Semester 2 Music Production

Another way to approach creating a beat from my recorded sounds was to load them into a drum sequencer and use MIDI to trigger them.

For this I used the 'Drag & Drop Samples Kit' patch of Ultrabeat in Logic.

This is really easy to use, simply drop your samples into Ultrabeat onto the separate channels and then use the pattern editor to play them

You can also used Ultrabeat pre-programmed MIDI patterns and apply them to your sounds.  

This is really good and much easier than arranging a beat on the timeline, although Ultrabeat is quite limited in its ability to map MIDI.  

I used Logic in this experiment as I much prefer it to Audition and Cubase.

I expirmented with effects on audio tracks using the automation lanes and also bus's.  

First I used a bus to apply reverb to a number of audio tracks, this is helpful if you want to apply the same effect to many tracks as you only need one plug-in running and also you can mix the desired amount of effect on each track giving you lots of control.

In this tutorial i used Audition to search though a piece of music and look for a loop to make a 'bed' for radio.

I tried all 3 methods for finding the beat in the piece of music.  I found method 2 of tapping along to the beats using F8 the most accurate.  Method 1 was far too time consuming and Method 3 was inaccurate on several types of music.

Adjusting the loop properties allowed me to play around with the timing of my loop and adjust it according to the tempo of the project.

In this tutorial we used Audition to generate sound reminiscent of wind, spaceships etc.

I generated some pink noise in Audition and then used the ADSR function to make it sound like wind blowing

After applying some reverb to the noise it sounded quite real.

I used Logic to sequence audio files.  I used sounds that I recorded earlier in the module.

Already being an experienced Logic user I found this exercise straight forward.  I used this tutorial as a base for the final project, arranging the found sounds into a beat.

I also created loops from the sounds using the 'Bounce Regions in Place' function and then sending the sounds to a different track.  After making the loop the length of a bar using snap, i could then loop the file.

In this tutorial we used Cubase to create a MIDI drum track.

After selecting the appropriate VST instrument I used the Drum Editor window to draw in sections of the beat.  I prefer this method to playing the beat on a keyboard after all, a keyboard is NOT a drum kit, and even with the quantise function at full capacity i believe its much better to draw in the hits.

The task was to edit a video segment, provide it with music and clean up the existing audio.

I used the automation lanes to create the fades for the music tracks

In this tutorial we used the Tascam recorders and a shot-gun mic to record some percussive sounds around the campus.

I found the import process very confusing in the tutorial.  It told us to record the signal through the desk into Audition live, while this might have been a good practical thing to learn, this task was easily done by dragging the files from the device straight to the bin in Audition.

We then used Adobe Audition to process the files, I used the normalize function to make the audio even sounding.

Next using the find phrase, auto-mark and batch process to collect and catalogue all the sounds.

Using the sounds collected in the last tutorial, I arranged these sounds on the timeline in Audition to make a drum beat.

I have had previous experience of this and so was able to progress through this tutorial quickly.  

In this tutorial we used Adobe Audition to create an audio track for a video clip.  The sounds were provided, as was a brief on were they should be placed.

The most challenging aspect of this task was making sure the idents and speech were in sync with the video.