Hey there: At 3:26 PM +1000 5/22/03, Michael Garrett wrote:

Thanks for the feedback so far. I had heard that Deck LE was buggy but I'm interested. Also, Carl, I thought maybe one of those Zoom four trackers was a good way to go, as far as ease of use and minimal setup time, but it may be more convenient in the long run to record straight into the computer since if you use Doggiebox they're going to be coming from there anyway,

Well, the Fostex had been my main multitracker until I decided to start going digital with recording, so too late now! At least when I do use it now, I don't lose quality when I bounce down tracks. This is one of the simpler Fostexes, so if you want to bounce down tracks you have to mix out to an external device like a tape deck or computer and then playback that mix onto one track of the Fostex. Now that I can use my laptop for this as the external device, the sound quality doesn't degrade. Then Pascal asked:

Would you mind sharing "how to do some simple fills" with the sequenced drums? I have been exporting to ProTools Free and trying to use its editing and automation features to create texture, but haven't had much luck with it. Any help you can provide would be appreciated.

OS 9 is my main OS still (I have several $$$$ worth of perfectly good software for OS 9 and, with a G3 laptop, the "gains" with OS X are minimal anyway, though it's nice to tinker with esp. when there's an OS X only program like Doggiebox that makes it worth rebooting every now and again), so I can't open Doggiebox right now to describe the pattern precisely. The main thing to do to start you off is to--oh what is it called?--expand the beat range per measure (this is either Apple-= or Apple-] ). I think I have it show 16 beats per measure. Try tempo 120, 4/4, high hat every two beats: measure 1: bass hit at 1, snare at 6, bass 8, bass 12, snare 14; measure 2: bass 1, snare 6, snare 9, snare 10, bass 12, snare 14. That's just a very simple one and I'm not sure I have the little snare filip on the right beats (don't forget to stop the high hat over the little snare thing--a real drummer could only do it with three hands!). I did one that's a little more complicated, but without looking at the pattern I can't count it off for you. I'm lucky to do a syncopated beat when I actually sit down at a kit; trying to count out actual fills at my desk is another matter entirely! And remember, I'm working out the entire drum pattern for a song BEFORE I actually sit down to record myself. I sit here with my guitar and work through the song and create the pattern for it. I don't have separate files for "neat Max Roach fill 1," "Keith Moon freak out 2," "Markie Ramone bashalong 3," etc., and then try to mix them together. Working out the pattern is complicated enough as it is . . . Oh, there was a general question about using ProTools. The setup requirements are a pain in the ass (turn virtual memory off, set memory cache to something or other, etc.)--well, not that big a pain, but we all have things that get our (zy)goat <smirk>--so I haven't used it too much and don't have much to say about it yet. Cheers, Carl -- ********** Carl Freire Oakland, California cfreire@ix.netcom.com cfreire@uclink4.berkeley.edu

At 17:05 22/05/2003, Carl Freire wrote:

The main thing to do to start you off is to--oh what is it called?--expand the beat range per measure (this is either Apple-= or Apple-] ). I think I have it show 16 beats per measure. Try tempo 120, 4/4, high hat every two beats: measure 1: bass hit at 1, snare at 6, bass 8, bass 12, snare 14; measure 2: bass 1, snare 6, snare 9, snare 10, bass 12, snare 14. That's just a very simple one and I'm not sure I have the little snare filip on the right beats (don't forget to stop the high hat over the little snare thing--a real drummer could only do it with three hands!). I did one that's a little more complicated, but without looking at the pattern I can't count it off for you.

Hmmm, I pretty much see what you mean, though perhaps you could do a screenshot or two of what you're doing in Doggiebox in OS X, and then (when in OS 9) post it somewhere (or send it to Ben for posting) as a kind of embryonic "Doggiebox tips & tricks" thing.

I don't have separate files for "neat Max Roach fill 1," "Keith Moon freak out 2," "Markie Ramone bashalong 3," etc., and then try to mix them together. Working out the pattern is complicated enough as it is . . .

Although a "Doggiebox sample library" with short little files of individual fill patterns, main rhythm pattens, and whatever, would be pretty cool. A more advanced part of the "Doggiebox tips & tricks" thing :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson mailto:cea@carlaz.com http://www.carlaz.com/

At 10:57 AM +0100 5/28/03, Pascal Barras wrote:

Thanks for the fill idea, Carl. It is a departure from how I have been approaching DB, but that was what I needed!

In the meantime, I finally had a chance to do a couple of screen shots. Two different 4-bar sections from the same song, which is pretty up tempo (I think Tempo=at least 144, but I'm remembering something faster) and mostly syncopated. Set Doggiebox to show 16 beats per measure. Section One Bar 1 *closed high hat every other beat (1, 3, 5, etc.) *bass at 1, 9, 13, 15 *snare at 5, 11 Bar 2 *closed high hat every other beat (1, 3, 5, etc.) *bass at 9, 13, 15 *snare at 5, 11 Bar 3 *closed high hat every other beat (1, 3, 5, etc.) *bass at 9, 13, 15 *snare at 5, 11 Bar 4 *closed high hat at 1, 3, 5 *snare at 5, 8, 9, 13, and 15 *bass at 11 Section Two Bar 1 *"M" cymbal at 1 *closed high hat at every other beat from 3 *snare at 5, 13 *bass at 1, 7, 11 Bar 2 *closed high hat every other beat (1, 3, 5, etc.) *snare at 5, 13 *bass at 1, 7, 11 Bar 3 *closed high hat every other beat (1, 3, 5, etc.) *snare at 5, 13 *bass at 1, 7, 11 Bar 4 *closed high hat at 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15 *Tom 1 at 8 *Tom 2 at 9 *Floor Tom at 13 *snare at 5 *bass at 1, 11 Enjoy! Carl -- ********** Carl Freire Oakland, California cfreire@ix.netcom.com cfreire@uclink4.berkeley.edu

The sample songs on the site were a couple that I had sent along to Ben, just for kicks. He liked them and posted them, after checking with me, of course. They were recorded using Cubase SX on a G4. The Doggiebox audio files were exported as 32bit float AIFF's, but any AIFF format would work, really. I imported these tracks as a single stereo track into Cubase. The guitar parts on the first demo were done with my 50's Classic Tele through a Tech 21 Trademark 10 piped directly into a Tascam 424, which I used as a sort of interface between the digital and analog worlds. The Tascam was routed stereo in to the G4, where Cubase picks up the tracks and lays 'em down. The bass was recorded pretty much direct. It's a '62 RI Fender Jazz routed through a compressor and then into the Tascam, etc. The drum tracks were left fairly dry. I added some overall compression and a bit of stereo reverb to the mix when creating the disk file. I mixed to AIFF, then used iTunes to convert to mp3. On Wed, 21 May 2003 21:01:35 -0700 Carl Freire <cfreire@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

Hi Michael:

At 11:11 AM +1000 5/22/03, Michael Garrett wrote:

...

Warning: I've just joined this mailing list and I'm sure this question has been asked before...

I haven't been on it too long myself so I don't know what's gone before, say, a month ago or so.

...

How are other people recording bass/guitar/vocals when they are using Doggiebox? The example mp3 songs on the web site are great. I'm <snip>

Well, I've done a little bit, making demos of my songs for my band. I convert my drum track to an .aiff file and then either play out into my Fostex four-track or the ProTools Free eight-track I downloaded some time back from the manufacturer. It's been very nice and sounds pretty good. Hope to tinker some more with this over the next few months--I finally figured out how to do some simple fills, which makes a big difference! Plus, it's easier for me to work to an "actual" drum backing rather than play off of a click track.

FWIW.

Carl --

**********

Carl Freire Oakland, California cfreire@ix.netcom.com cfreire@uclink4.berkeley.edu

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Just to chime in- I've been using Doggiebox with Deck LE, exporting drums as aiff and importing this file into the multitrack editor. I plug my Danelectro Hodad directly into a 6-channel Behringer mixer and go from the mixer into the mac's audio in. It sounds okay but but I've been looking at some firewire audio interfaces by MOTU that should provide the nice sound I'm looking for. Like someone else said on this list, I find it easier to play along to a 'real' percussion track than to a click. I have found that there is a bit of timing drift; i.e., I set the tempo of a doggiebox song to 100, export the aiff, and import to Deck, with session tempo = 100: the measure boundaries don't line up exactly the same. Maybe this is Deck or maybe it's db, but I work around it by exporting measure by measure from db. Ben, Doggiebox is great! Frank

When using Cubase, I noticed a very satisfying sync between the imported aif file and the assigned tempo in cubase. Throughout the length of a 3 or 4 minute song, things were just fine. If you have Deck, do you also have Peak? What about Amadeus? How do things compare there? I stopped using Deck due to some weird things happening. It's a great program and a good value, don't get me wrong. It's just not quite there yet, I think. Kudos for being the first OSX native multitracker though. You're importing, according to the message you typed. I would wonder about latency issues if it were a recording of a Doggiebox playback, but it doesn't seem likely. On Thu, 22 May 2003 12:45:45 -0400 "Ben Kennedy" <ben@zygoat.ca> wrote:

On 22 5 2003 at 11:19 am -0400, Frank Rubino wrote:

...

I have found that there is a bit of timing drift; i.e., I set the tempo of a doggiebox song to 100, export the aiff, and import to Deck, with session tempo = 100: the measure boundaries don't line up exactly the same.

Thanks for bringing this up, Frank. I thought I've noticed the same thing myself, but passed it off as recording anomalies (since my setup on the ibook has been sub-par as of late as I've been trying out different audio in apps).

It could well be that there are timing issues in Doggiebox; I'll try to look into this more closely.

-ben

-- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca

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On Wed, 21 May 2003, Carl Freire wrote:

Well, I've done a little bit, making demos of my songs for my band. I convert my drum track to an .aiff file and then either play out into my Fostex four-track or the ProTools Free eight-track I downloaded some time back from the manufacturer. It's been very nice and sounds pretty good.

Greetings - You're using ProTools Free in Classic? How is that working out for you? Any tips / wisdom you could share with the list? S

I have a (now rather old) Roland VS-1680 and Doggiebox is my drummer :) For my set-up, the best technique _seems_ to be to assemble a basic percussion track in Doggiebox, export it as an AIFF, playback the AIFF and record it on the 1680, then record guitars, etc. on top of that. The trick is that I often want to change the details of the percussion track as I work on the song (add fill here, extra cymbal there), but it's difficult to synchronize the start of play to rerecord the drum track directly (thus my MIDI feature requests some weeks back :) It works out (at present) a little easier to simply slap a whole new AIFF over the original percussion track on the 1680 to get it on the machine and roughly in place, and then "nudge" the whole thing into synchronization with the other instruments. It's still a little tedious, but not impossible.

I do basically the same thing, except that I've found it invaluable to add a measure of "count off" cymbal hits before the drum track starts. This ensures that the other tracks start at the right time and allows you to swap out the drum track with no ill effects on the timing of the other tracks. I use Doggiebox to create the drums, or at least enough to outline the completed song structure. Export it as AIFF and import into tracks 1 and 2 in Deck LE. From there my guitars plug into a Zoom multipedal box that plugs into an Eidoral UA5 USB audio hub. Guitars (and bass and voice) are recorded in succession and as long as you monitor in the analog domain (set Deck to use the UA5 as both input and output, plug headphones or monitor speakers into the UA5) there are no latency issues. I have not noticed, nor attempted to notice, the metering difference between Doggiebox and Deck that other users have noted. Cheers, Christoph PS. Ben, Doggiebox was the godsend app I've been searching for, I love it!