the sampled harmony parts below.Again, think about relative levels and EQ,although they won’t be quite as important.

After you have them tracked and you arehappy with the performance timing, you mightwish to slip the synth doublings later in time by3 or 4 milliseconds relative to the live track,which will further direct the listener’s attentionto the musical quality of the live voice.

Finally, tight gain riding and panning onindividual notes can be a beautiful thing. Onimportant notes, bring the levels up for empha-sis, and/or pan them left and right to open upthe sound, just for that note. This is easy to doin a DAW.

The same is true with synth tracks. They maybe more cheeseball than sampled tracks, butyou can make a virtue of that by making thepatch sufficiently weird or bizarro to enhancethe live track, if you can be subtle about it.

Dealing with stereoStereo can really be your friend here. You

can pan parts to left, right, and/or center formore spaciousness. You can add ambience tothe lead track only, or to all the tracks (whichwill have the added benefit of misdirecting thelistener some more). You can add stereo reverbto just the live track, leaving the synth tracksdry (and less noticeable), while also increasing

spaciousness and envelopment. And there’salways the panning stuff I mentioned above.

SpreadersPlease look at Figure 1, the screen dump

from Pro Tools that accompanies this article.A spreader is a cool little trick for “adding a

room” to a sound when reverb or ambience istoo much. You simply generate the first lateralearly reflections for left and right.

In your DAW, set up a stereo aux input orwhatever the equivalent is called in your soft-ware. Insert a stereo medium slap delay withdifferent delays, say 29 and 33ms—actual val-ues depend on the song, the tempo, and themood, and are selected by trial, error, andear—panned hard left and right. Make the ear-lier of the delays approximately 3dB softer.

Send all the signals you want to “spread” tosaid aux input via one of the internal buses.Adjust the send level to taste. When you get itright, you barely notice it until you mute it, atwhich point the dry track becomes surprisinglyflat, one-dimensional, and comparatively lifeless.

If you want a more complex spreader, youcan add more delays (four or six is good, eight

Figure 1: spreader. Caption: A basic spreader program creates “walls” with two discrete delays, panned hardL and R. It’s barely noticeable when you get it right—but you sure notice it if you mute it.

You might wish to slip the synth doublings later in

time by 3 or 4 milliseconds relative to the live

track, which will further direct the listener’s

attention to the musical quality of the live voice.

VIf e a t u r e


is usually a little much). Work out a volley oflateral early delays from a room the size of asmall club. Remember, the earlier of two nearlyidentical delay times from opposing channelsshould be made 3-5dB softer. This is to offsetthe precedence effect, which tends to “pull”the spreader ambience toward the side withthe earlier time. Do this by ear, sitting on themedian plane (i.e. centered perfectly betweenyour monitors).

Interestingly, I find that these simple primi-tive spreaders give me about 80% of all theshort-term room ambience I want. The placethat they don’t work is with impulsive sounds,such as snare drums, when the volley of delaytimes is usually revealed as a “smear” of snaredrum hits. They do work great with vocals,electric bass, lead guitar, and horn tracks.

AmbienceAmbience is short-term reverb, the kind of

sonic decay that happens in small roomsand/or comparatively dead rooms. It can be areally attractive kind of sonic perfume thatgives a palpable sense of “realness” to thesound without imposing a “wash” of decayingreverberance over (or under) everything.

I find 150-300ms decay time—it might becalled reverb time on your box or plug-in—isabout as long as you want to go, and predelay, ifany, should be quite short (no more than 30ms).

The point about both spreaders and ambi-ence is that when you send a group of live andsynth/sampled sounds together to one of theseeffects, they acquire a similar character andtend to unify into a comparatively believableensemble or section. That cheesy syntheticquality begins to really go away, and mean-while you haven’t done anything that limitsyour options much for the rest of the mix.

Dealing with reverbIt’s a little tougher dealing with reverb.

Reverb times begin at about 750ms (fairly dry)and go out to about 2.5 seconds (wet). Suchreverb is essential to support most atmosphericstring or sustained keyboard pads.

Naturally, it covers a multitude of sins—including your sampled string sounds if you’relayering live strings on top of them. The prob-lem is that it can cover a lot of other stuff aswell if you aren’t careful. Today’s convolutionreverbs work well for this, but standard reverbplug-ins may not sound all that good in thisapplication.

Personally, I’m a reverb junkie. I love the stuffand what it does. However, I’ve learned througha lot of painful experience to restrain my morecrass impulses. The trick for most pop work is touse reverb sparingly—either for effect, suddenrelaxation, or as a lush sort of background cush-ion for more dry upfront sounds in the lead inslower, less heavy material.

For the kinds of things we’re trying toaccomplish in this article, reverb isn’t necessari-ly the best fix. Happily, when you need it youcan also apply the reverb to stuff that alreadyhas spreader treatments or ambience. Theyactually help the reverb, as a general rule. I

often apply both ambience patches and largehall patches to various sounds in my mixes.

If you aren’t sufficiently con-fused by now, try surround!

Surround makes all of this a bit more tricky.Because you now have five channels (well, four,anyway if you tend to skip the center channel),it is possible to spread stuff out more and makeit clearer. Unfortunately, that also reveals thewarts a bit more. For your live/synth sections,you probably want to devote some spreadingor ambience to them in stereo, whether youassign that stereo to front or back.

Don’t try to be really sophisticated (not yet,anyway!) with full surround ambiences andspreaders (which are actually a lot of fun, ifimmensely time consuming) until you are reallysure of what you are doing. Also, for sustainedpads it is immensely tempting to put one partin each channel and then wash the wholething with reverb. If you get it right, this canbe wonderfully enveloping.

However, you run the risk of revealing yourcheeseball synth tracks all too clearly (as in“Hmmm. That violin in Left Front is pretty nice,but it’s a shame it’s all muddied up by thecheeseball synth tracks everywhere.”)

The payoff1Mostly, what we’re trying to do in these

cases is develop a sense of ensemble size, rich-

ness, and solidity. We want the assembled live,synth, and sampled parts to feel like part of areal band, in a real space, playing real music.It’s an illusion, of course.

Some whacko things to help that illusionalong include some of the following tricks:

Build up a section feel by double- or triple-tracking each part in unison on a separatetrack, using patches that mimic individualinstruments rather than sections. There comesa point, while you are burning through animmense number of tracks, when it reallybegins to “feel” like a section!

If you have enough sends and speakers, sendyour section tracks to an array of individualloudspeakers set on chairs in the studio,arrayed as if they are an ensemble of players orsingers. Then record them in stereo, usingwhichever of the three main stereo mic tech-niques floats your boat the most! It can feelremarkably live and nobody will ever figure outhow you did it (except me, of course!).

Mainly, concentrate on developing the illu-sion! It’s a musical thing more than a technicalthing. Use your ears. And keep trying until itfeels really good.

Thanks for listening.

Dave Moulton is virtually an instrumentalcheeseball these days. You can complain to himabout anything at his websitewww.moultonlabs.com.


So I defined all the sounds I used in all theGigaStudios on one graphical Environmentpage. [Again, please see Figure 2.] They werewonderfully sorted in layers like stings, brass,guitars, orchestral percussion, such and such.

So if you had an idea, you didn’t knowwhich sound would be perfect, you just look atit graphically. So you command/click [whichassigns the instrument to the currently selectedtrack]—this one? Maybe. This one? No. Andyou really had your whole pallet at your finger-tips.

VI: But you can’t do that now the wayyou’re working with EXS.

Badelt: They are about to change that too.Right now my pallet is not that graphic, butstill it’s quite a well organized hierarchy ofsounds. It gives me a hierarchical view of whatI can do, which is quite inspiring too.

What they’re doing, the idea is that a chan-nel strip setting is represented like a Favoriteobject, so basically by double-clicking on it youselect it and it loads a track. And then you cancreate a pallet again.

Logic loads so fast. I can load the biggestsounds in just a few seconds. It’s very opti-mized how they do it. We have sounds with somany layers, we reach the limits of the EXSconstantly.

Now they have to make it a really goodsampler. It’s a sample playback engine. I’m sureit can not keep up with the flexibility ofKontakt, MachFive, and Halion. But I prefer itintegrated.

VI: Are you using using other virtual instru-ments than the ones in Logic?

Badelt: The Logic ones are so good. Justlook at the ES2—you can spend weeks with theES2. Now with the different modeling synths, Ihaven’t gotten to the ground floor. It’s amaz-ing.

But I use the Spectrasonics stuff a lot. It’sgreat. Albino. I love these synths—the weirderthey are, the better. To find a tiny little soundin one cue, now you can. To get us all thesehigh and supernatural sounds, the bread andbutter sounds are actually great. I use synths alot in the template.

And I use Kontakt a lot too, actually. I useImpakt quite a bit too, which isKontakt, just a different GUI.

VI: Do you use any of the com-mercially available orchestrallibraries, or just your own customsounds?

Badelt: Basically not the com-mercial libraries. Maybe to aug-ment a sound here and there, butyou won’t even hear it. We just hadthe opportunity to record in a real-ly good hall, most of the people Inow use when I go to London, thesame engineer. It’s about therecording, about the right record-

ing engineer who does film work all the timeand the right hall. The real thing.

But I have lots of it—CD-ROMs of drums andloops. But mostly we create new sounds in aproject.

VI: Do you spend a lot of time program-ming sounds for each project?

Badelt: Well, I have special people for that.We have at least one sound programmer in aproject. It’s a full-time job.

VI: You still have Pro Tools in your rig, even

though you’re not using it for mixing anymore.

Badelt: I use Pro Tools as a video player,playing back effects and dialog and picture.That’s the one thing I don’t do inside Logic yet.I like video at such a high quality for projectionthat it’s just taxing the computer too much.I’m waiting for the quadruple 7GHz!

We’re writing music for films now just likethe Avid guys cut: you need one more editor,you add one more Avid, connected by a fibrechannel drive in another room. It’s scaleable,just another room opens up.

That’s what we’re doing now. If you havetwo weeks or three weeks to write“Constantine,” you need three or four “outlet”composers—arrangers, whatever you call them.Open another room, put another G5 in there,clone our library, and you’re ready to go.

Before it would mean build another studio.Not much more to it anymore.

It doesn’t help you writing a good tune! Youstill have to do that, unfortunately.

Maybe one day! I’ll ask them to put a prefer-ence or two: good cue, bad cue…

"What do you think of our EXS sampler?”

I was laughing at them! I had 14 GigaStudios, each

of them had four MIDI ports. They said, “You can

load 64 samplers.” That’s not even one Giga!

VIi n t e r v i e wBADELT(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 40)

Fig 3: Badelt’s Logic Audio Environment for “Constantine.” This is all running on a single G5.

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InventionsLindemann has been working on Synful

Orchestra for roughly eight years and has hadhis additive synthesizer running for the last fiveor six. Along the way he’s been awarded sever-al patents.

While additive synthesis is nothing new, theSynful approach to dealing with its parametersis unique. The complicated part is searchingand finding the fragments, and then splicingthem together transparently.

A single note may have 100 – 150 harmon-ics and a typical piece of music 10 – 20,000,and that requires a lot of computation.Lindemann created and subsequently patentedan efficient way of doing additive synthesis.The subject of another patent deals with howto smooth out the timbre; simple crossfadingisn’t nearly transparent enough.

Lindemann developed a vocabulary to labeleach phrase and catalogue it. These phrasesthen get crunched by the computer, whichstarts by extracting the harmonics. It takesabout 25 minutes of calculations to produce acompleted instrument, which consists of adatabase that the synthesizer plays in real time.

De...layActually, the initial Synful Orchestra interface

has a Magic Button (“delay for expression”),which is a 1-second lookahead delay thatallows it to calculate note transitions moreaccurately by looking at the incoming MIDIdata. It would be more elegant if the sequencercould tell Synful what notes are coming up inthe track, but there hasn’t been any demandfor such a feature before now.

In the meantime the solution is to sequencethe instrument with the Magic Button turnedoff, slide the track forward one second, andthen turn the button on to listen and tweaknotes before mixing.

PlansLindemann plans to round out the existing

orchestra with such instruments as string sec-tion, staccato strings, harmonics, and varioustremolos and different modes of playing.Upcoming products may include jazz instru-ments, trumpet, and various saxophones, alongwith various iconic-type data fragments andsounds—perhaps a John Coltrane sound forexample.

As of this writing, Synful is available forWindows only, but a Macintosh version is duefor release in July.

The future?Whether the Synful technology is a replace-

ment for sampling is partly a matter of opinion.It certainly won’t be a total replacement;Lindemann feels that sampling works well forinstruments like piano and percussion, whicharen’t changed by the player after the notestarts. Synful’s strength is in modeling expres-sion and note transitions.

Despite its limitations, “some people” feelsampling has an inherent life. Since Synful istied to the original recordings, the sound isalways going to be subjective. At the moment,some of the instruments in its orchestra arearguably better than others.

What’s certain is that Synful is a very inter-esting technology that is likely to wield someinfluence. It makes writing “to the library”—writing to accentuate a given library’s strengthsand avoid its weaknesses—totally unnecessary.And it’s much less demanding of computers.

At the very least, Synful is an exciting newtool to add to our arsenal.

You can download a functional demo andlisten to mp3 examples from www.Synful.com.

Frederick Russ is an accomplished orchestralcomposer. He runs the discussion forum atwww.vi-control.net/forum and invites you to takepart.

TRENDS(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 64)

Economy while writing

For reference reverb while composing, try using just two instances ofGigaPulse and sharing them: one for the up-close spread, the second forthe far back spread.

Far.Close.

enabled and then enable the surround to capture sections to disk whenyou are finished composing. (If you use Giga that way rather than havingit on “slave” machines.)

Happy convolution

Be sure to check out the other rooms and reverb units. GigaPulse shipswith several rooms & halls, as well as some very expensive reverb unitimpulses and a guitar amp, among other things. These programs havedifferent mic or parameter selection options to explore.

But they’re much simpler than the halls we’ve covered here.

GigaPulse comes with a lot of meticulously-sampled impulseresponse files. You can make and import your own as well;

Giga 3.1, due out this summer, makes it really easy to importfiles, and there are instructions on TASCAM’s website for earlierversions (look in the Giga Support area).

If you have a plug-in and/or outboard effects or processingchain you like for a program, for example, you could sample theresult and “burn” an impulse response file. You don’t need touse sine wave sweeps for this—a full-scale digital click (whichyou can create with your DAW’s pencil tool) should work fine.

You can also have a raucously good time creating your owneffects. The obvious way is to find interesting things and samplethem, whether it’s the inside of a piano, a cardboard tube, a toi-let, or someone’s huge mouth. Just keep it clean.

Here’s a tip from King Idiot: how about sampling some ofyour entire mix and running a signal through that? The result isan interesting ambient effect.

GIGAPULSE(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 54)

This also applies to the other mic positions, which can be assigned in thesame way to stage positions.

Here, the surround mics are assigned to the same positions as the closeones:

The best way to do this is to usetwo group channels. Put oneinstance in the insert of eachgroup, one for close-up, the otherfor farther back. Then you canassign any mixer channel output—i.e. any instrument—to either ofthe two groups to position it on

the stage. Instruments can be panned left to right by simply using theMIDI or mixer channel pan control.

To save resources, you can compose with two of the mic positions

Getting giggy with Giga

David Govett has been using Giga since before it was released. As a com-poser, he worked with game composing company Fatman for eight years.Dave has programmed many of the top sample libraries.


in the NI sampler engine. For example thereare plenty of velocity layers, and some of theprograms auto-alternate samples every timeyou hit a key to avoid exact repetitions. Also,many programs have extra performance ele-ments like pitch glide samples leading into bassand guitar notes when you play extra hard.Other than velocity, you play Colossus with thesustain pedal, modwheel crossfades whenlabeled, and then use MIDI CC11 (expression)for riding the volume.

Beyond that, the Kompakt player has a vari-ety of parameters and effects you can use toshape the sounds—traditional synthesis param-eters (filters, modulation, envelopes), tuning,etc. These features are available independentlyfor each of the eight instruments an instance ofthe player can load. Colossus leaves most ofthat up to you by default, but it’s very easy touse.

SoundsAs you can see from the screen dump with

this review, there are 18 banks in Colossus,each with a long list of instruments. There’salso a General MIDI bank that uses mostly thesame instruments.

The Colossus library is very well organizedand therefore takes virtually no time to learn.On the other hand, there’s so much in it thatevery time you browse through the programsyou discover something else. If you getbored—which you won’t—it’s very easy tolayer sounds on the same MIDI channel, andthat opens up a lot of possibilities.

And now we got to some subjective com-ments about the sounds, starting with theacoustic and electric drums. There’s a goodselection of nice kits, starting with a reallyfunky ’60s kit to brush and stick jazz kits with acharacteristically tiny (probably 18”) open bassdrum, on up to big rocking heavy impact kits,techno kits, 808-style hip-hop kits, and so on.All are cleanly recorded and tastefullyprocessed; these drums stand up to prettymuch any sampled drums on the market.

The Kompakt player instrument doesn’t letyou replace, say, the cymbal from one kit withone in another—you have to load the whole kiton another MIDI channel and play the cymbalseparately—but it does have a really usefulGroup Edit feature. That means you can select,say, the toms (which are subjectively too low insome of the kits) and raise their levels.Colossus’ programmers did a good job of cre-ating logical Groups for you to tweak.

There are some really nice electric bassesfrom the Hardcore Bass library, and theacoustic bass is outstanding. Though they’realready amped, I found that running some ofthe electric basses through a bass amp plug-inmakes them even better (I used the new oneincluded with Logic 7.1). Here again, theGroup Edit feature lets you adjust the velocityresponse to stop some of the slap and bendsamples from triggering too easily.

There’s a nice selection of acoustic guitars tochoose from, some of which take advantage ofthe virtual instrument’s round robin feature.Colossus also has banjo, mandolin, and uke,along with a big selection of electric guitars.Some of the electrics are recorded with amptone including spring reverb, others are readyto run through a guitar amp plug-in.

Ethnic instruments, both pitched and non-pitched, are a big strength of this library. Thereare too many highlights to list, but whether it’ssitar (an amazing program) or kalimba, theseprograms make it really easy to get the rightflavor. Great stuff.

Colossus includes a variety of “keyboard”instruments, from accordian to reed organ tothe mallet instruments from the East West

Quantum Leap Symphony Orchestra library(EWQLSO). I promise not to moan about theorchestral vibes not having pedal-up samples—which is particularly unfortunate given howgood they sound otherwise.

While the new age ensemble programsaren’t my personal cup of tea, they’re verycompetent synth/acoustic compound sounds.What is my cup of tea is the name of the firstone: Andreus Kugelschreiber.

The Stormdrone instruments are just out-standing. And I mean outstanding. These are 4-way evolving drones that you crossfade with themod wheel, grouped into high morphs, lowmorphs, and low-to-high morphs. You couldeasily score a scene or commercial with theseprograms. Hidden deep under a hierarchicalmenu labeled “disk utility” are six hard-pound-ing Stormdrum percussion ensemble loops.

Colossus includes a newly recorded Faziolipiano and a pretty decent Steinway B sampledpiano. The Fazioli isn’t sampled in enoughdetail, and perhaps it lacks some of the clan-gorous power of a real Fazioli, but it blends inwith the EWQLSO orchestral samples in thislibrary very nicely. There are also some excel-lent electric pianos in this category, includingan ’80s one that out-’80s the ’80s, and a won-derfully detailed Rhodes suitcase 88 (completewith tine-damping release samples). Colossusalso has a full bank of vintage organs thatshould make keyboard players very happy.

The synth bass, lead, and pad groups aresomewhat traditional analog sounds, but theysound really good—none of that thin, digitalsound you get with too many sampled analogprograms. They’re also programmed nicely,with modwheel crossfades between overlap-ping sounds and just the right velocityresponse.

One indication of how far sampling hascome in recent years is the older pop brass

from the Quantum Leap Brass library. It’s nottotally lousy, but it’s not at the same level asmost of the other content here. So far nobodyhas done this very satisfactorily, although thereare some libraries on the horizon.

In addition to men’s choir shouting (“Oh!”etc.), Colossus has separate men’s andwomen’s choir programs, with syllables like ah,ee, and oh, mostly with modwheel crossfadesinto progressively brighter sounds or from ahto mm. That makes the choir sound alive,which is necessary since these programs arelooped. You can also get some great choirsounds by layering programs.

And finally we get to the orchestral sounds,which come from the Gold and Platinum ver-sions of the East West Quantum Leap

Symphony Orchestra library, only they don’thave the recorded hall reverb trails (“releasetrails”). Some of the included programs, likethe solo cello, are just gorgeous; others aredecent if not spectacular, such as the solo clar-inet; still others, like the piccolo, I’d put in theVery Good (B+) category.

All the instruments of the orchestra are rep-resented, with the exception of percussion suchas drums and cymbals. The orchestral pro-grams in this collection are good choices, sincethey cover a lot of range. You can certainly finda more flowing legato violin patch, for exam-ple, but you couldn’t use it for fast passages;the Colossus violin program covers both situa-tions reasonably well.

If you just want to add a symphonic soundto songs when you play live, you should behappy with the high-quality orchestral instru-ments in this library. Serious orchestral com-posers will want to look at dedicated orchestralibraries, however. They have way more articu-lations, and they separate the ensemble stringand brass programs into individual instru-ments—although, to be honest, many peoplewouldn’t notice the difference if you mix in alittle of the solo strings with the string ensem-ble programs.

The end of sample librariesThere’s no such thing as the last sample

library you need to buy, since there are librariesthat cover every category in great detail, andthere will always be different varieties of every-thing. But this library is complete enough tostand alone.

Given its vast range of high-quality instru-ments, Colossus is equally ideal as the founda-tion of a professional sample library and as afill-in-the-gaps collection. While its $1000 listprice is a considerable investment for mostmusicians, in this case I consider it a bargain.

VIr e v i e w

COLOSSUS (CONTINUED FROM PAGE 18)

Colossus is being presented as a modern-day

equivalent to the keyboard workstations we relied

upon for years, and part of that concept is that its

instruments are almost all playable in real time.


Visitors to the NAMM Convention thiswinter who made the trip down to adistant booth in Hall E—where new

companies are stationed—may have stumbledacross a stunning new emulative synthesizer.This instrument, called Synful Orchestra, wasdemonstrated ably by company president EricLindemann.

It turns out that Lindemann is an industryveteran, having designed electronic musicmachines for the past 35 years. His resumeincludes having designed the originalWaveframe sampler in 1986, designing a com-puter music workstation for Pierre Boulez atIRCAM in Paris, contributing DSP code for theLinn Drum Machine, he had a stint at

Euphonics—as well ashaving played key-boards for theOsmonds and the 5thDimension, and beinga trained composer.

The remarkablething about Synful isthat depending on theinstrument, it soundspretty close to a mod-ern orchestral samplelibrary with dozens ofsampled articulations.What’s different is thatit only requires onetrack in a sequencer—the instrument seemsto be “changing artic-ulations” (which is not

what it’s doing, as you’ll see) and modelingnote transitions automatically.

While Synful’s sounds are inextricably tied tothe sampled recordings it starts out with, it isneither a sampler nor a physical modeling syn-thesizer. Instead, it’s an additive synthesizer—with some extremely complicated twists.

OverviewLindemann explains it in his own words:“For each instrument there is a database

containing phrases of real playing—recordings

of, for example, a violin playing three or fourseconds of some fast-flowing passages from asymphony. The database has numerous exam-ples, representing a whole variety of ways thatthe violin is played. Let’s think of these asrecordings for now, although they’re not reallystored that way.

“The program analyzes incoming MIDI datareal time. Synful then extracts as much infor-mation about the phrase that is being playedas possible. It looks at the separation betweennotes, the overlapping of notes to determinelegato playing, velocity, the position of pedals,pitch wheel, and so forth.

“Suppose for example that it determines,‘okay, what’s being played here is a legato tran-sition between B and D, the first one is a quar-ter of a second long and the second note is asecond long.’ Ideally it would find the perfectfragment exactly like that in the database, butit’s probably only going to find something simi-lar. If it finds a fragment going from Bb to D, itwill have to change Bb to B, preserving thenice transition. That segment needs to bespliced onto the previous segment.

“What’s happening is a lot of searching forlittle fragments, splicing fragments together,and morphing fragments in pitch and time tobe synthesized. Usually Synful Orchestra will bedoing three or four splices per note, dependingon the length of the note, the note transition,etc.

“Those splices have to sound like one note,so all of this requires a flexible representation ofthe sound. Rather than being stored as sam-ples, the sound is stored in the additive synthe-sis model, as time-varying harmonics. The com-puter is also modulating harmonics and noiseelements, which are stored separately, such asthe attack noises of a bow, reed noises, as wellas the sustained brass or sustained bow noise.”

Storing the sounds this way means that theentire Synful Orchestra is only 32MB; a compa-rable orchestral sample library could be 1000times the size.

Synful Orchestra


By Frederick Russ

This new additive synthesis virtual instrument analyzes theincoming MIDI data and uses a database of phrases to decidewhat note fragments to splice together. Could this technologydethrone sampling?

VI t r e n d s

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Virtual instruments v01#01 july aug 2005

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