Ame one Loves You

I’m mixing down my latest track and I kept having problems with the bass. It seemed like no matter what I did to it, it just sounded muddy, distorted and just bad. Also I just couldn’t get it to sit nicely in the mix. I was ready to give up on it and call it a day for the mix session. Then I decided to take a closer look at the wav file. I noticed there was some clipping on it. I thought this might have been the source of my problem and thought that maybe I didn’t check the level before I bounced it out. So I end up closing ProTools and go back to the original project in Logic Pro 7.

I was quite shocked to see that there was overdrive and chorus on the bass. I like to add a little bit of overdrive and chorus sometimes to give the bass movement. However, in this case the the chorus and overdrive were creating phase problems in the low end. I think I was lucky to be able to hear it on my headphones.

I just re-export out the bassline with out the added effects and I instantly get a bass that sits nicely in my mix with out much tweaking. Now let’s go on and analyze what happened and how we determined the best solution.

What was the symptoms of my problem.

How did I determine the best solution?

The last question is why did I have those plugins on the bass to begin with?

The lesson here is be careful of your low end. Especially if you don’t have a sub available for monitoring. The sub bass region is easily susceptible to phase problems.

Today I had a very interesting and insightful conversation about the music industry. In this conversation I promoting my current standpoint that albums are not the right model for the current times. I feel that EPs and singles are the way to go. Let’s examine the 3 models and you will see that albums might not actually be completely dead but can serve a purpose, slightly redundant however.

For as long as I can remember I bought albums. The thing I loved most was opening it and looking at the cd booklet or fold out panels that were in cassettes. That was one of the things I kind of miss these days with digital music. I still love looking at liner notes but for a totally different reason. I like seeing who engineered the track and where the samples came from and all that. The reason I am against the album is because it don’t think it is cost effective any more. First off time. It takes quite a but of time to release and promote an album. When you are writing an album, your name value is declining. Meaning that people are forgetting about you and only your hardcore fans care. But even with those fans your name can decline especially if you take too long to release any new product. Essentially I find it to be a catch 22. Promoting takes time away from creating music and creating music takes time away from promoting. So if we kill off the album that leaves us with singles and EPs.

But my last line in the first paragraph says that there still is a purpose for an album. I did think of one. Its not something I really like though. Let me tell you a little story, I remember seeing greatest hit albums of bands that have been around for a long time or who have broken up. As time went on, I started to see more of these greatest hits albums coming out with younger artists. It never dawned on me until tonight why these greatest hits albums are created. The obvious reason is it creates product in a time of no product. However I think the real reason is because of the reason I hate most albums these days. The greatest hits album is an album filled with the good music that the artist produced. While their regular albums consist only of a few good songs several mediocre songs. This is where I think albums have a good role. Just to clear up when I mean album I don’t mean cd. I’m referring to what it is with the medium it is on. It’s just several songs released at one time.

In the title of this post it says EP’s are the new albums. My reasoning is that a mini release allows you some time to promote and then go back and create more. It enables you to make more product available in a shorter period and keeps lessens your name devaluation. In addition you can just put your good songs on the EP and leave out the mediocre ones. Better for everyone.

Singles seem to never die. I never really did like the single format. I always thought they were over priced for what they are. But then I guess I can attribute that to the greed of the record labels and their price fixing. Ever since I got in to djing and drum n’ bass, I been more accustomed to thinking in terms of singles. Things move so fast in the dance music world that if you take too much time you it will pass you by. This is why I like singles, more product available quicker and less promotion leaving more time to make more product.

Of these 3 formats I like the EP best it’s the nice happy medium between albums and singles. Don’t be scared to promote the idea of EP’s being the new album and praising longevity to singles.

I recently finished 2 songs. A nice jazzy ambient dnb track and, to quote my friend’s friend, a “new-wave-breaks” track. The jazzy dnb track took a long time to write. Not because I was stuck, but I think more because, as usual, it started one way and then ended another way. This takes a lot of time because it goes a certain way until i discover something by chance or just become unhappy with it and I try something else and find I like that better. Then I have to go and make changes and all that. Another reason it took so long was because I would only work on it here or there. I didn’t sit down and consistently work on it. During that time I was also finishing up the last 2 songs for my EP. In the end though I am completely happy with this track. I think that really counts the most.

So what did all that have to with the breaks track? Well nothing. I have to say I am happy with the breaks track. But comparing the work process between them made me realize a few things about my production style and why I am probably not making as much music as I can.

One thing they both had in common is that they started one way and ended up differently. The breaks track was originally a down tempo track. That really didn’t have much. I think I might of just had some sort of intro written for it. When I opened it up recently I realized I didn’t like so I started messing around with a synth. I ended up recording a couple of synth riffs that became the main lines of the track. So no big deal I always do that when I write.

What made this different is that I recorded the riffs right away. Then came back to continue writing it. What I normally do is, make some kind of cool beat or something. Then I end up just jamming over it while it loops. This is always super fun. But not much gets done. The biggest problem with this is that it’s only cool until I get bored of the loop. After that I usually just close logic and don’t bother with it for awhile.

Here is where I decided that I will make a change in my work flow. Instead of just jamming over it and getting sick of it, like always, I think I will do what I read about the Beastie Boys doing. I can’t remember when I read this article, but they said that they just record their jam sessions and then go through it to find the cool parts and sample and make their beat. I think I’ll try to do more recording when I am just jamming. I realize I let too many cool ideas slip away by not recording.

I hope this will speed up the work flow some.

It snowed the other day. Here are some pics I took around where I live.

Snow in Osaka

Snow Covered Plants

The waterfall by my house

Flowers

Outside my building

A Little snowman on the walk way

Ame one

Flowers with snow

The lion by the road

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Sign by my house

Flowers

Foot prints in the snow

My foot prints in the snow

I had a bit of hard time figuring out how to get Logic 7 and Kontakt 3 to work together. It all came down to just setting things up right. This is something I never really had to deal with when I was using Cubase. In Cubase you just select your VSTi and it automatically creates channels in the mixer. No need to worry about how to set route things. If you try to do it the same way in Logic it just doesn’t work out right. You can assign additional instrument channels in Logic to different MIDI channels in Kontakt. The only problem with this is that Kontakt will have only one output in the Logic mixer..

Here’s the way I setup Logic and Kontakt to work together.

Step 8: In the Audio Object properties, assign the Audio Object’s channel to Auxiliary by clicking on Channel and select Aux and the Aux channel you desire. In our example we assigned it to Aux 1. If you notice in the picture it only shows 3 Aux channels. When you create more, Logic will automatically add more channels.

Now you have Kontakt setup as a multi channel instrument that utilizes multiple outs in Logic that can be accessed from logic’s mixer. But what if you want to do automation on the plugins that you have on the auxiliary channel strips?

If you have any questions or comments don’t hesitate to ask.

I have to give props to Logic-Cafe.com for their Use Multi Channel Audio Instruments as multi timbre synthesizers and Route separate audio channels from Multi Channel Audio Instruments

I noticed that I get a lot of visitors coming to my website looking for information about Kontakt. I present to you answers to many of the search queries about Kontakt 3. At the bottom of the page there are links to some useful websites.

Many of the questions that most users will have can be answered at the following websites.