Saturday, July 5, 2014

cool.

i'm going to ask an obscure favour, and actually throw it right out there for general request. i'm used to writing drum patterns in general midi over track ten using a staff and actual music notation. the reason i like to do it that way is that it provides absolute freedom in terms of time signatures, note lengths, etc. i mean, i may want to drum from 5 to 7 to 13 to 17 and back around to 8 in the space of a few bars, and have 64th note crashes (which may not be possible in reality, but reality isn't important when you're programming drums). vst drum machines generally just cannot provide that kind of flexibility, because they carry the interface forward. i get why they do it - it's what everybody wants - but it would be immensely useful if they'd take on track 10 compatibility so they can read a "regular" midi file, instead of forcing users to reduce themselves to their limitations and quarter note, bar-based interfaces.

that leaves me stuck more or less with using a soundcard emulator (like bandstand) for drums, which gets the job done but kind of takes me out of the drum machine universe, as well.

could you program this thing to read a standard midi file?

why are all the linn demos on youtube trying to make it sound like an 808? these were high end machines, put to good use mostly in art rock by the likes of peter gabriel and laurie anderson, not low end club devices that djs could afford.


uploading the time machine (vst mix) to youtube

i've created a video for the vst mix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtpW0Ve6t8A



original video taken from here without requesting permission:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNc-OzFhDnw

uploading the time machine (vst mix) to thru (final mix)

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 28, 2014 and updated on july 5, 2014 to fix a minor error in transcription.

the time machine (vst mix) (final mix)

this is the vst mix, which hooks up the constructed score to a series of vst instruments through the magic of midi sequencing and outputs the notes through various effects processors to create something approaching the sound of a live band.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 28, 2014 and updated on july 5, 2014 to fix a minor error in transcription.

well, silly me. it seemed to be a latency issue, but this is weird and maybe something to take note of if you do these things.

with a bit more experimenting, it didn't seem to be any specific plugin. if i unfroze 2 or 3 of about ten running simultaneously, it would run fine. so, i'm back to cpu or ram. except that doesn't make sense because one freezes to open up cpu and ram.

i noticed that some of the frozen tracks were frozen at different latencies. the drums were frozen at 256, but i had to increase the latency in the process of finishing the thing, so i froze the bass at 736.
what i did to fix it was to go back and make sure everything was frozen at 256. then, when i played back at 736 it was smooth.

i'm not sure how that makes sense. maybe what was happening was that i was getting some kind of wave interference on the playback, due to the sample rate.

whatever it was, it's working now and i hope to get some work done today.

what i mean is that the files may have been out of phase, and what seemed like a stutter was actually a cancellation.

just a guess...