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DIY: Home Studios, Recording & Composing, New Age PerspectiveBy: Mark ShowalterI'm a composer/arranger/performer, my favorite music to write is New Age a la Tangerine Dream/Pink Floyd, and I'm working on a three volume project called, The Silent Song Suite. I'm also putting together a private home studio, and these articles will be about my experience in doing all this. |
| The first thing to keep in mind is that I'm on, in probably most cases, the same level as those of you reading this. I just may have more toys. When I first started my home recording work, I had a Yamaha FB-01 synth module, a Casio CZ-101 keyboard and a Brother hardware sequencer. Believe me, I was in heaven with all the possibilities! Now, my studio has somewhat expanded. At the time this picture was taken, I was using an Atari 1040STE, which I still use for live performing. With a SyQuest EZ135 removable cartrage hard-drive, I had tremendous storage capability. My music files, which are timed to cover the whole side of a cassette tape, were easily stored with room to spare. For those of you wanting to get an inexpensive start in computer music, an Atari is the way to go. All the computer equipment you see there cost less than $1000 and I produced most of the music I'm currently working on with my Atari. Probably a majority of my equipment is used, and you may already know that there's a lot of very good quality used gear out there. Some because the only reason for selling was to get the next best thing, and this is what I want to warm you about first. Buy equipment that does what you need it to do, never buy to sell it to sell later. When a piece becomes clearly obsolete, keep it in your closet for at least 6 months so that when you realize that cool but old synth XYZ-99088CZ that was the ONLY synth that produced THAT sound is still with you, you won't be kicking yourself in the tokus when you realize you sold it for $25 to some guy whose three year old is now using it for a slobber-stopper. I still have the three pieces of gear I mentioned as my first midi set-up. The one area to NOT skimp on, however, is cables. Don't buy cheap cables except in dire need, and then relegate them to standbys as soon as you can afford better quality ones, especially midi cables, and even more especially, long midi cables. In general, keep your cables as short as possible. Also, if you expect to get a number of pieces of equipment, invest in good racks for your gear, like the ones my brother builds that you see at my web page. ( Yes, folks, that WAS a plug! ) This will save a lot of wear and tear on your equipment, besides making it that much harder to steal. If someone can run off with my racks, I certainly won't be arguing with them! As I began working on putting my studio together, I was also working on my music. One of the aspects of the new technology, that many have written about, is the problem of having to deal with the technology while at the same time, being a musician. I have, for almost the last year, been so involved in getting the gear to finish my studio, and to get all the music/arrangements from my Atari converted over to my Mac and Cubase, that I've had little time/energy/inspiration to actually do any new material. Since I'm also working a full time job, this is a problem. I'm gambling on being able to get the money to finish my studio and to record the material I already have, against working on new material. By the way, when I say, "...finish my studio....", I mean having the first phase done, which is the inclusion of a multi-track into my current rig. The next phase will be a DAT recorder; then possibly a CD-burner. I have several other phases, but I hope you get the point. If you're going to put together your own music set-up, for whatever purpose, have an idea of where you're going with it. If you're a keyboard wizard, the obvious first phase will be a good keyboard. Then whatever you need as far as microphones if it's an acoustic keyboard, or synth modules if your plan is in that direction. In my case, I knew the direction I was going because of my New Age project, and to achieve the finished product, I'd need good synth modules and plenty of effects. Of course, a computer for my midi arrangements was a given, thus entered my Atari 1040Ste and later, my PowerMac. First, I had the Brother hardware sequencer, but the small memory it had soon proved to be limited for anything other than cover songs when I performed live. With a lot of judicious arranging, I was able to get almost the entirety of, Dark Side Of The Moon sequenced with a little room to spare. I've found in general, that it's best to avoid the last %10 of available memory, just to keep a safety buffer so the thing has some thinking room. After I got my Atari, and up-graded the RAM to 4 meg ( WOW!! ), I found it easier to copy my midi files to the Atari, edit/arrange them, the record them back to the Brother, but put all the file on a single track, which gave me a great deal more available memory. In some cases, this would more than double the amount of available memory. My first version of, Dark Side Of The Moon only ran from Time through to, Money. After doing the editing on my Atari, and then transferring the file to just one track of the Brother, I was able to run from, Time", through to the end of the album, although I didn't include, Great Gig In The Sky, since I had no female vocalist capable of the performance. The work on, Dark Side Of The Moon, gave me the experience to begin working on my New Age project with the goal in mind of a continuous sequence that I'd eventually develop to cover a side of a cassette tape per file. This also gave me the opportunity to start to envision my material in long form, rather then the typical 3 to 5 minute song that is the standard for popular music. This also allowed me to work on arranging the pieces for contrast: that is, a soft piece followed by a more active piece. Most of the pieces segue from one to the other, many with sound effects like waves or wind as a blanket to cover the change. I especially like the long form arranging because it frees me from having to think of getting all my ideas in a short time period, plus it allows development of ideas that a short form doesn't. For me, this has made a big difference in my approach to composing and arranging, besides my approach to performing and recording. However, the biggest aspect of this approach is that I've been able to think in terms of an entire section and try to imagine what kinds of changes to make. In essence, this is a symphonic approach to composing music that isn't exactly symphonic in style or form. After my eight years as a theory and composition major, this approach has really paid off for me with my past experience. If you have any Pink Floyd albums on hand, you can after many listens, get the idea of what a project like this involves. It's nowhere as simple as it sounds, but the techniques aren't very difficult to understand once you get the soundscape in mind. What I find the most difficult, but the most rewarding, is working in such a long form and trying to keep all the material in mind. Obviously, with midi and computers, working on such an approach is easy, especially with programs like CUBASE that allow easy editing. If a particular piece doesn't work in one location, it's fairly easy to move it to another location to try out or develop. In my New Age work, I've often had a piece that is more or less fully developed, but not placed within a section. I'd try it out in one section, moving it around to different locations, until I felt it had found it's home. Although very few pieces have ended up being experimented with in this fashion, it has helped the ones that started out as orphans to find their home. One piece is a runaway percussion idea that starts out at a moderate tempo, and slowly builds up instrumentation and tempo. It's working title was, "India Huri " ( in a hurry....get it? ), and it started in the first volume of the project, first side; moved to the second volume, second side; then back to the first volume, second side where it now resides. To be continued... |