Chores
Beat mapping is Such a Bitch [UPDATE: a Cure is Found! Sorry Logic, I didn't mean it]
02/04/10 15:45 Filed under: Work
Oh Logic Pro, you know I love you.
You make the task of composing and arranging so easy and pleasurable, using your many key commands is like instant gratification for me, making short work of things that would usually take a few seconds longer. I remember days not long ago I would write music by clicking in each single note into Sibelius, you really have changed my life! You’re so smart, its like you know what I’m thinking, understand what I’m composing! Could you be ’the one’? For a while I thought Abelton would steal away my heart, but I should have always known I could never leave you alone. However, we need to sort something out.
Your MIDI beat mapping function sucks so hard .... & my eyes, after 4 hours of this thankless task, they bleed. There has to be a better way!? Your previous version was a little easier - move from left to right, place a marker, marker stayed put. In version 9, it’s all whack. Have you tried to get all clever and contextual or something? Why is it when I place my next marker, all the preceding MIDI info shifts about?
If only there was a way I could tap in a new tempo against the old one to replace the old one (in the case of improvisations that were performed to no click). Work it out for Logic 10, & I’ll gladly keep giving you my money.
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UPDATE 25-05-10
So I was bleating on about this in the office the other day and a colleague and all-round apple-logic--genius-man Mike Watkinson found me a great work around! My vexations are over! Here's how you do it:
- To stop the pesky MIDI notes from jumping about as you beatmap individual notes, you have to lock the SMPTE first. Makes sense.
- To create a new tempo against the old grid, create a new track and tap/play in the new tempo as new MIDI recording. SMPTE lock the original captured performance. Use the 'beats from regions' option in the beatmapping global track to analyse your new tempo track... and... voila! Easy peasy. Can't believe I used to spend whole evenings doing this the hard way. What a mug!
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Order being heaven's first law and all...
... I’ve decided to take myself through a series of lessons in the larger forms in music. I have this fantastic old book by Percy Goetschius (written 1915) that full of lovely composition exercises and I figured while I’m at it I might sharpen up my orchestration (and finally learn how to drive that VSL library properly). I’ve even busted out my old score-pads, something I haven’t used since I was at uni... and found some disturbingly rubbish music scrawled on a few of the pages (I recognized the desperation in the pencil markings, I must have had a portfolio due).
What brings this on? I’ve been writing a lot of miniatures of late - and by that I mean small instrumental works of about 3 - 5 mins in length (think little atmospheric pseudo-classical pop songs in binary form). I think I’ve been slightly frightened to write anything on a larger scale, some formal structures are a bit intimidating when you’re rusty on the rules... but by avoiding them I have been creating music that generally runs out of steam after themes A and B have run their course. In many ways it’s easier when you write for a film or other context, the music there supports a larger narrative or purpose and the composer is almost let off the hook. You just write some themes, agree on the instrumentation and then the rest kinda drives itself.
In the introduction there’s this fab quote from the book:
“The classic designs are not lightly to be overthrown, for they are the cumulative product of a gradually dawning recognition of nature’s musical laws, steadily progressing and crystallizing through the gathering and eliminating experiences of master-minds during many past centuries. It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that true structural progress cannot be achieved by abandoning these, but rather by building upon them”.
Right on, Percy.
Otherwise I’ve been keeping busy lately working on an arrangement of “forty six & two” (by Tool) for piano solo and string quartet, and working on the soundtrack for a new horror short for David Keith. I’ve also been composing a new batch of examples for my showreel and others that I hope to sell on to music libraries (remember those miniatures I was talking about earlier?). I love Summer holidays, you can get so much done when you don’t have to drag your arse to pesky ‘work’ all the time!
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Climbing the steps to Parnassus
08/02/09 01:12 Filed under: Study
3 days and five pages of dire note-against-note counterpoint for a cantus firmas in every mode later ... I feel like dying. I continually remind myself: Beethoven found this useful and referred to it constantly. Was this the reason he was such a cranky man?
I guess I will continue with it for a while, since the better I remember all the rules, the better I will be able to break them. I don’t want to begin writing The Quartet until I have a clear idea about theme and structure. At the moment my head is swimming with a million ideas with nothing really pinned down. On Thursday night I got into a cab and found myself overwhelmingly inspired by the Punjabi folk music playing on the car radio. Doesn’t help that the commission is supposed to be in neo-classic style.
*sigh* Hopefully the concept and design with hit me in the face sometime soon or else a Neoclassic/Punjabi mashup may happen, and surely only bring discomfort and misery to the world!
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