I wanted to write a song about Boltzmann brains – an odd topic — and needed odd sounds. It’s been a while since I last used Absynth, and the natural inclination when making strange sounds is indeed to first use this remarkable software synth.

And yes indeed, it’s not just odd spectral sounds you get, also odd sounding bass lines, as well as even rhytmic patterns that are not from your standard drum machine setup.

The thing I’m usually struggling with Absynth sounds is that they are so right in the high end, so many harmonics — even with taking down some of the track levels, it still cuts through.

As for the track, it didn’t take long to compose and finalize. This was one of those cases where I did the composition in Logic, and exported 24-bit AIFF files out to Ableton Live, and then reassembled it in a mix-like environment in about one hour. I still need to do a proper mastering and final check-down.

The other technique worth mentioning when exporting from Logic to Live is that I then use the re-pitch mode if I key in the exact same BPM as in Logic. This means that the quality is very much the same, no warping artifacts. I also do this with the drum loops exported.

As for the release, I doubt this could be released as an underground dance track, it’s 120bpm, and has too much oddities happening. Anyway, another reason I have the podcast channel in place to release material that can’t be released through normal channels, anyway. Meanwhile, check out about Boltzmann brains and see what the cosmologists are struggling with just now…

Logic’s channel strips are a really nice feature. A channel strip is a super-preset of various plug ins and other settings that you could define to a specific channel via the Inserts popup menu. Logic Pro is shipping with hundreds of channel strips, including already define bass lines, pads, and so on. It’s very common for me to start a project by keying in a channel strip for a kick drum or a bass sound, and then change the actual software synth preset or switch to another software synth, while keeping in place the channel strip effects. This way I could for example have a nice compression setting in place and go from that forward.

Now, a couple of days ago I was working on drum loops, and I had the default Apple loops installed on my MacBookPro. So I wanted to make the default loops sound more interesting and unique. I was hunting around and noticed that the 08 Effects channel strip grouping had lots of really cool effect setup with multiple plugins working together. So I took a default drum loop, and then run it through various effect channel strip presets, each one creating a very unique and interesting new drum loop.

This is where a podcast would make sense — I will make a sample setup in a future podcast showing what happens with a plain vanilla drum loop, and how it sounds when applying various effect channel strips to this one.

I just watched this really nice instructional video with Vincent Di Pasquale, showing how to use Logic Pro in remixing projects. You need to have an account to watch these instructional videos from Apple, but it’s free and easy to create one.

There were many good techniques shown in this video, how to figure out the BPM from a capellas, how to easily create stutter effects, reverse reverbs for voices, how to layer multiple bass lines with combiational effects, and much more.

The other nice thing, shown at the end, was that all this, tons and tons of audio tracks, plugins and software synths, could be easily handled with a MacBook Pro. Another reason why laptops today are serious contenders concerning main tools for audio work.

Anyway, if you are a Logic user and especially doing remixes, I really recommend watching this 22 minute video, as well as the other Logic Pro videos at this site.

Ok, I was watching this youtube movie set from Taxi about how easy it is to make music for TV and films (and make lots of money). I don’t know, don’t like to directly criticize someone directly, but I do think it’s good to have a uniqueness when making film or TV music, instead of just doing like anyone else.

So, as Taxi promised to make a 40 second snippet in 30 minutes, I did this in 20 minutes, composing/mixing/mastering, with me brushing my teeth during the same time, too. Here’s Taxi of the Third (right mouse on the Mac to download). Feel free to use it for any film/TV projects you have out there. It should loop fine, too.

Note I might go in and fix and make it longer, or maybe not, I’m drowning in half-made material just now…

For those who like details, this is a 16-bar song with three themes, 80 bpm, done in Logic (hence why it was so fast to put together). The Pad is an ES2 patch, the drums done with various Ultrabeat sounds, with the intention to hit the oddest syncopes you could do in a minute or two. The bass is from a Zebra 2 patch, and there are some other odd sounds from a Zebra patch, and an EXS24 effect pad. All mixed within a minute using Ozone 3. On we go.

I’ve been using 24-bit 44.1kHz for any audio material since the first MacOSX computer running audio applications (a 2 x 867MHz PowerMac). I never had any performance problems, and it’s really good I didn’t go down the road of creating and using 16-bit samples. The additional 8 bits give far more dynamics range.

The upper end, whether 44.1kHz or 48kHz, or even higher, is a big topic of discussion, especially in the mastering side. Some think it’s good to have more higher end for especially software synths so that any filtering will happen far beyond the hearing range. Others think it’s overkill. I could live with 44.1KHz, it maps nicely down to CD and MP3/AAC release versions, so there’s one less sampling I need to need or worry about.

Anyway, with most of the material as 24-bit or MIDI instruments, the output needs to at some point be rendered down to 16-bit for CD, MP3/AAC and so on products. This is where you really need to do dithering of the 24-bit material down to 16-bit in the the final rendering. Logic Pro has excellent dithering algorithms you could select. Of some reason Ableton Live still does not have any. I’m using Izotope Ozone for the final dithering from Ableton Live, myself.

So what is dithering, really? The Dithering with Ozone Guide over at the Izotope web site has excellent explanations what is happening. But shortly, if you take down 24-bit to 16-bit, the software needs to approximate values, so it doe something like average, and it makes the transition points very digital and harsh — believe it or not, adding noise up there will make the digital curves smoother, so the ear hears the final result more pleasing.

While you are at that web page, download and read the Mastering with Ozone Guide as well — even if it’s using Ozone as the example, it has tons of excellent advise about mastering, I try to re-read this document every three months or so to keep my mind fresh about mastering issues.

OK, enough mastering posts — marketing next!

This is something that I found a couple of months ago, and wish I knew about it long time ago. The nice thing with looping in Logic is that you just drag in the upper right corner of the MIDI track to extend a region so it loops multiple times. The bad thing is that you usually want to turn the loop into a real midi track segment at some point, as you want to edit individual MIDI notes to make things more variated.

Well, Logic always had the menu option in the Region-Parameters called Turn Loops into Real Copies. And the default command shortcut is comand-option-control-L. So now it’s a breeze for me to just let it loop, and when I want to go in and start making a different kind of MIDI segment, use this to get me a copy of real MIDI notes. Bye-bye copy/paste of midi segments. Duh.

It’s actually good modern DAWs have a lot of functionality — never a dull moment. Anyway, I’m usually falling into the trap of reading the manuals inside out, and trying to learn it all in one big session. It seldom works.

It’s better to learn one thing at a time, one feature a day or so. For example, you could go through Logic’s feature set, for example the key bindings, and use control-P for a day until your brain is programmed to realize that: “Hey it’s nice that I could switch on the left side between control strip mode and normal mode.”.

Or with Ableton Live, use command-option-B for a while until your brain gets the message that this is for opening and closing the browser view.

It is true that you need to start from somewhere, but just get things up and running with simple projects, and then learn the complexity one thing at a time.

Found this via a posting on osxaudio or BigBlueLounge that it’s called nowadays - Sounds Good podcasts. These are audio podcasts with images included, talking about music production, focusing on Logic. They are a little bit hokey because there are ads here and there, but I actually learned a couple of cool modulation tricks with Logic’s EXS24 sampler, for example how to have a drum track modulate the volume and filter settings on a loaded sample which I will test out shortly.

Seems today has been a day of watching videos. Here’s a good set of videos about Logic use, from the Seattle Logic Pro User group, presented by John Silverman (toysun). It covers a lot of Ultrabeat, how to rearrange material, creating Apple loops, and much more. The presenter even showed how the mysterious HyperEdit makes sense — I got an ahaa experience concerning making 1/64 note drum roll sequences in drum MIDI edits.

It was also fun listening to another content fanatic about creating tons of material as audio loops. I do this myself, everything is saved as a pack rat, and reused from time to time. He said a good point, if too many options, such as keeping the project as pure MIDI and plugin data, too many choices… Also, if the plugins are outdated, the project might not work. With all these new time-stretching algorithms the quality of re-used 24-bit audio is quite OK.

The latest Ableton newsletter had this URL with new YouTube video where Robert Henke shows Simpler in action. It’s really worth checking out, as you will get a lot of ideas how to incorporate Simpler into all kinds of projects. Also, Henke talks towards the end about the design philosophy behind Live — simple tools build more complexity, such as a brush for a painter could create complex results.

Samplers are actually sometimes tools that are, at least for me, considered old-fashioned compared with all the new synthesizers available. But they could really be used for all kinds of music sample triggering, like the video shows.

Also, Logic’s EXS24 is really nice, as it has a lot of vintage synth samples. I really miss my old Jupiter-6, and Logic has many Jupiter-8 sounds incorporated. With EXS24’s filtering unit, more effects, and layering, I could even create more complex patterns from the base sample sounds.

EXT24 also has many nice drum sets mapped in, such as default 808 and 909 samples, as well as others.

The Logic EFM1 software synth is like this step-son that is always forgotten. I rekindled its friendship after reading a posting on the Big Blue Lounge forum about how to make great bass lines, and one posting mentioned that EFM1 makes good bass sounds. So I had to fire up Logic and check it out, and it was true. OK, another weapon in my bass arsenal — creating good bass sounds is one of the tough assignments with productions.

Also, to prove my (silly) theory that most of minimalist music is done using FM synthesis, and while helping my son understand cross products in mathematics, I fired off a track using only EFM1 synths and one Ultrabeat drum sequence. It’s called Cross Products. I don’t know if I will release it, but it was a fun 30 minute exercise, especially running away from the drudge teaching about cross products…

As for good bass lines, FM makes sense, a lot of the low end rumble only needs to be somewhat pure sine waves with a some transitions, so FM synthesis makes this easy to achieve. You could then add more characteristics with additional FM synthesis on top.

Anyway, if you have Logic, and have not tried out EFM1 before, check it out. It’s a nice surprise.

Just to continue a little bit more — in case there are other Ultrabeat current and future users (it’s really great for electro/techno tracks!). One important button in the lower left corner (see image) is the pattern button. If you drag this pattern image into the logic track, then the pattern created in the track is copied over! This makes it easy to go in later and edit the patterns in the Logic MIDI editor, or otherwise reuse the patterns with other drum machines.

Don’t forget then to turn off the sequencer button (see the blue button just above). If you copied over the MIDI track info into the same track, and you use both the sequencer on and the track, the sequencer overrides — it means that even if you have parts in the track with no midi information, Ultrabeat will continue playing the current pattern.

I like systems where you could copy over patterns from a drum system into any other track (Reason has a similar system). This makes it possible to use drum patterns with any other drum machine. Or, sometimes I even use the drum machine patterns with any other synth as one way to make interesting and odd arpeggiator sequences. A lot of my composition model is to try out unexpected things and from that forward. I like random pattern generators as well (more about that later).

Recently I’ve started to use Ultrabeat from Logic Pro as the main drum machine system for minimalist/techno productions.

It takes a while to figure out the UI, but this quicktime movie at the Apple web site would help someone getting started with this drum machine (assuming you have Logic Pro, of course).

The reason I like Ultrabeat, and I have many other drum systems available, each having their good points, is that in addition of simulating the TR808/909 sound that is needed for a lot of this modern electro/minimalism techno movement we have just now, you could tweak the sounds further quite a lot.

In addition, it has random pattern generation that I like using from time to time, as well as envelopes tied to the pattern, so I could make for example the drum kicks sound differently depending on the bar position.

It also has a recording mode, I could build a set of patterns, and record the order while hitting the keyboard and the track is playing.

I’ve read about problems related to adding your own drum loops, the UI is not that easy to grasp. For me, it’s not that often I add in drum loops — I start from an existing set or using the synthetic ones, and then modify them further so they sound fresh.

But what I often do is to have multiple Ultrabeats running, one with just the kick, and others with just the snare, then one with hihats, and one with percussions, and so on. By separating these elements I could run different kinds of compressors on each one of them, or adjust the balance from the UI, instead of tweaking stuff inside Ultrabeat itself.

I was listening to Holger Zilske/Dave DKs Rainshower EP, especially the MIDI Shower track. It has a lot of bursts of MIDI notes going here and there - I really like it.

I just wondered if this didn’t happen by mistake, i.e. there was a sudden burst of MIDI that happened on the track… Or then it was a deliberate production, if so very nice.

I had a similar mistake happening recently, Logic has this ancient bug with buffers — if you don’t clear them out, when you export a track as outside information, a lot of existing data buffer material is still in the buffers, causing all kinds of odd artifacts. It happened with an electro lead I was exporting to Live. But actually, the initial burst of 1/32 notes sounded really good, even better than the original one, so I just used it.

Similar things have happened before. Again, in Logic if I had plugin compensation enabled, sometimes the initial MIDI note was not played or exported. So if I had a steady quarter note run, the first one wasn’t exported. Anyway, I was in a hurry — and didn’t know the workaround (turn off plugin compensation), so I just exported the tracks and wrote songs with the first MIDI note not happening. Made it easier for the kick to show up in the beginning of the four bar loop, and also made the composition sound very different.

I suspect this has happened to many other producers. The one I’m thinking of just now while writing this entry is the famous erasure of the first minutes of the drum tracks by Steve Winwood in “While You See A Chance” — and this track became a hit, especially as the beginning part was so different by him replacing the beginning of the song with a keyboard introduction.

Long time ago, MIDI sequences were all we had. But with all the new cool tools, starting with Acid and Ableton Live, suddenly it was quite handy to just use plain audio loops for various purposes. I had my initial share of excitement using Acid and acidized loops, until a month later or so I realized that the same loops were use in commercials and tons of other places.

So the whole idea of using loops went for me to the back burner. Many, including me, felt that it was just plain cheating to use pre-fabricated loops, instead of sweating at the keyboard and doing the hard work oneself. If nothing else, the tracks and songs were fresh compared with using already made loops that were most likely used in many other songs.

But those pesky loops started to crawl back in. It started with the pre-installed Apple Loops in Logic — it was just so handy to drag in an audio loop from the Apple Loops browser as a starting point.

So far I’ve only used drum loops, and that’s where things will stop in my case. I’m not using any melodic loops, synth loops, and so on. I have a big pile of both my own create drum loops, as well as other synth loops from past projects that I collect in my own sound bank, and from time to time I reuse these in other projects.

But I will get a set of house-music based drum loops soon, this as I could anyway import them via Ableton and tweak the loops into tiny pieces using alternate starting points, use volume envelopes of all kinds, change pitch envelopes, and so on. So it’s quite OK, in my mind, to use such pre-defined drum loops, as long as they are processed and made unique, again.

I should also start exporting my loops for others to use, as it’s good to give back anything you have made for others to use and make successful music with, I don’t mind about who gets credits, as long as someone thinks the material is useful.

The music production realm has changed so much, including how music is done, so the whole idea of mixing and matching various audio parts is just how things are done today, and that’s fine, as long as interesting music is published.