Musician’s Notebook

Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music has some updates on Native Instruments and MOTU compatibility with Leopard. He points out that it’s the first OS X upgrade without real benefits to musicians. It seems to be causing more problems with audio software compatibility than previous releases. As I posted yesterday, Logic Pro won’t open if you’ve got Melodyne ReWire enabled. Native Instruments “kind of” works, but not at all if you need to use the installers, and MOTU is still testing their stuff.

Er… wrong Leopard…

I’ve gone whole hog and upgraded both my Macs to Leopard. Aside from Logic failing to run while the Melodyne ReWire files were still lying around, it’s gone smoothly on my music-making machine. My iBook, on the other hand, has had to suffer a bit more with quite a few repeat visits to the install disc. Mind you, one of these times was thanks to my own stupidity in trying to get a Tiger-tested version of XAMPP to run on Leopard.

How long before it’s safe to upgrade? That really depends on the third-party companies, as Apple’s done their bit to get audio software up to grade. If you can’t live without MOTU, Native Instruments, or Melodyne integration with Logic, then you might want to hold off for one-to-two months.

Melodyne have not published any news regarding Leopard compatibility on their website, but MOTU and NI are both posting ongoing updates on their websites as they get these issues sorted.

Has anything in your audio rig broken after an upgrade to Leopard? Have you noticed anything working after a clean install that didn’t work after a standard upgrade install? Let us know in the comments - and if you have any fixes for the problems, please do share!

Almost two days after installing Leopard, I’ve finally decided to stop fiddling and get back to work recording a tuneback. But much to my surprise, when trying to open Logic Pro 8, the program spends a few minutes trying to load before crashing and closing. A look at the error report reveals something to do with a file controlling Melodyne’s ReWire options.

Logic Pro will not work under Leopard if Melodyne’s ReWire files are installed.

In order to get Logic working again, navigate to the following directory:

/Library/Application Support/Propellerhead Software/ReWire

Once in the ReWire app support folder, you’ll see a bunch of files (the number of these will vary depending on how many ReWire apps you use). Two of these will be Melodyne files; simply trash them and empty the bin. For one of those files, you will be asked for the admin password on your computer. Don’t be alarmed by this - if you want to get back into Logic, you’ll need to trash both files.

Once the trash is emptied, try starting Logic again. It’ll most likely check all your Audio Units, and then you’re up and away again.

I’m not sure if this will be a problem with Logic Express or earlier versions of Logic Pro. The problem does lie with Melodyne, not ReWire or Logic, and hopefully we’ll see an update from Celemony soon so that we can continue using Melodyne with ReWire (I dread using it stand-alone!).

This issue with Logic also brings up the issue of Apple’s release tactics regarding Leopard. Despite the fact that a retail version of Leopard leaked online a few days before its release, Apple decided that developers would get their hands on the final copy of Leopard at the same time as the public. Developers had access to betas, but smart developers will only begin altering popular applications on the final release, because anything can change. If Apple had been more sensible about releasing Leopard to developers in advance, would we have this problem?

From a marketing stance, building up such a huge buzz by locking everything down so tightly can be effective. But the same buzz can be achieved by deliberately leaking a product in a strategic way. Many bands have done this over the years to build up anticipation for second, third, fourth (and so on) albums. If a huge marketing buzz can be built without sacrificing third-party application compatibility, why not do it that way?

I’ll also be looking at how MainStage operates under Leopard soon.

It takes a talented and experienced musician to write hit-quality songs and coordinate a band and it’s repertoire, but everybody has to start learning somewhere. In the digital age, there are many ways to learn to make music with little to no skill and non-musicians can play with these tools either just for fun, or as one of the first steps to building a sense of rhythm and melody, and especially arrangement. Every Mac owner gets a copy of Garageband for free, and there are other similar programs like Ardour and Audacity that PC and Linux users can get there hands on for free as well. It’s a bit unusual to start learning music like this, but it makes it easier to pick up an instrument when you already have a sense of rhythm, melody and arrangement.

FYI: I believe there are serious problems in the music industry and popular music culture at this point in history and that our airwaves are overrun by people who just don’t know a damn thing about music. I am not condoning that with this article. This article is for those who wish to learn and cannot yet begin learning an instrument.

1. Melodyne

Melodyne is a helpful program for musicians and non-musicians alike. It’s billed as a tool that allows you to edit soundwaves with a piano roll interface. What this means for non-musicians is that if you have a melody in your head, you can sing it to Melodyne to determine which notes it uses. These melodies can be exported as MIDI files for manipulation as virtual instruments; so, if you have a bass line, flute melody or guitar riff in your head, record it vocally and fiddle with the MIDI in Garageband (or any other consumer level audio program) until it sounds like a melody for the instrument you have in mind.

2. Drum loops

Drums can be confusing for many people, including musicians who write songs who are not primarily drummers. So it’s doubly difficult for a non-musician to work them out with a drum machine such as Reason’s ReDrum. Thankfully, there are plenty of websites out there that offer free, and premium paid, drum loops. Check out ccMixter as your first stop.

3. A good rhyming dictionary

If you haven’t written a great deal of songs, nor have you had experience with poetry in the past, it might be difficult to grasp the mysterious, intertwined elements of rhythm and rhyme in the lyrics to your home-made music. A good rhyming dictionary such as Rhymezone will help you get started while you learn to think in terms of the sounds words make, as well as their various meanings and connotations.

4. A blog or frequently updated website

Whether you get some hosting with the affordable GoDaddy internet hosting company and install WordPress there, or use the free WordPress.com blog hosting service, you can release your new-found love for amateur masterpieces on a blog and have those tunes heard. Sure, they may not be the next chart hits, but what’s the point of a songwriting hobby if nobody ever hears the stuff?

5. A digital audio input

Once you’ve started getting into the hobby a bit more and have perhaps brought home a MIDI keyboard, a bass or a guitar, it’s worth purchasing one of the more affordable digital audio inputs so that your sound quality isn’t as terrible as the recordings you get from the computer’s default analogue inputs. Start out with something cheap like the FastTrack USB which can handle microphones, guitars and various other live instruments. If you’ve bought a MIDI-capable instrument such as a keyboard, you may have to pay a few more dollars to get something that does audio and MIDI.

With the above tools, I’ve seen a completely untrained non-musician make a song that didn’t sound half bad. You won’t be making masterpieces, but you’ll be having fun and getting a sense for songwriting and arrangement in the progress. Keep up some music lessons, either from a teacher or from books alone like I did, and given time those strange jingles of yours may just become the hit songs for the remainder of this century. Just remember when you’re using your voice to hit Melodyne with your next bass line: warm up first so you don’t screw it up before you begin!

Disclaimer: I do not have any financial or promotional connections with any of the services I have suggested above. I’m simply attaching to these suggestions the software and services that I use in my own songwriting and recording work with my band.

It seems that every time it becomes a little more obvious that digital music downloads are pushing methods of physical distribution out of the picture, the music industry comes up with yet another ridiculous, wallet-raping scheme to get you to hand over money for something physical. The ethics of this alone are obvious: even if you are still a climate change sceptic, there’s no denying that selling factory-line physical products is wasteful when there are digital alternatives that are just as good (if not better).

After a four year gap, Matchbox Twenty is one of the first to support the latest record industry scam: flash drive records. For $10, you get the equivalent of a CD single plus a bit of extra content - kind of like the special features on a DVD, which of course, you’ll never look at - even though you swear you’ll get there one day.

If you thought $10 for a single was bad, Matchbox Twenty’s Exile On Mainstream goes for $35, and you can only buy it from Best Buy. Ouch. I’d buy an album on USB for US$35, but only if it had an album of high quality, lossless recordings (high quality, of course, in terms of the sound itself and the music itself) and a few film clips or good live footage.

I don’t know exactly what’s on Matchbox Twenty’s flash drive, but knowing the mainstream music industry, probably nothing worth dishing out US$35 for. A stack of MP3s and a film clip, I’m guessing - or am I being too cynical? Matchbox would do well to take advice from their forefathers in this matter.

To the RIAA, good luck with the latest scam.

Led Zeppelin will offer downloads of their music from all major online music retailers as of November, around the same time as their reunion gig in London.
Led Zeppelin is one of the last rock giants to allow their downloads to be acquired digitally, one of the last hold-outs across the world. When the last hold-outs cave in, it becomes clear that “Digital Downloads” are not just a passing fad for the music industry, but the new hegemony - something we at Musician’s Notebook already knew.

While Led Zeppelin doesn’t need to worry about forging an audience and a career, digital downloads are a vital part of the modern band’s effective marketing campaign, among other things (such as band blogging). It’s advice that may run contrary to the music industry’s own beliefs, but we all know that they’re not very good for you anyway.

We’ve come along way from the controversy around Metallica’s anti-Napster stance all those years ago. Personally, I don’t understand the controversy: Metallica has legal rights and the legal right to enforce those legal rights. They are legally, morally and ethically justified in demanding that fans don’t rip them off. At the same time, offering downloads of songs, whether it is free or for fee, is the distribution medium of right now and there’s no going back. If you have a problem with your songs being sold at iTunes, please leave through the third door from back - yes, the one that is marked “Career Incinerator”.

Led Zeppelin is also selling ring tones and full songs for mobile phones with Verizon Wireless, so you might say they’ve also sold their soul to the devil.

Today I came across this article, The Problem With Music, which was originally printed in the Baffler. The article isn’t really about the problem with music, though. It’s about the problem with the music industry. And it’s a big problem, a very worrying problem to all musicians out there, big and small. This article exposes one part of the extensive corruption that these charlatans who call themselves the ‘music industry’ have engaged in. They are not in the music industry, though; they’re just as bad as those guys with Tommy guns that claim to be in the ‘waste management’ business.

Steve Albini

The article was written by Steve Albini who, aside from his obvious flair for high-quality and inquisitive writing, is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, audio engineer and music journalist. He’s been around the music biz block enough times to be credible in what he’s saying and joins a myriad of other voices shouting the same thing: it’s time for this music industry to clean up its act. Now that it’s become so much easier to launch an independent music career, however, their power is waning and we may soon see the day when they actually have to clean up. One can hope, anyway!

Check out The Problem With Music and remember: even a good lawyer may not save your ass from these vultures, so know what you are doing and how they operate.

The last time Apple released a music product was the jam pack released concurrently with iLife 08. Recently the company released Logic Studio 8, the latest update to their pro musician’s package, and within it, a new product called MainStage. MainStage allows musicians to take their Logic effects and MIDI queues to the stage. All the programming you do at home when recording a track in Logic can be duplicated any time live, and the gap between studio and live versions are bridged that much more.

The product features a 3D interface designed for the stage, so the information that you need at a glance is the most prominent. It works with MIDI keyboards, drum pads, control surfaces, and pedal boards - anything that has a MIDI output or USB port, really. The program offers the most powerful feature in conjunction with the keyboard using a feature Apple has called “keyboard racks” - layer up studio instruments and effects and then split them to various sections of the keyboard.

You can throw out your guitar effects pedal; gone are the days of various stomp boxes lined up in meticulously wired set-ups. That is, if the quality of the effects in this program is as good as Apple claims. Presumably, the software can switch the guitar rig depending on which part of the song you’re up to.

I haven’t had the chance to play with this yet but I’m very intrigued and excited about this package. If you’ve had the chance to play with it, tell us how it is in the comments. You can find out more, or purchase Logic Studio 8, here.