Alex Cook Music Technology 1 Of 6

Unit 32: Sequencing Systems And Techniques.

For my unit I had to recreate and remix an 80's song in which I chose to do 'Tainted Love' by Soft Cell. I also had to recreate another song as a group which we chose to do 'Mothership' by Enter Shikari. I will be explaining what programs I used and how I used them to remake my songs.

The Empty Project:

The picture above shows an empty Logic 9 project. All songs, remakes or musical productions in general when using Logic 9 start off here. You do have the ability to choose from templates for the genre of music that you are trying to produce but I personally find it easier to produce from scratch there chose to start on a 'blank canvas'

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Starting The Project:

Audio, Software Instruments and External Midi are the 3 types of different instances you can put into Logic 9. Two examples are shown in the picture above. The tracks which are highlighted blue are the 'Audio' tracks. These can be anything from mp3. Files to live recordings of vocals or instruments (which tend to be wavs.) The tracks that are green are instances of different 'Software Instruments'. A Software Instrument is an electronic instrument created for computers to produce a musica note. Multiple different instruments can be opened in one project and their settings can be tampered with to achieve a specific sound. To open an instance of a Software Instrument you can either send a sound from the library which is under 'Media' in the top right hand side of the program or by clicking on the channel in the mixer and selecting an instrument with the software selecting button provided. The first thing I did when I began remaking 'Tainted Love; was to put the original song into one of the tracks, I could either drag and drop the mp3 from my desktop or folder onto the track I wanted it to be on or alternatively, select an audio track instead of a Software Instrument track, highlugh the audio track, click on 'file' and then 'import audio track'. The audio can ONLY be imported into an audio track.

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The Tool Bar:

The Pointer Tool: 1 The pointer tool is your mouse. You use this to to click on things, drag copy, paste and highlight parts of your project. When opening up a clean project you will always start with this as your default tool. The Pencil Tool: 2 The pencil tool is only normally used in the piano roll, this is where you pick the notes you wish to play in your song. You can either use a midi instrument for example a keyboard or you can use the pencil tool to draw notes in on the piano roll one by one. The benefits of this is are that your songs are almost gaurunteed to be more in time than if you used the keyboard. The Eraser Tool : 3 The eraser tool erases notes, sequences or samples that have been mistakenly put into the piano roll or track. I did not personally use this tool very often as I found it easier to click on the piece of information and press delete on the keyboard or in some cases just to double click the note. The Text Tool: 4 The text tool gives you the ability to change the names of parts of the track, this would be especially helpful if there were a lot of different instances of the same software instrument, the tool is basically used to avoid confusion when your screen begins to get filled up with instruments. The Scissor Tool: 5

Alex Cook Music Technology 4 Of 6 The scissor tool is used for cutting up recordings or software instrument data. This would be a useful tool in a situation when you have recorded something for a prolonged amount of time and the extra sounds are affecting your mix, these sounds can be cut out via using the scissor tool to ensure a cleaner, better sounding mix. The Glue Tool: 6 The glue tool is the exact opposite if the scissor tool, instead of cutting and separating pieces of information it sticks them together to create one big piece of information, for example if you wanted to stick two audio files together you could do so by using the glue tool. The Solo Tool: 7 The solo tool is a tool which solo's a specific track to listen to so that you can hear it on its own. The Mute Tool: 8 The mute tool is a tool which mutes a specific track so that you can hear the other tracks without the one you have silenced. The Zoom Tool: 9 The zoom tool is where you can zoom in on things such as the piano roll so that you can move notes left and right to put them in the right positions. The Fade Tool: 0 The fade tool is where you can fade in or out a piece of sound which you have produced. Automation Select Tool: Q Automation select gives you the ability to choose what kind of automation you wish to use for example, volume, pitch, panning or BPM (Beats Per Minute) you can also do this by clicking on 'Automation' at the top of Logic 9. This will create automation clips for all the instances opened on your tracks and give you the ability to edit all the described. Automation Curve Tool: W This tool gives you the ability to produce a much smoother or alternatively grittier automation to whatever change you have made e.g. volume pitch etc. The Marquee Tool: E The marquee tool is where you can mark the time line where you want the track to start and stop playing. The Flex Tool: R The flex tool gives you the ability to extend or shorten the notes in the piano roll.

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The ES2:
The ES2 is an example of one of the many Software Instruments that Logic uses, when making my remake and remix of 'Tainted Love' I favorited this instrument for how quickly I adapted to the interface, I was able to get a lot of the sounds that I wanted. This synthesizer consisted of different filters, sound waves and effects such as flangers and phasers. It also has master controls at the bottom for things such as LFO (low frequency oscillator) pitch and master volume. There is also Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release faders for altering the sounds characteristics for example how long want the song to ring out for or how long it takes to kick in.

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The Mixer:
The mixer is where your master controls are for each track you have. For every instance of something that you open in Logic 9, a channel in the mixer will automatically be assigned for it. This channel enables you to alter the volume and assign the sound effects such as reverb, delay, bitcrushers, filters and distortion. These effects are known as plug ins and change the characteristics of your sound. The mixer is also used for mixdowns and helps you change the volumes of different instruments so that some things don't appear to loud or too quiet. This place is where you tend to EQ your sounds.

The Bitcrusher:
The bitcrusher is a plugin effect used on sounds to give it a more distorted. 8-bit effect. This plugin is popular with dubstep and other electronic music to produce a grittier sound. This is an example of one the plugins that can be assigned to a channel in the mixer to change the sound of your instruments or recordings.