Welcome to the Audiominds.com newsletter
Issue #8 - January 5th, 2005

Dear friends,

Much to my delight I announce the first edition of our monthly newsletter in 2005.

The new year holds many promises we're looking forward very optimistically. On the one hand this refers to internal plans to extend our homepage even more after the great reopening we celebrated last year. On the other hand we're glad to see how the community thrives. At the moment the homepage counter indicates about 79.000 visits. It won't take long and we have to add a digit because otherwise it will turn over to zero again. That's a good sign how Audiominds is well received by home-recording enthusiasts all over the world.

Following the tradition of our newsletter you'll find the usual well-balanced mix of information and entertainment. Here I want to extend my thanks to Pete, Cyprian and Mac who again performed nearly supernatural actions in order to get the newsletter done in time. Applaus, ladies and gentlemen!

Finally I hope you'll enjoy reading the newsletter and wish you the very best.

Yours,
Dennis Schulmeister
Editor of the newsletter

In 2004, I Loved Meg

I want to be those musicians that blow my mind. I want to be the music that blows my mind. I never thought that twenty years on from being enchanted by Euterpe’s call, I’d still be struggling to get off the ground. Once, a fertile period of creation happened, then it all dried up. Something in my spirit crashed, and off down the roads I bounced and fumbled.

That’s me in the corner, me in the spotlight, that’s me the fumbler (thanks to Mike Stype). There exists this train, see. Any one can ride, if you can find the depot and the conductor will punch your ticket. I want on. Flowing down the track, putting my energy, my being with the universal wave of sound. Some things I haven’t put into it lately are keeping me from catching the 9:15 out of here.

The hindrance isn’t some big hand pushing me down. I think God enjoys giving voice to musicians. It is me, all me. Not enough time devoted to practicing. Not enough time devoted to bringing the music into my being. Not enough commitment made to bonding with local musicians to create the very music. Not enough balls to take the risks that allow one to break out and get on.

Practice is simple. You either do it or you don’t. This aspect, I control. Part of paying your dues means practicing. Practice or die. This includes getting with the other musicians. Miles said that the best place to practice was on the stage. Cognitive dissonance? You answer the question.

Getting the music into your mind. I need to listen more. I need to learn those tunes that shake my shiver. This year, I discovered so much music that resonates with me, Ken Vandermark, Brian Eno, Joe McPhee, and many others. After expending a lot of effort to find these voices, I just sit on the experience. I need to make that experience part of me. Learn those lines, put my voice into their voices. Become active and not passive.

Making friends with the locals. I just have to get past my preconceived notions and hang ups. This means finding the musicians. This means going to local shows. This means opening my house to other musicians. This scares me. I am a private person wishing to be an extrovert ala David Bowie. If I want the conductor to punch my ticket, I am just going to need to suck it up and get myself out there. You can’t get there from your bedroom. You can learn a lot in the bedroom, but it isn’t going to get you anywhere beyond the bedroom. Goodbye bedroom, hello next stop.

Something needs to drop. All the opportunities I ignored have led me to my lovely little case of ennui. When the “it” comes, grab it. That is the depot. To get to see those “its”, you need to be out there and risk hurt, risk failure, risk eating dirt and ramen noodles. Can I do this? Me? If I want to get even near the track, I have to do it.

Ok, at first, this article was going to be a wrap up for 2004. Screw 2004, this is a manifesto for 2005. Shed some blood for the music this year. Get that beat, get rush, get on the train.

Cyprian Alexzander

But Is It Profound?

The Holiday Season is past, again. In our home, we celebrate the Christian Christmas, as the rest of our family and our ancestors have done for ages.

There are certain traditions that go with Christmas, beyond the obvious religious ones. We decorate, of course, and set up a tree. The decorations that go on that tree are the domain of The Wifeling. There are decorations for the young 'uns to handle, hang and occasionally destroy. But there is a box of Special Decorations too. Nobody touches those but Cindy.

When that box opens, everybody else takes a break. Each bulb and object is there for a reason. Some are generations old, handed down from both of our families. There is a “Baby's First Christmas” bulb for each of the kids. There is one that was a wedding gift.

We all know and understand that these are precious. Taken out of context, they would be a bunch of odds and ends like any other box of decorations in any other attic in the world... but here, in our home, each is an anchor, a reminder, a memento. In context, each is a key that cracks doors to the past. Though we cannot pass through those doors, we can peer through them. The sights, sounds and smells of long ago envelope us, carrying us on brief, magical journeys that seem to last only as long as we forget we are on them.

Music works the same magic. I used to work with a group of young teens, going to nursing homes on Sundays to present short worship services. There are people in these homes who don't even know who they are anymore. They've lost everything... almost. I can't tell you how many times, though, that we would start singing a familiar hymn and notice that those we thought had only been parked there to allow their caregivers a short break would be singing with us! This was no isolated event. It happened all the time.

Music has that power. We have that power. Every time we perform, we administer a magical elixir capable of marking time for future access. Every time we sing a hymn or carol, those doors to the past can open up a little bit.

Great architecture and great music both are characterized by beauty, function and durability. Our involvement may be as hobbyists, amateurs or part-timers, but we practice an art that is still as capable of enduring as it was when George Frideric Handel composed “Messiah.” A long-ago musical mentor would patiently listen to my fledgling compositions, nod, and ask, “But is it profound?”

Well... is it?

Pete J. Celano

The Rubik’s Cube

Well, we start the new year of 2005 out here at Audiominds with a puzzle.

Not a puzzle for recordists to solve, but a puzzle for recordists to understand.

If you’ve read any of my musings before at all, you have probably read something repeated often, that the designs of man are not perfect designs, no, they actually must consist of a series of tradeoffs.

The Rubik’s Cube puzzle suggests a wonderful analog model for us to view those tradeoffs and how they may affect our recording and musical endeavors. ( I am going to assume that every Audiominds member surely knows of the Rubik’s Cube and what it is about here. If you don’t, Google it up immediately and stop trying to make digital audio recordings on a PC, you have much more to learn first. )

Quite surely one of the very first things that someone attempting to solve the Rubik’s Cube game will find out (if they didn’t or somehow couldn’t deduce it beforehand) is that concentration on solving only one side of the cube, say the Red side, without paying attention to the other 5 sides is the proverbial kiss of death in this game. As a matter of fact, this is the very complexity that makes the problem challenging. There is an interdimensionality, if you will, to the thing.

We can allow the same kiss of death to occur when we are attempting to make a recording, which is at its heart a permanent record of a performance.

Every situation we encounter in the studio is a multi-faceted design puzzle that requires the successful recordist to be aware of the other sides of their little invisible cube and what happens to it when tweaking the side facing them. Any adjustment you make must necessarily involve a change in at least one of the other 5 sides, often more. Thinking about the impact of every move you make in the studio thus becomes extremely important.

Those who work towards understanding the situation and learn to constantly weigh the situation for the sides not seen when working with the front side will soon understand what I’m trying to get across. Presumably some will remain steadfast in the “Boolean thought” of addressing every recording issue not only singly but as a straight digital “either/or”, “one or zero” model that if continued will forever keep them tied up in the realm of “why don’t my recordings sound better than this?” land.

Let’s label the sides of our basic Home Recordist’s Rubik’s cube and then take a look at how each side can affect all the other sides as we do what is the primary job of the Composer, Arranger, Performer, Producer, Recordist and Engineer. (Hey, those are SIX separate “hats” that we have to wear at different times, huh? )

You betcha, and they are also going to be the six sides of my little imaginary Recordist’s Rubik’s Cube.

1. Composer
2. Arranger
3. Performer
4. Producer
5. Recordist
6. Engineer

Sure these are basics and sure there is a lot more but before we can delve deeper into the separate sides of the cube in future installments of this column we should first set out some basic subset of definitions. One could extrapolate another 6-sided level for each of the first 6 sides, and perhaps another level after that for each of the derived 6 subsets. It may just go deeper than that, but let’s save that second-level abstract thought for a day when the top level is at the tip of our tongues at all times and we own the basic information.

The very first aspect of all this that must be stressed is the fact that you cannot safely ignore any one side of the above list and somehow get super lucky enough to make your demo or your CD or whatever else your recording project is to be and have it come out the best you can make it. Also, choosing to ignore any one facet is going to not only result in a less-than-you-wanted end result, but the fact that a recording -- any recording -- that you release is a permament record of a performance that shall forever be associated with -- YOU.

Some people start out in this game with the statement that they wish to “make a CD” but they don’t want to have to deal with any of those Engineering terms and such for after all, they are musicians and artists and don't think that way and blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda. Turn your head and look and see. Those lips are the kiss of death puckering up at you.

Reality check time, if that is truly your goal, quit fooling yourself in an attempt to fool others and bite the cash bullet now, find a local recording “studio”, you know, the person who has already put together a few pieces of digital recording gear, is into it, and can pretty much guarantee you that they can do the engineering part for you, and pay them because if you are trying to save yourself some money by doing it yourself but are unwilling to do what it takes to do it, then don’t try to do it. (Of course, YOU aren't like that guy, nope, not one little bit, well neither am I so let's take a moment to feel sorry for that one poor fella and move along. )

Of course, the above applies to those who wish to ignore the Engineering face of the cube. There are others who may just love staring at the Engineering face, leering over new mics and preamps in catalogs, memorizing soundcard specs and otherwise ignoring something critical on the other five faces of our cube. That ain’t gonna work either if your objective is truly the one-person-show of self production of a recording.

The good news is that one does not have to master any one side or more of the cube to achieve their desired result and end up with something that they can be proud of for years to come, rather than attempting to be a master of all 6 sides, each of which would take a lifetime to truly master anyway, paying attention to the 6 sides and improving and increasing your knowledge of all 6 at a steady pace, trying to keep the sides about even with each other in your level of the knowledge at the same time, is indeed possible to do.

The first step is to identify those six sides of our cube, which I have done for you above, and then sit down with pencil and paper or laptop and wordpad and honestly rate yourself in each department so that you know which of the six sides of the cube are your strongest points and which are your weaker ones.

Organize those thoughts and then actively seek information to bring the weaker sides of your cube up to the level of your stronger sides.

Keep doing that and one day you will look up at the cube and find that all 6 sides have been solved.

Until next month, when hopefully some of you have already gone out and found that old Rubik's Cube and placed it atop the console to remind you,

Keep on Trackin’!

--Mac

MIDI, Synthesizer, Sampler and other terms of confusion - Part I

Hi and a warm welcome my dear friends to a brand new category of our monthly Audiominds newsletter. Again we spared no expenses and pains in order to throw light on a theme which somehow is always present but barely anybody startin out in the digital recording field knows what it really is: MIDI, the Musical Instrument Digital Interface.

In order to better understand MIDI it may be a good idea to know where it comes from in the first place. Indeed MIDI has two sources, mother and father so to say.

Its "mother" is as simple as the music instrument itself, especially the analog keyboards and synthesizers from the last century's sixties and seventies. Even those instruments featured an interesting way of communication that was called CV.

For the first time CV (Control Voltage) made it possible to remote control a synthesizer within some limits. This meant one could play its notes but not tweak its parameters. True to the old analog methods the design was easy but bullet-proof. It was as easy as current on, a sound is played. Current off, dead silence. The pitch was triggered by the voltage. "1 Volt / octave" was the magic word. This meant if 3.6 V triggered the middle A 440 Hz, 4.6 V triggered A' 880 Hz and 2.6 V triggered a 220 Hz A. Using that knowledge it was possible to build a monophonic CV master keyboard with only the keys and one voltage divider (two resistors) per key. Polyphony was impossible to achieve using this system, but it must be noted that at the time there were very few polyphonic synthesizers available anyway, you see the synthesizers themselves were very much analog designs also.

MIDI's father comes from another direction which of course is the digital design domain, or as I like to call it, the world of computers. Today this system standard seems to be a no-brainer but in 1983 when the MIDI standard was defined for the first time it was a small but noticeable sensation. Anybody who's old enough might remember the days when it didn't go without saying that musicians or anybody else for that matter could afford to have a computer at home. If there was a market at all it laid in the industrial and academic sectors. Only a few years before in the mid-seventies INTEL's CEO said the words: "I can't imagine why anybody should have a computer at home." It was not before the introduction of small personal computers like Commodore's C64 in 1983 when computers entered the living room. It is of interest to note that most often the personal computer would end up in the children's room.

If MIDI's mother is analog and it's father is digital we still lack the missing link: During the early eighties the first readily available commercial digital synthesizers stormed the music market. Without doubt Yamahas legendary DX7 can't remain unmentioned here. You guessed it, it's also from 1983. The DX7 was one of the first MIDI-capable synthesizers ever. And know what? Even after 22 long years it is still able to get along quite well with most modern MIDI devices - thanks to the MIDI standard.

But to be honest the term "digital synthesizer" was not an accurate enough descriptor for even these early instruments because the DX7 - like most of his colleagues - was a "digital programmable synthesizer". This meant that the sound, while digitally controlled, was still created using analog oscillators. An interesting combination which was only adapted by AKAI nearly 17 years later. But that's not our point yet. In a latter issue we will have enough time to discuss this when I'm writing about the different methods of synthesis.

Now we know about it's parents but what IS this thing called MIDI? What can it do for us? A popular prejudice is that MIDI sounds bad. This opinion covers the two greatest misconceptions about MIDI, first, MIDI in and of itself doesn't have any sound at all and second, what can be done with it and the kind of music that results doesn't necessarily have to sound bad or fake simply because of the MIDI standard.

So what is MIDI?

On the one hand, as already stated, it is the new word derived from the abbreviation for "Music Instrument Digital Interface". This leads to certain assumptions but as an actual definition of what this thing does it doesn't help us out all that much. Like I suggested in the beginning it's a kind of electronic communication for (mostly) digital instruments. It is important to understand that only data is exchanged on MIDI cables and there is no actual audio to find -- a point often not understood. If a sound is produced at all it's done by a triggered synthesizer. I mentioned it above, to a certain degree this was also possible using CV. But - and that's the point - you could only address one note on one instrument at a time with the CV method. Hardly a way to inspire the wide range of sonic emotions and colors that we call modern music.

That's why the MIDI standard defines a whole string of different but related commands. The original designers first had to distinguish between the interface and the protocol. Today we'll take a glimpse at the interface first and we'll investigate the protocol the next time. (When we do so a short description of the most important forms of synthesis will follow including how they work and where they come from.) Then by April or so I will have to think of something different to write about.

Because I don't know every iota of the midi interface by heart I sometimes refer to the german book "Sound am PC" by Klaus Dembowski which was published in 1994 by Markt & Technik.

Let's begin our look at the MIDI Interface by pointing out and establishing some mere formalities: Most MIDI devices themselves feature between one and three jacks which all look the same. In detail they are five pin female DIN jacks. This leads to the use of MIDI cables that have a male five pin DIN connector at each end. That's in so far not so luckily chosen as it doesn't allow connecting two cables with each other and it makes it easy to connect a MIDI connection to the wrong place at the other end of the cable if you aren't careful. Perhaps the designers were thinking of emulating the common guitar cord patch cable by putting those same connectors at each end, okay, but what it means to us is that we have to read the identification labeling that should mark each MIDI jack on any piece of MIDI equipment we have and make sure that we have directed the MIDI information from the proper place and to the proper place each time we hook up any MIDI devices if we are going to have the things operate properly.

The three possible jacks are identified by the MIDI Stanard as follows: MIDI-IN, MIDI-OUT and MIDI-THRU. These labels are the functions and are supposed to be self-explanatory, when using the MIDI-IN jack a device receives data, using the MID-OUT jack it transmits some. Transmitters and receivers used to be called Talker and Listener in the German and some other languages, today the names Master and Slave are more common. There are some few devices which have only one MIDI connector and thus one Midi port on them, either IN or OUT and there are devices in which at least both IN and OUT will be available. Most computers and synthesizers belong to the second category. Master keyboards or expanders often belong to the first.

Older MIDI devices for the most part feature the MIDI-THRU jack. Newer ones often omit it for it doesn't do anything more than outputting all incoming data without change. That's important to know when creating a MIDI network with more than two clients. The THRU jack can allow for a certain amount of "daisy-chaining" and can save you from having to buy a multiple midi port interface in certain cases.

Did you notice what I said in the last paragraph? I basically said that MIDI is a computer network. Data exchange is done digitally which is why a computer is needed. In the simplest case it consists of only one chip and is called a "microcomputer". (For the experimenters and techies: The PIC microcontrollers by Microdevice are not only cheap alternatives for the amateur but are also used by FATAR and a few other manufacturers in some of their master keyboards!)

Data is exchanged serially in the Midi interface. Consequently only three of the five possible wires are really needed for a midi cable. When you look at the connector the two pins on the far left and right remain unused. Some smart people even build MIDI-XLR adapters which allow running a MIDI signal through any XLR cabel. This is not only a surprise for clients in your studio but also very practical as with the adaptors you can use the same cables as you use for microphones to connect and even extend MIDI connections. Not usually necessary in the home studio environment, but good to keep in mind.

So MIDI is a network that uses a serial data transfer protocol. The opposite of serial, of course, is parallel. Basically, in order to transmit an 8-bit number (e.g. 23 = 00010111) over a parallel connection it would need eight wires of which four deliver a current and four don't do so in our example. The parallel port of any computer acts the same way. Before USB became popular it was mainly used for connecting printers, scanners, external storage devices and often as a convenient port for the connection of various home-grown circuits.

The serial port works differently and can be compared to the old International Morse Code method of information transfer. Only one wire (and one ground or Common) connection is needed. All bits are transmitted shifted in time in a train to be one behind the other. The main difference is that there is no short or long duration pulses as in the Morse Code, only on and off, the classic digital binary event. In order to prevent certain problems there are a lot of more or less complex circuits involved and because of its architecture the serial interface has long been favored for data exchange over long distances. Long before the first person connected the first prototype mouse to a computer at Xerox the serial connection was the preferred method used to exchange data between two computers. We must only keep in mind that there exist different Serial Communication Protocols and thus different types of serial connections on our computers today, while they all transfer data serially they all do it a bit differently from one another. Your serial data ports, your mouse and keyboard connections, the USB connection and the MIDI connections are all serial ports and one can find MIDI adaptors for all but the keyboard and mouse ports.

So before we finish this article let me enumerate some details for the tough guys. The MIDI-interface works asynchronously using eight data bits, one start bit and one stop bit at a fixed baud rate of 31,25 kBit/s (31,250 Bits/second). This means that every second 31250 bits are tranfered of which the first one marks the beginning and the last one the ending of a data stream. The other ones are subdivided into groups of eight which form one byte. Using one byte it is possible to decode numbers from 0 to 255. There's no validation of parity or other mechanism to prevent data loss in the MIDI comm standard and quite obviously none is really needed.

This alone is not enough in order to make it incompatible to simply connect your MIDI synth directly to the RS232 serial port. The main difference is that MIDI uses a Power Loop instead of just two different voltages in order to decode one and zero. This means not the current by itself nor the voltage by itself is important but the power, which is the product of the two. In detail 5 mA decodes a zero and no electricity at all decode a one. The devices are also electrically isolated form one another using opto couplers. This prevents influences by ground loops and avoids main current getting on the MIDI-connection in case of a defective device! If opto couplers remind you of optical compressors you don't think wrong. Indeed both make use of the same principle.

I admit the last two paragraphs are not necessary for the MIDI interested musician and may sound complicated and confusing for you if you're not into the electricity of the things we operate every day, but they are part and parcel of the basic understanding of MIDI and so I didn't want to omit them.

Next time we'll investigate the actual data of MIDI, the so-called MIDI protocol.

Until then I hope you'll have a great time making music, analog or digital.

Yours,
Dennis Schulmeister

Letter to the editor

Here is the second installment of our new category for you: Letter to the editor

In this category YOU dear reader have a voice. It's is very important for us not to write a newsletter from far above, but to listen to what our readers got to say. You are free to either write your feelings about a past issue or about a given question. The quesion we ask this time reads: ”Please tell us about your resolutions for 2005.”

This is what people wrote us, thanks guys:

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