Propellerhead Software today inaugurated the Propellerhead Artist Patch Charts. Have you ever wondered what the bass sound in that track was? How they made the harp glissandos in that movie, the shimmering strings in that commercial, or why the snare in that track sounds so familiar?

Propellerhead did and asked artists the question: “What’s in your Reason Rack?”
Their top picks and insights are collected into Artist Patch Charts.
Discover what Flaming Lips, 3OH!3 and Ru, amongst others, use in their productions: http://www.propellerheads.se/substance/patch-charts

Zplane.development released version 1.5 of vielklang. vielklang is an audio harmonization instrument for easy generation of vocal or instrumental harmonies with up to four voices. The utilization of voice leading and harmony progression models allows vielklang to create harmony parts in a more musical way than traditional harmony processors and makes it a versatile and creative tool for musicians, songwriters and producers.

The new version adds the following main features:

• live MIDI input: play chords or voicings directly on the keyboard to control vielklang’s harmonization
• new harmonization styles: 3-voice intelligent, Block Chords, Fauxbourdon, Organum
• new export options: Audio/MIDI File Export for individual voices, MIDI export of harmony tracks
• improved input melody analysis: new note detection algorithm improves accuracy and robustness
• Ready for Pro Tools 8 and Cubase 5

About vielklang
vielklang allows quick and easy creation of natural sounding backing vocals, brass sections, and other harmony parts with up to four voices. It offers a new musical approach for the generation of the voicings: rather than synthesizing plain parallel voicings, vielklang takes into account the melodic context to create a chord-based arrangement and is thus able to produce musical harmonizations instantly.

Automatic recognition engines take care of initialization of obvious parameters like root note and key to let the user to focus on musical issues rather than tedious plugin configuration.

While vielklang will provide instant and meaningful results, experienced users have the option to edit the result with parameters like range (ambitus) or the distribution of the voices, to modify root note and scale, to edit single harmonies and to change each single pitch of each individual voice. Alternatively, the harmonization can be controlled by direct MIDI keyboard input.

vielklang’s main features are:

• musical harmonization using voice-leading and harmony progression models
• adjustable pitch correction, delay, timing humanization, timbre, volume, and pan for each voice
• Audio-to-MIDI
• MIDI-controlled snapshot system allows several harmonizations per audio input
• one-click modification of tempo, pitch, scale and harmonies
• plug and play: don’t waste time with tedious configuration

vielklang 1.1 is available for RTAS (Mac OS X, Windows), VST (Mac OS X, Windows) and Audio Units (Mac OS X) at a MSRP of $299.00/€249.00

More at: vielkang.zplane.de

Toontracks, Swedish developers of award winning drum samplers, have generously provided OBEDIA with EZdrummer and Superior Drummer 2.0, two of their premier products, as prizes in a drawing exclusively for OBEDIA members. Both are RTAS, VST and Audio Units compatible and both run on Mac OSX and Windows. No matter your DAW of choice this will be an excellent addition to your system

Two lucky OBEDIA members get the chance of winning a great product from Toontrack! The drawing will take place on January 15th and is open to all registered OBEDIA members. Only one entry each registered member please. Enter now before it’s too late and get a chance to win one of these superb drum samplers.

Click Here to Enter

Native Instruments has just introduced REAKTOR SPARK, a KORE SOUNDPACK based on the new “Spark” performance synthesizer designed by NI founder and REAKTOR mastermind Stephan Schmitt. With a strong focus on distinctive tone and genuine musical expressiveness, REAKTOR SPARK is both an outstanding library addition for REAKTOR users as well as a powerful instrument and sound library for KORE 2 and the free KORE PLAYER.

Spark was designed by Stephan Schmitt as a personal project over the course of three years, with the goal to create a synthesizer with a highly energetic sound character and maximum potential for real-time expression. Completely realized in Native Instruments’ groundbreaking modular synthesis studio REAKTOR, Spark expertly combines powerful subtractive synthesis with a sophisticated array of internal feedback loops and various other special sound shaping features. This allows its distinctive sonic output to cut through any musical arrangement with vivid, animated and organic tones, which are especially gratifying when played live with a keyboard and a set of real-time parameter controls.

The REAKTOR SPARK sound pack built around Spark makes this powerful synthesizer conveniently accessible for users of KORE 2 and the free KORE PLAYER, providing 200 versatile presets as well as intuitive sound tweaking options through the unified KORE interface. Owners of REAKTOR have access to the full set of Spark’s parameter and control elements, and can also explore and modify the complete signal flow structure of this extraordinary instrument.

REAKTOR SPARK is available for download purchase in the NI Online Shop for a suggested retail price of $59 / 49 EUR.

Additional information on REAKTOR SPARK including audio demos is available at www.native-instruments.com/reaktorspark.info

Dave Bishop of Snohomish, WA is the lucky prizewinner! We are featuring a story on him shortly about how he started recording, his DAW system and work flow, and of course what he plans to use the Vocal Studio Toolkit for.

We had the highest number of entries ever for this prize generously donated by the folks at Antares. If you entered this time but didn’t win you’ll have plenty more opportunities in some future exciting contests we’re planning right now. Keep checking back for your next chance of winning!

Thanks for your support

The OBEDIA Team

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A first look at Pro Tools 8 from our friend at Digidesign Scott Church of Digidesign.

Q: I have a song where we recorded an acoustic guitar first then did the drum tracks later and so on. Before I recorded the drum tracks, I should have fixed the tempo problem first. Can I still fix this problem? (Even after using elastic audio to move some drum hits around?) I don’t work in grid mode or tick base settings for the most part. I know that this needs to change some day. Do you use beat detective?

A: OK, There’s 2 ways I can see going with this.

Way 1) Use Beat Detective to correct specific sections of the song, Say a bad fill for example Beat Detective is good with small sections. and is good for fixing a specific timing problem, but may still not work great if the tempo is all over the place or not defined for the entire song.

Way 2) Go the long way and create a tempo map of the entire song. Allowing you to use Elastic audio on any recorded tracks with more control over changing the actual tempo of the song. This is what I have been doing to fix parts because ultimately everything is much easier to edit in a grid mode once the tempo work is there. Also, Overdubbing new parts might be easier since you’ll be able to use a click track that will correspond to the tempo.

• Perform a SAVE AS at this point, so you can experiment without losing your current place. Creating the Tempo Map involves identifying bars and beats. Start by identifying bar 1. This could be tricky if you have any tracks set to Ticks. You may need to set them back to Samples before Identifying bar 1.
• Next identify Bar 2. This will set the Start tempo of the song. Now create a click track. This will help you by indicating when the tempo is changing and then go through the whole song identifying bars as you go whenever the click track gets off time. Each time you identify a bar, it will adjust the tempo map. Pic 1 shows where the Identify beat command is and also shows you my session, where I’ve gone through and done exactly that. Notice how the Tempo is identified, it’s all over the place. Kicks and snares are good places to identify beat. (Beat Detective can do this too, but I find it very tedious for an entire song)

• 
• Next, Change any Sample based tracks to tick based. Then pick the elastic type for ALL TRACKS - be sure your drum tracks are all grouped. Don’t leave any tracks out because they won’t be adjusted when you change tempo. Then I’ll mess around with the Tempo Operations window.
• In pic 2, I’m selecting 2 bars to apply a tempo change to.

This should go a long way to fixing any tempo issues. I don’t normally quantize things after all this, but often manually adjust or move warp markers using Grid mode. — Hope this helps.

If you want to bring (Import) an MP3 or Audio file into CUBASE and analyze it for learning/teaching or

Simply reusing it for a song or track you are composing – Here is how you do it…

For example, if you want to be able to slow down (tempo wise – without changing the pitch) an audio track so that you can figure out what is being played and examine the arrangement or simply use it as a loop, read on…

Although you could technically do this to an entire song (3 minutes +) it’s better to break the song/track up into separate 4 BAR segments. This is because all of the TEMPO/TIME stretching – compressing capabilities of CUBASE are based on the idea of working with “small” 1-4 Bar loops.

So, the first thing to do is define “LOOPS” or small segments of the song/track for processing.

To start, we will define a 4 bar area or “loop” that we want to examine.

To do this we want to set the LEFT / RIGHT boundary (or the start and end of the loop) markers in Cubase… Remember at this point the TEMPO that is set in Cubase has no relationship to the audio

you have just imported since the DEFAULT tempo of a new project in Cubase is 120 Beats Per Minute or 120 BPM. IE: Cubase has NO idea and does NOT care if the audio you just imported has ANY tempo value of any kind.

NOTE: To set (adjust) the Left and Right “markers” – Set LEFT Marker by holding down the “Ctrl” key

And clicking (and sliding) in the RULER area – Set RIGHT Marker by holding down the “Alt” key and

clicking (and sliding) in the RULER area.

After setting the L & R “Markers we can preview the “LOOP” by clicking on the “LOOP Enable” icon in

The transport bar.

Once we like what we HEAR, we will “split” the “loop” by Right Clicking, Hovering over the “EDIT” category and then choosing “Split Loop” from the sub category of the menu.

Next, we’ll select the area that we just “split”

Now COPY / DRAG this “loop” to a new track… NOTE: whenever you drag a piece of audio –

(or MIDI for that matter) to a “blank” area, Cubase will “Auto-Create” a NEW track for you.

Now, we want to turn what we have identified as our “loop” into a NEW piece of audio.

You will now see this dialog box…

Next, focusing on our new piece of audio or “loop”, we want to figure out what the ACTUAL tempo of this loop is… First, double click on it to open the “SAMPLE EDIT” window.

The Sample Edit Window…

Since we KNOW this “loop” is 4 BARS long, we need to tell Cubase, right here…

After telling Cubase the correct BAR count, it calculates the TEMPO as seen above.

Cubase now tells us that the ACTUAL TEMPO of this 4 bar loop is 104 Beats Per Minute.

The last step before closing the sample edit window is to enable the “PREVIEW”

Button.

After closing the SAMPLE EDIT window, you will notice that the “loop” region

Looks like this…

This indicates that this “loop” or “region” will adjust itself to whatever tempo

You set in the “TEMPO TRACK”…

Let’s open up the TEMPO TRACK window and set the TEMPO…

Like this…

Now we’ll see the BARS and BEATS grid change to the NEW (correct) Tempo!

You can now change the TEMPO TRACK at will and the TEMPO of audio region we worked on will

Change accordingly – Without changing the pitch!

I recently got a call from one our regular clients about some funky-ness while

“Dragging & Dropping” MIDI in Cubase 4. In this case we were using Toontrack’s

EZdrummer. It’s usually very straight forward… You open up the Grooves window in

EZD, find what you want and just drag it over to the MIDI track that is assigned to EZD.

BUT, instead of the “chunk” of MIDI just dropping where we wanted it – It would create a

couple of NEW, UNWANTED tracks. Worse than that, it kept creating new pairs of these

unwanted tracks EVERY TIME we did a Drag and Drop from EZD.

I figured that this HAD to have something to do with a preference in Cubase 4… So, I did

some digging and this is what I figured out…

NEXT…

When you do a MIDI “Drag and Drop, you are essentially IMPORTING MIDI into your

Project so, I had a look at the MIDI Preferences in Cubase 4…

To get to your Preferences, Click on the FILE MENU and then Click on PREFERENCES

As shown here…

NEXT…

What I discovered was right here…

The DEFAULT Setting has these two options (see below) ON!

I’m not quite sure what “Auto Dissolve Format 0″ is or does but,

After much playing around with it, I determined that things are better

With this setting OFF. The next setting is the more obvious one…

“Import To Instrument Tracks”… This one is the real culprit. This

Was creating new instrument tracks EVERY time we did a Drag And Drop.

SO – Shut these two “preferences” OFF and Dragging And Dropping MIDI

In Cubase 4 will act the way you’d expect.