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by ericdano

DEVONThink

April 2, 2006 in Reviews

I tend to gather stuff while online. Pictures, articles, PDFs, this, that, the other thing. It’s really hard to keep track of stuff. Perhaps it was a website where you read this great article about taking care of your reeds. Or maybe it was that PDF of a solo you downloaded, but what was the file name again? Mac OS X’s Spotlight can only help so much in finding stuff. And on Windows…..you’ll have to wait for Vista for anything like Spotlight.

Fear not. There are a number of solutions for this information overload, and the one I picked was DEVONThink Pro. It’s a great program that can keep track of all the STUFF you gather. All the PDFs I’ve collected. Articles out of FluteTalk, or the Double Reed Society. Or out of Downbeat. I have something like 16 gigabytes in DEVONThink right now. PDFs of songs. I can organize them. Categorize them. Type in some good descriptions. Plus, if I want to find a Beach Boys song, but I don’t remember the title…..I can search on it….instantly.

I don’t really know of anything like this for Windows, but if you have a Mac, you should check it out.

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by ericdano

Garritan Personal Orchestra

June 22, 2005 in Reviews

I recently bought the Garritan Personal Orchestra as part of a group buy. If you haven’t heard this program, listen to the demos. Good stuff.

Anyhow, I’ve played with it a while, and I feel I can write a review now of it.

First off, you need a LOT of processing power. The requirements in the manual list this:

  • Mac OS 10.2.6 or higher G4 733Mhz
  • Windows Pentium 4/Athlon 2.8 Ghz or better.

Ok, so, knowing this, my 933Mhz G4 was NOT going to run this program. I already knew this from the get go. I prepared my Athlon 2.5 Gigahertz PC to run it (though it is under specs). Defragged the drives, added more memory, and got a M-Audio card. So, the system has 1 gig of ram, a fast 80 Gig hard drive, and Windows XP service Pack 2.

I decided to try a couple of things with it. I loaded up Kontakt player, and loaded up some patches. I chose a string section consisting of the “wet” versions of Violin 1, Violas, and Cellos on channels 1, 2 and 3. I then loaded up a Trombone Section patch, a French Horn patch, and a Trumpet patch. Not a lot of stuff I thought. I played back an arrangement I was working on.

Sound wise, these patches sound great. The strings are awesome. When I layer them with the Strings on my Roland XV2020 and SC8820, it sounds great. The trumpets sound a LOT better than either module’s trumpet patch. The french horns, layered with the other two modules, sound great, as do the trombones. I was in midi-heaven.

Then, I hit a section where, by my counting, I asked the Garritan program to do something I did not have enough processing power for. 3 notes sounding in the Trombones, 3 in the French Horns, 1 in the Trumpet, and 6 notes total in the strings (2 for each, in octaves). It pretty much brought the processor load to 100%, and effective killed the sound generation until I did a ALL MIDI NOTES OFF command.

What does this mean? It means that I need a faster PC to use this program effective. Pentium 4, 3.6Gigahertz or faster. Dual maybe. Dedicated to JUST sound. No virus crap, nada. Just Windows, and a blank, defragmented drive.

My only gripe is that if you use the Kontakt player as a STAND-ALONE, you can’t save all the instruments you loaded. Hopefully an update will fix this.

This program is great, but you need the power to use it. Horsepower. Don’t try it with a G4. G5 might work great, I don’t have one (yet ;-) ). But if you are looking to augment your setup. To take it to another level, get this. Go to Fry’s or something, throw together a FAST PC, get an M-Audio 4096 or something, and enjoy!

9.5 out of 10. .5 deducted for the stupid stand-alone Kontakt player

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by ericdano

Pro Tools M-Powered

May 17, 2005 in Articles

I came across this yesterday. You can now get Protools if you have M-Audio‘s line of interfaces. This is totally cool. 32 Audio tracks, and it ships with 30 plugins. Wow!Downside, it’s $350. Upside, cheapest M-Audio interface is about $99. Still, for the power of the software, this is a huge value. I’d still like to see Digidesign just offer the software for sale to use with any interface. There are so many excellent interfaces out there, including Mackie, MOTU, and Tascam. I think if Digidesign knocked the price of Protools LE down to $299 and have it work with any interface, they could have something going.

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by ericdano

Software Synths

April 4, 2005 in Articles

I’ve recently become fascinated with Software Synths. These use gigabytes of libraries to deliver incredible sounds to people using Midi. I’ve heard Tascam’s Gigastudio. Wow. The one that I’m totally into now is Native Instrument’s Battery. The drum sound are simply the best I’ve ever heard. It’s amazing what a good drum track will do for a song.

However, the downside is that it requires a LOT of CPU power to drive these programs. My 933Mhz Mac choaked running Battery with a great acoustic drum kit. So, I’m off to redo my Windoze PC to start running these Synths, mainly Battery. Here is a little demo of a Green Day song I was working on. Drums kinda crapped out for a sec about 3/4ths of the way through.

I believe that the sound module is pretty much a dying breed now. Software Synths with multi-gigabyte libraries are the way to go now. Anyone else feel the same? Care to share what your favorite programs are?

Update: 04/05 20:04 GMT by E :Forgot to mention some other ones that I use. I use HyperCanvas on my PC for generating Band in a Box backgrounds. I’m considering switching over to SuperQuartet as the sounds are awesome on that. The big advantage of using software synths with BinaB (Windows) is that you can generate soundfiles via DXi in seconds. That makes it easy to do some backgrounds for students or yourself and toss them on you iPod or on a CD.

I just heard and got to play with Gigasampler. Wow. Talk about stunning. Now if I could afford the $500 for the software, plus a top of the line Intel box with a ton of ram, and a multi-channel sound card, I could die a happy man.

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by ericdano

Transcribe!

February 8, 2005 in Reviews

I’ve recently been very busy transcribing/arranging songs. Mainly for this R&B group that I am part of, though I have been working on the “Incredits”, the end credits of the movie “The Incredibles”. The most valuable tool I’ve encountered to help in transcribing is Transcribe.

Transcribe is a Mac/PC program that will slow down recordings. Ok, there are a lot of other programs that do that as well. This program has a bevy of features that take transcribing to a whole new level.

Transcribe lets you use just about any type of audio file, except for ones with DRM (like iTunes purchases). You can drag audio files out of iTunes into Transcribe. Very cool. The program doesn’t support (yet, the author said maybe in the next version) remote files, like MP3s on a shared drive. I could not get Transcribe to open, via drag and drop from iTunes, a MP3 on a Samba share on a remote computer. Oh well. Soon hopefully.

Lets talk wave forms. Transcribe shows you the wave form of the tune you are working on. You can then zoom in, put beat or section or measure marks in. That right there is very hip. Then, you can highlight a part of the wave form, and Transcribe will do a “spectrum” analysis of what potential pitches are in there. I’ve found that HUGE in trying to figure out horn chords, and maybe revealing some notes that you can’t quite make out.

There is one thing I’d love to see Transcribe to, which would be beat detection. A lot of programs like Protools and Digital Performer have this feature now. That would be an invaluable addition.

In all, this little piece of software is awesome. It has joined my frequently used programs like Finale, and Digital Performer. 9.5 stars out of 10 (-.5 for not supporting Samba shared files).

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by ericdano

Super Quartet and Band in a Box 2004

July 5, 2004 in Reviews

I recently tried out HQ Super Quartet software synth for the PC. Wow. Incredible sounds. Piano, drums, guitar, bass. Dxi support, so, you can rip Band in a Box sounds right to Audio files. Only 4 instruments, so, If you use a style with 5 instruments, you’ll have to set another virtual instrument up to handle it. I have been using another piano, and setting it to a rhodes patch or something.

Couple of issues. First, no patch list for Band in a Box. Kind of strange since they sell the product. Second, can you use it with another Dxi instrument? Like, use Super Quartet for piano, bass, drums, guitar, and Virtual Sound Canvas for strings?

And…..when are they going to get something like this for Mac OS X???

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by ericdano

Do you know any FREE music writing program??

May 2, 2004 in Articles

An anonymous coward writes “Hey, I wanted to ask you all if you know any site where I could download a free program for writing my music. I’ve looked in the internet and so far I haven’t found anything.
Thanks, any help would be very grateful.”

Free as in notation software or midi sequencing? For notation, try Finale Notepad.

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by ericdano

The Amazing Slow Downer

April 13, 2004 in Reviews

Blackstonian21 writes “Found a great program for those of us who transcribe. Its called the Amazing Slow Downer. I’m not affiliated with them but just thought i’d share a very helpful program. Slow down a file without changing the pitch, or change pitch without changing the speed. Available at http://www.ronimusic.com/index.htm“

Yes, this program is a great tool for transcribing and what-not. I have been using Digital Performer to figure things out. There are some tools there that are similar to what “The Amazing Slow Downer” offers, plus I can write out the tracks in MIDI to be sure of what I am doing.

Update: 04/13 20:39 GMT by E :Actually, I did buy this software last year. It has a couple of features that Transcribe does not have, like the ability to save the slowed audio into AIFF and other formats.

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by ericdano

Finale 2004 PC

November 23, 2003 in Reviews

While I still am pissed about Coda Music blowing it on shipping out a OS X version of Finale on time, I finally broke down and upgraded my PC version for a couple of the new features it offers and that I need. I also found a couple of interesting new little things in the program as well….First off, there is a lot of stuff that I don’t need nor wanted in the new Finale 2004. Human playback, Soundfonts, and Save as Audio are the main ones. Yes, its nice to know that people without a midi rig can hear things better. And that they can save things to burn to CD. Good for them. The hard core Finale users, like myself, need things that make our lives easier.

Coda changed the Simple Note Entry a little. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I used that. A new expression interface is, however, something long over due. This really now fixes a lot of the annoying little “glitches” one encounters while scoring out one’s music. Namely, the damn text/dynamics being in strange places. Is this alone with the update price? No, but it is getting there.

FinaleScript sounds interesting, but who has time to muck with that? Drum Grooves is a welcome addition, but the notation is still a little strange. And you can not get the Drum Groove to do time changes. No big deal I guess. Smart Page Turns looks good. I haven’t gotten to the point yet to try it, but it looks like it could help. It would be nice to see this in the EXTRACT PARTS area rather than where it is (PLUGINS->New Plugins for Finale 2004->Smart Page Turns). Maybe if I learned FinaleScript I could have something automatically run it? Um…….NO. Coda! Put the option in EXTRACT PARTS, just like Music Space is. Geeze. Hello.

Smart Cue Notes is a welcome addition, though I am so use to using TGTools one that I might continue using that one.

For those who use another sequencer and load the final project into Finale for Printing (like I do), you’ll be sad to know that Midi importing still sucks. One thing I found that it has now is this great little Plug-in, Auto Dynamics placement. It goes through a measure or measures, and based on the Midi volumes, puts in dynamics. Now that is a very welcome feature. However, since Midi imports still suck, it will save me a little time, but not a lot.

Verdict? On my lowly 600Mhz Pentium III, Finale 2004 seems a tad zipper. There are just a few things worth upgrading to. Is it worth the price? For the PC version, not really. The expression interface is the main reason, and if you have TGTools you probably don’t need Finale 2004. For Mac users, when/if they ship a OS X version, then it would be worth it and more. But for PC users, if you have Finale 2003 and TGTools, stay there. Unless you need some of the new things.

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by ericdano

Finale 2004

August 6, 2003 in Reviews

Finally, Codamusic is coming out with an update to Finale. The most notable feature to me is the OS X support. Its interesting that Coda decided to Carbonize Finale 2004 so it runs under OS X and OS 9.

Other features that sound interesting are: Finale Script, New simple entry, Drum grooves, Pitch to midi converter that works?, Smart page turns (finally!), and Edits. One feature, the ability to make a sound file out of a Finale File seems to me, well, something I wouldn’t use. I have a midi rig, and is this sound file going to sound as good as my tone modules? I don’t think so. Band in a Box has something like this as well.

In all, a good sounding update. $89. The same cost as the last update. The OS X version isn’t going to be released until October though. PC Version in August.

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by ericdano

Pro Tools Nation

May 2, 2003 in Articles

Rolling Stone has an interesting article about how a lot of guys are using Pro Tools to record professional albums. You still need creative genius, but at least studio time won’t put you in the poor house. The article didn’t cover some of the other costs in setting up a Pro Tools (or other) type of studio. There is the midi gear, the microphones, the preamps, the monitors. The stuff adds up. Still, a good short article.

Update: 05/02 19:56 GMT by E :Slashdot seems to have a discussion about this too. They are discussing the costs savings to the artists, but not to the consumer.

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by ericdano

Plugin For Finale

April 11, 2003 in Reviews

Finale I still think is the best notation program out there. You Sibelius geeks can argue, but I love Finale.

For users of Finale who have always wanted a quick, easy way to put note names on music, there is now a plug in. TG Tools has a FREE plugin that puts Pitches on notes. Great for beginners. It’s not perfect, but the resulting pitch names become score expressions that you can edit. (sharps are cis instead of c#, and b’s seem to come out h). Very cool, and free.

TG Tools is also a great addition to Finale. I’d get it if you plan on doing anything big or just want to do things easier.

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Band-in-a-Box 11 for Macintosh

September 28, 2002 in Reviews

For all you guys out there who have Band in a Box for Macintosh you’ll be pleased to hear that version 11 is out for Mac. It has most all the features of the PC version except the BURN to CD function. (Which I’ve never used on my PC version anyways).

The only thing is that it is a OS 9 application right now. It works well on my G4 Cube (450 Mhz I think) under OS 10.1.5, but on a G3 Pismo laptop under OS 9, it was very jittery. Hopefully PG Music will update the next version to be more OS X friendly.

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BBFinder 4.1.0

August 17, 2002 in Reviews

For those of you who use Band-in-a-Box (BinaB), you probably have problems finding songs. Fear not. BBFinder is here. BBFinder is a program that will scan through ALL of your BinaB files, and then you can sort, and search EASILY through them. Awesome. It displays the Title, File Path, Filename, Style, Whether or not it includes a Melody and/or Lyric, Tempo, Key the song is in, and how big the BinaB file is. So, for the nearly 8,500 BinaB files that I have, I can now actually FIND things. Wow.

All this for $20. Cheap. If you use BinaB, you need to have this program. It runs only on a PC, which is not really a problem since the last time PG Music updated BinaB for Mac was when Clinton was in the Whitehouse, and not even close to being finished with his second term. IE: The mac version is 4 versions behind.

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New Midi Gear

November 15, 2001 in Articles

There are a bunch of new midi items out there I think are quite interesting.

PolyPhontics which is a sound font program for the mac. Propellerheads have released a great Strings addition to Reason. My god is it good. I want it! And there is are some nice new instruments available for Protools from Native Instruments which include some nice sounding B4s and percussion sounds.

Now, if only Mark Of The Unicorn would get Digital Performer and it’s 828 Interface to work with OS X then life would be sweet!

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