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h_double
Jul 27, 2001
Yes Audacity or really any wav/audio editing app is fine for this.

You can also slow stuff down to half speed if you are trying to transcribe a tricky passage (half speed = all notes will be an octave lower, but they'll still be the same notes)

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h_double
Jul 27, 2001
As far as I can tell, the only benefit of Amazing Slow-Downer is a pretty clean UI for independently adjusting tempo/pitch from one screen.

The tempo adjustment in Audacity actually isn't bad, especially not for this purpose.

Reaper is a great program and all, but suggesting it for somebody who just wants to loop and slow down some mp3s is a little bit giving your mom a copy of Autocad when she just wants to make some signs to advertise a bake sale.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

dookie posted:

If I want MIDI in,

Should I get an audio interface with MIDI in?

or is there a better alternative? I very rarely record things with a mic, and when I do it is only one track at a time.

If I were to get an audio interface, what would be my best choice?


Have a look at the audio interface thread for some ideas.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

dookie posted:

Thanks. So basically if I have 2 synths I want to sync to ableton live and/or use as midi controllers, I need an audio interface with 2 MIDI ins? I can't seem to find an audio interface with 2 MIDI ins that don't have a shitload of other inputs that I don't need :(

Does either synth have a MIDI Thru port? If so you should be able to daisy chain them:

Interface MIDI Out -> Synth 1 MIDI In
Synth 1 MIDI Thru -> Synth 2 MIDI In
Synth (whichever one you want to use as a controller) Out -> Interface MIDI In


Just make sure they are both set to different MIDI channels.

h_double fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Apr 12, 2010

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Schmopenhauer posted:

Can anyone recommend a good ressource for sheet music for clarinet and alto saxophone? I'm a complete beginner in both instruments and don't know poo poo about reading music yet, but I assume it will be a good idea to find some and try to practice with it, outside of being taught.

I'm looking for jazz, mainly 30s and 40s stuff. :)

Look for a "fake book". These are collections of the melodies + chords for hundreds of standards (mostly jazz, some stuff like show tunes and older pop songs).

These started as photocopied collections of dubious legality passed from hand to hand (and there are still similar electronic versions floating around), now there are also several legitimate published equivalents (which benefit from better typesetting and fewer errors in transcription) that you can find at pretty much any music store; there is one called "The Ultimate Fake Book", the "Real Book" series etc.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

himajinga posted:

A quick question about using the FX loop on an amp. I've been building a pedal complement over the past few months and have been experimenting with order, etc. I finally tried plugging my pedals in through my fx loop and the result was crazy but awesome. My only issue is that the loop added TONS of noise to the signal, even with the guitar volume turned all the way off.

I have 2 questions:
Is it the pedals causing this noise or something else (cord, something on the amp, etc.)?
Would something like a noise suppressor reduce/eliminate this noise when the guitar isn't being played, and if so should I place it on the Send or Return end of the chain?

The signal chain, for the record, is:
Fender Lead II > Marshall DSL50 head > (loop: Little Big Muff Pi > Boss GE-6 EQ > Back into the DSL 50) > 2x12 Cab


Those particular pedals (especially the fuzz) will probably sound better normally in between the guitar and amp, and not used in the effects loop.

In general, an effects send is good for modulation type effects (delay, reverb, flanger, chorus, etc.), while volume/distortion/overdrive type effects work better directly after the guitar.

That said, a noise gate placed after any kind of moderately extreme distortion can definitely help make things more manageable when you're not actively playing.



vvvvv EDIT: yeah you're right about the noise gate, I misspoke

h_double fucked around with this message at 19:59 on Apr 22, 2010

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Gorilla Salsa posted:

Do I need a powered monitor or a passive monitor? Am I just asking for trouble?

You can go either way, the difference is that passive monitors require a separate power amp to drive them, while powered monitors have their own amp circuitry and you can directly feed them a line level signal from a mixer or interface.

I don't know anything about that kit you linked but it looks like it could be a cool project if you're comfortable with the soldering etc. involved.

As a rule of thumb, with passive monitors you want the speakers to be double the wattage of the power amp (so you can drive them plenty hard and not worry about blow-outs); those speakers are 100 watts @ 8 ohms so you would want an amp that provides 50 watts per channel @ 8 ohms.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

baka kaba posted:

Not used Cubase in a while, but I think you need to create a new track (stereo if you want stereo effects) and put your effects on there as inserts, or you could do separate tracks for each insert if you want more control. Then you click your Sends button on each source track and route it to the effects track(s)

You could set it up as inserts/sends, which lets you dial in how much of each track to send to the effect -- there is still a "dry" version of the track, this works well if you want to add a little reverb/delay to several tracks.

You can also set up a buss (submix) to route the tracks through and put the effects on that. This works better for things like EQ or compression, where you probably don't want any of the dry signal mixed in.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Svrdfsk posted:

What sound card should i get to support both my guitar playing and my lust for divulging into electronic music?
And also, what do these pads do? (Like Korg Nano-Pad)

You could get a guitar specific package like a Rig Kontrol or Stealth Pedal, which are bundled with Guitar Rig (Rig Kontrol) and Amplitube (Stealth Pedal) amp simulation software, and also work as a decent general-purpose audio interface. The main drawback to these pedals is the limited number of inputs/outputs (like if you want to plug in microphones or multiple instruments).

Also have a look at this thread on audio interfaces for a bunch of other suggestions.


The Nanopad is a USB control surface, it can be programmed to do pretty much anything within your audio software -- you can use the pads as drum pads or to trigger samples, to change the sound of a synthesizer, etc.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Erwin posted:

This is a really stupid question, but how do I play my USB midi keyboard live through Windows 7? I had it connected to an Ubuntu computer and was using Qsynth. I rearranged my office and for now, it would be far less effort if I could just connect it to the Windows 7 computer, run some program, and play my keyboard and sound comes out. No recording or sequencing or anything fancy, I just want to play the piano.

Bonus points if I can use Soundfonts.

Savihost (or its more advanced sibling VSTHost, on the same site)

+

sfz (VST soundfont player)

+

ASIO4ALL (low-latency drivers if you have a sound card without native ASIO drivers)

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Sharks Eat Bear posted:

I'm thinking about getting an interface that's bundled with Ableton Live Lite 7. While checking out the Ableton site, I've only found info about upgrading from Live LE or Live Intro, but not from Live Lite. Is it possible to upgrade from Live Lite 7? And would I be able to upgrade to Live 8 or only Live 7?

http://www.ableton.com/lite-upgrade

It looks like it's USD $329 to upgrade from Live Lite to Live 8 (full version), and that there is a free upgrade from Live Lite 7 to Live Lite 8.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001
What's the easiest/most economical way to record video which I can sync to audio recorded on my DAW?

I'd like to record some video clips in my studio, and then be able to go in and tweak/remix the audio later if necessary, with the end result of something I could stick up on youtube.

Right now my video recording tech consists of a Panasonic Lumix point & shoot cam with a video mode, and the camera on my Droid. I wouldn't mind picking up a modest video cam (and it would be sort of nice being able to shoot at 720p) but I want to do this basically as inexpensively as possible.

On the DAW end there's a FireFace 400, which can basically handle any kind of timecode sync and digital IO you can think of.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Popcorn posted:

My new small question: can anyone recommend a good free pitch shifter VST? The one in Guitar Rig is perfect, but then I have to route non-guitar things through Guitar Rig, and that's stupid.

Why is it stupid? I use GR all the time on synth basses, organs, electric pianos, etc. You can use effects without putting any amp or cab models in the patch.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

cat doter posted:

Any chance there's some nice sounding strings VSTis around that I can either get cheaply or free? There has to be some open source maniac out there that has made some cool sounding fake violins and cellos. I need to dress up a sad sounding pop song and we all know a string section does that nicely, right fellas?

Have a look at the free Kontakt Player, it probably has some string samples.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Excavation posted:

You know how there are those small toy keyboards sold in piss-scented electronics stores targeted at kids, right? My friend has one and loves it, I've played it too and while it is fun there are some limitations.

Anyway, storytime's over, this is the question thread after all. Is there such thing as a higher-end model of a tiny keyboard? It would be amazing if there were something I could fit in a backpack and play around with on the bus/during lunch. As I saids before, the regular ones have some limitations (they are made for babies after all), so I'd need to find something that has a headphone port and the ability to play at least 4 or 5 notes at once. Anything else (sound quality, touch sensitivity, variety of preset sounds, MIDI interface etc) is just gravy, I'd ideally just like to be able to transport it easily and use it to write music when I'm travelling or otherwise away from the house.

I do have a melodica, which would be perfect if it weren't so drat loud, so are there any other options?

It might on the big side for a backpack, but maybe look for an old Casiotone on eBay or such; you should be able to find a decent one for $30-50.

Or a Korg MicroX, but those are more expensive ($200-300)

h_double fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Jun 3, 2011

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Power_13 posted:

I'm considering upgrading my music laptop since my old one suffers from some pretty heavy slowdown once I get to something like seven tracks with effects and drums. I use Reaper, ezDrummer and Guitar Rig 4, and plug everything into a Saffire LE Focusrite (firewire). I use some other NativeInstruments software packages like the Session Strings package. My keyboard goes into my laptop via a USB MIDI interface.

What should I be looking at as a matter of priority; RAM, CPU or something in between? I'm currently using a single-core 3ghz with 2gb RAM. Is there anything else in my setup that might cause a "bottleneck"? I'm fairly new to proper recording, so I want to make sure I'm going to buy something that'll improve performance as much as possible.


Get a MacBook Pro.

Since there are only a small handful of possible hardware configurations on Mac, companies are able to write more stable (and better performing) drivers/apps compared to Windows, where there is a need to support dozens of hardware manufacturers, multiple flavors of Windows (in 32 and 64 bit), etc.

h_double fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Jun 11, 2011

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Archituethis posted:

I'm looking to buy a recording interface. Right now I use an SM58 and a Line6 UX2. I don't really like the UX2 though. I want to find something a little simpler that doesn't force me to use a lovely program with lovely effects.

Anyone know of any good, simple interfaces? All I need is one or two XLR and Guitar jacks and basic Gain knobs, etc., that's decently cheap. I'm Looking to spend $200 tops. Would prefer the $100 range though.

http://www.mackie.com/products/onyxblackjack/

$150, does what you need, good pres, solid drivers and convertors.

h_double fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jul 15, 2011

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Boz0r posted:

I'm trying to get the hang of recording and mixing so as a test I've tried recording the different guitar tracks of Christmas Time by The Darkness. What's hard is getting all the parts to sound clear. As an example, here is the ending:




How should I try recording these bits, and what should I look out for?

I'm recording through a Zoom G9.2tt board plugged into my Windows PC by USB and using Cubase.


Try using some EQ treatment in Cubase to give each guitar track its own slice of the frequency spectrum. That is to say, give the rhythm guitar a little EQ boost in the low end, and on the other guitars, cut some low end and emphasize the midrange and high frequencies.

Also, pan the guitar parts differently in the mix.

You can also experiment with giving each guitar part its own tone (different pickup selected, different amp model and effects). Make good notes of what settings you used for the different parts in case you want to go back and re-record something and have the tone match.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

HollisBrown posted:

My sister in-law is getting married in October and I was asked to DJ the reception among other responsibilities. Is there a free program that can manage a playlist and crossfades between songs? If it matters all this will be running off of my mac book pro through the headphone jack straight into a PA.


Yes, you can do this with iTunes.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001
I haven't tried it myself (I use Traktor), but Mixxx looks worth a look.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

EatDirt posted:

I am very interested in learning to play the violin, and do not want to pay 25,000$ for one.
The optimal price I am looking to pay is under 500$, I know I am not going to get the best for that, but hopefully one that isn't warped.

Anyone got suggestions?

Violin is one instrument where you really need a live instructor, so try and find one of those and ask them about good luthiers (or rental options) in your area. If you do decide to buy, try to get your teacher (or another experienced violinist) to go shopping with you to evaluate the individual instruments.

Drifter287 posted:

How difficult/expensive is it to move a pickup selector switch on an electric guitar? I have a single cut Ibanez with the switch in between the volume and tone knobs, but I always liked the Gibson style of having it on the upper horn of the guitar.

I'd be real hesitant to cut up a nice guitar like that, for fear the additional cutouts might adversely affect the tone. Plus routing that into an LP-style solid body sounds like a massive pain in the rear end (more $$$ in guitar tech terms).

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Behold! A Elk! posted:

Can anybody tell me the cheapest way to get realistic sounding drums in my songs without having a drum set. Perhaps a sort of program? I would prefer something where I can trigger the sound myself just to give things more of a recorded feel rather than programming beats, but if it comes to that I can deal with it. Thanks!

Check out the Kontakt Player, which has a free 560MB sample library that I'm pretty sure contains some decent drum kits.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001
whoops

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Long Wang posted:

If I decided to buy a flat, I would usually become a leaseholder, ie. I would lease the property from the freeholder. What I don't understand is, what happens if when the lease expires the freeholder doesn't allow me or anyone to renew.

What happens to a flat depends on the keyholder's signature, e.g. it could be ruled as accidental.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

moctopus posted:

Does anyone have any book suggestions for theory? In a perfect world it would have exercises or something.

I really dislike having to look at a web page for this sort of thing. I guess if there is an incredible site with exercises or questions or activities I'd be interested in knowing about that too.

I'm learning guitar if that matters.

Mark Sarnecki's "Complete Elementary Music Rudiments" is terrific. It's a 300 page workbook of pure exercises (with explanatory material) to take you from reading staff notation through intervals, chords, modes, scales, melody, and cadences.

Ricky Rooksby's "How to Write Songs on Guitar" is also great. It's guitar-specific, aimed at pop/rock players (in terms of examples), and focuses on how chords and chord progressions are constructed, scales, and general discussion of songwriting.

The Ted Greene books that butros recommended are excellent but HARD. They are aimed primarily at jazz players, they are awesomely chocked full of info, but they are extremely rigorous and challenging.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001
If I'm not worried about a strap looking stylish, I'm happy with a basic polypropylene strap: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/accessories/ernie-ball-2-poly-strap

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Sgt. Slaughter posted:

I bought a pair of M-Audio BX8a's, and am experiencing some very faint static which I believe is from AC interference from my power source. I've read a bit about AC sound filters but don't really know what exactly I should buy. The sound persists whether or not the monitors are plugged into a sound source. I can't hear it unless i put my ear right up next to the tweeter, but I'd still like to get rid of it if feasibly possible.

Some googling lead me to this: http://www.amazon.com/Behringer-UCA202-Audio-Interface/dp/B000KW2YEI

Would it solve the problem I'm having? Other suggestions would be great.


Definitely make sure you are are using an audio interface or mixer with balanced outputs to feed the monitors (that Behringer does not have balanced outs), using balanced (XLR or TRS) cables.

You might want to look into a power conditioner (Fuhrman makes several, I personally use one by Alesis); if you get one, try to get one locally from someplace that will let you return it if it doesn't do the trick.

Also, google "ground loop isolation" and do some reading.

h_double fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Sep 3, 2012

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

HollisBrown posted:

I want to light every djembe in the entire world on fire, and shove them up the rear end of every dumb white hippy with dreadlocks. Djembes are not meant to be accompaniment instruments, they are typically lead instruments in traditional African percussion. They are LOUD AS gently caress and I've only ever met like 3 people who could actually play one.

Honestly I would go with congas, but you have to actually learn to play them.

Jembes are traditionally part of an ensemble, with one lead jembe, and several other jembes and dunduns providing accompaniment. They are also often used to provide dramatic accent and backing for a storyteller.

Besides, who gives a drat what they were "meant to be"? This is music; unless you are recreating a specific historic style, all that matters is what sounds good. Plus, it's not like African musicians don't use the jembe in more popular/modern contexts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXYgCf24z5M

Jembes are awesome, but they are a musical instrument, and reward study and proper technique. If you go that route, go to some workshops or take a couple of lessons, learn the proper "syllables" and practice some traditional rhythms.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

duggimon posted:

So we're thinking of getting my stepdaughter a ukelele, I've seen cheap ones before that couldn't hold their tuning for more than a couple of strums though so I was wondering if anyone knew of a good make or whatever to look out for. Looking to spend £50 or less (UK) but there's no point in buying something poo poo, any help appreciated, thanks.

Getting something decent for that price is going to be tough unless you can find something second hand. If you can go as high as £75-100, look at a Lanikai LU-21C or a Kala KA-C.

Also you might want to PM TapTheForwardAssist, I think he's the resident uke expert around here.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

cactuscarpet posted:

As for my own small question, somewhat obliquely related: I've never managed to get into Pink Floyd, though part of me knows that it's an essential part of last century's musical history. However, it seems all I've heard of them are endless delay-saturated jams and plodding, soft-focus ballads. What should I listen to to change my mind?

"Relics" is a compilation album of PF's early psychedelic-pop singles from when Syd Barrett was still involved with the band.

"Animals" is a concept album based on Orwell's "Animal Farm". Pay attention to the lyrics.

Give "The Wall" a watch while you're at it.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

baka kaba posted:

Modern guitar? Or modern guitar




Hope you're okay with an instrument that can only play in a couple of keys.

You can also play a fretless instrument, but that requires substantial skill and ear training, and good luck quickly playing barre chords on a fretless.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Captain Payne posted:

Does anybody know of a good cheap microphone for basic recording? I need something to use for some piano pieces.

edit--just saw the faq on mics. all the mics listed in there are a bit above my price range. i'm looking for something in the neighborhood of $20-30, quality isn't a big issue--I just want the next step up from a headset mic.


Option 1) http://www.radioshack.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=13067513&sr=1&origkw=microphone


Option 2) a USB mic like a Samson Go, which pushes your budget a little bit (they sell for $40) but is likely to offer dramatically better sound quality than option 1.

The problem with using an XLR mic and an adapter to step it down to 3.5mm is that XLR mics sound pretty terrible without a proper preamp.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Revvik posted:

My bandmates wanted to pose this question, re: band naming. We had settled on one, then someone did some digging and found a small band with the same name from the '90s that had a CD release from Columbia and a later CD from 2003 under their own independent release, and like five other bands on Reverbnation with the same name across the US.

I guess the question is, should we care?

Yes. There are enough good potential band names to go around that there's no reason to use one that's already in use. Best case, you might confuse your potential fans, and you'll miss out on a chance to stand out. If somebody looks for your band on google, there should be no question about who's who. Even if there's no legal/trademark conflict (which do happen), it looks sort of half-assed. This is especially true if one of the other same-named bands blows up and gets popular a year or two from now.

h_double fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Oct 13, 2012

h_double
Jul 27, 2001
"Horse bite" is a new form of underground club music, it's basically a mix of trap, dancehall, vaporwave, and surf punk. Horse bite parties are notorious for the wild near-pornographic dancing, where a guy will grind up against a girl while she shakes her rear end and violently grabs his quads.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Sorbo Shirtless posted:

What would Jazz/Blues guitar strings sound like heavily distorted and played with a bow?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIHabvURnpk


"Jazz strings" are often flatwound, which are a heavier gauge, and have a darker/mellower sound. I don't know how much of a difference that would make with a bow. "Blues strings" could be anything really, that's not really a useful description.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001
A cello is a different enough instrument that even with viola experience, it'd be a good idea for a new player to have at least a few in-person lessons to learn basic technique (how to hold the intrument, proper bow technique, etc.); things that'd be difficult to explain perfectly with a book, but that an experienced player would easily be able to give immediate feedback.

Try checking google/craigslist/etc. for adult instructors in your area; you should be able to find some who will either come to your home or give lessons at a studio. That person should also be able to provide better information about instrument rental, compared to just walking into a random music store.

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Radical Griff posted:

Like, for instance, on Daft Punk's "Around the World," the bassline is all funky and awesome. How did they do that? I mean, did they just throw notes together until something sounded good? There has to be some sort of science to it! I keep reading my book on music theory, but it doesn't seem to answer my questions. The biggest one, "how do you put notes together to make something sound natural and funky and cool." Because I am obviously not doing it right!

You're on the right track with music theory. For developing good melody progressions, it helps to understand intervals, scales, and chords. These things are all interrelated and all build upon one another. An interval is simply the distance (in semitones) between two notes -- a minor third can sound mellow or pensive, a major third can be bright or stately, and soforth. Scales are built upon a particular pattern of notes of the full 12-note chromatic scale, and chords are built from a particular set of notes within a scale.

A good place to start with this is ear training. There are a number of apps and websites to help you with this (musictheory.net and http://trainer.thetamusic.com/ are great theory resources), which will play one note and then another and you have to identify the interval between them. This will help you learn to instinctively recognize a minor third or a major seventh or an octave interval when you hear one, and this will help you be able to decode other people's melodies when you hear them.

Another thing that has helped me a lot is practicing tons and tons of scales. Guitar is my main instrument, I really like the way that scale patterns are laid out on the fretboard, plus it's easy to move around from key to key (this is all true of bass guitar too of course). Keyboard instruments are great for being able to visualize patterns too. Practicing scales is partly training for performance, but it's also a form of ear training and drilling in pattern recognition -- it helps you internalize the roadmap of intervals within a scale. The minor and major scales are the most common, and the pentatonic minor scale is extremely common in all types of pop music.

From scales you can go to chords by playing arpeggios -- that is, picking out just the chord tones (typically the first, third, fifth, and seventh notes) of a scale, and playing those back and forth in different patterns. You can whip up some great basslines and melodies by starting with a basic arpeggio, tweaking notes around a bit, changing up the order of the notes (inversion), etc. I realize I'm throwing a lot of terms at you here, naturally don't worry about trying to digest everything at once. Be patient!

Once you've got a decent grasp on music theory, that's one piece of the puzzle. Another is a strong sense of rhythm and groove, this is something else which takes lots of practice for most people. You can start by using a metronome (or click track in your DAW) when you're practicing scales, and start with the tempo turned down S-L-O-W, and don't turn it up until your timing is tighter than a nun's butthole. Then, learn about swing and syncopation. And if you want to play or produce reggae or house or funk (or whatever), learn about the particular patterns and rhythmic stresses that characterize that type of music (for example, most rock/blues has the emphasis on the downbeat -- ONE two THREE four -- while reggae emphasizes the upbeat -- one TWO three FOUR). I guess some people naturally have a good ear for complex rhythms and can program them directly, but in my experience it helps a lot having at least some basic skill with a performance instrument, to help "feel" the rhythm and strengthen the connection between the mental and the physical.

Once you get all this down, you have the makings of a badass bassline. Now you just need to learn about synth programming, about oscillators and filters and envelopes and LFOs, about the general physics of sound, about EQ and compression and mixing and how to make sounds sit together tightly with one another. And by now you're probably ready to go back for more music theory, to learn how to take all those individual snippets of melody and rhythm and tone, and add in bigger building blocks of chord progression and harmonic theory to turn it all into a fully realized song.

And again, this is a lot of stuff to take in, but you don't have to digest it all at once; it takes most people years to sound "merely okay" if they are trying to write and produce entire tracks from scratch. But hopefully this wall of text can provide at least a helpful overview of what goes where. The great part of computer production is you don't have to figure everything out at once. Maybe you want to start with a sampled drum loop and some killer synth presets and a melody not much more complex than "Mary Had a Little Lamb", but you want to make that melody really groove. Or maybe you want to jack the melody from a song you like and program a synth tone to make it sound like something totally different.

Be diligent but have fun with it!

h_double fucked around with this message at 09:52 on Jan 5, 2013

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

peepsalot posted:

I have a little electronics project I'm playing with to make my own crude capacitive touch sensing device. I'm not really a musician or dj, but I figured it would be fun anyways to try to use my device to emulate one of those digital turntables.

Does anyone know if there is a standard device protocol for those sort of things? Also is there any linux compatible software for just goofing around with "scratching" like that with such a device?


I would approach this by interfacing the touch sensing device with an Arduino board. There are Arduino libraries for communicating in pretty much any data format. I'd personally try to use OSC, though MIDI might be easier to get talking with some other apps.

You could connect the Arduino setup to Pd (Pd/Puredata is a visual programming environment for audio, which is free and available for Linux), then adapt a Pd patch to scratch samples. (In this case, you wouldn't have to worry about OSC or MIDI, just do everything internally in Pd).

h_double fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jan 27, 2013

h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Pope Mobile posted:

What kind of viola strings should one buy if they are completely new to string instruments in general?

If you are completely new to violin/viola, you should really really, moreso even than other instruments, find a good in-person teacher (and ask them to recommend equipment). It's not an instrument you can pick up on your own.

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h_double
Jul 27, 2001

Magnitogorsk. posted:

Greetings friends. I previously asked a question here about trying to play guitar on my computer, which led me to buying this audio interface http://us.focusrite.com/usb-audio-interfaces/scarlett-2i2. I'm using it, along with Amplitube and ASIO4All to play guitar with fancy digital modelling on my computer with very low latency which is great. However, I can't play audio from any other programs while using ASIO4All. I read all about the history of Windows and kmixer and completely understand why it doesn't work with my crappy onboard sound card. What I can't figure out after hours of Google searching, and I'm about to throw my computer out the god drat window, is:

How can I achieve low latency guitar playback on my computer via a program like Amplitube WHILE playing audio from other programs????

I'm 99.9% sure I just need to buy a new sound card, which I'm willing to spend as much money as I need to on, but what the hell do I look at in the technical specs to make sure it will do what I want? Is any decent sound card going to accomplish this and this is a completely stupid question? I just want to make sure what I'm buying is actually going to work before I buy it.


Is there a reason you're using ASIO4ALL rather than the native ASIO drivers that come with the Scarlett? ASIO4ALL is mostly to provide ASIO support for soundcards that don't offer it natively.

A different audio interface won't make a difference, as what you're running into is a limitation of ASIO.

What other thing are you trying to play audio from? If it's a media file or youtube clip or something, the easiest thing might be to rip the audio to mp3 or wav and import it to another DAW track.

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