Over the years I like to think Ableton has been at the forefront of the digital music community (at least among the pack like Korg), at a special nexus of hardware, software, VST developers, and global sharing by way of an incredibly robust and deep Live Suite program. Seeing the firm continue to reach out and share community resources is habitual for them, and I'm very pleased to see this get all sorts of attention from this community. The intersection of Technology and Art is a bright, multi-cultural future, and with that comes responsibility. To put it in a phrase, this is an example of Ableton providing a ladder up to new members, rather than slamming the door behind them once a certain level was reached. Enjoy!
Get started making music
451–460 of 476 posts
Re: Get started making music
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
For instance, while Imperial units aren't without some advantage, they are pretty generally inferior to the Metric system. You say this pretty matter of factly, but I actually vehemently disagree. Many imperial measurements are better than their metric counterparts for day-to-day lay usage. - Fahrenheit is a better scale than Celsius - Inches, Feet, & Miles are very practical units. Centimeters, and Meters much less…
“In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie1 of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point. An amount of hydrogen weighing the same amount has exactly one mole of atoms in it. Whereas in the American system, the answer to ‘How much energy does it take to boil a room-te…
That's great.
When is that EVER useful to the layperson?
Re: Get started making music
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like LMMS but it has enough vst issues that I just went with a cheap Reaper license. Plus I need an audio recorder as well.
I wouldn't say that "LMMS has vst issues". I would say that vst has a serious issue: it is not a open standard. Although it seems they are trying to improve that for the linux community: http://cdm.link/2017/03/steinberg-brings-vst-linux-good-thin...
Good to know. That said Reaper enabled me to use the 7-8 vsts I was really interested in using that didn't work (or worked poorly) in lmms. If I new c++ better I would contribute.
Re: Get started making music
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many non classical musicians use other notations. For example, many guitarists and bassists use tab notation. It's simply a visual representation of the strings and a number for which fret to play. It's not as expressive but is far easier to get started with.
"It's not as expressive" Have you ever used Guitar Pro or Tux Guitar? It can be INSANELY expressive. Grab a MIDI of Van Halen's "Jump" (IIRC The best one was about 76kB) and import it into either of those. Guitar Pro will be noticeably more expressive vs TuxGuitar. Inside of that MIDI, the solo is 100% dead-on note-for-harmonic-for-slide-for-hammer. Both programs output the exact same tablature. You will get the solo…
MIDI isn't tab though. It requires note velocities and durations for a start, which tab doesn't. You can go from MIDI to tab but you couldn't go from tab to MIDI.
Re: Get started making music
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I always wondered why musicians keep up with the > conventional musical notation system, and haven't come > up with something better (maybe a job for a HNer?). Before starting down that path, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with the wide range of music notations that already exist and continue to be used, and then the ridiculously varying plethora of failed alternative music notations that have been invent…
Agree 100% with all this. Modern drum notation is probably the easiest case to look at with regards to evolution of "western notation", with jazz chord symbols being another. Some other reasons why musical notation prevails: - There's a huge switching cost, as much of the world's written music is in some form of "western notation". Being able to read standard notation unlocks a huge wealth of knowelege from books, et…
What great jazz musicians don't read music?
Re: Get started making music
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Isn't most tolerable trade-off between multually-incompatible requirements another way of saying "best overall"? I could have said that better. What I meant was that standard notation isn't better than every other system according to every metric we could use to compare such things. Gary Garrett has more lattice demos on Youtube. Here's one that's an animation of an example in Harmonic Experience by W. A. Mathieu (…
> What I meant was that standard notation isn't better than every other system according to every metric we could use to compare such things. This is totally true; tablature is better for beginning guitar players to learn to play specific songs on the guitar. The only reason tablature doesn't supplant standard notation is that the metric under which it's superior is much narrower -- it's only for guitars, and only be…
It's a way to identify distinct pitches that are usually treated as the same in equal temperament.
For instance, in just intonation 2 (the major second of the scale) has a frequency that makes a ratio of 9/8 relative to the tonic, but sometimes you might want a slightly flatter major second with a ratio of 10/9. So, that note is label 2- to distinguish it from the regular major second.
Re: Get started making music
#457I always wondered why musicians keep up with the conventional musical notation system, and haven't come up with something better (maybe a job for a HNer?). I mean the conventional music notation represents tones in five lines, each capable of holding a "note" (is that the right word?) on a line, as well as in between lines, possibly pitched down and up, resp., by B's and sharps (depending on the tune etc.). Since wes…
Tempered tuning indeed divides the octave into 12 half-steps, but a huge amount of music uses only 7 or fewer of them for long stretches (or entire pieces) with a few exceptions. So think of the lines & spaces as being a compressed representation that doesn't waste vertical space for the tones that a piece isn't going to use.
Me, I love standard notation. Common chord voicings and interval patterns stand out as easily recognizable patterns on the page.
Re: Get started making music
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree 100% with all this. Modern drum notation is probably the easiest case to look at with regards to evolution of "western notation", with jazz chord symbols being another. Some other reasons why musical notation prevails: - There's a huge switching cost, as much of the world's written music is in some form of "western notation". Being able to read standard notation unlocks a huge wealth of knowelege from books, et…
What great jazz musicians don't read music?
Wes Montgomery, Erroll Garner, Django Reinhart and obviously Roland Kirk are probably the most well known that couldn't read at all. There are many, many more jazz musicians that were/are very poor sight readers.
Re: Get started making music
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
What great jazz musicians don't read music?
Wes Montgomery, Erroll Garner, Django Reinhart and obviously Roland Kirk are probably the most well known that couldn't read at all . There are many, many more jazz musicians that were/are very poor sight readers.
Sure, but those guys are all (sadly) long gone, and the parent comment said "don't", not "didn't".
Re: Get started making music
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It's not as expressive" Have you ever used Guitar Pro or Tux Guitar? It can be INSANELY expressive. Grab a MIDI of Van Halen's "Jump" (IIRC The best one was about 76kB) and import it into either of those. Guitar Pro will be noticeably more expressive vs TuxGuitar. Inside of that MIDI, the solo is 100% dead-on note-for-harmonic-for-slide-for-hammer. Both programs output the exact same tablature. You will get the solo…
MIDI isn't tab though. It requires note velocities and durations for a start, which tab doesn't. You can go from MIDI to tab but you couldn't go from tab to MIDI.
"MIDI isn't tab though. It requires note velocities and durations for a start, which tab doesn't."
This is entirely incorrect. You can get velocities (Mezzo-forte, mezzo-piano, etc.) and such is expressed if you hover over the note itself in Guitar Pro or Tuxguitar. Sure they change the granularity of it, but the general range remains the same and for all practical purposes sounds the same if played properly.