"Indoor Wiggin" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
Back over to Windows 7 for some software synthesizer shenanigans. At the very end a hardware synth plays some of the same MIDI.
One objective was to try out the E-Mu Orbit 9090 soundfont kit in Kontakt and body it up with some effects. Also, Native Instruments did software updates and I wanted to see what was new.
"Soundfonts" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
This was done with Linux Ardour. Am having some issues with probably needing a faster processor to run this software, so I am sticking to relatively small "soundfont" files in Fluidsynth, a plugin sample player. The method of this track was to write a few bars of beats, record them, then use the MIDI with the beats to play organs and other pitched instruments, then make changes to the melodies of those, then use the MIDI to play new beats, etc. Eventually chunks of 2- and 4-bar audio begin to accumulate on four tracks of the timeline, which can be arranged into a tune. A final mix was done in Windows Cubase, where some reverb and compression was added.
"Half-Calf" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
"Two Themes" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
Am sort of using Linux Ardour, with its plugins, as a loop generator, and then assembling the loops into songs in Windows Cubase. (Cubase is still faster and more reliable for me as a final editor.)
I am using Ardour's MIDI out to trigger a (hardware) modular synth, and then recording the output back into Ardour and combining it with softsynths. One of the softsynths is Calf Plugins' Fluidsynth, which plays "soundfont" samples. I found a collection of soundfont files based on the E-Mu Orbit 9090 synth module, from the '90s, which is where the rave nostalgia in "Half-Calf" is coming from.
"No Windows" [mp3 removed -- please listen on Bandcamp]
My first track produced on my PC running the Linux Mint OS. Ardour is the software used -- a DAW (digital audio workstation) that handles similarly to Cubase.
The sound sources are
--the Moog Concertmate keyboard, played live and recorded into Ardour
--some found old school synth beats
--Doepfer modular mini-synth, triggered by MIDI from Ardour and recorded simultaneously into the DAW
--Calf's Monosynth, a softsynth plugin for Ardour that can be played using an Ardour MIDI track and exported as audio
--"Reasonable," a default softsynth for Ardour MIDI tracks
For a soundcard I used Native Instruments' Komplete Audio 6 (hat tip Joel for suggesting this). The ALSA driver in the Linux "kernel" recognizes this class-compliant USB device; audio ins, outs and MIDI are ported to/from it using the JACK streaming & connection program. This took a few days of reading forums to set up (although Ardour installs JACK automatically, I had to add the NI hardware in a separate Jack control called QJACKCTL, and instructions on how to do this varied).
Am very happy to be able to make music pretty similar to what I've been doing on Windows and have a final mixdown without (unintentional) clicks or glitches.
MAJOR NEGATIVE: At present the only way I can run Ardour is with an unacceptable amount of latency (about a fifth of a second). When I reduce the sample buffer I get pops and the dreaded "XRUNS" -- dropouts in the audio. The next task is to try to optimize the PC (which has a fast-enough processor and lots of RAM) without interfering with other things I use the computer for. Ardour also has a tendency to crackle when moving windows and clicking graphics inside the interface while audio is playing. This is annoying but doesn't affect the final output.
