Electronic Musician: Superior Drummer Review

Here's a link to my Electronic Musician review of Superior Drummer, which is one of the most comprehensive sampled drum packages on the market. Prior to receiving the product, I witnessed an interesting demonstration at BiCoastal Music in Ossining, NY, with Nir—who manned the kit when the samples were created—triggering the samples with an electronic kit.

Comment: D-AAAAAW...that's cute!

Okay, I acknowledge the lameness of that headline, but "What exactly is a DAW in 2009?" seemed a little academic to me.

So getting to my point: it seems like just about every piece of software other than instruments and effects (and even some of those!) performs at least part of the traditional role of the Digital Audio Workstation. You could produce a pop song with GarageBand -- or Melodyne, for that matter. Live has become an incredibly powerful tool for both loop and linear production. SONY ACID -- the original program to offer the kind of time-and-pitch manipulation that brought loop construction to the masses -- is also basically a standard music production tool these days. Only Reason, which still does not offer audio recording, has stuck to its roots as a specialist, albeit an incredibly flexible one.

At the same time, traditional DAWs have become so "creatively enhanced" that their main reason for existing -- multitrack recording and mixing -- is now only one part of what they do. I mean, look at Pro Tools 8: MIDI, notation, loops... it's virtually a virtual playground. Cubase, Logic Studio, Digital Performer, and SONAR have long been blurring the line between "creation" and production, adding vast sound libraries and virtual instruments to their respective feature sets.

This overlap is mostly a good thing, because it means that we can use the software of our choice without sacrificing what have become essential features. On the other hand, this trip to the feature candy store has been known to cause a stomach ache or two, if agita can be linked to the feeling that you're going to spend the rest of your life updating and learning new features. The truth is, the new features are useful -- and most producers can probably name several that they'd wished existed back in the day. But it's also important to remember that almost everything we're listening to today, from the classic hits with that vintage sound so many of us are chasing to the latest electronica, was created using tools that are obsolete. I'm not talking analog; I mean if it was recorded with Live 7 or Pro Tools 7, it was done with yesterday's code. Something to keep in mind as we upgrade.

The bottom line is that with so much power so universally available, those of us who feel comfortable in one platform can stay there. Sure, there may be things about Logic that may fit you better than Cubase or Pro Tools, etc., but in terms of being competitive in the marketplace, there's little difference, and most what difference there is can be addressed by third-party add ons. If you're new to the arena, it's a little more complicated. You have so many choices that it can seem overwhelming, and you won't really know what works best for you unless you spend significant time with the software. Fortunately, with so many strong contenders out there, it's basically impossible to go wrong: in 2009, every DAW has its day.

Review: Euphonix MC Control

I admit that I have a bit of a love hate relationship with control surfaces. The love part is usually directed at the faders and transport controls, which require almost no brain power to master and which ALWAYS make life easier. The "not love" (hate is such an ugly word) comes when I start using knobs, the functions of which change more often than Lindsay Lohan's hair color. Half the time, I never know what the hell they're supposed to be doing, and so I end up using the mouse instead.

Enter the Euphonix MC Control; instead of using a small display with cryptic information about every knob, it has a touch screen that actually spells out words. I gave it a brief spin with Logic Pro, and got the hang of things pretty easily. In addition to making common tasks like mixing and transport easier, the soft buttons let you access functions that would normally take some serious menu wading—and also simplifies some tasks that have always been annoying in Logic. For example, you can see all the available tools and choose one with a button push, instead of having to use the mouse/escape key combination. Even better, you can modify the behavior of the shuttle wheel to do things like move—or adjust the length of—the auto punch area, something that is always a bit of a pain using a mouse. Operations that require a custom key-command setting are also available via a clearly-labeled button. One of my favorites is "pick up clock," which moves the selected material to the current playhead location, sort of a poor-man's spot function that's buried in Logic's Key commands; with MC control, it's right there in front of your face.

I'm still learning my way around; I've figured out how to open menus, but have not discovered how to "enter" or "cancel" a command. Maybe you need the mouse/keyboard for those. Or maybe I should open the instructions file. But that fact that i got this far without it is a great sign.

More to come, along with Cubase (version 5 is now supported), DP, and Pro Tools.

Introducing The Desktop Studio Blog

As I wrap up my revised edition of my book The Desktop Studio (Hal Leonard), it occurs to me that any book about using computers—especially one where the computers and software will be used in aid of creating art—is by its very nature obsolete to some degree.

That's not to say it's not valuable. As I worked on the revision, so many of the things I wrote about in 2002 remain valid. Macs were already on OS X; FireWire and USB were becoming common for mass storage, MIDI, and audio interfaces; Ableton's Live had been released, while Sony's ACID had changed the way we worked with audio files. We still record AIFF and Wav files, use MP3s to share audio on the Internet, use MIDI to trigger sounds, and still feel the pinch when our computers have too little RAM or too slow a processor.

But much has also changed. As I went through the book, I did a lot of deleting—and usually, the word I was striking was "can't." Music software has become so powerful that many things that were once very difficult to do are now easy, given the right set of tools. Want to quantize an audio file? You can do that with a number of programs, but perhaps Ableton's Live 8 takes it to an unprecedented level by letting you get inside a groove. Want to edit audio as you would MIDI? You can do that with Celemony's Melodyne. Pretty soon, that software will allow us to edit individual notes in a polyphonic performance. I've seen it in action and it's impressive.

My goal for this blog is to talk about these new developments as they happen, and continue the discussion started in The Desktop Studio. I'll call your attention to new products and draw on almost 20 years as a reviewer to make recommendations. I'll offer tips and tricks, and, hopefully, include your experiences in the discussion.