Music • Sound • Video • Art

I’ve been using the new Presonus StudioOne Pro 1.5 update a bit more lately. I have to say this DAW is coming along really, really nicely. There are some very cool productivity features and the fact that it has a modern code base shows. The Presonus team is also really helpful and responsive and the online community has a really nice vibe. I encourage folks to check out the free demo. (Coming from traditional DAWs one may be looking for more traditional and “complicated” ways of doing things, so check out the built-in tutorials when you do.)

There are also a ton of Presonus and user demonstration and help videos on the web.

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I am about 3/4 of the way through Logic 9 Explained by Eli Krantzberg (available at Groove3). Eli has put together a thoughtful, well-paced, and logical (no pun intended) introduction to the software. If you are new to LOGIC or moving over to it from another DAW, you will save a lot of time and head scratching by taking the time to go through this set of tutorials. I found it particularly useful in moving over from Digital Performer for instance.

A few pros and cons:

Pros

• Lessons are chunked nicely at about 8 minutes each on average. This makes them quite “snackable”; It’s easy to grab a lesson or two in the morning or when you have a moment between things.
• Lessons build on each other. Eli does not make the common mistake of referring to things or concepts not yet covered in his previous lessons, so the confusion factor (especially for someone new to this stuff) is really minimized.
• He goes at a nice pace and his screen captures are clear and easy to follow.
• There is no “fluff” or unnecessary banter. He is friendly and informative, not cheesy or overly chatty.

Cons

• He sometimes says that certain techniques or methods are important to note, but does not take the next step and say why they may be important to note. In some cases it is obvious why it may be important, in other cases, not so much. It would be helpful to provide a little more context.

Like all products of this type, this straddles the line between “training” and “demonstration”. Nevertheless, you can still learn from a well done, well structured demonstration and Eli has definitely put one together. (In my view, training requires some level of interaction with the material. If it is a completely passive experience, it falls more in the realm of demonstration. To bring the interactivity to it, I open LOGIC on a separate monitor and create a parallel project to practice the techniques and methods Eli covers. This works great, and I’ve actually come up with the nub of a couple of pieces I will come back to later for further development!)

There are other videos out there, most notably those offered by MacProVideo. Their LOGIC series is also quite comprehensive. (In particular, I like the Tips N Tricks and Master Class by Steve Horlick.) However, for an introduction and explanation of LOGIC, I find Logic 9 Explained to be a more straightforward and useful offering than its MacProVideo counterpart. I also find the Groove3 web-based interface to be much more stable than MPV’s customized “feature-filled” player.

I’m looking forward to checking out the rest of Eli’s series.

For years, I’ve dismissed trackers as “geeky”, “limited”, good for only “ChipTunes” or repetitive dance tracks, and generally “not for real musicians.” (As if I am one. hah!).

Well, I was 100%, pure D wrong. Renoise is really, really cool. And really surprising to me is that the types of music being produced with it range from…well ChipTunes and Dance to classical, ambient, and experimental.

Calling Renoise a “Tracker” is like calling LOGIC a “Sequencer”: True but hardly sufficient. Renoise is a full featured DAW. It handles plug-ins (AU/VST), audio recording, ReWire, ASIO multi I/O cards support, and full on PDC. It offers a bunch of internal audio and midi effects, an integrated sampler and sample editor, internal real-time effects with an unlimited number of effects per track, master and send tracks, etc.

The Renoise Main Interface

Don't let this prejudice you...

The interface can be very confusing at first. For historical reasons as well as convention, the interface is “turned on its side” as compared to other sequencers / DAWs. (A composition’s time flow is “up->down” as opposed to the usual “left-> right”. And the thing is optimized for text keyboard input of notes really although other methods are well supported.) It takes a minute to get used to aspects of its sequencing, entering controller data, etc., but this is literally minutes if you avail yourself of the quickstarts, tutorials, and videos created by its rather passionate user community.