Tuesday, March 20, 2007
April Fool's Day Part 5
I'm extending my deadline for this song to this weekend. Probably Saturday. Work and stuff getting in the way.
Didn't do much today except replace the kick drum track that replaced a previous kick drum track. I didn't like the way it sounded, so I went back into Hydrogen and loaded the second drum set. There were two already loaded in the program and more available here. I'll download those others at some point, but the one I found did just fine.
I kept the Nyquist EQ settings, mostly, though I tweaked it a little.
When I solo a couple of the PSP Rhythm instrument tracks, I hear a slight click at the end. These on sounds that were reversed, so they fade in and then stop suddenly. In the mix they're not really noticeable I think, so I'll leave them alone for the most part, except near the begining.
Next...
Didn't do much today except replace the kick drum track that replaced a previous kick drum track. I didn't like the way it sounded, so I went back into Hydrogen and loaded the second drum set. There were two already loaded in the program and more available here. I'll download those others at some point, but the one I found did just fine.
I kept the Nyquist EQ settings, mostly, though I tweaked it a little.
When I solo a couple of the PSP Rhythm instrument tracks, I hear a slight click at the end. These on sounds that were reversed, so they fade in and then stop suddenly. In the mix they're not really noticeable I think, so I'll leave them alone for the most part, except near the begining.
Next...
Labels: April Fool's Day, Hydrogen, Sonar
Monday, March 19, 2007
April Fool's Day Part 4
The guitar editing from the other day left a wee bit of a gap on the right side of the stereo which I fixed by a little cutting and pasting. It was time I did something about that kick drum track (imported from PSP Rhythm) which had some mild pops and clicks in the background.
Sonar has something called Session Drummer, but I didn't feel like figuring out how it works right now, so I looked into something more familiar. First I tried Hammerhead, but didn't care for it's sounds, the deepest of which was almost as crackly as the one in PSP Rhythm. I remembered Hydrogen and thought I might've read that there was a Windows version. I was in luck, so I downloaded it, programed a quick loop, imitating the original track and exported it.
The Hydrogen Kick was a different sound, but I figured it would do just fine. Once in Sonar I Groove Clipped it and stretched it the length of the song and then EQ'd it with NyquistEq5. Then I went and cut all the spaces in the vocals, where I neither spoke nor sang (but cleared my throat once or twice) and then exported to mp3 so I can listen to it a million times on my PSP before making my next move...
Next...
Sonar has something called Session Drummer, but I didn't feel like figuring out how it works right now, so I looked into something more familiar. First I tried Hammerhead, but didn't care for it's sounds, the deepest of which was almost as crackly as the one in PSP Rhythm. I remembered Hydrogen and thought I might've read that there was a Windows version. I was in luck, so I downloaded it, programed a quick loop, imitating the original track and exported it.
The Hydrogen Kick was a different sound, but I figured it would do just fine. Once in Sonar I Groove Clipped it and stretched it the length of the song and then EQ'd it with NyquistEq5. Then I went and cut all the spaces in the vocals, where I neither spoke nor sang (but cleared my throat once or twice) and then exported to mp3 so I can listen to it a million times on my PSP before making my next move...
Next...
Labels: April Fool's Day, effects, Hydrogen, plug-ins, PSP Rhythm, Sonar
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Above It All part 3
Forgot to mention this yesterday, but the rhythm pattern created in Hydrogen was set in that program to 40 bpm, while the tempo in Ardour was set to 80. Ardour is in sync to Hydrogen, thanks to JACK, but the 80 bpm does not cancel out the 40 in Hydrogen. Hydrogen seems to automatically sync to JACK, so I haven't messed with anything there. Ardour was set to sync to JACK before I started recording. No biggie. Something else to look into, and so far I like the way it's worked out.
I spent a little time (an hour or so) trying to figure out why I couldn't split any tracks and found out that the edit cursor (blue) was different from the playback cursor (red). I also set the "snap to" properties to bar.
Before doing any more recording, I extended the bridge section by cutting and pasting the guitar and vocal tracks and then replced the ending chorus section with a previous guitar take.
Recorded three tracks of Bass with the Fender Jazz, with the third being the best of the bunch. I may still incorporate the earlier takes somehow.
Here's what I have so far.
Based on The World They Loved To Hate, written by Crystal Walters. Creative Commons license: Attribution-ShareAlike
next>>>
I spent a little time (an hour or so) trying to figure out why I couldn't split any tracks and found out that the edit cursor (blue) was different from the playback cursor (red). I also set the "snap to" properties to bar.
Before doing any more recording, I extended the bridge section by cutting and pasting the guitar and vocal tracks and then replced the ending chorus section with a previous guitar take.
Recorded three tracks of Bass with the Fender Jazz, with the third being the best of the bunch. I may still incorporate the earlier takes somehow.
Here's what I have so far.
Based on The World They Loved To Hate, written by Crystal Walters. Creative Commons license: Attribution-ShareAlike
next>>>
Labels: Above It All, Agnula, Ardour, covers, Crystal Walters, Hydrogen, Linux
Monday, January 16, 2006
Above It All part 2
I worked on this a little yesterday, but didn't post about it. I'd simply opened up Hydrogen and created a drum track using the HardElectro1 drumkit by ArtemioLabs. I also used LADSPA effects on a couple of instruments: Simple amplifier on Kick 2 & 3 & FX and TAP Flanger on FX.
Today I opened up Jack Control and set the sample rate to 88200 just because, however my soundcard may not support that as Ardour seems to indicate that I'm at 48 kHz. I'll look into that later. Hydrogen seems to stay at 44100 no matter what. Hmmm.
In Ardour I recorded a bunch of guitar takes, trying to get input levels right. Adjusted the levels via the Tascam 688 and then there was the issue of playing the song right. There were a couple of extra chords at the begining of verse two I wanted to cut out (easier than playing the whole song over again) which seemed tricky. Through right-clicking I tried to split the track, but no go for some reason. Instead I pressed the range button on the upper right hand side of the screen and was able to select the area I wanted to delete. Then I went and dragged the two pieces together. Not sure how accurate the placement was. Sounds okay, I think, as far as timing is concerned. This kinda thing would be much easier in Cakewalk. Also recorded a scratch vocal and then the Hydrogen output to a track so that I can mix it down and listen to it at my leisure.
I changed my mind about posting the in progress audio files. I'll continue to do that and then remove them from my server once the song is completed, and then post the miscelaneous tracks to archive.org.
So, here's Above It All, based on The World They Loved To Hate, written by Crystal Walters. Creative Commons license: Attribution-ShareAlike
next>>>
Today I opened up Jack Control and set the sample rate to 88200 just because, however my soundcard may not support that as Ardour seems to indicate that I'm at 48 kHz. I'll look into that later. Hydrogen seems to stay at 44100 no matter what. Hmmm.
In Ardour I recorded a bunch of guitar takes, trying to get input levels right. Adjusted the levels via the Tascam 688 and then there was the issue of playing the song right. There were a couple of extra chords at the begining of verse two I wanted to cut out (easier than playing the whole song over again) which seemed tricky. Through right-clicking I tried to split the track, but no go for some reason. Instead I pressed the range button on the upper right hand side of the screen and was able to select the area I wanted to delete. Then I went and dragged the two pieces together. Not sure how accurate the placement was. Sounds okay, I think, as far as timing is concerned. This kinda thing would be much easier in Cakewalk. Also recorded a scratch vocal and then the Hydrogen output to a track so that I can mix it down and listen to it at my leisure.
I changed my mind about posting the in progress audio files. I'll continue to do that and then remove them from my server once the song is completed, and then post the miscelaneous tracks to archive.org.
So, here's Above It All, based on The World They Loved To Hate, written by Crystal Walters. Creative Commons license: Attribution-ShareAlike
next>>>
Labels: Above It All, Agnula, Ardour, covers, Creative Commons, Crystal Walters, DAW, Hydrogen, Linux
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Ménage à trois with robots parts 8 and 9
A few weeks ago I changed the power supply on my computer and soon replaced the 8 gig harddrive I was using for Agnula with a new 80 gig one. Also because of my impatience, I installed the latest release candidate (RC2) of Agnula/DeMuDi rather than continue with the latest stable release. Not bright, but like I said, I was impatient. I'm having a few problems with it, that I hope will be solved shortly. I'll list those at some other time.
This song had caused me a number of issues the last time I messed around with it and I found I couldn't record more tracks. Also, a crapload of error messages would pop-up whenever I'd open up this file. Instead of solving the problem, I created a new session and imported the audio, taking note of where each track starts. Some do not start at the begining of the song.
I re-did some vocals on Sunday (the 22nd), after importing most of the audio. Wasn't sure I needed to, but I did anyway. I also created a new beat in Hydrogen, and unlike the first time was able to sync the two programs. I unmuted the keys from before. The result sounds like this.
Today, I recorded more guitar. The original guitar tracks stop abruptly at or near the third chorus for some reason (probably related to the old hard drive, or maybe the previous version of Ardour/Agnula). I wanted a track to play all the way through and also a track of some ad-libbed stuff near the end. This is where it is so far...
This song had caused me a number of issues the last time I messed around with it and I found I couldn't record more tracks. Also, a crapload of error messages would pop-up whenever I'd open up this file. Instead of solving the problem, I created a new session and imported the audio, taking note of where each track starts. Some do not start at the begining of the song.
I re-did some vocals on Sunday (the 22nd), after importing most of the audio. Wasn't sure I needed to, but I did anyway. I also created a new beat in Hydrogen, and unlike the first time was able to sync the two programs. I unmuted the keys from before. The result sounds like this.
Today, I recorded more guitar. The original guitar tracks stop abruptly at or near the third chorus for some reason (probably related to the old hard drive, or maybe the previous version of Ardour/Agnula). I wanted a track to play all the way through and also a track of some ad-libbed stuff near the end. This is where it is so far...
Labels: Agnula, Hydrogen, Ménage à trois with robots
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
untitled part three
Though I've figured out (I think) how to sync Ardour to Hydrogen and whatnot, I've already assembled 12 tracks of audio from the various drum instruments. This is probably less effective than syncing, but I'll wait til the next song to find out. I was supposed to do some more recording, which I did do (a couple of tracks of amSynth using the Deeck preset), but the first 90 minutes was spent arranging the various drum tracks into my usual song format; verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-etc. Next time I'll do all of that in Hydrogen. During that time I learned how to trim regions and duplicate them. If I understand correctly, each of the 16 bar audio snippets which occupy my tracks count as a region. Or something like that.
Eventually I'm gonna have to incorporate a midi program into this routine as I could probably use some quantizing. Or perhaps just learn to play better. However the the two takes (sort of a bassline) when played together and panned into separate left and right channels don't sound quite as bad as when I was recording them.
Eventually I'm gonna have to incorporate a midi program into this routine as I could probably use some quantizing. Or perhaps just learn to play better. However the the two takes (sort of a bassline) when played together and panned into separate left and right channels don't sound quite as bad as when I was recording them.
Labels: Ardour, Hydrogen, Ménage à trois with robots
Monday, February 28, 2005
untitled part two
Okay, I found the Jack transport option in Hydrogen. It's near the top of the screen and looks like a meter. So, I can get Hydrogen to play with Ardour, but while... Nevermind, I got it. If I press play in Jack, I'll hear sound play in Hydrogen, but while that line thing moves across the bars in Ardour no sound plays in the latter. But I see now that they are working together after pressing play in Ardour (sync source is set to Jack). Cool.
I recorded a track this morning with amSynth (played through a midi keyboard - the Roland U-20) without too much effort. The track itself sucks, but I may be able to salvage a couple of pieces of it. I'll do more recording tomorrow (actually later today) after work.
I had some crashing issues a little while ago. Don't know what I did exactly. I thought, at first, it might've had something to do with the Jack Transport in Hydrogen. I had that switched on, but I also had amSynth on. When I'd open Ardour, it would be fine until I opened the file I was working on. I'd get a shitload of error messages in a log window. Then when I tried to play anything Ardour would either freeze, shutdown, or log me out. I avoided the situation this time by not starting amSynth, yet and waiting till I opened Ardour to turn on the Jack Transport in Hydrgen.
I'll see if it happens again tomorrow and take a closer look. Just tried opening amSynth and it won't cooperate. The Jack window logs another x-run each time I try.
I recorded a track this morning with amSynth (played through a midi keyboard - the Roland U-20) without too much effort. The track itself sucks, but I may be able to salvage a couple of pieces of it. I'll do more recording tomorrow (actually later today) after work.
I had some crashing issues a little while ago. Don't know what I did exactly. I thought, at first, it might've had something to do with the Jack Transport in Hydrogen. I had that switched on, but I also had amSynth on. When I'd open Ardour, it would be fine until I opened the file I was working on. I'd get a shitload of error messages in a log window. Then when I tried to play anything Ardour would either freeze, shutdown, or log me out. I avoided the situation this time by not starting amSynth, yet and waiting till I opened Ardour to turn on the Jack Transport in Hydrgen.
I'll see if it happens again tomorrow and take a closer look. Just tried opening amSynth and it won't cooperate. The Jack window logs another x-run each time I try.
Labels: amSynth, Ardour, Hydrogen, Ménage à trois with robots
Saturday, February 26, 2005
untitled part one...
This song (untitled at the moment) started with a beat created in Hydrogen. Initially, I wanted to use this with Rosegarden, which is both a MIDI and audio sequencer which also imports Hydrogen song files. Things were going well with that (for a different song - Thinking Of You), until my attempt to record a third track of audio on top of two drum tracks (from Hydrogen), and two acoustic guitar tracks. Anytime I pressed record, the song would start in the middle of the song. I couldn't find a way around this, so I gave up on Rosegarden for the time being. The song was re-recorded in Sonar in Windows (needed to be done and e-mailed on Valentine's Day). I had some problems with Sonar, since I hadn't used it in while, but while not great, the job was done. I continued my Linux experiment with Ardour, which is an audio multi-track which doesn't do midi (I gather).
There's supposed to be a way to sync Ardour with Hydrogen using JACK, but I've not figured out how, even after reading this. I'm using Hydrogen 0.8.2 (instead of 0.8.1 mentioned in the link), I think, and the Jack transport slave option seems not to be available in audio preferences.
I'll figure it out eventually. What I did instead was something like what I used to do in Cakewalk/Sonar with the Hammerhead drum program in Windows; I'd program the beats first, then separate each instrument and export the patterns to wav files. Import the wavs (one for each instrument) into the Cakewalk tracks where they can be looped, edited and panned into some sort of arrangement. Here I did the same with Hydrogen, though some patterns contained more than one instrument. These were panned in advance of being converted to wav. The wavs were imported into Ardour's sound library and then placed into tracks 1-12. Those tracks with panned instruments were placed with right and left on separate tracks.
There's supposed to be a way to sync Ardour with Hydrogen using JACK, but I've not figured out how, even after reading this. I'm using Hydrogen 0.8.2 (instead of 0.8.1 mentioned in the link), I think, and the Jack transport slave option seems not to be available in audio preferences.
I'll figure it out eventually. What I did instead was something like what I used to do in Cakewalk/Sonar with the Hammerhead drum program in Windows; I'd program the beats first, then separate each instrument and export the patterns to wav files. Import the wavs (one for each instrument) into the Cakewalk tracks where they can be looped, edited and panned into some sort of arrangement. Here I did the same with Hydrogen, though some patterns contained more than one instrument. These were panned in advance of being converted to wav. The wavs were imported into Ardour's sound library and then placed into tracks 1-12. Those tracks with panned instruments were placed with right and left on separate tracks.
Labels: Ardour, Hydrogen, Ménage à trois with robots, Sonar
