It’s all about being social, being popular, being politically correct, etc.- right? It’s not for me. I learned that social media is a scam, a massive sales funnel, and a censorship/behavioral tool. It’s quite an effective one, too. All they want is to sell all your data and control all aspects of your life. They can throttle your views up or down on a whim. They can let certain people attack certain other people. They can demonetize you whenever. No free speech there. Think-speak. Spying. Theft.
They program their political views into AI, and you’re under their thumb. Well it’s all phony. It’s one-sided. It’s un-freedom. We think we have choices. You have their choices, and that’s it. From there, they scheme and manipulate away. If it’s your thing, have at it. I won’t re-enter their time-wasting vortex. Rigged. No participation trophy for me!
On the Brighter Side…
On the brighter side, I’m working on a new album- “Winter Soldier”. Music’s always an adventure, because I’m never sure where any of this is going. Take the title song-it’s spread out over eight and a half minutes (so far). It starts with an Artiphon Instrument 1 midi controller
triggering a Waves Flow Motion Synth. It’s turning into a composition for us short-attention span listeners, for sure, but you’ll never be bored!
I took the same midi I recorded with the Instrument 1 and used it to trigger several different sounds through the Flow Motion (some pretty wild presets included). Then, I rendered them into individual wav files before I changed each setting. After doing this maybe 15-20 times, I started editing. Not all those wav files made the final cut.
Then, I chose drum sounds. I use a combination of wav and midi loops. Also, I like to layer contrasting midi kits for something different. I then rendered a wav file mix bypassing the mix bus effects plugins so that signal would not go through them a second time when mixing down. That’s the first movement’s construction (as it now stands, anyway).
Finale Time
Next, I went into my Finale notation program, chose my first bank of 16 instruments from Sample Tank , and started orchestration for the next section. I’ve used Sample Tank 3 so far on this composition, but noted the link for the soon-to-be released Sample Tank 4. Sample Tank has been my go-to instrument for years. The Max upgrade I’m getting will increase that by FIVE times with exponentially better editing and functionality of an already awesome product. It also comes in a USB drive to make more accessible as well as portable. The release is imminent, so I’m sitting here vibrating in anticipation!
Finale allows the use of instrument plugins such as Sample Tank, as well as audio plugins for compression, equalization, etc. When I got everything sounding where I wanted it, I rendered a midi file of the orchestration.
Into Waveform
Then, I imported the orchestration midi file into Waveform, and put Sample Tank in each track by using racks (see Waveform 9 user guide-download here) with the same sound bank (multi) I used in Finale. I made sure I selected separate output pairs (1-32) for each channel (1-16) to get maximum control when mixing down.
I then rendered a wav file and tacked it on the first Flow Motion-based movement (in a separate track, of course). Then, ran it through the mix bus plugins and rendered what I call a “scratch track”. This gives me something resembling the composition’s structure, although things are open to change. I will listen this track and see what happens next!
© 2019 J. Mark Witters Skyypilot.com