Homebrewed Music

I little update as to why I haven't been posting much. I have purchased a domain name, and am in the process of getting things around to start a website. I will start posting here again when I get things in order with that. I may end up moving this blog to my own site...I am still undecided on that though.

I know I haven't had any comments on anything that I have posted yet, but I know there
have been people out there that have read these articles. I was wondering if there are any certain areas of digital music that people are hung up on. If there is any topic dealing with music on your mac then drop a line in the comments section of this post and let me know.

Music box is a free drum machine that is pretty straight forward to use. With it you can step sequence you drumming patterns and then export the files into a quicktime format. This app takes place of an old app that use to be for Mac OS 9 called virtual drummer. It had pretty much the same interface, and sound. Check it out and start making some beats for your original song creations. By the way it's in beta stage write now, and therefore free so grab it while you can.

Musicbox

Although windows users have enjoyed it for years. Macintosh users
will finally be able to get thier hands on a very cool musical tool
later this year. The just of the application is that it is a tool that is used to create tabliture for all instruments. From this tabliture the music can be played back. Also you can export to a midi file. Very useful for hard to find midi files if you can't find your favorite song for use in my last post

Guitar Pro is an application that has some very helpful tools for any musician. to sum it up I will quote their website.

" Guitar Pro is a multitrack tablature editor for guitar, banjo and bass. Besides writing scores, Guitar Pro is a complete tool for young and accomplished guitarists alike to progress, compose, or simply accompany themselves."

Users of this software post their guitar pro files on the internet here at mysongbook where anyone can download them and either use them to help them improve their playing or to try and recreate what ever favorite songs they like.

I will post a story about it when this application becomes available. If you would like to be notified by the company that it is out the sign up here.

I am going to show you how you can take a midi file and make a fairly believable backing track so that it can be used for a cover track.The software that is going to be used to this is Logic Express from Apple.For a quick reference I used a website called MidiDB to acquire a Ramones Midi. For this I selected beat on the brat.

The first thing to do is launch your app, and by default it brings up a song template. What you are going to want to do is go to the File menu and navigate to close. A dialog box will appear asking weather or not you want to save which in this case you do not.




Then navigate back to the File menu this time choosing Open, which will
give you yet another dialog box. In this dialog box there must be one step that is taken before finding your midi file for use in your project. In the pull down menu at the bottom of the dialog box select MIDI files. Then select your midi file and hit open. By doing this logic knows that it is a midi file and it will recognize
any tempo changes if any that are within the file.



When your midi is brought into Logic each individual instrument is split up into different tracks. Logic also assigns a name to each instrument on the left hand side.



If you look above those tracks you will notice a different color track. These tracks are a blue color. This is where we want our newly imported midi tracks to go. To accomplish this click with your mouse anywhere in the grey are of Logics window then drag over all of the green midi tracks. This will turn most of the tracks black. Drag the first track up to the track that says Inst 1, and all of the other selected tracks will follow. If you notice it goes from Inst 1-4 then repeats.
Well we don't want this so we need to change it from instrument 1-9 or however many depending how many tracks your midi file has.




Changing the number of the Inst track is fairly simple. Click on the first repeating number one and hold your mouse button down. This will reveal a "hidden" menu that gives you a number of options. Navigate through the following menu to get where you need to go. Audio->Audio Instrument->Inst 5. Repeat this until all of your midi tracks have different numbers.





Now the next step is to locate which instruments you want to sound "real", and then double click on it to reveal the track mixer window. I am for the most part a guitar player and/or a vocalist so naturally I would want to keep the bass and
drum tracks from this song, and then recreate everything else myself. I see that track Inst 9 correlates with the midi drum track when I first brought the file into Logic.
So I double click on Instr 9 and when the track mixer window appears Inst 9 is
already highlighted and waiting for you to tell it what to do.



What you want to do next is click and hold down on the word Inserts in the Instr 9 Track Window setting which will reveal a pull down menu allowing you to choose between Logic Express and Garageband instruments. I find that the garageband Rock drumkit is the best setting to use about 90% of the time. When you select this it will load all of the drum samples in the Rock kit library. If you hit the play button down at the bottom of your screen you will hear only the drums playing.The sound can be adjusted in the Track Mixer window by selecting different EQ settings, and audio plugins.



Next thing that I am going to do is select the bass for the song. First off I am going to give you a hint about midi bass. I don't know the reason why, but I will tell you the fix for it. When you bring a midi file in to Logic Express the bass always has to be transposed. When you select the bass track you will find a little box in Logics interface that says Transpose. It's default setting is set to zero.
The magic number for any cover track that I have ever done has always been +12. So first off select your Bass instrument just like you did your drums. Then with the bass track selected click on the zero and change it to 12.







Now you have all of your tracks done that you want (if you want only the drums and bass.) You can try out the different instruments if you want to see what they sound like. Since I am only using these two I will move on to tell you how to get your audio out of Logic. You will need to mute all of the other tracks or highlight
and delete them if you don't feel that you will need them in the future. Then you will need to highlight the tracksthat you want to export or Bounce is the term used in music. (To select more than one track after you have the other tracks muted. Click on the first track that isn't mutes then holding the shift button select the last track that is unmuted. This will highlight everything in between.) With the track highlighted go to the file menu and select Bounce.






A dialog box ill appear and in the Save As: box rename your file to whatever you choose. Select some settings for your audio file. You can choose to have you file exported into different formats on the left. I chose to use mp3 for this tutorial.
Check the button Write ID3 tags then click the button which it will give you the option to properly name your file, and author it. Finally if you wish a copy to be sent to iTunes check the box labeled Add to iTunes library.




The Final result will give you your desired instruments so that you can recreate your favorite songs.


Final Product


This is my first software tutorial that I have ever written, and I am pretty much self taught at the things that I just explained to you. Some of the more experienced readers out there might have some shortcut solutions, or whatever hints to share with other people. Please leave a comment about this tutorial and let me know if there is anyway that I can improve for the next time I attempt one.

Thank You!!!

I am planning to update this site. Mostly make it kind of a tutorial page.
Working out some ideas on how to do that. So sit tight and I should have something good
coming soon.

The equipment that I use to make music are listed below:

Squire Stratocaster
Shure Microphone
Tascam USB Audio/Midi Controller (more info)
iMac G5 (2ghz, 768mb ram, 20")
Logic Express (more info)
Garageband 2 (more info)

I am a guitarist and a vocalist so as of right now I am a little limited on the info that I can provide other than what I can provide through research oline about such things as drums or whatever instrument that you might play.

This blog is going to be used to try and keep updated on the current lifestyle of those who use the interent to get there inspiration out there to the world. No matter if it is someone who is just an amatuer or a professional musician the internet opens so many doors allowing people to get their musical gifts heard. I will try to teach as best as I can how to get things going if you are interested in doing it and don't know how. Also I will cover all kinds of music as metal is my first love I do like all kinds of music.
Any ideas or related links that might help the furthering in the educational value of this site is more than welcome. Hopefully someone out there can gain something by reading whatever might come from here.