audio engineering

(This is a rough draft. The post will evolve. I'll add some illustrations and maybe even a video, but for right now it's just the basics.)

JARGON ALERT: If you don't understand the jargon used in this blog entry, refer to this glossary of sound engineering terms.
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How to use Seq24 to build a 32-bar song.

Seq24's song editor makes midi sequencing a snap. Sequence your loops into a song. This video shows you how to make a 32-bar song using an example song tentatively called "Credit."

Break 32 bars into parts. Each part is some multiple of 4 bars long. The song "Credit" being created in the tutorial breaks down like this:

8-bar Intro
12-bar verse
8-bar chorus
4-bar bridge

This is about songwriting as much as about slathering on effects. With midi instruments, I like to add the effects before structuring the song for reasons that I explain in the video. Seq24 makes it easy to isolate the sounds for adjustment in Hydrogen and ZynAddSubFX

Be amazed as I roll a funky-ass beat before your very eyes using free open-source software.

I'm not going to get too specific since there are so many configurations and I don't want to confuse anyone. This is what I did before the video started rolling:

1) Fired up JACK (for me it was version 0.3.4)
2) Fired up seq24 (version 0.8.7)
3) Made seq24 the master of JACK (and therefore the universe) [file-->options-->jack sync--> "Transport Master"]
4) Fire up Hydrogen (0.9.4). It connects to JACK automatically, but check the JACK settings just to make sure you have both MIDI input from seq and audio output to your sound card (you do, but if you don't, make the connections by connecting the wires).
5) Fire up Zyn (4.7.1). Activate a couple of instruments and throw them on separate MIDI channels.

Then I did this:

Will Godfrey, who is referenced in the tutorial, has a lot of free music on his site -- nice mellow instrumental synth grooves, melody-heavy.

(PS -- Making a beat with seq24 is really a three-step process . This tutorial covers the first part -- getting your timings/loops down and into the matrix. The second step is to tweak the instruments to get the sounds you want. The third step is to put it all together in the song editor. I plan on doing videos for the next two steps with this same beat. I guess what I'm saying is that you should check back.)