The Studio Log - What Did You Do In The Studio

[vurt]

Out of site out of mind is true. I’ve been thinking of installing a shelf above my synth rack to put occasional use things. Pictures of vurt’s set up gave me the idea.

i call my style "ive got no cupboards"

[Constructed Identity]

The knobs from Lovemyswitches.com came today, they fit Big improvement over the knobs Beh put on the Edge which are simultaneously too wide for the small space and completely smooth... Unpacked and set up the Enner and Planetarium. Was thinking for a while they would make a great combo and they DO! It's been over a year since I played the Enner and I was even thinking I should sell it, but I forgot how weirdly expressive it can be. Now that they are ready to go on my desk I might do a live video this weekend when I have more time.

[mjolnir]

The knobs from Lovemyswitches.com came today, they fit Big improvement over the knobs Beh put on the Edge which are simultaneously too wide for the small space and completely smooth... Unpacked and set up the Enner and Planetarium. Was thinking for a while they would make a great combo and they DO! It's been over a year since I played the Enner and I was even thinking I should sell it, but I forgot how weirdly expressive it can be. Now that they are ready to go on my desk I might do a live video this weekend when I have more time.

That's awesome news. I look forward to the video if you end up doing it.

A buddy of mine has a 3-D printer and the skills to use it and I tried to convince him to produce custom knobs for synths and things. It's what I'd do if I knew how to use such a printer and had the know-how. The performance value of the gear can be efficiently increased with the right knobs. That's cool how it worked out for you. I will peek at the website.

[mjolnir]

I will try not to spam you guys with Studio Log stuff, but I've been busy...

Today I learned pretty much how to use MuLab 10.
One of the nicest things about it is that it's really thorough.
There tend to be multiple ways to accomplish the same musical goals, and yet the interface stays clean and uncluttered.
The MuLab developers seem to have solved some improved on some design norms of both REAPER and FL Studio.
There's even a recordable clip launcher like Ableton Live.

I'm not trying to brag, i'm just surprised and pleased and sharing.

Aside from getting used to the interface, I learned how to import and export audio and how to freeze and rename tracks.
Today I discovered that it has a Note Repeater (arpeggiator) which can repeat something like 32 down to 1.

So if you set it to 3, or 6, or 12. or 24, you get dubstep triplets!!!!!
I really needed this function for styles I had in mind. This is normally hard to do in REAPER for me.
It's really easy to play in the triplets and they still snap in place when quantizing note starts. It's really smooth!

I have been dying to do styles in other meters for a long time, and this is when it happens for me.
Overall, MuLab is a great idea pad. And you could probably do full tunes in it pretty well.

Right now the only thing holding me back a little bit is that it's 64-bit only, so I can't load my 32-bit plugins.
And since I'm on Linux and it's a Windows program, I can't load up my LV2 and Linux plugins. i slightly nipped myself there.
So I'll probably keep using REAPER for mixdowns and some overdubs and some edits.
That's what i'm used to anyhow.

However, for starting out, which is the hardest part for me, MuLab is great for building ideas.
The MIDI editing seems smoother to me than REAPER, although I had a few minor quantization errors due to wrong audio buffer settings at first.
But I got those fixed and I'm back to work.

For anybody who likes to do VST3i and sample based pro audio or dance music, MuLab is a nice fit.

In case you can't tell, I'm really excited about this.
MuLab is helping me get more tunes done faster and hopefully better.
I watched a few tutorial videos today to fill in the gaps.
So I'm on the learning curve.

P.S.-also I made some improvements to a tune on my SoundCloud. I added a bit more depth to it I hope.

[Winstontaneous]

I will try not to spam you guys with Studio Log stuff, but I've been busy...

Today I learned pretty much how to use MuLab 10.
One of the nicest things about it is that it's really thorough.
There tend to be multiple ways to accomplish the same musical goals, and yet the interface stays clean and uncluttered.
The MuLab developers seem to have solved some improved on some design norms of both REAPER and FL Studio.
There's even a recordable clip launcher like Ableton Live.

I'm not trying to brag, i'm just surprised and pleased and sharing.

Aside from getting used to the interface, I learned how to import and export audio and how to freeze and rename tracks.
Today I discovered that it has a Note Repeater (arpeggiator) which can repeat something like 32 down to 1.

So if you set it to 3, or 6, or 12. or 24, you get dubstep triplets!!!!!
I really needed this function for styles I had in mind. This is normally hard to do in REAPER for me.
It's really easy to play in the triplets and they still snap in place when quantizing note starts. It's really smooth!

I have been dying to do styles in other meters for a long time, and this is when it happens for me.
Overall, MuLab is a great idea pad. And you could probably do full tunes in it pretty well.

Right now the only thing holding me back a little bit is that it's 64-bit only, so I can't load my 32-bit plugins.
And since I'm on Linux and it's a Windows program, I can't load up my LV2 and Linux plugins. i slightly nipped myself there.
So I'll probably keep using REAPER for mixdowns and some overdubs and some edits.
That's what i'm used to anyhow.

However, for starting out, which is the hardest part for me, MuLab is great for building ideas.
The MIDI editing seems smoother to me than REAPER, although I had a few minor quantization errors due to wrong audio buffer settings at first.
But I got those fixed and I'm back to work.

For anybody who likes to do VST3i and sample based pro audio or dance music, MuLab is a nice fit.

In case you can't tell, I'm really excited about this.
MuLab is helping me get more tunes done faster and hopefully better.
I watched a few tutorial videos today to fill in the gaps.
So I'm on the learning curve.

P.S.-also I made some improvements to a tune on my SoundCloud. I added a bit more depth to it I hope.

It's great to find a tool that gives you tools & inspiration for making the music you want!

I'm getting back to making music every day after a brutal month of working 10-15 hour days with no real weekends.

[mjolnir]

I'm getting back to making music every day after a brutal month of working 10-15 hour days with no real weekends.

That's great that you're back.
Your skills will improve every day.

[mjolnir]

Today I watched some YouTube videos...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... dP4n45JvZh
...about how to use MilkyTracker.

In Linux, I made a really simple rhythm using drum WAV sounds and saved the file.
Nicely, the sequence *.xm plays by default in Audacious. VLC plays the *.xm file(s) too!
I know that Audacious has a recording setting so I could use that or otherwise use "jack_capture" to save the final WAV.

I can't really see myself using this very much, but it was fun to learn.
I found a cultural reference to this tune in a YouTube video about the history of trackers:

https://ia801300.us.archive.org/3/items ... teady.flac
("Rockin' Steady" by BayTremore)

ALSO...
I need to up my game, so...
I recently got some reasonable composing ideas from this series...







And this different other one really helped me out...

[mjolnir]

Today...

1) spent too much time online
2) installed some new VST drums from plugins4free.com

I forget what the plugins were called, but I got some good ones of both acoustic and techno-like drums.
This was badly needed because I've been using the same few drum samples all year long and a few of them are naff.
I feel really good about this as I need to start some tunes with drums first.

[crimsonwarlock]

spent too much time online

You think?

[ROTMetro]

I found out the expansion cards in my old XP-80 are worth a little bit. Now to decide if it's worth the bother of dealing with selling online.

[Constructed Identity]

The last module for my Behringer Go case arrived so I installed it. I had also ordered a black faceplate for Sarajewo and I put that on and fired it up! Patched up the Manis Iteritas Alia to hear it directly out my mixer and it sounds either good or bad depending upon how the knobs are positioned. There is enough good there to be quite recordable IMHO so I then used some LFOs from Envy to modulate ‘Saw Mod’ and voila- great stuff. So, going from Noise Engineering to Noise Engineering, I patched it into Desmodus Versio for a synth line. Suddenly it was 10:30pm

[vurt]

recieved my chromaplane, so had a play with that.
fun stuff will need more of a play to get used to it, but sounds really nice and the delay is pretty cool too!

[mjolnir]

Not much going on with me lately. I'm still waiting on some deliveries.
But I did get a set of pro headphones, finally.
Other than that, I'm just maintaining my DAW.

Also, I'm mentally planning some new tunes... thinking about the instrument selection and mixdown templates.

I did finally get my ZOOM R8 in the mail today.
I can't use it until I get audio adapters and maybe a power supply adapter.
For now, I'm mentally planning how to hook it up and allocate tracks and stuff.
I downloaded the PDF manual and studied it.
There are still others on the market even though ZOOM discontinued the series.
It's a pretty decent machine for certain things.


Today I was trying to rack my brains to figure out some new interesting field samples to use percussively or for ambience. I'm thinking that might be a more musical way forward for me... to get more cinematic.

The other things I got done:

1) downsampled to 44100 my drum samples for ease of use between the DAW and my ZOOM R8
2) went for it and updated to the latest REAPER
3) created a proper REAPER project template to match the ZOOM R8
4) figured out how to use the R8 card reader
5) practiced using the ZOOM R8 step editor and WAV sequencer

I had some trouble doing track bouncing, but I still know how to do mixdowns.
Overall, things are looking good.

[mjolnir]

Today I auditioned my Drum samples folder and decided to clean it up.
I got it down from about 250 sounds to just 49 sounds, one for each key on my keyboard. This is ideal for me.

Also, I declicked and truncated some of them and enlongated others with pitch shifting and envelopes. Overall, my drums are gonna be good because I'm weeding out all the mediocre and bad ones.
It makes me feel good and the drum samples will be ready for the ZOOM R8 when it's all done.

[WatchTheGuitar]

Dragged my bass from its spare room hidey hole then spent a good couple of hours auditioning a couple of Neural DSP bass amp emulation plugins that are half price on sale. Ended up buying Parallax X as it provides a bunch of nice shaping options and I quite like it’s not a straight rip of some Ampeg model and its own thing.