Jeff Hendricks (.net)

I’ve been tossing around the idea of looping with hardware for quite a while, basically since I first heard of it a few months ago. It would allow me to perform music with much more flexibility than just me playing a single instrument, and it is a lot of fun, too. I am now at the point where I have to decide what kind of setup I want to use, and work on getting it functional in my setup.

If you’re interested in this kind of thing, there’s three routes you can go: a dedicated looping pedal, an analog tape delay (or equivalent), or a computer with software. Here’s a brief look at the three, and why I chose the last one.

Looper Pedals

These would include pedals by Digitech, Boss, Line6, and a few others. Each company makes a few different models, each with more buttons/features than the last. The two most popular are the Boss RC-20 & RC-50, and the Digitech JamMan, both of which come in different sizes and with different features.

There’s single-sized pedals, double-sized, and huge-sized ones. These pedals start at around $180 for the singles, and up to $400 or more for the full-featured ones. Now, I understand the attraction of a portable self-contained unit, especially the Digitech ones that have SD flash card slots, which let you pre-load it with background loops. However, the single pedals only have the most basic functions, and having only one footswitch really limits what you can do with it. You can get an add-on switch for most of the smaller ones, which helps, but you’re still looking at $300 to start off with.

Delays

There’s also the way to overdub, the way the old-school guys did it, with a looping tape recorder and moveable record/play heads. The original units cost a large fortune, but you can get smaller “tape simulation” pedals that work almost exactly the same way. Some of these include the Danelectro Reel-Echo, the Line 6 DL-4 and a few other units of note.

PC Software Looping

However, I have access to lots of old computer parts, and there is plenty of free looping software. I can use a setup like this, but you need some way to control it live, of course, preferably with a footswitch. I happen to have a MIDI foot controller, but it’s old, and doesn’t recognize double-steps very well at all. I also have a small MIDI keyboard, but that would be hard to use with my feet.

So my next course of action would be to build a foot pedal. Yes, it’s possible to do this, it just requires some electronics know-how and a little persistance. However, the cost is significant, as the controller “brain” boards are quite expensive. You can get keyboard controller “brain” boards for fairly cheap, though, most notably for arcade cabinet emulators! This would give me almost the same functionality as a MIDI pedal, but at a much cheaper price. So I placed an order with Ultimarc for an iPac-2 controller, and ordered some arcade buttons from Sparkfun.com to complete the hardware list.

The software I’m using is called Sooper Looper and runs on Linux and OSX. It’s free, and has tons of features based on the legendary Echoplex Digital Pro looping unit.

My personal looping setup is now just about complete. I’ll post up some shots of it in action soon!

I’ve recently run across a type of musical performance called “Live Looping” which involves a performer on stage using a delay device to layer sounds until they have an entire song. After watching some of these musicians, I am extremely impressed, and very much inspired to try it myself. I will have a detailed video on how I set my rig up later on, but for now, I’ll just say that it is incredibly fun, and perfect for musicians with Attention Deficit Disorder. Why? Because you not only get to perform the whole song, but you get to do it all yourself, jumping from instrument to instrument, and part to part, while keeping track of everything you’ve done already.

I’ve got two guitar amps, a digital effects unit, a MIDI keyboard controller, a computer, and a MIDI footpedal controller. Oh yeah, and a couple of guitars!

I know it’s kind of a tease to just describe it without some sort of photo or video, so here’s something to tide you over! This guy is one of the best I’ve seen at this kind of music. Yes, this is what I am going to learn how to do.

First, let me begin by saying I am neither a professional recording engineer, nor a full-time musician anymore (though I majored in music performance in college). I have little to no experience with the other major DAW offerings, but I will make note of similar features when I see them. I could go into all kinds of detail about the program’s history, etc. but you guys just want to know how it works and what it has to offer, so I’ll try my best to stick to the practical. If you want a thorough walk-through of the whole program’s features, you can go to http://en.flossmanuals.net/Ardour/ for the whole manual.

Ardour runs on top of a low-latency audio server called JACK. It’s very flexible, networkable, and can record in 24-bit 96Khz rates down to the lowest latency your interface will support under ideal conditions. Jack not only transports audio, but can act as a master timeclock to interface with all the other programs you can run that are JACK-aware, such as loopers, drum sequencers, MIDI recorders, etc.

Hardware support isn’t really anything to do with Ardour, but a lot of people won’t switch to Linux (or OSX) because of lack of hardware support. Needless to say, anything that is compatible with ALSA and/or FFADO drivers will work with JACK, and therefore work with Ardour. On Macs, anything supported by CoreAudio should work as well. Before you can run Ardour, you have to set up your Jack server. There are plenty of how-to’s out there, and that’s not really in the scope of this review.

Here’s a shot of Jack’s config screen:

Once the main window is open, you’ll see the main track editor window. You have your (dockable) transport controls, action buttons, menus, timeline, clock, and off the the right is the playlist/regions area. At the top right you’ll see your system’s resources. Press Alt-M and it toggles the Mixer window, which is handy if you don’t have a multiscreen setup.

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Psychoacoustics is the study of how humans perceive sounds. Since I’ve been working on setting up a low-to-no-cost music production workstation, I’ve run into the limitation of how to listen to the music I’m creating. What happens if you mix the music to where it sounds good on junky speakers? When you play it on nice speakers, it sounds junky again.

Pro studios use a type of speakers called Monitors to listen to music. They are sonically flat- they play all frequencies at exactly the same level (or as close to it as possible) so that you can hear when a part of the music sticks out. It lets you hear when things are wrong, and allows you to fix them.

The problem we run into is that to use monitors, you also should “treat” the room acoustically… putting in baffles, bass traps, acoustic tiles, etc. to reduce the amount of “coloring” the room does. All of this is to create a perfectly accurate reproduction of what you’re recording.

Most of us, however, have no way of having a room dedicated to just this. Our wives will look at us funny if we start hanging foam panels in the bedroom. Not only that, but quality monitors and room treatment are rather expensive for a frugal guy like me. We’re talking in the thousands of dollars… I’m thinking more in the hundreds, if that much.

So how do we solve this dilemma? “Ah, why not use headphones?” you ask, and rightfully so. But that opens up a whole different problem. Headphones don’t reproduce sound perfectly, either. However, it removes the issue of having an untreated room, so that’s something. But why can’t you use them?

Well, that goes back to Psychoacoustics. When you listen to stereo music on headphones, it sounds like the band is inside your head. This is because when you listen to speakers, the two signals reach your ears at different times, and you hear a little bit of the right channel in your left ear, and vice versa. You also get some echo off the walls, all of which your brain interprets as hearing something “in front” of you. With headphones, there’s no echo, no delay, and no crossing between ears… left and right are 100% separated. It makes for cool effects, but it doesn’t reproduce the music the way you naturally hear it live.

Being the geek I am, I knew there was a solution to this. After some research, I discovered that hi-fi headphones amplifiers include a feature called “crossfeed” which does exactly what it sounds like: feeds a little of each signal to the other side, with some delay, to make it sound like you’re listening to speakers in a room. Well, I don’t have great headphones, nor can I afford a $400 amp with this feature. And of course, after some more searching, I found the answer: a Stereo to Binaural Simulator!

What this little program does is simulate the crossfeed and echo of listening to speakers in a room. It allows you to use good quality headphones without sacrificing what the music actually sounds like.

How well does it work? Well, it definitely does what it’s supposed to, but I’m sure I’ll need a much better set of headphones before I realize the true potential of a program like this. Still, even if I spend $200 on a set of Grado SR80i cans, it’s cheaper and less space-intensive than acoustically treating an entire room and a good set of monitor speakers. It’s not ideal, but hey, we don’t live in an ideal world. Those of you who are heavy headphone listeners, try it out and tell me what you think.

No, I haven’t lost my mind. But like all good geeks, I’m interested in learning more about how to use what’s already available. Instead of doling out thousands of dollars, I can use some time and effort and get similar results with no cash whatsoever!

And no, you can’t build a true DAW for nothing, unless you’re like me, and have people give you old computers for parts. If you go this route, you will likely still have to buy at least a sound card and a microphone, but you get the idea. I’m going to show you how to set up the software to turn a plain computer into a Digital Audio Workstation. For nothing.

The current “studio” setup:

First, the easiest way to get most of what you need is to install Ubuntu Studio on that old second-hand computer. I’m going to assume it’s an older computer, with less than 4GB of RAM. Unless you have a newer computer with more than 4GB of RAM, just use the 32-bit version of Ubuntu Studio. You’re going to want to download Ubuntu Studio version 9.04, because the newer version of Ubuntu changes a lot of things it shouldn’t have, which causes problems. There are also known issues with 9.10 and M-Audio Delta sound cards (which are a fantastic value for a home studio), so I’d recommend sticking with 9.04.

I’ll post up a few more articles with more info on how to set up something like this in your home!!

If you haven’t heard of autotune, I can bet you’ve most certainly head it used on the radio… possibly without even realizing it. Basically, it allows studio producers to correct singers who sing slightly off-key. If you crank the knobs all the way, you get a robot-like sound, much like the rapper “T-Pain”. This is becoming a common effect in pop music, and it’s kinda fun to listen to (but not for an entire song, of course).

The good side is that you can make a recording really sound nice, and can make every note pitch-perfect in tune. There are even singers who use it in live performances (such as Faith Hill and Tim McGraw) to make sure they sound good. However, not everybody is okay with this. There are now performers who are openly against the Autotune craze, and think it damages people’s expectations of what performers can do, and what a good performer should be.

Here’s an excellent article on the subject, written by Michael McCall. It’s based on country singers in Nashville, but the topics are just as easily applicable to modern pop music, too. I’ll also note that this article was written six years ago… this phenomenon is nothing new. However, viewed as a gimmick, you can use the Autotune phase vocoder to do some really funny stuff, and to great effect on techno and rock recordings (within limits).

So the question is: would you rather listen to perfect recordings, or more passionate but slightly imperfect recordings? Do you think Faith Hill would have become a star if her recordings and live performances were not “fixed?” Do you think Hollywood is having a hard time finding really good performers who are also attractive (which seems to be a must nowdays)?

Today is one of those days when I don’t feel like writing about anything important, anything serious, or anything cool. It’s just the day before Friday. I did go to our local community concert band tonight, I haven’t played with them in years. Some were old friends I haven’t seen in fifteen years or more, who were teaching music when I was a kid. Others were young enough to be my kids.

It always makes me smile when I see cross-generational interaction on this kind of level. We had guys in their 60′s playing alongside junior high schoolers. And they were all there for one reason: making music.

This is the kind of thing that just makes me happy. Instead of just having fun playing music in bars for money, this is a chance for me to share my 25 years of music experience with people who are just learning the craft. Plus there were some of my Sinfonia brothers there, it is always a pleasure to hang out with fellow men of music.

If we aren’t impacting people around us, and teaching the next generation, then what good are we doing? I don’t expect a kid to learn everything they’ll ever need to know about music from only 3 band directors… there’s so much more out there to learn, if they would care to look. Public school systems aren’t geared to teach children about music more than it takes to play at football games and the occasional Christmas concert. Where will they learn about music’s life-changing power?

It starts with us.

So, okay, I did come up with a decent post after all!

Picked up my old sax from the repair shop today… sounds great!

This beauty is an all-original 1923 Conn tenor sax. No kidding!

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

So what do you do when you need a break from destroying… er, I mean building things?

Dance!