sequencing a pop song

Unit 49 brief 2: sequencing a pop song

How to set up a new project and to create tracks

1.   First, you need to load up Cubase 6

2.   When loading Cubase, it should give you a certain file that you can load such as guitar or keyboard. You will need to press create at the bottom and it should just give you a blank project

3.   After all of that you will need to start creating your tracks

4.   First you will need to click on project at the top and it should come up with this.

5.   You will need to click add track

6.   Then you will need to click on instrument

7.   Next, you will need to click onto synth and find HALion sonic SE

8.   And to add an instrument, you will need to find a black box that should say project

9.   Next is to find the instrument that you would want and then select it

10.                And you should have a screen that looks like this

How to assign synths to tracks

1.   Click on project at the top of the screen

2.   Find add track

3.   Find add instrument

4.   Next is to click on synth for the HALion sonic SE and for a synthesiser you will need to click on sylenth

5.   For the synthesisers, you would need to find an icon on the left hand side that looks like this

6.   And you should get something really confusing that should look like this.

7.   Most of the stuff that is on there you won’t be using. The only thing that you will be using is the keyboard and the effects like the reverb and EQ.

8.   Again you will need to click on the black box that should say project on the left hand side of your instruments.

9.   Then, test each sound and make a decision on which one you want to go with your track.

How to input midi data (notes)

1.   First you draw out a bar for one of your instruments

2.   To do that you will need to go the top and find a bar that looks like this

3.   You will need to click on the pencil tool and start to draw out your bars next to your instruments

4.   After drawing out your bar, it should look like this

5.   Then you double click on the bar and you should see this pop up (but first you would need to change from pencil to mouse)

6.   You select the pencil tool again and start to draw out your notes. The keyboard on the left hand side should help you with knowing what the notes are.

7.   When you draw out the notes and their lengths, it should look a little like this

8.   And to get out of this, you just need to minimize or close the screen and it should go back to the original screen and you can see your notes

9.   Next is to play your track. You should be able to find a play button at either the top of your screen or the bottom of the screen.

10.       If there are any notes that don’t sound right then use the mouse tool and double click on the bar and make the changes.

11.       In the end, you should have almost all of your notes for your song and should look a little like this.

·      MIDI specifications

·      MIDI connections

There are 2 different versions of MIDI connections: daisy chain distribution and in and out.

The daisy chain allows a person to link their

computer to different MIDI’s. For example if a teacher wanted to hear a student play piano then they would connect their computer with the students keyboard so they can hear the student play.

The in and out sends the sound from the MIDI keyboard to the computer and this is called out. Then the USB sends it back to MIDI keyboard so the sound can be played back, this is called in.

·      MIDI manager

In Cubase this is called list editor. What this does is show you a more complex version than to what you normally see on Cubase when you double click on a bar for one of your instruments so you can get a closer look at what’s being played.

Where it says note, that’s the status byte. Where it says data 1, that’s where the note name is. And data 2 shows the volume of the note.

·      MIDI channels

MIDI can only have up to 16 channels/tracks. The channel numbers are referred as 1-16 when in the reality it is represented by its binary values, which are 0-15.

·      MIDI controller information

The MIDI controller information is just the keyboards (M-audio) that we have in the classroom.

·      MIDI files

A MIDI file is just a set of instructions that are put into the computer. This contains a list of events or messages that can tell a certain electronic device to generate a certain sound. These files are very small, about 33 Kilobytes small. They are well known for karaoke tracks, however they also used to be used for very old games and phones.

How to use Groove agent and media bay to create drum tracks and samples

1.   Just like loading up your instrument when clicking on project, however instead of looking for the synthesisers, you find one that says drum – groove agent ONE.

2.   If you click on the mini piano like symbol on the left hand side, you should get something like come up

3.   Its best to stay on one of the numbers because that’s where all of you drum notes are going be

4.   Next is to load up something called media bay

5.   There are 2 ways to load up media bay

a.   You can press F5

b.   You can go into media, then media bay

6.   Then you should have something like this come up

7.   Then you would have to type in the instrument or in this case, a part of the drum kit that you need. To do this you would need to click on the red bar and type in the type of instrument that you want

8.   Hear the sounds and once you have found the one that you want, drag it to one of the panels to where you think is suitable to have it.

9.   So now the instruments are now on certain keys on the keyboard so when it comes to putting in the notes, it should put in the drum parts in. and in the end it should look something like this

What is a DAW?

DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation. And all it is, is what we are using to create our soundtrack on. Cubase, for example is a DAW.

Platforms and operating systems

The platform and operating system that we used were the Apple Macs to do al of our work and sequencing which has Cubase on it.

How Cubase is used to sequence songs

We used a piece of software called Cubase to sequence the song that we have been given to do. What we do is add instrument tracks and select instruments that we would want to put into our sequence. We draw out our bars and start to add notes and the length of the notes into these bars and we play them back to make sure that they sound right and if we need to change the length or the sound of the note then we can do that. We can also add synthesisers and drums to this sequence with something called Media Bay, which is where you can get a select of instruments and place it onto this panel that we use for the drums.(Media Bay)

To get these up we have to click on this piano like button on the left hand side of our screen.

Software Synthesis

·      Oscillator

With this we can change frequency wave in order to change the sound of our synthesiser. There are 4 types of waves: Sine, Square, Triangle and Saw tooth.

 Sine

Square

Saw Tooth

·      EnvelopeTriangle

With this we can change the length of certain notes. The Attack increases or decreases the length of the starting note. The Decay goes in-between the Attack and Sustain and it changes the volume. The Sustain increases the note length that’s in-between the Attack and the Release. And finally, the Release is the same as the Attack however it only affects the ending note.

·      Filter

The filter affects the EQ. you can make the EQ High or Low.

·      Low Frequency Oscillator

This helps to vary the velocity in sound waves from high to low at a certain rate, very similar to what you hear in dubstep.

·      Mixer

What the Mixer does is change the volume. If the light flashes red then its too loud and then you would have to turn it down.

·      How Sylenth is used in my work

I have used the Sylenth to create the main tune in the song and I have used the Oscillator and the Mixer to make the sound the same or at least similar to the original track. However you need to make sure that these boxes are un-ticked because they are extra effects.

Groove Agent

·      What is a sample

A sample is a small snippet of a short sound file. Samples are used a lot in songs now days. The samples are mostly from old songs because they are easy to sample and remix.

·      How to assign samples

We assign these samples from a piece of software called ‘Media Bay’. Media bay is a sound bank, and to find your wanted samples all you have to search it in media bay and find the sample that you are looking for next is to drag your wanted sample to Groove Agent and its should come up on a little panel. So when you start to add your notes onto Cubase, you should hear the sample play as you are putting in your notes.

Media bay

 Groove Agent

·      Groups

You have a set of groups that set is on a certain place when you are adding your notes. With this you can add multiple samples.

·      How Groove Agent is used in my work

I’ve used Groove Agent to add my drum parts in, such as my hi-hat and kick drum.

Hardware keyboard samplers

The hardware keyboard sampler that we’ve got is the Keyboard that’s attached to the computer, so when we press a key on the keyboard we would be able to hear it through the headphones and computer (if the headphones aren’t plugged in).

Fading out

I have managed to get some of the instrument to fade out at the end of the song. This gives it a good effect when the song finishes. To do this I have to:

1.   Click on the small arrow on the left hand side for where the instruments are.

2.   This will bring down a few icons, however I’m only going to be using one of them, which is the R button. When I click on it will flash green and bring a line underneath the instrument.

3.   To start to change the volume of the instrument I can turn off the R and move the line up or down (high or low). However, since I’ve got the R on, I click on a certain part and I should get a dot that should look like this.

4.   Then I click next to it to get another dot and with this I can change the volume to loud or quiet while the first dot stays where it is.

5.   Since this diagonal is going down, it means that the volume is doing to gradually decrease giving the instrument that fade out effect.

Sound Cloud link: https://soundcloud.com/user-308391730/rather-be-kareoke-1