The Friday podcast from NPR's Planet Money team was about how musicians use the internet. In it, they profile musician Jonathan Coulton who is a guy you've probably never heard of, but he makes a ton of money making music.
Listen to the podcast. The internet has certainly helped me. Without it, I would never have met such engaging, talented people through this web site. Has the internet helped or hurt musicians? Let us know in the comments.
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In this tutorial I thought I would talk about resampling in Reason. What's resampling? Well, it's taking a sound you like, which could be a synth sound or sampled sound, and sampling it back into a Reason device. Why would you want to do this? There are a number of reasons (no pun intended!). First, you may have a huge layer made of 10 or more devices with effects. This may use a lot of CPU when you play it. You could sample the whole thing, throw it into an NN-XT or even an NN19, play the one sample and save a lot of CPU. Another reason would be to add breath control to a sound or device that has no breath control or CV inputs. I know we talked about how to route breath performance data to anywhere in the Reason rack, but there is at least one device that has no breath control or CV inputs - the ID8 device from Record. To be fair, the ID8 was never intended as a replacement for the other synths or samplers. It is there for Record users who do not have Reason so they at least have something to play. Not only that, the sounds are REALLY good and fit very nice in a song. There are some surprisingly good sounds in here and the Record sound bank has a few combinators that use multiple ID8's to good effect.
I wanted to add breath control to one of the combinators, so in order to do that, I sampled the combinator sounds via the live sampling feature in the NN-XT in Record 1.5/Reason 5. I was then able to add breath control to the NN-XT sound. Click 'Read More' to learn how to do it. I'm messing around some more with the Bottle waveform on the Malstrom. This sound is not breathy, but clean. It has something of whistling sound to it, but also a vocal quality. It's still a light, airy sound. I was inspired by the subtle sound of the blown bottles in Pat Metheny's Orchestrion, which you should definitely check out.
This is a sound that uses two malstroms to produce a breathy, bottle kind of a sound. You can experiment with the mix between the 'pure' blown bottle and the breath noise in the Line Mixer that is in the combinator. Don't forget to add reverb!
This isn't really related to the EWI per se, and in fact there is no EWI playing on this album. Nonetheless, I thought I would mention it here. My new favorite album. If you are a fan of 21st century jazz (I made that term up just now!) you will love Seamus Blake's new album featuring Oz Noy on guitar. This album is inventive and original. Oz Noy's textures are a nice complement to Seamus Blake's playing. I highly recommend it. The search for a killer synth brass patch continues. Here is another take on it. I cribbed from the Record Factory Sound Bank. There is a synth brass patch in there that uses three ID8 devices that sounds pretty good - except that the ID8 does not respond to BC and the usual CV tricks don't work because there are no CV inputs! I replaced the sounds with one NN-XT and two Thors to come up with something even better. Personally, I think it's a losing battle to try to emulate a perfect horn section. Maybe that's because I'm a horn player and have been fortunate enough to play is some killer horn sections myself. I just know how good a real section can sound and trying to get it perfect and missing, is worse than not trying. The main thing I like to do is get the same feeling as a real horn section and perform the same musical function as a real horn section, without sounding like cheeseball sampled horns. I'll definitely be using this one on the gig.
This week we have fairly standard moog style lead, inspired by the Magic Moog Refill you can get for free from the Propellerheads web site. This is a particularly expressive patch, and I can see using it on ballads or up tempo electronica.
I've been a little lax with the sounds of the week lately - it's been more like the sound of the month. That's what happens when you have to figure life into your life - PLUS I'm working on some really cool new projects. Since the gigging season is starting soon (as least for me) I thought I would share some patches for tunes that I'm learning in the pop/cover band I'm in. We are playing 'Last Name' by Carrie Underwood, and I'll be covering a banjo and fiddle. On the recording, the fiddle player does a lot with double stops, so I layered in another violin a perfect fourth below the main one. The second violin is only triggered when velocity (translated as attack strength on the EWI) is above 108. The bottom part of the range is a banjo, just for fun. Next time you play a country tune, you can break out the fiddle and banjo! Fun stuff! The other advantage as a horn player, is that I don't have to lay out this tune, since there are no horns on it. That keeps me musically relevant in the band.
I'm working on a new project and have been creating some breath controlled NN-XT patches. Sometimes there are many layers in one patch - for example, a brass section with trumpets, trombone, and a few saxes. What I found was I wanted to work on one zone (say the Tenor sax) without hearing the other zones (trumpets and trombones) and the NN-XT doesn't have a 'mute zone' button. The best you can do is turn the Volume down on the zone you don't want to hear, which is inconvenient to say the least. Here is a technique that I started using when working on NN-XT sounds, especially one with a lot of layers. Well, we are still playing around with that basic Thor patch. I'm working on a new project and creating a little library of variations on this basic sound. This patch uses two state variable filters for that distinctive Oberheim sound. Remember, you can beef up this sound with a Scream 4. Try the 'HalfInch' Scream 4 patch found in the Reason Factory Sound Bank (Scream 4 Patches -> Warm Saturation). Try some reverb, too, and have fun.
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