Is it just me, or does DB like to "stutter" a little bit on the first playback after opening a song for editing? If I start a bar, or a whole song, the timing is very messed up. If I stop, then play the same bar, it's OK. This is true until DB makes it's way through the whole song. It's a bit annoying. It's like there's some sort of caching or something not going on that requires DB to think about all the sounds again. Another question: is linking an active feature yet? If so, how to make a link? I've got that next nskit ready to go, but all the sounds are embedded.
On 21 8 2004 at 3:30 pm -0400, Mike Carlyle wrote:
It's like there's some sort of caching or something not going on that requires DB to think about all the sounds again.
Actually you are probably right on the mark here. I think what's likely happening is that DB is lazy-loading sounds as they are required in the song; once they've been loaded once, they persist. I should change this so that as soon as a song is opened, all currently in-use sounds are immediately loaded from disk (in a background thread). Note that this is a new phenomenon in this beta series, which is a side- effect of the improved kit format that allows for lazy loading. (The idea is that opening of kits and songs is sped up because we no longer waste time/memory loading unused sounds... but this has hit the opposite extreme.) Thanks for raising this; this came to mind a few days ago but I had since forgotten about it temporarily.
Another question: is linking an active feature yet? If so, how to make a link? I've got that next nskit ready to go, but all the sounds are embedded.
You may need to re-import the sounds to the kit again. Once you save and close a kit with sounds designated as "embedded", the linking relationship is lost -- since the sounds are now embedded in the kit file, DB discards the location of the original. (It is possible to convert a linked kit into an embedded one after the fact, but not vice versa.) Fortunately fixing this should be as straightforward as drag/drop to re- establish the links -- you should then find that the "link" option in the pop-up menu becomes enabled. -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
Mike Carlyle wrote:
Cool. One nskit version 7, coming up.
Cool. I hadn't finished making the icons for mine anyway, so I'll wait for Mike's! I was having trouble getting velocity numbers big enough to see on the icons anyway :) I gotta mess around more with my "prehistoric Scandinavia" samples and the GarageBand percussion kit :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/
On 21 8 2004 at 5:46 pm -0400, Mike Carlyle wrote:
Cool. One nskit version 7, coming up.
...and now it's up in the library. Thanks for your hard work Mike. I am interested to hear how you all find the experience of downloading the wav files and using the linked kit. -b -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
http://webpages.charter.net/mcarlyle/alive_basictracks.mp3 Glad to help, Ben. Above is a link to a new song I'm working on that uses the new kit. It's just a mix of three basic tracks that I will build on with my singer/lyricist collaborator. I really like the new "press" or "buzz" snare drum. It's very similar to the idea I first saw presented in the 70's Ludwig Kit. You can hear it as the very first drum sound in the song above. It also appears during some tasty fills that happen throughout the song. Note also that I pushed the tempo from 120 to 124 bpm when jumping into what will become the chorus part. This really adds some humanization in my opinion. When I first mapped out this song, I did it on real drums. When listening to tapes, I sped up quit a bit when it came to this same part. I don't know if my notes were saved with the kit. I made some remarks about the 75 meg file size of the nskit7 drumset. I also noted that not all of the drums were needed. Only about 10 percent of the available drums went into my version of the DB kit. More would be overkill. On Aug 24, 2004, at 7:33 PM, Ben Kennedy wrote:
On 21 8 2004 at 5:46 pm -0400, Mike Carlyle wrote:
Cool. One nskit version 7, coming up.
...and now it's up in the library. Thanks for your hard work Mike.
I am interested to hear how you all find the experience of downloading the wav files and using the linked kit.
-b
-- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
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I look forward to messing with this when I've got a launching version of DB again. Are any of the other recent betas still online? I think I tried to download 1C7 but it wasn't there .... Otherwise I should probably go back and download the last standard release just to be carrying on with until the next beta comes along. Mike Carlyle wrote:
http://webpages.charter.net/mcarlyle/alive_basictracks.mp3 Note also that I pushed the tempo from 120 to 124 bpm when jumping into what will become the chorus part. This really adds some humanization in my opinion. When I first mapped out this song, I did it on real drums. When listening to tapes, I sped up quit a bit when it came to this same part.
Yeah, I tried that on one of my DB-based pieces ("Thunderbird"), though I only pushed the tempo to 122 on the choruses, I think. I also had a "speed up" and "slow down" measures of 121 at the beginnings and end of verse segments to keep that transition smoother. I think it sounds pretty cool. Also, my current version of "Afterburner" _doesn't_ use this kind of technique (since I assembled it in a real hurry!) and I think the feel of the drums suffers a bit for it. So it's a good trick :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/
Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
I look forward to messing with this when I've got a launching version of DB again. Are any of the other recent betas still online? I think I tried to download 1C7 but it wasn't there ....
Oops, nevermind: I see that 1C7 is there! I must have followed the wrong link previously .... Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/
On 25 8 2004 at 6:45 am -0400, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
I look forward to messing with this when I've got a launching version of DB again.
Then look no further than <http://www.doggiebox.com/distribution/ Doggiebox-1C10.tbz> :) This build features the new mono button, and also fixes the stuttering- on-first-playback issue Mike mentioned a few days ago. As for why this is packaged as a tbz (tar-bzip2) this time... after much poking and head-scratching, I hypothesize that something in the Finder's unzip mechanism doesn't like particular permissions that Xcode 1.5 seems to be setting on frameworks that are copied into the app bundle. Using stuffit expander seemed to work though, which also happens to launch by default for .tbz files, so I thought I'd give it a try. -b -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
Ben Kennedy wrote:
Then look no further than <http://www.doggiebox.com/distribution/ Doggiebox-1C10.tbz> :)
Well, it definitely launches :) I popped it open and felt so keen that after hour or so of crouching in front of the iBook and had roughed out a drum part for a song I had mostly written 10 years ago but had never been able to get down. All right! I'm totally going to have a go at checking the MMC functionality, not later than this weekend. That will be like a dream come true :) I definitely feel more like I'm getting the hang of how to use the section list and playlist better (though I haven't learned how to give sensible names to things in the playlist, since I rapidly find that I can get a very long playlist!). I almost feel I want the playlist groupable into collapseable/expandable uebersections, but this would start to make a very cluttered interface, perhaps! And I do still think a way to select, say, the snares from bars 3 and 4 of _this_ section to paste into bars 1 and 2 of _that_ section would be handy. And I have started to think my iBook's screen is very small, even in comparison to my old G3 Powerbook, and I want to zoom the interface so that I can now see these somewhat microscopic drum icons more clearly. But these are all minor thoughts, really! I continue to be blown away with how useful and flexible DB is. You'd have to spend a vast pile of cash to get something better, if something better even exists! Cheers, Carl ps - Thanks to Doggiebox making it possible for me to record plausible demos, I was able to teach the little band of "guys from the office" to play one of my songs, and we actually performed it live a few weeks ago. Doggiebox has transformed me into a rock star! ;) -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/
On 26 Aug 2004, at 11:38, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
All right! I'm totally going to have a go at checking the MMC functionality, not later than this weekend.
OK, I hooked the iBook back up to my deck, keyed it to start with my lovely new dbsong, and pressed played. Zilch, I'm afraid! Well, DB happily produced sound without any stuttering or drop-outs, but didn't show any sign of having sent a MMC play command to my deck (which would continue to sit there not recording until I pressed its own play button). I checked all the MIDI set-up and connections, and the all seem fine -- I hadn't changed anything from the last tests anyway, and then DB certainly sent the play command even if he he later lost audio. So I'm not sure what's happened there. Hopefully just some little hiccup that ate MMC output in this build, and it will work like a dream next go around :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/
On 24 8 2004 at 8:30 pm -0400, Mike Carlyle wrote:
Glad to help, Ben. Above is a link to a new song I'm working on that uses the new kit. It's just a mix of three basic tracks that I will build on with my singer/lyricist collaborator.
That's a great groove Mike (as usual). I particularly dig the bassline in the chorus. Are you playing all the Asus stuff open? sounds like you are moving up to the 4th fret on the D string (for the sus6) eh?
I really like the new "press" or "buzz" snare drum. It's very similar to the idea I first saw presented in the 70's Ludwig Kit. You can hear it as the very first drum sound in the song above. It also appears during some tasty fills that happen throughout the song.
Very nice. The hi hat stuff sounds very realistic too, thanks to different velocities and whatnot.
Note also that I pushed the tempo from 120 to 124 bpm when jumping into what will become the chorus part. This really adds some humanization in my opinion. When I first mapped out this song, I did it on real drums. When listening to tapes, I sped up quit a bit when it came to this same part.
I agree. On first reading (before I had listened to the mp3) I was expecting this might be kind of abrupt and false sounding, but quite the opposite. In fact the difference is so marginal I probably wouldn't have noticed had you not pointed it out. The chorus definitely has more of an "alright let's go" feel to it though which benefits from the pushed tempo, then settling back down a lil after...
I don't know if my notes were saved with the kit. I made some remarks about the 75 meg file size of the nskit7 drumset. I also noted that not all of the drums were needed. Only about 10 percent of the available drums went into my version of the DB kit. More would be overkill.
No notes were preserved at least that I saw -- the zip file only contained the .dbkit, and the "notes/comments/description" field in the drum kit editor was empty. If you want I will add some text to it -- in fact I think that would be a good idea, anybody playing with the kit would probably well be interested. -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
The A string kind of drones as an open string. You are correct about the sus6 fingering. When finished, this guitar track should be somewhat less prominent than it currently stands. There will be some electric rythyms and fills, not to mention vocals. I now have a "recipe" for recording basic tracks. I play the drums to four track tape in stereo, and apply some compression with an Alesis nano compressor. I record bass next, also compressing. The guitar track is next. This is mixed as a stereo track into Cubase, where I continue to build. The reason for this is that I was not satisfied at all with my computer recorded drum and bass tracks. I like the warmth and compression of tape, even though it's 1/4" cassette. Even when mixed into the Mac, it retains some fullness and definition that I can't otherwise achieve. In addition, I will probably let me singer friend record his tracks on his deck at home. I'll mix them and comp them together in Cubase after. I'll get a much more natural performance from him, I'll bet. On Aug 25, 2004, at 11:22 AM, Ben Kennedy wrote:
On 24 8 2004 at 8:30 pm -0400, Mike Carlyle wrote:
Glad to help, Ben. Above is a link to a new song I'm working on that uses the new kit. It's just a mix of three basic tracks that I will build on with my singer/lyricist collaborator.
That's a great groove Mike (as usual). I particularly dig the bassline in the chorus.
Are you playing all the Asus stuff open? sounds like you are moving up to the 4th fret on the D string (for the sus6) eh?
I really like the new "press" or "buzz" snare drum. It's very similar to the idea I first saw presented in the 70's Ludwig Kit. You can hear it as the very first drum sound in the song above. It also appears during some tasty fills that happen throughout the song.
Very nice. The hi hat stuff sounds very realistic too, thanks to different velocities and whatnot.
Note also that I pushed the tempo from 120 to 124 bpm when jumping into what will become the chorus part. This really adds some humanization in my opinion. When I first mapped out this song, I did it on real drums. When listening to tapes, I sped up quit a bit when it came to this same part.
I agree. On first reading (before I had listened to the mp3) I was expecting this might be kind of abrupt and false sounding, but quite the opposite. In fact the difference is so marginal I probably wouldn't have noticed had you not pointed it out. The chorus definitely has more of an "alright let's go" feel to it though which benefits from the pushed tempo, then settling back down a lil after...
I don't know if my notes were saved with the kit. I made some remarks about the 75 meg file size of the nskit7 drumset. I also noted that not all of the drums were needed. Only about 10 percent of the available drums went into my version of the DB kit. More would be overkill.
No notes were preserved at least that I saw -- the zip file only contained the .dbkit, and the "notes/comments/description" field in the drum kit editor was empty. If you want I will add some text to it -- in fact I think that would be a good idea, anybody playing with the kit would probably well be interested.
-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 25 Aug 2004, at 01:30, Mike Carlyle wrote:
I don't know if my notes were saved with the kit. I made some remarks about the 75 meg file size of the nskit7 drumset. I also noted that not all of the drums were needed. Only about 10 percent of the available drums went into my version of the DB kit. More would be overkill.
But of course I decided I wanted to play around and twiddle some other sounds in :) Which leads me to ask: what font did you use for the lettering on your icons? I was making some variants just using plain Arial in bold face, but they somehow just weren't as visible, and looking closely I can see that your icons' letters have slightly thicker horizontal strokes and slightly different glyph shapes. Also, what was the path to the samples your dbkit expected? I figured I would try to put all the samples I'm using in the same place, more or less (I have several partially assembled kits of various sorts, some of which reference the same samples, which is the other reason I can think of to link rather than embed, even just on one's one machine). I made a Samples directory in Applications/Doggiebox and threw the ns-kit download in there, so the full path to a give sample is something like Applications/Doggiebox/Samples/ns_kit7freeWAV/samples/<filename>.wav. Looking forward to playing with all this :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/
[ I realized I had responded to Carl alone, before ] The path will be hard for me to convey. It's got no discernible relationship to where my Doggiebox kits are stored. The reason for this is simply that, when I set out to build the kit, I had not considered sharing it (sorry). Because of this selfishness, the relationship of the sounds to the kit is somewhat convoluted. If I'm not mistaken, a user is prompted to locate the files anyway, so it doesn't really matter where they are. Ben, please correct me if this is not true. A conversion from linked to embedded samples should make the kit rather portable, but it will be about 50 megs after this conversion. The path is something like /Users/Users/michael/Downloads/ns_kit7freeWAV/samples/<filename>.wav. Doggiebox is somewhere else entirely. It's not in my Applications folder, but on a separate drive. I would not bother to try to recreate the path relationship between the two. The font I used was Myriad Bold, sized appropriately to the specific graphic. On Aug 25, 2004, at 5:39 PM, Carl Edlund Anderson wrote:
On 25 Aug 2004, at 01:30, Mike Carlyle wrote:
I don't know if my notes were saved with the kit. I made some remarks about the 75 meg file size of the nskit7 drumset. I also noted that not all of the drums were needed. Only about 10 percent of the available drums went into my version of the DB kit. More would be overkill.
But of course I decided I wanted to play around and twiddle some other sounds in :) Which leads me to ask: what font did you use for the lettering on your icons? I was making some variants just using plain Arial in bold face, but they somehow just weren't as visible, and looking closely I can see that your icons' letters have slightly thicker horizontal strokes and slightly different glyph shapes.
Also, what was the path to the samples your dbkit expected? I figured I would try to put all the samples I'm using in the same place, more or less (I have several partially assembled kits of various sorts, some of which reference the same samples, which is the other reason I can think of to link rather than embed, even just on one's one machine). I made a Samples directory in Applications/Doggiebox and threw the ns-kit download in there, so the full path to a give sample is something like Applications/Doggiebox/Samples/ns_kit7freeWAV/samples/<filename>.wav.
Looking forward to playing with all this :)
Cheers, Carl
-- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/
On 26 8 2004 at 6:44 pm -0400, Mike Carlyle wrote:
If I'm not mistaken, a user is prompted to locate the files anyway, so it doesn't really matter where they are. Ben, please correct me if this is not true.
You are correct. It should not matter where the samples are, at all. Upon opening a song that uses a linked kit, DB will attempt to ensure that all of the linked sounds are available. If any are missing or not immediately found, the user is prompted to locate them by choosing a folder in which they reside. What DB actually does here is scan the entire contents of this folder and all of its subfolders, looking for filenames which match the base part of the original filenames (e.g. "something.wav"). This way, even if your samples are organized amongst various subfolders, it will still work. Theoretically you could choose the root of your hard drive to begin the search, and though it might take awhile, the result should be the same (unless you have several files of the same name on your disk somewhere, in which case the first one will be used). Once all needed files have been found, DB then in fact silently re-writes the .dbkit file (if it resides on a writable disk/partition) with the updated paths, so that next time you open the kit they need not be searched for. -ben -- Ben Kennedy, chief magician zygoat creative technical services 613-228-3392 | 1-866-466-4628 http://www.zygoat.ca
participants (3)
-
Ben Kennedy -
Carl Edlund Anderson -
Mike Carlyle