Archive for music

Personal Log (2): Leaving Linux, buing guitars

July 8, 2009 at 16:17 · Filed under music, real-life, software ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Not that I write continuation of the personal log every time Federer wins a Slam title, but after dramatic final of the Wimbledon it really happened. (Just another instant classic after last year final? :-) ) Fifteen and counting so it seems.

I wanted to confess that I stopped using Linux on my computers. I still have out of date Ubuntu on my desktop, but I can’t remember last time I used it. I went for Windows XP after all those Linux years, because I play more games now than ever. Video and music processing is also better supported on Windows – more software to choose from, VST support, etc. Seriously, why to use Wine just to pretend I’m not using Windows, right? Of course – anytime I have to work in command line in Windows, it’s real pain in the ass. When I changed my old computer at work for Lenovo T500 (with some troubles though) I decided to go for Windows XP only and in order to have some Linux I searched for some virtual machine solution. Friend of mine recommended VirtualBox and I was satisfied! It worked nicely, there was some trick with virtual folder name (try different name then the directory name if you have problem, or something like that ;-) ), but after just a few hours I had nice Ubuntu machine for development tasks that required Unix tools, strong command line and all the rest you don’t have in Windows for free. Of course, performance was… virtual. :-) But if you want to try some virtual machine software, I strongly recommend this one. Documentation is OK, not too much to drown in and I found everything important there.

What I can’t understand is SVN Tortoise client. It’s absolutely great tool, looks nice, integrates to contextual menus for files, etc. So far so good. But when you want to check modified files to find out what is not added to repository (and should be) or when you want to commit, the view shows you either only managed files or all files recursively – there is no way that non-managed directory is just reported without the complete sub-tree. Compare this to default CLI functionality of the svn st command. Man I miss that so much! But not that much that I plan to setup my system PATH and run the all-time-looser “cmd” to use it.

There is one more thing I dislike on Windows. I alt-tab a lot, I’m of those erratic guys. :-) And sometimes I alt-shift-tab back too. Sometimes, when I depress these keys in a wrong order, Windows is strongly convinced I wanted to switch the keyboard layout (alt-shift). Trouble is, there is limited amount of options (keyboard shortcuts) to do so, this one is clearly the best. I should probably download some tool just do switch between keyboard layouts. Slovak keyboard is not good for coding really. Enough Windows rant for now.

I bought a new guitar! I have infamous Behringer’s V-Tone pack – because it was cheap and I was young(er) and uninformed when I bought it. The price was good, amplifier is good, guitar is… well, it’s some kind of Strat and it is possible to play on it. Now I know there are better options in the same price tag (not too many though), but what’s done is done. To have at least semi-decent guitar I bought French LAG AM100:


Black beauty!

It looks cool, it’s Superstrat, it is something different than the Strat, so I might actually also learn more about guitars per se. It was priced 356€ but in a massive sale action I acquired it for 156€, why not? I actually didn’t know what to buy as I also wanted some Ovation, but I decided to buy the best value from whatever I wanted. Funny sale strategy when you learn prices only on site. :-) Even before I bought it I had started to learn some scales and other stuff to enhance my play. Chords, rhythm, no problem, but I wanted to go on after a long stagnation – and with better guitar it’s even more fun!

Is the guitar good? More people claim it’s a good value even for the original price, so I guess I wasn’t wrong with my buy. Quality is OK, but I honestly can’t judge guitar when I can’t compare it. Maybe later I’ll write more on the guitar, trouble with LAG is that they have no official English site (as a manufacturer, not as reseller), forums are dominated by French language, no real documentation for newbies like me. So I have to rely on other forums, other people and learn the rest by myself. Of course, when I just play on it, there is no problem, but you know… when you have a new toy, you want to play with it even more. Tune it (later probably, and I don’t mean just strings now), understand it. However, enough for this time – I need to practice!

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Behringer UCA202 tricky crosstalk

June 29, 2009 at 23:18 · Filed under music, real-life ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Behringer UCA202 (see product page or little video introduction) is a neat little box that’s plugged into your mixer (or whatever else in the analog signal realm) via two pairs of RCA cables and than it has another USB cable to your computer. With ASIO drivers you can see it in your favourite DAW and record sounds going into the UCA202 or send master via the same box out (to monitor via your mixer for instance). Simply put – it’s USB Audio Interface. It has absolutely awesome price – you can probably buy it under $30, I bought it for 34€. Obviously in this price tag you can expect some cons. First are pretty obvious – it’s only USB 1.1 which probably determines the sampling frequency (max 48kHz) and bit resolution (16 bit for every channel). And it’s stereo, no multi-input. But hey, that’s CD quality (48kHz is actually a bit better), it’s low latency device, so what do you want for that price?

Well, there is one twist I’ve discovered after some time. I wanted to practice an electric guitar, so I started REAPER, loaded some jam track in it started a playback. Immediately I noticed some signal on a guitar track (that was armed for recording) – signal that wasn’t there before. Now I thought that my out and in ways are well separated, I suspected that maybe it’s a problem in mixing console (also Behringer and also budget solution). But after some time of connecting and disconnecting various cables I found out the sinner. Even when UCA202 is plugged only to the computer (no RCA cables in or out) it sends part of the output back to the input. I’ve found some measurements for this box here and we discussed the issue with author of the blog where this comparison is linked – see the post and the discussion. Funny thing is that stereo crosstalk on the output is lower than this leakage into input. That probably means that there is some design flaw on the board – or maybe in some chip, I really don’t know.

Does it mean that UCA202 is unusable? Well – no. But you should know how much of the monitored music will go into your recorded track. In my case it’s quite alarming -48dB at 100Hz (which is normal frequency for bass, kicks, etc.). Other man mentioned -50dB and Behringer’s support confirmed -58dB. You can actually fight it pretty easily – just lower your master when you record. The unit has quite strong headphones output, so you can monitor there or further amplify your headphones on a mixing console. In that case you can get another 10-20dB which should be OK. But this fact is clearly the biggest flaw of the unit in my eyes. I can live with the CD quality, but this really affects my recorded track. It’s good to know.

Today I was also informed that UMA25S has the same problem like UCA202. I didn’t know what UMA is ;-) so I went to check it out and it’s basically like their former UMX25 (25 midi keyboard with some freely assignable knobs, when your SW can support it) but with USB audio interface actually built-in (UMX has UCA202 in the package). It’s a great idea – probably not their, but I just never thought of that before. So you have one unit with only one USB to your computer and then those RCA connectors on the Midi keyboard plus there is a headset and cool bag. Now I sound like an agent… but hey! Obviously the USB audio unit in the UMA25 has the same problem, which is kinda sad. And it’s still only USB 1.1. Man – imagine M-Audio AXIOM 25 with USB audio device built-in. But then… you still can buy two units – each making what you really want. But UMA25 is a great combo in one peace in case you’re starting with home recording. There is a good video review on this unit.

And the point? I would never expect this kind of problem – however cheap the unit is. It’s probably some design flaw that wasn’t thought of, because it’s crazy if you hear more from let’s say left output on any input than on the right output (that would be stereo crosstalk, right?). It’s unlucky that these Behringer’s units suffer from this (the real values vary piece to piece probably) but you can still use that “lower-your-master” workaround and the price is very interesting. But if you’re willing to pay more, go for something better – and maybe find out information about this kind of crosstalk too. :-) Good luck with your home recording.

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REAPER Introduction

June 20, 2009 at 22:03 · Filed under music, real-life, software ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

This time I wanna reference my double-episode about Reaper. It’s really just a quick introduction because it’s not possible to cover any DAW in under 16 minutes, but I wanted to show how to approach some basic tasks in REAPER. Both videos were made with version 2.5x and it was just a few days before Reaper 3 was released. However all covered topics are still valid. In the first video I talk about multi-track recording, how to arm the track, select input… and similar things that are a bit different from Audacity that was covered in first two episodes. I demonstrate how you can record multiple audio tracks and midi tracks at once – something you can’t do with Audacity. Then I quickly go through MIDI editor (which is overhauled in version 3) and I show how to quantize recorded MIDI events:


Episode 3 – REAPER introduction, device setup, recording multiple tracks

Second video (sounds more sleepy as the night was closing in :-) ) continues with applying VST effects on a track, than I show how to use VSTi (instrument) to synthesize MIDI tracks and then I move on to envelopes. First I edit volume envelope to achieve fade-out on the track and I explain how to edit envelope with mouse during the process. There are other ways how to edit envelope, you can even record the envelope using MIDI CC (continuous controller). Last example shows how to change a tempo of the song. This is very useful if you want for instance slow song with faster intro or the other way around. When you do things like this, you should plan your song before you record audio tracks, because while MIDI tracks respect the tempo, audio tracks are based on real time. This means that when you change the tempo of the song audio tracks go out of sync.


Episode 4 – REAPER and VST, VSTi and some playing with envelopes

I mentioned (in the video) that I use free VST(i)s. That’s obviously because I’m tight on budget – I can buy things, but music is only my hobby, results are still not convincing :-) and there is no point in spending hundreds of bucks on great VSTs. Would they pay off in my case? Certainly not! I mentioned Kore Player in the previous blog post about this topic. This time I’ll mention few of my other favourite VSTs. If you have a hint, or a link to something better – don’t hesitate and post a comment! Blue Cat’s Freeware plugin pack is a nice pack of effects like chorus, flanger or phaser, but there is also spectrum analyzer added in. Another pack of VST effects is provided by mda here – and mda also offers VST instruments – synths and pianos. Not that bad for no money! Finally there are ndc plugs – site with some interesting multi-purpose VST plugins. From them I want to recommend ndcMIDI that can be used to split midi keyboards for instance. With MIDI filter you can allow only some parts of the keyboard to be passed to VSTi synthesizer and when you do so with multiple MIDI tracks you can split your keyboard between various instruments ad lib!

I’ll talk more about interesting free VST(i) plugins also in the following parts, it’s impossible to cover it all – today I named only a few packs with wide range of usage.

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Personal Log

June 7, 2009 at 22:19 · Filed under music, real-life, software ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

I’m not sure if I should add “(1)” into the title or not but let’s deal with the content first – before I decide to write another personal log. I just feel like to write something from my everyday life. Yet not so everyday, because today it finally happened – Roger Federer matched Pete Sampras with his Grand Slam titles + he completed career Grand Slam. In open era only Rod Laver and Andre Agassi did that before – and only Andre (and Roger now) on three different surfaces (on the other hand – Rod did it in one year and so he is the only man with the true Grand Slam in open era).

Funny – I became Roger’s fan when his star seemed to diminish. I didn’t care about tennis that much – mostly because of the lack of TV in my household. In 2005 I somehow accidentally saw him winning the US Open against Agassi (who also handed him Roland Garros trophy today!). Later I started to watch him in 2007 which was his last domination year. In 2008 he left the first place to Nadal who waited for this for a long time (just another statistical record) and barely managed to stay #2 – mostly because the mononucleosis in the start of the year. At least he won US Open (again ;-) ). However 2009 doesn’t look so bad at all! Nadal showed hell of a fight in Australian Open and he is now clearly all-around player (after winning Wimbledon 2008 and hard court AO 2009 who can doubt it?). Roland Garros seemed to be ill-fated for Federer, but he managed to win it – while the biggest favourite lost to Robin Söderling who managed to pull it through to the final. And lose against Roger Federer. Who knows how it would end against Nadal. Nadal lost last clay final to Federer though – but it was only best of three and French Open – that’s just completely different motivation. Whatever the Roger’s way to this success was – he is there – between those few who won each of Grand Slam titles. Congratulations.


As a funny addition – here is a vid with some Barca fan entering the court during today’s match :-)

But tennis is not the only thing I live with. To make the post rather shorter I’ll touch other things sort of telegraphically. :-) I mentioned REAPER digital audio workstation (DAW) in my previous posts (and also in my YouTube videos I wanted to wrap-up here). Big thing is that REAPER v3 was released. Actually it’s 3.02 currently – which is a good thing because Cockos (developer of the software) started to fix things quickly. If you’re in music business (especially home recording/computer based recording with strong emphasis on audio+MIDI), you should try Reaper because it’s slick, small, fast yet powerful DAW. I also found incredible VST instrument… more than that actually. Free Kore Player by Native Instruments along with their free Kore Soundpack Compilation Vol.1 is something you simply have to have (yes, I know the registration and activation process is annoying, but it’s worth it). I found some great sounds there, one patch with rock drums (through 6 octaves, 3 full sets!) and another Latino drums – and much more!… man, this is incredible deal for 0 money and I’m happy that NI supports also music fans who can’t afford expansive solutions – or maybe just wanna taste how it is to do some music and not make living of it.

Other than that? Well, business as usual, socialists took the most EU parliament chairs in for our country. I’ll just pay my taxes on, with thieves like our Slovak non-liberal, private-equity-backed socialists I’m pretty sure my money won’t get to poor people anyway (not in the same extent like it did with rightists, which is funny paradox). And maybe people will see one day. I don’t care anymore – although elections are my sacred obligation. World-wide crisis is far from over, well – I rather care about present and little things around. My wife, my son… or my tortoise :-) (see it how it can flip from its back!). Or Roger’s triumph on Roland Garros for that matter.

Well and now I should finally do something about JavaSimon or its second version will never reach final. So see you later. :-)

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Multi-track home recording for free

May 18, 2009 at 21:50 · Filed under music, software, virtual-life ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

I’d like to interconnect my YouTube creations with this blog – so this time we’ll be talking about home recording with Audacity. It’s by no means Audacity tutorial – I just want to introduce Audacity and also demonstrate its limitations when you wanna enter the realm where acronyms like VST, MIDI and ASIO rule it all. I have also found out that it’s easier to talk English above beer than to produce the video in English language (don’t forget – I’m a Slovak :-) ). I grew fond of short cuts (or cross-fading cuts of my longer speech that wasn’t that good) and it is generally a lot of trying for me. And I expect the viewer to be a bit tolerant to my faults. I came to the conclusion that I should rather write a script before but I’m just way too lazy to do so. However… back to the Audacity.


WTF is multi-track recording? How to plug the microphone into the computer? Newbie warning! (If you know it all watch it only at your own risk or for fun. :-) )

First video is just the introduction to a very, very raw way how to get your sound into the computer via soundcard with 1/8″ jack (I meant 3.5 mm, but you know… imperial units are still often used in this world) – that is via typical microphone input available virtually on every computer. When you have a better microphone with XLR connector, you might end up with XLR on the other side of the cable or with 6.3 mm jack (1/4″). In any case you need a converter, jack-jack (in both size directions) are pretty common, XLR-jack is also possible but it’s another complication. Now imagine we have a (semi) serious microphone plugged into the computer (without preamp! It’s a Sin!) just to use my few bucks “Skype” microphone for the rest of the show and to introduce the Audacity.

With this setup I made my first songs – and of course the quality was poor. I’m still not too close to optimal home recording quality, but Audacity with microphone via soundcard is really rather just an emergency solution. However – it works, you can experiment and it does not cost you anything. Except the microphone and the computer of course. And whatever instrument you want to play. Later you find out that it’s not easy to record multiple tracks in sync (unless you’re really very lucky). That’s caused by so called latency. And latency is the core of the second video with Audacity as our main hero:


Audacity, latencies and ASIO. And when we’re talking about Steinberg also some VST is mentioned. In theory.

This time I added intro – it was made in REAPER. “Lead guitar” is actually played on MIDI keyboard and heavily edited later (read: corrected :-) ) and I also played a bit with the pan envelope (don’t worry, we might talk about it next time). The rest is mostly about latencies with some conclusion about Audacity in context of ASIO and VST usage. I don’t like the heavy sound of my computer you can hear all the time in the background, but you have to live with that until I buy some other microphone (probably some Koss headphones with microphone on it). I don’t wanna use dynamic microphone shown in the first episode because it’s not that handy. Maybe next time I’ll come up with better setup. Currently I’m not able to get playback from software into the captured video but maybe I’ll overcome it somehow later.

I have also next two videos uploaded already – they are just a short introduction into REAPER and I’ll cover them in some future post. I don’t want to continue in Reaper tutorial, but I wanted to introduce the DAW before I move on to hardware I use. The goal is to cover home recording on extremely tight budget (understand 500-1500 EUR or USD, choice is yours) so don’t expect miracles. But the time is right and it’s really easy now to have a reasonable home recording solution for the price of your choice. To add one more link, there is really awesome and extensive Guide to the Home and Project Studio by Tweak. Funny that I found it after I knew some of those answers (but far from even half of them). Sometimes it’s hard to find a guide when you actually don’t know what to search for. Isn’t it Ironic?

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