Expression is the soul of music. In this episode of Digital Media Insider, we listen to the techniques players use to coax emotion out of electronic instruments and software. (DMI 02-12-2007: 14 minutes 0 seconds)
Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Digital Media Insider podcast or add our O'Reilly Network podcast feed to your podcasting application and get the files automatically.After experimenting with a headset mic last episode, I returned to the Rode Podcaster, which sounds vastly better. I recorded my voiceover into BIAS Peak as a 16-bit, 44.1kHz, mono AIFF file. Next, I used Peak's editing tools to clean up the false starts and lip noises.
Most of the music examples started as MP3s from the artists or our articles, although I captured two examples using Ambrosia Software's WireTap utility. WireTap is a streamripper; it records any sound playing on your computer. I used it to extract the soundtrack from one of Stephen Kay's KARMA videos as well as a sound bite from an interview I had recorded with him in MP2 format. (I used my AppleScript transcriber trick to zoom in on the sound bite I wanted.) I imported all the examples into Peak, tightened them up with cuts and fades, and then normalized their levels.
Stephen Kay demonstrates the KARMA manual advance feature, which triggers new notes based on the keys you hold with your left hand and the rhythm you play with your right.
Next, I imported everything into Ableton Live, where I arranged the music examples around my voiceover and theme music. I compressed and enhanced the voiceover with Izotope Ozone. Finally, I rendered the mix to an AIFF file, converted it to an MP3 in Peak, and then used iTunes to clean up the ID3 tags and add artwork.
The theme music came together in Live as well. I made the opening sound effect by splicing a compressed mouth noise onto a tone cluster I generated in Native Instruments Reaktor. The main groove is from Steinberg Xphraze. (Jim Aikin turned me on to both virtual instruments in his article "My Five Favorite Soft Synths.") The piano is from the Garritan Personal Orchestra, which I discovered when we interviewed Gary Garritan. Then there are a few percussion samples dredged from my hard drive. Altogether, the theme took just six tracks. Effects processing was courtesy of Live's default plugins and Freeverb.
The Morrison Digital Trumpet makes no sound itself; it's a MIDI controller with numerous input sensors. See it in action here.
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Some of the products and people mentioned in the podcast:
David Battino is the audio editor for O’Reilly’s Digital Media site, the co-author of The Art of Digital Music, and on the steering committee for the Interactive Audio Special Interest Group (IASIG). He also writes, publishes, and performs Japanese kamishibai storycards.
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