Demonstrate an effective use of a compressor in a musical context (hopefully a piece of your own music).

INTRODUCTION

The goal of this tutorial is to demonstrate how to  use of a compressor in a musical context.

Compression is used to bring down the highest peaks, above the threshold level, leaving the lower levels just as they were. (Downward Compression)

Compression also amplifies quiet sounds by narrowing or "compressing" an audio signal's dynamic range. (Expander)

Most compressor have the following common parameters:

1. Threshold sets the level where compression starts to take effect.
2. Ratio, which sets the degree of compression above the threshold level.  A ratio of 2:1 represents mild compression and means that when the incoming level (above the threshold) rises by 10dB, the outgoing level will only rise by 5dB.  Ratios of 10:1 and known as limiters.
3. Attack, measured in milliseconds and tells the time taken for the compressor to start working once the signal has passed the threshold. A fair amount of attack will give us a more realistic sound whereas removing too much attack can produce a fake sound.
4. Release sets the length of time it takes for the compressor to go back to its normal state once the signal has gone back below the threshold.

DAW: Ableton Live 9, default compressor (Under Audio Effects)

The Video, will hopefully, guide you in the process of adding compression to your creations, do pay attention to the sounds before and after adding compression, sometimes it is useful to use external speakers instead of your laptop's default speakers in order to get a better listening of what's going on.

In closing, Compression is widely used in contemporary music, one of the bands I like that use a lot of compression in their sound is Rammstein, anyhow, try to listen the use of compression in your favorite tunes, it is actually a good exercise.

The tune I used, is of my own creation, I will upload it to soudcloud when I am done working on it.

Hope you have enjoyed the video, thanks a lot for reviewing  this material, good bye for now and good luck with this week's lessons.

Note: If the video looks blurry, please  in the  youtube viewer click on the cog icon and set your resolution to 720 HD (or higher if you prefer )

The tutorial is 5 minutes long, I added a couple of seconds of the final result so that you can listen to it.

Submix practical: Demonstrate the configuration of a Submix in a DAW or physical mixing board.

INTRODUCTION
The goal of this tutorial is to demonstrate how to  create a submix in a DAW.

The concept of a submix is to have a group of tracks routed to an aux track and being able to control the group of tracks with only the selected aux track. Of course we can also add effects to the aux track, and the effects will be applied to all the tracks linked to that aux track.

  
DAW: Apple Logic Pro 9, (I was planning to do the tutorial in Ableton Live 9, but is is quite simple to use groups in Live 9 and route it to an aux track, so I took the decision  to use a more complex DAW)

The video: Will guide though the process of naming the buses, assigning each track to the chosen bus, special attention should be taken in the process of assigning the three Electric Guitar tracks to one single  bus to create a submix

In closing. Submixing is a powerful technique that can help us to control many tracks at the time with the use of one single fader and also we can add effects to many tracks by using a submix.

I would have loved to have used drums for this tutorial but I don't have a hardware mixer yet. Hope you have enjoyed the video, thanks a lot for reviewing  this material, good bye for now and good luck with this week's lessons.

Note: If the video looks blurry, please  in the  youtube viewer click on the cog icon and set your resolution to 720 HD (or higher if you prefer )

Add a software instrument and record MIDI and quantize in your DAW

Introduction


The goal of this tutorial is to show you how to add a software instrument and record MIDI and quantize in your DAW. Including preparing the track(s), adding the instrument, setting the click and countoff, and recording efficiently.

For this assignment I have chosen to create a video, the following is the check list of software I am using:

DAW: Ableton Live 9  https://www.ableton.com/en/trial/
Midi Controller: Virtual Midi KeyBoard http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmpk/
Software Instrument: Syth1   http://synth1.com   http://www.geocities.jp/daichi1969/softsynth/

The video will guide you through the process of setting up the recording preferences, setting up a countoff, adding a software instrument, recording a clip using your computer keyboard as a virtual midi keyboard, adjusting bar length, setting up quantizing and  quantizing a clip, and as a bonus: adding a simple drum clip. 

In closing, Synth1 is a highly CPU/Memory efficient VST Software Instrument which virtually offers unlimited sound options for free, it has an incredible amount of patches and an unofficial manual that will easily guide through the process of creating your own sounds. It is available for Mac and PC.

I didn't have my MIDI Controller available at time of creating the video so my option was to use a Virtual Controller such as Virtual Midi KeyBoard instead, and it actually did a decent job.

Hope this small tutorial was useful. Thanks for taking time to review my post, good bye for now and good luck with this week's lessons.

Edit. I had to upload the video again to youtube, first one was low res, sorry about that. If the video looks blurry, please  in the  youtube viewer click on the cog icon and set your resolution to 720 HD

How To: Recording an Electric Guitar or Bass without an Amplifier

Introduction

So, the main goal of this tutorial is to give a short and clear answer to the question "How do I record my Electric Guitar without an Amp?"

There is a technique known as direct recording which, is few words, is connecting your guitar to the DAW using an audio interface.

So the main issue for me is that I don't yet have a USB mixer or an audio interface that I can use to record the sound of my guitar, but wait a minute I do have a Zoom G 2.1U which happens to have a usb port that I can hook up to my computer.

Ok, so let go ahead an describe the process to record my guitar sound.


The connections schema:

My setup goes like this: From the guitar It run a 1/4 inch TS cable to the Zoom G 2.1U which, as stated before, has a USB connector, from there I run a USB 2.0 cable to my Mac, form the audio out of the Mac i run a stereo cable  which goes to the 5.1 Speakers set.

One thing you have to notice is that I am not using a power source for the Zoom G 2.1U, that is because the USB power will be enough to get the Zoom pedal running, just make sure the power switch is set to off on the Zoom G 2.1U.

So far so good, but I can't still hear anything coming from my guitar, next step is use a DAW so that we can actually hear and record the sound coming from the guitar.

Listening  and Recording our sound.
When recording or playing guitar sound using direct connection I use GarageBand, which is simple and flexible enough for what I intend to do.

First we mus tell GarageBand which is going to be our sound source, so:

Open preferences window: GarageBand  ->Preferences 
Audio/MIDI: Select desired input from drop-down menu, which in our case will be the Zoom G 2.1U
So, that's it for sound input.

For sound output, I do the following:
Open preferences window: GarageBand  ->Preferences 
Audio/MIDI: Select desired audio output from drop-down menu, in our case that'll be System Setting 

Once it is done we need to add a track in GarageBand. This track is going to be were we record the sound coming from the guitar.

Once we add a track we must choose the type of instrument the track is going to hold. In this case we can choose Electric Guitar, GarageBand will add some nice effects and an amp simulator to our track so that we have a start point.

Also we must notice that at left we have a drop down which prompt us "My instrument is connected with" we must make sure is says USB or we will not be able to get any sound coming from the guitar.

On the right side we have another drop down which prompts us what is going to be the output for the sound, System Setting will do the trick.

We can also choose on the bottom left if we want the sound we hear and record in mono or in stereo.

Finally and very important is the I want to hear my instrument as I play and record check box, which must be selected so that we can hear the sound of our instrument in the speakers system attached to the Mac

Then we click on Create and Voilà, we are ready to record our guitar sound without using an amplifier.

In closing, I must let you know that I use this method to record my guitar sound with a backtrack (usually Bass Guitar, recorded in the same way and a midi track with the drums), as you  can see in the image above, which so far has worked just fine for me. 

Also in the guitar track you can tweak your sound using the plugins provided in GarageBand or you even use an Amp  modeler software such as Amplitube, in that way you can try some of the most incredible Guitar Amps and stomp boxes.

Hope this small tutorial was useful. Good bye for now and good luck with this week's lessons.