Creative Work
Making a list of things to do right on your desktop
09/05/21 17:08
Do you end up with a lot of windows or panels open in your computer’s desktop? You are a working freelance, and have a lot of concurrent tasks going on? I know your story!
You are probably dealing with a Getting Things Done (GTD) workflow, and also keep one or more windows of your planner open, just to deal with the fact you have too many windows open. Your computer is protesting, with higher processor and memory consumption.
So, do your organization work right were your work is done – your computer’s desktop. Open a folder on top of one of your categories (Company Texts, Music Composition, Drawings and so on), and name it something like “Thing to do in music”. If you want it on top of the list, add a zero or underscore at the beginning of its name.
Add shortcuts/aliases from the open folders. Close the folders. Open just one of them when you are going to work on it. Close it when done. Leave only the list of aliases always open. Work on your GTD list, one task at a time.
You are probably dealing with a Getting Things Done (GTD) workflow, and also keep one or more windows of your planner open, just to deal with the fact you have too many windows open. Your computer is protesting, with higher processor and memory consumption.
So, do your organization work right were your work is done – your computer’s desktop. Open a folder on top of one of your categories (Company Texts, Music Composition, Drawings and so on), and name it something like “Thing to do in music”. If you want it on top of the list, add a zero or underscore at the beginning of its name.
Add shortcuts/aliases from the open folders. Close the folders. Open just one of them when you are going to work on it. Close it when done. Leave only the list of aliases always open. Work on your GTD list, one task at a time.
Dealing with Logic’s Beat Mapping
15/04/21 17:00
Do I really have to do it? You know – load an audio file in Logic, enable Beat Mapping, then drag a Measure/Beat ruler position to the corresponding peak in the audio waveform. If you are working on very simple materials, maybe the automatic detection can work nearly alone. If you are working on real music, it doesn’t work.
After many long tedious sessions of Ctrl-Shift-dragging and hoping the beat to sticks to the desired position, and usually ending up with a bumpy Tempo track, I’ve decided a better solution had to be found. My preferred workaround is to beat the Tempo in a new MIDI track. Then, I’ll ask Logic to get the beat mapping from that one. If things are a bit out, I can simply nudge the MIDI event, proportionally respace them with the Time Handles, or even add or delete events if a beat should be added or removed.
This works a lot better for me. At least, it is a tempo I beat myself on real music, and not an informed hint from a machine.
After many long tedious sessions of Ctrl-Shift-dragging and hoping the beat to sticks to the desired position, and usually ending up with a bumpy Tempo track, I’ve decided a better solution had to be found. My preferred workaround is to beat the Tempo in a new MIDI track. Then, I’ll ask Logic to get the beat mapping from that one. If things are a bit out, I can simply nudge the MIDI event, proportionally respace them with the Time Handles, or even add or delete events if a beat should be added or removed.
This works a lot better for me. At least, it is a tempo I beat myself on real music, and not an informed hint from a machine.
Praise for the open meter and key
03/05/20 11:55
One of the most common criticism moved to Dorico is that new documents are not in 4/4 meter and in C Major. They are in an open meter and key.
In my view, this is one of the strongest points in Dorico, and one of the most innovative. I liked it immensely in Igor Engraver, and am immensely happy to find it again.
From the point of view of a student or beginner, having a blank staff is highly educative, since it forces one to learn how to choose the right meter and key. It is not a given, it has to be carefully considered. Having it ready is easier? It depends on the target. If someone only needs a way to transcribe a simple tune, maybe a program as complex as Dorico Pro is not the right one.
For someone writing music in the 'academic' styles since the 20th century (including much film music), having a blank staff is liberating. The idea of 'flow' is at the basis of Dorico, and flow is not only the name of one of the structural elements: it's the deep philosophy of this program. Music flows. You are free to give it a measure, design patterns. But, at the basis, it is a free flow in time.
In my view, this is one of the strongest points in Dorico, and one of the most innovative. I liked it immensely in Igor Engraver, and am immensely happy to find it again.
From the point of view of a student or beginner, having a blank staff is highly educative, since it forces one to learn how to choose the right meter and key. It is not a given, it has to be carefully considered. Having it ready is easier? It depends on the target. If someone only needs a way to transcribe a simple tune, maybe a program as complex as Dorico Pro is not the right one.
For someone writing music in the 'academic' styles since the 20th century (including much film music), having a blank staff is liberating. The idea of 'flow' is at the basis of Dorico, and flow is not only the name of one of the structural elements: it's the deep philosophy of this program. Music flows. You are free to give it a measure, design patterns. But, at the basis, it is a free flow in time.
Composing contemporary music in the age of sound libraries
20/12/19 12:36
I’ve been trained to write music on paper. My main teacher, one of the best composers of his generation, was also a copyist, and insisted on good and accurate calligraphy. Writing on paper seems like the most obvious way, when dealing with a very rational type of music, based on proportions and semi-automatic processes. It’s also the fastest way to notate some tightly integrated music gestures, made of a bundle of pitches, articulations, and expressions, that would be impossible to quickly notate with notation programs (an example: a violin playing a starting pitch, fading into a jété and gliding up to an uncertain pitch).
At the same time, I’ve always felt the need to feel the music under my fingers. Neither my mind, nor the calculated music coming out of a computer when listening to the results of what I was writing, has given me a satisfactory connection with my music. My mind, a powerful generator of music, is only a part of my body; and my ears, receiving the waves of pressure from the loudspeakers, are only a part of the sensorial experience. I need a tactile experience of my music, together with the auditory experience.
When very young, I composed at the piano. Sometimes, I sat at the piano, and went on experimenting with stravinskian overlapping chords, bartókian hammering rhythms, schoenbergian piercing intervals and misty outburst of notes; some other times, I just checked at the piano what I was writing on paper. I had a physical connection with my music.
Later, when I could afford one, I switched to computers. I tried to simulate “real” music and sounds. However, notation programs were unable to make my notes sound as I wrote them; I wrote them as music, the computer insisted on playing them back as arithmetic expressions. The sounds I could feel when playing on the keyboard were not what they were named after: the piano lacked hammers and resonance, violins lacked wood and body, brass did not explode, woodwinds lacked breath and click. The computer was great for electronic music, not for simulating music made with real instruments.
But acoustic sound libraries improved over the years. VSL was a revolution. Other libraries appeared for specialized types of sound. For what I was looking for, VSL and XSample offered great support to my music. At first, I had something resembling realism in the libraries that came with the Native Instruments package (a taste of VSL, then the realistic chamber strings of Session Strings Pro). Then, I could finally afford the solo instruments of the XSample Library with their extended techniques, and the accurate orchestral sounds of the VSL Special Edition. I had a powerful, realistic sonic arsenal under my fingers. I had all the sound tools I could need.
So, I could compose at the computer again. But how? Notation programs continued to be cold as a grave. Wallander’s NotePerformer added life to my Sibelius scores, but still more the life of a lemur than that of a living body. And composing by patiently writing and sculpting pitches on the staff looked like underusing the tools I had. What I had was basically a glorified piano – the same keyboard on which the greatest composers of the past loved to improvise and compose, the same white and black technological interface with music they loved to spend time imagining and feel their music – but capable to really *play*, and not only suggest, a full orchestra.
Is composing at the keyboard legit? With Logic, I can keep the score, pianoroll and controller pages open, in a mix of traditional notation, evolving texture and cluster graphic notation, oscillator and modulator diagrams. I can move the input cursor where I have to insert a segment, and start recording from there. I can step-input pitches as I would do in a notation program. I can have rather accurate notation and realistic sonic rendering at the same time, write notes on staves, and later export a MusicXML file to refine notation with a dedicated program. Logic can also assist me with some serial-based elaboration, unless I want to cut and paste pitches generated by OpenMusic.
What I feel is that, by composing at a DAW that lets me easily have accurate control on the piece’s micro- and macro-structure, I can really go further, and maintain a better control on the piece’s macrostructure and evolution. I can create a general structure and time signature map in advance, insert motives and focal points as placeholders, use the track arrangement space as a blank wall where to attach post-its, and create my piece by going from the general image to the finer details, gradually filling that wall. And always keeping contact with the actual sound, not simply a mental image of the sound.
Isn’t this a lot like the old Maestros sitting at their klaviers, one hand on the keyboard and the other hand writing on a music sheet?
(The above is an old reflection, made in February 2017.)
At the same time, I’ve always felt the need to feel the music under my fingers. Neither my mind, nor the calculated music coming out of a computer when listening to the results of what I was writing, has given me a satisfactory connection with my music. My mind, a powerful generator of music, is only a part of my body; and my ears, receiving the waves of pressure from the loudspeakers, are only a part of the sensorial experience. I need a tactile experience of my music, together with the auditory experience.
When very young, I composed at the piano. Sometimes, I sat at the piano, and went on experimenting with stravinskian overlapping chords, bartókian hammering rhythms, schoenbergian piercing intervals and misty outburst of notes; some other times, I just checked at the piano what I was writing on paper. I had a physical connection with my music.
Later, when I could afford one, I switched to computers. I tried to simulate “real” music and sounds. However, notation programs were unable to make my notes sound as I wrote them; I wrote them as music, the computer insisted on playing them back as arithmetic expressions. The sounds I could feel when playing on the keyboard were not what they were named after: the piano lacked hammers and resonance, violins lacked wood and body, brass did not explode, woodwinds lacked breath and click. The computer was great for electronic music, not for simulating music made with real instruments.
But acoustic sound libraries improved over the years. VSL was a revolution. Other libraries appeared for specialized types of sound. For what I was looking for, VSL and XSample offered great support to my music. At first, I had something resembling realism in the libraries that came with the Native Instruments package (a taste of VSL, then the realistic chamber strings of Session Strings Pro). Then, I could finally afford the solo instruments of the XSample Library with their extended techniques, and the accurate orchestral sounds of the VSL Special Edition. I had a powerful, realistic sonic arsenal under my fingers. I had all the sound tools I could need.
So, I could compose at the computer again. But how? Notation programs continued to be cold as a grave. Wallander’s NotePerformer added life to my Sibelius scores, but still more the life of a lemur than that of a living body. And composing by patiently writing and sculpting pitches on the staff looked like underusing the tools I had. What I had was basically a glorified piano – the same keyboard on which the greatest composers of the past loved to improvise and compose, the same white and black technological interface with music they loved to spend time imagining and feel their music – but capable to really *play*, and not only suggest, a full orchestra.
Is composing at the keyboard legit? With Logic, I can keep the score, pianoroll and controller pages open, in a mix of traditional notation, evolving texture and cluster graphic notation, oscillator and modulator diagrams. I can move the input cursor where I have to insert a segment, and start recording from there. I can step-input pitches as I would do in a notation program. I can have rather accurate notation and realistic sonic rendering at the same time, write notes on staves, and later export a MusicXML file to refine notation with a dedicated program. Logic can also assist me with some serial-based elaboration, unless I want to cut and paste pitches generated by OpenMusic.
What I feel is that, by composing at a DAW that lets me easily have accurate control on the piece’s micro- and macro-structure, I can really go further, and maintain a better control on the piece’s macrostructure and evolution. I can create a general structure and time signature map in advance, insert motives and focal points as placeholders, use the track arrangement space as a blank wall where to attach post-its, and create my piece by going from the general image to the finer details, gradually filling that wall. And always keeping contact with the actual sound, not simply a mental image of the sound.
Isn’t this a lot like the old Maestros sitting at their klaviers, one hand on the keyboard and the other hand writing on a music sheet?
(The above is an old reflection, made in February 2017.)
Sketching libraries and quick composition
30/11/19 12:19
Are “sketching libraries” really useful to speed up composition? I’m not a great example of quick and fast productivity, but when writing tonally I like to start playing the piano. Considering how good modern sampled pianos are, I find it liberating to just return to my first instrument and let it help me drawing at raw lines my music.
The new tempo follow metronome in Logic is a revolutionary innovation for me, since I have all my creativity killed by playing on a metronome click. Having the metronome follow me is letting creativity flow freely, as one could do in the age of acoustic pianos, pencil and paper.
The piano sketch is a good place to work on melody, harmony, form. It's just two lines of music and some textual annotations. When done with the basic matters, you can start propagating your music to the other instruments, by copying&pasting or playing idiomatically the new lines.
But I admit that sketching libraries are also great. Not as straight as a piano, they let you write down more information on the first pass. I like Albion One for more booming music, Vienna Smart Orchestra for more classical. The Berlin Orchestra Inspire series should also work great. Orchestra sketching libraries are however already forcing one to follow their pace. String attacks may be too slow, and while you can adjust this with a controller (later or in realtime), here are you already and again facing detailed editing - the thing you were trying to avoid.
On the other side, sketching orchestras may offer you inspiration. I can't wait to try British Drama Toolkit.
The new tempo follow metronome in Logic is a revolutionary innovation for me, since I have all my creativity killed by playing on a metronome click. Having the metronome follow me is letting creativity flow freely, as one could do in the age of acoustic pianos, pencil and paper.
The piano sketch is a good place to work on melody, harmony, form. It's just two lines of music and some textual annotations. When done with the basic matters, you can start propagating your music to the other instruments, by copying&pasting or playing idiomatically the new lines.
But I admit that sketching libraries are also great. Not as straight as a piano, they let you write down more information on the first pass. I like Albion One for more booming music, Vienna Smart Orchestra for more classical. The Berlin Orchestra Inspire series should also work great. Orchestra sketching libraries are however already forcing one to follow their pace. String attacks may be too slow, and while you can adjust this with a controller (later or in realtime), here are you already and again facing detailed editing - the thing you were trying to avoid.
On the other side, sketching orchestras may offer you inspiration. I can't wait to try British Drama Toolkit.
Presets, templates and the good practice
05/10/19 12:00
All considered, making an universal preset schema that can work for all your sounds, and arranging the sounds in a template that will make your ensemble sound coherent, is not dissimilar to tuning the instruments of an orchestra in the old times.
With digital instruments, we no longer need to spend time tuning, unless you have the old-fashioned idea of calling in some acoustic instrument. In the pre-digital era, you had to accurately tune everything, including some analogue synth.
Renaissance and Early Baroque – a bit earlier than the birth of the opera, and at the times of Monteverdi – you had to choose a tuning among the many experimental ones. Bach had not yet come with his propaganda for completely equal tuning, good for all the scales. Meantone tuning, for example, was one good for great sounding major thirds and decent sounding fifths, and you had to think to the most used ‘modes’ to choose the best sounding intervals. You had to patiently tune by ear by listening to beatings between intervals, and ultimately following your taste.
Creating presets and templates is our preliminary work on what would lead to great sounding music. You have to think to the music that you will want to do, and decide which articulations, which layout, which selection controls and which space to use. It’s nothing more than what our ancestors did with a tuning fork and good ears: tuning their instruments to make them their immediately collaborative musical partners.
With digital instruments, we no longer need to spend time tuning, unless you have the old-fashioned idea of calling in some acoustic instrument. In the pre-digital era, you had to accurately tune everything, including some analogue synth.
Renaissance and Early Baroque – a bit earlier than the birth of the opera, and at the times of Monteverdi – you had to choose a tuning among the many experimental ones. Bach had not yet come with his propaganda for completely equal tuning, good for all the scales. Meantone tuning, for example, was one good for great sounding major thirds and decent sounding fifths, and you had to think to the most used ‘modes’ to choose the best sounding intervals. You had to patiently tune by ear by listening to beatings between intervals, and ultimately following your taste.
Creating presets and templates is our preliminary work on what would lead to great sounding music. You have to think to the music that you will want to do, and decide which articulations, which layout, which selection controls and which space to use. It’s nothing more than what our ancestors did with a tuning fork and good ears: tuning their instruments to make them their immediately collaborative musical partners.
Composing at the sequencer or notation software
19/09/19 23:01
If you are like, a considerable amount of time is spent, before even touching a key, to decide if the project has to be done in a sequencer/DAW software, or a score notation program. If you can’t read written music, there is only a choice. If you can, you are falling between two stools, torn between two possible choices.
In general, I tend to go for a sequencer when I have to write for visual media, or to create a credible mockup of classical music. If I have to compose something in a style that implies sophisticate notation craft, I go for the notation software. If you are like me, you know that a written page of music is something more than music – it is an art in itself, where the composed symbols on the page translate into performed music, and are never just a mere transcription of resounding music.
There are situations where the choice continues to be hard. Hybrid scores, for example, might require so much realtime control, that notation software may lack the needed tools. Sibelius, for example, allows for MIDI controls written over the score. Handy, if all you have to do is to send an articulation switch here and there. Not much so, if you have to control the hectic filter opening or a synthesizer.
Dorico seems to promise to be the best of both worlds. As a notation program, it thinks are a contemporary composer does, with an innate flexibility in recording, transcription, separate editing of the two parallel graphic and performance layers. And then actual playback. As a sequencer, it has a clever piano roll page, where you can access notes as two overlapping layers (graphic; performance), running next to lines representing MIDI controllers and a lane with articulation changes.
Still, I feel that a sequencer will continue to be my preferred tool to model sound as clay; and notation software will mostly serve for art music, where either real performers are involved, or the graphic art is simply too important to leave it to a bare Score page in software conceived for noisier music.
In general, I tend to go for a sequencer when I have to write for visual media, or to create a credible mockup of classical music. If I have to compose something in a style that implies sophisticate notation craft, I go for the notation software. If you are like me, you know that a written page of music is something more than music – it is an art in itself, where the composed symbols on the page translate into performed music, and are never just a mere transcription of resounding music.
There are situations where the choice continues to be hard. Hybrid scores, for example, might require so much realtime control, that notation software may lack the needed tools. Sibelius, for example, allows for MIDI controls written over the score. Handy, if all you have to do is to send an articulation switch here and there. Not much so, if you have to control the hectic filter opening or a synthesizer.
Dorico seems to promise to be the best of both worlds. As a notation program, it thinks are a contemporary composer does, with an innate flexibility in recording, transcription, separate editing of the two parallel graphic and performance layers. And then actual playback. As a sequencer, it has a clever piano roll page, where you can access notes as two overlapping layers (graphic; performance), running next to lines representing MIDI controllers and a lane with articulation changes.
Still, I feel that a sequencer will continue to be my preferred tool to model sound as clay; and notation software will mostly serve for art music, where either real performers are involved, or the graphic art is simply too important to leave it to a bare Score page in software conceived for noisier music.
Interlinking a score and its sounds
27/08/19 12:19
I confess: I’m (mostly) a serial composer. Hybridized with a spectral one. With no little influx from ambient and brutal noisemakers. I’m one of those kids who compose not only with notes, but also with everything happening to them. Odd bow movements, overblowing, punching unexpected parts of the skin with unintended tools.
As a consequence, there is this schizophrenia for which there are times when you have to accurately listen to the resulting sound, comparing it to the one you were imagining, and put it to the test of reality. And other times, when you need absolute silence, to prevent the wrong sounds to interfere with your creative process.
A discussion in the forum dedicated to Dorico, the notation program, offered an interesting perspective. You can easily and completely separate the score from the sound generator. Dorico can drive external players, like NI’s Kontakt or VSL’s Vienna Ensemble Pro. It can also switch to a silent player.
Therefore, you can build your orchestral template as accurately as possible. Make all the noise you like. When you need silence, just run Dorico without first running Vienna Ensemble Pro. No waiting time, no wrong sounds. Just you and your inner musical daemon.
As a consequence, there is this schizophrenia for which there are times when you have to accurately listen to the resulting sound, comparing it to the one you were imagining, and put it to the test of reality. And other times, when you need absolute silence, to prevent the wrong sounds to interfere with your creative process.
A discussion in the forum dedicated to Dorico, the notation program, offered an interesting perspective. You can easily and completely separate the score from the sound generator. Dorico can drive external players, like NI’s Kontakt or VSL’s Vienna Ensemble Pro. It can also switch to a silent player.
Therefore, you can build your orchestral template as accurately as possible. Make all the noise you like. When you need silence, just run Dorico without first running Vienna Ensemble Pro. No waiting time, no wrong sounds. Just you and your inner musical daemon.
Strategies to find creative time
13/02/19 16:18
How to deal with the lack of time for writing or composing
Read More…
Read More…
Orchestral prototypes
29/11/17 18:22
We all agree that there is no substitute to a human player – a skilled one – playing contemporary techniques on real instruments. As for me, this is still the final goal of composing: making music for a community of people wanting to enjoy music, both as players and as listeners.
The use of computers and sound libraries is a help for composition. What once was done with a real piano, or even with the family or friends reading your freshly written music in the evening, is now done with this sophisticate keyboard instrument that is the sampler.
There is a growing opportunity of making nearly credible prototypes with the current tools. The libraries from IRCAM are explicitly made for contemporary music, and Xsample libraries contain several of the same techniques. Some smaller houses, like Soniccouture, Sonokinetic or 8Dio, have other useful sounds. VSL, Orchestral Tools, Spitfire Audio are adding more and more of these techniques, even if their core business is not mainly this niche, but the modern composer for media in advanced markets (like the sophisticate world of film and TV production in London, Paris or Berlin), where using the most recent vocabulary is allowed and even required.
My impression is that a composer is no longer forced to just imagine his/her music, but can put it to test with the available compositional tools. And if these tools can open a way to other new techniques – either in the world of acoustic or electronic instruments – music will gain something new.
The use of computers and sound libraries is a help for composition. What once was done with a real piano, or even with the family or friends reading your freshly written music in the evening, is now done with this sophisticate keyboard instrument that is the sampler.
There is a growing opportunity of making nearly credible prototypes with the current tools. The libraries from IRCAM are explicitly made for contemporary music, and Xsample libraries contain several of the same techniques. Some smaller houses, like Soniccouture, Sonokinetic or 8Dio, have other useful sounds. VSL, Orchestral Tools, Spitfire Audio are adding more and more of these techniques, even if their core business is not mainly this niche, but the modern composer for media in advanced markets (like the sophisticate world of film and TV production in London, Paris or Berlin), where using the most recent vocabulary is allowed and even required.
My impression is that a composer is no longer forced to just imagine his/her music, but can put it to test with the available compositional tools. And if these tools can open a way to other new techniques – either in the world of acoustic or electronic instruments – music will gain something new.