Category: lectureNotes_cm1

Filters A general definition for a filter is anything that changes the gain of frequencies in a sound. This definition is so general it is useless, since by this definition all audio producing, recording, transmission, and listening devices (including rooms, ears, etc.) are filters. Typically, we use the term filter to apply to devices that…

Music Technology maintains an email listserv, BSU_MET-L,  to facilitate one-to-many communication among students, faculty, and staff. You should all subscribe to it. We use it for concert and guest lecture announcements; students often use it to let others know when they can’t make their reserved studio time; and alumni and others use it to post…

Last week someone came to me with another problem about Peak not able to process DSP commands due to disk full errors. The seemingly obvious answer is to check the scratch disk folder, making sure it is somewhere that the student login can write to. But in this case, the scratch folder was set to…

When you open DP and try to set the output of a MIDI track to Apple Software Synth, you’ll find that it isn’t a choice. Where is it? The default setup for the studios has the software synthesizer turned off. You can turn it on using the Setup | Interapplication MIDI… menu command. In the…

Nibbles In binary notation, 8 bits equals one byte. Four bits equals a nibble. A nibble can be represented with one hexadecimal place. Translating large binary numbers to hexadecimal is much easier than translating large binary numbers to base 10. By dividing the binary number into 4-bit nibbles and converting the result to hexadecimal, you…

MIDI MIDI stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is a specification for physically connecting devices (interface standard), and for communicating between them (communications messaging protoc0l). It was designed for real-time keyboard performance, originally connecting analog synthesis devices (although it is a digital language). It is a control language – it transmits performance instructions rather…

iTunes is the best app to convert your aiff file to mp3 format. You can do it in Peak, but you can’t save as much information in the file. Open iTunes and drag your mix file into the iTunes music window. iTunes will copy your file into its database. The image below shows my “Kothman…

Jeff installed the new Digidesign audio interfaces Studios 4 and 5 (DAW 1 and 2). For those studios, you no longer use the MOTU 828’s as your audio interfaces. He’s explained why, and how to use the new setups, on his blog. The bottom line: if you can’t figure out the DAW’s, work in studio…

When you’re finished with your project (all mixing/DP processing is done), you need to bounce your project to disk to get a stereo aiff file. Bouncing to disk processes all of your soundbites and the non-destructive edits you’ve applied, mixes them, and outputs the result to a file. The basic process involves Selecting all of…