I’m pleased to have now finished mastering Jason Hayward’s forthcoming release, Spinoza Gambit. This has been a fun and intense project over several months, during which I explored a genre quite unfamiliar to me, with Jason’s help and his compositions. This was a great collaboration. We’re both delighted with the results, and I can’t wait for the release.
Spinoza Gambit is ten tracks of electronic instrumental music in a number of tempos and sub-genres within the electronic realm. The process of developing the right patches, atmosphere, and groove has been an eye opener for me. And this is the first time I’ve mastered for mass production. This took way too long, but it was worth getting right, and I think that’s exactly what we’ve done.
You can hear the whole album at http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/bands/Spinoza-Gambit
When we do MIDI backing tracks for live shows, they can go through many incarnations as time progresses from first sketch to first performance. I thought I’d just give a brief example of how I receive the music, and even though this example isn’t finished (we’re still waiting on final arrangements before doing any more work on them), how they might end up.
I receive an audio file taken from a Korg keyboard, and also a MIDI file of the same. I can tempo lock these in my sequencer. In this case, I got the tracks the same day as we were recording a temp lead vocal guide, so this was also the track our vocalist sung to.
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There was just a little time before we were recording a small choir for backing vocals, and they worked from this one… a little more developed but still pretty rough.
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Still very much unfinished, but with more finesse in the arrangement/sequence, this is a lot closer to how I expect the final product to be delivered.
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LA Scoring Strings is a most fantastic string library, and recently it was updated to add a function called Auto Accompaniment. If this brings back memories of the old Casio or Bontempi keyboards, you’ll have to clear your mind. What auto accompaniment does here is split parts intelligently between the instruments playing. What that means is that you can write a string tune on a single MIDI track, and it will split your file between whatever instruments you choose to play it.
I thought I’d start with a string quartet (in actual fact, one violin, viola, cello and double bass). I also added a piano part too. So just remember that very little effort has been put into this string part – it was played live into Cubase on my keyboard.
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The Auto Accompaniment feature is tweakable and comes with many preset ensembles, so you can use it for intelligent auto-divisi between sustained parts, or fast articulations. A great time saver for LASS users.
Looking for an upright bass sample library recently, I came across Spectrasonic’s Trilian. I was totally blown away by the demo videos – not only of the upright bass, but of the electric, and most of all the synth basses. I placed a rush order with Long & McQuade. They said it could take up to 10 days to arrive, but they had it to me within 24 hours! Unbelievable!!! Well, just finishing the install now, will post a review in a while.
I’ve been umming and ahhing over buying a full sized (88key) keyboard for some time. The “meh” factor of this idea coming from the space it would take up, the cost of a good one, and the fact that I’m still really not a piano player. So, instead, I’ve ordered a Novation SL 61 MkII which is a five octave keyboard with aftertouch and lots of controllers.
This is intended to replace my CME UF5 which does not play with Windows 64 bit. Kind of a disappointment since it has the breath controller input that is lacking on virtually every other keyboard not made by Yamaha, and also because the key action suits me, but I think the Novation is going to be good, though none of the reviews I’ve seen actually mention the keyboard part! Possibly because the keyboard action is by Fatar who’s keyboard action is legendary.
For the benefit of the internet world looking for an unbiased, and full review, I’ll do one after I’ve used it for a while.
The keyboard is on order, but like everything, it’ll take a while to get here.
