In the central portion of Paris, France there lies an island in the middle of the river Seine. There you will find the huge Cathedral Notre Dame which was built around 1200. Notre Dame is one of the most magnificently architectural locations in all of Europe. 

In the 12^th and 13^th centuries, Notre Dame was the focal point of polyphonic musical compositions. The first Medieval University was constructed around the cathedral and Kings and Queens built palaces surrounding the sacred location.

As you read the historical evolution of the first piece of harmony, listen to one of the earliest plainchant's of harmonical sound.

 

Source

The earliest written sources of music were medieval manuscripts of the late 9th century that contain liturgical texts. Small symbols were used called “neumes” that indicated the contour of the melodic lines.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame

Source

In honor of the construction of this massive structure, two composers created the first polyphonical piece in the history of  Western music. Leoninus was the eldest son and originally started the collection that was composed for Notre Dame. Perotinus added to the collection by extending the range and scope of the music.

Magnus Liber Organi

Source

The pieces of these two composers were made into a collection of compositions called the “Magnus Liber Organi”. The book itself contains sophisticated pieces for the year of Notre Dame.

Viderunt Omnes

The most famous of the compositions was the four part Viderunt Omnes by Perotinus, based on the plainchant of the same name. This chant was meant to be played in the middle of Mass services on Christmas Day.

The most incredible aspect about this piece is that it is built entirely on an ancient structure of musical composition many are not familiar with. In addition, the voice parts of the composition were sang entirely by monks or priests.

The evolution of harmony began in the 10^th century and it made its way all over the country and the entire world. Not only would your favorite harmonical songs be nonexistent if not for this invention but, our lives would be filled with monophonic music lacking instrumentation and including the voices of monks in unison.

There are drummers in Africa who specifically use this repetiousnuess to induce a trance like state among listeners so you want your beat to be near hypnotic as found in nearly all hit songs. Be mindful not to use too much syncopation as this will just sound corny. Start with a basic beat add the lighetst and highest pitched percussions first . Add the other sounds and percussion from the highest down such as shakers then high hats / snare while the kick drum and bass is holding down the beat like a back bone for everythign else to come. Vari this as needed. 

Once you have got you basic rythm going and while enjoying that groove. Give yourself time to hum something you really like but in a brain stormig way. Try others and try to remember the ones you keep comeing back to. Those are the melody lines for that beat. Oh Yea! Try to keep one melody line in a different octave from the other. You will find that they can play together in the more dramatic parts of the song and seperately sounding great each way. The higher and or lower octave sound should be processed so that they can play torgether if they don't start out that way.

This is about making music so not one of these items are rules.  Go get jiggy with it.

There are different schools of thought on everything in life... choose one and follow through!

The first trick is: don't think perfect pitch is out of your reach. You can catch the curve and hang on. There is a curve in sound. Think about a train whistle or a police siren as they move.

When someone throws a baseball, it doesn't travel in a straight line. It's got a curve to it. It starts in one hand and moves through the air and ends abruptly at the bat, or in someone else's hand. Pretend we're watching a movie. Imagine the journey of that ball through the air in slow motion, complete with sound. As the ball is in the hand, it's silent. It's leaving the hand, and we start to hear the sound of the ball moving through the air, a low swish, getting higher as the ball picks up speed. We hear several tones within one sound. One is the wind moving around the ball. One is the ball moving through the wind. One is changing with the speed of the ball. And one is the abrupt stop of the sound, with the crack of the bat against it. (Or the thump as it hits someone's glove).

Are you with me so far? You might have to work at this - and thought - hmmm... stretch of the imagination. Yes, it is. That's good!

Stretching your imagination in this way is a good habit to get into. Stop right now and listen to the sounds around you. For me, at this moment, I can hear the ceiling fan. That, in itself, has more than one tone. I can hear the mechanical part turning, and the air being pushed from the blades, and a little squeak. There is the ticking of a clock. A car is driving by. My attention returns to the ceiling fan. I begin to hear a predominant hum. It's a tone. It's a note! If I keep listening long enough I could go over to the piano (or any instrument) and find the closest note. I'll try a B flat. Many things with motors are in B flat.

When you get into the habit of hearing everything around you as something musical, you are on your way.

Try this for at least a week. Do it on a regular basis! I find it improves my whole outlook on life. Come back and there'll be more for you on the process of developing your ear.

 

1. Before buying the Turntable:
   
   • Test Drive in other words play some tunes and have a listen.
2. There is no point of buying a turntable without a pitch control:
   
   • When the pitch control is at the center, the center circle in the turntable should not be moving.
   • Start moving the pitch control either way ( Up: Slows it down / Down: Speeds it up).
   • When moving the pitch control, the center platter shouldn't be wobbling.
3. The platter:
   
   • Move it around, if you notice a crack or noise, then that means that turntable had a hard life, and either lower the price or walk away.
   • Lot of mixes and scratching give pressure at the platter, which may damage the platter over time.
4. The head shell:
   
   • Take the head shell off, and watch to see if the piece that holds it is wobbling, because in that case the head shell could move, which mean when the needle is on the record it might not be square on the record and might move back and forth.
   • The arm should not wobble, which may effect the sound coming through the speakers.
5. The bottom of the turntable:
   
   • If you see few screws missing, that means that someone opened the turntable up, and either tried to fix it, or damaged it.
   • Make sure the screws underneath the feet are placed correctly as well
6. Removing the platter:
   
   • Make sure the magnet, and the rubber is in good condition.
   • Check for screws as well.

To me, being in a band, playing shows, it's all about connecting with the crowd, most importantly, have them buy our merchandise, sign up for the mailinglist, visit our myspace and come back next time I play a show. I've played with a handful of bands who had rock star attitudes, they felt competitive and I just laughed at that. It's really silly if you think about it. I'm a big Bob Proctor fan. In his book "You were Born Rich" regarding Competition he says "The only competition you'll ever have is with your own ignorance," I love that. Because it is true. How could any other musician really be your competition, yes, you submit to a festival, a film/tv spot, to labels, others do that too, but the one that get's picked is always the one meant for the project. I see competition as motivation, someone has something I want, a placement in a major movie, I want to learn more about it. I start thinking about ways I can land a spot myself. I want to better myself as a Composer/Songwriter.

We are all unique. We all have our own path. Yes, some bands get signed right away, they, make it big and you sit there saying "wtf? I'm much better then them" I feel you, I've done that several times myself. But the fact is, someone saw something in them and if they sell a ton of records, than a lot of people saw something in them too. Instead of looking on the other side, look at yourself. Let this slight frustration be your motivation. Turn that energy of envy into creativity. Write a song about it. You know many others can relate to that feeling of being left out, ignored. There are many sound alike bands out there, not my cup of tea either but hey, if it's cool with them, GREAT! Let them be. Be yourself and do what rocks your boat. Work on yourself rather than spending all your precious energy and time critizising others. Most importantly! Whatever you do, don't give up. Perserverance is the key here.

Many overnight successes took 12 years and that's a fact; many rejected songs became hits, many rejected artists became rich, successful and famous. We all have our own path. We are all responsible for our own success. Surround yourself with successful musicians, better musicians than yourself. It makes you want to be better. I rather play with 5 kick ass bands than 5 lame bands. If the whole night is great, it raises the energy in the room, the audience is having a blast and they'll remember that. It makes everyone look great. It makes people want to come back next time you play. So next time you are about to bitch and complain about a band that does not deserve success, ask yourself, what can I do to turn this feeling around and get to where I want to go? Sometimes all it takes is a phone call. People know people. And remember, it's one step at a time, just because you can't see things happening right away doesn't mean nothing is happening. Be patient and keep creating.

1. Recording

   The first step to getting heard is to get recordings. There are many different modes of thought that conflict with this, but they're all irrelevant for this tutorial. Now you don't need to call up Universal Records to get a record deal so they'll spend millions of dollars on your very first album. No, it doesn't work that way. Instead you need to start small. Now adays home recordings are taking the industry by storm.
   
   So here's what you do: find a friend or a member of the band who has a mac book with garage band installed (most of them come with it), and bust out a few tracks. This first recording does NOT have to be perfect. Pretty much, your simply trying to portray your ability as a band to potential listeners. Better quality recordings will come later, after some gig money starts rolling in.

2. Band Bio

   Okay here's where your high school education comes in handy. There are companies who will offer to write you a superior band bio, but that's called stealing. You should never pay someone to do what you are perfectly capable of doing yourself. You don't want to waste money on things like this when it can be used for more important things. Now to the bio itself: include your band name, style/genre of music, number of members, names of members. instruments, length of band being together, etc... basically you need to tell them everything important. I say important because people don't care about irrelevant things and will stop reading entirely if they are bored. This brings me to another point. Don't be boring! Anecdotes and side storys are okay if they relate to how the band was formed, why your influences are who they are, and so on. You are perfectly capable of writing your story, so write it well.

3. The Perfect Picture

   Another necessity is getting a couple band pics taken. Again, don't waste your money going to a professional photographer. If you still go to school, find someone in a photography class to do it. Some times they can use it themselves, so your helping each other. If you don't go to school slap a camera in someones hand and do the best you can. Now the picture itself should represent who you are as a band. This will always be your potential fans' first impression, so make it a good one!

4. The Internet

   The Internet is one of the most wonderful and awful tools that an up and coming band can utilize. I say awful because so many bands are using it that it can be difficult to be discovered among millions of other bands just like you. That said, it is vital that you use every tool that you can, which includes the internet. The first thing that you should do is to build a page to promote your band. You don't need to buy your own domain name yet, cause no one knows who you are anyway. Myspace.com has a wonderful band page builder that I highly recomend. You can go to other people's pages after creating your own and "friend" them, thus showing them your own page and allowing them the opportunity to listen to your music. Also be sure to include your band bio and pictures. This is why recordings, pictures and bio writings are an important first, second and third step; cause you can have the most appealing web page, but with nothing for viewers to listen to or see, your just wasting time.

5. Get the Gig

   Playing shows and gigs is the heart and center of your band. How do you get shows and gigs, you may ask? Getting the gig is fifth on the list because you've got to combine numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 in order to achieve number 5. There are two ways to book your own shows: press kits and electronic press kits. I'll explain the details of a press kit later, but for now simply collect your bio, best picture and best single track on a CD. This is a basic press kit. Depending on where you send it, it may need more but your skeleton is complete. Now what do you do with this? Well head on down to your local bar, resturaunt or other local venue and ask for the manager. When he meets you, present your press kit to him in a proffesional and neat manner - make sure all the pages are crisp and there are no scratches on the CD, you should also put it all in a folder.
   
   Now for the not so outgoing types, there are also electronic press kits. These are basically your MySpace pages. Find venues and promoters on myspace and send "em a message saying how much you"d love to play with them. Promoters are almost always looking for new bands to fill the slots. There's always a catch though. Depending on the promoter you will most likely have to sell a set number of tickets to play the show. This is commonly refered to as "pay to play," and is an archaic trend that should be abolished.
   
   But it still exists today, and part of succeeding is learning to play the game. Just make sure that you fully understand the requirements of the ticket minimums and you should be fine. Once you get the gig, most venues will offer to record your set for a few bucks, which is always a good idea if it was a good show. These are more cost effective ways to get better quality recordings.

Before I started recording my samples I planned out a route to take around the Atrium and Cardiff city centre to gain the best possible results in the least time taken. I decided to start with the Café area inside the Atrium before moving out the back exit towards the railway bridge, where I could perhaps attain a train sample crossing its points. Also I wanted to get some footsteps walking underneath the bridge where there was a large amount of decay on the reverb due to its tunnel-like shape. I was lucky enough to get this because after waiting around for a train or two to ride past someone walking in high heels crossed the pavement, this was perfect as it gave the “cloppy” almost horse hoof sound I wanted. Next going up towards the zebra crossing I recorded some traffic and ambience noise before travelling across the road to find a rock being kicked along the hollow sounding tiles which paved the floor. This made for an interesting sound so I decided to drop the rock on the tiles and on a manhole or two to attain different timbres so I could pick and choose which sample would sound best to be edited and manipulated later.

I decided to go into a charity shop to see if there was anything worth recording, since charity shops aren't characteristically known to be loud, and often contain a lot of miscellaneous items, one of which was the children's play toy, (as heard in the beginning of the song). After this I continued round towards Queen Street before completing the circle and ending up back at the rear entrance of the Atrium.

I first recorded the samples using a Solid State HD portable recorder attained from the LRC. Using a Sennheiser E614, a small diaphragm condenser microphone I attached a wind shield and went in and around the Atrium and parts of Cardiff City Centre to record the samples. A few problems arose during this exercise, as there was no instruction manual with the solid state recorder, such as how to record onto different tracks which I eventually worked out. However, another problem was uploading the samples onto the digital audio workstation, (DAW). After trying it in the lesson room and failing because I did not have administrator privileges to install the devices driver to allow uploading I decided to take it down to the library to upload. Again however, the problem arose as to which “mode” to set the HD to, so with no instructions and a lot of error messages I decided to seek help from the LRC and their comprehensive foundation of knowledge…

After finally being able to upload the samples to the DAW I found that the 40 GB solid state recordable hard drive had kindly saved all the samples as .mp3 files. Dumbfounded by the lack of information given to me upon retrieving the solid state recorder and its functionality I decided to move along to the editing of the samples and to choose which samples I could use with any particular style I had planned to compose within.

Editing/Manipulation and Problems Encountered

The first problem that arose from all the recordings was the hum from the recorder, whether it is from earth noise or a damaged XLR lead the first thing I did was to apply a simple equalisation to the tracks I would be editing. Applying a wide bandwidth band reject at 250Hz, I decided to fine tune my setting from 250Hz because whilst eliminating most of the hum it also misbalanced the tonality of the samples somewhat. I did this as you can see above at the 200Hz range with a Q factor of 2 using a band reject filter. At -30dB it eliminated all/most of the hum noise but fortunately didn't disrupt the sonic balance of the samples themselves.

As you can see I used a linear phase equalisation plug-in from the Waves bundle. Simply put, this equaliser keeps the phase shift linear across the frequency spectra, resulting in a natural sounding equalisation change, producing minimal phase distortion. In some cases this is preferred but others may like to warp their sounds to any level of degree so linear phase is not always required. But for this exercise I wanted a natural and balanced tone kept and as such used the linear phase equaliser plug-in.

Below is a spectrum analysis of the samples before equalisation.

And after equalisation.

As you can see the equalisation has taken effect and severely reduced the hum that could be found before the filtering was applied. This is a simple yet efficient way of reducing internal noise and hum from unearthed wires or bad circuitry/radio interference. I used a parametric EQ rather than paragraphic or graphic, because with parametric the bandwidth can be altered to fine tune to an even smaller Q factor than graphic, and of course a larger bandwidth than the graphic or paragraphic equaliser. This means that you have even more control of the sound that you are manipulating which is an advantage and a disadvantage. I suggest that it may be a disadvantage because, (especially when dealing with DAW) the engineer can feel he has to use the plug-ins or decides to use them, just because they're there. In my opinion the clearest sound of an instrument or sound source often sounds best, as it means the sound can be kept clean if desired but also increases the quality of the manipulation afterwards as you have the high quality audio fundamentally.

Here you can see I reversed one of the audio samples by right-clicking and selecting process, then reverse. This sample was of somebody saying their name, so I decided to reverse the sample to contribute to the abstraction of the soundscape. The reason for this is because I wanted the musique concrete to contain a certain amount of humanitarian elements but didn't want too many words to be recognised and tried to be understood by the listener, so that they could just interpret the musical elements and enjoy the piece on a whole, rather than focusing on lyrical content.

Next time I would like to experiment with this further by recording samples of people reading words aloud, then reversing it and getting them to practice the words being said backwards. Then re-record them saying the words backwards but reverse it in the DAW so that it sounds like they're actually saying it forwards. I think this would be more endearing to the listener because it shows that time has been taken over each part of the musique and displays a certain level of competence to adhere to the coherent textures required. As I'm sure that some/most of the public disagree with the ambiguity of most abstract compositions I want to allow my composition to be as unsettling as possible, where they can depict each instrument individually and hear how it progresses to form an entire coherent soundscape of textures and pitch.

I had a sample of someone imitating a sheep. Instead of just leaving the sample as it was I wanted it to sound more realistic so to morph the audio clip into something more resembling of an animal I used the Bitcrusher tool to warp the timbre of the sample. I mixed the wet signal about 88% with the dry, and kept it in the first mode labelled “I” because out of all the modes this created the smoothest texture, as it distorted the sound without changing it beyond recognition. I put the bit depth down to a resolution of 14.6 bits, which may seem quite high for some applications but I increased the sample divider to 13 which again, allowed a small amount of distortion without masking the entire timbre.

I did this again, because I wanted to include a human element in my music but not to be forced as simply a dry vocal sample. Making the sample flow with the rest of the music would prove perhaps difficult since it was neither rhythmically matched nor pitched to any other “instrument”. So in order to keep it smooth in the mix I added the Bitcrusher plug-in.

Below is the Propellerhead Reason sampler the NN-XT. This allows you to map a sample to a certain keyrange for a MIDI controller keyboard and control the various parameters available to customise the sound you want to create.

To load a sample click here and select the audio sample you wish to map.

Then to map the sample to the select keys you wish you activate it you must move the selector ranges here.

Here you can see the start and end point of the looping. Looping in this case is how much of the audio sample plays before it starts again if a key is held down to give a type of sustain. Fine tuning you can create your own custom sound, whether it's attacking with the beginning of a sample louder than the ending resulting in clicking when the key is sustained. Or a smooth transition where there is no transient peak at the beginning or end of the loop.

There are other parameters that can be applied to the sample such as keyboard tracking (the point at which its cut-off takes effect after the note has been played, whether it's equal temperament (the same all the way up) or slower at the lower notes and faster at the higher notes. Also an ADSR envelope, (attack decay sustain release) allowing you to control the movement of the waveform as the keys are pressed. Pitch bends are in place as well as a filter section incase you need to fine tune the editing to get it sounding right with loop points or other parts of the song etc.

There are two LFO's, (low frequency oscillators) to manipulate the texture of the sound, choosing between levels of rate and delay and the carrier waveforms themselves and being able to manipulate the modulation envelope yourself, which changes the attack, decay, hold, sustain and release of the carrier waveform rather than the modulated waveform respectively. There is a section at the top which is favourable among analogue synthesiser players such as Rick Wakeman, (see: Rick Wakeman, White Rock, 1976, AMLH 64614, Trident Studio) and alike, which is the portamento. The portamento simply put, bends the pitch of the sample up or down to the next note that you play in line with the last, giving a slight glissando-type slide up or down to each note.

What is a Tracker?

As stated on Wikipedia:

“A Tracker is the generic term for a class of software music sequencers which, in their purest form, allow the user to arrange sound samples stepwise on a timeline across several channels.” (“Tracker”, Wikipedia)

Unlike the traditional forms of music notation, a tracker appears as a list of notes like the screenshot in figure 1 below. A single list of notes, which is often 64 lines long, is referred to as a pattern. An artist can create a number of patterns and then set the order in which they play with a pattern list.

The speed at which the tempo can be controlled by changing the song speed or a Lines-per-Minute setting - each Tracker has its own method for these types of controls. But the freedom of the tracker comes from your instrument library, and I use that term very lightly. In the tracking world, your instruments are usually an audio recording that we refer to as a sample. Many tracking musicians record their own samples if they have the means. There are also several resources of free samples available online that can be found with a quick web search.

Sometimes, you can get some high quality samples from remix competitions like the Acid Planet competitions - Free registration and I would highly recommend entering some of the contests which are a great learning experiences). Some modern trackers even support Virtual Studio Technology Plugins (Also known as VSTs or VSTi's).

VSTs can take on many forms from simple effects to virtual synthesizers. It's a powerful technology that is very common in the MIDI world and it can extend any studio software, even your tracking software. Many VSTs are available free, and even some of the best VSTs on the market are relatively cheap.

Trackers are a unique approach to music writing, and it takes some patience. But there are two reasons why Trackers are popular. First, many people who write music haven't benefited from a formal music education and the MIDI approach may not seem as logical as the tracking (or the scrolling list) approach. Second, in comparison to most MIDI software, Trackers are very cheap or sometimes even free and it's simple and cheap to expand with readily available sample libraries and free VST downloads.

Tracking doesn't come without a loss, however. The sound quality you can achieve with a Tracking program is going to be limited by the samples that are used and the overall mix-down process is not going to be nearly as great as can be achieved with top-shelf software for your MIDI studio. However, many listeners will never be able to tell the difference. Regardless of the medium's shortcomings, many artists, even professionals, still prefer the tracking medium and will use it regularly in their music.

A screenshot from MadTracker 2, one of the many modern Trackers available. Note that the music notes appear in list form. These are known as patterns, and the pattern list (top left) indicates the order in which each pattern plays.

Getting Started in the Tracking World

The first thing that you need to do is to find a software interface that you are comfortable with. Many of the Trackers available are free to download and use. There are some Trackers available in a free version and a registered version where the free version is restricted in some way.

For example, MadTracker 2 limits your export options - greatly limiting your control of the overall sound quality - in the free version. But even the registered versions are relatively cheap and, in many cases, are well worth the price. As there are so many Trackers available, I am only going to lightly touch on some of the more popular Trackers. And I am only going to focus on current software that will work perfectly within Windows XP. This is a list to get you started. I encourage you to explore the web trying to find additional Trackers that may be more appropriate for you.

MadTracker

MadTracker (Version 2 illustrated in Figure 1 above) supports both samples and VST instruments. Its interface is incredibly simple and easy to use and it's VST support is quite incredible (I've found VSTs that work in MadTracker that don't work in Cubase).

By default, the free version exports to an .OGG format which can easily be converted to the more popular MP3 format, but that does not allow for easy mix-down. The “Pro” version (About $52 USD as of this writing) allows the export to WAV or AIFF formats making easy use for mixing/mastering software such as Cubase or Cakewalk or freely available mixing software.

Schism Tracker

Back in the day, there was a popular Tracker, Impulse Tracker, which was written for DOS. It didn't look pretty, but it was incredibly powerful and was widely used by many music writers all over the world. But with the advent of Windows 95 and its successors, DOS software became difficult to run. Impulse Tracker was no more. There have been many clones, but Schism Tracker is the closest to the real thing that you'll get in Windows. It is freely available for your use without any clauses, but you are restricted to the use of samples only. No VST support. For many beginning tracking musicians, this may not be a restriction, so long as you find some good samples.

Renoise

Another popular tracker from yesteryear was FastTracker which suffered the same fate as Impulse Tracker. Renoise probably started as a FastTracker clone, but it has grown significantly. It supports VST instruments and effects, it supports ASIO low-latency drivers (with the full version), a full featured Mixing panel and more. It's pretty much a professional quality tracking software with a lot of features.

There's a catch: The demo version is restricted. It allows you to determine if you'll like the interface, but it's not enough to produce your music well. The good news is that the full version is only about $50 USD (as of this writing).

Psycle

Psycle is a reinvention of the classic tracking software. There are a number of plugins that are designed specifically for Psycle including noise generators and effects. The power behind Psycle is that you can link these machines together, visually, to create your “instruments”. You can then control these instruments in your pattern editor much like any other tracker, but the actual audio is very dynamic. It has some VST support, but there are some VSTs that won't work well with Psycle. But those that work (and most do) can typically drop right into your plugin folder and they can coexist with the native plugins.

In all, you have a very powerful software application that makes some of the electronic styles very easy to write once you get the hang of the interface. Many people are discouraged by the interface as it is incredibly machine driven. You will need to tinker quite a bit to get the sounds that you want, and the method for which to control those machines in your pattern editor leaves something to be desired. But it is incredibly powerful and it's entirely free to use.

Final Words

As I said, these are some of the more popular trackers available today. There are clones and branches of each of these (for that matter, some of these are clones of older software), so there is some exploration to be had. But they are all very powerful and relatively easy to learn. Download everything you find and experiment with each. You first need to determine if the tracking style of music writing is for you. And if so, you need to next determine which interface fits your style best.

My next recommendation would be to download as much music written for your chosen tracker as possible in its native format. Many of these trackers come with samples already. But the more you have, the easier it will be to learn some of the tricks of the trade. Like the way a song sounds? Get under the hood to see how they did it. Like a particular instrument? See how they made it.

Finally, don't get discouraged if your first (or your first ten) songs aren't very good. The interface will take some getting used to, and you'll need to be comfortable before you can really write some good music. Join the community and ask for advice and help and offer your songs for critique. You may just find a new (cheap) music writing hobby.