Unit 49 Brief 2- sequencing a pop song

What is a DAW? - DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation; electronic device or computer software application for recording, editing and producing audio files such as songs, musical pieces, human speech or sound effects.

Examples of DAW’s are: Apple Garage Band,

                                          ProSonus Studio One

                                          Apple Logic Pro

                                          Cubase

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                                          FL Studio

To sequence a song on Cubase I used Cubase 6 on an Apple Mac OSX (10.7.5). to set this up I had to load Cubase with a new project and then added the tracks I needed .

How to create Tracks:

·      Open ‘Project’ on the toolbar at the top then click ‘Add Track’

·      Then select ‘instrument’

·      Then select how many track you need

·      Finally choose the synth you want.

How to assign Synths to tracks 

• A task bar will pop up and when it does click the no VST... then select 'HALion Sonic SE' select the amount of tracks wanted
• Then select the pencil tool to draw the box that the bars go in to produce the sound
• hover over the blank task bar on the left hand side and then it will pop up with a screen which says 'results' then type in 'synth' and select a string instrument or which instrument fits best

MIDI:
MIDI is not a musical file and does not contain any actual sounds, it is nothing more than a set of instructions for the computer, it contains a list of events or messages that tell an electronic device how to generate a sound, whether that be a musical instrument, computer sound card of mobile phone.

Midi specifications
MIDI uses a Binary format of 1's and 0's and is made of 3 bytes. there are 2 types of MIDI message bytes, the Status Byte which always begin with 1 and Data Bytes which always begin with 0. this leaves only 7 bits per byte to represent the message which is 128 possible values. MIDI messages begin with a status byte, where 3 bits are used to denote the type of message and 4 bits to denote the channel number to which the message applies.

MIDI Connections
MIDI connections include a MIDI output from a MIDI controller for example a MIDI keyboard which connects via usb to a computer or Mac, There is also a MIDI in which inputs sounds for the keyboard to play. There is also a MIDI thru which enables you to connect numerous Keyboards together through a 'Daisy chain'

MIDI Manager
This is similar to the Key editor but it shows everything that happens in order of when it happens and what the file is telling the computer to do.

 MIDI Channels
MIDI channel numbers (n) are referred as 1 to 16, while in reality they are represented by binary values 0 to 15 (0-F). For example the status byte of a note off message for channel 7 is "86".

MIDI Controller info
A MIDI controller is anything which can control the MIDI and example is a Keyboard or even a mouse.

MIDI Files
The files are stored as .mid and have a very small file size, they are able to be opened, edited and also played back by most media players. They are usually used for the Karaoke industry, old video games and also old mobile phones.

How to use Groove agent and Media Bay to create a drum track:

• A task bar will pop up and click the no VST... then select 'HALion Sonic SE' select the amount of tracks wanted
• Then select the pencil tool to draw the box that the bars go in to produce the sound
• Select drum in media bay
• Then open the groove agent on the left hand side in the different groups
• Then open media bay and select the variety of drum kit needed.
• then drag the selected drum into the groove agent group 1

When using groove agent it can be used in conjunction with MediaBay to input the drum samples required. To open MediaBay go to the 'Media' file at the top of the page then go down to 'MediaBay'.

Samplers:

A sampler is an electronic or digital musical instrument which is similar to the synthesiser, but instead of generating sounds manually they can create sounds with filters and oscillators it uses sound recordings of real instruments. The samples are loaded or recorded by the user or by a manufacturer. These sounds are then played back by means of the sampler program itself, a MIDI keyboard, sequencer or another triggering device. there are types of samplers and example is a hardware sampler.

Often samplers offer filters, effects units, modulation via low frequency oscillation which the sounds can be modified in many different ways. 

Software Synthesis:

Envelope and ADSR

• The envelop changes the velocity of the sound over a set time during the piece.
• A- Attack
• The fast attack is how quickly the sound reaches the highest velocity
• The slow attack is a slower version of the fast attack, but it takes longer to reach the right velocity. 
• D- Decay
• How quickly the sound drops to the sustain level
• S- Sustain
• The constant volume after the sound is released after the decay
• R- Release
• How quickly the sound fades when a note ends.

Low Frequency Oscillator

• The low frequency oscillator changes the volume from lows to highs and highs to lows.

Filter EQ

• The Filter is a form of EQ which boosts the high and low frequencies.
• Equalisers manage the high/low frequency of audio/sounds, they do this by changing the wavelength which changes the pitch, humans can hear up to 20kHz but nothing below 20Hz. They boost the different frequency’s to get an overall sound. On the mixing desk there is a series of green dials, these are the dials to use to change the frequency from low to high, or high to low, when you turn all to low the it stops frequency we call this the low pass filter.

Oscillator

• A1/A2 which generates a wave form for different sounds
• Sine Waves- which creates muffled sound which can sometimes be heard as a fluffy sound.
• Square waves- which produce a digital sound.
• Triangle Waves- which sits in the middle of Sine and Square waves
• Saw tooth- which produces a harsh and powerful sound.

Clean Bandit- Rather Be