The evolution of home recording

Well, usually it is Matt who talks tech, or Sam or Ben who talks music..

But I am having such a blast discovering the many uses for soundfonts.

Basically, a soundfont is a collection of sounds, either recorded or synthesized, placed into a font – like a letter font for word processing. The difference here is that the keyboard used is a musical one.. Ostensibly, what this means is that a guy can record his piano – so that when you hit middle C your computer plays the sound of his piano hitting middle C, make it as detailed as he wants.

It took me a while to get the hang of this.. but I’ve found real live sounding drum recordings, perfect pianos.. and other great stuff.. and a lot of it is free homemade stuff by music enthusiasts. It is going, I think, to revolutionize the way I do music.

Well, usually it is Matt who talks tech, or Sam or Ben who talks music..

But I am having such a blast discovering the many uses for soundfonts.

Basically, a soundfont is a collection of sounds, either recorded or synthesized, placed into a font – like a letter font for word processing. The difference here is that the keyboard used is a musical one.. Ostensibly, what this means is that a guy can record his piano – so that when you hit middle C your computer plays the sound of his piano hitting middle C, make it as detailed as he wants.

It took me a while to get the hang of this.. but I’ve found real live sounding drum recordings, perfect pianos.. and other great stuff.. and a lot of it is free homemade stuff by music enthusiasts. It is going, I think, to revolutionize the way I do music.

I remember Sam’s (I think) M1, or the HS’s Ensoniq SQ80, and both of those are pretty easy to find, every sound.. for free. Its pretty darned cool.

I do think its funny how it took this long, with this much technology for me to finally be able to make music that doesn’t sound like I’m using a lot of technology.

Ironic, dontcha think?

5 thoughts on “The evolution of home recording”

  1. Skillz

    Think you’ve got skills working with the latest and greatest sound recording utilities?

    I think the guy who did this bit has everyone beat. Who has that kind of time — or interest?

    But I watched the whole thing from beginning to end. A bit like how I can’t help slowing down to rubberneck when I pass a car wreck.

    —
    Matthew P. Barnson

    1. Setup

      Justin and I use quite similar setups so that we can transfer files back and forth to one another for comment and refinement. Here’s mine:

      • Cakewalk Sonar 3.1.1
      • Pentium-III/933MHz
      • 512 MB RAM
      • 80 GB hard drive
      • Two mirrored 120GB hard drives for musical data (even streaming 40+ tracks, I’m never out of disk speed — my CPU is bogged down by that point)
      • SoundBlaster Live! 5.1 sound card using Creative’s latest drivers (it’s not low-latency, but I can work around it)
      • The same freaking mic I had in high school, on the same boom stand
      • A Phonics 4-channel mixer w/phantom power (really, really quiet little mixer, which is nice)
      • Charvel 6-string electric guitar with active electronics (burns through the 9-volt batteries, but it has a very, very nice tone)
      • Assorted pedals and PC-based guitar effects
      • A now-retired “Mako”-brand electric guitar in storage, that plays out-of-tune on the high strings. But it was the one I had in high school, and the screws are even rusted which reminds me of the time we did that dumb shoe-store photo shoot in the rain in somebody’s garage. They didn’t need real musicians; they just needed equipment, and we offered to do it really cheap.
      • The same 6-string green acoustic I had in high school; it plays well, has even tone, and works well
      • An old Dean Markley pickup for my acoustic six-string when I need that sound; it’s really noisy, though, so I avoid using it
      • My old 60-watt amp for my guitar when I want a miked sound
      • Boatloads of plugins, sample libraries, and soundfonts for Sonar; I’ve spent way, way, way more on plugins than I ever did on Sonar in the first place.
      • Cool Edit 2000; it has the best noise-reduction plugin I’ve ever used, and in my noisy basement, yanking that fan noise from my computer out of a vocal track is important, and luckily doesn’t interfere too much with the quality of the vocal. The noise reduction doesn’t work so well on sounds that have a harmonic component close to the frequency of my fans (female voices).
      • A Yamaha CVP-59S weighted 88-key keyboard. Other than the lack of a mod wheel, pitch bend, and “aftertouch”, it works well as a MIDI controller. I do most of my mod-wheel and pitch-bend work in post-processing anyway, because I’ve never been very good at one-handed fingering while doing bends and mods. I don’t use many of its sounds nowadays, though, unless I’m going for a quaint sound.

      Things I want to buy, in order of priority:

      1. A good condenser microphone. My current mic has problems with high-end response, and has just been really used and abused. It’s decent for rock & roll work, but anything where I want clear highs, it’s pretty useless.
      2. A new computer: preferably, dual-processor, at at least 2GHz. And a gigabyte or more of RAM. I’ll probably use my same hard drives, so it can be a barebones machine, but I’m getting into some hefty 200+MByte sample sets, and running out of memory sucks.
      3. A 4-channel, or 6-channel, sound card, that can do 96KHz@24-bit. 48KHz@16-bit is OK for today’s CD work, but I see DVD music coming on in a big way over the next five years, and it’s about time to go to the new standard. 96KHz@24 seems to get rid of most the problems people with sensitive ears perceive in digital music; it’s very warm, full, without the “cold” digital feel some people can still hear at 44.1KHz.
      4. A drumset, and a MIDI drumset. Practice on the live ones, and because I doubt I’ll ever be able to do a good drum mic setup in my basement, record on the MIDI kit. I’m talking a full MIDI kit, with all the pads in the right places, throne , etc. They are about $600-$800, but I may be able to get a deal on on used.
      5. A real bass guitar
      6. A dedicated, probably 40-key, MIDI controller. Pitch bend, mod wheel, aftertouch, no samples necessary
      7. A Mackie midi-scriptable mixer

      Although I’ve often lusted over various plugins, at this point I really have enough to put out good-sounding stuff. From this point on, it’s just a matter of new goodies for different effects, and since Sonar 3.1 includes the VST adapter, I can use any of the thousands and thousands of VST plugins now (instead of just being limited to DXi, like I was before).

      Sonar has a pretty darn good notation editor now, too. Far more functional than old ones; I’m using it to notate a symphony orchestra, with all the parts in the right clefs. It does a decent job, though I haven’t figured out how to do a tenor clef yet.

      —
      Matthew P. Barnson

      1. Setup

        -Sonar 2 -2.7 Ghz Celeron -40 GB -256 MB (will upgrade soon) -Soundblaster Awe 64 gold -Alesis QS6 keyboard (pretty much just for MIDI input now) -40 dollar Radio shack mic (need to upgrade it one of these days) -Mic stand with boom -Fender Stratocaster Guitar -Fender Amp -Yamaha 6-String Acoustic guitar -Alesis Nanocompressor -Cool Edit 2000 -Plugins for Cooledit – Ozone, Autotune -Still looking for good free soundfonts. Found a good piano and Drumset. -A noisy basement (thank God for cool edit)

        What I want to buy: 1. Drumkit from Hell Soundfonts(Matt says it rules, and I believe him) 2. Memory upgrade to 1 gb 3. A better mic. I probably wont ever spend the dough for a condensor mic, seeing as how I record in a basement. If I ever create a good soundbooth.. maybe then. 4. Drumset, second soundcard (for 4 track simultaneous recording), mixer, ability to play drums 5. 12 string acoustic 6. Real bass guitar 7. 88 key keyboard

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