Unit 6 problem solving
1st problem efficiency in rehearsals:
Communicate more in rehearsals on what to improve.
2nd problem Practicing at home:
Dedicate more time to practicing at home.
Anticipate technical issues
Power cut: check before hand that the venue has sufficient power,
mixing desk not working: bring a digital backup,
faulty mic: troubleshoot,
faulty cables: replace the cable,
loose connections: double check your connections,
incorrect patching: soundcheck before the gig,
faulty amps: replace the amp and get it fixed later,
faulty pedals: check power and inputs and outputs,
faulty inputs/outputs: replace the thing with the faulty input or output,
incorrect crossover: soundcheck before gig,
faulty monitors:replace the monitor,
feedback: turn everything off and then flatten everything out.
Rehearsal Log
Targets, Problems and solutions
1st week:
The Group target of this rehearsal was to learn the song structure of somebody to love and how many bars where in each verse chorus and ect.. We wrote down the song structure and Carrie helped with how many bars in each part since its written in 8/4.
My individual target was to learn the solo. I learnt the notes to the solo at home but didn’t get to the point were I could match the tempo of the song.
The only problem we had was that no one knew the chord progression so we couldn’t rehearse. We solved this issue by learning the chord progression at home.
2nd week:
The group target was to rehearse the first verse and the chorus. We learnt the first verse and chorus at home and rehearsed it together.
My target was to be able to constantly be able to play the solo a the right tempo. I practised at home and with the help of the lesson with Moe on Monday i managed to reach the consistent level i wanted.
This weeks rehearsals had very little problems.
3rd week:
The group target was to practice the intro of the song and the transitions between chorus and verse. We successfully rehearsed these parts and did some improvements in the smoothness of the transitions and the synchronicity of the beginning.
My target was to improve the timing in the solo but we didn’t get to that part so I practised on staying in-time with the rest.
4th week:
The group target was to work on the transition between the 1st chorus and the verse and the 2nd chorus and the bridge. We successfully rehearsed the 1st transition from the 1st chorus to the 2nd verse and the 2nd chorus and bridge.
My target was to tighten up the rhythm between the guitarist and bass which i did by focusing on the chord changes and amount of bars in each section.
5th week:
The group target was to work on the second half of the song. We successfully ran through the whole song but need to work on the timing at the end when the outro starts.
My target was to keep working on the solo especially the second half of the solo where it speeds up. I practised at home to complete my target.
6th week:
The group target was to work on the performance side of the performance. We did this by running through the song standing up without stopping.
My target was to play the solo standing up comfortably. I did this by rehearsing the solo standing up.
7th week:
The group target was to keep working on the performance side. We rehearsed through the song standing up and moved around the positioning of everyone.
My target was to keep working on the solo at home.
8th week:
I wasn’t at this rehearsal but was told they worked on the same thing as last week.
I played to the live version of somebody to love at home to have a final run through of the song.
How effective was the rehearsals and why?
The rehearsals were very effective, at the beginning the song felt too difficult to perform but after working on it for a couple weeks. The reason the rehearsals were effective was because the rehearsals were focused and we worked on the weak parts of the song and rehearsed the verses and choruses over and over again.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uz06-TSI-bGD48u9TnpS6rKcZGOgFLN9
Essay
This essay is about the technical issues that come with live performances, effective front of house and monitor mixes, planning live performances and how to communicate ideas with the sound engineer.
Planning Live performances
A lot goes into planning live performances and usually a artist or band has someone to do this for them like a manager. First to plan a live performance you need a venue, a setlist, a crew to set up the amps, drum kit and ect.. The musicians also need to rehearse together for the live performance.
Effective front of house and monitor mixes.
An effective front of house and monitor mix is important because the audience hear the band through the front of house and the band can only be as good as the front of house mix. A good monitor mix is also important because the band needs to be able to hear themselves. An Effective front of house mix is when every instrument can be heard clearly along with the vocals and no instrument is too loud blocking out the others. Also the sound engineer has to be careful with the high end frequencies in their mixes because if they are too loud for an extended amount of time it can damage your ears. An effective monitor mix is individual to the musician which means the sound engineer needs to talk to the musician about what they want in their monitor, for example the vocalist might want piano and drums whereas the guitarist might only want guitar.
How to communicate with sound engineers.
Before your performance or gig you should try and have a discussion with the sound engineer on the specific things that you want them to do, for example you might want him to play something through the front of house speakers at a specific moment. You should also discuss what you want in your monitors whether it is in ear or on the a speaker. usually you this would happen during soundcheck.
During the performance or gig if you want to communicate with the sound engineer use hand signals, if you can, like if you want more volume in your monitors point to the monitor and then point up to the sky.
Technical issues
When performing music live you are exposed to an array of technical issues like: Faulty Cables/Leads, Fault microphones, incorrect patching, loose connections faulty amps or pedals, faulty inputs/outputs, faulty monitors. Most of these issues can be fixed quite easily by either troubleshooting or bringing a spare like bringing spare cables. When we did our performance of Somebody to love by Queen I didn’t notice that the person that went on before me had switched off the amp so when I went to play my part there was no sound in the moment I fiddled around with the volume on the guitar before realizing it was the amp that was off and so I turned it back on and continued with the band. So when you have a technical issue live silently try to find a solution and if you don’t than wait of the song to end to get someone to fix it.
In conclusion Live music takes a lot of planning, preparation and requires effective communication with the sound engineer for a good performance and if you get technical issues fix it quick and quietly.
Unit 6 Synthesis and Sampling
Synth track
Patches:
How the track was made.
I used the ES2 synth for all eight patches.
I started with the snare drum which I made using only the white noise wave form (all frequencies at the same amplitude) and by removing the higher harmonics using the low pass cutoff filter on the ES2 and shaping the sound with the envelope generator by adjusting the control to have no attack, a little bit of decay, no sustain and no release so that It emulates the sound of someone hitting a snare drum. I also added some reverb to make the snare take more space in the track.
I then worked on the kick drum which I made using two wave forms, the sine wave and white noise at fifty percent each. I adjusted the low pass cutoff filter so that none of the high frequencies are heard and used the ressonance filter to accentuate the highest frequency that the low pass cutoff filter is letting through. After adjusting the filter and the resonance and adding some drive I shaped the sound using the envelope generator. In the envelope generator I removed all attack, adjusted the decay to just below half way, removed all sustain and left a little bit of release.
After the kick drum was finished I worked on the Hi-Hat using the white noise wave form and turned the low pass cutoff filter all the way up and resonance all the way up. then I went into the Channel EQ in logic to add a high pass filter to get rid of the low frequencies because a hi-hat doesn’t have low frequencies. Then I used the envelope generator to shape the sound. I put attack, sustain and release all the way down and left the decay at 1/4 length.
For the Bass sound I used two wave forms, sine wave and triangle wave. I turned up the lowpass cutoff filter so that It doesn’t filter anything, turned the resonance up 3/4 of the way up and put the drive at half way to boost the signal. After that I moved to the envelope generator and set the sustain to 0, decay to just below 1/2, sustain to 1/2 and release to the same level as decay.
For the Pad sound I used 2 triangle waves and a square wave to get a rich sound. I set the lowpass cutoff filter at just below half, did the same with resonance and added no drive. In the envelope generator i removed the attack to nearly nothing so that there was a little swell of volume, decay at 1/4 length, sustain at max and release at just below half so that the the chords don’t mix into each other.
For the Lead sound I used three wave forms sawtooth, ring and square wave to get a a smooth lead sound. I set the low pass cutoff filter to just below half, the resonance to half and drive to 1/6. In the envelope generator I turned down the attack the whole way, Decay at just below half, sustain to 3/4 and release to a little bit.
For the bubbly sound I used three waves the square wave twice and Fm wave. I blended the two cutoff filters and resonance to half way so that more than one frequency is resonated. In the envelope generator I put the attack to max, decay to 1/4, sustain to above half and release to half. The envelope is set like this so that it slowly rises in volume and the slowly decreases in volume after it peaks, this make it sound like a wave.
For the strings sound I used three waves triangle waves, square waves and sine wave. I blended the two cutoff filters and resonance again. I also added a bit of drive. After that in the envelope generator I put the attack to half way, decay to a bit above half way, sustain to half way and release to just below half.
Sampling
How the track was made
I made this track using five samples. I sampled the drums from Skull snaps its a new day, the piano i sampled from Aretha Franklin and the vocals from Toni Braxton You’re makin’ me high.
To get a one bar loop of the drums i counted out the bar from the kick drum and then roughly cut at the end of the bar. I then cut it more precisely so that it loops perfectly. Then i adjusted the tempo so that it would fit in the bar on logic, which was 95.4 bpm. After this i put the edited audio file in the EXS24 (logic’s sampler) so that i could adjust the pitch and rhythm. I used the EXS24 to program in the pattern for the drums. I also used the channel EQ to filter out unwanted high frequencies and boost the rest.
After finishing the drums i worked on the piano loop. I used the same process to find the tempo of the audio file, which was 103.6 bpm. After finding the tempo of the track i chopped up the chords individually, so that i could rearrange it, to put in to the EXS24 to program the new arrangement of the chords.
With the instruments all done i added some vocal samples so that the track didn’t sound too boring. I listened to the first verse and chorus and chopped up three parts and put them into the EXS24 and pitched them up. I also added an echo on the first vocal sample.
Jeremy's Music Blog 