Virtual Instruments V01#01 July-Aug 2005

JULY/AUGUST 2005 - VOL. 1 NO.
1
JULY/AUGUST 2005 - VOL. 1 NO. 1

www.tascamgiga.com
We couldnt have said it better. For more GigaStudio information, visit www.tascamgiga.com
2005 TASCAM, a division of TEAC America. All Rights Reserved. All specications are subject
to change without notice. GigaStudio is a trademark of TASCAM/TEAC.
I
ts high-end audio quality, exible
routing and processing capabilities,
advanced performance features,
sophisticated editing tools, powerful
search functions, and streamlined user
interface make it once again the
indisputable gold standard in
software samplers.
Electronic Musician, May 2005
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2 V I R T U A L I NS T R U ME NT S
From the
W
elcome to the premiere issue of Virtual
Instruments Magazine. Its extremely
exciting to finally see this project get off
the ground, and we hope you get a lot out of it. Our
goal is to put out the finest music industry magazine
ever.
So what is Virtual Instruments all about? If youre
reading this, you probably understand that software-
based music creation is the hot new frontier. Its
become a huge deal all around the world, with
something like 750 virtual instruments on the mar-
ket. And counting.
Theres now a passionate group of musicians scat-
tered all over the planetmyself includedwho live
and breathe sample libraries and virtual instruments.
We have a whole new way of creating music, a
whole new musical medium, and a whole new set of
creative possibilities. And along with that, a whole
new set of musical skills and technical challenges.
In short, its high time the world of softsynths
and samplers had its own magazine to spearhead
the revolution. Being way into this, and having been
the editor of a music industry magazine (Recording)
for 10-1/2 yearsand written for others such as Mix
for several moreI felt like the one to do that.
So Ive assembled a team of the best, most
knowledgeable writers in our industry, along with a
very capable staff to put out the magazine youre
holding in your hands. Our mission is simple: to help
you get the absolute most out of your software-
based musical instrument set-ups, whether youre
first thinking about taking the plunge or youre an
experienced pro running huge orchestral libraries on
multiple computers.
What you see here is just one months worth of
that; itll take a few issues to expose our full reper-
toire. For example, youll certainly see reviews of
effects plug-ins and V.I.-related hardware such as
sound cards and controllers. Naturally, the article
mix will always depend on whats new and exciting.
A
t this point Id like to thank all the advertisers
who took the leap of faith to support us without
even having seen the first issue. Please rush out and
buy their wares as a reward!
Id also like to thank the fine writers who con-
tributed to this issue. Its an absolute pleasure work-
ing with Jim Aikin, whose articles are even greater
now than they were when I first read them in
Keyboard magazine back in the mid-80s. Chris
Meyer is one of the brightest, most insightful, and
colorful writers and people around. My friend Dave
Moulton is the audio gurus guru. Dave Govett is
The Guy when it comes to GigaStudio and many
other things, the always articulate Bruce Richardson
writes from a wealth of real-world experience, and
Ashif King Idiot Hakik is a walking clever idea fac-
tory with body piercings. General expert Lee
Sherman and dashing Frederick Russ (who runs
www.VI-Control.net, an excellent discussion forum)
are doing a great job for us, and were very pleased
to have them.
And three cheers to our lovely and talented core
staff, who have worked their tails off to make this
magazine happen: art director Lachlan Westfall, web
designer Denise Young, and ad/marketing manager
Carl Marinoff. Thanks everyone.
P
lease email to let us know what you think, what
youd like to see, technical questions, tips, I wish
theyd make feature and product ideasyou get
the idea. NB@VirtualInstrumentsMag.com.
With your help well have a lively Letters section
next issue. And for heavens sake, make an honest
man or woman out of yourself and subscribe! Not
only is it much less expensive than the newsstand,
youll be helping us print more pages and more fre-
quent issues. To encourage that, we have the
Mungo Giveaway promotion youll find at the center
of this magazine.
Finally, dont forget the website:
www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com. Among other
things, you wont want to miss the audio and
graphic files that go with some of the articles.
Happy reading.NB
Editor
ILIO_VSL_6-05-VIMag 5/20/05 1:30 PM Page 1
Composite
C M Y CM MY CY CMY K
EDITOR/PUBLISHER: Nick Batzdorf
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CONTRIBUTORS: Jim Aikin, David Govett, Ashif King Idiot Hakik,
Chris Meyer, Dave Moulton, Bruce Richardson,
Frederick Russ, Lee Sherman.
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2005 Virtual Instruments, Inc.
The World of
Softsynths and
Samplers
by Nick Batzdorf
A big overview of this exciting new musical medium. Getting
startedwhats available, the various product categories,
what to expect from different computers, and generally how
to integrate software-based musical instruments into your
universe.
6
14
The Age of Reason
by Jim Aikin
A Very Deep Clinic on Propellerheads popular stand-alone
music station. Create stereo and filtered delays, become a
monster Maelstrom programmer, ReWire tricks, the pleasures
of polyrhythms, and lots more.
Rigors of the Road Rig
by Bruce Richardson
A from-the-trenches report on putting together a VI rig for
live useeverything from what power supply to use in the
computer to racking it up.
44
Interview:
Film Composer
Klaus Badelts
Shrinking Studio
The composer of Constantine and over 25 other major
Hollywood films (Pirates of the Carribean, Catwoman,
The Recruit) discusses his evolution from a wall-length
rack full of gear to a single Apple G5 running Logic Pro.
38
July/August 2005
Random Tips
Routing with the MOTU PCI-424 card, altering VSL string
runs in Melodyne, and using the mouse wheel in Logic Pro 7.
V I R T U A L I NS T R U ME NT S 5
GigaStudio 3 Finesse:
Taking the GigaPulse
by David Govett
The man who wrote the manual goes beyond it to examine
the power of the GigaPulse convolution processor in Giga 3.
Another Very Deep Clinic.
VI
VI
contents
Sampling with King
Idiot. Part 1: Modern
features for old
libraries
by Ashif King Idiot Hakik
Older sample libraries and keyboard instruments can be pro-
grammed so they work alongside your new libraries. One of
the worlds most sought-after sample library programmers
details how to create legato programs, wet and dry samples,
and release triggers.
Combining Live and
Virtual Instruments
by Dave Moulton
How to create the right space so that instruments recorded in
completely different environments will mesh seamlessly with
your VIs and sample libraries.
Trends Synfuls
Reconstructive Phrase
Modeling
by Frederick Russ
This new additive synthesis virtual instrument analyzes the
incoming MIDI data and uses a database of phrases to decide
what note fragments to splice together. Could this technology
dethrone sampling?
reviews
24
50
56
64
22, 28, 37
10 Apple GarageBand and
Jam Pack 4: Orchestra
by Nick Batzdorf
An overview of this important entry-
level program, along with the latest
add-on content package. Yes, there real-
ly is a $99 orchestral librarywith
sounds that truly belie the price.
18 East West Quantum
Leap Colossus virtual
instrument
by Nick Batzdorf
A self-contained, high quality desert
island library that covers all the bases
and then some.
42 Ableton Operator add-on
FM synth for Live
by Lee Sherman
Up until now, nobody has figured out
how to put a friendly face on FM
programming. This synth is a lot easier
than the DX-7.
20 Cycling 74 Cycles
by Chris Meyer
Some unique loops to freshen the pallet.
These rank high on the dont-leave-on-
your-shelf list.
21 Zero-G Beats
Working in Cuba
by Chris Meyer
This is more than a loop librarythis
virtual instrument documents a musical
genre.
34 Spectrasonics
Stylus RMX and SAGE
Expanders 1-5
by Nick Batzdorf
Exceptional grooves in a brilliantly-
executed virtual instrument bring work-
ing with loops to a whole new level.
PREMIERE ISSUE
V1.N1
MIDI sequencers changed the way music
was composed, and their ability to fix every
mistake and play with perfect timing changed
the way we hear music. Drum machines got
some musicians thinking in patterns, which for
better and worse laid the groundwork for loop-
oriented music.
The synth craze was on. Samplerswhich
are technically not synthesizers, since they use
digital recordings as the basis for their
soundsstarted becoming affordable a couple
of years later. The music software and sound-
ware industries got going in full force.
These were the high-flying keyboard du jour
days, with each model leapfrogging the previ-
ous one. That era lasted a few years. A lot of
incredible digital instruments came out, many
of which are still in use today.
These instruments have microprocessors,
memory, storage, operating systems, software,
A big overview of this exciting new musical medium. Getting
startedwhats available, the various product categories, what to
expect from different computers, and generally how to integrate
software-based musical instruments into your universe.
W
ere in the midst of a second great wave in the
music technology revolution.
The first one came in with the information era. In 1983,
when synthesizers started to come under microprocessor
control, the industry adopted MIDI as the common control
language. Yamaha introduced the famous DX-7 synthesiz-
er, and it brought digital synthesis into the mainstream.
The World of
Softsynths and
Samplers
By Nick Batzdorf
they waddle and quackall the elements of a
personal computer. And theres no ducking the
fact that they are computers. But the hardware
is proprietary, which means that the develop-
ment was done by companies with the funds it
takes to manufacture hardware.
Meanwhile, standard computers were con-
stantly getting more and more powerful.
Digital audio workstations (DAWs) began tak-
ing over as a recording medium, first with the
help of add-on hardware acceleration
(Digidesign Pro Tools), later with or without it.
By the mid-90s, a cottage industry had materi-
alized to take advantage of the DAW migration,
writing DSP plug-insequalizers, compressors,
delays, and so on.
Then at some point before the turn of the
century, standard personal computers became
powerful enough to run synthesizers and sam-
plers in software. Five years later, they have so
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sampler called GigaSampler. It completely blew
the lid off the pot. (GigaSampler is now called
GigaStudio and NemeSys is owned by TAS-
CAM.) Instead of loading samples into RAM,
Giga streams them off hard drives. It still needs
to load a little bit into a head-start RAM buffer,
but the recording time is essentially unlimited.
All of a sudden it became possible to sample
as many variations of an instrument as neces-
sary to capture its expressive range. So instead
of having a choice between, say, short and
long string ensemble programs, we now have
programs with literally dozens of individual vio-
lin, viola, etc. playing techniquesknown as
articulations. Each one is sampled at several dif-
ferent velocity layers, and the programming
details go on from there.
Giga injected new life into the field of sam-
pling, and it attracted a lot of excellent develop-
ers. Sampled sounds have become so much bet-
ter that its almost like a whole new technology.
Giga started a worldwide craze. MIDI pro-
grammingthat is, piecing together phrases
using different articulations, rather than just
playing parts in real time (using one-size-fits-all
programs)has become an important skill of
its own, and not just for orchestral libraries. A
whole new musical medium was born. The
process of composition has changed forever.
Sample libraries used to be measured in
Megabytes and come on a CD. Now theyre
measured in Gigabytes and come on multiple
DVDs.
While there are other excellent orchestral
sample libraries, the pinnacle of the whole sam-
pling field in many ways is the Vienna
Symphony Orchestra, which is currently up to
230GB. These people have sampled every
instrument of the orchestra in impeccable
detail, including the transitions between every
two notes up to an octave apart; what theyve
done is just incredible.
Today there are several other software sam-
plers that feature disk-streaming, including the
EXS24 sampler built into Apple Logic Pro,
Steinberg Halion, Native Instruments Kontakt,
and MOTU MachFive. Youll also find a lot of
librariesincluding some reviewed in this
issuesold as virtual instruments, meaning
that they come attached to an OEM player
version of one of these samplers. The advan-
tage is that you dont need the sampler to run
the library; the disadvantage is that the ability
to tweak is generally limited.
We refer to large disk-streaming libraries as
modern sample libraries.
much power that software-based musical
instrumentsVirtual Instrumentsare often
more capable than dedicated hardware ones.
It still takes a lot of skill to develop an instru-
ment, but it doesnt take the huge investment
required to build hardware, nor does it take the
manpower and time to code an operating sys-
tem from scratch. Were seeing a lot of innova-
tion as a result, only now its not only coming
from large companiessome of which didnt
start out that waybut also from the proverbial
1-person shop in some small Eastern European
mountain village youve never heard of.
The pioneering spirit of the early 80s is back.
This is the second great wave in digital
music technology. Its more gentle than the
first one, but its having a profound effect on
the way music is created at all levelsand on
the music itself.
The virtual instrument phenomenon has
resulted in some very interesting instruments,
and more are coming out all the time. But on a
practical level, probably the biggest difference
between working with hardware synthesizers
20 years ago and software synthesizers now is
that we have so many of them at our immedi-
ate disposal.
Sampling, on the other hand, has under-
gone a major revolution.
Along came Giga
The basic concept of using samples to imi-
tate an instrumentas opposed to doing weird
stuffis pretty simple: record an instrument
playing a note, and then assign that to the cor-
responding note on a keyboard (or other MIDI
controller). For added detail, record the instru-
ment playing at different levels, and assign
them to that same note to be triggered at
appropriate velocities (i.e. the harder you play,
the louder the sample you trigger).
There were excellent samples available in the
early 80s, but they were limited by the
amount of memory that was available, which
translates to recording time. Samples had to be
loaded into RAM for playback, so it wasnt pos-
sible to sample, say, every piano note at 16
velocity levels with their full decay to nothing
(which can take over a minute).
To save recording time, the compromises
were to record a sample every few notes and
pitch-shift it, restrict the number of velocity lay-
ers, and find a clear section of the wave form
to loop repeatedly. While the amount of avail-
able RAM grew from kilobytes to Megabytes,
this was a limitation of both hardware and
early software samplers.
Then out of nowhere a company called
NemeSys came along with a Windows software
It still takes a lot of skill to develop a software
instrument, but it doesn't take the huge
investment required to build hardware.
The pioneering spirit of the early 80s is back.
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Taking the plunge is surprisingly easy: all you need is a reasonably late model computer, a controller
keyboard, and a sound card for high-quality monitoring.
The entry level: hardware
The list of hardware you need to get started
isnt very long: a suitable computer with a basic
sound card aka audio interface if you want high
quality monitoring, a MIDI keyboard (or other
controller), and a basic MIDI interface if one isnt
built into the keyboard or sound card.
As to computers, any PC or Mac released in
the past five yearsmaybe even earlieris
capable of doing something useful with V.I.s,
but the more power and memory (up to the
maximum your system can address) you have
the better. Depending on the instruments and
plug-ins youre running, a large-scale arrange-
ment can bring any machine to its knees; on
the other hand, its remarkable how much you
can get out of a single machine.
Software instruments always spec minimum
system requirements on their boxes, but in
general youll constantly be running into the
minimum machines limits. Its a good policy to
contact the developer of the software you plan
on using to find out how much you can expect
to eke out of a given computer. You should be
able to get a feel for this by reading some of
the reviews in this issue, for example the East
West Quantum Leap Colossus review on page
18.
For playing V.I.s, one of the important specs
is latency: the delay between playing a note on
your keyboard and hearing it come out your
speakers. Up to a point, performance and the
size of the RAM buffer every sound card
requires are on opposite sides of a scale. The
more powerful your computer is, the lower a
buffer youll be able to set without hearing
clicks and pops as you start pushing the num-
ber of voices (simultaneous notes).
Sound cards come in all shapes and sizes,
starting at well under $100 and continuing
upwards of $12,000 for a Digidesign Pro Tools
HD system. While its not ideal, you can even
monitor V.I.s through a computers built-in
audio card (hopefully through decent head-
phones or a home stereo system for better
sound); Mac G5s have optical digital outputs
built in as well as their analog ones, and theyre
fine if you have a way of converting them to
analog (again, such as with the digital inputs
on a home stereo).
Any MIDI keyboard will work as a controller,
whether its a workstation with built-in sounds of
its own or a dedicated controller keyboard. Bear
in mind that keyboards with weighted keys that
feel like a piano are good for keyboard parts, but
they can be hard to control if youre playing
something like woodwinds, and vice versa.
Some recent keyboard controllers connect to
a USB port on your computer. Others have a
MIDI Out port, in which case youll need a
basic MIDI interface to give your computer a
MIDI In. These boxes arent expensive.
Taking the plunge: software
Most virtual instruments are plug-ins, which
by definition means that theyre add-ons to a
host application. These hosts are usually digital
audio sequencers, which are programs that
record, play, edit, mix, etc. live audio and MIDI
side-by-side. The terms digital audio
sequencer and digital audio workstation or
more commonly DAW are interchangeable.
The most widely used digital audio
sequencers are Apple Logic, MOTU Digital
Performer, Digidesign Pro Tools, Steinberg
Cubase, and Cakewalk Sonar; youll see all of
them mentioned a lot in this magazine.
However, there are many other kinds of pro-
grams that can host V.I.s., including 2-track
audio editors; all-in-one environments such as
Ableton Live, Propellerhead Reason, Arturio
Storm, FL Studio, Sony ACID; stand-alone hosts
that do nothing else such as Steinberg V-Stack;
notation programs with links to V.I.s such as
Sibeliusand many more were leaving out.
Most people are best off with a digital audio
sequencer, but for example Ableton Live is a
great all-in-one program if youre into loop
composition and performance. Propellerhead
Reason (see clinic in this issue) is a great all-in-
one groove-based composition environment
with some really interesting synths and effects,
and it doesnt require all that hefty a computer.
Most sound cards and many other programs
these days come with very generous lite ver-
sion software bundles, and thats a great way
to get your feet wet before investing heavily in
software. So is Apple GarageBand, which
comes with every Mac and is very inexpensive
as part of iLife (see the following article).
Garritan Personal Orchestra, all the TASCAM
audio interfaces, Digidesigns MBoxthese all
include serious software bundles.
A lot of musicians use a variety of programs
to take advantage of what each has to offer.
ReWire, a protocol developed by Propellerhead,
allows two programs running on the same
computer to be in complete lock-step. You set
up a ReWire master and slave, and MIDI, audio,
sync, and transport control get handled trans-
parently. If you work in Logic and want to treat
Reason as an external sound generator rather
than a complete environment, for example,
you can just ReWire it into Logics mixer.
Without wanting to be grossly obsequious to
our advertisers, the best way to see whats out
there is to go to a major retailers website like
MIDI programmingthat is, piecing together
phrases using different articulationshas become
an important skill of its own, and not just for
orchestral libraries. A whole new
musical medium was born.
At 230GB, the Vienna Symphonic Library represents the pinnacle of sampling. This screen capture from
Tascam GigaStudio 3 shows how extensive it is.
VI
f e a t u r e
www.Audiomidi.com or www.Sweetwater.com
and poke around their software sections. Then
go to developers websites and investigate their
demos.
Formats
Theres a variety of formats to be aware of,
among them formats for software to communi-
cate with audio hardware, plug-in formats, and
sampler formats. While they dont make for a
very perky article and we wont list them here,
its important to understand the distinction.
Its the plug-in format that were listing at
the top of each review; that tells you which
hosts are compatible with the plug-in being
reviewed.
One machine
Those are the three factors that determine
how much you can squeeze out of a computer:
processing power, hard disk access, and memo-
ry addressing.
Computer processing power is the most
important resource for synthesizers and DSP
plug-inssomething we havent really dis-
cussed in this article, but nonetheless an essen-
tial part of software-based music creation. With
certain notable exceptions, however, you prob-
ably wont constantly rub up against the pro-
cessing limits of a higher-end computer, such
as a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 or a Mac G5, if youre
just running synths. We want to be careful not
to rule out the possibility, however.
Software samplers dont use up a lot of pro-
cessing horsepower just to stream voices, but
sometimes they have DSP built in that does
require CPU muscle. The latest trend is for sam-
plers to have convolution processors built in,
and that really uses processing power. (See the
sidebars to the Giga clinic in this issue for more
about convolution processing.)
The speed at which a computers hard disk
subsystem is able to deliver audio to the sam-
pler determines how many voicesthat is,
simultaneous notesyou can play. Todays
machines are delivering in excess of 256 stereo
voices off standard drives. If youre playing sus-
tained keyboard arpeggios, you can quickly run
out of voices; single bass drum hits dont use
up any polyphony worth talking about.
What is a concern for samplers is RAM,
even though theyre streaming the bulk of
the recordings off a hard drive. The reason is
the head-start buffer we discussed earlierit
still takes memory to load programs; the
more samples in a program, the larger the
buffer.
If youre running modern sample libraries
(again, modern means theyre large and and
they stream off disks), you need to try different
articulations for notes or groups of notes. You
dont want to have to stop to unload and load
programs in the throes of sequencing; that
would be like putting a violin in its case and
picking up a different one every time you
wanted to switch bow directions.
So even if you dont play all the articulations
you have loadedand you wontthe name of
the game is to have as many programs cued
up and ready to play as possible. That means
the sampler must be able to access as much
RAM as possible.
Both GigaStudio and Kontakt can load
approximately 1 - 1.2GB of samples in a
Windows XP machine with 2GB of RAM
installed; installing more RAM doesnt change
this. That includes whatever RAM a host pro-
gram uses if youre running these samplers
inside one (many people run Gigas on separate
machines with nothing else going).
Its not possible to say how many programs
that translates to in the real world, because it
depends on the program, but 32 - 40 is a rea-
sonable minimum. That figure could easily
double if all youre loading is single percussion
hits. A G5 Mac with 4.5 to 5GB of RAM
installed, running OS X Panther or Tiger, is
equivalent to about 2-1/2 Windows XP
machines; a G4 with 1.5 or 2GB installed in
Panther or Tiger is roughly equivalent to a sin-
gle XP machine.
Multiple machines and beyond
In order to load big templates, a lot of musi-
cians who use larger librariesorchestral or
otherwiserun multiple computers. They do
that in part for the additional processing power
and voice count, but mainly for the memory
access. If you have an older machine available,
you can certainly put it to use just by adding a
sound card and a MIDI interface.
Dont get scared, though. You can run a
heck of a lot on a single machine.
If you look at the diagram showing a basic
2-computer set-up, youll see that there are lots
of cables to run. The latest technology thats
emerging is to run audio and/or MIDI over an
ethernet network cable. That reduces the num-
ber of cables and is generally convenient, plus
it means you dont need a sound card and
MIDI interface on every machine.
Some of the networking products to investi-
gate include MIDI Over LAN
(www.Musiclab.com); Apples Network MIDI
(in OS X Tiger); FX Teleport
(www.FXMax.com); Yamahas mLan; and
Steinbergs VST System Link. Logic Audio Pro
version 7 has a feature called Logic Nodes that
offloads Logic-format DSP plug-ins onto anoth-
er Mac on the network. Version 7.1 also has a
tantalizingly undocumented plug-in called
AUNetSend that sends audio over a network.
Bzz
The latest computer industry buzzword is
64-bit. Whats important to you and me is
64-bit memory addressing, which means virtu-
ally unlimited memory access for loading sam-
ple starts.
Maybe that will bring us closer to the elusive
goal of being able to run everything we want
on a single machine.
And everything weve talked about is what
this magazine is all about.
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Fig 3: A basic multi-computer set-up. The mixer is optional, and you can share the keyboard and monitor
with a KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) switch.
1 0 V I R T U A L I NS T R U ME NT S
I
ts hard to imagine an easier entry into the
world of softsynths and samplers than Apple
GarageBand. Even without any of the add-on
Jam Packs were starting to review in this issue,
this deceptively simple loop-oriented digital
audio sequencer comes packed with a hulking
selection of everything you need to get started:
software instruments, loops, and effects.
So well start with a basic run-down of
GarageBand for those who havent tried it.
The first ones free
Apple figures about 50% of all American
households have someone who plays an instru-
ment, and theyd like every one of these peo-
ple to be making music with Macs. So
GarageBand 2 comes free on every new Mac as
part of their pot-sweetening iLife 05 collection,
along with iDVD, iTunes, iMovie HD, and
iPhoto. Or you just buy the entire iLife package
(GarageBand included) for $79.
Part of Apples imperial design is for you to
start having way too much fun with
GarageBand, prompting you to upgrade to
Logic Express or preferably Logic Pro, their
more advanced digital audio sequencers. Its no
coincidence that you can use GarageBands
Apple Loops and software instruments in these
programs, and also in Soundtrack Prowhich
in my opinion makes it a no-brainer for every
Logic user to get GarageBand just for its con-
tent.
(Actually, you can use the included audio
versions of Apple Loops in any audio pro-
gramtheyre just AIFF files.)
Toys Rnt us
Because non-musicians can stack up loops to
use GarageBand as the musical equivalent of
painting by the numbers, it might seem like a
toy. Its not. While the program does lack some
basic features, most notably the ability to
change meters and tempos during the song,
its a surprisingly capable tool.
GarageBand has two types of tracks: Real
Instrument tracks (meaning audio, for placing
audio loops or recording live input) and
Software Instrument tracks, which contain MIDI
loops and recordings to trigger sample play-
back instruments. Rather than inserting the
Software Instruments on a trackwhich is how
you use them in Logicthey define the track
itself in GarageBand.
(GarageBand can also host AU format plug-
ins and virtual instruments, and you can stream
audio into it using the ReWire protocolsee
The World of Softsynths and Samplers else-
where in this issue.)
The interface couldnt be more friendly. If
you drag a MIDI or audio loop from
GarageBands loop browser, the program auto-
matically creates an appropriate track to play
the loop and matches it to the tempo. Theres
also a preference to convert MIDI loops to
audio as soon as you drag them onto the play-
ing field. (Theres actually no conversionthe
audio version is substituted for the MIDI ver-
sion with effects.)
Price: GarageBand, $79;
Jam Pack 4, $99
Company: Apple Computer, 1
Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014.
408/996-1010. www.Apple.com
Platform: Mac G3 600MHz+ (G4 or
G5 strongly recommended for soft-
ware instruments); OS 10.3.4+; Jam
Pack instruments work with Logic,
Logic Express, Soundtrack/Pro, and
GarageBand; loops can be used
with any program.
License: 1 user, 1 machine, royalty-
free use in audio and video projects.
Apple
GarageBand and
Jam Pack 4:
Symphony Orchestra
An overview of this important entry-level
program, along with the latest add-on content pack-
age. Yes, there really is a $99 orchestral librarywith
sounds that truly belie the price.
Review by
Nick Batzdorf
VI
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Fig. 1: GarageBands loop browser makes it easy to find your way through its extensive library of riffs.
V I R T U A L I NS T R U ME NT S 1 1
Whats really handy is that you audition the
instruments with your MIDI keyboard right in
the Open dialog. This would be a brilliant fea-
ture for Logics integral EXS24 sampler, which
incidentally can open GarageBand Software
Instrument programs for more extensive edit-
ing than the player provides.
GarageBand has both piano roll and nota-
tion-based editing for MIDI regions. You can
quantize notes, edit five common controllers,
and there are sliders for transposing and adjust-
ing the velocities of selected notes.
For audio, there are rather innocuous-looking
sliders that, if you think about it, are pretty
amazing. One slider transposes the whole region
over an octave range in either direction, and it
doesnt sound bad at all. The other two are
Enhance Tuning and Enhance Timing. This
absurdly inexpensive program can actually auto-
correct intonation and quantize audio to a speci-
fied grid. And it sounds pretty good, as long as
you dont push it beyond reason. Theres also a
guitar tuner, along with various standard effects
like eq and reverb, and a guitar amp simulator.
I have just two complaints about
GarageBand. First, it isnt able to route its audio
to specific outputs on MOTU audio hardware
unlike every other program in OS X. Instead,
the sound comes out the first two outputs of
the first interface connected to the PCI-424
card, which is absolutely no help if those dont
happen to be the outputs youre using to mon-
itor. (Fixing this could be MOTUs or Apples
responsibility, but that makes no difference to
the user.)
Second, the GarageBand and Jam Pack
installers will only put the content on your
startup disk. Real men and women put applica-
tions on startup partitions and content on sep-
arate drives. Aliases to content moved to
another drive will not work. (I actually had to
set up a Firewire drive to start up from in order
to do this review, since my startup drive had
nowhere near enough free space.)
In spite of that, its almost funny how much
GarageBand has to offer for the price. Its very
few features away from being able to cover all
the bases youd expect from a professional
composition tool.
Jam Pack basics
There are presently four Jam Packs for
GarageBand, each of which runs $99. When
you consider that each of these libraries is from
3 to 10GB and contains from about 30 to over
100 software instruments, along with (Im
trusting the boxes here) over 2000 loopswell,
thats a silly price.
It appears that Apple licensed some if not all
of the content from other developers. In gener-
al, the Jam Pack software instruments are
somewhat lighter than youd find in a typical
modern sample library. They tend to include
fewer articulations, or a given program might
have a couple of velocity layers instead of three
or four.
But thats not a dis, because the flip side is
that this makes these libraries very manageable.
I had no problem getting useful results out of
GarageBand on a G4/500-upgraded
PowerBook thats approaching five years of
agewhich is about 100 in computer years.
(However, the bulk of this review was done on
a dual 2.5GHz G5 and a dual 1GHz G4; see the
box with this article for system requirements.)
Another advantage to these libraries rela-
tively compact nature is that all the instruments
are designed to be played in real time. Youll
only be doing minimal articulation-switching in
the Orchestral Jam Pack, and pretty much none
in the others. And the instruments load quickly,
since theyre not huge.
Apple struck the right balance between com-
plexity and practicality, in my opinion. The Jam
Packs still have considerable subtlety, for exam-
ple some of the programs have release sam-
ples, and overall theyre at least as deep as the
factory programs on any keyboard workstation
from before the modern sampling era.
(Again, please see The World of Softsynths
and Samplers earlier in this issue for an expla-
nation of how sampling has undergone a major
revolution over the past five years.)
Jam Pack 4 Symphony
Orchestra
Software instruments
How comprehensive can a $100 orchestral
library be? Youd be surprised. Well get to the
VI
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Fig. 2: Clicking on the scissors brings up an edit window showing the track selection above.
In this case an audio track is selected.

loops later, but Jam Pack 4s software instru-
ments cover every instrument of the orchestra,
and the sounds are totally usableconsiderably
better overall than youd get out of a keyboard
module. Of course the variety of articulations is
limited compared to the next tier of orchestral
libraries, but theres plenty here for a skilled pro-
grammer to produce convincing orchestrations.
Most of the software instrument programs in
this Pack use the pitch wheel to control expres-
sion (actually volume). You can also use MIDI
cc7, but most people like to reserve that for
setting an overall trim level and then use
cc11, expression, for riding the level. Its
more common to use a slider for expression,
since the pitch wheel springs back to its center
when you let it go, but it actually works very
well.
This library uses the mod wheel to switch
between as many as five different articulations.
For example, violin Section 1a very nice sam-
pled string sectionhas medium sustained
notes, staccato, sus tremolo, 1/2 step trills,
whole step trills, and pizzicato all up at once.
Its pretty hard move the mod wheel to the
right position when there are five articulations
up, but three works greatas in the French
horn section, which switches between long
notes, short notes, and short crescendos.
But its not necessary to spend hours practic-
ing mod wheel switchesthese articulations
are available separately, labeled Xtra. If you
own Logic Pro, you can build your own pro-
gram switches in the EXS24 editor.
Its also worth mentioning that Apple chose
not to limit the ranges of the lowest and high-
est samples in these software instruments. You
can play string bass way up the keyboard or
glock all the way down, for example.
As a gauge of Symphony Orchestras depth,
theres a total of about 38 different string artic-
ulations, divided among seven programs.
Subjectively, the strings are way better than
they deserve to be in a $99 library.
In addition to harp, and violins 1 and 2 ( a
smaller section), viola, cello, and bass sections,
theres a String Ensemble section. You can use
the ensemble to play the parts before splitting
the MIDI notes to individual section tracks,
although its not very easy to control where
notes get pasted in GarageBand.
There are also eleven wonderful church
organs, a nice celeste, a decent if somewhat
brittle Steinway piano, a harpsichord recorded
too closely that has excellent release samples, a
keyboardful of good orchestral percussion, cro-
tales, tubular bells, three different timpani artic-
ulations (again, available under the mod wheel
and separately), glock, marimiba, and xylo-
phone.
As with the strings, theres a brass ensemble
as well as individual sections. Both solo and
section French Horns are included, the tuba is
solo, and the trombones and trumpets are sec-
tions. These are not cheesy-synthy trumpetsI
was surprised at how good the 2-layer trumpet
section sounds. The long horn and trombone
programs both suffer somewhat from swelling
articulations that get sucked back into the
track when you play a new note, but you can
control that somewhat with the expression
(pitch) wheel.
Jam Pack 4s woodwinds include solo bas-
soon, English horn, oboe, and piccolo, and
both solo and section flute and clarinet. All but
the bassoon, which Id subjectively rate only
average, sound very nice indeedas long as
youre playing the right sorts of lines for the
articulations included.
The woodwinds are where I really noticed
the limited number of articulations in this
library. For example, you can play gorgeous
legato phrases with the English horn, but the
staccato articulation is too bright to blend with
the legato one in the middle of a phrase. The
same applies to the solo flute and clarinet, plus
they also have sucking legato articulations.
This is less of a problem with the section clar-
inet, but its still present.
To be clear, theres definitely a place for
swelling articulations; the problem is when you
use them for successive notes that arent long
and sustained. And as long as you write to the
library, these woodwind programs sound real-
ly nice.
Orchestral loops
The first thing that struck me about the
loops included with this Jam Pack is that
theyre not the clichs I was expecting. These
are all short riffs of varying length (1 16 bars)
that you can build upon, with descriptive
names like Adversary, Escape, Cinematic
Transition.
With all the audio loops in this collection,
you get the entire mix and then stems of
individual parts (broken into high strings, medi-
um strings, etc.); the MIDI loops naturally have
each individual part separated. Full versions of
the demo songs that the loops were extracted
from are included on the DVD so you can hear
the entire arrangement.
Most of these riffs loop seamlessly, a few
dontand probably arent intended to. The
Symphony Orchestra is not a construction kit
like the other Jam Packs; its loops, which
almost certainly come from different com-
posers, arent all designed to work together
even if theyre put in the same key.
On the other hand there are always going to
be some interesting accidents whenever you
layer two pieces of music. This is an old music
editors trick.
In general, I found the loop content interest-
ing and worth listening to for ideas. Some peo-
ple will undoubtedly score videos with them.
But this part of the library is all so subjective
that its best left to your ears to decide what
you like and dont like about this collection.
Conclusion
The Symphony Orchestra Jam Pack is one of
the best deals around, even if it is missing a
couple of important woodwind and brass artic-
ulations. Anyone looking to get his/her feet wet
with orchestral writing would find it an ideal
starting point. Just the string programs, which
dont sound like cheesy synth strings, are worth
the price.
Musicians who already have other libraries
could find this Pack useful as part of a laptop-
friendly portable writing rig; just add some-
thing like a 2-octave M-Audio Oxygen8 MIDI
keyboard and youre good to go.
Most importantly, though, GarageBand has
the potential to bring lots of musicians into our
fold, and that can only be a good thing for us
all.
Next month: Jam Packs 1, 2, and 3.
VI
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Fig. 3: Notation editing for MIDI tracks is a new feature in GarageBand 2. It does a pretty
good job of interpreting the rhythms that were played.
This deceptively simple loop-oriented digital audio
sequencer comes with a hulking selection of
everything you need to get started: software
instruments, loops, and effects.
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Because Reasons interface is so clear, there
are almost no hidden features to trip up the
novice. On the other hand, the program is
capable of far more than you may suspect. In
this clinic well reveal a few of the techniques
beloved by Reason power users. This is not an
introduction to Reason, nor is it a product
review. Im going to assume that you have the
program and have read the manual.
Much of Reasons power stems from its
rear-panel connections. You can do far more
with these than connect a sound module to
the mixer. For instance
Stereo delays
The DDL-1 delay line is not a stereo delay. Its
left and right inputs and outputs are purely for
convenience in processing stereo signals. If you
want a ping-pong delay (one that bounces the
signal from left to right and back), heres how
to set it up.
Take the output of your chosen synth or
Redrum channel and patch it into a Spider
Audio splitter channel. Create two DDL-1s and
give each of them an input from the Spider.
Set the delay time and wet/dry mix of the two
DDL-1s to taste (the delay times should not be
identical). Patch the DDL-1 outputs into your
Mixer. (This may have been done for you when
you created them.) Now you can use either the
Mixer channels panpots or the panpots on the
DDL-1 panels to pan one delay hard left and
the other hard right.
With this patch, the feedback setting on the
long delay should probably be set lower than
the feedback on the short delay, so that theyll
fade out at about the same time.
For an interesting sonic wrinkle, set both of
the DDL-1s wet/dry knobs fully wet and patch
the Spider Audio splitter to yet another Mixer
input. This will give you a dry signal that hasnt
passed through the DDL-1s. Now patch a
Secret Techniques of
Power Users Exposed!
T
he so-called virtual worksta-
tion has carved a fat niche for
itself in the music world. Being able
to craft a song from start to finish in
one piece of software without ever
having to wrestle with compatibility
conflict is an attractive proposition.
Propellerhead Reason wasnt the
first virtual workstation program, nor
is it the most feature-laden.
Nevertheless, Reason has become
the big gorilla in this particular cir-
cus. It sounds great, of course, but
the real explanation for its success
lies in its user interface, which emu-
lates rackmount hardware with an
almost obsessive attention to detail.
Not only does this make Reason easy
to learn and use, it gives the experi-
ence of working with the program a
kind of tactile, physical dimension
that musicians find gratifying.
Scream 4 distortion effect between the left out-
puts of both DDL-1s and the mixer. Because
the Scream is a true stereo processor, it can
grind up one DDLs output in its left channel
and the other in its right channel, and pass the
results on to the mixer with hard panning.
This concept is illustrated in the online file
Screamin In Rhythm.rns. This file also uses a
couple of Matrix pattern sequencers to modu-
late the Scream, as described below in the sec-
tion You scream, I scream.
Filtered delay
The sound of a filtered delay, in which the
successive echoes get darker as the highs are
filtered out, is a classic. Reasons DDL-1 lacks a
filter circuit, but you can create one for your-
self. Heres how to do it. Note: This patch can
cause feedback! Before setting it up, I recom-
mend that you turn your monitor system way
down.
The ingredients are as follows: a sound
source (such as a Redrum module), a DDL-1, a
PEQ-2 for filtering purposes, two Spider Audio
Merger/Splitters, and an extra Mixer 14:2. The
concept is that the Mixer is going to be used as
an attenuator for the feedback loop, so turn
the Feedback knob on the DDL-1 all the way
down and leave its dry/wet knob all the way
wet.
For clarity, start by renaming one of the
Spiders Delay Source and the other Delay
Output. Rename the Mixer Delay Loop. To
set up the patch, make the following connec-
tions:
Output of sound source module to Delay
Source splitter.
One output of the Delay Source splitter to
your main mixer. (Thats the dry signal.)
Another output of the Delay Source splitter
to the Delay Source merger.
Delay Source merger output to the PEQ
input.
PEQ output to DDL input.
DDL output to Delay Output splitter.
One output from Delay Output splitter to
your main mixer. (Thats the wet signal
path.)
Another output of the Delay Output splitter
to a channel input on the Delay Loop
Mixer.
The Age
of Reason
by Jim Aikin
VI
v e r y d e e p c l i n i c
more
online
www.virtualinstrumentsmag.com
one active oscillator, and while the
filters are both switched on, the
oscillator isnt being routed
through either of them. Choose
something other than the sine,
square, sawtooth, or triangle wave,
turn the motion knob all the way
to the left, and then move the
index slider slowly left and right
while holding a note on your MIDI
keyboard. Youll hear a variety of
waveforms. When the motion knob
isnt all the way to the left, the
oscillator will sweep through these
waves.
Next, while leaving the motion
knob all the way to the left, park
the index slider at any spot and
turn the shift knob up slowly. This
will change the timbre of the wave
by introducing higher harmonics.
Since there are more than 80
waves, this experimentation will
take a little time. Once you have
an idea what a single Malstrm
oscillator will do, youll be ready to
try things like turning on the wave-
shaper and modulating the shift
and index from the mod wheel.
On glancing at Malstrms two
Mod generators (equivalent to
LFOs in other synths), you may think they cant
control too many aspects of the soundthere
are only three output knobs for Mod A and
four for Mod B. But there are some quasi-hid-
den modulation possibilities. First, like other
the velocity and mod wheel inputs on the left
side, the Mod generators have A/both/B
switches. Using this switch on Mod A, for
instance, you could direct it to modulate only
the pitch, index, or shift of Osc B.
But what if you want Mod A to
modulate Filter B at the same time its
modulating Osc A? Impossible, right?
Theres not even a filter knob in Mod
A. So hit the Tab key and take a look
at the back panel. Theres an output
for the signal coming from Mod A,
and just to the left of it is an input for
filter control. This input has its own
A/both/B switch. So patch Mod A to
the filter input by dragging a patch
cord with the mouse, switch the input
to the B destination, adjust the
amount of filter modulation to taste,
and youre good to go.
The one limitation of this tech-
nique is that your patch cord routing
wont be saved when you save your
new Malstrm patch. It will be saved
with the Reason song, however. And
version 3.0 can save complex patch-
es that include rear-panel routings in
its new Combinator plug-in. If you
dont have 3.0, you might want to
create a little text file containing
notes on your Reason patches.
Another cool resource, before we
move on: the Malstrm has audio
inputs to its filter section. These can be used
even if the Malstrm is not playing notes. By
triggering the filter envelope from a sequencer
track, however (while leaving both oscillators
switched off), you can add rhythmic envelope
or Mod generator sweeps to whatever sound is
being processed by the Malstrm. The patch
Mal as Filter.rns shows what can happen when
the Malstrm is pressed into service as an
external filter for a Subtractor.
You scream, I scream
As good as Reasons sounds are, the Scream
4 Sound Destruction Unit increases its sonic
palette by a factor of a hundred. Running a ho-
hum kick/snare rhythm pattern through
Scream will turn it into an industrial monster
covered with radioactive slime.
One approach is to route several drums
through different Scream units, but with a
slower computer, inserting several of them may
add too much CPU overhead. On the other
hand, you may not want exactly the same fla-
vor of distortion on the kick as on the snare.
The solution, as usual with Reason, is to hit the
Tab key and work with the jacks on the back.
Create a Matrix step sequencer, make its pat-
tern the same length as your drum loop, and
patch its note and curve outputs into the P1,
P2, and/or Damage jacks on the back of the
Scream. By editing the Matrix steps, you can
change the sound of the Scream from one
drum hit to another.
The file Delay Scream.rns illustrates two of
my favorite techniques. Running a solo synth
tone through a delay line before it reaches the
Scream distortion causes it to intermodulate
with itself. In addition, cranking up the reso-
Before completing the loop, hit the Tab key
and drastically lower the channel fader on
the Delay Loop Mixer. (If youve been fol-
lowing instructions, it will be labeled
Delay Out.)
The Delay Loop Mixers master output back
to the Delay Source merger input.
Thats the patch. To use it, start your sound
source, choose a suitable EQ curve on the PEQ,
and then raise the level of the channel fader on
the Delay Loop Mixer gradually until you
achieve the desired level of delay feedback.
With this patch you can use the PEQ to boost
selected bands you arent limited to high
rolloff. Note, however, that boosting a band
with the PEQ has a side effect: it increases the
feedback level. The gain knob on the PEQ can
drive the patch into runaway feedback, so be
careful.
You can download this patch from the VI
website. Its called Filtered Delay.rns.
Dive into the Malstrm
To become a demon Malstrm programmer,
youll need to master the oscillator waveforms
and the signal flow. The latter is shown plainly
on the front panel; you just have to think a bit
about which buttons are lighted and where the
arrows point. (Hint: when the buttons on the
right side of the oscillators are not lighted, that
doesnt mean the oscillators are switched off. It
just means their outputs arent being processed
by the filters.)
The waveforms are not visible, so the best
way to learn them is to experiment. Proceed as
follows:
Start with the Init Patch, which is loaded
when you create a Malstrm. This patch has
The easiest way to figure out Malstrm is to start with its default
Init patch and check out the waveforms (see text).
The Filtered Delay patch looks like this, but dont try to trace
the patch cords by eye, just follow the step-by-step directions
in this article.
V I R T U A L I NS T R U ME NT S 1 5
nance of a tone before sending it to a distor-
tion effect will cause the pitch to warble and
gargle in an unstable way.
ReWire Solutions
Using Reason as a ReWire slave device is ludi-
crously easy, though the details may differ
depending on which host application youre
using. If youre using Cubase SX, for instance,
you launch Cubase first and then launch
Reason as usual. With Sonar, however, Reason
is launched from Sonars Insert menu. Next,
find the dialog box in the host app where you
switch on as many Reason audio channels as
you need.
If youre planning to use only Reasons
effects for its sounds, route its synths into a
Mixer module in the normal way, then patch
this to the Hardware Interface. This way youll
need only one stereo pair of inputs in your host
app, which will receive the output of the
Reason Mixer. To process various Reason synths
through different plug-ins in your host, simply
activate more channels in the host and patch
the synths directly to the Hardware Interface,
skipping the Mixer.
I normally use Cubase to sequence the tracks
that play individual Reason modules. Reason
becomes strictly a sound module (more or less
as if it were a VSTi). Knob and fader moves can
be recorded from Reasons front-panel controls
into the host sequencer; all you have to do is
select the Reason device as the MIDI input for
the track, put the sequencer in record mode,
switch to Reason, and move the controls as
needed. (Not all sequencers support this fea-
ture, however.)
If you look in the MIDI Implementation
Charts document (installed with Reason) youll
find the controller assignments for the various
panel controls. Note that Reasons MIDI
Remote Mapping feature, which is supposed to
allow you to assign panel controls to the CC
number and channel of your choice, works
only with external MIDI arriving from hard-
ware, not with MIDI data arriving from a
ReWire host sequencer.
I recommend saving all the materials for a
given song in the same folder. When saving the
Reason .rns file for the song, put it in the same
folder with the sequencer files. This way you can
back up the whole project (you do back up after
every work session, dont you?) more easily.
When using Reason strictly as a sound mod-
ule, routing MIDI correctly requires an extra
step. The trick is to create a track in Reasons
sequencer that isnt assigned to any of the
Reason synths. I usually call this the duff
track. When a new Reason synth is created,
Reason automatically creates an internal
sequence track for it and assigns
the MIDI input to that track. This
is not useful in ReWire mode with
Cubase, because the MIDI data
from the host will reach the mod-
ule directly, while the input from
external MIDI hardware will be
routed to the track and from the
track to the module. So after cre-
ating a new module, click on the
left end of the duff track to move
the MIDI icon back to it. If you
dont do this, youll hear doubled
notes during recording.
The pleasures of
polyrhythms
Most Reason users record
exclusively in 4/4 time. Nothing
wrong with that. By default,
Reasons pattern sequencers
(Matrix and Redrum) give you 16
16th-notes that is, one-meas-
ure patterns. Extending Matrix to
32 steps or Redrum to 32 or 64
steps gives you 2-measure or 4-
measure patterns, which again
will be fine for many types of dance music. But
Reason lets you get much more sophisticated if
you dare.
If you need a hi-hat pattern that runs in
triplets, for instance, create a separate Redrum
for the hats, make its patterns 24 steps long,
and set the clock knob to 1/16T. Mission
accomplished. But its possible to get fancier.
Since Redrum has a separate gate in and gate
out for each channel, you can trigger the
sounds from a single kit using different timing
resolutions. This type of patching would be the
tool of choice for adding a 32nd-note hi-hat
flourish at the end of every other bar, for
instance. Just set the second Redrum to 32nd-
note resolution, make its patterns 64 steps
long, enter a couple of notes at the end of the
pattern using any channel, and route that
channels gate out to the hi-hat channels gate
in on the main Redrum.
This technique can also be used to combine
duple and triple rhythms in a single Redrum
channel. The file Duple Triple Hat.rns shows
how to set it up.
Learn the shortcuts
One of the best ways to become a Reason
power user is to get used to using the handy
keyboard shortcuts:
When creating a new module, hold down
the shift key if you dont want Reason to create
some sort of default patch cord routing.
To shift a Matrix or Redrum pattern one step
at a time to the left or right, use Ctrl-J and Ctrl-
K (Mac Command-J and Command-K).
To transpose the pitches in a Matrix pattern
up or down, use Ctrl/Command-U and
Ctrl/Command-D.
To program Redrum dynamics quickly, leave
the switch set at Medium. To create a Hard
step, hold shift while clicking the button. For a
Soft step, hold Alt (Mac Option) while clicking
the step.
Rock on...
In this article Ive only touched on a few of
the many subtle and complex things you can
do with Reason. If you want to go deeper, I can
recommend Kurt Kurasakis excellent book
Power Tools for Reason 2.5 (published by
Backbeat Books). This is not, strictly speaking, a
shameless plug. While its true that I edited the
book, I earn no royalties from it. And because I
did edit it, I took the time to try out all of the
dozens of slick Reason patches that Kurt includ-
ed. They rock. Read the manual, buy the book,
get creative, and youll rock too.
Jim Aikin is the author of Power Tools for
Synthesizer Programming and Chords and
Harmony, both from Backbeat Books. When
not writing about music technology, he plays
electric cello. For more about Jims varied activi-
ties, you can visit him online at www.music-
words.net.
The Scream 4 Destruction unit increases Reason's sonic pallet by a
factor of a hundred.
VI
Because Reasons interface is so clear, there are
almost no hidden features to trip up the novice.
On the other hand, the program is capable of far
more than you may suspect.
Review by
Nick Batzdorf
VI
r e v i e w
T
he concept sure makes a lot of sense: a
huge modern sample library that covers
all the bases with one product (modern
= its big and it streams off hard drives). And
since Quantum Leap has been releasing high-
quality modern sample libraries for a few years,
theyre in as good a position as anyone to be
the ones to do that.
Actually, measured strictly by disk space,
only half of Colossus colossal 32GB of content
comes from Quantum Leap libraries; producer
Nick Phoenix sampled a whole lot of new
material for this product. But much of the con-
tent comes from his well-established and popu-
lar libraries: East West Quantum Leap
Symphony Orchestra, Stormdrum, Hardcore
Bass, Voices of the Apocalypse, Ra, and others.
Colossus really is a self-contained desert
island library, with enough range to handle
almost any kind of professional project you
could think of. It has everything:
drums/bass/guitar/keys, some rhythm loops,
percussion, all the orchestral instruments,
pitched and non-pitched ethnic instruments,
synth sounds and drones, choirand and and.
Workstation du jour
Colossus comes in a dedicated Native
Instruments (NI) Kompakt Player, an OEM
engine derived from their full Kontakt sampler,
so you dont need anything to run it other
than a hostin fact you can even run it stand-
alone for live use. However, you can open
Colossus instruments in Kontakt or Kontakt 2,
which permits more extensive editing.
While the Colossus instrument doesnt pass
Logic Audio 7.1s AU validation test as of this
writing, it actually works fine in Logic. Most of
this review was done in Logic on a dual 2.5GHz
G5 Mac running OS X 10.4.1,
but I regularly run NI players in
Digital Performer and Pro Tools
too, and also on the Windows
machines in my studio.
As modern sample libraries go,
Colossus isnt especially demand-
ing of the computer it runs on.
Thats because its performance
programming is relatively
uncomplicated, for example
there are no keyswitch programs
that eat up oodles of memory,
and very few programs with
recorded reverb that use a lot of
polyphony.
You should have no problem
running large-scale compositions
on a single machinePC or
Macprovided it has enough
RAM installed. As a very rough
guideline, a machine with 1.5 -
2GB should be able to load four
instances of the 8-part multitim-
bral Colossus instrument, which
of course is 32 instruments; the test G5, which
is overstocked with 5GB of RAM, was able to fill
over ten instances inside Logic before the sys-
tem became unstable80+ instruments, which
is really impressive.
Colossus is being presented as a modern-day
equivalent to the keyboard workstations we
relied upon for years, and part of that concept
is that its instruments are almost all playable in
real time. So rather than loading, say, eight dif-
ferent violin articulationsan entire instance of
the player just for one instrumentand split-
ting notes to program your phrases, you just
play a one-size-fits-all strings program in real
time. In many cases that approach exchanges
some subtlety for ease of use, but the choice
makes sense given the instruments intended
application.
Having said that, the programming in
Colossus takes good advantage of the features
Price: $995
Company: East West
(www.soundsonline.com)
Platforms: Native Instruments
Kontakt player - Windows XP: VST,
RTAS, DXi, ASIO, DirectSound; Mac
OS X 10.2.6+: VST, Audio Units,
RTAS, Core Audio, Core MIDI
(stand-alone)
License: Challenge/response limit-
ed to two installs. Free to use as
part of a musical composition; may
not be resold as another library.
A self-contained, high quality desert island library
that covers all the bases
East West Quantum
Leap Colossus
virtual instrument
(CONTINUED ON PAGE 63)
REAK!0R 5 devers orgnaLy every Lme. The ffLh generaLon of Lhe award
wnnng sound sLudo w nspre your creaLvLy wLh a massve coecLon of
poneerng sound generaLors and cuLLng-edge effecLs. ILs unque adapLabLy
aows you Lo modfy any nsLrumenL or bud new ones from scraLch. The new
REAKT0R 0ore Technoogy deves deeper nLo moduar consLrucLon Lhan ever
before, breakng new ground n versaLLy and audo quaLy. Sound synLhess
and sgna processng have never been so powerfu.
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VI
r e v i e w
L
ibraries of industrial or unusual
electronic sounds are a bit of a
guilty pleasure for many of us:
theyre interesting to listen to, and we
think theyre going to push us to be
more edgy in our own compositionsbut at
the end of the day many of them sit on our
shelves, all but unused. Im happy to say the
cycles collections are a pleasure we do not have
to feel guilty aboutthey are perhaps the most
useable libraries Ive encountered in this genre
so far.
Some forward thinking has been put into
these libraries. Each has a DVD with 24-bit
.wav files, in 44.1 and 48 kHz versions, as well
as a normal audio CD that includes unfaded,
untrimmed copies of the samples. All samples
can be looped, even if they are not naturally
loops themselves (in other words, the linear
ones have clean fades at the head and tail). All
the libraries come with nicely-formatted PDF
and Excel indexes of the samples, which
include (where applicable) tempo, duration in
bars, and tonal center.
Okaybut what about the sounds? sustained
encounters features evolving drones, sound
environments, and pads that range from
lush, dark, and mysterious to industrial in
nature (the latter not necessarily being grat-
ingmore like being in a spacecrafts engine
room or communication center). There are
over 100 events or loops that range from
seven seconds to a minute, plus 18 longer
pieces that range from 40 seconds to over two
minutes in lengthincluding several provided
as both stereo and 5.1 surround mixes.
cycles vol. 01:
sustained encounters
cycles vol. 02:
unnatural rhythm
cycles vol. 03:
incidental gesture
$99 each
Cycling 74 (www.cycling74.com)
379A Clementina Street, San
Francisco, CA 94103. 415/974-1818
platform: DVD-ROM of 24-bit .wav
samples + audio CD, many REX
versions included
license: Free to use as long as
combined with other sounds or not
resold as another library.
Some unique loops to freshen the pallet
Review by
Chris Meyer
Cycles
Frankly, given their experimental nature and
relative lack of rhythm or clear tonal center,
this is the library that would be hardest to
apply to a wide variety of music. I mainly hear
these as bridges or extended intros for darker
pieces.
unnatural rhythm contains roughly 300
rhythmic loops, ranging from machines (real
and imagined) to interestingly-looped acoustic
phenomena (such as pennies rolling around a
jar) to raw bleeps and hisses from Buchla and
Serge synthesizers. Typical tempo range is
wide, centering around 70 to 120 bpm; most
of the loops are from one to eight bars in
length, although 23 are presented as xtend-
ed versions ranging from 16 to 96 (!) bars.
REX versions of many loops are also provid-
ed. REX is Propellerhead ReCycles format;
ReCycled loops have been sliced into individual
beats so they can be played at any tempo. This
happens automatically in any REX-compatible
host program.
Im happy if I find a handful of loops in new
libraries that are promising for my composi-
tions; I easily found a couple of dozen here.
There arent a lot of variations presented, but
the longer loops have nice evolution, meaning
you could cut them into smaller phrases. Here
again, the tonality is more often lush than jar-
ring. Not many composers would use this
library for their entire rhythmic beds, but it
T
his is not just a loop library, it documents
a musical genre. Producers Barry Sage
and Gonzalo Lasheras Garcia traveled to
Havana, Cuba where they recorded local pro-
fessionals playing examples of the twelve
prime Afro/Hispanic rhythms of the Cuban
music culture, including: Cha Cha Cha,
Danzon, Son Montuno, Bolero, Pilon, Son
Traditional, Guajira Son, Guaracha, Mambo,
Songo, Timba, Conga Habanera (Carnival), and
Conga Moderna, often providing modern
(with drum kit) and traditional (sans kit) ver-
sions of each.
In addition to over six gigabytes of 24-bit
loops, you get an informative HTML file cover-
ing details of the players, the instruments, the
styles, the recording process, and the samples
themselves. Theres even a DVD documentary
included!
Performances of each style are broken into
roughly 20 to 60 2- or 4-bar segments (includ-
ing an intro and ending, as well as verses, cho-
ruses, or just pieces of a linear performance).
Numerous mixes of each performance are pro-
vided, including a full mix plus each instrument
Beats Working in Cuba
($399.95)
Zero-G (www.zero-g.co.uk;
distributed in US by East West:
www.soundsonline.com)
platform: Mac OS 10.2.6 or
Windows XP; standalone (through
Core Audio, DirectSound, or ASIO)
or as VST, DXi, ASIO, RTAS, or
Audio Units plug-in.
Challenge/response installer limited
to two unique installs.
license: Free to use as part of a
musical composition; may not be
resold as another library.
Review by
Chris Meyer
soloed. These are then presented dry, live, and
often in a surround version (provided as two
stereo pairs).
The samples are played back through the
familiar Native Instrument Intakt virtual instru-
ment [see sidebar]; where the individual hits
can be isolated, they are sliced using Intakts
Beat Machine, complete with MIDI files to
export of the pattern for each sliced perform-
ance. Sometimes
these individual hits
are mapped to an
Intakt keyboard as
well.
Youve heard the
saying presentation
is everythingand
with this many seg-
ments and variations
available, presentation
becomes quite a chal-
lenge. The answer
Zero-G decided upon
was to present each
2- or 4-bar segment
as a folder of discrete
Intakt patches. Each
single segment then
has up to two dozen
individual patches.
For example, Conga
Moderna provides
separate patches for
congas dry, congas live, congas LsRs (surround
pair), bells dry, bells live, bells LsRs, kick, snare,
hi-hat, cowbell, toms, drum overhead mics,
drum front ambient mics, drum LsRs, and a full
stereo mix.
Theres usually one patch per segment that
provides several useful mixes and breakdowns
of that segment, but there are essentially no
patches that make more than one segment
available at the same time. This means if you
want to recreate a, say, 30-segment perform-
ance in your piece, you need to load 30 patch-
es, one at a time (a few patches present three
segments back-to-back; oh, for more of
those). If you want to combine two mixes,
double that.
Since the segments were cut out of a linear
performance, not all of them loop naturally by
themselves, making it a bit harder to cheat
by repeating a smaller number of segments.
One more detail: a chart is provided, showing
how to offset each loop in time to achieve the
most authentic feel. In other words, you
shouldnt just start each loop on the down-
beatand the offset changes per segment.
does provide nice intros, breakdowns, and
unusual layers.
incidental gesture is a thoroughly pleasant
surprise. This is the most melodic of these
libraries, containing a number of blown,
plucked, and struck acoustic instruments (as
well as some natural sounds and purely elec-
tronic confections) playing meandering lines,
then heavily processed to create otherworldly
sonic narratives.
Most of the performances are one to two
minutes long with listed tempos and tonal cen-
ters; the longer performances have also been
edited into phrases. Of course, the problem
with this (and any of the cycles libraries) is that
their utter uniqueness will make them easier to
spot when others use them. But they are so far
off the beaten path, such occurrences will
probably be rare.
But come to think of it, forget you read
thisIm keeping these libraries to myself.
Beats Working
in Cuba
sound library
+ virtual instrument
VI
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Intakt
Overview
M
any higher-end sound libraries now
come integrated with a virtual instru-
ment sample player. Part of the reason is to
provide a form of copy protection for the
samples residing behind the curtain, but
they can also present cool sound warpage
opportunities to extend the original
sounds.
Some of the most popular VIs for this
task are Intakt and Kompakt from Native
Instruments (www.nativeinstruments.com).
Intakt is optimized for rhythm loop
libraries; both Percussive Adventures and
Beats Working in Cuba (reviewed in this
issue) use it. The limitation is that the
included version can only play the library it
came bundled with; you can upgrade to the
full version of Intaktwhich can load any
compatible libraryfor $129 ($100 off),
and to Kontakta fuller-featured multitim-
bral samplerfor $249 ($200 off).
Intakt works as a stand-alone program or
a plug-in; in the latter case, it immediately
picks up the tempo from the host applica-
tion. It contains three different algorithms
to stretch the loop to match the requested
tempo: Sampler, which changes pitch to
match; Beat Machine, where the loop is
sliced into individual hits that are then trig-
gered at the correct times; and Time
Machine, which time-stretches and com-
presses the loop while keeping constant
pitch without using discrete slices.
Intakt also features nice subtractive synth
engine to feed the samples through. It
includes a pitch envelope, AHDSR envelope,
envelope follower, two LFOs with multiple
waveforms (which can be tempo-synchro-
nized), two filters featuring multiple pole
and pass configurations, a master filter that
can also function as a 3-band EQ, and an
effects section that includes a synchroniz-
able delay plus lo-fi and distortion sections.
Intakt is easy to use, providing all con-
trols in a single window. This window can
be a bit large, especially when trying to
view a sequencer or other program behind
it, but you can collapse sections to con-
sume less real estate.
When using one instance of it as a plug-
in for the Mac version of Abletons Live, I
found it took up about 7-8% of the CPU
load on both a 1.5 GHz PowerBook and
dual 1.8 GHz G5; adding a second instance
took up about 30% (!). You can trigger mul-
tiple loops in one instance of the plug-in,
but you are at the mercy of the library
developer to arrange useful sound banks
with multiple parts in the same patch.
Otherwise, you may be better resampling
its output into your compositional applica-
tion of choice.
Those familiar with piecing together individ-
ual articulations in an orchestral library may be
comfortable building a performance this way; a
more groove-oriented person like myself may
not. Personally, I would have preferred that a
single patch contain a single mixdown of as
many different segments as possible. Then pro-
vide me alternate patcheswith the same seg-
ment-to-key mappingthat have alternate
instrument breakdowns and mixes. That way,
once I had built a MIDI file that played back
Scroll Wheel Support in Logic Pro 7
Most people arent aware of the mouse/trackpad scroll wheel
functions in Logic Pro 7. Theyre very convenient. Try them
youll say, I didnt know that!
modifier
none or
shift/command
shift or
command
option
shift/option or
command/option
scroll wheel function
scroll screen vertically
scroll screen horizontally
zoom vertically
zoom horizontally
VI
r e v i e w
random
tip
the segments in the desired order, I could then
just load different patches to hear different
breakdowns and mixes.
If you are looking for a definitive library of
Cuban rhythms, Beats Working in Cuba will blow
you away. If you are looking for a way to quickly
add an Afro/Hispanic flair to a piece, this same
library may stop you dead in your tracks. Zero-G
is looking into updating Beats Working in Cuba
to provide more performance-oriented patches,
so all of us can be happy.
The old sample libraries we were happily
using before end up buried at the bottom of a
moving box.
Well, Im here to tell you non-sample tweak-
ers and rookie patch programmers to dust off
those old CDs, Zip drives, andyesfloppies.
Get ready to give your favorite forgotten
libraries new life with some TLC in your DAW.
In this issue were going to focus things you
can do to the raw samples themselves outside
the actual sampler, manipulating them in an
audio editor. Well detail some options for
exporting the samples and then re-importing
the reborn samples.
For this article Im going to describe how to
accomplish the edits in Native Instruments
Kontakt and Steinberg Wavelab on a PC, but
these techniques work with any sampler and
audio editor. You will have to learn the basics
of your sampler on your own, though, since
this is a magazine rather than an instruction
manual.
Weve uploaded some samples and instru-
ments generously given to us by the fine folks
at Project SAM. These samples are rough test
samples of a trumpet section they used as
proof of concept of their sample method, and
not part of their release products, but theyll be
perfect for us here. Download them at
www.VirtualInstrumentsMag.com.
Sanctioned cloning
The first thing you need to do is make a
copy of the instrument you want to work
withan actual physical copy of the samples.
Part 1: Modern features for old libraries
By Ashif King Idiot Hakik
With King Idiot
VI
m a s t e r c l a s s
W
eve seen revolutionary advances in the
realm of sample playback over the past
few years. The features in todays samplers have
opened up a whole new breed of options. There
are expressive features like real-time time-
stretching control, multi-layered crossfades within
a single patch, lots of control over integrated
effects, as well as general options that were avail-
able but werent always easy to set upuntil now.
Whether theyre in keyboard
instruments or in hardware sam-
plers, older sample libraries lack
many of the advanced features
you find today. Heres how to
update your favorite sounds so
they can co-exist with your mod-
ern software instruments.
Please go to the downloads
section of
www.Virtualinstrumentsmag.com
and grab the example files.
more
online
Sampling
old sounds work with your modern libraries,
and you dont want to stop and run just this
one sound through a reverb.
First, open the new set of samples in your
waveform editor, and apply your preferred
reverb settings to each sample. As the focus of
this article is sample manipulation, I wont go
into detail about what reverb you should use,
or what reverb settings are bestalthough Id
advise against using a spring reverb setting if
youre trying to emulate a real concert hall!
Wavelab has a batch processing feature that
will process all the samples with one set of
reverb settings. Batch processors are time-
savers, but if you dont have one, dont fret
theres hope in the form of scripting applica-
tions like QuicKeys (Fig. 1).
Once the processing is finished, all you need
to do is reload the samples into Kontakt (or
your sampler), and the samples will retain all
the tuning info volume information and play-
back settings from the original. You can
rename the instrument to whatever you want
now.
Its also easy to layer the original and
processed instruments into Kontakt and trigger
them on the same MIDI channel. (See Fig. 2)
You can use MIDI to adjust the balance
between the original and new instruments in
real time.
Many of the older sample libraries that
focused on live instruments were recorded in
fairly dry rooms. You may prefer the wet sam-
ples to the original.
The headless sample
Have you ever played a string line and found
that some note transitions just dont happen
fast enough, no matter how much you overlap
notes in your MIDI sequencer? You know, that
dreaded note-to-note sucking effect that lit-
erally sucks you back to reality and reminds
you that your musical cue is being played by a
machine with no sense of the music?
Whats causing this effectand what is miss-
ing in the samplesis the natural tendency for
the string players to move the bow slightly
faster and with slightly more pressure on notes
after the beginning of a phrase.
Along the same lines, a trumpet player
doesnt always re-attack every note with his
breathsometimes he closes a valve that
causes it to change the pitch. But with sam-
Fig. 1: QuicKeys for Windows. This macro utility from CE Software, also available for Mac, can save a lot
of time whenever youre doing anything repetitivewhich happens a lot when youre doing the same thing
to dozens of samples.
Fig. 2: Wet and dry versions of the same program in Kontakt. Both are on MIDI channel 1 so they trigger
together; you adjust the relative balance with the volume controls.
As a rule, its a bad idea to burn your bridges
by working on the original samples.
In Kontakt the easiest way to do this is to
load an instrument, rename the instrument (for
this example well add the word edit1 to the
end of the name so it becomes SAM Trpts
TEST_VI1_edit1), and then save it, selecting
patch + samples.
This will make a complete duplicate of the
patch and the samples with a new file name
and a new sample folder. Then remove the
instrument from your sample player (in
Kontakt, just reset the Multi).
From here on youre going to be able to do
quite a few things to the samples: add reverb,
put the samples through a ring modulator,
time stretch/compress, run the samples
through a vocoder, even all of the above at the
same time. Or other things.
You can also perform waveform edits across
all the samples to alter the way they play back
in your sampler. For instance, you can change
the attack characteristics of the samples by
changing just the speed of the start of the sam-
ple. Or you could add another sample on top
of it.
Its up to you whether you want to create
new or strange sounds, or stick to more tradi-
tional effects. Were going to stick to some
more practical things in this articleone of the
easiest being to add reverb, so lets start there.
The wetter the better
Lets make a new set of samples thats a
completely wet version of the trumpets. Well
put them in a big hall with your favorite reverb
effect. You could just run the whole program
through a reverb unit, but there are advan-
tages to applying the reverb directly to the file.
Among them: you dont have to use processing
power later; and you can spend the time
matching your samples to others in your collec-
tion now so you can just load the program
later. After all, the goal is to make your favorite
VI
ples, a new note starts playing every time you
press a key on your keyboard.
Im going to outline how to make legato
variations of the samples and add them back to
existing instruments. There are many different
ways to create legato samples, but were going
to keep it simple. This article is about working
on reimporting samples rather than audio edit-
ing; Ill save that for a future article just about
legato.
Start by making a clone instrument and
opening the cloned instruments samples in
your audio editor. Select about 200 millisec-
onds of audio, starting from the very beginning
of the sample. Now delete that portion of the
sample, and save it. Do this to every sample in
the cloned instruments sample folder. (See Fig.
3)
Wavelab has a feature called Auto Split that
can speed up this process. It can batch-process
all the samples to have their heads lopped
off, saving the time of opening and editing
each file by hand. But again, QuicKeys can
automate this process if youre not using
Wavelab.
What weve done is remove the attack char-
acteristic of the sample. This is an old trick that
some older hardware samplers did internally.
Its simple, but it can be very effective for some
instruments.
Were through with the waveform editing
now, so open the headless instrument in
Kontakt or your sampler and save the cloned
instrument under a different name.
Now its time to adjust the programming to
make this new instrument work with the exist-
ing one. While the actions that need to be
taken are actually simple, the descriptions can
be a bit tricky to read, so just take your time
and focus on doing each step correctly. Dont
forget to look at the pretty green pictures!
Were going to force the instrument to play
the headless samples when the mod wheel is
above a value of 64 (center position), and to
play the normal samples at any value below
64. In other words, were making the mod
wheel act as an on/off switch for legato. You
can use any other MIDI Continuous Controller
(cc) if you want, in fact sustain pedal (cc64) is
the most commonly used controller for this
type of programming feature.
The following is Kontakt-centric, but the
steps are similar in all samplers. First, click on
the Edit button of the original instrument, then
click on Group Start Options in the source
module.
Change the setting from Always to Start On
Controller. Set the CC# to 1 (mod wheel). Set the
value range to Between 0 and 64. (See Fig. 4)
Now click on the headless instruments Edit
button, and again click on Group Start Options
in its source module. Change the setting from
Always to Start On Controller. Again, set the
CC# to 1 (mod wheel). But this time set the
values to Between 65 and 127.
Thats it. Setting both programs to the same
MIDI channel will now force the legato samples
to be played with the mod wheel all the way
up and the standard samples with with it all
the way down.
Youll need to adjust the attack time of the
new legato group to taste. Usually 30 - 50ms is
a good place to start, with varying results
depending on the instrument.
While youre there, try assigning the mod
wheel to the release time of the instrument, so
the legato programs have a longer release.
Tweaking the note endings can really help cre-
ate believable melody lines. (See Fig. 5)
Fig. 3: Getting rid of the first 200ms of audio in Wavelab to create a sample with no attack.
Fig. 4: Setting the program to trigger only when the mod wheel (cc#1) is between 0 and 64.
VI
ILIO_RMX_6-05-VIMag 5/20/05 1:41 PM Page 1
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Expand Styl us RMX wi th the
The trick is to start phrases or groups of
notes to be played in one bow or breath with
the standard instrument, and then switch to
the headless instrument for subsequent notes
in the phrase or group.
Release triggers
Now lets try something a bit more complex,
using concepts from both of the above tech-
niques. This time were going to create release
triggers for instrumentseven ones that dont
have any decay or reverb in the samples to
start with.
Release triggers are samples that play back
when you release the note, that is when a MIDI
Note-off message is received by the sampler.
These can be instrument resonances, sounds
that occur naturally when you release a key (as
with harpsichords), or they can be natural
ambience decays. Were going to create ambi-
ence decays to make it sound like the instru-
ment was recorded in a big space.
Start by making a renamed copy of the
instrument you created earlier with wet sam-
ples. Load its samples in your waveform editor.
Were going to edit the sample by deleting all
the audio except for the decay/reverb tail.
This isnt a process that can be done by the
numbers, so it will take some time listening and
editing to find the right spot. One trick is that it
can be easier to hear where the decay starts if
you listen to the samples backwards. So you
could try reversing the sample, cropping the
decay portion (which of course is rising when
reversed), and then reversing it back the right
way, leaving just the decay. Parts of this process
can be scripted in QuicKeys to speed things up.
Once youre done editing the samples, do
the now-familiar routine. Save the cloned
instrument under a different name, and then
load up the original and cloned instruments
with the original in the first slot and the new
one in the second.
As shown in Fig. 6, click on the release trail
instruments Edit button, and click on the RLS.
Fig. 5: Adjust the legato instruments attack time. While youre at it, try assigning the
mod wheel to control the release time too.
VI
random
tip
C
elemonys Melodyne allows you to treat monophonic
(i.e. single-line, not chords) audio as if it were MIDI
data. It can change the pitch, timing, and formants inde-
pendently of each other. It can quantize audio. It can correct
pitch, of course. Its a remarkable creative tool.
One of the many things you can use Melodyne for is tak-
ing sampled scale runssuch as the violin section runs in
the Vienna Symphonic Librarys Performance Setand
changing the scales they play. While VSL comes with a big
selection of standard string runs, its not possible for it to
include every permutation you can imagine.
This graphic shows a C major scale run thats been
changed to a diminished whole tone scale (1/2 step, 1 step,
1/2 step, 1 step).
Melodyne has a very hard time separating the notes in
this type of material, since its very imprecise by design. Not
only are there 14 violins playing a very fast run, theyre play-
ing it legato.
But all that fudginess works in our favor, because the new
scale doesnt have to be very precise either. All you have to
do is separate the notes somewhere near where they switch,
and nobody can hear the difference; it all slurs right by very
quickly.
You can also time-stretch or compress the run very easily if it
isnt quite the right tempo. Melodyne also makes it easy to adjust
the levels of individual notes. And so on. The point is that you can
create your own library of runs to augment the ones that come
with your sample library.
Changing the scales of
VSL string runs in Melodyne
This 14-violin diminished whole tone scale run used to be a C major scale before it
met Melodyne.
Several other libraries also have string runs, of course. Even the
Orkestra soundbank that comes with Propellerhead Reason has
them.
Trigger button in the Kontakt Source module.
Now adjust the attack envelope in the ADSR
module so the release sample doesnt come in
too abruptly; 80ms or so is usually okay. Set
the release envelope high enough to let the
sample play outtwo seconds should be good
for an orchestral hall trail.
Adjustments should be made to the attack
envelope of the release trigger instrument as
well as the release time of the original instru-
ment. You want to try and make it so that the
release triggers arent too abrupt and you get a
fairly smooth transition between the two. Its all
a matter of taste.
And thats it. You now have a combination
of instruments that will play back a release trig-
ger sample when you release a key on your
keyboard.
Become an Idiot
I suggest spending a little time familiarizing
yourself with your software sampler, even if
youre using Kontakt and are able to follow the
steps in this article directly. Weve skipped a lot
of details for the sake of reaching the goal. If
Fig. 6: Adjusting the release trigger.
The tricks in this article assume that you only have
to import the programs from your old libraries into
your software sampler. But you can also sample the
ROM sounds from a keyboard or module you own
taking care not to violate any license agreements.
The way to do this is to program MIDI notes in your
sequencer to trigger the keyboard at various velocity
levels, and then record the result. Depending on how
critical you are about the sound, you may not need to
sample every half step. But a minor third is about the
maximum youd normally want to go.
After programming this scale, set all the velocities
to the first velocity level you want to sample and
record the instrument. Then select all the notes and
set the velocity to the next level you want. And so on.
If this seems tedious, theres a great program called
AutoSampler (www.Redmatica.com) that will do all
this and build an instrument automatically for the
EXS24 sampler built into Logic. Youre not a Logic
user, you say? Import the EXS program into your sam-
pler.
What if your old sample library is a keyboard?
VI
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you spend time understanding why things
work the way they do, you can come up with
variations of the techniques that may be more
suited to your needs.
Those of you who are versed in sample edit-
ing techniques and are wondering why my
way of doing things is different from yours, just
wait for future articles in this series. Well have
a good time getting down and dirty.
Ashif King Idiot Hakik is an award-nominat-
ed composer whose credits include several major
video games. He does sound effects design, hes
orchestrating the upcoming Queensrche record,
and hes edited/programmed several sample
libraries you probably use.
S
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VI
r e v i e w
S
pectrasonics first Stylus release became
widely popular because of its loops and
sounds. Its successor Stylus RMX, which
subsumes classic Stylus, is an extremely
sophisticated virtual instrument. Stylus RMX
advances the way you can work with rhythm
loops to a whole new level.
Just saying that RMX is a RAM-based, multi-
timbral sample and loop player with extensive
processing, a great effects rack, an intelligent
randomizer, and oodles of great, really well-
organized content (plus optional expansion
content and the ability to import your own)
doesnt tell the whole story. But it is the high
concept.
The lower concept requires some explana-
tion.
Slices
While the content in RMX is derived from
groove performances, called Suites, its loops
arent traditional audio regions. Instead, the
performances are cut up into time slices (usual-
ly spanning an 8th or 16th note) similar to the
way Propellerheads ReCycle program works.
Spectrasonics is very good at this, and they call
their proprietary slicing method Groove
Control.
Taken to the extreme, each individual slice
could be independently filtered, pitch-shifted,
reversed, panned, etc.and run through its
own chain of RMX effects units. It can also be
sent to its own output if the host sequencer
supports that, but with all the integrated pro-
cessing you may find that unnecessary.
Everything in Stylus RMX can be triggered
by MIDI, which opens up all the host
sequencers editing functions to the loops. That
means you can shuffle the order of slices, use
the sequencers quantizing functions, and so
on. Pretty much every RMX parameter can be
automated in the sequencer or controlled in
real time using the simple watch and wiggle
MIDI Learn function.
In the default MIDI mode, called Slice Menu,
each successive slice in the pattern is assigned
Exceptional grooves in a
brilliantly-executed
virtual instrument
Spectrasonics Stylus
RMX and SAGE
Xpanders
Review by
Nick Batzdorf
Stylus RMX, $299; SAGE
Xpanders, $99 each.
Spectrasonics
(www.Spectrasonics.net),
distributed by Ilio Entertainments,
P.O. Box 6211, Malibu, CA 90265.
818/707-7222, 800/747-4546.
Platforms: Mac 10.2.6+ AU, RTAS,
VST; Windows 2000, XP VST.
License: Free to use as long as
not made into another library.
Need not be combined with other
sounds.
to the next ascending chromatic note. So play-
ing a chromatic scale in rhythm, starting on
the first note in the pattern (usually C1), will
play the pattern.
You audition everything inside RMX itself
without using MIDI; while this is reportedly not
how the software actually works internally, the
effect is the same as if the grooves were being
triggered by Standard MIDI files (SMFs) that
reside inside the virtual instrument, and theyre
synced to the host sequencers tempo. In sup-
porting hostsincluding Logic 7, which I used
most of the time for this reviewyou do drag
actual MIDI files directly from the RMX instru-
ment onto sequencer tracks to build rhythm
parts; in other programs like Pro Tools you drag
the MIDI files onto the desktop and import
them.
Spectrasonics calls RMX innards SAGE:
Spectrasonics Advanced Groove Engine. A utility
to convert older Spectrasonics or Ilio (their dis-
tributor) Groove Control libraries to SAGE is
included. You can also use the utility to convert
ReCycles REX files, but the results arent guaran-
teed; Groove Control libraries are processed real-
ly well, so the loops can play at pretty much any
tempo and still sound as good as they do at their
original tempo. The MIDI files simply trigger at
the host sequencers current tempo, and this
method has several advantages over time-
stretching/compressing unsliced loops.
Several sub-loops, called Elements, are
included with most of the Suites. These might
be A and B variations of the main pattern, fills,
submixes, a beat without snare or bass, lighter
versions of the loop, or maybe just one or two
of the parts in it. Even though the Elements are
either 2-bar or 4-bar patterns, there are many
ways of constructing longer phrases and cus-
tomizing the patterns. One is simply to layer
Elements from different Suites, another is to
rearrange the slices in a sequencer, and there
are others.
Theres another view in the browser called
Groove Elements, which has loops grouped by
instrument type. This makes it easy to find, say, a
16th note tambourine or shaker part with
accents on 2 and 4, or a bongo pattern. Groove
Elements contains a vast amount of excellent
material, and you can use it on its own or mix
and match it with anything else in RMX.
Real time
There are several ways of performing RMX in
real time.
The default RMX MIDI mode is Slice Menu,
but it has an additional MIDI mode called
Groove Menu in which the Elements in a Suite
are triggered by MIDI keys; so rather than trig-
gering individual slices, youre triggering loops.
Groove Menu mode makes it easy to string
together patterns in real time just by triggering
them at the appropriate point (quantized to
the next note or bar, etc., if you want).
Elements play as long as you hold their
assigned keys down; you can layer them by
playing multiple notes, play only a portion of
them (maybe just the hits on the downbeats),
stop and start them, and so on. This allows for
real-time pattern performance.
Another way of playing Stylus RMX is to use
Kit mode, in which the same samples used to
create the Suites are mapped to the keyboard
following the General MIDI mappings. This
turns RMX into a sound module. It doesnt
have the detail you find in modern drum sam-
ple librarieslots of velocity layers, separate left
and right hand samples, and what have you
but the sounds are great. And in this context
(mostly processed sounds) you dont miss that.
RMX has an extremely clever interface from
top to bottom, but I do have one wish: a closer
relationship between Kit mode and the pattern-
based modes. I often found myself wanting to
play my own grooves using the sounds in a
Suite I like, but switching to Kit mode gives
you a blank slate rather than sounds from the
current suite. (Opening another RMX instance
on a separate track avoids having the Suite dis-
appear, but the point is that Kit mode isnt
related.)
While you can play the slices in a Suite from
the keyboard without loading them into Kit
mode, the time slices often contain more than
one sound, e.g. bass drum and hi-hat. Perhaps
preset Kits with the same names as their corre-
sponding Suites would be a solutionwhich
you could assemble yourself, of course, but
that could be daunting.
RMX is 8-part multitimbral, with each of the
eight parts assigned to a separate MIDI chan-
nel. A part can contain a standard Element or a
Sound Menu instrumentwhich well explain
nextso you can both layer grooves and play
along with them on different MIDI channels. If
you need more than eight parts, you simply
open another RMX on a different track.
Sound Menus
While Kit mode uses the same samples as
the Suites, theres a huge additional library in
RMX called Sound Menus with its own content.
Just saying that RMX is a RAM-based,
multi-timbral sample and loop player with
extensive processing, a great effects rack, an
intelligent randomizer, and oodles of great, really
well-organized content (plus optional expansion
content and the ability to import your own)
doesnt tell the whole story.
VI
r e v i e w
Stylus' effects rack, here with a Tape Slammer, a Wa-Wah, and a BPM Delay set up.
Spectrasonics says there are over 10,000
sounds here, and well have to take their word
for that.
There are 17 Sound Menu Suites that range
from percussion instruments (Suites of claps,
hi-hats, snares, toms, etc.) to Cinematic sound
design hits to Retro Hits (big band falls, etc.),
Guitar Bits (processed guitar chunkas)a huge
amount of excellent material. Each of these 17
Suites contains several Elements, each of which
brings up a keyboard full of sounds, up to five
octavesi.e. up to 60 sounds.
Some of these sounds are straight, but most
of them are processed and electronic/synthy.
The sound content here is great and it covers a
wide range.
Whats more, you could run every Sound
Menu sound through its own independent
effects and processing chain.
Editing
Its very easy to get around RMX. In addition
to its browser, which is accessible from all
screens, the instrument has four screens: Edit,
Chaos (the intelligent randomizer well cover
shortly), FX, and a Mixer.
In the Edit screen you have control over
amplitude, filtering, overall panning, and the
pitch. Each of the first three can be controlled
with an LFO that has a choice of eight standard
waveforms. There are also 4-stage envelopes
for amplitude, filtering, and pitch.
RMX has two different filters: a more rudi-
mentary Master filter, and a very nice-sounding
multimode Power filter that uses more proces-
sor. Theres also a pitch control, along with a
sample start slider and a Reverse button.
Finally, there are handy buttons for doubling
and halving the tempo, which you can do
repeatedly in either direction.
While the editing and in fact the whole instru-
ment are very easy to understand and use, RMX
comes with a concise series of QuickTime video
tutorials by producer Eric Persing to get you up
and running. But while Eric is a very charming
and engaging personality, I do admit to wishing
for a printed manual as well, both for speed of
learning and for reference.
[Hold the presses: Version 1.3 due out this
summer will have an integrated reference man-
ual that can be printed.]
Rather than separating notes by the instru-
ment in the traditional way, RMX lets you
select the slices you want to work onmean-
ing the slices you want to filter, effect, random-
ize, etc.by creating Edit Groups. You can cre-
ate Edit Groups for downbeats, backbeats,
every specified note value (for example every
quarter note, or the second 16th note on each
beat, etc.), just one Element, one MIDI note,
every slicesuffice it to say that theres a way
to catch just what you want 99% of the time.
Whats really useful is that edit groups can be
soloed and muted.
All the tweaks in the Edit, Chaos, and (for
insert effects) the FX windows apply only to the
current Edit Group. To do something global, you
simply select the Main edit group. Would that all
user interfaces were this easy to deal with.
Chaos
RMX randomizer has six self-explanatory
sliders that you raise to, as Persing puts it in the
tutorials, increase the probability of the
parameter changing: pattern, repeat, reverse,
timing, pitch, and dynamics. This lets you cre-
ate endless variations of all the Elements; when
you find one you like, press the Capture button
and drag it to a sequencer track (again, if your
sequencer supports this).
You can easily control the amount of disarray
Chaos creates. Since it only affects the currently
selected edit group, you can, say, vary the
pitch of just the backbeats, randomize the hi-
hat pattern, or vary the timing of a bongo part.
Chaos can be weird, subtle, or it can simply
avoid stagnant loops.
You can also use Chaos live on patterns
being triggered in MIDI Groove mode.
FX and mixer
RMX effects work very well with rhythm parts.
Please see the graphic showing the available list
on page 35; theres enough there for subtle
tweaks or radical transformations. My favorites
are the crunchy Flame Distortion and nasty
Spring Verb, but theyre all very usable. While no
substitute for a great convolution reverb proces-
sor, even the PRO-verb sounds fine.
RMX has four shared auxes and a master,
plus you can insert effects on each edit group.
There are three slots in the rack in each of
these paths. Version 1.2 added both single and
3-rack effects presets.
Not just the effects, but the whole instru-
ment is very efficient. When its just sitting
there idle, it takes up no CPU; the same applies
to inserted effects processors that arent pass-
ing audio. Playing one Element takes up about
4% on the review dual 2.5GHz Mac G5. A
PRO-verb instance takes up an additional 8%
or so, and turning on the Power Filter eats up
about 3%.
The mixer is straightforward: each of the
eight parts in Stylus RMX has its own channel
strip. This is where you balance levels, pan
parts, send them to the four FX auxes, and
route them to separate outputs for external
processing.
Libraries
The base library with Stylus RMX, which inci-
dentally stands for remix, is about 7GB. It
includes the classic Stylus sounds and the
new RMX library.
With all the Stylus libraries, you get the over-
whelming sense that its beats are right on the
money. When youre looking for a readily iden-
tifiable contemporary sound, Stylus has it
regardless of the particular style.
Theres considerable variety in all the RMX
libraries, but the roughly 200 grooves in the
classic Stylus library mostly have a hip-hoppy
feel. This collection contains mainly retro-
processed real drum sounds, and almost all the
beats have slightly swung 16ths or 8ths. They
have a great feel.
The new RMX library uses a lot of electronic
and heavily processed percussion sounds. Youll
find a wide range of interesting grooves, from
funny to powerful to danceable to dramatic
and in between. Many of the grooves have an
electronic/ethnic percussion ensemble feel.
There are five optional SAGE expanders
(Xpanders) for Stylus RMX. Each is about
1GB in size, so theres less content than in the
core libraries, but its still a heck of a lot. For
example, the Retro Funk Xpander has 54
Suites, 507 Elements, 305 Fills, 44 extras (bon-
gos, conga, shaker, tambourines), and 85 Multi
patchesa feature we didnt mention; you can
save the multitimbral state of the instrument as
a Multi.
The Chaos designer is an intelligent randomizer with several self-explanatory parameters. You can apply
Chaos selectively to anything from an individual time slice to backbeats to the entire groove.
Taken to the extreme, each individual time slice
could be independently filtered, pitch-shifted,
reversed, panned, etc.and run through its own
chain of RMX effects units.
VI
r e v i e w

Each Xpander includes some bonus con-
tent from Spectrasonics Bizarre Guitar,
Distorted Reality, Vocal Planet libraries. The
Bizarre Guitar material here is mainly scratchy
wah or otherwise interestingly processed short
licksreally funky onesalthough there are a
couple of more ambient Elements. Most of the
Vocal Planet loops are mouth percussion
(processed vocal noises), but there are also
some really spirited claps, stomps, and exuber-
ant noises from a gospel choir. The Distorted
Reality grooves are stylistically similar to the
base RMX libraryelectronic percussionbut
the rhythms tend to be simpler. You can layer
them for complexity, of course, and save the
result as a Multi.
Its worth pointing out that due to the way
some of the drum kits in the Xpanders are
recorded with ambience, a few of them can
glitch if you randomize the patterns in the RMX
Chaos generator. But most of them work fine.
The Metamorphosis SAGE Xpander is in the
same vein as the RMX core library, and pretty
much everything you can say about one
applies to the other. These grooves are
extremely creative, they lead you to ideas, and
theyre unique.
Backbeat is a collection of traditional drum
beats, but theyre really good ones. It has a
wide selection of grooves on many different
types of kits, from standard studio drum sets to
unmuffled jazz kits. This librarys content isnt
ground-breaking, but its really well done; any-
one whos looking for totally appropriate, well-
played and recorded drum loops should be
very happy with it.
You could describe Liquid Grooves as the
acoustic equivalent of Metamorphosis. Its
grooves feature percussion, but its usually
combined with a light drum set, in some cases
played with what sound like nylon brushes.
Liquid Grooves is just outstanding.
Burning Grooves features drummer Abe
Laboriel, Jr. These beats use standard drum set,
but the effects and sounds are all different and
all very interesting. Laboriels patterns are all
qute original, and due to dynamics, even the
really busy ones groove like crazy. If you never
used it, this Xpander would be worth having
just as a source for drum programming ideas.
The last Xpander, Retro Funk, takes you right
back to the 70s. These beats completely funk
out in the Harvey Mason/Mike Clark
Headhunters East Bay vein. Some of the pat-
terns groove so well it drives you crazy! Funky
funky.
Conclusion
Its one thing for the content to be excep-
tional, to say nothing of being meticulously
recorded, edited, and processed. But the Stylus
RMX virtual instrument really revolutionizes the
way you can work with loops. And on top of
that its quick and easy to use.
As a reformed drummer, I personally never
really liked working with rhythm loops before.
This instrument has changed my mind. Stylus
RMX is one of the hottest virtual instruments
around right now, and deservedly so.
VI
r e v i e w
random
tip
M
OTUs popular PCI-424 card features
an onboard digital monitor mixer that
can be as large as 96 x 96, depending on
the audio interfaces connected to it (MOTU
makes several). This mixer, which has virtu-
ally no latency, is controlled by the CueMix
Console software shown here.
Theres some confusion about how the
CueMix mixer integrates with third-party
audio software. If you dont understand the
routing, its easy to find yourself monitor-
ing a signal with normal computer latency,
or to hear two signals that chorus/comb-fil-
ter together. The confusion is that there
are really two potential paths to your
speakers: through the CueMix Console
monitor mixer on the PCI-424 card, and/or
through your DAW software. Heres how it
works.
The physical input signal goes to the
Mute and Input Trim controls at the top of
the mixer first; if its muted there, you will
hear nothing.
After the input Mute and Trim, the signal
gets split into two. One path goes on to
whatever software is running on the com-
puter (whether MOTUs or someone elses);
the other path goes to the latency-free
CueMix monitor mixer. All the onscreen
faders and knobs on the light grey back-
ground control the CueMix monitor mixer.
Your DAW software is blissfully ignorant
of the CueMix mixer, so if you have soft-
ware monitoring turned on, youll hear the
input signal twice: once directly through
the CueMix mixer, and again coming back
out the computer (with added latency).
The combination of the two signals is what
causes the chorused sound we dont want.
You must mute the signal here or in
your DAWs channel strippick one.
There are two sets of meters on the
CueMix mixer, marked Mix and Out. The
Mix meters show the output of the CueMix
Console mixer; the Out meters show whats
in the Mix meters summed with whatevers
coming from the computerwhich includes
local virtual instrument outputs, recorded
tracks, system sounds, and so on. Theres
no level control here for the computer
audio, and it would be confusing if there
were; you adjust it in your DAW.
MOTU PCI-424 Card and CueMix Console
Routing with Third-party Software
From Computer
Input
Signal
To Computer 2
1
3
Walk into Badelts old studio at the place for-
merly known as Media Ventures (hes since
moved), and one of the first things you notice
iswithout exaggerationa wall-length, head-
height rack full of hardware units. There are
more samplers, effects, and outboard equip-
ment than youve ever seen.
And not a single one of those boxes has
been powered on for a couple of years.
The only unit with lights on is a solitary
MOTU 2408 Mk III audio interface at the very
end of the rack. Its connected to a PowerMac
G5 and five (actually 5.1) speakers.
Without prompting, Badelt traces the evolu-
tion of his working set-up.
Badelt: The very first requirement for film
scoring is that you need to be flexible. The film
changes, opinions change. Your mind changes.
Youre always rewriting or polishing until the end.
At the beginning it was tons of E-mu sam-
plers16 E-mus, 18 or 20 Rolands, going into
From wall-sized rack to a single PowerMac G5:
one of Hollywoods hottest young composers
traces the evolution of his workflow.
Klaus
Badelt
K
laus Badelt is an extremely
busy composer whos written
music for over 25 major Hollywood
films and counting. His credits
include Pirates of the Caribbean
(2003), Werner Herzogs Invincible
(2001), The Recruit (2003), The
Time Machine (2002), K-19: The
Widowmaker (2002), Ned Kelly
(2003), Basic (2003), The In-laws
(2003), Catwoman (2004), and
most recently Constantine (2005).
At the moment hes working on the
score for Curious Georgeas well
as other films in the mill.
Badelt is equally adept writing for
orchestra and working with soft-
synths and samplers, and he has an
inside reputation for being one of
the best MIDI sequencer program-
mers in the world. His score to The
Recruit, for instance, makes exten-
sive and intricate use of loops, and
the Constantine score is heavily
electronic. Both are extremely
effective.
VI
i n t e r v i e w

a handful of 02Rs (Yamaha digital mixers), and
we could recall that set-up with the O2R. We
thought that was really cool.
The only thing is that you have to define
your pallet at the beginning of the project. You
cant go back and change sounds once theyve
been recorded as audio, so we had to think in
advance what would be good for the film And
then wed load all these sounds.
I had to have so many samplers because I
had to have all the sounds ready all the time. It
would take too long to go load another sound
for another cue, and too many errors would
creep in. If you had a synthesizer, you had to
store the sounds...
It was a complete nightmare. Whenever you
hit Play when the director was there...well, I
would record it to audio to play for the direc-
tor. Too many parameters, too many tracks
the pallet would be 300, 400 tracks.
So it was good but not great.
The next generation started when
GigaStudio came out. So there you could get
rid of all the samplers, you had much better
sounds, it would all be networkedsuddenly
you were in the computer environment, so you
would not have to look for that E-mu sound
from that film we did five years ago, we would
have the library, we would have storage capa-
bilityso that was pretty cool.
At that stage I got rid of all the 02Rs and
bought Pro Tools systems to do live mixing.
But Pro Tools wasnt really built to do live mix-
ing then, at least not for our purposes.
VI: What were the problemsnot enough
inputs?
Badelt: At the beginning we didnt have
enough inputs, so I used a Creamware Pulsar to
act like a recallable patchbay, ADAT lightpipe to
ADAT lightpipe, from 90-something channels
into 48. So I would save the patch for each cue.
It was a great system at the time, because I
could finally take my tracks I was writing and
record them dry. I would record my live feed as
audio, go to a mix studio, and be able to not
only mix my stuff but change what I mixed
before.
To be able to go back one generation, I
would record each group of tracks of audio
with all the effects wet. You know, you were
locked into what you had. But you could deliv-
er all the tracks to the mix studio, including all
the plug-ins and everything.
Still, there were some practical issues. Pro
Tools doesnt provide a way of mixing live and
then recording thatyoure either mixing live
or recording. In other words, what they call
Aux Inputslive inputscan not be easily con-
verted to a track where you can actually record
it. So youre always working with tracks that
are in Record Enable, and then theres no
automation in Record Enable. These little
things then turn into it not being ideal for our
application.
You can get around this by bussing, but I
may have 60 cues in a film, and for each cue I
would have to set this up. And then you still
had only a limited number of inputs, and each
individual sound had its input. So we often had
to go back to the writing room and record if
we wanted to make a hi-hat louder.
And still you have to load your pallet. I was
using Orion (Synapse Software); you could run
all the internal instruments and VST instru-
ments as wellit was my VST instrument host.
We couldnt use Steinberg V-Stack because it
wasnt possible to slave delays and other time-
based effects to MIDI Time
Code.
So the next generation. I
just wanted to be more flexi-
ble again. I want to put a
delay on just one string
trackanything with mixing
and writing. One day Emagic
came by, we were working
on Pirates of the
Carribbean, and they said,
What do you think of our
EXS sampler?
And I was laughing at
them! I had 14 GigaStudios,
each of them had four MIDI
ports. They said, You can
load 64 samplers.
Thats not even one Giga!
But after they were gone,
we thought about it and
analyzed our tracks a little
bit, and found out that the
average cue has 40 tracks
maximum. So the actual
used instruments at one time
are not that many.
I think Catwoman was
the first project that was
Fig 1: Badelts main Logic
screen for Constantine.
The very first requirement for film scoring is that
you need to be flexible. The film changes, opinions
change. Your mind changes. Youre always
rewriting or polishing until the end.
VI
i n t e r v i e w
done completely in Logic, including mixing the
orchestra and delivering the final master.
VI: What sorts of things were you requesting
from Emagic [as Logics developer was known
prior to being purchased by Apple] before they
showed you EXS?
Badelt: The funny thing was when they
came, I remember we said, Come have a look
what were doing here, and they came to the
mixing room and saw us working there with a
few Logic Controls [MIDI hardware control sur-
faces] and mixing the orchestra.
You could see in their faces: whoa! You
guys are really doing this, right?! And so they
looked at each other and said, Oh shit!
because we were pushing the envelope so
much that it would reach the limits.
But it worked.
VI: What was missing?
Badelt: For instance loading up complete
track set-upschannel strips and data. You
couldnt really copy and paste between two
Logic Songs. These things were put in since
then. Theyre still working on being able to
copy parts of Environments.
Theyve now put in the Apple Loops capabil-
ity. For our purposes its better to have it all
integrated in one. Now loops are just another
audio track.
Constantine was to a certain degree based
on Apple Loop tracks. We recorded an electric
cello player, and we made lots of loops that
could go in other cues.
VI: How are you able to get by with so
many fewer sounds loaded than you had avail-
able in Giga?
Badelt: The Giga revolution was great.
Sounds were unlimited, and the company was
very collaborativedeveloper Jim Van Buskirk
put in a lot of work. We had maybe 100
GigaStudios at our place altogether, and I was
using maybe 14.
But still we had the issue that I couldnt
recall cues; you cant load 14 samplers, it
would take too long. So after we realized we
only used 40 tracks in a cue, we gave EXS a try.
You never learn if you dont use it on a proj-
ect. So I wrote a small filmthere was not that
much orchestra, not a big action adventure,
and I tried to do it with everything coming
from a dual G5. I kept a few Gigas running in
the back just in case, but it turned out that it
worked amazingly well.
Its very efficient and integrated with Logic.
For example, when you use the same sounds in
five cues, EXS doesnt load the sounds five
times, it loads them once. They in memory.
We converted our whole library into EXS
with all our hundreds of thousands of samples.
Its not done yet! But most of it is.
Its just amazing how your work will change
this way. Okay, I have an idea, next track I
needlets try this guitar. You open a track,
plug in the guitarwhich can be very fast now.
No, lets try a different instrument, a synth
sound. Lets add some ambience. Then the
next time you use electric guitar with some
ambience simulation.
And you could do that between each cue,
with full recall. And the mixing is in the writing
now. So the fader you have when you write is
the channel strip of the mix.
VI: Do you have a separate person mixing
now?
Badelt: Yes.
VI: You give him or her the Logic file.
Badelt: Thats what we do, right. We have
the same Logic set-up in the mixing room. He
opens the sounds.
And thats another big key: you dont start
the mix from scratch, you open what I did.
And of course Ive spent some time with the
mix already at that point. He can do what an
engineer does welleq and so onbut its
based on what I did. It used to take a long
time just to get it the point where I had it.
VI: You normally use about 40 tracks, but
you must have way more than that in your
template loaded up and ready to play.
Badelt: Oh, hundreds. The palette in Logic
(in the Environment) is by definition external
instruments. [See Fig. 2] But now Im using
internal instruments and I only load the ones I
need. The Arrange page before was hundreds
of tracks, and only some of them were used.
The cool thing in Logic is that you can con-
figure it any way you want. No two Logic users
set it up the same wayif I go to someone
who uses it, they constantly surprise me with
what theyre doing with it.
Fig 2: Klaus Badelts Logic Environment for Pirates of the Caribbean. Each of the
icons in this sound pallet points to an independent external MIDI port and channel, in
this case on one of about 18 fully-loaded GigaStudio machines. Command/clicking on an
icon instantly assigns it to the currently selected track in the Arrange window (not shown
here), making it easy to manage a vast template without pre-assigning every single
sound to a track.
Badelt now uses a single G5 instead, which doesnt allow you to work this way. Having
everything on one machine has the advantages Badelt outlines in this interview, and he is
able to pull it off for a variety of unique reasons. For example, he only uses a private
orchestral library that loads very quickly; he has programmers on hand converting every-
thing to Logics EXS24 format; and all his cues get sent to an engineer for mixing, so he
doesnt need to run a heavy load of processing plug-ins.
But before you try this at home, kids, note that you can only keep a fraction of the
number of sounds and instruments cued up and ready to play. While you can run a lot on
a top-end machine today, many if not most professinoal composers working with large
sample libraries and processor-intensive virtual instruments prefer to split the load across
at least a couple of computers.
VI
i n t e r v i e w
O
perator is an add-on FM synthesizer
virtual instrument for Live, Abletons
unique and popular Mac and
Windows real-time music production program.
It works only within Live, but you can stream
Live into other sequencing programs via
ReWire (please see The World of Softsynths
and Samplers elsewhere in this issue for an
explanation of ReWire).
For those unfamiliar with Live, it is a special-
ized MIDI and digital audio sequencer thats set
up for triggering and processing patterns and
loops in real time. It can also record.
Operator uses FMfrequency modulation
synthesis, which generates complicated wave-
forms by using oscillating sine waves from one
sine wave generator to modulate the signal
coming out of another sine wave generator. A
circuit with two or more sine wave building
blocks is called an operator, hence the name.
The famous Yamaha DX-7 from 1983 used
FM synthesis, and it was notoriously difficult to
program. Since then weve seen several
attempts to make FM easier to program,
notably Native Instruments FM7, but no one
has really rethought the paradigm while still
delivering the goodsuntil now.
Abletons implementation is so easy even a
child could grasp it. Picture Operator as a DX-7
with onscreen knobs that invite you to dive in
(as opposed to membrane switches and a cou-
ple of sliders that accessed menu upon menu).
FM synthesis is represented graphically with
a series of colored building blocks that clearly
indicate which oscillator is modulating the
other. Operator takes full advantage of Lives
hands-on real-time control, low latency, and
envelope-based automation features.
At its simplest level, Operator hides the com-
plexity of FM programming behind a pair of
macro controls, Time and Tone, that can be
immediately called into play to modify a
sounds characteristics in real time. Its straight-
forward layout provides controls for the most
add-on FM Sythesizer for Live
Ableton Operator
Price: $149
Company: www.ableton.com.
Distributed in U.S. by M-Audio,
5795 Martin Rd., Irwindale, CA
91706. 626/633-9050.
Platforms: Runs only inside
Ableton Live, on Mac or Windows.
VI
r e v i e w
By Lee Sherman
immediate FM parameters up-front, while
allowing single click access to its graphical
envelope editors.
This synthesizer can produce the full range
of FM sounds, from percussive to bell-tones,
punchy bass, harmonically rich pads, and real-
istic electric pianos. It sounds absolutely fantas-
tic, and if you just buy it for quick access to
some killer presets within Live, youll love it.
But that would be missing the point.
Hearing carriers
Operators voice architecture consists of four
oscillators, labeled A D, plus a resonant multi-
mode filter (multimode means it can function
as a lowpass, bandpass, highpass, or notch fil-
ter). Theres a wide variety of waveforms to
choose from, including variations of sine wave-
forms that allow it to mimic the whooshing
aliasing artifacts of hardware FM synthesizers.
(The DX-7 had six operators, but it had no
alternative waveforms or filtering.)
Instead of trying to minimize aliasing as
most virtual analog synths do, Ableton has
gone to great lengths to harness it so that it
can be used to musical advantage. Perhaps this
is not surprising, given that the softwares con-
ceptualist was the experimental musician
Robert Henke, also known as Monolake.
Operator even lets you control the level of
aliasing. By assigning this control to a MIDI
controller, you can go from mellow to nasty at
the turn of a knob.
Operator is primarily an FM synth, but it
does include the subtractive algorithms and
waveforms (saw, square, triangle, noise) neces-
sary to provide a reasonable simulation of ana-
log sounds, adding tremendously to the soft-
wares versatility.
The envelope, please
Theres more secret sauce. Each of the four
oscillators has its own envelope, as do the LFO,
filter, and pitch. Interestingly, envelopes can
not only hard-sync to the songs tempo, they
can be made to loop completely out of sync,
repeat individually at their own rate, or repeat
at the rate specified, allowing for some incredi-
bly complex textures.
Its great to see Ableton applying some of its
innovative thinking to instrument design.
Weve seen several
attempts to make FM
easier to program,
but no one has really
rethought the paradigm
while still delivering the
goodsuntil now.
Solidarity
The first step in building a dependable rig is
outfitting the computer itself. Few mainstream,
off-the-shelf computers are ideal for this. They
have far too many convenience features for
home and office that lie at cross-purposes to
the lean, mean, mission-critical systems one
needs for stage work.
With Windows machines, that leaves us with
two primary choices: the do-it-yourself route,
or purchasing a turnkey machine put together
by specialists for the purpose. (Please see the
sidebars to this article for other alternatives.)
It is of infinite value to know exactly what is
in a machine, where these parts can be pur-
chased, and how to replace them in a pinch. I
personally prefer to put machines together
myself for that reason. But even if you choose a
turnkey machine, knowing what you need and
want is crucial to satisfaction, from the power
cord all the way to the audio outputs.
I avoid laptops. Their portability is attractive,
but in many ways that convenience is only skin
deep. Sample-based systems want fast, huge
disk capacities. Theres no room in a laptop for
that, so external drives tend to be a must.
Laptops survive drops poorly. Theyre incon-
venient to place onstage, since monitor and
keyboard input are fixed to one another. And
by the time youve strung the peripherals youll
need to make a laptop a stageworthy compan-
ion, is it really more convenient?
Each cable becomes a potential failure point,
not to mention a trip hazard. Its a personal
decision, but for the purposes of this article I
will focus on what I consider to be a rig that is
idealized for roadability, and thats a rackmount
system.
Components
Since Macs are sold pre-configured (you
cant put them together by selecting a case,
motherboard, power supply, fans, etc.), most
but not all of this section applies to Windows
machines only. Please see the sidebar for more
about making Macs roadworthy.
Starting with the computer case, I recom-
mend a 4-space rackmount. One can get small-
er units, even single-space, but the tradeoffs
start to become similar to those associated with
laptops. A 4-space case allows a full comple-
ment of mainstream hardware in standard
sizes. Unless theyre very deep, smaller cases
may limit choices in one way or another, which
usually equals more expensive parts with less
capability.
Why rackmount in general? Why not a nice
tower case? Rackmounts certainly do cost
more, but I have found the cost offset by the
convenience and sturdiness. On the road, a
rackmount can screw into a caster rack and
transport with ease.
For local gigging I dont rack my CPU unit,
because I use it in the studio as well. Instead, I
have a flight case for it. In the studio, it lives in
a Raxxess Isoraxx on a rack-shelf unit. When I
pack for the gig, I just undo the cabling, slide
out the computer, and put it into its flight case.
This is convenient for me. I dont have to
N
othing has had such an enormous impact on music production in
recent years as software synthesis and sampling. These tools are stun-
ning in their scope and sound. Yet this software playground rarely leaves the
studio, and dedicated hardware keyboards continue to reign supreme in live
settings.
In 2005, does this really make any sense? Hardly. Software offers superior
flexibility, configuration, and creative potential on the stage. While the vari-
ables introduced in a computing environment appear staggering compared
to the relative simplicity of a single-purpose synth or sampler, they are not
insurmountableand more musicians are discovering the pleasures of a com-
puter-based performance rig every day. Digital stagecraft has certainly
arrived.
But how does one get there? How do we set up a rig we can really depend
upon? Surprisingly, its not so hard, if we consider the challenges of the stage
when designing our systems.
By
Bruce Richardson
Despite the bum
rap, software-
based musical
instruments can
be reliable on
stageas long as
you put together
a reliable rig.
Part 1: the
computer itself.
Rigors of the
Road Rig
VI
f e a t u r e
The engineers at GForce have a passion for one thingincredibly realistic emulations of vintage keyboards. These software
instruments bring back the synths that defined an erathe Minimoog, ARP Odyssey, Oxford OSCAR and Mellotron. In addition to
being authentic in sound and function, these incredible emulations have the advantage of modern features like memory, additional
modulation and new performance modes the original designers never dreamed of (not to mention staying in perfect tune). Use them
alone or with your favorite host software.
www.m-audio.com recording interfaces USB keyboards studio monitors microphones preamps sound libraries music software
MSRP: $ 129.95
MSRP: $ 129.95
MSRP: $ 129.95
MSRP: $ 199.95
M-Audio is a trademark of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All product names used here are trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with Avid
Technology, Inc. The trademarks belonging to other manufacturers are used solely to identify the products of those manufacturers, whose sounds and tone were studied during GForces sound model development.
includes over 1GB of
additional tape banks
MA_GFrc1b_VrtInstMyJn05.qxd 6/3/05 11:36 AM Page 1
4. A face but no head: Yet another alternative is Muse Researchs Receptor
(www.museresearch.com) is specially-designed Windows computer that replaces the moni-
tor and keyboard with an LED screen and front-panel knobs and buttons.
unbolt the computer in and out of a rack, and
in practice I have not found a compelling rea-
son that it makes a difference on stage.
When I set up, I place the computer on the
stage, and the rack either atop it or in close
proximity. It only becomes worth it for me to
rack the computer when someone else is doing
the lifting and toting. In fact, I have been
known to forego the flight case on a gig with
easy ins and outs. The rackmount case in and
of itself provides easy carrying and good pro-
tection.
The biggest dangers in going sans-case are
reduced shock protection in the event of a
bump or drop, and the possibility of damaging
rear connectors. My last vehicle was not quite
large enough to accommodate the CPUs flight
case along with everything else, but I have
since solved that problem (and must offer the
observation that the Honda Element seems to
have been invented just for musicians). So for
extra insurance I now use the case most of the
time.
Moving on to the computers stuffing, I
believe it is worth spending a little more
money to buy locally if at all possible.
Choosing the guts is all about risk reduction
not to say that the risk of problems is high in a
well-tested system. In practice, I have found it
to be low. Nevertheless, less risk is better.
The parts likely to be stocked in your local
computer superstore will be stocked in other
communities. Some of the more esoteric parts
available online are not. Should you encounter
failure on the road, or at the eleventh hour in a
local club, being able to dispatch a loyal friend
to fetch a part is advantageous. Even if its
same-brand-different-part, you increase the
odds of quick recovery. The drivers may be sim-
ilar, even the same. System impact will likely be
similar.
Power supplies should be beefy and quiet.
Dont skimp, because extra hard drives, audio
hardware, etc. all put some load on the system.
These days, 400 watts is a reasonable mini-
mum. Put a quiet, variable RPM fan in every
hole. This allows you to speed down the fans in
cool and quiet environments, while providing
as much cooling as possible when the heats
on.
Cases with big, grille-covered fan holes cool
better than the poked hole variety. Anything
that impedes the flow of air reduces cooling
efficiency.
I dont recommend cooling exotica involving
liquids for a road machine, for all the obvious
reasons. Heatpipe solutions will work in some
environments, but forced air works most
dependably. I favor CPU cooling solutions
based on large fans and large heatsinks, since
these are usually more dependable than small-
er, higher RPM fans (as well as quieter).
Use wire ties to secure all internal cabling to
anchor points, taking care not to kink or bind
cabling. But in doing so, leave slack in critical
locations. In particular, youll want to be able
to get the drive cage out and accessible with-
out taking loose a lot of wiring. Secure the bulk
of the cablings weight so that in cartage,
chances of cables shaking loose are minimized.
Always facilitate the maximum airflow
through the case. Stages can get very hot, as
can outdoor venues, so make certain that the
CPU, drives, and other hot-running compo-
nents get the maximum airflow possible. As
with anything else, balance is the key. Tie
down just enough to make things secure and
open, but not enough to prevent quick mainte-
nance.
Audio hardware
My live rack currently contains a power/light
unit, a multieffects hardware unit, a pitch-to-
MIDI converter, a 12-channel mixer, and an
Echo Layla 20 audio interface.
The choice of the Layla 20 lies partly in its
good working relationship with my choices of
software for live use (Tascam GigaStudio and
Native Instruments Reactor), and partly in the
fact that I already own three of them. Because I
have upgraded the studio systems to newer
models, I am able to keep a Layla 20 in both
the live rack and in the studio. This has been
ideal, and it leaves me with two extra PCI-cards
and an extra breakout box in case one goes
bad.
Here again, were leveraging expense
against failure and that equation is personal.
The most redundancy one can afford is always
the right answer.
When choosing your audio interface, no
matter what the brand, ask yourself a series of
questions. Foremost, does it work well with
your choice of software? How many discrete
outputs do you desire from the software youre
using? Do you want to route audio into the
system for effects purposes? Do you want it to
also be your MIDI interface? Do you desire any
additional digital I/O or clocking functions?
I use both of my main performance applica-
tions to process microphone input, and I some-
times route multiple output pairs, hence my
personal choice serves me very well. Internet
discussion groups are a good source for infor-
mation about putting together equipment
from different manufacturers, since theres a
good chance somebody is using the same
combination.
Keep your video interface simple. No music
software requires particularly cutting edge
graphics performance, and high-performance
video cards generate lots of heat. Some need
fans, and these small, high-RPM fans are very
prone to failure.
The cards of a generation or three back are
more than sufficient. Built-in motherboard
video is invariably good enough, unless you
run into a problem with some specific manu-
facturer vs. your software choices. Again, the
internet is chock-full of discussion on which
Macs on stage: The most common way
to road-proof a Mac is simply to put it in
a flight case, wedged into the foam lin-
ing and held in place by friction. As long
as the front and rear lids are removed
while its on, cooling is not a problem.
If you prefer to rack-mount a Mac,
Marathon Computer
(www.Marathoncomputer.com) has
attachments for blue and white G3s, G4s,
and G5s.
The most redundancy one can afford
is always the right answer.
VI
f e a t u r e
Open Labs Neko incorprates a keyboard, and a computer with proprietary software.
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C o n n e c t .
excl usi ve
di st r i but or s
hardware works well with what. Do your
homework, and you will be happier. I use older
NVidia-based cards in my machines, and they
have worked well for me.
Monitors
My current monitor is a generic 15 LCD.
No need to spend big bucks here, so look for
bargains. CRT monitors are cheaper, but their
bulk and weight makes them inconvenient to
move and awkward to place on stage.
Anything can happen on the bandstand. The
bigger they are, the harder they fall. And the
dorkier they look.
I have a flight case for this monitor, which is
handily enough the same exact case I use to
transport the CPU unit. Put directional arrows
on the case so that it will be packed properly in
case its not you doing the packing. Protect the
face of the monitor with a piece of foam if you
are storing other items in the case that can
move around. LCD screens are not fragile, but
they are vulnerable to pressure and sharp-
object injury.
I use an amp stand to hold it up in live use,
but one can also get quite creative with custom
VESA mount solutions. There are many nice
mounts on the market, and if your appetite
runs to the exotic, any machine shop worth its
salt could manufacture whatever mount you
desire. I am currently investigating a mic stand
mount.
Consider the possibility of visibility-reducing
glare before you actually start gigging with
your new rig. A low-key club date is likely no
problem. But if you work with more elaborate
stage lighting, you may need a monitor hood. I
have been reduced to shrouding my head with
a towel in the Texas heat, like a large-format
photographer, on an outdoor gig where the
sun was setting at my back. Anticipate your sit-
uation as much as possible. I looked very dorky
that day.
The hood
A great monitor hood can be fashioned out
of corrugated plastic signboard, black being
the most opaque, but any color will reduce
direct glare. Cut a sheet of signboard to the
total of your monitors top, left, and right side
dimensions. Make the cut such that the corru-
gations in the signboard are running perpendi-
cular to the screenwell use them as bending
guides for good sharp corners. Leave about
12 of signboard in the dimension parallel to
the interior ribs; well trim it later.
Now apply good quality Velcro to the facto-
ry edge (the one perpendicular to the ribs).
Apply the opposite-sex velcro to those edges of
the monitor, and starting on the left side,
attach the signboard, letting the excess stick
straight up. Bend the signboard carefully on
the corner and stick down the top dimension,
then again to attach the right side. When fin-
ished, youll have a boxy hood.
Now determine the depth youd like your
hood to be, remove it, and use a straightedge
and a box-knife to trim your hood to the
desired overhang. Angle the sides, if desired,
since lighting tends to mostly shine down-
wards. You want the least amount of overhang
that will do the job. Its a cheap solution, so
you can always build a couple. Theyll fold nice
and flat in your monitor case.
Headlessness
All this said, there are advocates of essential-
ly black-box solutions, sans monitors and even
input devices like keyboards and mice. One can
set up software to autoload, and create a
machine that simply turns on and off.
To me, the essence of digital stagecraft is
using every possible tool the medium provides,
and the visual component is the primary inter-
face of modern software. To deprive myself of
this would be unthinkable.
The simplest example is the best for this: I
use a screen-manipulated Theremin emulation
in one of my Reaktor setups. Its great fun, and
without the visual component, it would be dif-
ficult to set up for live use. I want the ability to
manipulate the environment in ways I may not
have pre-conceived. And the thought of flying
blind frightens me.
Keyboard and mouse
On stage, the trackball is a far more useful
input device than a mouse, since it can be
Velcroed to a static point. I also Velcro the
computers keyboard to my 88-key controller.
This has worked well for me. I have seen peo-
ple adapt drawers, etc., to racks or stands.
The important thing is to find a location that
works for you, and to make it secure for per-
formance.
Conclusions
Once you have a good dependable comput-
er system built and have adapted it to the
stage, whats left is the thoroughly fun part:
picking the software tools youll use to per-
form, and the keyboards and other controllers
youll use to make them go.
The great thing about a computer on stage
is that there are really no fixed limits on what
you can hook up as an input device, or how
many input devices you can string up to create
your own personal jungle gym of musical
adventure.
Bruce Richardson is a Dallas-based composer,
producer, and performer. He has scored hundreds
of productions in television, film, and theater; pro-
duced world-class artists; and has appeared as a
sideman on stages and in arenas all over the world.
Pre-configured com-
puters: Several companies
put together Windows
computers tested and con-
figured for musical applica-
tions, often with specific
softwaree.g. GigaStudio
or Kontaktand some-
times even specific sample
libraries in mind. The BYC
VisionDAW (www.vision-
daw.com) is an example of
one weve had excellent luck with.
I avoid laptops. Their portability is
attractive, but in many ways that
convenience is only skin deep.
VI
f e a t u r e
Muse Researchs Receptor has a proprietary operating system, but it hosts standard VST instruments and
plug-ins. You can connect a keyboard and monitor by ethernet when youre back in the studio.
Distributed by
M-Audio is a registered trademark of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
MA_LiveIns_VrtInstMyJn05.qxd 6/3/05 12:10 PM Page 1
VI
GigaPulse interface
In a nutshell, convolution technology allows environmentsor anything
else that affects soundto be sampled, and its attributes applied to other
sounds or instruments. You can place a dry recorded instrument into any
impulsed room or hall, and it will sound virtually the same as if it had
actually been recorded in that space.
Convolution processing is not just limited to rooms. GigaPulse comes
with impulses of a variety of microphones, DSP gear, instrument body res-
onance, and more. You can also create your own impulses and do all
kinds of crazy things (see Getting giggy with Giga).
GigaStudio was the first sampler to have an impulse processor built in,
but the idea is catching on in other products, and convolution technolo-
gy is the cutting edge of sampling. A good example of it is in the upcom-
ing GigaViolin. This library will offer one set of samplesdry, body-less
stringsand a dozen or so violin bodies to choose from.
You can then enable any or all of the microphone models in GigaPulse
and even try different pickup patterns and filters. After that, all this can be
placed in a room.
But for this article were going to concentrate on the basics of using
GigaPulse for the room and hall environments.
Advance placement
There are two main ways to assign instrument positions in a GigaPulse
Hall Environment: Point Source, and Stereo Spread - Multiple Position.
Setting up point source
The first thing to do is select an instrument and load it into Giga. For this
example Im going to use the new French-style oboe from VSL (Vienna
Symphonic Library), included with Giga. These samples were recorded
fairly dry to allow for good control over how much ambience you want,
but they still have a little bit of air. That allows the sound to breathe a bit
and gives it some authentic spacial cues.
Well start by loading a mono version of the oboe into Giga on MIDI
channel 1, Port 1, to demonstrate the point source method of using
By Dave Govett
TASCAM GigaStudio:
Taking the GigaPulse
Routing instruments through GigaPulse, the built-in convolution processor in
GigaStudio 3* isnt as convoluted as it seems. The man who wrote most of the
GigaStudio 3 manual explains.
W
hat a timely concept for a music industry magazine! Im very
glad to be here dishing out info on GigaStudio, a subject dear
to my heart.
You could say Im the first user of Giga technology, since I persuaded the
guys at NemeSys (the original developer before TASCAM acquired the
company) to let me beta test it. They ended up hiring me, and I did a
few years of tech support, making training videos, documentation, doing
clinics, and I laid out the first couple of dozen Giga-format sample
libraries. Now I do contract work on Giga for TASCAMespecially docu-
mentation.
For this article Im going to go over the fantastic GigaPulse convolution
processor included with GigaStudio 3.0, sharing some recommendations
for getting the best sound and most efficiency out of it. Please be sure to
check out the audio examples on the Virtual Instruments website
(www.VitualInstrumentsmag.com).
Stereo Spread-Multiple Position: Point Source:
more
online
(*GigaPulse will also be available as a stand-alone VST plug-in in the near future.)
GigaPulse. If you listen to the audio examples on the site, I think youll be
amazed at how good a mono instrument can sound. Please check out
Oboe-Mono-Dry.mp3 for reference.
The MIDI Channel output of the oboe is assigned to DSP channels 1 & 2
in Giga.
MIDI Channel output assigned to DSP mixer channels 1&2
Go to the DSP Mixer Channel pair 1 & 2 and expand it by clicking on the
little triangle at the top right corner of the channel.
Use the channel insert to open up the GigaPulse. While te uses more pro-
cessing power than sharing the processor, I prefer to use inserts for
GigaPulse rooms instead of Auxiliary Sends. This puts 100% of the signal
in the room the way it would happen in real life.
Opening a GigaPulse
That brings up the GigaPulse Interface, which should look like this:
The default GigaPulse Interface
For this example, Im using the Medium Hall. I particularly like this hall
because its fairly ambient without getting too reverberant.
Selecting the Medium Hall
Position-8 (Right-Close) osition-2 (Left-Close)
Position-17 (Right-Far) Position-11 (Left-Far)
The Medium Hall program
The hall was sampled with five mics and 18 speakers. You can simply
choose any of the 18 positions on the stage with the mouse.
Be sure to check out the audio examples of various positions on the stage
using the Mono Oboe.
Oboe-Mono-GP-Pos-2.mp3 left up close
Oboe-Mono-GP-Pos-8.mp3 right up close
Oboe-Mono-GP-Pos-11.mp3 left farther Back
Oboe-Mono-GP-Pos-17.mp3 right farther back
The two arcs of positions on the stage give a nice left-to-right spread, as
well as some depth positioningwhich is where impulse technology really
shines compared to traditional reverb. Its the front-to-back image that
really creates the illusion of space, more than the left-to-right position.
Perspective controller
If the front or back positions are too close or far for an instrument, you
can use the Perspective slider to loosen or tighten the sound (up to the
extremes of the recorded positions). This is another reason to use
GigaPulse as an insert instead of a shared resource on an aux send.

Channel assignments
Now the question comes up about how to assign the various mics to the
rear or center channels of the system. That is where the Mic to Mixer
Routing matrix comes in.
First, set the drop-down to 7-Channel mode for sur-
round sound.
From top to bottom we have the
mic positions; from left to right
we have the channel assign-
ments, which are the seven adja-
cent channels to the starting
channel.
For example, if we insert a GigaPulse on input channels 1 & 2, then the
channels in this matrix will be channels 1 through 7; insert the GigaPulse
on inputs channels 15 & 16, and these channels will be channels 15-21.
Simply click on the lights to the
right of the mix positions to assign
any mic position to any of these
seven adjacent channels. Then
you can go to each of those adja-
cent channels and assign them to
any available physical outputs, or
even to a group channel.
This is done at the bottom of each channel.
Assigning physical outputs
Now we have Mixer channels 1-8 assigned to hard-
ware outputs 1-8. This gives us seven discrete physi-
cal outputs that can then be routed to the speakers.
If we use a group channel, then that group channel can be assigned to a
physical output as well.
So the signal path starts at the MIDI channel, works its way through the
mixer, and goes on to the sound card physical outputs, or to group chan-
nels first and then the physical outputs.
The MIDI channels are assigned to DSP Mixer Channels in the MIDI
Channel & Port Screen.
Mixer channel is assigned to
physical output
Or the Mixer channel is
assigned to group channel.
Then the Group is assigned to the physical outputs.
The Perspective controller
Moving the slider to the left tightens and brings the sound closer; moving
it right loosens and pushes the sound farther away.
You can start with a close position and make it wetter, or start with a far
position and make it drier using the Perspective slider. Always try both
options to see which one works best.
Enabling more mic positions for surround
So far weve only dealt with the default 2-mic setup, however these halls
have been impulsed in 7-channel surround. To enable any of these
channels, simply click on the mic position with the mouse.
CPU usage
Keep in mind that each extra channel uses additional CPU processing.
However, the Giga engineers are well known for making their programs
efficient; GigaPulse is fairly thrifty with the processor considering what it is
accomplishing. On my 2.8Ghz Pentium 4 machine, I find that each mic
position in the medium hall adds an extra 3% to the CPU usage. If I were
to dedicate this machine to nothing but GigaPulse, I could get four
instances of five channels eachand thats in full 5-speaker surround, all
at the same time on a single machine. (80% of the CPU is being used at
that point.)
VI
All 7 Mic positions enabled 5 Mic positions enabled
What is convolution and
why is it the latest craze?
W
hile theres still a place for the conventional reverb units
weve been using for the past 25 years, convolution pro-
cessing has brought a new level of realism to reverb and other
kinds of modeling. Convolution actually allows you to sample
anything that has an effect on sounda room or hall, a guitar
amp, mic, musical instrument bodyanything.
Until a few years ago, real-time convolution processing was
only available in very high-end hardware units from Sony and
Yamaha. Then a few years ago a Dutch company called Audio
Ease introduced a software unit called Altiverb, so named
because it uses the AltiVec coprocessor on the chips in all G4
and G5 Macs.
Altiverb is still an extremely viable contender, but now there
are several others as wellin fact Logic Audio Pro even comes
with one (Space Designer). Following Gigapulses lead, convolu-
tion processing is now finding its way into virtual instruments
(Native Instruments Kontakt 2, MOTUs forthcoming Symphonic
Instrument, and others will certainly follow). This is an exciting
development for sampling, not just for reverb but because of
things like instrument body modeling (see text).
Oboe-Stereo-GP-Close-Center.mp3 shows what this sounds like.
To adjust the left right position of the oboe, simply pan it using the MIDI
or volume panning.
These examples show what this sounds like:
Oboe-Stereo-GP-Close-Left.mp3
Oboe-Stereo-GP-Close-Right.mp3
The same placement idea applies
to the rear stage positions. To posi-
tion the sound farther back, simply
assign the left mic to stage posi-
tion 11 and the right mic to stage
position 17.
These examples show what it
sounds like farther back with differ-
ent panning:
Oboe-Stereo-GP-Far-
Center.mp3
Oboe-Stereo-GP-Far-Left.mp3
Oboe-Stereo-GP-Far-Right.mp3
You can widen or narrow the stereo spread by using different stage posi-
tions. Its also possible to be creative and combine left close with far right or
any combination. However, a symmetrical setup is right for most situations.
I
f you play a full-bandwidth, very sharp
sound through a speaker in a room (or
through anything else) and sample the
reverb decay, you get an impulse response
of the room. In other words, you get a
recording of the rooms audio signature
its response to being excited at every fre-
quency. Impulses are theoretical, infinitely
short noise spikes that contain all the audi-
ble frequencies.
In reality, sounds that are similar to
impulses (such as starter pistols) are hard
for speakers to reproduce, so for acoustic
spaces its better to to use sine wave sweeps
that are time-compressed back into a single
spike after recording; Audio Eases Altiverb
convolution processor actually comes with a
sweep-generating/recording/processing
utility for making your own samples this
way.
There are some differences in the convo-
lution playback engines on the market, but
the quality of the impulse response samples
themselves is by far the greatest factor in
the quality of the sound. Impulse responses
are simply audio files, of course.
Heres a good way to picture how convo-
lution processing works; special thanks to
Arjen of Audio Ease for his help explaining
this rather difficult concept.
Samplingdigital recordingworks by
taking 44,100 readings of the source per
second (or 48,000, etc., depending on the
sampling rate). Each one of those readings,
or samples, represents a voltage; the contin-
uous waveform you hear on playback is pro-
duced by drawing a line to connect each
one of those voltage numbers on an imagi-
nary bar graph.
What convolution does is take each one
of the samples in the source recording and
scale itthat is, multiply itrelative to the
value of each successive sample in the
impulse response file. So each sample in
effect gets its own reverb. If the source
sample is short, its repeated to make up for
it not being as long as the impulse
response, or vice versa (it makes no differ-
ence because 1x2 is the same as 2x1).
Because each sample has to be processed
44,100 times every second (depending on
the sample rate), its easy to understand
why convolution processing requires a lot of
CPU. And the longer the impulse response
is, the more CPU it takes, since there are
more samples to process.
Mathematically, convolution models
exactly what would happen if you played an
instrument in the room in which you
recorded the impulse response; in theory
theres no difference in the result. Reality is
a little more complicated, but convolution
reverbs are stunningly realisticand getting
more so as the technology advances and
more processing power becomes available.
How convolution works:
Stereo spread-multiple position
To really hear a stereo sample sparkle and shine, try the multiple select,
stereo spread method. This lets you keep the air and the positional cues
from the stereo samples as you place them in the GigaPulse environment.
You can still use the point source method on stereo samples if you wish,
but I find that the stereo samples really benefit with this method. This is
especially true of ensemble instruments like a strings, which have a wider
stage position than a point-source instrument like a solo woodwind.
First, load up the stereo version of the oboe.
Check out the example: Oboe-Stereo-Dry.mp3 for reference.
Instead of just clicking on the stage positions, this time well use the
Control key to lock the pairs of positions to pairs of microphones.
Choosing mic positions that are farther apart widens the stereo spread,
and conversely closer mics narrow it.
To do this, hold down the Control key and click on the left-front mic posi-
tion. Then continue holding down Control and click on stage position 2.
Do the same thing for the right mic position and assign it to stage posi-
tion 6. The colors of the positions change to show which mic is assigned
to which stage position.
Now when we play the oboe it
has a more live stereo sound in
the center.
Close & Far Spread: Narrow Spread:
VI
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VI
f e a t u r e
S
ample libraries have come a long way
since the days when they really wanted
to be hidden in a mix. You either had to
mix them in low or disguise them with some
live instruments in the foreground.
Yet while thats no longer true, live instru-
ments can breathe a lot of life and expression
into a piece, in fact even a small percussion
part can add a lot. And there are still times
when you want to layer real instruments on
top of sampled ones to create an ensemble, for
example if youre creating a pop brass ensem-
ble. (There are some intriguing big band brass
libraries on the horizon, but as of now nothing
available is totally satisfactory.)
That sets up what this article is really about:
combining live tracks with synth/sampled
tracks. Why would we do such a cheesy thing?
(To save money, doh!) Can it possibly work?
(Surprisingly well!) How do we approach this?
(Very carefully.)
About live sound sources
If were going to generate the equivalent of
real live sounds, and or integrate synth sounds
with live ones, we need to know a little about
those live sounds. Here are some verities:
when we record a live instrument with a
microphone, the instrument and the micro-
phone are both in a room, and some distance
from each other;
when the microphone is within the near
field of the instrument (i.e. within a distance
equal to the instruments largest vibrating or
resonating dimension) we dont capture the
entire sound of the instrument, and what we
get may not be representative of what we think
the instrument should really sound like;
when the microphone is outside the near
field of the instrument it may very well pick
up reverberance from the room, particularly if
it is a small room;
therefore when we capture the real
sound of an instrument, we often also capture
the sound of the room in which it is recorded,
which is often something other than what we
want;
and finally, we need to keep in mind that
microphones perceive sounds in profoundly dif-
ferent ways than our ears do, and that a sound
whose quality has been altered by the process
of going through a microphone AND a loud-
speaker AND another, different room to the lis-
tener is without doubt going to sound a lot dif-
ferent than the original sound did. The
acoustics and psychoacoustics of the situation
require it.
When we are struggling with any kind of
production that involves combining live sounds
and sampling or synthesis (or even if were just
struggling with sampling), we need to keep
these verities in mind.
Recording live sources
When we record live sources, particularly in
overdubbing/layering situations, we need to
devote considerable care to mic choice and
placement, for the reasons cited above. Again,
we are balancing direct versus room sound
while obsessing about the particular tone quali-
ty were getting, which may not be (a) what it
sounds like to our ears in the studio, or (b)
exactly what we had in mind or wanted. Tiny
changes in physical setup result in big, often
illogical changes in sound character.
Sometimes we find we really like the room
ambience we hear in the studio and try to cap-
ture it by hanging up a stereo pair of room
mics, only to be really surprised at how trashy
it sounds when we check it out on monitors in
the control room.
My experience is this: when were doing
multitrack production, we need to close-mic
sounds and suppress room tone as much as
possible when were tracking and overdubbing,
except in very special cases. When we want
room tone, ambience, or reverberance, we
generally do best to add it in mixdown or post-
production.
When were doing live acoustical recording
(classical music, some kinds of acoustic music,
live club recordings, etc.), we try to capture the
live ambience as part of the recording (via one
of a number of techniques). Here were less
concerned with details of timbre of an individ-
ual instrument than we are about the balance
between instruments and the balance between
By Dave Moulton
Combining
Live and Virtual
Instruments
Creating an ensemble of instruments recorded in
different spaces presents some problems. Heres
how to get around them.
Sometimes we find we really like the
room ambience we hear in the studio and try
to capture it by hanging up a stereo pair of room
mics, only to be really surprised at how
trashy it sounds when we check it out on
monitors in the control room.
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the instruments and the room tone and/or
reverberance.
Orchestration and studio
orchestration: the fine art of
misdirection
Its worth thinking for a moment about why
we do this stuff. Were making up music, right? If
we are doing it the traditional way, we write dots
on a page that musicians play. We usually make
a decision as to who plays what. Sometimes we
say to ourselves something like, I really want
this part to be like screaming lead guitar, except
with a harmonic doubling a third below.
Welcome to the art of orchestration.
Orchestration is the act of assigning different
sounds to different instruments, as well as mak-
ing sure those sounds are playable by those
instruments. Its a wonderful craft, and if youre
good at it, it can be a lot of fun.
Something similar happens in the recording
studio when we are producing recordings
there. We combine, double, mix, and otherwise
combine instruments to get different sounds
and perspectives (not to mention all the signal
processing stuff we do when suitably inspired).
I call this studio orchestration. We are decid-
ing how it is going to sound, not by calling up
various instruments, but by the way we mic
instruments, mix instruments together, and/or
process instruments.
The reason I belabor this is because in multi-
track production, we usually do live/synth dou-
blings like this for one of several pretty basic rea-
sons: (a) we want to make one instrument sound
like a group of instruments (chorusing/doubling,
the Moron Block n Tackle Choir, etc.), (b) we
want to add a sense of spaciousness (spreaders,
explained later; spread-triple-tracks; room ambi-
ence; reverb; etc.), or (c) we want to add some
ear candy effect to a given musical voice (really
tight live unison doublings in mono, or a really
interesting extra coloration on an instrumental
part). These things are all at the heart of studio
orchestration.
Now these doublings and triplings are all
tried and true effects that mostly have become
wonderfully effective clichs. Often, however,
we cant use them because we dont have the
resources available (usually either enough play-
ers or enough time), so we resort to synths or
samplers to fill in the doublings we want.
Why we need to record
dry tracks
At this point its clear why we desire dry
tracks to do this. If the tracks have room tone,
that tone is going to become a significant part
of the resulting sound, and there is no reason-
able way out of it. Thats okay if you really like
and can live with that particular room tone.
Meanwhile, for my kind of tweaky music
production work, sampled sounds with room
tone are really a shaky premiseunless I dont
plan on doubling them with anything else,
because now we have Sampled Rooms whether
we want them or not. Uh-oh! Sample libraries
often give you a choice of wet or dry mic posi-
tions; my personal preference is to opt for the
driest and add back moisture in mixing.
Theres another way to look at this, though.
For a great deal of film and broadcast audio
production, the quality of the supplied room
tone is just fine, and having it aboard from the
beginning saves at least one step and probably
a number of them.
Anyway, when we are tracking and/or col-
lecting our own samples, this means a dead
studio and close miking.
Mixing live and sampled
or synth tracks
If youre layering a live track on top of sam-
ples in order to create a larger sound, for
example building a pop horn section with only
one real trumpet, then obviously the live instru-
ment has to be the leader. We want its live-
ness to cover the simplification of the sampled
horns and misdirect the listeners attention
from their essential cheeseball character.
So make it louder and make it brighter
(boost EQ in the 2-4kHz range). If the sampled
tracks are in unison with the live, make them
softer (say, 2-3dB) and also gently roll off their
top end. Make sure, also, that the sampled
tracks arent phase-locked clones of one anoth-
erchangs the sample patch slightly for each
line so they have small but audible differences.
If the tracks are harmonies rather than uni-
son, make the live track the top note in the
chord, with the sampled harmony parts below.
Again, think about relative levels and EQ,
although they wont be quite as important.
After you have them tracked and you are
happy with the performance timing, you might
wish to slip the synth doublings later in time by
3 or 4 milliseconds relative to the live track,
which will further direct the listeners attention
to the musical quality of the live voice.
Finally, tight gain riding and panning on
individual notes can be a beautiful thing. On
important notes, bring the levels up for empha-
sis, and/or pan them left and right to open up
the sound, just for that note. This is easy to do
in a DAW.
The same is true with synth tracks. They may
be more cheeseball than sampled tracks, but
you can make a virtue of that by making the
patch sufficiently weird or bizarro to enhance
the live track, if you can be subtle about it.
Dealing with stereo
Stereo can really be your friend here. You
can pan parts to left, right, and/or center for
more spaciousness. You can add ambience to
the lead track only, or to all the tracks (which
will have the added benefit of misdirecting the
listener some more). You can add stereo reverb
to just the live track, leaving the synth tracks
dry (and less noticeable), while also increasing
spaciousness and envelopment. And theres
always the panning stuff I mentioned above.
Spreaders
Please look at Figure 1, the screen dump
from Pro Tools that accompanies this article.
A spreader is a cool little trick for adding a
room to a sound when reverb or ambience is
too much. You simply generate the first lateral
early reflections for left and right.
In your DAW, set up a stereo aux input or
whatever the equivalent is called in your soft-
ware. Insert a stereo medium slap delay with
different delays, say 29 and 33msactual val-
ues depend on the song, the tempo, and the
mood, and are selected by trial, error, and
earpanned hard left and right. Make the ear-
lier of the delays approximately 3dB softer.
Send all the signals you want to spread to
said aux input via one of the internal buses.
Adjust the send level to taste. When you get it
right, you barely notice it until you mute it, at
which point the dry track becomes surprisingly
flat, one-dimensional, and comparatively lifeless.
If you want a more complex spreader, you
can add more delays (four or six is good, eight
Figure 1: spreader. Caption: A basic spreader program creates walls with two discrete delays, panned hard
L and R. Its barely noticeable when you get it rightbut you sure notice it if you mute it.
You might wish to slip the synth doublings later in
time by 3 or 4 milliseconds relative to the live
track, which will further direct the listeners
attention to the musical quality of the live voice.
VI
f e a t u r e
is usually a little much). Work out a volley of
lateral early delays from a room the size of a
small club. Remember, the earlier of two nearly
identical delay times from opposing channels
should be made 3-5dB softer. This is to offset
the precedence effect, which tends to pull
the spreader ambience toward the side with
the earlier time. Do this by ear, sitting on the
median plane (i.e. centered perfectly between
your monitors).
Interestingly, I find that these simple primi-
tive spreaders give me about 80% of all the
short-term room ambience I want. The place
that they dont work is with impulsive sounds,
such as snare drums, when the volley of delay
times is usually revealed as a smear of snare
drum hits. They do work great with vocals,
electric bass, lead guitar, and horn tracks.
Ambience
Ambience is short-term reverb, the kind of
sonic decay that happens in small rooms
and/or comparatively dead rooms. It can be a
really attractive kind of sonic perfume that
gives a palpable sense of realness to the
sound without imposing a wash of decaying
reverberance over (or under) everything.
I find 150-300ms decay timeit might be
called reverb time on your box or plug-inis
about as long as you want to go, and predelay, if
any, should be quite short (no more than 30ms).
The point about both spreaders and ambi-
ence is that when you send a group of live and
synth/sampled sounds together to one of these
effects, they acquire a similar character and
tend to unify into a comparatively believable
ensemble or section. That cheesy synthetic
quality begins to really go away, and mean-
while you havent done anything that limits
your options much for the rest of the mix.
Dealing with reverb
Its a little tougher dealing with reverb.
Reverb times begin at about 750ms (fairly dry)
and go out to about 2.5 seconds (wet). Such
reverb is essential to support most atmospheric
string or sustained keyboard pads.
Naturally, it covers a multitude of sins
including your sampled string sounds if youre
layering live strings on top of them. The prob-
lem is that it can cover a lot of other stuff as
well if you arent careful. Todays convolution
reverbs work well for this, but standard reverb
plug-ins may not sound all that good in this
application.
Personally, Im a reverb junkie. I love the stuff
and what it does. However, Ive learned through
a lot of painful experience to restrain my more
crass impulses. The trick for most pop work is to
use reverb sparinglyeither for effect, sudden
relaxation, or as a lush sort of background cush-
ion for more dry upfront sounds in the lead in
slower, less heavy material.
For the kinds of things were trying to
accomplish in this article, reverb isnt necessari-
ly the best fix. Happily, when you need it you
can also apply the reverb to stuff that already
has spreader treatments or ambience. They
actually help the reverb, as a general rule. I
often apply both ambience patches and large
hall patches to various sounds in my mixes.
If you arent sufficiently con-
fused by now, try surround!
Surround makes all of this a bit more tricky.
Because you now have five channels (well, four,
anyway if you tend to skip the center channel),
it is possible to spread stuff out more and make
it clearer. Unfortunately, that also reveals the
warts a bit more. For your live/synth sections,
you probably want to devote some spreading
or ambience to them in stereo, whether you
assign that stereo to front or back.
Dont try to be really sophisticated (not yet,
anyway!) with full surround ambiences and
spreaders (which are actually a lot of fun, if
immensely time consuming) until you are really
sure of what you are doing. Also, for sustained
pads it is immensely tempting to put one part
in each channel and then wash the whole
thing with reverb. If you get it right, this can
be wonderfully enveloping.
However, you run the risk of revealing your
cheeseball synth tracks all too clearly (as in
Hmmm. That violin in Left Front is pretty nice,
but its a shame its all muddied up by the
cheeseball synth tracks everywhere.)
The payoff1
Mostly, what were trying to do in these
cases is develop a sense of ensemble size, rich-
ness, and solidity. We want the assembled live,
synth, and sampled parts to feel like part of a
real band, in a real space, playing real music.
Its an illusion, of course.
Some whacko things to help that illusion
along include some of the following tricks:
Build up a section feel by double- or triple-
tracking each part in unison on a separate
track, using patches that mimic individual
instruments rather than sections. There comes
a point, while you are burning through an
immense number of tracks, when it really
begins to feel like a section!
If you have enough sends and speakers, send
your section tracks to an array of individual
loudspeakers set on chairs in the studio,
arrayed as if they are an ensemble of players or
singers. Then record them in stereo, using
whichever of the three main stereo mic tech-
niques floats your boat the most! It can feel
remarkably live and nobody will ever figure out
how you did it (except me, of course!).
Mainly, concentrate on developing the illu-
sion! Its a musical thing more than a technical
thing. Use your ears. And keep trying until it
feels really good.
Thanks for listening.
Dave Moulton is virtually an instrumental
cheeseball these days. You can complain to him
about anything at his website
www.moultonlabs.com.
So I defined all the sounds I used in all the
GigaStudios on one graphical Environment
page. [Again, please see Figure 2.] They were
wonderfully sorted in layers like stings, brass,
guitars, orchestral percussion, such and such.
So if you had an idea, you didnt know
which sound would be perfect, you just look at
it graphically. So you command/click [which
assigns the instrument to the currently selected
track]this one? Maybe. This one? No. And
you really had your whole pallet at your finger-
tips.
VI: But you cant do that now the way
youre working with EXS.
Badelt: They are about to change that too.
Right now my pallet is not that graphic, but
still its quite a well organized hierarchy of
sounds. It gives me a hierarchical view of what
I can do, which is quite inspiring too.
What theyre doing, the idea is that a chan-
nel strip setting is represented like a Favorite
object, so basically by double-clicking on it you
select it and it loads a track. And then you can
create a pallet again.
Logic loads so fast. I can load the biggest
sounds in just a few seconds. Its very opti-
mized how they do it. We have sounds with so
many layers, we reach the limits of the EXS
constantly.
Now they have to make it a really good
sampler. Its a sample playback engine. Im sure
it can not keep up with the flexibility of
Kontakt, MachFive, and Halion. But I prefer it
integrated.
VI: Are you using using other virtual instru-
ments than the ones in Logic?
Badelt: The Logic ones are so good. Just
look at the ES2you can spend weeks with the
ES2. Now with the different modeling synths, I
havent gotten to the ground floor. Its amaz-
ing.
But I use the Spectrasonics stuff a lot. Its
great. Albino. I love these synthsthe weirder
they are, the better. To find a tiny little sound
in one cue, now you can. To get us all these
high and supernatural sounds, the bread and
butter sounds are actually great. I use synths a
lot in the template.
And I use Kontakt a lot too, actually. I use
Impakt quite a bit too, which is
Kontakt, just a different GUI.
VI: Do you use any of the com-
mercially available orchestral
libraries, or just your own custom
sounds?
Badelt: Basically not the com-
mercial libraries. Maybe to aug-
ment a sound here and there, but
you wont even hear it. We just had
the opportunity to record in a real-
ly good hall, most of the people I
now use when I go to London, the
same engineer. Its about the
recording, about the right record-
ing engineer who does film work all the time
and the right hall. The real thing.
But I have lots of itCD-ROMs of drums and
loops. But mostly we create new sounds in a
project.
VI: Do you spend a lot of time program-
ming sounds for each project?
Badelt: Well, I have special people for that.
We have at least one sound programmer in a
project. Its a full-time job.
VI: You still have Pro Tools in your rig, even
though youre not using it for mixing anymore.
Badelt: I use Pro Tools as a video player,
playing back effects and dialog and picture.
Thats the one thing I dont do inside Logic yet.
I like video at such a high quality for projection
that its just taxing the computer too much.
Im waiting for the quadruple 7GHz!
Were writing music for films now just like
the Avid guys cut: you need one more editor,
you add one more Avid, connected by a fibre
channel drive in another room. Its scaleable,
just another room opens up.
Thats what were doing now. If you have
two weeks or three weeks to write
Constantine, you need three or four outlet
composersarrangers, whatever you call them.
Open another room, put another G5 in there,
clone our library, and youre ready to go.
Before it would mean build another studio.
Not much more to it anymore.
It doesnt help you writing a good tune! You
still have to do that, unfortunately.
Maybe one day! Ill ask them to put a prefer-
ence or two: good cue, bad cue
"What do you think of our EXS sampler?
I was laughing at them! I had 14 GigaStudios, each
of them had four MIDI ports. They said, You can
load 64 samplers. Thats not even one Giga!
VI
i n t e r v i e w
BADELT
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 40)
Fig 3: Badelts Logic Audio Environment for Constantine. This is all running on a single G5.
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Inventions
Lindemann has been working on Synful
Orchestra for roughly eight years and has had
his additive synthesizer running for the last five
or six. Along the way hes been awarded sever-
al patents.
While additive synthesis is nothing new, the
Synful approach to dealing with its parameters
is unique. The complicated part is searching
and finding the fragments, and then splicing
them together transparently.
A single note may have 100 150 harmon-
ics and a typical piece of music 10 20,000,
and that requires a lot of computation.
Lindemann created and subsequently patented
an efficient way of doing additive synthesis.
The subject of another patent deals with how
to smooth out the timbre; simple crossfading
isnt nearly transparent enough.
Lindemann developed a vocabulary to label
each phrase and catalogue it. These phrases
then get crunched by the computer, which
starts by extracting the harmonics. It takes
about 25 minutes of calculations to produce a
completed instrument, which consists of a
database that the synthesizer plays in real time.
De...lay
Actually, the initial Synful Orchestra interface
has a Magic Button (delay for expression),
which is a 1-second lookahead delay that
allows it to calculate note transitions more
accurately by looking at the incoming MIDI
data. It would be more elegant if the sequencer
could tell Synful what notes are coming up in
the track, but there hasnt been any demand
for such a feature before now.
In the meantime the solution is to sequence
the instrument with the Magic Button turned
off, slide the track forward one second, and
then turn the button on to listen and tweak
notes before mixing.
Plans
Lindemann plans to round out the existing
orchestra with such instruments as string sec-
tion, staccato strings, harmonics, and various
tremolos and different modes of playing.
Upcoming products may include jazz instru-
ments, trumpet, and various saxophones, along
with various iconic-type data fragments and
soundsperhaps a John Coltrane sound for
example.
As of this writing, Synful is available for
Windows only, but a Macintosh version is due
for release in July.
The future?
Whether the Synful technology is a replace-
ment for sampling is partly a matter of opinion.
It certainly wont be a total replacement;
Lindemann feels that sampling works well for
instruments like piano and percussion, which
arent changed by the player after the note
starts. Synfuls strength is in modeling expres-
sion and note transitions.
Despite its limitations, some people feel
sampling has an inherent life. Since Synful is
tied to the original recordings, the sound is
always going to be subjective. At the moment,
some of the instruments in its orchestra are
arguably better than others.
Whats certain is that Synful is a very inter-
esting technology that is likely to wield some
influence. It makes writing to the library
writing to accentuate a given librarys strengths
and avoid its weaknessestotally unnecessary.
And its much less demanding of computers.
At the very least, Synful is an exciting new
tool to add to our arsenal.
You can download a functional demo and
listen to mp3 examples from www.Synful.com.
Frederick Russ is an accomplished orchestral
composer. He runs the discussion forum at
www.vi-control.net/forum and invites you to take
part.
TRENDS
Economy while writing
For reference reverb while composing, try using just two instances of
GigaPulse and sharing them: one for the up-close spread, the second for
the far back spread.
Far. Close.
enabled and then enable the surround to capture sections to disk when
you are finished composing. (If you use Giga that way rather than having
it on slave machines.)
Happy convolution
Be sure to check out the other rooms and reverb units. GigaPulse ships
with several rooms & halls, as well as some very expensive reverb unit
impulses and a guitar amp, among other things. These programs have
different mic or parameter selection options to explore.
But theyre much simpler than the halls weve covered here.
G
igaPulse comes with a lot of meticulously-sampled impulse
response files. You can make and import your own as well;
Giga 3.1, due out this summer, makes it really easy to import
files, and there are instructions on TASCAMs website for earlier
versions (look in the Giga Support area).
If you have a plug-in and/or outboard effects or processing
chain you like for a program, for example, you could sample the
result and burn an impulse response file. You dont need to
use sine wave sweeps for thisa full-scale digital click (which
you can create with your DAWs pencil tool) should work fine.
You can also have a raucously good time creating your own
effects. The obvious way is to find interesting things and sample
them, whether its the inside of a piano, a cardboard tube, a toi-
let, or someones huge mouth. Just keep it clean.
Heres a tip from King Idiot: how about sampling some of
your entire mix and running a signal through that? The result is
an interesting ambient effect.
GIGAPULSE
This also applies to the other mic positions, which can be assigned in the
same way to stage positions.
Here, the surround mics are assigned to the same positions as the close
ones:
The best way to do this is to use
two group channels. Put one
instance in the insert of each
group, one for close-up, the other
for farther back. Then you can
assign any mixer channel output
i.e. any instrumentto either of
the two groups to position it on
the stage. Instruments can be panned left to right by simply using the
MIDI or mixer channel pan control.
To save resources, you can compose with two of the mic positions
Getting giggy with Giga
David Govett has been using Giga since before it was released. As a com-
poser, he worked with game composing company Fatman for eight years.
Dave has programmed many of the top sample libraries.

in the NI sampler engine. For example there
are plenty of velocity layers, and some of the
programs auto-alternate samples every time
you hit a key to avoid exact repetitions. Also,
many programs have extra performance ele-
ments like pitch glide samples leading into bass
and guitar notes when you play extra hard.
Other than velocity, you play Colossus with the
sustain pedal, modwheel crossfades when
labeled, and then use MIDI CC11 (expression)
for riding the volume.
Beyond that, the Kompakt player has a vari-
ety of parameters and effects you can use to
shape the soundstraditional synthesis param-
eters (filters, modulation, envelopes), tuning,
etc. These features are available independently
for each of the eight instruments an instance of
the player can load. Colossus leaves most of
that up to you by default, but its very easy to
use.
Sounds
As you can see from the screen dump with
this review, there are 18 banks in Colossus,
each with a long list of instruments. Theres
also a General MIDI bank that uses mostly the
same instruments.
The Colossus library is very well organized
and therefore takes virtually no time to learn.
On the other hand, theres so much in it that
every time you browse through the programs
you discover something else. If you get
boredwhich you wontits very easy to
layer sounds on the same MIDI channel, and
that opens up a lot of possibilities.
And now we got to some subjective com-
ments about the sounds, starting with the
acoustic and electric drums. Theres a good
selection of nice kits, starting with a really
funky 60s kit to brush and stick jazz kits with a
characteristically tiny (probably 18) open bass
drum, on up to big rocking heavy impact kits,
techno kits, 808-style hip-hop kits, and so on.
All are cleanly recorded and tastefully
processed; these drums stand up to pretty
much any sampled drums on the market.
The Kompakt player instrument doesnt let
you replace, say, the cymbal from one kit with
one in anotheryou have to load the whole kit
on another MIDI channel and play the cymbal
separatelybut it does have a really useful
Group Edit feature. That means you can select,
say, the toms (which are subjectively too low in
some of the kits) and raise their levels.
Colossus programmers did a good job of cre-
ating logical Groups for you to tweak.
There are some really nice electric basses
from the Hardcore Bass library, and the
acoustic bass is outstanding. Though theyre
already amped, I found that running some of
the electric basses through a bass amp plug-in
makes them even better (I used the new one
included with Logic 7.1). Here again, the
Group Edit feature lets you adjust the velocity
response to stop some of the slap and bend
samples from triggering too easily.
Theres a nice selection of acoustic guitars to
choose from, some of which take advantage of
the virtual instruments round robin feature.
Colossus also has banjo, mandolin, and uke,
along with a big selection of electric guitars.
Some of the electrics are recorded with amp
tone including spring reverb, others are ready
to run through a guitar amp plug-in.
Ethnic instruments, both pitched and non-
pitched, are a big strength of this library. There
are too many highlights to list, but whether its
sitar (an amazing program) or kalimba, these
programs make it really easy to get the right
flavor. Great stuff.
Colossus includes a variety of keyboard
instruments, from accordian to reed organ to
the mallet instruments from the East West
Quantum Leap Symphony Orchestra library
(EWQLSO). I promise not to moan about the
orchestral vibes not having pedal-up samples
which is particularly unfortunate given how
good they sound otherwise.
While the new age ensemble programs
arent my personal cup of tea, theyre very
competent synth/acoustic compound sounds.
What is my cup of tea is the name of the first
one: Andreus Kugelschreiber.
The Stormdrone instruments are just out-
standing. And I mean outstanding. These are 4-
way evolving drones that you crossfade with the
mod wheel, grouped into high morphs, low
morphs, and low-to-high morphs. You could
easily score a scene or commercial with these
programs. Hidden deep under a hierarchical
menu labeled disk utility are six hard-pound-
ing Stormdrum percussion ensemble loops.
Colossus includes a newly recorded Fazioli
piano and a pretty decent Steinway B sampled
piano. The Fazioli isnt sampled in enough
detail, and perhaps it lacks some of the clan-
gorous power of a real Fazioli, but it blends in
with the EWQLSO orchestral samples in this
library very nicely. There are also some excel-
lent electric pianos in this category, including
an 80s one that out-80s the 80s, and a won-
derfully detailed Rhodes suitcase 88 (complete
with tine-damping release samples). Colossus
also has a full bank of vintage organs that
should make keyboard players very happy.
The synth bass, lead, and pad groups are
somewhat traditional analog sounds, but they
sound really goodnone of that thin, digital
sound you get with too many sampled analog
programs. Theyre also programmed nicely,
with modwheel crossfades between overlap-
ping sounds and just the right velocity
response.
One indication of how far sampling has
come in recent years is the older pop brass
from the Quantum Leap Brass library. Its not
totally lousy, but its not at the same level as
most of the other content here. So far nobody
has done this very satisfactorily, although there
are some libraries on the horizon.
In addition to mens choir shouting (Oh!
etc.), Colossus has separate mens and
womens choir programs, with syllables like ah,
ee, and oh, mostly with modwheel crossfades
into progressively brighter sounds or from ah
to mm. That makes the choir sound alive,
which is necessary since these programs are
looped. You can also get some great choir
sounds by layering programs.
And finally we get to the orchestral sounds,
which come from the Gold and Platinum ver-
sions of the East West Quantum Leap
Symphony Orchestra library, only they dont
have the recorded hall reverb trails (release
trails). Some of the included programs, like
the solo cello, are just gorgeous; others are
decent if not spectacular, such as the solo clar-
inet; still others, like the piccolo, Id put in the
Very Good (B+) category.
All the instruments of the orchestra are rep-
resented, with the exception of percussion such
as drums and cymbals. The orchestral pro-
grams in this collection are good choices, since
they cover a lot of range. You can certainly find
a more flowing legato violin patch, for exam-
ple, but you couldnt use it for fast passages;
the Colossus violin program covers both situa-
tions reasonably well.
If you just want to add a symphonic sound
to songs when you play live, you should be
happy with the high-quality orchestral instru-
ments in this library. Serious orchestral com-
posers will want to look at dedicated orchestra
libraries, however. They have way more articu-
lations, and they separate the ensemble string
and brass programs into individual instru-
mentsalthough, to be honest, many people
wouldnt notice the difference if you mix in a
little of the solo strings with the string ensem-
ble programs.
The end of sample libraries
Theres no such thing as the last sample
library you need to buy, since there are libraries
that cover every category in great detail, and
there will always be different varieties of every-
thing. But this library is complete enough to
stand alone.
Given its vast range of high-quality instru-
ments, Colossus is equally ideal as the founda-
tion of a professional sample library and as a
fill-in-the-gaps collection. While its $1000 list
price is a considerable investment for most
musicians, in this case I consider it a bargain.
VI
r e v i e w
COLOSSUS
Colossus is being presented as a modern-day
equivalent to the keyboard workstations we relied
upon for years, and part of that concept is that its
instruments are almost all playable in real time.
V
isitors to the NAMM Convention this
winter who made the trip down to a
distant booth in Hall Ewhere new
companies are stationedmay have stumbled
across a stunning new emulative synthesizer.
This instrument, called Synful Orchestra, was
demonstrated ably by company president Eric
Lindemann.
It turns out that Lindemann is an industry
veteran, having designed electronic music
machines for the past 35 years. His resume
includes having designed the original
Waveframe sampler in 1986, designing a com-
puter music workstation for Pierre Boulez at
IRCAM in Paris, contributing DSP code for the
Linn Drum Machine, he had a stint at
Euphonicsas well as
having played key-
boards for the
Osmonds and the 5th
Dimension, and being
a trained composer.
The remarkable
thing about Synful is
that depending on the
instrument, it sounds
pretty close to a mod-
ern orchestral sample
library with dozens of
sampled articulations.
Whats different is that
it only requires one
track in a sequencer
the instrument seems
to be changing artic-
ulations (which is not
what its doing, as youll see) and modeling
note transitions automatically.
While Synfuls sounds are inextricably tied to
the sampled recordings it starts out with, it is
neither a sampler nor a physical modeling syn-
thesizer. Instead, its an additive synthesizer
with some extremely complicated twists.
Overview
Lindemann explains it in his own words:
For each instrument there is a database
containing phrases of real playingrecordings
of, for example, a violin playing three or four
seconds of some fast-flowing passages from a
symphony. The database has numerous exam-
ples, representing a whole variety of ways that
the violin is played. Lets think of these as
recordings for now, although theyre not really
stored that way.
The program analyzes incoming MIDI data
real time. Synful then extracts as much infor-
mation about the phrase that is being played
as possible. It looks at the separation between
notes, the overlapping of notes to determine
legato playing, velocity, the position of pedals,
pitch wheel, and so forth.
Suppose for example that it determines,
okay, whats being played here is a legato tran-
sition between B and D, the first one is a quar-
ter of a second long and the second note is a
second long. Ideally it would find the perfect
fragment exactly like that in the database, but
its probably only going to find something simi-
lar. If it finds a fragment going from Bb to D, it
will have to change Bb to B, preserving the
nice transition. That segment needs to be
spliced onto the previous segment.
Whats happening is a lot of searching for
little fragments, splicing fragments together,
and morphing fragments in pitch and time to
be synthesized. Usually Synful Orchestra will be
doing three or four splices per note, depending
on the length of the note, the note transition,
etc.
Those splices have to sound like one note,
so all of this requires a flexible representation of
the sound. Rather than being stored as sam-
ples, the sound is stored in the additive synthe-
sis model, as time-varying harmonics. The com-
puter is also modulating harmonics and noise
elements, which are stored separately, such as
the attack noises of a bow, reed noises, as well
as the sustained brass or sustained bow noise.
Storing the sounds this way means that the
entire Synful Orchestra is only 32MB; a compa-
rable orchestral sample library could be 1000
times the size.
Synful Orchestra
By Frederick Russ
This new additive synthesis virtual instrument analyzes the
incoming MIDI data and uses a database of phrases to decide
what note fragments to splice together. Could this technology
dethrone sampling?
VIt r e n d s
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Virtual Instruments V01#01 July-Aug 2005

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JULY/AUGUST 2005 - VOL. 1 NO.

it`s not a hobby

Who will you trust to build your next system?

Running benchmark tests with GigaStudio 3 on a Creation Station,

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