Notes_Norton

Hair today, gone tomorrow. Or in my case, gone years ago. If we put our heads together we could make an ..... (never mind, the censors might not like it). Better idea, Dolly Parton. You might notice the rock and roll toupee in my avatar :D Notes

And the only mistake they made was that 5 pin DIN connector. Obviously they were in-house people and not used to rolling a rack to one-nighter gigs, where the non-locking DIN connectors have a habit of falling out of their sockets. A locking connector with a mechanism like a XLR latch would have been better. But I'm a big fan of MIDI and the cables don't unplug themselves that often. On the other hand, they decide to be loose when there is no room to take the back off the rack 😀 I run with 4 sound modules in my rack. Two Yamaha VL70m's, One Roland XV-5050 and one Roland Sound Canvas. I am truly thankful for being able to fit a few thousand sounds into 3 rack spaces (actually 2.5). Insights and incites by Notes

I do this on the guitar and hate it when the microphones do it :D

Since I tend to record MIDI, what I end up fixing mostly is erasing slop notes - the kind where I went for that D and brushed the C# on the way. Since I sequence all the parts and practice each one first, on a new song, I'm still prone to that occasional wrong note. if the feel and the timing is right and the rest of the track is good, in MIDI that's a simple fix. When playing/entering the most attention is on timing. In my situation wrong notes can be fixed (as long as they are uncommon - if there are a bunch, get back Notes and practice some more before recording again). Insights and incites by notes

I guess I'm old school. Practice until I get the timing right, and play it live in real time. IMO there are no short cuts to practice until right. But then, I'm only recording myself, and unlike Bill BRainbow, I don't have clients to accommodate. I have my personal pride to satisfy. Instead I make backing tracks to play behind my duo, and I want the backing tracks to sound as close to a real band as possible. If it's difficult, it might take me a few days to work up the backing track, to get the timing right, to get the notes right, to get the groove right and to get it as good as my current skills allow. But if I'm lucky, I'll get to play that song thousands of times in front of an appreciative audience and I'll be inspired to sing or play my best on top of the track. If I knew I could do it better, it would haunt me every time I play the song. But like I always say, there is more than one right way to make music. Insights and incites by Notes

I'm interested in MIDI 2. I heard two way communications mentioned, and I wonder how that will work out. I don't have two way communications with my sax, drums, bass, guitar, flute, wind synthesizer, keyboard synth, or voice, and can't help wondering what benefit 2 way communication will provide me. Will it be fantastic, a usable tool, or meh? Time will tell, and I'll stay tuned for details. Other than perhaps a new form of synthesis, I have pretty much all I need in MIDI sound modules (notice I said need and not want). I hope MIDI 2 is so exciting that I just have to part with some of my hard earned cash. And as I said before, I'm very glad backward compatibility was a prime concern. Insights and incites by Notes

I'm an anti-quantizing person for most forms of music (some electronic dance music and disco songs need it). I believe that along with auto-tune, they are tools better to be left alone. IMHO quantizing takes the soul out of the music. It takes the breath out of it. It makes it sterile. The rhythm section needs to groove. Sometimes the 2s and 4s need to be a hair ahead of the beat, some times behind. Same for eighth notes. Big triplets need to be dragged in most cases. Melodies often drag part of a phrase and then rush to catch up or vice versa. Sometimes a certain beat of a song needs to be rushed or dragged for emphasis. In many Latin American forms of music the congas need to be played laid back behind the beat. Sometimes in jazz the ride cymbals need to be a hair pushed. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. I've played professionally since the 1960s in a variety of genres and venues. When I started sequencing MIDI back in the Atari/DOS/MotorolaMac days I tried quantizing and hated the sound. Where's the groove? Where's the soul? Where's the vox humana? I realized I had to play the parts in live, in real time, and use the feel that I'm used to by playing with some of the finest musicians I've ever heard. Of course there are many exceptions. And although you can generalize about certain things like 2&4s being laid back in the blues, the reality is no two songs are alike. If you know the song well, play it like you feel it. One more thing, as I mentioned earlier, some "dance" forms of music and/or individual songs from the disco era on need to be quantized as that is their sound. Of course, there is more than one right way to make music. My way may not be best for you. Insights and incites by Notes

It was nice. I like the moment right before totality too, because it looked more like a globe than a disk. Notes

Yes, I think GM2 was based on Roland thing called GS. It adds 128 additional standard patch names in a second bank of sounds. I have an Edirol SD-90 that is compatible with GM2, GS and XG (which I think is a Yamaha extended bank). I don't remember exactly how to access them. I have access to up to 16 variations of any GM1 voice by using a MSB (Most Significant Bit) and LSB (Least Significant Bit) in the MIDI stream going to the synth. I suppose GM2 and the others would be accessed in a similar way. But they are just patch maps and not additional sounds so I've never bothered with it. GM1 is nice because I can do a MIDI sequence using GM patches, and when another person receives it, the patches will have the same name. They of course might not sound the same, because each synth has it's on variation on what they think a tenor sax, trumpet, clean guitar or fantasy sounds like, but at least it will be recognizable. If every GM synth doesn't recognize GM2 it's not going to work.. Insights and incites by Notes

I'm glad they are ensuring backwards compatibility. Although I have new MIDI devices, I also have sound modules that go back to the dawning of MIDI like the Yamaha TX81z, Korg DS8, and Roland MT-32. While plenty of the sounds on these synths are dated, there are still some great sounds that havnen't been duplicated in newer devices. Insights and incites by Notes

OK, I'll be patient. In the meantime I found this: https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=Cakewalk&language=3&help=toc.html It seems to be much better than nothing, although I'd like a downloadable one, because often when I'm intensely working on music, I disconnect from my WiFi. Notes

Is there a downloadable user manual for the current Bandlab version of Cakewalk? Thanks, Notes

Hot cocoa sounds like it will be in order. The tail end of that big northeastern blizzard will make it down here and Sunday is supposed to be the coldest night of the year. It normally goes into the upper 60s or 70s here at night, but Sunday night they are predicting 50s or 40s and then a warming back to normal. I know that doesn't sound cold to people who live in the north, but it's 80 right now, and that's a big dip in temperature. I've seen a number of full lunar eclipses, and I never get tired of them. So if I don't return, send out the Saint Bernard dogs with a full keg of brandy !!! Notes

A cold front (for Florida) is coming, so at least the mosquitoes will be dormant. Notes

Some of what I do are covers, as close to a famous recording as I am able. Some of my tracks are similar to a recording, but with my own twist on them. Others are completely rearranged, like Stevie Wonder's "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" as a cool school jazz (swing) tune, Jimmy Buffet's "Son Of A Sailor" as a Reggae tune, Dolly Parton's "Joline" as a slow, torch song, and so on. We play once a week at a marina on a lagoon in Florida (in our 11th year) and tropical songs are welcome. Jimmy Buffet is a big hit here too. I had a woman who is now a regular customer ask for Jimmy Buffet's "A Pirate Looks At 40". I warned her that I didn't do it like the record (I do it as a calypso steel-drum band song with something close to a rhumba rhythm). She says she likes it better than Jimmy's ballad version and requests it often. We often play at yacht or country clubs (good $$ for the hours) and the need a 'dinner set'. Playing old pop songs as instrumental bossa-novas works well. I put the lead on the wind synthesizer instead of the sax, turn the PA down until we are at 65dba and get my gentle chops out. After dinner we get to crank it up to about 100db and play moderately high to high energy dance music. It depends on what I think my audience would like. I'm not always correct in my guesses, but all in all I have a good track record. I actually like playing different genres and different energy levels of music. Each genre puts me in a different emotional state, and I have the challenge of trying to sound authentic in many genres. We don't do originals, because I learned people want memories, but we do some parodies. We do a version of "Winter Wonderland" that has no up-north references and lots of Florida ones, like "Plastic pink flamingos in the lawn." Especially at the marina, fun songs go over well. All and all, in order to make a living doing music and nothing but music, you need to be versatile and mold your 'act' to the needs of the audience. That sometimes means compromise, but a bad day playing music is better than a good day at any other job I can think of. Insights and incites by Notes

The thing I've noticed about lunar eclipses, is that for me, the moon usually looks like a disk, but during a full eclipse it looks more like a globe. And a good pair of binoculars enhances the experience. Insights and incites by Notes

There is definitely more than one right way to do this. For me, all the work is done at home. I try to keep things as simple as possible on stage. Since I cue the songs, sing and/or play either sax, guitar, flute or wind synth on each song. By having mp3s pre-recorded at home on a laptop, I can start a song by highlighting it in Windows File Explorer and hitting Enter. It plays on Windows Media Player. While it's playing, Alt+Tab puts the focus back on File Explorer. Since the laptop keyboard is always available, type two or 3 letters and the next song is cued up. Hit enter and it plays. That was I can go from song to song seamlessly, and even change my mind in the last few seconds of the song we are playing and still go seamlessly. I don't do set lists, but prefer to do my best to read the crowd and play what they need when they want it. Since my market is the over 40 audience, if they are fast dancing and there is 2 seconds between songs, they will head back to their seats and the next song won't bring them back. So I've learned when I need to go to the next song seamlessly. But back on topic. By doing my own backing tracks, I have complete control over the music. If I want to eliminate the rubato intro I can because the intro might not be danceable (is danceable a word?). I can even record two versions in case it's a listening and not dancing crowd I can do the intro. I can also start with the hook and then go into the first verse. Often people recognize songs by the hook, and the quicker they recognize it, the faster they will respond. I can put the key in the best key for us so we can sing it at its best. I can lengthen slow songs because for my market 2.5 minutes isn't long enough. 4 to5 is optimal. I can speed it up a few BPM because for live performance, it adds energy. This is something I've learned from all the live bands (no backing tracks) I've ever played with. And by mixing in mono and having the bass and drums on a second channel, but tweaking the midrange pot, I can pump up or down the snare, or using the gain pot bring up or down the core rhythm section. This all works for me, and it is my current way of doing things. It has evolved through the years as I find ways that solve problems I had and work better for me. It might not be the way for anybody else, and I might change it again at any time. Insights and incites by Notes

A blonde and a lawyer are seated next to each other on a flight from LA to NY. The lawyer asks if she would like to play a fun game? The blonde, tired, just wants to take a nap, politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The lawyer persists and explains that the game is easy and a lot of fun. He explains, I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5.00, and vise versa. Again, she declines and tries to get some sleep. The lawyer, now agitated, says, "Okay, if you don't know the answer you pay me $5.00, and, if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500.00." This catches the blonde's attention and, figuring there will be no end to this torment unless she plays, agrees to the game. The lawyer asks the first question. "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" The blonde doesn't say a word, reaches into her purse, pulls out a $5.00 bill and hands it to the lawyer. Okay says the lawyer, your turn. She asks the lawyer, "What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four legs?" The lawyer, puzzled, takes out his laptop computer and searches all his references, no answer. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the net and the library of congress, no answer. Frustrated, he sends e-mails to all his friends and coworkers, to no avail. After an hour, he wakes the blonde, and hands her $500.00. The blonde says, "Thank you," and turns back to get some more sleep. The lawyer, who is more than a little miffed, wakes the blonde and asks, "Well, what's the answer? "Without a word, the blonde reaches into her purse, hands the lawyer $5.00, and goes back to sleep.

Hoping for clear weather. Thanks for the alert!

Thanks Msmcleod. Starise, I haven't done any CbB tracks yet. I'm still using Master Tracks Pro. The gigging season got really, really busy here in S. Florida (that's a good thing) so I haven't had enough time to get good at CbB yet. I had to learn some songs for special requests at gigs, and since I already know where everything is in MTPro, I'm using it simply because I'm quick with it. When I have the time to learn where everything is and what it's called in CbB, I'll probably ditch MTPro as it has been orphaned since Windows XP. But MIDI is MIDI, whether I program it with CbB or MTPro it should sound the same. All my sound modules are external, so the voices won't change. Insights and incites by Notes

I don't know what CbB is so I don't know if it's my work. I write aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box but they are intentionally generic so they can be used for more than one song. I had a customer of mine ask for a "Don't Be Cruel" style (Elvis P) so I made one. But with the song specific guitar figure, it is only good for one song. Try it in a different song and it shouts "Don't Be Cruel". And getting it to work with the limitations of BiaB was more work than writing the sequence out track by track in real time. BiaB does have it's quirks. I've done contract work for some other software and hardware auto-accompaniment products but with a non-disclosure agreement. Nothing really recent but when I hear my work on things I'm not allowed to brag about, it still makes me smile. For my own duo's tracks, I mix in stereo but pan both channels center so it comes out mono. Here's the advantage as I see it. I put the bass and drums on one channel (L) and the comp parts on the other (R). That way I can kick up the bass and drums if need be or turn them down. We played for dinner and then dancing in a yacht club for about 10 years, and dinner sets had to be about 65dba max. I'd turn the L channel down a notch to make them even more background during the dinner set. After dinner we cranked it up to about 90db right in front of the stage and I'd return the L channel to it's home position. I was slightly adjusting a mono mix that way. But since I have some people sitting under the left speaker and others the right, the only way to get them to hear everything is to run everything panned center or mono. I remember sitting in an Italian restaurant in a strip center once, sitting under the ceiling speaker that played only one channel. The songs were familiar and parts panned on the other side of the store were not heard by me, just a little reverb of the instruments at times. I have an old Samson MPL1204 mixer. Actually I have a half dozen because I use them in my stage rack as well. I'm a "the show must go on" kind of a guy so I have duplicates of everything important. Since the 1204 is discontinued, I bought more. I don't see any 12 channel mixers that fit in a road rack. The ones advertised have one or two stereo channels that they count as two. I don't mix that way so it's not 12 for me. I'd jump on a newer model if I could find one with a manufacturer that isn't going out of business soon (I almost bought a Carvin mixer but they went belly-up). I mix my MIDI instruments in the 1204, run the output and record them into a second computer to make a WAV file. Since I started doing this in 2002 and storage was 2G max for Windows, I make 192kbps mp3 files using an old CDex app. I read that newer CDex apps have had spyware introduced, so version 5 or earlier is recommended. I guess that's the price of open source software when the parent company loses interest. (Before 2002 I did live sequences pushing floppy disks into a hardware sequencer.) I mix at home and I first listen on external computer speakers. I always listen in mono, everything panned center. Then I lug in a Carvin 2way with a 15" woofer. They are old PA speakers now doing double duty as stereo set speakers in the living room. I use EVs on stage now that sound better than the Carvins (and are much more expensive). If I can hear everything on both the small computer speakers and the Carvin, I'll be able to hear everything on stage. On stage I run two vocal mics, 4 synth modules, 2 guitars (via fx/amp-sim pedals), and my backing tracks all panned center. There are two spare channels. If I'm doing a party a cheap mic on a long cable goes in one if the host or anyone else wants to speak. We prefer that they don't use our singing mics because if they are catching a cold and don't know it yet, we could get it and a future gig would suffer. I also mix the speaking mic with no FX, and EQ it for speech. Then what I think is a very important piece of gear. A BBE Sonic Maximizer. I always shop at a mom and pop store if I can. Years ago, the owner loaned me this BBE. He said try it on the gig. No down payment, no credit card, just my word to either bring it back if I don't like it or some money if I did. We were a house band at the time, and when we cranked up the first set three separate customers wanted to know what we did because we sounded even better than usual. In my basic understanding it works this way. Coils, like the ones in your speakers, don't like current to reverse directions, so there is some minuscule delay. The higher the frequency the more the delay. So for the typical loudspeaker the low notes reach your ears slightly before the high ones. The Sonic Maximizer delays the low notes to compensate so that the lows and the highs reach your ears in phase. If you use one, de-EQ your system first and then re-EQ with the BBE in. You'll find you need much less EQ. The BBE goes between the mixer/preamp and the power amp, which in my case is in each speaker cabinet. There are times when I get the mix wrong at home, so I'll make tweaks to the sequence and try again for the next gig. Usually the main tweak is simply volume sometimes a bit of mix. I might have ripped the mp3 a little too hot or low at home. Until the volume is up and it's on the gigging speakers, it's sometimes hard to tell. Most of the time I get it right the first time, sometimes it takes 2 or 3 and the most stubborn one to date took 5 tries. If people offer to let me use the house system, I politely refuse. I tell them that I know my system, my music is equalized to compensate for the audio signature of my system, it took a while to learn how my system reacts, and if I used yours, I'd have to learn yours. Since we usually play small to medium size rooms, that has always worked. Of course it means schlepping two 15" speaker cabs, one 12 space rack, one sax, two guitars, two synth controllers, tow wind synths, 3 computers, a bunch of stands and cables and a couple of mics. It takes about an hour to set up, we leave an hour and a half (it's always the cable, and it knows when you are short of time), and another hour to tear down. But it's worth it to always sound our best. Insights and incites by Notes

For most in the audience, that's true. But I know the difference when I'm playing and my tracks are more fun to play along with than a purchased karaoke track. They are my arrangement, in our optimal key, I can extend the solo section or take multiple solos, and I have that self-pride thing (wrong or right, that's just me). We have been working steadily since we formed the duo in the 1980s, I have to turn down gigs to take a yearly vacation, and we make more money per night than most if not all of the other duos in the area. Part of that is the backing tracks, part of that is the job we do on top of the tracks (my partner is a phenomenal singer, I'm only an adequate singer and guitarist but an excellent sax and wind synth player), and part is that we are professional and hard working. We read the crowd, call songs when we perceive the crowd needs them, and act appropriately for each gig. We view this as competition with our musician friends. Our goal is to do it better than the rest in every way we can, and to the best of our abilities. If the tracks are a little better, the crowd pacing a little better, the vocals a little better, the arrangements a little better, the stage presence a little better, and the solos a little better, it all adds up to a lot. If any of these things are not a little better than the competition, at least we know we've done our very best. Insights and incites by Notes

There is a lot of wisdom in that quote BayouBill. When you can do it so well that you don't have to think about it anymore, you can turn the so-called left brain off and your subconscious will allow your emotions to be expressed through the music. In a simpler way, an old teacher of mine used to say, "Practice it until you can play it without thinking. The best music comes out when you don't have to think about it." I have friends who tell me to buy karaoke tracks or commercial MIDI sequences for my tracks. They tell me I'm working too hard. Working too hard? Since when is music working? We PLAY music. Sure, practice can take time, and it's often repetitious, but it's still play. Doing my own backing tracks to the best of my ability takes time. It depends on the song. Sometimes part of a day, other times days with edit after edit once I hear them on stage. But when they are done they are absolutely as good as I can make them, and I'm proud of my accomplishment. If I'm lucky, I'll get to sing and/or play sax, wind synth, or guitar over that track thousands of times on stage with a full dance floor or a concert crowd enjoying the music I'm making. On stage playing music with an appreciative audience feeding the energy back to me is the most fun I can have with my clothes on. Insights and incites by Notes

I make my own backing tracks for my duo saving the most fun parts to be played live over the tracks. Downsizing to a duo was a compromise, but a way to keep making a living doing music and nothing but music in the days after people stopped paying bands enough money to live on. I make most of them 100% MIDI because (a) I don't have a pristine recording environment and (b) too much audio sounds like karaoke to me. I don't know if the audience cares about karaoke tracks, but I have enough self-pride to care. I make the majority of them from scratch, playing the parts live with MIDI controllers, starting with the drums first, then the bass, and after that whatever the song needs. I play drums, bass, sax, wind synth, guitar, flute, keyboard synth and vocals so it's something I can do. Doing the entire backing track myself lets me know exactly what is going on in the song, the chords, the substitutions used, and everything I need to play a good improvised solo. Doing the backing tracks myself also allows me to change and/or extend the song I'm covering so I can have a space for a nice solo. I can put it in our best key, and change the tempo too without artifacts. If there is an appropriate style I'll use Band-in-a-Box for the 'mule work' (comp parts that don't require song specific licks or rhythms). I have a page on how to: http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html Another mule work time saver. I can enter the chords in BiaB, and if playing horn, string or other ensemble parts, I can record the high part and let BiaB write the lower harmony parts. BiaB has many different options and follows the rules I learned in the Berklee correspondence course when I was young. I'm a live performer, if I were to do an album I'd still record the parts the same way, drums first, bass next and so on. So would it be a backing track or not? (Who cares?) I've done 'sax for hire' studio work often to a rhythm section already recorded and with a temp vocal track on it. When done the singer overdubs the final track. So is that a backing track to the vocalist? (Another rhetorical question.) I also write aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box so I know what the app can do and cannot do, it's strong points to use and it's weaknesses to avoid. At the start of this post, I said the duo was a compromise, and it is... All the background parts are 'me'. -- there is nobody to surprise me with a part I didn't think of already -- there is interaction on stage only between my partner and myself, but not with the 'band' .. we can react to it, but it doesn't react back to us -- the arrangements are set in stone and although I can make different arrangements of the same song for different situations, once I start it's what it is -- it's a lot more 'not playing music work' on stage -- when those rare but inevitable mistakes are made, the rest of the 'band' won't help you cover them up. But here is what drove me to duo-land: I was in a 5 piece band with the woman who is now my wife (we first met while in different bands and joined first a jazz trio and then this pop band together). We were working steadily and the bass player had to quit. Two months out of work auditioning and braking in a replacement. As a musician I know to keep two months living money in the bank for these circumstances but I don't like having to replenish it. A few months later we lost the drummer. Auditioned a few and hired one who had a small kit, kept a solid beat, played tastefully, and could sing background vocals. She caught on quickly and we got back to work in about a month. First gig, a wedding at a local country club. The crowd was huge so the opened the accordion pleat wall between the lounge and the dining room and set us in the lounge. The drummer said, "God won't forgive me if I play in a bar." I said, "God will have to forgive me for homicide tonight if you don't play in the bar." She then figured if we didn't drink for this one time it would be OK. The next week I bought a keyboard with an on-board sequencer and never looked back. And the bonus was that we were taking home more money. The duo made only about $100 less per night than the 5 piece was making. And we split it with two people who were living together at the time (and eventually married). After the keyboard came an Atari Computer, a Mac, and now I make the tracks on a Windows PC. The technology has grown nicely since I started doing the duo thing in 1985, and we've been working steady every since. In fact, we have to turn down work to take a yearly vacation. The duo works for us, and making my own backing tracks works for us too. Insights and incites by Notes