move from Garageband to Linux : can it be done ? - Part 3

In this post we will split up the song into different parts, making it is easier to analyse.

1) Preparation
While i was preparing this post i was looking for a way to visualize the waveform and add some sort of indication or markers to identify the different parts in the song.
My first idea was to take a screenshot of the waveform and use Gimp to add a couple of lines and some text, similar to the way Soundcloud lets you to add comments to a song as you are listening to it.
I could actually use Soundcloud to do this -and it would simplify things for you guys-, but since it's not my own work this could potentially get me into trouble (yes i know that chances are very very small, but you never know)
Exit Soundcloud, back to to Gimp.

While i was preparing to go the Gimp way i started up Audacity, loaded the song, started playing around with markers and accidentally discovered the 'label track' option.
A 'label track' is a non-audio track that lets you add comments at a specific moment in time, and also allows you to define a time range and give it a name : brilliant !

The result :

2) divide and conquer
If you listen to the song a couple of times, you will hear that there is a nice buildup an you can roughly split up the song into 7 parts:

part	start	end
Intro	0	1'20"
Part 1	1'20"	2'17"
Part 2	2'17"	2'46"
Part 3	2'46"	3'15"
Break	3'15"	3'43"
Part 4	3'43"	4'39"
Outro	4'39"	5'31"

3) intro breakdown
In the image below i have added markers for all 'events' that occur in the intro:

4) intro drum loop
The arp is the first thing we hear in the intro, but since arps are tempo synced to the beat, i decided to start with the drums.
For the drums we have been using Hydrogen for quite a while so this should be fairly easy to do : select the drum samples that sound right (i usually end up picking samples from several drumkits and layer them on top of each other) and create the loop.

Note: One thing to keep in mind here is that we will be performing this song live so our drummer will either be playing along with the drumtrack, or he will play the complete drumtrack.  Most likely we will end up doing something in between.  Either way we need a drumtrack to start with, so here we go.

To determine the tempo of a song i usually enable Hydrogen's click, open the song in Audacity and then just play around with the tempo in Hydrogen until i get the tempo just right.
For this song i set the tempo to 133.5 BPM.

Note: for some songs the tempo isn't all that critical, but for other songs it can really make or break it (especially if you are using samples form the original song and you don't want to use too much time stretching) so it's always good to know the original tempo of a song.

The drum loop in the intro is your typical kick-hihat loop with a dry kick and an acoustic hihat.
As mentioned before i usually compose my own drumkit by selecting sounds from various drumkits, so for this loop i selected the TR-707 kick, the 'Snare reg 1c' and the 'HH 1 closed a' from the UltraAcousticKit.
The snare is used to add just a _little_ accent on the 2 and 4.

You can listen to the result here : https://soundcloud.com/thijsvanseveren/synrise-drumloop-intro



Next time we will have a closer look at the arp(s)

move from Garageband to Linux : can it be done ? - Part2

- read part 1 first -

Hi all,

To make it a bit easier to understand what exactly we are trying to accomplish i would like to tell you first what our current setup(s) looks like :

1) the setups
As you probably know we have been using Hydrogen live for a while now and that worked out quite well so far.  The Hydrogen setup consists out of a midi drum controller, an old laptop-in-a-box (LT1 on the drawing) and some extra wiring to be able to use the Left and Right output as 2 individual channels :

move from Garageband to Linux : can it be done ? - Part1

We (my cousin and I) are currently working on a rather interesting experiment : the goal is to move my cousins setup from Garageband (on OSX) to Linux.

First some background on the current setup(s) and where we want to end up:
Currently I'm running AmSynth + Calf Monosynth on my Ubuntu laptop and Stijn (my cousin) is running Garageband on his Macbook 13".  We both have a midi keyboard hooked up to our laptop and  use the built-in sound card.
An important detail : we are using these laptops live on stage so whatever we run it needs to be rock solid and easy to set up.

The idea to switch to Linux is not new, in fact I already dual-booted Stijn's Macbook some time ago, but it was more of an experiment because it wasn't clear what we really wanted to do with these laptops.  Since that time we started using the laptops for some songs we play with the band so now we have a better understanding of 'who-will-do-what' and also what sounds we need.

Being guitarist with 0 piano playing skills we use an _absolute_ maximum of 3 fingers to play the keyboard, so you can probably guess that we mainly use the laptops for a couple of monophonic electro/dance riffs and also some more old-school sounds like Hammond or piano as backing to create a richer sound.
Sounds pretty simple, but in fact that covers almost the complete spectrum of existing synth types : soundfont player, modular analog synth emulators, sound modeling synths ...

This should be interesting to see how/if we will move from Garageband to Linux.

To be continued ...

- read Part 2 here -

music made with linux

This is a listing of music that was (partially) made with linux and is really well recorded IMHO.
Wether you like the style of music is a totally different question of course :-)

Hope you enjoy it !

Jazzy-electro by Attack
http://sharpattack.bandcamp.com/

Electro-ambient by Pneuman (some nice Air influences)
http://pneuman.bandcamp.com/

Avant-garde rock by Platypuse Egg
http://platypusegg.bandcamp.com/album/little-street-of-happiness-2

Experimental-electro by Chordpunch
http://soundcloud.com/chordpunch

Crazy stuff by Sebkha-Chott
https://soundcloud.com/Sebkha-Chott

Metal by Pupkovem (drums are Hydrogen)
http://soundcloud.com/pupkovem/cutthroat_notalive_instrumenta


If you know of any other album/demo that was recorded using Linux be sure to let me know in the comments below!

Hydrogen drumkit creator script V5 is here !

YES I KNOW!
It should have been V3, but V3 and V4 sucked big time so i had to put them down ...
amen

Anyway :
here is V5 !

And what does it do that V2 couldn't do ?
It can take an existing drumkit as input and convert it to FLAC and OGG

Why ?
Because that is really cool + it reduces the size of the drumkit drastically.
An example: Gabriel's 'AC guitar strums' drumkit (the one that won the Hydrogen Drumkit contest) is 370MB in it's original form (using WAV samples), 135MB in FLAC format and only 7MB in OGG format !!
Of course the conversion to OGG does have an impact on the sound quality while the FLAC version maintains the same quality as the original.
What format you want to use is you choice, but 1 good reason to use OGG is to save space, both on disk and in RAM when the drumkit is loaded.

The 'Drumbody'

A couple of weeks ago I received Wolke's 'Drumbody' : a DIY midi controller that is -more or less- made especially for Hydrogen :

Denon CRB 90 Rhythm Box for Hydrogen

Hi all
I finally found some time to finish my 'Denon Rhythm Box' Hydrogen drumkit

A Denon Rhythm Box ?
That's right, a Denon Rhythm Box :

Check out this video if you want to see it in action (note that this box has been modded), and I even found a blog dedicated to this device !

As you probably have noticed : the capabilities of the box and the quality of the sounds are not all that fantastic compared to what other boxes can do, but keep in mind that this box dates from ... euh ... way back !

Btw: I actually don't own the Denon box I used to record the sounds from.  A friend just kinda left it at my parents home after one of our rehersals and 'forgot' about it, but now that I have the samples I can give it back to him (he'll be really happy ;-)