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Article #3:
Organizing Your MIDI Studio
By Donald S. Griffin 1-26-98
- Why Is Organizing A MIDI Studio So Important?
- Choosing Powerful AND Useful Software And Hardware
- Managing Increasing Studio Complexity Along With Studio Growth
- A Word About Physical Layout
Why Is Organizing A MIDI Studio So Important?
Learning about, and becoming comfortable with making music using MIDI is a major undertaking. While I did not find learning MIDI as difficult as learning the Trumpet (my first instrument) it still took me most of a year before I was comfortable enough working with MIDI that I could concentrate on composing using MIDI sequencing software. My father once told me of a famous jazz musician who commented that he no longer plays his instrument; he plays music. Obviously he would still hold his horn and blow air through it and finger the keys but his point was that he had become so familiar with the process of playing the instrument that he no longer had to think about it consciously so he was free to concentrate on the music itself. There have been a few simple statements I have heard in my life time that have had an impact out of all proportion to the statement itself. This was one of them. It has been about twenty years since I heard those few simple words and I am still amazed at how useful they have been. My first response was to concentrate on becoming so familiar with my instrument that I could think a tune and it would come out of my horn as naturally as words came out of my mouth. While I never achieved precisely that degree of mastery, what I did achieve was close enough for me to get the effect I was looking for. I started concentrating on how the notes should be played, then on deciding what notes I wanted to play, then what melodies, then many variations on those melodies. In short, I was able to make music instead of working hard just to play the instrument. This was the crucial first step in my development as a composer. Attaining a similar familiarity with MIDI and basic MIDI equipment was the crucial first step in my development as a MIDI composer and essentially moved me from bicycle to a motorcycle in terms of productivity.
Lets take a broader look at the this concept. In a general sense it means that every aspect of a task that you can become so familiar with that you no longer have to think much about it allows you more freedom to think about other aspects of that same task. In addition; every whole task that you can place in this category frees up more of your mind and time to work on other tasks. Composing music in a MIDI studio requires you to do many complex tasks at the same time. Just for starters you have to play a musical instrument while composing music while operating complicated software on a computer. Depending on what kind of equipment you are using these three tasks may be only the beginning of a long list of things you must do all at about the same time. Each new piece of equipment you add to your studio carries with it the potential to take all your concentration while you try to utilize it if effectively. For example: Lets say I just bought a nice new reverb unit. It has the potential to add a lot of realism to the sound of my computer generated instruments but to really get the best use out of it I should try each of the different presets to see which one sounds best with this composition but this could take several hours. Should I go even farther and program a preset myself to get just exactly the sound I am looking for? This could take all day! Fortunately I probably won't have to think much about that reverb unit once I get it set up right. Except from now on it is one more piece of equipment I have to turn on each day before I can get to work. Here is a better example: I am a sax player so I just bought a Yamaha WX-11 MIDI sax controller. I can play it like a sax (almost) and the notes go right in to my MIDI sequencer software. The problem is that it doesn't play just like my real sax and it takes some concentration to get used to the differences in fingering and the different feel of the artificial reed. So while I may be playing the notes in from a more familiar instrument I am so distracted by this new piece of equipment that I am finding it hard to concentrate on my composition. I keep having to pick it up and put it down and if I want to just listen to how a new instrument sounds it is easier to reach over and hit a key on my controller keyboard. I also have to set up both devices to play into the computer at the same time or switch back and forth. This has cost me the initial set up time and the time it takes me each session to turn on one more gadget. Maybe you are starting to see how more junk can really restrict or even completely dam up your creative flow. If you are new to composing then just think about how hard it is to create even if all you have to deal with is a pad and pen or a simple tape recorder?
As I am prone to do I have spent quite a bit of this article on telling you why you should read the rest of it but if you have read up to this point the rest is just details.Since I have made the point that a MIDI studio can quickly get very complicated I hope you can understand that this article could also get very complicated and lengthy if I tried to go into detail about every thing I have learned over the years in the process of making my studio more capable and flexible while demanding as little of my precious concentration as possible. Because of this I will try to make a few general observations and a few detailed ones and hope you can infer much more from these few points. Since the goal of organizing your MIDI studio is for it to operate in a way that is easy and logical for you it is natural that each person will end up with a different configuration. What I am hoping to do with this article is to help you to spend as little time and money as possible making your studio take as little effort as possible to operate.
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Choosing Powerful AND Useful Software And Hardware
The centerpiece of any MIDI studio should be you. It should fit like good pair of shoes and to take the analogy a little further it should help you, not hurt you. After you the next most important item is your sequencer software. It is your pencil and paper and if it works in a way that feels natural to you then it can make be tremendously helpful to the creative process. On the other hand it can make your life a living hell. The first few sequencer packages I tried were difficult to use. I accepted the weird way you had to put in notes because I didn't know it could be any better. I am still sure the programmers thought of their software as a way for the user to put data into their software rather than a the composer's little helper who is always there with what you need where and when you need it. The programs made me do things in a way that was very alien from the way I was used to working. For me the best example of this will always be the 'piano roll' type interface. The term comes from the rolls of paper you put into a 'Player Piano' to make it play a particular song. A piano roll interface looks much like a piano roll stretched across your computer screen. Musical notes are represented as horizontal bars going across the page from left to right. Along the left edge of the screen is usually graphic representation of a piano keyboard to show you how each row represents a different pitch. Where the bars start and end on the graph shows you where your notes will start and end. MIDI note lengths stored in a MIDI file as being a certain number of ticks long. Depending on the time resolution of your sequencer there might be anywhere from 96 ticks in each quarter note to nearly a thousand. This resolution is called the PPQ or Pulse Per Quarter Note. At 120 PPQ I a quarter note will be 30 ticks long and that is how it is stored as MIDI data. The problem is that most programs don't come up with a friendly way for you to convert from musical notation, the language of music, to ticks, the language of MIDI devices. This type of software would might expect me to know figure out that if I want a note to start on the the second half of the third beat in 4/4 measure that I will have to tell the software to start the note on the 76th tick Since the first beat starts on 1 the second starts on 31, the third starts on 61 and since 120ppq divided by 4 beats is 30 ticks per beat and I have to add a half a beat so I have to add 15 to the first tow beats which total 60 which brings us up to 75 but I want to start on the first tick of the next note so that is 76, not 75. I know this sounds complicated. It has that effect on me too. It is certainly distracting. Now if I am composing a piece with a swing beat like a boogie woogie then that "and after three" will have to be delayed a a few ticks so it might happen at 81 ticks into the measure instead of 76. Now, lets say I am reading that data to try to understand it in musical terms. What is a note that starts at tick number 50. Right, in swing time it is probably an "and after two" or the third eighth note in the measure but swung. Now lets not forget that you have to watch a numerical display at the top of the screen that shows you the velocity value of each note on a scale of 0 to 127 to tell you how hard that note was hit so while you are trying to follow what is going on by watching a bar graph zip by, hardly able to tell which line is in which octave let alone which pitch, you are expected to watch a display of numbers zipping by telling you the relative strength of each note. Now this is only for one instrument since very few programs are capable of displaying a single piano roll view showing several different instruments, usually color coded. Some others let you open several windows at once you have to do this with four different windows all at the same time just for a quartet! Good luck if you want to compose a symphony!
I am telling you all this not to scare you (though it should) but to let you know that not all sequencer software is alike or even adequate to the task. Until just a few years ago there were only a few sequencers that made any use of musical notation at all. Until recently music programs one of two kinds. They were either called sequencers and used a combination of piano roll and event lists for composing music; or they were called notation programs and were designed purely for making printed musical notation that looked nice. Some software developers actually suggested you use one program to put in MIDI data then transfer your finished file to another program that would convert the MIDI data to very quirky notation if you wanted to see your music as notes! This is hardly any way for a musician to compose. It is much like stopping your car every few feet and getting out to walk in front of your car in order to see where you are driving. Several sequencers have added some notation capability but they often will only show one instrument at a time and only a few measures at a time or the MIDI data is severely rounded off to make the notes look nice but this causes the notation not to reasonably display what you intended to convey. This solution is usually incorporated by people who have spent years using only piano roll, often can not read music very well and are not in a habit of considering what all the other instruments will be doing when they are composing for any one instrument. Essentially they don't know how to use musical notation so they don't miss its absence and are not capable of understanding how it must function within a sequencer for it to be useful to a composer. Some of those programs are gradually getting better in fits and starts but I am happy to say that a few sequencers have been much closer to the mark all along. Specifically Logic by Emagic is a program which used to be called Notator and has had the right idea all along starting on the old Atari computers. Logic is an extremely complex and powerful program. It has a very steep learning curve but it is worth it. Fortunately most people using Logic today have used it for years and are comfortable with it by now. If you are just starting in MIDI Logic may be enough to send you away screaming in defeat but if you are determined enough you will end up having learned on the most powerful MIDI program and will probably never have to learn another one. My old favorite is Musicator GS for DOS which, though not very powerful, has an extremely musician friendly layout. Musicator GS for windows in now in its 3rd generation and incorporates digital audio but some of the key features were dropped when they went from DOS to windows and they are very slowly being re-incorporated into the program though it is now much more powerful in many other ways. CakeWalk Pro Was in the previous category for a very long time but they have come a long way and may be considered in the last category in recent versions. Cubase is another notation based sequencer that is worthy of note but it seems to have some of Logic's difficult learning curve while not having as many features for the trouble. I would like to be able to tell you that trying a sequencer in a store and reading about it in magazines or on a web site is enough to let you pick the right one but that is sadly not true. Try to find somebody who works like you and see what they use. Then ask them what is frustrating about their software then cross your fingers and hope you made a good choice. You can't really judge what is a good package for you until you learn all the ins and outs of a couple of them. In keeping with the theme of this section remember that more features will not define what sequencer is best for you. This is true of most music hardware.
So far I have talked about making sure your new gear is useful and that should always be your first priority. It should serve a definite need and be easy to use in filling that need. Sadly, sometimes you have a definite need of hardware or software that is going to be hard to learn to use. My philosophy on this is in two parts. Avoid these gadgets as much as you can and if you have to then see if you can combine many of them into one single beast so you only have to learn to use one complex gadget instead of many. I have two devices like this that also turned out to be very popular in their year of introduction and for some time afterwards. The first is the Ensoniq DP/4 Parallel Effects Processor. This unit has four digital effects processors that each can do a separate audio processing task and they can work independently or together in various combinations. This beast has layers upon layers of parameters you could get lost in but once you learned how to use this one unit you would have filled the requirement for several racks full of effects processors. The other device I want to mention that falls into this category is the Kurzweil K2000 sampling synthesizer. It is a MIDI controller keyboard, sampler, synthesizer and sequencer all rolled into one and it is very, very powerful, flexible and upgrade-able. It is not simple to learn how to use nor is it cheap but if you have one you won't need much else in the way of synthesizers. I should give an honorable mention to the Yamaha MU80 XG synthesizer module. It is a synth module which means it tries to pack a ton of instruments into a small amount of sample memory (ROM) which tends to severely limit the quality of the instrument sounds by professional standards but for the average MIDI hobbyist it is incredibly useful. It has 18bit DACs (Digital to Analog Converters) which give it a bit more crystal sparkling clear sound then most of its competitors that only use 16bit DACs. It is a multi-port module which means, in this case, that it has 2 16 part synthesizers allowing you to have up to 32 different sounding instruments playing at once. But one of the most useful things about this little gem is that it has analog inputs in the front for a microphone and a guitar, for example. It will supply appropriate effects for your voice and guitar then combine that audio signal with the synthesizer and send it out the back all combined into one stereo pair that can go into your sound system quite simply. The MU80 is not really a complex instrument but it does fit my philosophy of having one device do several things so you have to buy, learn to use, and maintain fewer devices in your studio. In this sense it is powerful.
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Managing Increasing Studio Complexity Along With Studio Growth
As you learn more it is inevitable that you will start working with digital audio. Most sequencers today come in 'Audio' versions that allow you to work with digital audio and MIDI data side by side. This is an incredibly powerful working environment but it adds its own set of problems and can cause the complexity of your creative process, your software and your hardware to increase in leaps and bounds. If you have read my previous articles you may remember how long it took me to explain the MIDI signal path in and out of various devices, sometimes going in both directions at once. The good thing about that is the lack of audio cables. You pretty much only need audio cables from you synthesizer to your stereo system's aux inputs. If you add a few more synthesizers you might need a line mixer which is usually a pretty simple rack mounted box that gives you places to plug in the audio from all your synthesizers and one set of stereo outputs to send it all to an amplifier like that on your home stereo system or since you now have several synthesizers you may have decided to spend about $200 for a decent reference amplifier and a few hundred more for a decent pair of near field monitors. Near field monitors are so called because they are not like normal hi-fi speakers. They are specially designed to be used within about three to 6 feet of the listener and they are very directional so you can more clearly hear, not only which sound is coming from which speaker but you can hear all of the sound you are supposed to hear.If you move your head away from the 'sweet spot' directly in the speaker's patch you listening experience is severely diminished. This speakers don't work well for home stereo entertainment systems just like those speakers would not make near field monitors. An in expensive set is worth the investment. Don't use headphones except to listen to a music track while you are singing or playing another instrument. A mix created while listening to headphones will sound all wrong when you play it out of any kind of speakers. Anyway here you are with a simple line mixer but now you need to start recording from microphones and you need headphone monitor outs and you may now realize you need a way to use reverb on some devices but a different set of effects on your vocals and still other effects on your guitar. This means you will have to break down and get a real mixer. For starters you can hardly go wrong with a Mackie 1604. Their smaller mixers are pretty nifty too. The 1604 looks deceptively simple but this is yet another case of how a complex machine can make your life simpler if you learn how to use it. If you start monkeying around with this device when you don't need it you can waste a lot of your time but if your studio starts getting a little more complicated you will be glad you have a single place to handle all your audio signals.
But wait. If you are handling audio you may need to handle digital audio going from one device to another. Now you have four fundamentally different kinds of cables floating around your studio. They all need to be routed and plugged into stuff and you need to be able to turn them all on and off in one way or another. First you have all those power cables. Don' forget a good surge suppressor or two or three. Not those cheap ones you get in the supermarket but something that can handle a load. Computer stores usually have the right type.Remember that if even one of your electronic devices that is somehow connected to the others is exposed to a power surge like a power fluctuation or a lightening strike it has the potential to fry every device that it is in any way connected to.That is why there are surge suppressors that have a place to plug your telephone line in and back out on the way to your computer. Every device must be plugged into a surge suppressor. In this case the more you have, the more you have to lose so the more sense it makes to be sure this issue is handled properly.
Next you have MIDI cables. Possibly two for each device. By now you have enough devices that you need some sort of MIDI patch bay to allow you to control which MIDI signals go where. I have found the Music Quest 8PortSE parallel port MIDI interface to be very useful. Not only does it have 8 ins and 8 outs that can be controlled and accessed by my computer via a parallel cable, but it has presets that work even when it is not connected to the computer so I can program it then use it as a stand-alone used with older DOS software or out on a gig if I am not using a computer. When I am using my older DOS sequencer software I access it via a normal MIDI card which sends to one of the in ports on the 8PortSE which has several presets I can select from to tell it how to re-route that signal to the other devices. In this case I am using it as though it is not connected to the computer at all. Still, this is one more device to buy and incorporate into your system and it does require a certain amount of attention. But by choosing this device over another one I have cut down on some of the problems that might otherwise have taken away more of my creative time.
Next you have something you might not have had much of before: audio cables. A mixer becomes one more device you have to learn how to use. One more thing that might be the reason you are not getting any sound from your keyboard. But if you set it up in a simple and practical way it will also give you an easy way of managing which devices you want to hear and maybe and easy way to add that new effect box to any device in the studio including a guitar or a vocal microphone. You can plug your tape deck and CD player and TV into it so you have a way to mix your background noise with your other noise if you are that kind of person. It also makes it easy to record your results on a cassette to send to a friend without disconnecting your tape deck from one system and plugging it into another. In general any time I am plugging a device into something I ask myself if this is the last time I will have to do this. If this answer is no then I am doing something wrong somewhere and it will keep costing me time in the future. If your audio setup out grows your mixer you may not need another mixer. You might need an audio patch bay. They look like those old fashioned telephone switchboards where the operator had to plug in cables. You plug all your equipment into sockets in the back and the signal goes in the top one and out the bottom one of each vertical pair. If you want to temporarily change a signal path you do so by plugging in short patch cables and routing the signal a different way on the front of the patch bay. This way when you are done with that particular unusual setup you can put everything back the way it was by simply unplugging any cables that are visible on front. Patch bays cost money, about $100 dollars each and you may need more than one, the patch cables you use on the front to re-route signals cost more money and wherever you needed 1 cable before you now need 2. Instead of a cable going from a synth to a mixer it now goes from a synth to the back of the patch bay and another goes from the socket below it on the back of the patch bay out to the mixer. That can be a lot of money in new cables. Still, if your setup has reached the level of complexity that you need a patch bay you will welcome the flexibility it can give you.
Next may now have digital audio cables, SP/DIF or AESEBU type or maybe a fiber optic cable. I have digital cables going from my CD player to my computer for taking library sound effects off of CDs directly into my computer without altering the signal. I also have digital audio cables between my computer and my DAT (Digital Audio Tape) deck so I can get my digitally mixed or processed music onto DAT without going out to analog and back again which would cause degradation of the audio. DAT never caught on as a consumer medium but it is the standard way music is passed to CD burning plants and for delivering professional audio to clients so guess what? You might have to deal with one of those too! They tend to be between $1200 and $2000 so think twice before you buy and be sure you really need one. You might be able to do what you want just storing your digital audio on ZIP disks or write-able CDs and you can send these files via email (if they are very short) or by mailing a Zip disk. If you have enough digital audio capable devices it is possible to use an audio patch bay to route them. I recommend de-normalling the sockets you will be using for this purpose and hooking up the in and out pair of each device to one vertical pair. A patch bay is called 'normalled' if it is wired so that the signal going in the top rear socket is passed out to whatever is plugged into the bottom rear socket. By de-normalling the sockets you are using for digital audio pairs you will make sure a digital signal loop is not set up which can mess up your signal royally or confuse your equipment. This is a case where you will probably want to know a digital signal is only flowing if you see a patch cable on the front of the patch bay.
If you continue with MIDI and get more adventurous or start doing some more professional work you won't be able to avoid adding some more gear and along with more gear comes more cables and more complex routing situations. If you plan ahead with a realistic idea of what you will need and what you will not need you can avoid a lot of redundancy which wastes your studio space, your money, and your time. Keep an eye out for devices, systems or ways or working that will reduce the number, variety and complexity of devices in your studio. Remember the goal is to compose and/or record good music. Everything else associated with that task is just an unavoidable nuisance. Take a good, close look at each nuisance and make sure it really is unavoidable
A Word About Physical Layout
If you are not thinking ahead you can waste as much time moving around gear and furniture as in any other time wasting endeavor. Remember that musical gear is always attached to other stuff with at least one cable and often four or more. If you want to move your mixer to a different rack you may have a real nightmare as you try to find the original sockets for fifty or more cables. Then you have to test each signal path. This is if you are lucky enough not to have to buy a lot of new longer cables because now much of your gear is farther from the mixer than it used to be. Longer cables also mean more noise in the signal. I like to keep everything in front of me and everything in reach. The problem is there is only so much space in front of me and my arms can only reach so far. Compromises have to be made. Make them carefully. Good studio furniture can help a lot, again if you choose it carefully. I have a large music work station with my computer keyboard on a sliding drawer which leaves my desk top free for all my papers and notes. My video monitor is no a raised shelf straight in front of me. I hate neck and back pain from turning sideways or looking up or down. My audio monitors are on raised shelves to either side of my magnetically shielded video monitor. The old one got distorted by the proximity to the speakers' big magnets. This reduced the number of places where I could put speakers. There is a 4Unit rack space below each audio monitor but I need the CD player in one which takes 3U in that one leaving only space for some papers. The Other has the MIDI interface and two General MIDI synth modules because I need to see monitor the displays on all three. The remaining space is taken by a speaker switch which I need to be able to switch back and forth while listening carefully so I can't put it where I can' reach it easily. I have desktop space left but much of it is used by my power and data switches and modem and telephone. There are big rack bays in right and left body of the desk where drawers should be but getting to the backs of those devices would mean crawling under the desk then making a u-turn and crawling back into the long tunnel of the desk itself. I suppose I could just use long chords and unscrew the units and slide them out the front to make back panel changes but that is less than ideal and how much gear can you place down by your knees and expect make good use of it? This leaves the areas to my left and right. I have a multi-tiered keyboard rack to my right and a long keyboard desk with hutch to my left. But with my K2000 and disks and fax and such on the right and long controller keyboard, VCR, TV and second computer on the left that space gets used up pretty quickly too. I squeezed in a tall, rolling rack on my left but that has pushed my long keyboard over a foot farther back behind my left shoulder which is not a good place to keep a keyboard to which you will want constant and easy access. Since most of you are probably keyboardists. I am sure you will want your keyboard right next to you if not right in front of you. That is not the whole layout but it is the central core of it.
It has taken me about 10 years to arrive at this configuration which is only a few months old. Every new device brought with it a new set of considerations and lots of time was spent incorporating each new element into the whole. Often some new gadget seemed to have an appropriate place but if I moved something else to make room for it I would start a domino effect that would ripple from device to device, each needing to be moved because of some critical consideration which I had not thought about since I installed it. Still, the hours of thinking seem to be worth it when I can walk into my studio and flick a few switches and jump right into what I had started creating in the shower.