Posts Tagged ‘basic synthesis’
30 Day Ableton Music Production Journal
Welcome to my 30 Day Journal experiment. Below are 3 of the 30 videos available in my full Ableton video collection. Over the course of 30 days I forced myself to record at least 30 minutes of producing everyday journaling my full creative process for 2 songs and a DJ mix. I also show you how to take a song from within or outside of Ableton and prepare it for live performance.
Be aware that due to the volume of video material I’ve recorded (20 or more hours), there are no zooms or tricky video effects. I am also aware that there may be some imperfections & volumes may fluctuate with my voice from video to video. In this case I’m going for a wealth of content instead of perfection. It is recommended that you enlarge this video to fullscreen for best results. Enjoy and please share this with your friends through word of mouth, email, Twitter & Facebook. I’d like to share this free content with as many people as possible.
Day 1 (Song 1 begins)
Day 14 (Song 2 Begins)
Day 27 (DJ mix begins)
Download completed songs & the Mix at the links below(right click and save):
Jason Timothy – DJ Mix August 2010
Final thoughts:
Realize the songs & dj mix were not abandoned at the point of perfection as reaching that can require far more than 30 days. Also be aware that reaching a level of satisfaction instead of perfection may be just the discipline you need. I know many people who spend years on their work and by the time it’s close to perfect, they realized it now sounds outdated to them thus starting the cycle all over again.
At the end of the day, completing your creative works takes a level of skill, patience and most importantly confidence. If you can’t muster the confidence in your work, you’ll never be able to say “This is finished”.
I took a huge gamble when starting this 30 day video journal. I had no idea what I would accomplish, if anything. I had no idea if I would be well received as I stumbled through each day trying to share an honest reflection of my creative process. I knew I would be far from perfect and that I would have several of my weaknesses exposed for all to see.
For me, this was a test of will, persistance and courage. I completed the challenge and I came out alive on the other side. As a sidenote I’ve pushed my comfort zone out quite a bit and have become less resistant to facing my fears. I want to thank you all for the support and the positive feedback. I hope this process has inspired you to have the confidence to create and complete your work.
Special thanks to Nick from NicksTutorials.com for loaning me the space and bandwidth to make this possible. I highly recommend you stop by his site. His Ableton tutorials are fantastic and he has loads of free vids as well.
For those who are interested, all the songfiles, samples and final mixes of the songs available immediately if you decide to order this full collection (you’ll need version 8.1.3). The full collection will soon be priced at $79 but is reduced to $59 for a limited time. (Keep in mind that the songs used for the DJ Mix are not included due to obvious legal reasons).
I hope you enjoyed this 30 day experiement.
Happy Music Making
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).
All your feedback & support is appreciated!
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Professional 1 on 1 Ableton Training
Personal 1 on 1 Ableton training
Although I believe that my tutorial video collections are very helpful for most, I know of several people who prefer direct interaction with me. You may have a specific topic that is challenging you or perhaps you run into a rough spot in one of your songs that you need guidance on.
Whatever it may be, there are several reasons to opt for personal training. I personally find my learning and production skyrockets when I’m working with another person. I find that the power of 2 or more people working on a creative task can accomplish quite a bit more that each individual on their own. Each person brings certain skills to the table that the others may not have.
Since 1999 I have been doing 1 on 1 training on a number of programs including Cubase, Acid, Fruity Loops, Pro tools, Sonar and Reason. My experience over the years helped me understand what was most important tips and tricks are that would be most helpful and productive. This also led me to making video tutorials and starting my blog.
The reason I switched from personal training to making videos was simply the ability to reach and assist more people through the internet than I possibly could privately. There were only so many people I could help within my local area & to go outside of that zone was very time consuming. The reason I return to a limited amount of private training is that I now have the ability to do sessions with anyone in the world from the comfort of my home. Now we can access my studio or yours at any time during the session. That prospect is exciting and inspiring to me.
My sincere goal has always been to empower people to be more productive and to help them make music they can be proud of. Sometimes knowing all the tricks isn’t enough to give you that creative instinct. Sometimes you get stuck with too many choices and you freeze up, afraid of making the wrong choice.
This is where personal training can come to the rescue. You can have someone on your side taking you directly the the right tool in your toolbox to accomplish what you have in mind.
You’ll also have someone who can see and hear potential issues before they turn into a problem. To know your tools well is definitely important, but more important is to know which technique will give you the best result for your immediate task. This is why many people hate reading manuals. Sure the information is most likely in there (if it’s a decent manual), but who wants to dig through all 500+ pages to get to the 1 paragraph that will solve your issue? Out of the 1000′s of choices you have from moment to moment in your songwriting. wouldn’t it by nice to know that you’ll only need 15 or 20 of them to finish the song in front of you?
Although I have a Remix walkthrough collection that has helped a number of people, some want that experience applied directly to their song. Perhaps your song needs different tools that I didn’t address in my video collection. For whatever the reason, I am making myself available to help you get to the next level.
When you book a Personal Training session, it will be your time to learn exactly what you want to learn. If you want to learn a certain technique, I’ll walk you through it until you have confidence performing the task yourself.
Maybe you want to watch how I might approach a certain songwriting task. Perhaps you want me to help you work on your own ideas to try to pull out the potential that hasn’t yet shined through.
Remember that very few people do everything on their own. Pretty much everyone has people they go to when they are in a jam. Even the best of the best. I do it ALL the time. There is no shame in asking for help when you find yourself stuck. If I can be of service, I encourage you to contact me.
As I expect to be booked up pretty quickly, it’s probable that i’ll be raising my prices if wait times get too long. I would rather charge more and be able to work with people more quickly. Also if you would like to go in on a session with a few friends, that is also fine by me. Just make sure you are organized in what you want to learn or work on.
This should also help those of you who read my blog and watch my videos as I’ll be able to share more challenges and solutions that I come across.
What this is not
Those of you with viruses, software problems, or computer repair needs will not benefit from my services. Make sure you sort out your glitches before booking a session with me. I work pretty specifically with Ableton Live so I won’t be doing training on 3rd party synths, effects or other DAWs. If you have specific needs, make sure to discuss it with me prior to booking a session.
Booking a session
If you are interested in booking a session click on the link below:
http://www.musicsoftwaretraining.com/1-on-1-training/
Happy Music Making,
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment below with any questions.
All your feedback is appreciated!
Musical Mediation
Musical Meditation
As I’ve said in previous posts, I can’t read or write music notation. However I do have something that I think makes up for it.
Let’s call it “Musical Mediation”
I have the ability to build a song idea in my head. It can start from a riff, a drum pattern or a lyrical phrase. I can “hear” inside
my head what works and what doesn’t.
For example I can try out certain vocal harmonies in my head. and hear how slight variations can create a better or worse result.
I can tell if something will sound too full or too empty before I’ve physically played or sung a note. Sometimes I don’t know exactly
what is missing but I know it’s not quite “right”.
Although I have this ability, I don’t actually use it as often as I should.
The main reason is that I find it works better for me when I’m making guitar based songs. I figure electronic songs are more difficult
because the soundscape is largely unfamiliar. I think many great composers are so great at dreaming up symphonies because they are
so familiar with each instrument that would make up a symphonic piece of music.
I was thinking about this today and pondering how I could develop this skill of mine and perhaps help others develop as well.
Here is an approach that I’ve come up with:
Dreaming up sounds:
In order to accurately get a unique sound that is in your head into your computer or recording device, you are going to need to
understand the fundamentals of sound.
*Try going into a synth and only use 1 oscillator.
*Turn off the filters and effects and just listen to each type of waveform, Sine, Square, Triangle, Saw.
These are the basic sound palates to every sound you will create. Understand these basics and you have the fundamentals to
dreaming up great sounds and being able to put the sound in your head into an actual song.
Although getting sidetracked can lead to some wonderfully surprising sounds, for this exercise it’s of utmost importance that
you see this process through without losing focus. I think it can be argued that this loss of focus is one of the leading causes
of not completing songs.
Here’s the scenario:
You had an original idea in your head but lost focus early on and just went with whatever interesting sound jumped out at
you first. Soon you are listening to a loop or collection of sounds over and over without anywhere to go. You have essentially
lost your steam.
It’s no wonder you get bored with the idea so quickly. You aren’t creating anything close to what inspired you in the first place!
What if you were able to quickly get the ideas out of your head accurately before you lost focus?
My guess is that you would probably find more satisfaction in your work.
Then of course once you got the basic idea out of your head you could allow for more experimentation and happy accidents.
Remember, this isn’t a lesson in inflexibility but of focus.
Having trouble dreaming up your own sounds? Try dreaming up someone else’s.
*Pull out a CD or pull up a song in your computer.
*Listen to just one tone that attracts you.
*When you find a sound you like, listen to it as closely as possible.
*Listen to how the sound characteristics change with each note.
*If there are volume variations, take note of those too.
Breaking it down:
If the sound you are trying to recreate in your head is complex, break it down into the separate parts that make the sound up.
If you have a hard time doing this, think of it as 3 different sounds. One sound in the lower frequency, one in the mid frequency
and one in the high frequency. In the same way you might break down a harmony into each separate voice, many sound designers
and musicians break down sounds to their most basic elements. When you can mentality break sounds down to their basic elements,
you can better predict how to build your own complex tones as well.
Now that you have that sound in your head, close your eyes and try to vividly recreate that sound in your head. Try to hear it
all by itself instead of in the context of a song. You may want to give this sound a name so you can mentally access it more
easily.
Recreate the part you heard in your head in as much detail as possible.
Variation:
Next try changing some notes around and creating variations. Try not to lose the image in your head and don’t change the sound in your head. It’s very easy to get bored and wander off, but what we are trying to do is ingrain this sound into your memory as vividly as possible so you can add it to your mental palate.
Imagine changing the eq, or filtering out the high frequencies, then the low frequencies.
Imagine the sound with a bit of distortion, flange,delay or reverb. If you can’t vividly imagine these effects, you may want to spend some time adding these effects to some basic sounds so your mind has something to work with.
Practice makes perfect:
When you are able to do this with some proficiency, You will be able to add more and more instruments in your head and know how to get exactly what you want before you’ve even played a note. You’ll be able to build and arrange full song ideas in your
head and work out the kinks before you waste any time in the studio.
In the same way that it takes a while to become good at meditating and blocking out all of the days thoughts, it’s also difficult to start using “musical meditation” to focus on an idea without distractions. You may not get it right immediately, but with practice I am confident you will have an amazingly powerful tool that will just continue to get better and better.
Happy Music Making,
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).
All your feedback & support is appreciated!
Basic Synthesis and Sound Design essentials made easy
Basic Synthesis and Sound Design essentials:
I wanted to give you some basic concepts to synthesis that you can quickly use to better your sound design abilities. My hope is that I am able to help people who haven’t yet had the ability to grasp it quite yet. I will do my best to share what I understand in a way that is easily digestible. This stuff has taken me years to understand. With any luck, this will shave a lot of time off of your learning curve. Feel free to correct me if you find more useful or more simplistic definitions for the following terms.
Waveforms
Sine wave – The simplest of all waveforms. It has no harmonics so is quite pure in sound. a Sine wave is best used for Sub-bass.
Square wave – This waveform only exsists as highs or lows with nothing inbetween. It’s produced by only odd harmonics which gives a more hollow sound. Good for creating wind instrument tones, widening strings and pads and deep wide bass tones.
Pulse wave – This is basically like a Square wave with adjustable highs and lows which can vary the harmonic content of the sound. can create reed like tones.
Sawtooth Wave – Produces all odd and even harmonics which is great for raspy dirty tones as well as brassy sounds. Also good for lead sounds and in your face bass tones.
Triangle wave – This only contains odd harmonics and is great when mixed with Sine, Square or Pulse waves to add some brightness or glitter.
Noise wave – A random mix of all frequencies instead of actual tones. White noise has an equal amount of amplitude throughout the frequencies which Pink noise has differing energies giving it a perceived deeper tone.Noice waves are excellent for percussive sounds (especially snare and handclaps) as well as wind or ocean sounds.
Additive Synthesis:
If you are using a waveform that is more complex than a simple Sine wave, then you are using a form of Additive synthesis. Anytime you add harmonic content to a wave to create a Saw, Square, Triangle or Pulse wave, you are using Additive synthesis. When you see wave options that say, for example, Saw 16, Saw 32, and Saw 64, just know that the higher the number (16, 32, 64 etc), The more high frequency harmonics have been added to the sound. You may want to think of this as fuller or brighter in tone.
Oscillators:
An oscillator is basically a sound generator. This oscillator generates a Sine wave in its most basic form. Square, Triangle and Saw waves are all derivative of the Sine wave. The only difference are the harmonics added to the sound at different frequencies and amplitude (volume) levels. The process of adding harmonic frequencies to a sine wave is called Additive synthesis.
Lets use the Operator instrument as an example…
The Operator instrument has 4 Oscillators, meaning 4 simple sound generators, which can by mixed together in a number of ways to create a final sound. Operator offers both Subtractive and FM synthesis algorithms.
One approach would be to to make 4 separate waveforms and mix them together(This could also be a form of Additive synthesis). This would give you more predictable results as you can fairly easily distinguish each separate sound of each oscillator that creates your completed sound. In it’s most basic form, this is similar to having a 4 track recorder and simply mixing each instrument together to make a song by adjusting the volume and a few other parameters.
Envelopes:
Any thing that happens to a sound over time involves envelopes. Amplitude(volume), Oscillators and filters all have Envelopes as can pitch. Each of these Envelopes can be completely different within one sound which can drastically influence the final sonic results.
In any sound or effect there are 4 components over time that make up an envelope. We will use an amplitude envelope as an example:
Attack – how quickly a sound reaches it’s peak level after a key is hit to trigger the sound
Decay – how quickly a sound drops to a level that it will remain at after the Attack peak. Sometimes the sound will remain at it’s peak level. Other times the sound will jump up quickly in volume and then settle at a lower volume.
Sustain – The level that that sound remains at after the decay until the key is released (this is a volume setting not a time setting)
Release – How quickly the sound level fades to nothing after the key is released.
Since each sound can have multiple envelopes, a sound can get really complex, but that doesn’t mean the building blocks of these sounds can’t be made from a basic knowledge of synthesis.
Subtractive Synthesis:
Subtractive synthesis is a model of sound design where you chip away at the frequencies of a simple or complex waveform with a filter (Complex waveforms being the result of additive synthesis, or, the adding of harmonics to a simple sine wave). You are subtracting certain frequencies from a rich, full range sound to create a tone you find satisfying. You can think of subtractive synthesis sound design in a similar way to how a sculptor creates his art. The “art” is already their, he just needs to chip away what isn’t needed.
FM Synthesis:
With this approach, the results of how each oscillator will effect your final sound is less predictable. Basically FM synthesis uses 1 oscillator as the main sound and each other oscillator as a waveform that modulates the first sound. This combination makes for much more complex results. You can look at subtractive synthesis like a salad. In a salad you have a combination of vegetables but with all it’s separate parts completely recognizable. FM synthesis is more like baking a cake. The sum of each ingredient may result in something that looks nothing like the original raw ingredients. The math involved would make your head spin, so just trust me on this. Another way to look at it is that subtractive synthesis is like a mixture of wet and dry signal on a reverb whereas FM synthesis is like having the reverb set to 100% leaving none of the original signal. This isn’t the perfect analogy however as Subtractive synthesis can be a mixture of several tones whereas classic FM synthesis is the processing or modulating of one single tone.
With FM synthesis you will need to rely on experimentation in order to build a vocabulary of familiar combinations. If you have never heard what a square wave sounds like when it is modulated by a triangle wave, which in turn is being modulated by a saw wave, you won’t be able to predict in your head the outcome. Do not feel like an idiot that you can’t simply think of a sound in your head and bang it out using fm synthesis. It’s going to take some time to understand how one waveform alters the sound of another. For now, just clear your mind and mess with the oscillators until something sounds cool, then take note of how you created it. You’ve now built your vocabulary. Repeat this step until you can start to predict how something will sound. Then you will move to a combination of predicting and experimenting.
Whereas with Subtractive synthesis frequencies can be altered with a filter, FM synthesis can create rich harmonics when one oscillator is modulated by one or more other oscillators. It is advisable to start with a darker tone and build the harmonic frequencies with other oscillators and then use the filter at the end if desired. The use of a filter on FM synthesis is supposedly not necessary since modulating oscillators can do that for you and classic FM synthesis doesn’t involve a filter. The use of a filter is kind of a mixture of FM and Subtractive synthesis.
Other forms of synthesis:
Other forms of synthesis includes:
Granular synthesis which uses a sequences of short grains(waveforms) to form a longer output sound.
Physical Modeling which uses some very complex mathematics and waveforms to create a realistic sound of wind a drum hit or bowed instruments.
Wavetable Synthesis which is usually made with a small collection of waveforms spliced together and looped. These loops can be measured in milliseconds. Think of it as microscopic audio samples mixed together to create a complex texture.
I’m not going to dive any further into those as my goal was to help you dive into the basics of synthesis. If you would like to really elevate your sound design skills, I highly recommend you purchase the Sampler or Operator video collections by Nick Maxwell at www.NicksTutorials.com. Much of what I am sharing with you has been made much more clear through watching his videos and being lucky enough to chat with him on the phone. This guy goes DEEP into what is possible with sound.
Hopefully this has cleared a few things up for you, now go make some music!
Jason
P.S. – Don’t forget to comment & tweet (down below) & “like” (up above).
All your feedback & support is appreciated!
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