[ddots-l] Re: Native Instruments accessible??
- From: "Dan Rugman" <danrugman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 23:46:06 +0100
Hi Jeff,
I hate to sound like a doom merchant but advanced synthesis is very
difficult for blind composers. That said I write a lot of electroacoustic
music (or electronica as some call it) and I took several courses in it
while doing my degree at the Royal College of Music which went into a lot of
detail. Obviously, I don't know what they'll ask you to do but if it's
anything like what I had to do then you'll find that most of the software
you need is very inaccessible and you'll have to find some work arounds.
The courses I took covered addative synthesis with six sign tone oscilators,
subtractive synthesis with two filters, FM synthesis with three modulators,
wavetable synthesis, granular synthesis and virtual physical modelling. We
also covered psychoacoustics and digital processing.
Unfortunately there aren't many synths out there that go far enough into the
kind of things that advance synthesis requires and the few that do are
almost entirely visual because they're modular in nature. For example, in
Absynth (native instruments' advanced synth) you have to drag things around
on the screne and draw waveforms and envelopes to control filters,
modulators and oscilators. You also need to do a lot of recording fader
movements because a lot of complicated special effects will be used with
changing reverbs, delays, filter sweeps, pitch shifting and so on. I should
also warn you that physical modelling is almost completely inaccessible to
us because it involves building virtual instruments by bolting bits of
existing instruments together on the screne. There's a great plugin for
logic that we used but unfortunately its for logic and we all know that
story. The best PC synth for physical modelling is Tassman but again we
can't use it.
The good news is that grannular synthesis is very possible for us. There
are several plugins that you can use in sonar and a very good stand alone
program call Grannulab which is fully midi controlable out of the box.
A lot of work was done using max MSP which is also completely inaccessible.
However, there is a programming language called CSound, which is a language
for making complex sounds that isn't too difficult too use, a little like
basic. Its by far the most flexible thing around but it meant a lot more
work for me because of the coding involve. That said, once you get the hang
of it you can do things that no softsynth can ever do.
The bottum line is that you may have to trall around on the net looking for
plugins that you can access in the right way and you may occasionally have
to get sighted assistance for some things. The best advice I can give you,
and this is based on bitter experience, is to talk to the people running the
course as soon as possible so that you can get a headstart on accessing what
you'll need to use. They also need to be made aware of how much more work
you'll need to do compared to everyone else.
That said, you should be able to do most things that you have to and I'm not
the only blind composer who writes electroacoustic music.
I hope I haven't scared you too much and don't hesitate to ask me anything.
Dan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Molzow" <jmolzow@xxxxxxx>
To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, April 28, 2006 9:52 PM
Subject: [ddots-l] Native Instruments accessible??
Hello:
Gord or anyone who knows. Which Native instruments softsynths are
accessible. Specifically, I'm interested in the Native Instruments
Complete
(I think that's the name). I have to attend an advanced synthesis and
sampling course and was hoping to use a softsynth.
Thanks
Jeff
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