Embellish sounds - Produce music.
Digital Audio Computer Music-Making and MIDI XG
Now more than 10 years old!
This site was originally for users of the good 'ole General MIDI (GM) and Yamaha's superior XG MIDI standard; specifically, the SYXG-50 and SYXG100 softsynths, now discontinued.
Now it's also for musicians using the computer for making music in the digital audio realm too.
But that's not to say TheWhippinipost is abandoning you GM and XG MIDI users. You can still find the comprehensive MIDI XG guide on how to interpret and use XG's specialised commandset to tap into its hidden power.
Mixing music is another area now covered with lots of articles, interviews and tutorials including the popular 10 essential mixing tips.
There's also an overview (plus many reviews) of popular computer music products, including keyboards and midi and recording equipment.
Oh the list just goes on including the ever-popular online music calculators plus a growing bank of online video tutorials for musicians - just get stuck in and discover, learn, tell your friends and enjoy!
We've already discussed a few tips to find the key of a song which invlolved mainly trial and error.
But as with anything, practise makes perfect and with this piece of kit from Solfege, you can train your ears to recognise chords and timing intervals, plus more by the looks of it:
A Free Cakewalk SONAR 6 update is now available for download which - along with Vista-compatibility (32-bit and 64-bit) - also comes packed with new features.
Reason ReWire and Cubase Tutorial Updates
It's difficult to balance the spinning plates these days, what with trying to roll-out the dedicated online video tutorials for musicians service, the usual maintenance and upgrade projects that cook behind-the-scenes, and writing tutorials blah, blah, blah...
I'm glad I found this - I read it a while back but lost the URL - If you're seriously looking to get signed to a label, then you owe it to yourself to read carefully.
These A&R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or "deal memo," which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little memo, is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document.
Oh the information just keeps on coming in!
I'm gonna just keep updating this post with any hard numbers that come our way instead of scattering them over several posts - Please feel free to add any others you might find.
Last week I wrote about the upcoming new Microsoft Vista operating system - Specifically; what the new Vista audio engine will mean for musicians.
Well, had an email from NormC (though why you lot are too shy to leave comments, I don't know - especially those of you that are members!), who is asking why I didn't mention the WaveRT (wave real-time) port driver...
Just ran a quick comparison of the first few popular audio/midi editors that came to mind using Google Trends which shows what search-words are on the rise, or on the fall... a barometer of popularity, ya could say.
I punched-in: Cubase, Cakewalk, Ableton and Pro Tools. The results are listed below.
Last week we touched on how to find the key of a song - Uncanny, as it was literally at that same moment that Allen & Heath (in partnership with Mixed In Key) announced Xone Mixed In Key
Sometimes our songs are built in the head before touching anything - Other times they evolve as we go along. Then, there are times when evolution just grinds to a halt part-way through a new tune, rendering what started out as a good idea, into another extinct song.
Just WTF are you supposed to do?!
Here's a little technique I sometimes use when the creative juices suddenly stop flowing, right bang-slap in the middle of a song.
Reckon you could write and record either 10 songs, or 35 minutes of original material in 28 days?
Well, RPM Challenge is once again reaching-out to grab you by the collar and slap you in the face before shouting: Come-head then, show us what you've got man-queen!!
