Labels:text | screenshot | font OCR: AM/FM THE MAKING OF "HOBBITS & SPACESHIPS" PART 2 OF 2 First a little explanation: and produced Crusaders" and "Hobbits & Spaceships" is a Compact Disc with by AM/FM Editor Bjᵒrn A. Lynne, also known as Seppo Hurme, also known as "Fleshbrain / The compact disc music composed "Dr. Awesome Crusaders". has been sold in the Amiga scene for about a year now. Contrary to what some people think, the CD does *NOT* contain recorded Amiga-music. The music was made with synthesizers, effect units, etc. It is 72 minutes long, and is available for sale from AM/FM. Take a look at the "AM/FM Product Catalogue" elsewhere in this magazine to see price how to order, etc. Ok, here's the second and last part of the "Making of Hobbits & Spaceships", reques by ers, and written to shed ome light upon all the difficult details and doings that come with releasing a CD on a private basis. In part 1, published in AM/FM #15, I described how we did things "outside" the the process of creating the music itself who we contacted, the various problems we encountered etc. This time, I will go more into how we did things technically, composing and recording the music itself. I hope this article can stimulate a few musicians out there, hopefully so much that we will see more CDs emerge from the Amiga scene! Ever since 1990, music. know B&P Pro has UNTION I have been using Music-X for composing all my synthesizer You might not agree, but of all the sequencer programmes that have been made for the Amiga, including the very latest and hottest like Bars & Pipes Professional 2, I still consider Music-X the best for my purposes. I a lot of heavy functions available, like Multimedia possibilities, etc. but when it comes to composing a piece of music, in my opinion, Music-X does the job better than anything else. It is flexible, easy op* to use, safe, very user-friendly once you get to know it, and through all these years, there simply hasn't been one thing that I wanted to do but couldn't! Whenever I want to do something to my music, Music-X lets me do it easily, quickly, no fuzz, and no messing around. In my opinion, Music-X has the perfect balance between depth and speed/ease of use. On some of the earliest tracks, my "main" synth, the one that did most of the job, was a ROLAND U-110. This is a rack-nodule synth module, which isn't really a synthesizer, but more of a "sample-player". The box is crammed full of nice quality 12-bit samples which can be played up to 31 at any time. It also had built-in drums, and the sounds were actually quite nice. Listen to tracks like "Tin-viel" and "Cosmic Winds". Most of what you hear here comes from the Roland U-110, including the extremely nice choir- sound that opens "Cosmic Winds" (when the first part of "Air Movement" goes into the second part). Many people have in fact asked me, "where does this incredible choir come from?", and they have been surprised to hear that it came from a Roland U-110, a low-priced, quite old, sample-player. Everyone thought it came from an above-ú2000-synth. However, in the midst of composing the H&S music, I sold my U-110 and replaced it with an ENSONIQ SQ-R+. This is the rack-module version of the ENSONIQ SQ-1 Plus, including some great, incredibly realistic 16-bit piano samples. This synth module has 20 built-in drum kits, 21-voice polyphony, hundreds of sounds available, built-in digital effects, etc. In Norway, this module costs about 8000 NOK, i.e. approx. ú750. In some other European countries it might be somewhat cheaper, and in the US, it's probably a whole lot cheaper. Recommended! The only thing that I have really been missing since I changed from the Roland U110 to the Ensoniq SQ-R, is the fantastic choirs in the U110, which I mentioned above. Most of the lead sounds on my tracks were played from the Roland Juno-2 synth. I picked this one up second-hand for about 1000 NOK (!), i.e. a little under ú100! When I bought this synth, it was mostly because I loved feel of the it, keys on It has those so my thought was to use it as a master-keyboard. really smooth, feels-great-to-play keys, for someone like me (who isn't used to playing a real piano and therefore doesn't need "weighted keys"!). I loved playing the keyboard on this synth, but soon found out that some of the sounds, although not latest state-of-the-art, had a great deal of charm. Almost all the lead-sounds on all synth-solos in my tracks are played from the Juno-2. 11 If you're looking for a nice keyboard to play, to use as a a naster keyboard to use together with one or more rack- modules, I can heart ly recommend the Juno-2 as મૈં master keyboard, as it will give you some "not-too-bad" sounds as an added bonus! The first synth- solo in "Dimminuendo" is an example of the Juno-2's quite simple, but nice and effective, lead-sounds. The full, round, bass sound in "Cosmic Winds" is another of the sounds coming from the Juno-2. I still have the Juno-2 and use it as a Master Keyboard. I also had a Korg DW-8000, which is a synthesizer in the words true meaning. The keyboard on this synth is, in my opinion, awful, so I never touched it's keyboard. Instead I hooked it up to my Juno-2 which I used, as usual, as a master-keyboard. So for me, a rack module version of the Korg DW-8000 would be the obvious choice, but I don't even know if this synth has been made as a rack-module. This synth is quite old; it has those really It's nice to use for sound effects and sounds going "Zzzooiiingg", "FTrrrrrrssshhhhhiiishh" and "Zingngngngng". effects and atmosphere was made with this synth, for example in "Tinuviel" and many of the other tracks on H&S. synthetic sounds. "wwowwwwww", Many background It sounds strange, perhaps, but a few sounds were also played from the Amiga, using Music-X's ability to play Amiga samples along with the MIDI music. For example (and I bet this surprises you!): Almost all the drums and percussion in "Cosmic Winds" are Amiga samples! Some other small effects here and there, especially percussion, were also played from the Amiga. Amiga samples can sound quite good if they're blended in with more professional sounds, and given some reverb. So to sum it up; all the sound on my tracks from H&S come from: - Roland U110 Never these two at the same time, - Ensoniq SQ-R + ✓ as I sold one and bought the other - Roland Juno-2 -Korg DW-8000 - Amiga 500 My Amiga setup at the time was a standard good'old A500 with Kick 1.2, 2 megs of RAM, a 130 Mb Harddisk, an Alcotini Sound Sampler, and a home-made MIDI interface which I've had since 1987! (And which cost me, back then, about ú3 in parts! I friend of mine built it for me. (I still have it, by the way!)). All these sound sources were connected to my mixer, which was a Boss BX-8 8-channel stereo mixer with two effect loops. One of the effect-loops were in use, and hooked up to it was an Art Proverb digital effects unit which isn't exactly the latest state-of-the-art and is quite noisy! So any hiss or noise you might hear on H&S is most likely to come from this effect unit. If you don't know what an effect unit is, well here's an attempt to explain it in an easily understandable way: An effect unit is a unit that tries to improve an already created sound, by adding reverb, echo, chorus, or other effects to the sound. You can connect your effect unit to a synthesizer, and feed the sound from the synth THROUGH the effect-unit, and the sound will come out changed in some way. (Hopefully to the better!). These effect units are used in ALL professional studios, and most of the high quality synths that come out these days, often come with a built-in effect unit. (Like the Ensoniq SQ-series and many many other synth models). Here's an attempt to draw the MIDI setup as I used it under the composing and recording of "Hobbits & Spaceships": Korg DW8000 I | | | | | | _ ||| Rol. U110 / Enq. SQ-R+ [ Thru Out _|____|_|_|_| In Thru Out I I I I I I I _In_Thru_Out Art Proverb FX | I I I I I _In_Thru_ Out Amiga 500 I Thru In Out Rol. Juno-2 I || | || | || | || LLLLLLLLLL (Master keyboard) Music-X I can see, I also had a MIDI connection to the Art Proverb Effects As you processor. What for?? This unit doesn't make any sound at all - it's no use sending any MIDI notes to it! Correct - but I sent Program Change messages to it, and set it up for special effect programs, before and during the songs. I could, for example, switch from Echo to Reverb at a special time in a song. And here's an attempt to draw the sound connections: Rol. U110 Enq. SQ-R+ | III (3 outputs) III (1 left, 1 right, III (1 centered) I Korg DW8000 I |||||||||||||| LLLLLLLLLLLLL I(used only 1 output) ||| Art Proverb FX I I I I I I Master out ||| I |===================> TO DAT RECORDER (analogue input) I |||Inputs || || ||| 111 (8) || || ||| || || || || || || I || || II Rol. Juno-2 Ī I Aniga 500 Music-X |||||||||||||| LLLLL▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ (Master keyboard) The Roland U110 has 6 outputs, but you can configure them more or less like you want to, and I configured 3 outputs - one left, one right, and one centered, to be able three inputs on to get some real stereo from it. Since the U110 took my mixer, I only used 1 output from the DW8000, since I only had 8 inputs on my mixer... The DW8000 was least used, so I sacrificed one of it's outputs - i.e. I only got Mono sound from it. The "finished" sound travelled from the Master Output of the mixer and into a DAT recorder which I borrowed from a friend (I didn't have my own DAT recorder at the time). It was actually quite a big job to record all the songs, even though they were finished already when I started recording. For every new Also, the the in fact take song you want to record, something always goes wrong when you try to play it - Wrong sounds, no sound, wrong patch, wrong effect, wrong volume... mixer settings have to be tweaked an tweaked to perfection. All this can as much as an hour or even more, just to set things back exactly as they were when you composed your song. Of course, this depends on which you have, and their nature when it comes to handling programs, patches, etc. etc. It also depends on how careful you are about placing the correct Program Change messages within the Music-X sequences. very good at that... Unfortunately. Well, when you've finally got everything to sound as you want it to, as it synths effects, I was never did when you composed your song, then you have to tweak the input volume of the DAT recorder to the perfect setting for the song. I admit screwing this up a bit on the very first track of the CD, "Dimminuendo", I'm sure many of of the CD. Sorry about that! you have noticed that it's recorded on a too low volume compared to the rest It wouldn't have been so apparent, if it wasn't for the fact that the next* track on the CD, Seppo's "Sword of the Past", starts with full volume right away! When I recorded the music, I always turned off anything in the room that could extra static noise. When you record fuzz possible, cause hum and switched off as of course. for a CD, you want as little hiss, Things that should definitely be Also, the clicking of the Amiga disk are Monitors and TUS. sometimes cause static noise, so it's smart to place a disk in all stop them from clicking. The Amiga power supply can also but of course, since I was playing my music from Music-X, I create some drives can your disk drives, to "hun", couldn't turn the Amiga off! from my mixer as I could. Still, *some* hiss, fuzz and hum So I moved the Amiga power supply as far away the Boss BX8 isn't really a great mixer, so was still there when I recorded it. Well, I did the best I could with the equipment that I had, and I was quite pleased with the result. Well, think that pretty much wraps it up for this two-part article about I "The Making of Hobbits & Spaceships". I really can't think of much more to tell you. Of course, I haven't described in any detail how we did things on the inside of Music-X, but that leads more towards a Music-X tutorial, and I can refer to all the various Music-X tutorial material that we have already in AM/FM - there's Music-X tutorials, hints and tips in AM/FM published here Magazine Disks no. 2, 3, 9, 10 and 11 - and there are lots and lots of extra utilities, protocols, sequences, etc. for Music-X scattered around almost all disks that have been released so far. of the AM/FM Magazine If there's anything special you want to know about how we did a certain thing on Hobbits & Spaceships, don't hesitate to write and ask, and I will answer your question in the next issue. See you! (Oh, and thanks for reading all the way through to the end! :-) Bjᵒrn A. Lynne AM/FM I Mixer I Boss BX-8 I FX FX send back I mono stereol In I I L
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