#tutorial 7

The following is a mini pitch deck for an app idea. Furthermore, steps 2-4 and 7 are from the MindSea blog.

tutorial 7 || blender guru

Driving Technological Change in the Home ('push factors').

Speed, efficiency and practicality are major factors that are driving technological change and advancement in the home. A means of doing an everyday task faster, cheaper and easier is highly sought after, and has been for centuries. Household appliances such as lights, heaters, air conditioners, ceiling fans, ovens, stoves, fridges, microwaves and more are all examples of human ingenuity meeting primal needs of staying warm/cool and eating.

The house itself provides the shelter, and its contents the comfort. Everything we have in our home is used to make everyday life easier, better, or both. We could potentially find places to eat, sleep, wash our clothes, shower, or watch TV outside of our home but we have these resources in our homes because it is easier, faster and more practical to do so. Technological advancement over the last century in particular has seen a rapid rise in the development of household appliances, and may well continue to do so. The question for the future is whether such advancement will be purely for leisure or pleasure rather than efficiency, or whether we have still yet to peak in our ability to make everyday tasks easier.

Desires Built into Technology in the Home ('pull factors').

Household appliances are both made for efficiency, and marketed as efficient. The 'ready-made' home, as seen more and more today with start-up housing estates and suburbs sprouting out of our major cities, is a model of modern efficient living: the brand-new appliances, furniture, even the positioning and outline of the rooms are all designed to attract the efficient buyer and liver.

While perhaps not in itself 'technology' as such, the way modern houses are structured is adding to the attraction of the efficient lifestyle. The right amount of rooms, where they are positioned, how far the kitchen is from the dining room, whether the bedrooms have ensuites etc are all important factors in building and buying a new home today.

In the second part of the tutorial i looked at time-stretching. I had a MIDI bass line that, having used the 'quantize length' feature in the advanced quantize setup, would now stay in time whatever tempo i changed it to. However, the drum loop i was using was not MIDI and therefore could not be quantized in the same way and when i played back at a slower tempo, it didnt loop correctly:

Drum loop before time stretching

Even after i had time stretched the loop, it still wasnt quite looping as i wanted so i needed to make some adjustments. Having selected 'Make Groove', I set the quantize to 'Audio 1'and applied it the 3rd, 7th and 8th bass notes as these were the notes that corresponded with the snare drum. Having done this, the bass notes and the snare hits are matching in timing at any tempo:

During this tutorial i was able to learn about quantization in greater detail than before by experimenting with the many different quatization settings in Cubase. I started by loading the project and routing each midi part to the appropriate synths. i then brought up the sequencer for the bass part and noticed that many of the notes werent on the beat. by selecting 'MIDI' from the menu, then quantize settings i was able to change the parameters in order to find the right setting for me. First i tried straight 1/8 quantization: 

This cleared up the messiness of the original notes but it now felt a bit too robotic as every note was precisely on the beat. I wanted it to have a looser feel so i changed the swing settings to give it more of a groove, as you can see below:

A similar effect can also be obtained by altering the 'Non-Quantize' and 'Random Quantize' settings to achieve a looser sound. For the audio example below, i raised the random quantize up to 10 ticks. i applied these settings to all the bass and drum parts and the overall effect was to bring all the parts together so they were in time with the beat but still kept a looser, more human feel.

Creating hit points

in order to create hit points, firstly double click on the audio file to bring up the sample editor. then on the left is an option "edit hitpoints" this then will measure the transients of the wave and add a marker.

Another useful feature is the option "Make Groove" this will create an option in the quantize drop down box enabling the midi notes to quantize with the transients of the audio. this helps to keep the music tight but still keep a human feel.