I Write Songs At Home

The whole idea of this website was initially supposed to be to add an blog entry every time I wrote a song, for the purpose of promoting the creation and recording your own music at home. That would allow those kind enough to read to follow along in my progress. 

If you've been following along at your computer you've been nodding off and you've noticed that your computer has been collecting dust. I just have not been creating enough musical output, for a variety of reasons. That being the case, I thought I would widen the focus of the blog to include commentary not just on my own music, but on others as it relates to the music creation process.

A quick legal comment: one reason I was hesitant to cover music by others is the wild, unsettled universe of copyright on the web. I am now confidently aware of the concept of <fair use>. What that means is that as long as I use small illustrative clips of other people's music for commentary purposes only, everything in this blog will be legal and proper. It is analogous to one literary work quoting another, with attribution of course.

There are a couple of other things I might include in my standard band setup: horns and strings. I think what I’ll do instead is wrap it up here and consider myself ready to resume writing songs. I will go back and add those things if I feel inclined to.

I can easily use Kontakt for sampled horns and strings. The thing is I have always been particular about saxophone sounds, never being totally happy with sax samples. I am always looking for the next best way to recreate that beauty of an instrument. 

That is actually why I chose the Yamaha S30 I now use as my keyboard. It has a compatible slot for Yamaha’s PLG Series plug-in cards (officially called the Modular Synthesis Plug-in System). The expansion card I have, the PGL150VL, gives me access to saxes and other horns using Yamaha’s physical modelling synthesis. 

In addition to the S30 the PLG expansion cards can be used with other Yamaha synthesizers, including the S80, S90, CS6X, CS6R and Motif.

Since then I have found something even better. I already owned Reaktor before I got it as part of the Muse Research Receptor with Komplete inside. A typical Reaktor instrument looks something like the one shown here and virtually always has excellent sound.

Here is what I consider the basic keyboards for my taste: acoustic piano, electric piano, organ and synthesizer. There can be many variations (and of course millions of variations for that last one), but my standard setup will contain just one version of each. After all, this is only for getting started on a song.

Acoustic piano is the easy one. I am using the Akoustik Piano application from the Komplete suite. It has many sampled piano sounds, but since I am not a pianist I am not picky. I’ll just take the first one. I can always choose another sound later if it is better for the song.

Native Instruments was kind enough to create the Elektrik Piano application to cover that end. Again, there are many sounds but before knowing which one is needed for a song I will just choose one at random for my standard band.

In my mind the best software emulation of a real instrument is B4 II, which emulates the Hammond B3 organ. I will settle on a rich organ sound as part of my setup.

Although I have access to Reaktor, the world’s greatest software synth, I will not make that part of the setup. I will only go to it as needed because it is so vast. Of all the components of the Komplete application the one I am most familiar with is Reaktor. I owned it before I decided to spring for the whole Komplete package as part of the Receptor. If you only buy one software synth this is the one to get. If you are not sure, check out the Reaktor User Library which is a free benefit of being a Reaktor owner. There you can see the extra freebies which are above and beyond all the synths and effects which come standard with the application.

In putting together my standard band I start with the drums. Battery, which is part of the Native Instruments Komplete suite includes perhaps the greatest collection of sampled drum sounds ever committed to software. Of course, I would probably say that about every component of the Komplete application.

I am not familiar with some of the Komplete applications. That includes Battery. Some people enjoy the learning curve aspect of getting into a new application. I am not one of them. I like to just know and go. In a case like this I try to find out just enough to get done what I need to do and learn the rest later.

I do ultimately try to sit down and read the whole manual. I would STRONGLY suggest that you do that with any new application. Today’s software is so mature that doing so always produces pleasant surprises that makes things easier in the long run.

My original plan was to create a custom drum kit to be my standard kit, but Battery comes loaded with preset kits, so why stop being lazy now? A quick run through the kits and I made my decision. All of the kits sounded good, but I notices there were differences in how they were laid out on the keyboard. Because this is to be my standard and I normally use General MIDI format to set up my drums I chose the GM kit. I can always replace individual sounds when I need to.