A virtual Zoom seminar about the challenges and methods of home recording, editing and mastering with Matt Holsen. Matt has an ambitious outline of subjects to touch upon. While we may only get to cover some of these topics to a degree, you will leave with a better appreciation of what you can do with your original song recording. This is the kind of exposure that can save you hours of time by exposing you to the steps that professionals go through to achieve high quality audio. Below is an outline.
Introduction to Digital Audio Workstations –
1. Some examples of “in the box” productions (~5 minutes of videos)
2. What can you do with a DAW?· Record Audio (or import someone else’s audio)
· Process and edit audio (including time-stretching and pitch correction)
· Plug in virtual instruments
· Play and record MIDI to play those virtual instruments
· Process and edit the MIDI tracks to tweak the performance
· Mix audio and MIDI for a finished track
3. Demo - A very short song (16 measures)
· What I'm using: Software and hardware, briefly
· About audio and Instrument tracks in the DAW
· The Grid - Measures or timecode. Snapping
· Start with Drums (although you don’t have to). Full audio tracks, audio loops, Rex2 loops or virtual instrument? Time-stretching for drums
· Virtual Instruments What is a plugin? (instruments, processors, analyzers, etc.) VI’s can be played live or by recorded MIDI tracks or by imported MIDI What data can a MIDI track contain?
· Plug in Steven Slate Drums and pick a canned MIDI pattern
· Add a Rex2 loop for percussion - Sliced audio on the grid
· Record Audio: guitar and vocal
· Add Trillian Bass and record part
· Add a horn and record part
· Processing MIDI: Adding dynamics and expression in the horns (velocity and/or control codes) Articulations Quantizing Modifying MIDI on the fly
· Processing Audio: Levels, EQ, compression and reverb (More plugins)
· Do a Basic Mix and render.
4. Misc. topics:
· MIDI Input Devices: Keyboard, guitar-to-MIDI, voice-to-MIDI and an extreme MIDI controller: The TEC breath/bite/nod/tilt controller
· Virtual Instrument tricks: Strumming engines, real legato, portamento, smart delay, voice synths
· Tempo maps
· Tempo detection
· Sampler tracks
· The audio interface - latency and direct monitoring
· File formats, sampling rates and bit depth
